The Trophies of NaNoWriMo, with AJ Mac

Follow this link to check out the book The Gem State Siege:

https://amzn.to/3yDtVDn

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The following is a transcript of this episode. The complete transcript is available on the show’s website.

[00:00:00] Devin Davis: Are you ever worried about writing a large amount of text in a short amount of time? Then you need to listen to AJ Mac, author of the book The Gem State Seige. He wrote the entire thing during NaNoWriMo of 2020, and he is our guest today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello, hello, hello! And welcome to the show.

[00:00:47] Welcome back to the show. I am Devin Davis, your host, and I am the guy living in a tiny house to show you all of the different ways, regardless of how busy you are, that you can write that book. We focus mainly on fiction, at least the majority of these episodes. Today we have a person that I have been so excited to get to know. His name isAJ Mac.

[00:01:11] His first name is actually Aaron. And it's not in the interview. So I get to share a little tidbit before we play the interview. I actually met Aaron on a Facebook group looking for a critique partner. I had no idea what he had done. I had no idea his story or the process that he had taken to write this thing, but we exchanged first chapters many, many months ago and he critiqued my first chapter.

[00:01:40] I critiqued his first chapter. It was a great experience. And then like, a couple months later, I realized that his book was being released and was in print. So today we have AJ Mac, author of the book The Gem State Seige to share his entire story with us. 

[00:02:02] AJ Mac: I started off writing a completely different novel that I said I was going to release first, but then I thought about the options of like Permafree books and like start in content. Cause I just wanted to kind of roll into something that was a little bit bigger of a project than the one that I released first. And it took me about 10 years to actually write that novel, like rewriting and constantly revising and all of that. The final draft of that book, it took me about nine months to do a hundred thousand words, I think. And I was just like, okay I need to write it a little bit faster if I have this goal of doing all of these books and all of this story, this this whole sci-fi universe that I've created in my head, I might want to write a little bit faster.

[00:02:52] So NaNoWriMo came along. I found it on Facebook, found a lot of groups on Facebook, talking about writing 50,000 words in a month. And I was like, Okay. That's a challenge. I'm going to take it. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to try. 

[00:03:07] So October 31st. I was just like, kind of like at my computer at 1159, like a runner at a Olympic track meet. 12 o'clock hit and I just started going. It took me about 20 days, 21 days, I think to get the 50,000 words, but I did it and I proved to myself that I actually could write faster. 

[00:03:29] Devin Davis: NaNoWriMo, though it calls itself a competition, is more like a big push to get people to start writing. No one is looking over your shoulder. You don't submit your progress to anyone, but it's just a month long marathon in the spirit of writing. And it is celebrated by everyone. When Aaron got in the thick of it, he had some big realizations about his own writing process.

[00:03:58] AJ Mac: I like being a pantser for the most part. Doing Prep-Tober is what they call it when you're preparing for NaNoWriMo I took some time out and wrote like a whole outline. I started setting up my writing space, and I bought Scrivener, and I wrote out and it took me about a day or so to write this entire like, outline of what I was going to do.

[00:04:21] And about Chapter Two, I was like screw outline. Yeah. I just yeah. 

[00:04:26] Devin Davis: He wrote for hours every day. Like he said, it took him 21 days to get his first draft completed. Three weeks. And as you might imagine, it took a toll on his social life.

[00:04:41] AJ Mac: I don't think I talked to my girlfriend much during that time. I was working night shift at my full-time job. And what I would do is I would work 5:00 PM to about 4:00 AM, was my schedule. And I would spend as much time as I possibly could while I was working-- which wasn't much-- writing. And when I was at home I would wake up early. I still wake up earlier about 11 o'clock and I will write until I go to work. so I I was pretty much, at my computer the entire time. 

[00:05:14] Devin Davis: Because he wasn't an experienced writer, at first he didn't know how to go about self edits and critique partners at all. This is how he handled it.

[00:05:25] AJ Mac: And I sat on the manuscript for about a month and a half maybe. And like, there were a lot of people saying that if you write something in NaNoWriMo, then it should at least be a year out before you actually start, like, thinking about publishing, but I was determined. I was determined to get some feedback on it. And I, I went to Facebook groups and like a bunch of critique groups. And I start querying for some people to give me some feedback on the book. And that was my start. And to editing that rough draft and submitting that rough draft and seeing if there was a actual concept for me to even publish a book. 

[00:06:05] Devin Davis: And a few short months later, he had The Gem State Siege in print.

[00:06:13] AJ Mac: It's about Tawnie Simms, a world-renowned conspiracy theorist who finds herself in the middle of a cataclysmic event in her hometown, Idaho falls. When what seems like a natural disaster, a mysterious organization that uses the tragedy is fueled to start a mass extermination disguised as a pandemic. Tawnie has to find her way to stop the monstrous billionaire responsible while keeping her and her five-year-old son safe.

[00:06:41] Devin Davis: So this book required some research, not only about concepts, but about geography. The story takes place in Idaho falls and Aaron doesn't even live there.

[00:06:54] AJ Mac: The pantser in me decided to find it somewhere where geysers would make sense for for the relic that I used in the book. So Yellowstone National Park was, was nearby. I have a fascination with-- and this is going to sound horrible-- but I have a fascination with like end of the world kind of cataclysmic movies like that, like movies, like 2012 and Water Worlds, things like that. Just kind of like interests me. So the apocalyptic trope I feel like that's my thing. That's what interests me. It's a lot of build up to what I'm doing in the scifi universe that I'm creating and the world that I'm putting together. And that just happened to be one of the starting points of the world.

[00:07:36] Devin Davis: So I asked him what got him interested in books and science fiction in the first place.

[00:07:44] AJ Mac: A lot of fanfiction. I used to do a lot of sketches growing up and drawing my own comic books specifically when I was younger. It was a show called Dragon Ball Z that for whatever reason in America did not want to continue past a certain saga.

[00:08:00] So I started drawing my own and that trend never left. Like I fell in love with writing and coming up with my own ideas. And I felt comfortable. Like growing up as an introvert, I felt comfortable just writing my own reality as opposed to living in the real reality, I guess. And it just kind of worked for me. 

[00:08:19] Devin Davis: All of us as writers, face roadblocks and other struggles. And sometimes we have self doubt. 

[00:08:25] AJ Mac: I struggled with the belief that I could even write that fast, considering that I've just been sitting on a bunch of ideas for 10 years before I actually decided to publish a novel. For any aspiring author that wants to write, join a community like NaNoWriMo where people are having the same challenges.

[00:08:47] Devin Davis: Not only is Erin cranking out books, but he and his friends also do a podcast.

[00:08:54] AJ Mac: My podcast is called The Dirty Trunk podcast. And we like to say that that's where the elephant is always welcome. And we talk about the uncomfortable conversations about growth and building your mindset as an entrepreneur. They come out every Tuesday, and the last episode we discussed your environment and how it shapes your future as an adult. 

[00:09:17] Devin Davis: By the time this episode airs, the Dirty Trunk podcast will have reached more than 100 episodes. 

[00:09:26] AJ Mac: For anybody who's listening to this episode here, if you have the goal or the dream to be a published author, do it. You can listen to this podcast and everybody who joins Mr. Devin on this this journey being a guest on this awesome podcast that he has here in this platform, you can listen to every single one of them talk about their dreams, their goals of how to start and how they started, but it will not be possible for you unless you actually put pen to paper and do it. Do not let fear get in the way of your goals and your dream. 

[00:10:01] Devin Davis: A special things to Aaron, author name AJ Mac, for joining me today on Writing in the Tiny House. He is working hard on the next several books of his series. And I am excited to see when those are going to come out. If you are interested in ordering or reading the Gem State Siege by AJ Mac, follow the link in the show notes and it'll get you there.

[00:10:26] And that is it for today. Thank you so much for my patrons. Without them this show can not be possible. If you wish to become a patron, patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. You can get early access to these episodes. You can get an additional episode, and you can get quality time with me over our exclusive chat rooms on Discord. Follow me on Instagram. My handle is @authordevindavis and on Twitter, my handle is @authordevind. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next week and have fun writing.

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BookWise Publishing, with Karen Christoffersen

A special thanks to Karen Christoffersen!

www.bookwisepublishing.com

chrisbizzz@comcast.net

She does free 30 minute consultations!

 

Become a patron to Writing in the Tiny House today.

patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

 

The following is a transcript of this episode. The complete transcript can be found on the show’s website.

 

Devin Davis:  If you are looking to do a book on your own, then you need to get to know Karen Christoffersen owner of Book-wise Publishing. She assisted me in doing my first two books and she is actually our guest today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the show. Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House.

[00:00:49] I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy living in the tiny house who is here to show you ways to get that novel written. Even if you are the busiest person in the whole world. And today we have a special guest. And before I do a really big introduction, let's go ahead and meet her. This is Karen Christoffersen. She is a producer and the owner of Book-wise Publishing.  

[00:01:18] Karen Christoffersen: Hi Devin. I'm so excited to be able to do this with the Writing in the Tiny House. I thought that the title of your podcast was delightful. And so the fact that you've invited me to be on it is, is an honor. 

[00:01:35]Devin Davis: I have known Karen for, forever, it seems. Her son and I are very good friends. And back in my early twenties, when I wrote my first book As Magic Shifts, it was Karen who did all of the heavy lifting to get it published and to produce it and to clean it up and to move all of the moving parts to form this cohesive picture we call a book. And the first book I wrote As Magic Shifts was published under CMS publishing, which at the time was owned by Karen Christoffersen, and then later she moved to Book-wise Publishing. And my second book, The Witch's Pupil was published under Book-wise.

[00:02:25] Karen Christoffersen: Book-wise publishing was started back in 2006 when there was a company called Book-wise and Company owned by Richard Paul Evans, number one New York times bestselling author, and several partners who decided they wanted to create a publishing arm. And they called it Book-wise Publishing and came to me and asked me, because I'm a producer, if I would produce a hundred books for a hundred new authors. As a producer, all we do is start a project and finish it. I was doing television commercials, radio commercials, motion pictures. I was doing all kinds of production as a producer, but I'd done two non-fiction books for Richard.  It's a piece of cake, you know, you start, you finish. And so I said, sure, I can do that. And of course, my dad taught me never to say no. He said, just go out and find out how to do it. And so I ended up surrounding myself with a lot of really talented people: editors and illustrators and designers and all kinds of people actively involved in the publishing industry locally and nationally.

[00:03:39] And they made me look very good. And I coordinated everything. And so I've been doing that since 2007, 'cause we started that the second year and after a year and a half, Richard decided that, and by the way, Richard was only doing endorsements. He wasn't doing anything. I was operating the business alone. And after a year and a half, he decided he really didn't want the liability anymore. I'm pretty sure that's why. And besides he had his irons in so many fires at the time, he was just going gangbusters, doing all kinds of things. And he sold it to me for a dollar. The branding alone for Book-wise Publishing was worth $20,000. Plus, you know, there were other parts to the company that had value. And so I said, sure, I'll do that. It did take me because there were a hundred authors and then they added another 50 when they added a program called Write-Wise. So I had 150 authors that I was responsible for producing their books.

[00:04:43]And out of the $5,000 they paid, I only got 1300 to work on their books. So it took me a couple of years to get the company in the black, but obviously not all of those hundred and 50 authors came back and finished your books. So I eventually just continued doing more and more and more until today.

[00:05:07]Devin Davis: Karen has been doing this for more than 14 years, and she has produced more than 500 books, anything from paper back ,to hard back, to board books, to tub books, to eBooks and audio books.She ha s a team of talent that can do it all and can do all of the things. And so she has become a very valuable resource for anybody who wishes to self publish. 

[00:05:38] Karen Christoffersen: My goal is to make my authors as happy as I possibly can. So when I put that book in their hands, it's like putting that baby in her mother's arms. It's a moment of just pure joy, and that's what I look for. 

[00:05:53]

[00:05:53] Devin Davis: So Karen estimates that the expense of producing a book is about $3,000. My personal estimation is closer to $5,000. And many authors get a book finished, they write it, they edit it and they go through the entire huge process of getting a manuscript ready. And now it's printed, or it is available to order in the ebook form or whatever, they have this finished product, but many of them just don't know what to do next.

[00:06:26]Karen Christoffersen:  If we can just get authors atuned to the fact that this is a small business.  The startup business is tough and you have to build and you have to stick with it. Well, a book is like that as well. You have to be on there every day. You know, write a blog, do a newsletter. You must have a website. Websites are very inexpensive to do now. The hard part is selling it. 

[00:06:54] So if people start off from the beginning, I remember Richard Evans told me, he said if I had started collecting email addresses when The Christmas Box first came out, he said, I've had millions of names, but he didn't start collecting addresses for like 10 years. And so that's one thing that I can't convince enough authors to do is to go out there and start building that list.

[00:07:21] Tell your friends to share. Tell your friends to send this to their friends and ask your friends if you can have their email address. 

[00:07:29]Devin Davis: So where to get started. The process of writing a book has so many steps and so many different professionals to bring in on board to the project that it is so easy to lose track of what you need to do. It is easy to lose your steam and it is easy to lose focus. So, what Karen has put together is called the Book-wise Publishing Boiler  Plate and she passed this document onto me.

[00:07:59] It is updated regularly. The one that I have  was current as of July 7th, 2021. And it goes through and outlines step by step, the different things that you need to do in the writing process to produce a book, to get to that finish line of having a book. And then we move on a little bit to marketing after that.

[00:08:27] So if you are interested in the Book-wise Publishing Boiler Plate document, go ahead and email me. My email is authordevindavis@gmail.com. And I will be able to send that to you so that you can see what Book-wise Publishing has put together. As far as that is concerned.  

[00:08:49] Karen Christoffersen: One thing I think is really important is that if you are a serious writer, if you're serious about completing a book, you need two books, you need your book, but you also need a journal. And write in your journal every day what you do, whether you write 10 pages, whether you call so-and-so who knows an editor or an agent or whatever is happening in your book life, keep a journal of it because you're going to want to refer back to that sometime. And you will have valuable information that you don't even know was valuable at the time you received it. So two books.

[00:09:29]Devin Davis: Sometimes as business owners and as people who are creative, we failed to see the importance of record keeping. So with different things like this  with having your manuscript that you are working on and then keeping track of the things that you did to progress that manuscript that can serve you in many different ways. It can show you, first of all, exactly how you did it so that you can do it again when you move on to your second manuscript. It can also serve as kind of a force to lift you up. If you are feeling down, if you are feeling unmotivated, you can look back to the specific days where you pushed through and did a lot and accomplished a lot, and had a really successful day, as far as production goes, and you can replicate what you did to get past that and to do it again. And so record keeping is very, very important in a small business, not only just the financial side, but also what you have done for production. 

[00:10:42] With me, I have my book, well, my two books. I now have two books, two manuscripts that I'm working on. I also have this podcast that I need to keep track of. With the podcast, I don't keep track of all of the notes that I have taken for each episode, but I definitely have a planner because this is a regular release schedule. And so I need to be organized and I need to think ahead.

[00:11:08] And if I ever want to have days off, it means that I need to get things done beforehand to earn those days off or to prepare for them. So with books, I have done the book writing before I know how to do that. And I know the people that I need to get ahold of for the next steps, because I've done that too. And I never did keep a second journal, but I also recommend doing that just as Karen pointed out.

[00:11:36]But also something, another thing that Karen does,  and this was surprising to me, Karen has an entire career built around producing and around marketing. And so Karen has spent her entire adult life writing the short stuff, saying impactful things in a very short amount of time, because in marketing, you don't have pages and pages to build or to develop.

[00:12:06] You get to hit them hard and you get to say the important things in a good, meaningful  way right away. And so Karen writes the short stuff. With my books, she wrote the blurbs on the back of the covers because she's good at that. And she knows how to do the small things well. And so when she moves on to share with me something else that you will hear here in a second, I was completely surprised and delighted by this little gift that she shares.

[00:12:44] Karen Christoffersen: I was going to read to you just a little thing. 'Cause I don't write books.

[00:12:48] I do a lot of writing, but I don't write books because I have too much work to do just editing. I decided to write as what I call a fictionalized narrative based on true events. And I bring other people in like, you know, the boy in my neighborhood who was my friend and his quote from his point of view, what he sees happening in my life.

[00:13:13] But I thought it might be fun just to read a tiny little excerpt.  So I would like your response to these four short paragraphs. You're ready for this? 

[00:13:25] Okay. Now I grew up in a trailer  in a tiny home and and I had a sister who played Elvis Presley all the time.

[00:13:34] And my big brother,  12 years older than me. He looked like Elvis Presley.  I thought Elvis was my brother.  And I liked big words. This is when I was five years old. But even when I was five years old, I liked big words. So this is four paragraphs for inspiration for you guys. 

[00:13:52]Butch was my friend. He was about 10 or 11, and I was five. Butch had a dog named Gunner. He was a big German shepherd, mostly black, but he had a lot of golden fur in his face and he was beautiful. He was bigger than me, probably twice my size, a happy dog, always looked like he was grinning, kind of like me. Dad called me a grinning idiot.

[00:14:15]Butch had to keep him on a long rope because we didn't have fences. So Gunner had to be leashed when we were at school. And I lived right on Route 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. So it was a nasty road. I remember riding the school bus home one day. And as we got to our stop right in front of our trailer park, there was a dark something in the middle of the road, a ways in front of the bus.

[00:14:37]I didn't think anything about it at the time, but when we walked to our trailers, I noticed Butch was looking around and couldn't find Gunner. He called him, and Gunner would always come when he heard Butch call  but not this time. And then I knew what that black thing in the middle of the road was.

[00:14:55] And I was sick at heart, sick to my stomach, and didn't know what to do. Butch and his dad dug a hole near the back of their trailer space I remember it was in the spring because the wild flowers were in bloom and I picked a bunch to put on his grave. Butch was pretty stoic. I liked that word.

[00:15:12] It meant strong and quiet-like I loved big words, even as a child. I knew he was hurting, but he didn't have to show it. I liked that. He could hurt inside, but he didn't have to show everybody and make a fuss. At my house, someone was always making a fuss. That kind of quiet strength really impressed me. I wanted to be like that, but I was a girl and girls, well, we're usually not the epitome of quiet strength.

[00:15:40] The role model I had at the time was just the opposite. I remember standing there as Butch's dad shoveled dirt into the hole, singing quietly to myself, "You ain't nothing but a hound dog crying all the time, nothing but a hound dog." It was my requiem for Gunner. He was a good dog, a loyal and loving one. Died on Route 66, just east of Albuquerque.

[00:16:06] And that is my tiny excerpt from my narrative. And I wanted to write it in such a way that my kids would actually read it. And so I bring this up because anybody out there who is thinking about writing the book and thinks they can't write a book. Well, I thought I couldn't write a book, but I I'm starting to think I might be able to, because I read a few of these pieces to my children and they liked them and ask for more.

[00:16:38]Devin Davis: So there you have it. Anyone can write a story. And a lot of us want to write some form of memoir, either for ourselves, for our lives or for a loved one. Like Caroline Nadine Helsing did in one of those previous episodes. And you should. And it is fun to bring focus to the idea of a fictional narrative based on real events and how that can be just fine and a beautiful way to do your own narrative or your own memoir or the memoir of a loved one.

[00:17:14] It can be fun. It can be entertaining. It can be more memorable that way. If you choose to incorporate those elements as well, just as Karen is choosing to do with her own personal memoirs. I know that I will, when I do my own stuff later on in life, I'm not interested in writing a memoir today. But if you are interested in reaching out to Book-wise Publishing, do their website at www.bookwisepublishing.com. And if you want to reach out to Karen Kristofferson herself,  her email is chrisbizzz@comcast.net. It has three Z's in a row. Uh, I will include that email address and a link to the website in the notes of the show.

[00:18:03] Also, again, referring back to the boiler plate document. If you want to get a hold of that, feel free to reach out to me. My email address is authordevindavis@gmail.com. And I would be able to send that over to you. 

[00:18:18]That's it for today. A big shout out to my patrons who help make this show what it is. If you wish to become a patron, you will get early access to this content, you could get an additional episode every month and you could spend quality time with me over some private chat features in Discord.

[00:18:35] Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to sign up to become a patron today. Also, be sure to follow me on social media. On Instagram I am @authordevindavis, on Twitter I am @authordevind. And thank you so much for listening. Be sure to be on the lookout for next week's episode, where we will be hearing from author AJ Mac, who wrote The Gem State Siege during NaNoWriMo last year. So that is coming up next week. Thank you so much, guys. Have fun writing.

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Plotting, but Upside Down

Become patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

 

Be sure to check out the podcast Writing Roots, found wherever you listen to your podcasts!

 

The following is a transcription to this episode. The complete transcription is on the show’s website.

 

Devin Davis: Do you have the most awesome character in all of fiction and you have wonderful plans for this character, but you just don't dare to put those plans into action? Well, I am here to tell you to dare to dream. Well, in ways. Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! And welcome back to the show. Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and we are here together for another wonderful episode of writing in the tiny house. I am the guy living in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you how to fit in writing a book, even in the most busy of schedules. So that's what we're doing.

[00:01:09] That's what we do here. Sometimes we have interviews of professionals in the field. Sometimes we have me talking about different writing advice. Last week, we talked about plotting from the inside out, from finding an event that would happen in your plot and in your book and finding ways to entangle that with all of the different subplots and then working backward so that you can find out how everybody got there.

[00:01:41] This week, we are going to be talking about characters and the awesome things we want them to do. So this is still plotting. This is still doing the plot structure stuff. But I warn you: what I'm about to talk about can be dangerous. But first I want to do a quick shout out. You know, that in these episodes I sometimes have announcements.

[00:02:06]  One of the podcasts that I just stumbled upon is called Writing Roots by Aspen House Publishing. They release episodes twice a week and they are great. And I highly recommend that you guys search them out and have a good time with that. It's been fun exploring some of these other writing podcasts and just building a community like that.

[00:02:27] So that's it for announcements. Let's just get in to the nitty gritty of this. Let me first share with you the warning. Let me first set the stage. This stage is: you have this wonderful character, and because I am a fantasy genre author, we're going to keep things kind of fantasy.

[00:02:50] If you do any other type of fiction though, this totally applies. So with fantasy, anything can happen. There's magic. I appreciate a really good magic system. I appreciate believable characters. I appreciate human characters that I can relate too. So we have this character who is becoming more and more powerful in magic, and we imagine this wonderful big finale or this wonderful big spell or this wonderful big situation that this character really should be put into.

[00:03:31] If the character were in that situation, the entire plot would be more exciting. And that particular scene that you are imagining would be fun to write. It would be fun to envision. It is fun to daydream about.  If it were a movie, you know all of the camera angles, you know all of the pictures, you know all of the special effects that it would have.

[00:03:54] And so we get to ask ourselves, "How did we get our character to do that? How do we get our character to get there?"  We need to include these exciting moments because it's fun. And that's what makes some of this literature really fun is really big magic, really big high stakes things.

[00:04:18] We like the fights. We like the battles, at least in fantasy we usually do. And so it's important to include those things. However, when it comes to this specific character, doing this specific thing or developing in this specific way or having this or that specific backstory, it is important to step back and ask yourself why.

[00:04:49]And this is the reason why I say things like this. If you do not step back and ask yourself why it can lead to problems with your writing. It can lead to problems with your story. When you have a character who needs, in your opinion-- and  it truly is in your opinion, none of this is real. And so you are in charge of everything in this writing process. But if you have this woman who needs to learn a specific spell or needs to do a specific fight, then you need to find a believable way to get her there. It is important to write down the different things that you want this character to have, and that you want this character to do.

[00:05:42] It's important to write all those things down for all of the main characters. But, you need to cross reference all of that with the previous stuff that I said in the previous episode. You need to make sure that you're getting your character from this stage to this other stage in a believable way. It needs to be something that is organic.

[00:06:10] It needs to be something that is real. It needs to be something that we can believe. And so what the pitfall is, is plot devices. Sometimes plot armor. If you're familiar with that term, that is when the character doesn't die or doesn't really get hurt just because they are the main character.

[00:06:32] Not because they are otherwise special in any other way. But just because they're the main character we protect them, or  we have our main character or our main crew of characters, and we need to get them from here to there, but we have written them into this corner. And so how do we get them out of this corner?

[00:06:53] Well, the problem is the unbelievable solution or the convenient thing that comes by. I spoke about plot conveniences earlier when I spoke about Santa Claus showing up in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia and Santa Claus brought deadly weapons, which the children would be needing at the end of the book, and that is all very convenient. And this way of plotting can lead to these plot conveniences. However, I'm going to tell you that if your character absolutely needs to do a specific thing, what I invite you to do is write down what that specific thing is, and then sit on it for a while.

[00:07:42]Have it in the back of your mind. If everything in the story already makes sense and leads up to that, and this would be just a natural progression along the way, then absolutely stick it into your story. If not, pay attention to your gut feeling. If it ends up being extra or stupid, or unbelievable, or just too much, or it ends up affecting the pacing-- like things get really slow and boring now that we have this thing in there-- then I invite you to step back and to perhaps revisit it or to throw it away entirely. There have been many wonderful ideas that I have thought of in my own stories that simply did not survive just because there was no organic way to include them in the story.

[00:08:40] So in instances like this, sometimes sometimes, and I absolutely give you every excuse to do this if you feel you need to. Sometimes you simply must sit down and write it anyway, knowing that it is going to be modified later. And you could write thousands of words just because you need to write that. You need this particular scene or event to exist for you, for you as the storyteller. In writing that scene, it brings you a little bit closer to your character. It lets you get to know the character and the dynamics of the environment that they're in, the stakes that they have and many more things. But it is okay to then turn around and rip it out of your manuscript.

[00:09:36]If you are the type of person who has heart failure over deleting things in their manuscript, it's okay to cut them from the manuscript that you are working on and paste them into another file that you can title your graveyard and to have those ideas continue on in the graveyard for either further inspiration or just reminiscing about what might've been. When I wrote my first book As Magic Shifts, the prologue was the longest chapter in the entire book by far, and it was the prologue. And if you do any type of Googling or  just a quick search in YouTube, you can discover that prologues are kind of on the hot plate right now.

[00:10:34] They're kind of a debatable subject. Do you need a prologue? Do you not need a prologue? And there are a million different things to say about that subject. But in my book As Magic Shifts, when I wrote that 13 years ago, I simply needed to write this battle scene. And in the prologue, I wrote the battle scene from start to finish.

[00:11:00] It was the entire battle. And it had characters in it that had not been introduced in any other aspect. It had events in it that were confusing. It had multiple points of view. It was a mess. It was also 45 pages long. Which is too long for a prologue. You want your prologue to be shorter than the average length of your chapters.

[00:11:26] And so it was a problem and I sat back and I recognize that. And so what I did instead was after I wrote the entire prologue, I took just a single scene from it, the most important scene, and I made that become the prologue. And had I not done it that way, at least that's how it became for the second draft.

[00:11:52] Had I not done it that way-- had I not sat down and written out this entire battle-- I wouldn't have arrived at that scene that worked for the second draft. And that's okay. What I did later was I had a way to understand the characters backstory, and as a way to understand just some of the magic and some of the effects that were happening in a really negative way. I had flashbacks of sorts to that war, to that battle that happened years and years ago, as a way to explain to the reader and to actually some of the other characters, what was actually going on and why it was happening in this way. And so I never forgot that battle.

[00:12:45]Again, this is the thing. If you have main characters that you really, really, really want them to do specific things or act in a specific way, make sure you reference your overall story and pay attention to your gut. It has also been my experience that if I let things marinate for long enough, I will be able to come to a very logical conclusion about those things, whether or not to put them in the book. Or I can find the absolute perfect way to include them. And sometimes that takes time. Sometimes that just takes that patience, that ability to sit back and allow the forces at work to just kind of figure out this aspect of the story that you didn't understand before.

[00:13:45] For me, I daydream about my books all day, every day. And so sometimes I get fixated on the really exciting things on the good things that I find in the storyline. And because I'm the storyteller and because I'm the author, they all make perfect sense to me. And then sometimes when I draft, I don't see that they don't make sense yet, or that they need more or that it's too much, whatever.

[00:14:15]But in the times that I do see that this doesn't work right now, or that this character doesn't get to act in this way right now, or this event doesn't get to happen right now, but I still allow myself to daydream and I still allow myself to think about it, I have found that for the really important events in my entire overall story, even though some of the context might change, I have found there is always a creative and beautiful way to approach those events every time. And that moment is so exciting when, when I come to realize, oh, it gets to happen this way. So the event is still there! And I still get to be excited about what is about to happen and the magic and the action, and you know, what the characters are going to learn and grow from or whatever, if that's even in the scene.

[00:15:17] And even though the context may be different and sometimes the secondary characters might be different or the setting might be a little different. I have found that there are creative ways to find the  perfect place for those exciting moments. And for those important moments, sometimes it requires a bit of ju from your manuscript, but it can happen.

[00:15:42] Sometimes you get to be prepared to put them on the back burner so that you can give it more time to marinate and let your creative brain find the most perfect way to include that important scene. 

[00:15:58] So that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. And a special thanks to my patrons: without my patrons, this podcast would not be possible. If you are interested in joining the patron gang, go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. You would be getting early access to these episodes. You would be getting an additional episode every month and an opportunity to spend private time with me.

[00:16:24] So again, that is patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. Also be sure to follow me on Instagram. My handle is @authordevindavis and on Twitter my handle is @authordevind. Again, thank you so much for joining me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.

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Plot, but Inside Out

S1E24 Plot, but Inside Out

 

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This is a transcript of this episode. The full transcript is found on the show’s website.

 

Devin Davis: You know, there has been wind, there has been rain. There has been everything you can imagine. And so I'm hoping that my microphone doesn't pick it up because we have a deadline today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy living in a tiny house who is here to tell you how to write that novel specifically. But we don't just pay attention only to novels. We pay attention to all books. It has been my experience that so many adults who work a nine to five and have a family also have a book idea in the back of their mind that they simply have not started writing.

[00:01:12] And I'm here to tell you that it is possible. And I am here to show you how it's done. So as far as announcements go, we are here and we are on our 24th episode. Isn't that so fun? I have been doing my darndest to kind of get ahead of things and it's a lot of work, friends. The podcast itself is a lot of work. I absolutely love it. And it brings me a lot of joy. But to get ahead of my publishing schedule and to give myself some room to breathe and stuff has taken a lot of effort.

[00:01:45] I don't really have a day where I can sit down and record like six episodes. That's not how it works. And so instead I've been doing a lot of interviews and I have been doing about two podcasts a week and becauseI have a patron community, I get to do an additional episode every month and that episode gets to be really good.

[00:02:07] So there's just a lot of recording and I simply do what I can in the time that I have. I don't have my boys every night. I am alone on most nights. And  my goal has been to record two episodes a week and publish one. So with some time we're going to get that nice big cushion.

[00:02:28] In case, well, which is what I want that way if I need to take time off, the publishing schedule won't be interrupted. Or if something happens or if there's an emergency, then you, my friends, don't need to worry about some good additional content and neither do I. And that's good. It is good to have that.

[00:02:47] Additionally. So August is very soon, actually, August is this month. You CA it's this month, we are presently in August, as you can tell. And that means that we have three months to prepare for NaNoWriMo. So NaNoWriMo is basically when we get our writing idea and we map it out and we outline as much as we feel we need to. And we make a goal that in November we write 50,000 words of that project. Now in my life, 50,000 words does not make a novel. Even if you read the NaNoWriMo guidelines, they pretend that 50,000 is a novel. In most publishing standards, 50,000 is a novella, but 50,000 words in a month would be a huge step in the progress of anybody's book.

[00:03:59] So for the traditional debut novel, which should be at about a hundred thousand words, you would get halfway there. If you are already at like 40 to 50,000 words, you would finish the thing by the end of NaNoWriMo. And so that is what I am preparing to do. I want to have all of November's podcasts recorded in advance.

[00:04:24] November is going to be a little bit different just because that entire month is going to be a big push to 50,000 words. I currently have two works in progress that are half done. And so to get 50,000 more words is a big freaking deal. Even if between now and then I managed to finish one of them.

[00:04:44] There's always more to be written. And I have short story ideas that need to happen too. All the things. There are a million different ways to get to 50,000 words, even if it's not just in one manuscript. And so NaNoWriMo November is going to look a bit differently instead of just the informative episode content that I have done in many of these episodes, like the tips and tricks and whatever, in November, we're going to take a different approach just because I am inviting you, my listening community, to do NaNoWriMo with me, especially  my patrons.

[00:05:24]So think of a project where you can do a big push to the end and let's nail it down in the month of November. But in November, we are going to have episodes on how to deal with stress. I know that one of them is going to be a guided meditation, just different things like that, ways to clear your head, ways to keep you going.

[00:05:46] And so it may not be related specifically to writing. It might be more related just to achieving goals and pushing through things that will stand in your way and different things like that. Starting a routine of whatever it might be. So that in November we can tackle our goals and push through to the end.

[00:06:11] In 30 days and that is amazing. So there's going to be a lot of that and preparing for it in October, we're going to have episodes on how to prepare for that type of a marathon. So that's what the content will look like in the fall. And we have three months leading up to that. So stay tuned. It is going to be awesome in November.

[00:06:37] It's going to be a little bit different and I will be posting updates on my personal progress on the Discord community and also on Instagram. So if you follow me on Instagram, you can see that. If you are not a part of the Discord community, you need to become a patron to do so. So go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse, and, there will be a giveaway, there will be a lot of back and forth on how to stay on track, on how to push through, on how to move forward. And so NaNoWriMo is a big goal this year. So let's do that right before the holiday season. It's going to be great. 

[00:07:17] So anyway, onto the main body of this episode. I want to talk about how to structure plot. And do it from the inside out sort of. So the plot of a story can happen in many different ways. It is, especially if you're doing fiction and you are not modeling something with your fiction. A lot of people take an event. And through the inspiration of that event, they write a story. And so that story is inspired by events that actually happened.

[00:07:54] And so putting in the rising action and whatever else is a bit easier, just because everything that they're writing happened in some way already.  If you are writing a book with a larger cast and a more complicated plot with several subplots, things get to happen a little bit differently.

[00:08:16] And so for something like a big epic, something where people go up against impossible odds and there's that really, really big finish at the end. And the stakes are like life or death or the death of a village or like life of death, of their loved ones or whatever else. That's what I mean by an epic.

[00:08:42] Sometimes what you can do is imagine, and I've done this with a lot of the key points in my books and with a lot of the subplots too. And you get to go through and think about how this applies to your characters later. But what I do is I envision what the outcome will look like. So I start at the end or I start at the middle.

[00:09:11] I start at what the outcome of whatever conflict, whichever conflict I choose to look at and I see how it ends. And I see who's in that conflict and who's in the picture and I go through and I map out. So I've told you that I'm kind of a pantser when it comes to writing, I don't really like to use an outline and that is true to an extent I outline a lot.

[00:09:44] I just don't write it all down and I don't write down every last detail of the scenes that play through my mind. I like a lot of the details of the scene and the interactions of the people in the scene to unfold as I write them. But there definitely has to be a direction and there has to be, you know, an ending, there has to be a way to get there and there still has to be a goal.

[00:10:12] And so in that respect, I definitely outline, and I recommend outlining. Otherwise you won't know what to do and you will have writer's block like you won't believe. So anyway, If you start at the end and you see who's all there and you see how it happened and you see all those different things, then you take the people who are there and you trace backwards.

[00:10:41] How did they end up there? What other big thing in the entire story? So an event that affects all of the subplots or most of them had to happen so that after that they would have this big finish at the end.

[00:10:57]And you call that event like Event D. From Event D you see, who is there and you imagine which other big event in the story would have brought everybody to that point, and you label this other event Event C and you move on back to B and then back to A. This is one way of an infinite number of ways to come up with a good plot. And it's a way to make sure that there is continuity and that there are ways that your subplots tie together. I appreciate all of the subplots. I do not have the brain power or the attention span to pay attention to subplots that happen in the first book and then are dropped until book five and then picked up again.

[00:12:00] I don't pay attention to all of those things. And so I like to have a good book where all of the subplots tie together in some way in the span of one book, and this is a way to ensure that. It's a way to keep all of the subplots there. It's also a good way to keep them tangled and it is so fun and so freaking hard, but so fun to have all of these subplots and to have many people involved in all of the subplots. It makes the book ridiculous to write, but it makes it intriguing to read and it adds so much suspense and it adds so much pull and so much grip. It really grips me when everybody is in everybody else's business. And then a big thing happens and there's a reason why everyone was there.

[00:12:58] And then the subplots, and the main plot kind of separate for another few chapters. And then they meet together again. And then at the end, for a big finish. I love that. Now, when you're doing it and we'll get to this in subsequent episodes, you need to make sure that your characters are doing it right.

[00:13:19] And you need to make sure that the pacing is correct among other things. But we're going to touch on those things in some of the next episodes of Writing in the Tiny House. 

[00:13:30] So that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you wish to become a patron and get early access to the episodes or a bonus episode every month, or be involved in our community and spend time with me every month.

[00:13:46]Then be sure to go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. Also follow me on Instagram. My handle is @authordevindavis and on Twitter. And my handle is @authordevind. Take just a minute and leave a review on whatever app you are listening to this podcast through

[00:14:13] a special thanks to my patrons. Without you, this podcast. Would not be as fun or as possible. So thank you so much, guys. Be sure to join in next week and have fun writing.

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