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by
Gaelen Foley
Over the course of the next year or two, for your viewing pleasure,
I’ll be posting a series of articles with my take on some
of the finer points of writing romance novels. In the first article
(archived on the Writing main page) I listed my favorite writing
books and writers’ organizations to further your self-instruction.
In the upcoming series, I’ll discuss topics under four main
sections: Pre-Writing, Writing, Revising, and Publishing.
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of Pre-Writing, which includes
all manner of topics concerned with setting yourself up for success,
I would like to invite you to lay a bit of groundwork for what I
hope will be your own writing adventure.
Later on, you will meet what may well be the writer’s best
friend: the trusty GMC Chart. The GMC Chart is a plotting tool developed
by Debra Dixon based on some fundamental tenets put forth by the
late, great Dwight Swain. The GMC Chart is used to orient a character
within the story, as follows:
G = Goal
What exactly does this character want? What specific thing is he
or she trying to achieve in this scene or situation?
M = Motivation
Why does she want or need this? What rewards will she get if she
succeeds? On the other hand, what will be the painful consequences
of failure?
C = Conflict
What are the obstacles looming in her path? What threatens to stop
her from achieving her goal?
My suggestion is to dive right in and familiarize yourself with
the GMC Chart by using it on yourself as it applies to your writing
dreams.
G=Goal
What exactly do you want to have happen in regards to your writing?
What is your ideal outcome? Do you want to complete one manuscript
for your own enjoyment or do you aspire to become a professional
novelist? Whatever the answer is for you, having a clear picture
in your mind of what you want to accomplish will help you chart
a logical path to your goal and stay on track until you get there.
M=Motivation
You’ve stated your Goal—now, why do you want it? Why
is this outcome important to you? What rewards will you experience
if you succeed? What consequences will you suffer if you give up
and quit? (That’s the only real way to fail in life!) Understanding
the inner forces, needs, and ideals that compel us to write is a
very powerful piece of self-knowledge; motivation, after all, is
emotional fuel that enables us to keep picking ourselves up, dusting
ourselves off, and pressing on when the going gets tough—and
it will, for no quest worth undertaking was every easy.}
Usually we are motivated by both the threat of pain if we fail
and the pleasure of some desired reward if we succeed. These motivators
can be external, such as extra money earned from writing, or internal,
such as the joy of the creative process. While you’re thinking
about all of this, you might want to make a list of all your reasons
for writing so that you can refer back to it whenever your motivation
runs low. Reading over it will help to psyche you up again when
your morale needs a boost.
C=Conflict
The final step in your own personal GMC chart is to take a look
at the external and internal obstacles that you can expect to meet
with as you set out on your quest to write your book. Obstacles
are different for everyone.
They can be external, such as lack of time to write, a noisy environment,
an unsupportive spouse or brutal critique partner, or even physical
pain or fatigue; or internal, such as crippling perfectionism, fear
of failure, anxiety, a negative attitude, or lack of discipline.
External obstacles can be formidable because they always end up
forcing us to make hard choices. Usually it comes down to a matter
of priorities.
Internal obstacles are par for the course, because writing is such
a head game. The best tools I’ve found for dealing with the
internal challenges include: journaling—getting it all down
on paper and out of your head; moderate exercise, again, getting
you out of your head and back down into your body—it’s
also a great means of stress relief; venting to a sympathetic friend;
and if all else fails, there’s always chocolate. <g>
In any case, try to pin down beforehand whatever problems you suspect
may be lurking ahead in your case individually. Most of us tend
to know what our weak points are. Using your creativity to slay
your dragons now is a smart way to keep them from throwing you off
course in the early stages of writing your book.
Having completed our own personal GMC charts, we can now turn to
the intriguing question of discovering what we are best suited to
write. I’m a great believer in dreaming big, so my suggestion
is to cast your mind outward into the vast, possible future and
muse a bit on the overall body of work that you would like to contribute
to the world.
I’ll assume if you’re reading this that the medium you
have in mind is the novel, but don’t overlook other creative
outlets for your vision, such as poetry, essays, short stories,
plays, movie scripts, song lyrics, children’s stories, even
comic books. Another exciting new field is ‘creative non-fiction.’
New technology also offers new possibilities for yet undreamed-of
forms, such as stories using hyperlinks to lead to alternate endings
or plot twists. For now, however, let’s get back to novels.
If you are interested in writing as a hobby, then the literary
world is your oyster. There are no guidelines for you but to follow
your heart!
If, however, you harbor serious aims of writing professionally
someday, then you need to start thinking long-term.
If you’re serious about achieving your goals, it’s
never too soon to start forming a good strategy, and that’s
what this section is all about. Nothing I’m about to tell
you is an ironclad rule, just some general guidelines that hopefully
will save you time, frustration, and wasted work.
First off, it’s a good idea to specialize—pick one
(or at most, two) types of book(s) and set your sights on becoming
a master of that particular type(s). By “type” of book,
I’m not referring to a plot line or theme, but to genre or
sub-genre. Some examples are: romantic comedies, legal thrillers,
paranormals, time-travel, chick lit, erotica, family dramas, light/frothy
Regency historicals, dark/dramatic Regency historicals, medievals,
Westerns, heartwarming small-town contemporaries, Christian romances,
etc. There are many more, as a stroll through your favorite bookstores
will reveal; also, many authors have had success by combining two
subgenres in clever new ways.
If the first step is choosing your subgenre, I have noticed that
it’s here where many people get off track. Some aspiring authors
choose to let the market dictate what they write, i.e., what the
editors are buying, but I see this as a recipe for frustration rather
than success, for numerous reasons.
One: It’s almost impossible to achieve excellence in a genre
or subgenre that does not genuinely inspire you; and given how incredibly
competitive the current market is, mediocrity cannot long survive.
So, to me, writing what you love is not only an issue of integrity
and personal happiness, but a solid business decision, as well.
Secondly, by the time a trend is identified as such, you’re
going to be way behind the curve. It can take a year to write a
novel, another year to sell it, and another year for the publisher
to process it for publication (cover art, typesetting, proofreading,
etc.) Your target trend could be totally passé by then.
The third reason not to write strictly to the market is that it
takes five books to establish a career, according to The Career
Novelist by agent Donald Maass, and if by some miracle you break
into the business writing something you don’t love, in all
likelihood, you’re going to be stuck here. For that reason,
the concept of “just doing this to break into the business”
is a faulty one. Going back to the need for excellence merely as
a career survival strategy, it’s hard to master any one milieu,
style, or length of book if you’re bouncing around all over
the place. Furthermore, the readership won’t be able to get
a handle on who you are or what sort of books you are offering.
For this reason, to build a viable career, those five books should
ideally all be in the same field. That requires a commitment of
several years so, obviously, you’ll want to spend that time
doing something you enjoy.
So, what kind of book will you choose with which to make your mark
on the world?
Oftentimes (but not always) what we most love to read is what we’ll
have a natural talent for writing, because we’ve already got
an affinity for it and are familiar with its conventions.
It’s also practical to make a few observations about one’s
own personality and how that could play into the writing process.
For example, story length.
If you are a high-energy type person who always has ten projects
going at once, you might want to think about doing the shorter-length
(150-300 pages) category books offered by Harlequin/Silhouette.
This company, a veritable bastion of romance fiction, offers a “line”
in several different length formats and every imaginable topic and
tone, from Christian romances, to borderline erotica, to family
stories, to female action-adventure tales. I’m not an expert
on series writing, but from what I can see, going the Harlequin/Silhouette
route offers one of the most viable, stable, long-term career strategies
available to new writers. It worked for Nora Roberts!—and
Sandra Brown, Debbie Macomber, Jennifer Crusie, Suzanne Brockmann,
and countless other Big Names who later moved into the mainstream.
Writing the shorter length books, you can also finish more quickly
and move on to the next story, if you’re someone who gets
bored easily. More books coming out onto the shelves in rapid succession
means that the public will learn your name faster by sheer repetition:
Creating a “brand name” is the one thing that every
author must do. Building name recognition is harder for people who
write and publish more slowly. It’s something worth keeping
in mind. Slower, more ponderous thinkers, on the other hand, probably
won’t mind as much spending a whole year on one book. These
people may be drawn to the longer (400-500 pages) type form known
as single-title.
Another consideration is what tone of stories you want to write.
You could have a mismatch on your hands if, for example, you happen
to have a fun, zany temperament and decide to write dark, brooding
Gothics. It might not be the best fit. On the other hand, if you
do feel drawn to a type of book that seems to be the opposite of
your personality, it might be your psyche’s way of balancing
you out!
Play to your strengths. Do what feels natural. Have fun with your
explorations into the various sub-genres and don’t be afraid
to try dreaming up plot premises in a whole slew of different categories
to see what grabs you. If you find one sort of story that seems
to come particularly easily to you, then you’re probably onto
something.
Keep your eye out for that one kind of story that you know you
could be happy writing over the long haul. You’ll know it
what you find it. Then the only challenge will be learning how to
write it!
Once you know what kind of novels you’re interested in writing
long-term, it’s time to sketch out your career game plan,
and the most sensible way to do that is to find out what has worked
for the best people in your field. I’m a big believer in modeling
the success of those we admire, people who have already achieved
what we dream of doing. They help us remember that our dreams in
fact are possible with hard work, smart strategies, and the inner
strength to persevere through adversity. So: Make up a list of the
top people in the genre or subgenre you wish to write in and do
some online research to find out how they got to where they are
now; how long it took them; how quickly they write; who publishes
them; what they’ve learned along the way that they wish they
knew when they were just starting out; what they see as the most
important aspects of that type of book, etc. You’re not going
to mimic their writing style or steal their plots, heaven forbid,
you’re just going to study them to learn whatever you can
in order to achieve your goals.
This information is readily available in this age of the internet,
and most authors are very happy to share. Many romance-reading sites
on the ’net have archives full of Author Interviews where
you can learn about the people you are using as your ‘models.’
Indeed, these days most authors have their own websites where they’ll
often discuss their career path and related issues. Look at the
people who have your dream-career and compare the various paths
they took to get there. This is a great way to formulate guidelines
for how you, too, can arrive at your destination.
Like many authors, I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines,
so this one will have to be a judgment call for whatever works best
for you. All I know is that with no deadline, tasks never seem to
get finished, while too harsh of a deadline can shut down creativity.
Your very first novel is really going to be your learning book,
so depending on how busy you are in general, it would not be unreasonable
to set a deadline of a year, year and a half, or even two years
to write it (at the single-title length of 100,000 words). Add another
two to six months for revision.
The variation here is very wide, however. I know writers who finished
their first manuscript in six months, others who are still working
on it nine years after they started. If you can train yourself to
write quickly, that will be an advantage later, once you sell, but
quality is much more important than quantity. Most people have to
write several manuscripts before they finally finish one that’s
of saleable quality; I wrote four that went into the trash before
I started The Pirate Prince, which became my debut novel. (That
book, incidentally, took me about two years to write, and then my
editor asked for revisions that took another few months.)
Similar to writing deadlines, some people like to set deadlines
for achieving their goal of publication. Again, this is iffy in
my view because a lot of the factors involved are beyond our control.
Common wisdom says it takes about five years on average to sell
one’s first book. It took me nearly six, but again, the variation
is huge. One of my favorite authors, a very Big Name, took over
ten years to sell her first book, while another one of my favorites
sold her first manuscript in a month. Anything goes in this business!
There are advantages and disadvantages to either route. The one
who sells her book only after a long, grueling period of years has
to fight discouragement and the temptation to chase the market,
while the one who sells quickly is often caught off guard by success
and may not feel solid yet in her skills, so she faces an even larger
amount of insecurity than the rest of us do.
Perhaps the best compromise is to set realistic deadlines, but
only for the things that are within our direct control—finishing
a book, a chapter, a certain number of pages per day, etc. Whatever
you decide to do, your time frame should be part of the overall
map you are sketching that will lead you to your ultimate success.
Until next time,
Gaelen
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