Writing Wednesdays: What Description Really Does

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Writing Wednesdays: What Description Really Does

Like exposition, writing description is one of those things that, if you're not already inclined to it, can feel like an anchor around your paragraphs. It's all too easy to go overboard describing what your characters see and feel, and while you may think you're giving your readers what they need, you're really just sinking your book under dead weight. If you go too light on description, though, your readers don't know what anything looks or smells or feels like and the book falls flat.

Just like everything else in writing, good description comes down to good execution, which is just a fancy way of saying "You've got to do it well." That's no sweat if you're one of those writers who already loves description. For me, though, description is one of those writing elements I've always struggled with. I'm a plot and characters girl who'd do everything in dialogue if she could. I'm also not a very visual person, which means I'm constantly forgetting to describe basic things like what characters are wearing because I just don't think about it. My readers do, though, and boy did they let me know.

So right from the beginning, I knew I had a problem with descriptions, and like any good writer, I got to work on fixing that.

Kindle Unlimited Is Changing Their Payment Structure and Why I Think That's Awesome

I was on a sort-of vacation last week (well, as close to vacation as I get), so I didn't hear about the newly unveiled Kindle Unlimited payment structure changes until my (not actually publishing related) friend mentioned it to me at dinner.

Since any change to KU is the definition of Relevant To My Interests, I proceeded to be very rude and looked it up right there at the table, and you know what? I really liked what I read, and here's why.

Writing Wednesdays: The Price of a Novel (It's Not What You Think!)

Quick bookkeeping note: Nice Dragons Finish Last is still on sale for $0.99, and the sequel, One Good Dragon Deserves Another is still available for pre-order. This is where the books live! Get you one!

So I normally like to keep these WW features focused on the craft of writing, but an event happened this last week that really got my writing goat, and thus this post was spawned. I hope you enjoy it!

Writing Wednesdays: The Price of a Novel (It's Not What You Think!)

The other day I was at a social event, talking to the parents of some of my son's friends (as you do), and it came up that I was a writer. This is still a pretty new thing for me. Even after five years as a full time author, I still find it hard to say "I am a writer" in mixed company without feeling like a poser, but I'm slowly getting better.

Anyway, after the usual "What do you write? Why haven't I heard of you? I've always wanted to be a writer!" back and forth, it comes out that I self-published my last novel, and this one lady asks me how much it costs to put out a professional quality self-pub book.

Now, as you've probably noticed, I don't mind talking money at all when it comes to my business! I feel that giving people real world numbers for the costs and benefits of writing is the most effective way to take power away from those who try to dupe new writers and take advantage of their dreams. I've actually broken down my costs for publishing Nice Dragons Finish Last on the blog before, so I was able to proudly tell this lady that it cost me about $3000.

She gets this shell-shocked look on her face. "Three thousand dollars?"

I explain how that includes hiring editors and copy editors and commissioning custom art for the cover. I also tell her how I was able to save money since, as a former graphic designer myself, I could do the design work for the cover and the ebook interior on my own. But while I'm standing there being proud about how low I kept my costs, she's still staring at me like I'm nuts, and then she says,

"I would never pay that much for my book."

And ladies and gentlemen, this is when I start looking at her like she's crazy. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I write for a living and must therefore expect to make that $3000 back plus some (otherwise I would make no profit and thus be unable to survive), or the part where $3000 is a tiny investment when you're talking about a small business that supports a family. No, I was staring at her because those three thousand countable, bankable dollars I paid to have my book professionally packaged are the least of my costs when it comes to writing.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Let's Talk Numbers: Reader Retention Rates Across a Series

So today, completely of his own volition (and because he is a giant data geek), my husband, business partner, and far more sensible half, Travis Bach, is here to share some publishing numbers! Today, we're looking at reader retention rates across series, how many people who buy the first book in a series can be expected to buy the others.

Now, of course, this number will vary wildly between writers and even between series by the same author, but (as Travis is about to explain) looking at your book sales from a top down, data driven perspective can enable you to make some pretty sharp best guesses, or at least ballpark. If nothing else, it's an interesting topic to think about and I thought you guys would enjoy getting a peek behind the curtain for how we make our business decisions here at the Aaron/Bach book factory.

Writing Wednesdays: Info Filling (Or, How to Write Exposition *Without* Being Boring)

Yay! Another Writing Wednesday! I'm so glad you guys have been enjoying these. :) Also, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you so so SO much to everyone who's pre-ordered One Good Dragon Deserves Another! The reception has been overwhelming. I can't wait for you guys to read the actual book come August!!

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, the first book in the series, Nice Dragons Finish Last, is still only $0.99 on Amazon, so go check it out!

Now, on with the show...

Writing Wednesdays: Info Filling (Or, How to Write Exposition *Without* Being Boring)

Oh exposition, you quarrelsome beast.

Exposition is one of those fancy literary vocab words most people first encounter in High School English. Anything that feeds the reader information in a story--the description of a town square where a riot is happening, the explanation of the political situation that caused the riot, a recounting of the tragic personal history of the woman leading the riot--counts as narrative exposition, and it's famous for being one of those things that writers, especially genre writers, mess up.

It makes sense. The burden of exposition (which every writer struggles with at some point) is exponentially higher for those who write about people, places, and things that don't exist in real life. A thriller writer can simply say "the stern FBI agent" and expect his reader to know what he's talking about without spending paragraphs explaining what this "FBI" thing is. A Fantasy author, on the other hand, often has a entire new world to introduce before our readers can even appreciate what's going on with the plot.

That's an exponentially heavier exposition burden to bear with a much higher bar for success. Sloppy, info-dumpy exposition, which might slide under the radar in contemporary fiction if the writer is strong in other areas, becomes a deal-breaker any kind of genre fiction where the writer is introducing their reader to complex new worlds, societies, or rules for reality. There is simply too much to explain to do it badly, which is why skillful, interesting exposition is one of those skills every writer, but particularly every genre writer, must master if they want readers to stick with them long enough to see the rest of the book.

So how do we do it? How do you explain your epic magic system/political conflict/hyperspace travel to your reader without dumping a giant, book-closing wall o' text on their eyeballs? Well, fortunately for us, there's a trick to writing good description/exposition that's not actually hard to master. It just requires that you one 1) be aware of how much you're asking your reader to absorb at any one time, and 2) remember to stay entertaining.

How to Write Exposition People Won't Skip

Ask a non-Fantasy reader why they don't read Fantasy, and one of the most common complaints you'll hear is that there's too much exposition. Who wants to sit around and listen to some elf sing a song about the history for five pages? Dullsville.

Now, I happen to enjoy a good elf song, but I can totally see why people would complain. For years, Fantasy authors, Tolkien included, have relied on info-dumps to explain the detailed history of their worlds, often through songs or inscriptions or whatever other in-text excuse the author can come up with for a history lesson. This sort of thing happened so often, it became one of the conventions of the epic Fantasy genre, and when done well, it can definitely lend a real feeling of elegance and other-worldliness to the text. When done badly, however, this sort of exposition is the most excruciating, boring, nonsensical crap you'll ever wade through.

It's stuff like this gives Fantasy a bad name in so many circles. Don't believe me? Take a second and imagine reading the most stereotypically bad Fantasy novel you can think of. Chances are, your imaginary book starts with a densely written prologue describing the birth/fall of the world in lofty, quasi-poetic language.

That's how bad this thing has gotten. The convention itself has become a marker of terrible quality. Even if you do write a masterful, entertaining, beautifully crafted exposition prologue/elf song/found history/whatever, chance are most modern readers will just skip it because so many other authors have abused this exposition mechanic so abysmally.

So, if even masterful infodumps are off the table, how do you describe your pantheon/world breaking/epic history/other weighty topic of world building? How do you teach your reader what they need to know about the history of your world without sitting them down for a history lesson?

The exact answer to this problem will depend on your own particular book, writing voice, and intended audience, but a trick I like to use in my Fantasy (and Science Fiction) novels is something I call Info Filling.

Rather than dumping information on the reader all at once, I use whatever exposition I want the reader to learn as filler for when I'm doing other things. For example, say I'm introducing a new character who is foreign to my main cast, and she has a hideous scar. Maybe one of my characters asks about it, showing how tactless and direct he is (character development!), and the new lady gruffly informs him that she received this scar because she was a medicine woman who was accused of witchcraft, and the villain scared her face to show the world that she was evil (exposition and character development!)

As you can see, this is a much more natural and interesting way to inform your reader that there's a bad dude out there accusing ladies of being witches and scarring their faces than just sitting them down and telling them about it. By filling your information into the scene rather than just dumping it, you've turned your exposition into its own little story within your larger narrative and you've also layered in some character development, which is always good.

Tricks like these let you squeeze an enormous amount of exposition into your prose without making the reader work for it. Whenever I do a scene--any scene--I'm always trying to squeeze information about the larger world into the cracks wherever it will fit, even if I'm not using that information immediately. It's just there, a natural part of the world, and if you do it well, your reader will absorb all the information they need without even realizing it.

You see this tactic all the time in really good video games. Portal, for example, has zero info dumping. Nothing. Everything about the world and how it came to be that way is told in small details which are arranged to be found naturally as the player progresses through the puzzles or as part of the ambient atmosphere. But even with this complete lack of hand holding, by the end of the game, the player still knows enough about the world and its stakes to care about the final boss battle. That is amazing, and probably my favorite modern example of how good exposition should work. Also, the game is stupidly fun and clever, but you knew that, right?

I've also found that approaching exposition as a seasoning rather than a main dish really helps to "load balance" the information my books. Since I've completely abandoned the idea of trying to cram entire concepts down my reader's throats early in the text, I'm free to dole information out on a purely need to know basis as the plot progresses. Not only does doing things this way make the reading/writing experience a lot easier for all involved, it also ensure that, when I do need to stop and explain something complicated, my reader is ready to learn it.

It's all about creating investment first. You use your characters and your plot to show your reader why your history/worldbuilding/etc. is important, and only then, when they're desperate to know, do you hit them with the details. This is how you turn what would otherwise be boring, info dumpy exposition into a treat your readers will gobble up. Parcel it out slowly, feed them just enough details so they understand what's going on (but are never overloaded) while you draw them in. Then, when they're hooked and turning pages, that's when you hit them with the big, complicated explanation.

Pull this pattern off right, and you'll never get accused of info dumping again. :)

I hope this gives you all a new avenue of attack on your exposition woes! Thanks for reading, and I'll be back next Wednesday with another writing post.

Yours,
Rachel

Writing Wednesdays: Battling Perfectionism and Shutting Up Your Inner Editor

Yay! Time for another Writing Wednesday! First, though, (in case you missed my spam on Monday), I have a new book coming out! One Good Dragon Deserves Another, the long awaited sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last (which is currently on sale for $0.99!) will release August 1, 2015! You can read a sneak-peek sample here, or pre-order your very own copy on Amazon.

Also, if you clicked any of those links, you might have noticed that I revamped my website. So check that out, too. It's pretty!

Okay, okay, Rachel, enough with the promo. Let's get to the good stuff!

Writing Wednesdays: Battling Perfectionism and Shutting Up Your Inner Editor

Perfectionism is a common curse for writers. It makes sense, too. With so much time and work going into a single product, striving to make it "perfect" is the the logical conclusion. Add in the inevitable writer ego, and it's all too easy for us to get hung up on the little mistakes rather than seeing all the stuff we got right. But while perfectionism is often spun as one of those "good flaws" since it implies a high level of quality control in the final product, the truth is that giving in to perfectionism is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to your writing.

I was on the #NAlitchat podcast last year, and one of the hosts brought up what I felt was a really brilliant observation about this exact topic. She put forth that most writer perfectionist tendencies aren't due to actual perfectionism, but, rather, to fear. Perfectionism, she said, can be just another name for procrastination, because it's easier to find problems than it is to take the plunge and put your work out there to be judged.

Now, of course, I'm not saying every incident of perfectionism is due to fear. If you care about books enough to write them, you probably have high standards, and there's nothing wrong with going over your work multiple times in an effort to make it as good as possible. That's just having pride in your work. The problem comes in when the need to make things absolutely perfect starts getting in the way of actually finishing the book. The most insidious form of problem perfectionism is when you start doing this during the first draft stage of writing, when you shouldn't be worried about editing at all. This problem is so common, writers even have a pet name for it: the dreaded Inner Editor.

The Inner Editor is that obnoxious voice in your head that butts into your writing and tells you you're doing it wrong. That's a stupid word choice. No one will ever want to read this. Real authors don't use adverbs, and so forth.

This litany of insecurities is totally normal, but just because it happens to nearly everyone who tries to write doesn't lessen its negative impact. The Inner Editor monologue can be crippling, especially if you're new to writing and haven't yet gotten enough words under your belt to build up the necessary weight of experience and confidence to shut that stupid voice down. But sometimes even experience isn't enough to save you. I've written fourteen novels, and I still get hit with bouts of the Inner Editor.

So how do we deal with this problem? How do we get over perfectionism and shut the Inner Editor up so we can actually write the damn book?

Sadly, I don't have a single bulletproof answer to this. One of the amazing but sometimes frustrating things about writing is that everyone does it differently. How you get around the mental roadblock that is your Inner Editor will depend entirely on your work style, your personality, and what motivates you as a writer. That said, I've had a lot of fights with my Inner Editor over the years, and I've developed some key self-defense strategies that worked really well for me, which I'm now listing here in the hope that they'll help you as well.

Rachel's Anti-Inner Editor Battle Plan #1: Create a Safe Space
Like I said above, the Inner Editor's criticism tends to revolve around insecurities about other people's judgement of your work, so one of the very first things I did to get away from it was make myself a safe space. It can be a mental space or a physical one, or both! You just need somewhere--a room, a folder, a notebook--where you can convince yourself that your writing in this place will never be read by anyone else unless you allow it.

The idea behind this strategy is to create a safe zone where your Inner Editor's complaints are rendered invalid and, therefore, not your problem. What does it matter if that's a stupid way to write that sentence? No one ever has to see it but me. And if I do write something awesome, I can just copy-paste it into my manuscript, and no one ever has to know that it was the lone survivor of 34 pages of crap.

Personally, I create a safe space for myself by always thinking of my first draft as the practice draft. I subscribe to the theory that the first draft is what you write to learn how to write the book. I'm not writing the book people will read, I'm writing the sludge that I have to work through in order to learn how to write the book. I'm building my mock-up, drawing my sketches, doing my warm-up routine, whatever metaphor you prefer. The important thing here, though, is that I know that the words I'm writing are in no way the finished product. They're vital practice, the rehearsal before the play, the safe place where I am allowed to write crap and make mistakes and experiment. It's only after the first draft, when I've failed forward enough times and ended up with a more-or-less manuscript I'm excited to work with, that I switch mental gears and thinking about my document as a book that others will read.

One of my favorite mantras is that writing is not a performance art. You don't ever have to show anyone your work until you're happy with it. And while this sort of thinking can definitely lead to a downward perfectionism spiral where you never show anyone your work, it can also be a source of strength and confidence. By taking away your Inner Editor's platform, you're putting yourself back in control. You're the one with the power who has the final say in everything. You're the writer, which is the same as being a god within your created worlds. All you have to do is find a place where you're comfortable embracing that power, and your Inner Editor doesn't have a chance.

Rachel's Anti-Inner Editor Battle Plan #2: Accept That There's No Such Thing As A Perfect Book
One of my favorite bits of author coping advice I've picked up over the years is the habit of going to the Amazon or Goodreads page for my favorite novel, the one I believe is absolutely perfect, and reading the one star reviews. The point of this isn't to drag down my favorite work--so far as I'm concerned, those one star reviewers are Wrong McWrongpants from the city of Wrongville where everyone's wrong--but to remind myself that every book, even the ones I think are brilliant, even the lauded classics, have things people can criticize. This doesn't they're bad books. I obviously think they're amazing books. But no book, not even the top 1% of the best, is perfect to all readers, and, therefore, mine doesn't have to be, either.

Understanding that it is provably impossible for a book to be "perfect" was a huge step for me in battling my Inner Editor. I'm a detail oriented person, and I tend to get really down on myself about what are arguably very minor, subtle things. Going bad review surfing, while sometimes infuriating (how could anyone say that about THE LAST UNICORN? Don't you people understand that book is a masterpiece!!!???) is, for me, a vital exercise in perspective. It's almost too easy to get so wrapped up in our own work, we forget that our readers are not us. Some of them will fixate on flaws we never noticed as a reason to give a terrible review, some won't care at all, and there's nothing we can do to predict or change that. All we can do as writers is our best, and even that is inherently flawed.

Once I accepted that and realized that my Inner Editor's criticisms were both correct and completely irrelevant at the same time, it was a lot easier to tune her out and focus on what was actually important: writing a book I was proud of.


Rachel's Anti-Inner Editor Battle Plan #3: Get Lost In Your Own World
If you've listened to/read any of my advice/ruminations on writing, you probably already know that I'm a huge believer in the idea that writing should be fun. I mean, we're basically playing a very high level game of make-believe, creating worlds where we are gods and best friends and devils all at the same time. That's heady stuff, so much so that one of the three breakthroughs of how I went from writing 2k a day to 10k was to get excited about my work, but what I didn't talk about there was the fact that embracing this fundamental creativity of writing has become my single best defense against my Inner Editor.

When you're suitably excited about something, nothing can bring you down. Take your favorite series/band/sports team/whatever. Are you going to stop being a fan just because someone else said the thing you love was stupid? No way! F the haters!

Now, take that same level of "I love this and nothing you say can change my mind" and apply it to your writing, and you'll find that Inner Editor's commentary matters just as little as the people who try to tell you that our favorite whatever is stupid. This doesn't mean they can't have true criticism (nothing is perfect, see battle plan #2 above), but, and this is the secret, you don't have to care. If you really focus on getting excited about your own world and writing and characters, that excitement, that love and passion for your story will not only shine through your words and get your readers excited as well, it can also be an iron wall against Inner Editor nagging.

I call this being your own biggest fan, and while it can definitely be taken too far (you don't want to fall so in love with your voice that you become blind to actual weaknesses you need to address), I believe it's a vital part of the artist side of being a writer. After all, if I don't love my books, why am I writing them? If I don't care, why should anyone else? So don't be afraid to really dive into your world and embrace whatever you think is most awesome. Let yourself be a fan for your own world, and you'll reduce that Inner Editor to just another hater.


Rachel's Anti-Inner Editor Battle Plan #4: Let Go and Move On
This is the final stage of beating your Inner Editor. For me, this part happens in the later drafting stages, when I've already used the strategies above in the battle against my Inner Editor. Unfortunately, for me at least, my Inner Editor rarely stays beaten. So long as I have insecurities about my work, she'll always rise again, and so the final stage of any writing project for me is learning to let go.

For me, at least, this part never gets easier no matter how many books I write. Even now, five years later, there are a million things I still itch to fix when I think about the Eli books, but I can't. Those books are done, beyond my control, and that's okay. Are they perfect? Of course not, but there are still thousands of readers who love them despite all the stuff I know I messed up. Think of your own pleasure reading. Do you expect every book you encounter to be perfect? No, you just want a good story that will move and entertain you, a book worth reading. That's as it should be, because the only person who will ever care about true perfection in your books is you.

This is a lesson I have to relearn on every book. There are always so many things I could fix, and asking strangers to read your work never stops being terrifying. At the end of the day, though, every writer, even me, has to let go, because if you don't, that book will never be published.

This is the ultimate goal of beating perfectionism, the reason (other than your own mental health) that beating your Inner Editor is so important. We only have so much time to write in our lives. If you let yourself get hung up on perfecting a book that's already 99% done, you'll lose all those books you could have been writing. You can polish and polish and polish until you can't stand the sight of your own words anymore, but at the end of the day, you still have to let that book go free in the hands of readers. If you don't, if you let fear or obsessing over small details hold you back, no one will ever read it, and that would be a great tragedy, indeed.

I hope these strategies help you with your own battles against your Inner Editor. If you struggle with perfectionism, please know that you're not alone. Thousands of writers at all levels of success struggle with these exact same issues, but the ones who make it are the ones who find a way to look past all the minor tweaks that can seem so stupidly important and focus on what really matters: telling your story and getting it out into the world!

There will always be more books to write, and I look forward to reading yours.

Thank you again for being my reader, and I hope you enjoyed this edition of Writing Wednesdays!

One Good Dragon Deserves Another comes out August 1st! Cover! Blurb! Pre-order info! Sample chapters! OMG!

YES! At long last, One Good Dragon Deserves Another, the highly anticipated sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last has a release date, and that date is August 1st, 2015! (Pre-order here, if that's your jam) (And for Amazon.UK)

After barely escaping the machinations of his terrifying mother, two all-knowing seers, and countless bloodthirsty siblings, the last thing Julius wants to see is another dragon. 

Unfortunately for him, the only thing more dangerous than being a useless Heartstriker is being a useful one, and now that he’s got an in with the Three Sisters, Julius has become a key pawn in Bethesda the Heartstriker’s gamble to put her clan on top.

Refusal to play along with his mother’s plans means death, but there’s more going on than even Bethesda knows, and with Estella back in the game with a vengeance, Heartstriker futures disappearing, and Algonquin’s dragon hunter closing in, the stakes are higher than even a seer can calculate. But when his most powerful family members start dropping like flies, it falls to Julius to defend the clan that never respected him and prove that, sometimes, the world’s worst dragon is the best one to have on your side.

Sample chapters are already up on my lovely, newly revamped website (new book, new look!), or you can pre-order your own copy now on Amazon.com!

And as if all that wasn't enough, Nice Dragons Finish Last is also on sale all this month for $0.99 as part of the Kindle Big Deal! So if you know anyone who hasn't read the series, and you want to get them started for cheap, this is a great chance. ;)

I hope all these announcements make your Monday, and I really hope you enjoy your first look at One Good Dragon. Please let me know what you think in the comments, and as always, thank you so much for being my readers! You guys make my world go 'round :D!

Yours,
Rachel

PS: Right now, the Heartstrikers series is available on Amazon only due to the first book being in Kindle Unlimited. HOWEVER! This will not be the case forever, and I will absolutely let you know when the books become available on other readers/vendors. Thank you for your patience!

Interview Round-Up!

Wow, what a crazy week!

Well, technically, it's been 10 days, but still. I did a three podcasts and had a fantastic time! Basically, I finished my book and RT and was still like "MUST DO ALL THE THINGS!" Thankfully, I had plenty of people willing to talk to me and overall I think it went very well. I had an absolute blast, talked a lot about writing/the writing biz, and dropped a ton of info about Paradox, Heartstrikers, and what I'm writing next.

For those of you who are confused or who missed out over the week and still want to get in on this sweet, sweet podcast action, fear not! I have listed them below for your listening convenience. Please enjoy, and if you like one of the shows, be sure to let the hosts know! They're the ones who did all the work. I just showed up!

And now, the links!

Podcasts/Hangouts Rachel Was On In May

Sword and Laser #216 - Why Genres Don't Matter on the Internet

"We talk with Rachel Aaron about why she doesn't worry about genre anymore and how she had to fight the siren song of Warcraft to become a professional writer."

(Available as both audio & video streaming and as a direct download. Also EEEEE I WAS ON S&L YOU GUYYYYS! #fangasam)


Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast #32 - Traditional Publishing, Indie Publishing, and Writing More Words Per Day with Rachel Aaron

I talk about how 2k to 10k is still working for me, the difference between trad and indie marketing when it comes to getting your book out there, and the importance of remembering to have fun with your writing! (The single most important factor, IMO). There's an extremely detailed write up of all our topics on the link above as well if you want to jump to something specific.

Also, you can't really see it, but I was wearing my Auryn necklace from the Never Ending Story! So, ya know, bonus. (Audio and video, streaming and direct download.)


And last, (but 1000% not least), I was on the Smart Bitches Podcast #143. Fantasy, Romance, and the Writing Process – An Interview with Rachel Aaron

This was an enormous personal honor for me. I've been a fan of the Smart Bitches blog since before I got published, and I can't tell you how stoked I was to go on and talk to Sarah, who is an absolute delight! There's tons of goofing around, great book recs, plus talk about my upcoming Heartstriker books and a proposed new Paradox trilogy.

So if you're a fan of my fiction (or just good books in general), definitely give it a listen. It was an amazing good time! Thank you, Sarah, for having me on! (Plus, every book we talk about is linked on the podcast page, which is kind of amazing, because we talked about a LOT of titles!) (Streaming audio only)

And that's it! Thank you all for tuning in, and come back on Monday when I'll have some biiiiiig announcements!

See you then!
Rachel

Writing Wednesdays: How Long Should Your Story Be?

Woohoo! It's hump day. Time for another Writing Wednesdays post!

Today I'm talking about wordcounts and how I decide how long a book should be. First though, some announcements, starting with the most obvious, which is that the blog has been updated with a new look and features, including the badass Marci art that will soon be a cover for my Heartstriker sequel, ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER. Please let me know what you think or if there's anything else you'd like to see added. I'm in the process of updating my website to be at least 20% cooler, too. We're just upping the cool all around!

Second, awesome Fantasy author Lindsay Buroker asked me to come on the SFF Marketing Podcast, and I did! And it was great! Awesome questions covering 2k to 10k as well as my experiences with marketing my books both from my trad published side and my own efforts with my indie titles. I was also a giant nerd, but what else could you expect? It's me. \_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, you can listen or watch the whole thing for free here: SFFMP 32: Traditional Publishing, Indie Publishing, and Writing More Words Per Day with Rachel Aaron. 

Enjoy!

And now, without further ado, here's what you're actually (hopefully) here to read:

Writing Wednesdays: How Long Should Your Story Be?
Way back in the ancient times when I was first trying to break into publishing, there were hard and fast rules about how long a story should be (70k for Romance and Thrillers, 80-100k for Fantasy with a ceiling of 120k, etc.). The reason for this was because, back when every book was released in print, these were the word counts that let a publisher publish your book inside the acceptable printing cost to cover price ratio needed to make a profit.

Back in the days of print dominance, these strict word counts made a lot of sense even outside of a publisher's profit and loss sheets. Too long, and your book would cost too much to produce, which would in turn force up the cover price past what readers were willing to pay. Too short, and your book would look tiny on the shelf, creating the perception of a rip off (who wants to pay $6 for that pamphlet of a book?!).

But with the rising dominance of ebooks, hard word counts have become far less important. Longer books still cost more to produce since they just take longer to edit and proofread, but the production cost difference between a monster tome and a short quick read is much less of an issue than it used to be, especially if you're covering the cost of the book yourself. Also, since all books are now just links on a eReader, readers can't see them next to each other on the shelf, which eliminates the stigma against overly short or long books. Every book is judged equally by its title, cover, and blurb.

As writers, this shift away from the classic hard and fast rules on novel length gives us enormous freedom. Now, at last, we can focus on telling exactly the story we want in the best way possible without worrying if we're going over or under a limit. By that same turn, though, it's also enough rope to hang ourselves, because even though we don't have to worry so much about print lengths anymore (or at all if you're publishing in ebook only), there is definitely still a perception of how long a novel should be among readers.

This perception of what is or isn't an acceptable length for a novel varies by genre, and failing to fit inside it can lead to some nasty reviews, even from readers who loved your book otherwise. This is especially true with books that run too short, because when a reader pays for something, they expect to get their money's worth.

So how can we as writers avoid this problem? Well, the simplest solution is to just stick to the old word counts, the standardized lengths the publishing industry has been teaching readers to expect for decades. Personally, though, I hate the constraint of hard word counts. I believe that the word count should serve the story, not the other way around. That said, though, I'm a commercial writer. If I want to keep selling books (and I do), I have to write for my market, which means respecting what my readers want and expect when it comes to length.

So how do I balance the book length I want verses the book length they expect? Also, how can you tell if a story is a stand alone of it if needs to be multiple books? These aren't questions that have definitive answers, but, like everything in writing, determining the right balance for your book all comes down to skill, planning, and execution.

Step 1: Figure out how long your book is going to be, and if that's a problem.
When I sit down to write a new story, the very first thing I think about is how long it's going to be. Because I love to world build, I'll often come to a book with enough stuff to write something that's five or ten times larger than what I really need. Determining what belongs and what needs to stay in the background is where the art part of writing comes in. It's not really a question of can, but of should. Sure I can write more, but should I? Is adding more plot or information actually going to help my story, or it just going to drag it down?

These are calls that only I as the author can make, and I've found the best way to decide which of my ideas is worthy of making the cut into the final story is to try and think like a reader. I can't speak to you, but I know that for me, Writer!Rachel and Reader!Rachel have very different priorities. Writer!Rachel thinks all her ideas are awesome and can't wait to cram everything in, while Reader!Rachel just wants the story to move ahead at the speed of maximum excitement.

This is why, when I'm plotting a book, I always try to start at the barest minimum story needed to get from the beginning to the end. I can always add more scenes later, but the bones of the plot don't change. A note here; if you can't figure out which plot line or lines are your main story, that's a warning flag that your book might be rambling. An author has to know better than anyone what story exactly they're trying to tell, otherwise your book will be a mess. So if you're not sure, figure it out. You can always change your mind later.

Once I have the bare bones of my plot down, I try to figure out how many words I think it'll take to write just what I've got to determine the minimum length of my book. Now, obviously, the accounting here will vary enormously from writer to writer just based on style, so if you don't already have a good idea of how long your scenes run, I suggest going back to something you wrote earlier that you're proud of and figuring out your average scene length. Once you've got that, you can look at a plot, make a rough estimation of how many scenes it'll break down into, and then multiply by your average scene word count to get a very ballpark idea of how long the finished book will be. If that number is shorter than 100k, you can most likely fit everything you've got into a single book. If it's higher than 100k, you know you're going to end up with either a long book, or a book that might need to be split in half. Even with ebooks, unless you're writing epic fantasy, most readers are leery of 200k+ books, and publishers are VERY skeptical about taking them on. Even, if you're self publishing, books over 200k, or even 150k, can be a bad bet since you're going to be paying to edit what's essentially two books worth of content for only one title's worth of profit.

Considerations like this are why taking the time to consider your final word count before you start writing is so important. It is infinitely easier to cut/add scenes, or to break what you thought was going to be one book into two, before you've invested months of your time in the text. Even if you're a pantser instead of a plotter, taking a moment to critically think about what you'd like the final form of your story to look like can be the difference between finishing up with a novel that's spot on for where you want to be, and finishing up with a novel that you'll now have to fatten up or drastically cut down.

Step 2: Filling in the rest.
Now that I've got the bare bones of your book, it's time to flesh out the rest of me story. Again, this is a process that involves balancing my reader and writer minds. As always, Writer!Rachel has a million things she wants to add, but while that's exciting, the question I always try to ask is would Reader!Rachel care? Does all this extra stuff make the story more exciting/dramatic/engaging, or is it dead weight?

Again, making the call as to what scenes are writer ego and which are actually awesome is part of the art of being a good writer, and should always be carefully considered. Personally, I try to err on the side of less is more. Like Eli, my motto is "my stones have a 2 bird minimum," which means anything I put in my books has to serve at least two purposes. For example, if I have a character talk at length abut her backstory, those words have to do more than just tell her story. Whatever information she's revealing also needs to help build the larger world of the book, or foreshadow future plot events, or name drop other important characters in the setting. It can't just be a girl talking about her childhood. Or, rather, it can, but again, you've only got so many words in your book. Why waste them doing only one thing?

Help! My book's too long!
If your word count is bloating out of control, but you're not sure why, my advice is to step back and re-focus on the story you're telling right now in this book. Find your main plot line, and make sure it works. Everything else can be added or subtracted later, but your central story has to be coherent, clear, and properly executed if your book is going to be successful. Otherwise it's just a bunch of scenes in a line. Find your main plot and stick to it, cut anything else that's not pulling its weight.

If you do know your main plot, but you're still having trouble making it fit because you need to include way more background information than you have room for, that may be a sign you need to start your book earlier in the story of your world and actually show some of that backstory on the page. Or, if that doesn't work, you could just try starting with at a simpler point for your first book and save the huge complicated stuff for later in the series when your reader is more comfortable/invested.

Finally, if you've got a tight focus on your main story and your book is still larger than you think it should be, you can always go back through and tighten up the individual sentences. Even if you only cut 500 words per chapter, that's still 5k in a ten chapter book/10k from a twenty chapter book, not to mention doing this will often make your writing tighter and therefore better over all. I do this with every book I write.

And if all of those still aren't enough, it might just be time to embrace your larger book. :)

Help! My book's too short!

I have to confess, this is an issue I don't generally have. As you might guess from my blog posts, excessive brevity is not my problem. That said, I've read several books that were way shorter than they felt like they should be, and every time, it was because the author made things too easy on their characters.

So if your book is coming in under where you feel it should be, look back and see if you can make life harder on your heroes. Make the bad guy smarter, make the barrier higher, give them bad luck. I'm not saying go overboard into full on sadism, but characters aren't in a book to have a good time. Suffering, struggle, and conflict are the soul of good plots and deep characters, so do whatever you can to make your characters fight for every inch within what's reasonable for your world, and not only will you end up with a better word count, you'll add real depth to your story.

Alternately, you can also expand your book by giving the villain and side characters more development. The trick to this is that the development has to go somewhere. You can't build a character up into someone we're really invested in and then have him go out like a punk. If you're going to get a reader invested, you have to make that investment pay off, or you're just wasting everyone's time. But if you can build up a character and make that pay off at the end (for example, humanizing a villain only to then have his own human weaknesses--such as an inability to let go of anger--be his ultimate downfall at the end), you'll come out with a really great addition to your book.

And again, if you try everything and your book's still too short, maybe you just wrote a novella, which is totally fine.

And that's it!
Thanks for reading! I hope these tricks I've learned help you write the book that's exactly the right length for your story and your market. Ultimately, though, whatever your final word count, the only thing that really matters is that you end up with a book you're proud of and readers will love. Sometimes, books just come out weirdly sized, and no matter what you do, you can't make them fit, and that's okay. So long as the story is good and the writing is tight, the length of the book is ultimately a secondary concern.

And thus concludes this week's Writing Wednesday! Come back next week for a new craft topic, and if you've got a specific issue you'd like me to cover, leave it in the comments below. If you missed a post, you can see them all by clicking the "Writing Wednesday" label (or the general "writing" label, which links to all my writing essays going back to 2012) at the bottom of this post.

Thank you as always for reading, and happy writing!
- Rachel

Writing Wednesdays: My POV on POVs - Whom to Use, and When

So, as you see, we're doing some big work on the blog. New posts, a tag system, more subscription options, all sorts of stuff! But the biggest thing we're adding is Writing Wednesday!

Now, instead of waiting weeks for me to fall out of my novel, I'll have new writing posts going up every Wednesday covering plot, characters, pacing, story structure, and pretty much anything else I've run into as a writer. Have a writing problem you'd like to talk about? Put it in the comments below! Today, by popular request, I'm talking about how I handle POV, so enough business. Let's get started!

Writing Wednesdays: My POV on POVs - Whom to Use, and When

(Note: If you don't know what a POV is, go here for a great breakdown.)

If you've ever read any of my Fantasy (especially my Eli Monpress books), you know I am the queen of multiple POVs. I love them. I love how they let you show the reader different parts of the story at different times to increase tension or give a different point of view. This is why the Paradox books drove me crazy sometimes, because it was in First Person, which felt like being stuck in a canyon. All this amazing stuff was going on in the background, and I couldn't jump over to show it. Let me tell you, it took a lot of narrative acrobatics to figure out how to fit all that stuff in without the luxury of POV switches.

Fortunately for me, third person writing (my favorite style) is all about the POV switch! That said, though, you can't go too crazy. POV switches are a powerful narrative tool, but each perspective you jump to adds a layer of complexity and weight to your novel, and that can get out of hand very quickly. So how do I decide when to jump POVs and when to stay? Or which character gets a POV and which stays to the side?