Tips for NaNoWriMo-What You Can Do Before November

Halloween is fast coming upon us. For many people it means carving pumpkins, wearing costumes and passing out candy. But for some writers, it marks the last day before November, better known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are one these writers, taking advantage of this time to do some preliminary work on your new novel will save you time while you are in the thick of NaNoWriMo. Below are some tips to get you prepared for November:

• Write out the story goals in detail. What is at stake? Get a sense of the larger picture and the personal picture. What does the character want? What would it mean for the story if she gets it? What would it mean if he doesn’t?

• Create a plot outline.  Some writers are meticulous planners, which helps them stay on track. Other writers are “free-writers” who prefer the spontaneity that comes from not knowing what going to happen next. I would suggest something in-between: a broad outline of the plot, so that you have an idea of where you need to go with the story, but still have room for experimentation and discovery.

• Get to know your characters now.  This will alleviate the time you’ll spend during NaNoWriMo guessing at your character’s responses to important decisions and how they should act when they encounter unexpected challenges in the story. 
  
  
  

• Design the world ahead of time. Or at least, have a good idea of the environment your characters are going to exist in. This will save you from getting bogged down in world building during NaNoWriMo.  Hone in on the details of the world, including weather, geography, people, and objects, letting these details reveal the character who would be observing or experiencing them. And although this world may be very familiar to your readers, describe it in a way that is unfamiliar, strange or foreign. In other words, let the unfamiliarity and unique perspective of the character seeing it for the first time come through.  If the story is set in an exotic, strange or alien place, try to describe it as if it was familiar, demonstrating the ordinariness of the world.
  
  
  

• Do any preliminary research that you think you’ll need to know, or at least have on hand. Research can easily become a black hole and make you lose momentum while in your NaNoWriMo groove.  While you can’t anticipate every piece of research you’ll need, you might be able to do a little research to help you understand how to get your character to a particular plot point or what the motivation is behind a character’s action.

• Start setting aside time to write now. Get into some kind of writing regiment (you can do these exercises to fill that time), so that when November starts, your NaNoWriMo efforts won’t feel like a sudden shift in your daily life.

• Set up a support system with other writers. There are some great resources and blogs about National Novel Writing Month, but start with the official NaNoWriMo site first.  Sign up for free and get help and support in just about any aspect of your NaNoWriMo experience, from planning to staying motivated throughout the month.
  
  
  

In following these tips, you’ll be able to start your new novel with a more grounded picture of the world and a clearer understanding of your characters. And if you are only able to do just some of these exercises, you'll still be better equipped to handle the challenge of writing every day in November. 50,000 words can seem daunting but a little preparation can not only give you a good start, it can help you maintain your writing momentum and keep you on track to meet your NaNoWriMo goals.

Curb Your Insecurity: Tips on Good Submission Etiquette

There are plenty of querying and publishing “how-to’s” that provide authors with great information about how to find, query and submit to an agent. What is not always so clear is what you should do after your manuscript has been submitted to prospective literary agents. Waiting is often the hardest part of the submission process. That is the time when insecurity can rear its ugly head, and authors may suddenly feel that they must do something, but what they do is actually worse than not doing anything.

First, I’d like to clear up a misperception about literary agents. It is often said literary agents are in the business not for the money but because they love what they are doing. That is certainly true. While some agents are lucky enough to work at an agency that provides a salary, quite a number of us only see a paycheck after we’ve sold a book. And while we love what we are doing, this should not be construed as we are working or willing to work for free.

Consider the concept, time = money. The time we spend on book projects – whether it is combing through slush piles, reading submissions, providing edits to a client, or any number of activities we must undertake to sell a book – is considered our “capital” investment in our business.  And let’s face it, publishing, which includes agenting, is a business. Many authors, especially debut authors, write their novels while maintaining a job that pays the bills. Their writing activity may be viewed as a “hobby,” since they are not compensated for it, which in turn, makes it easy to mistake an agent’s job for his or her “hobby” as well. After all, it looks like we’re doing it for free. But since time is our investment, it is a very precious, limited commodity for agents. We have to be selective on what to invest our time on. So as an author looking for representation, you should be mindful of an agent’s time. If not, you risk putting your foot in your mouth, or worse, shooting yourself in the foot.

To help you avoid doing either, I’ve put together the following ten tips for good submission etiquette:

1. Don’t “shotgun” your submission. In other words, don’t simply send out your submission to a large number of random agents, hoping to ensure some positive responses. This wastes both your and the agents’ time.  You’ll have more success and make a more favorable impression by doing your research to make sure the agents you are approaching are appropriate for your project.  
   
   
   
   
   
2. Really follow submission guidelines and how the agent wants to be contacted. And if an agent isn’t accepting unsolicited submissions, don’t discount or ignore this by querying anyway. It shows disrespect and, at the very least, that you can’t follow directions, which is a red flag. It hints at a potential difficulty you might have in taking editing directions.
   
   
3. Don’t “nudge” or follow up on your submission too soon. I once received a follow up from an author after only 2 weeks. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get an answer. You might even get a response shortly after, passing on your book. Why? It could be that the agent happened to get to your submission, and it was just a coincidence. Or it could be that the agent decided it was better to let it go, since you seemed to need an answer so quickly. Or it could mean that alarm bells went off, and the agent wondered if you are impatient now, what happens once he takes on your project? 
   
   
   
   
   
4. Wait at least 3-4 months before your follow-up on your query or submission. Please believe me when I say it takes a lot of time to go through submissions. At Kimberley Cameron & Associates, we look at every submission. It may be as little as 10 pages or as many as 50, but our agency policy is to give each of them thoughtful consideration. And our agents are required to answer every one of them, whether in a form letter or a personal note, which adds even more time.
   
   
5. Don’t make demands either in your query or follow-up, whether it’s for a specific time frame to respond or confirmation that your submission was received. It raises a big red flag and shows a  lack of respect for the agent’s time. Consider how many submissions an agent receives in a day or a week. For some, it may be a dozen, while others, it’s several hundred. If you think they’re slow to respond now, imagine how much longer it would be if agents had to also confirm receipt of submissions to authors.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Don’t burn bridges by responding to an agent who passed on your project with a defensive retort or ask for editorial suggestions. If suggestions are provided, consider yourself among the fortunate. It means that the agent was willing to spend some her capital to help you out, so take those suggestions to heart. If you respond defensively, it not only makes you look unprofessional, it pretty much ends any potential for future contact, which you may regret after you’ve done a major revision or written another book.
   
   
7. If general comments, or reasons why your project was passed on, are offered, don’t respond requesting detailed editorial recommendations, or worse, request a copy of your manuscript back with the agent’s notes.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Notify agents only when you have been offered representation. There is no need to let us now that you’ve submitted to other agents (this is pretty much assumed) or when other agents request full manuscripts.  
   
   
9. Be honest about your intentions. When you are offered representation, it is perfectly acceptable to ask for time to notify other agents, just be honest about it and your intentions for doing so. One author I offered representation to told me that she had every intention of signing with me, only to find out she’d been using my offer to leverage offers from other agents. She kept me hanging on until she secured her “dream” agent.





10. Be professional on social media and don’t solicit or pitch agents by commenting on posts or tweeting at them unless it’s part of an organized contest, pitch party or other social media event. Along those same lines, don’t post a comment or tweet to an agent to nudge, request confirmation your submission was received, or ask when to expect a response on your submission. 

While practicing good submission etiquette will not guarantee you'll get an offer, it might help your submission hang in there a little longer. For agents, it is often easier to avoid a potential problem simply by passing. At the same time, by demonstrating professionalism and respect for an agent's time and efforts, you'll make it that much easier for an agent to take your submission to the next step.

Ten Steps to an Emotionally Engaging Character

Literary agents pass on submissions for all sorts of reasons. For me, it usually comes down to the writing, more specifically, the characters themselves and how well I am able to connect with them. Having that emotional engagement with the characters makes me care what happens to them and keeps me turning pages.

The most common reason why I cannot connect with a protagonist is because the character does not seem “real” enough for me to relate to him or her. In other words, the character must have a certain degree of complexity, and a deeper or more layered way of thinking and acting to comes off as authentic and unique. Otherwise, the character will appear shallow and one-dimensional. He or she will seem more like a stock character pulled out of a TV show or movie, or worse, a caricature of a person.

The key to creating a more complex and convincing protagonist is to understand your character on an intimate level. Below is a 10-step writing exercise designed to help you dive deeper into the inner workings of your character’s personality:

Step 1: Create a tagline for the character. This is similar to what you would see in a personal profile of someone on social media. Just like a social media profile, it should be relatively short, reveal a main aspect of the character and her interests or what she desires most or aspires to become. 

Step 2: Write up a personal history of the character. Start with the basics and leave room to add more as more about the character comes to you. A good place to begin is with the character’s family history, including cultural and social roots. Then expand further. Are there any family issues or secrets? What about significant or pivotal childhood events? Think of what events or relationships might’ve influenced or shaped the character’s decisions in the story – perhaps an alcoholic or abusive parent, or a sibling that drowned or was murdered.

Step 3: Identify in general terms, your character’s type. Think in categories, archetypes, and even in stereotypes. Commercial fiction will often require a character to fill a role that fits a category – like the nosy mother-in-law or the funny, buddy sidekick or the recovering alcoholic detective. Once you have a generalized aspect of your character, make him or her more interesting and unique by adding traits and behaviors that might emphasize, stretch, bend or go against type.

Step 4: Describe the character’s morality make-up. Is the character principled or is he untrustworthy?  Is she thoughtful and logical about her decisions or impulsive and irrational? Is he empathetic and kind or indifferent and cruel to others? Is he honest to fault? Or perhaps ruthless and ambitious? Or maybe ethical and heroic?

Step 5: List what your character’s dreams and aspirations are.  Include not just career or life goals. Also include personal goals. For example, you might have a character who wants to stop a terrorist plot but he also wants to some day make amends with his estranged brother.

Step 6: Describe difficulties in the character’s life. What inner demons are making him or her struggle to get though the day, or deal with others? These difficulties might manifest themselves in the character’s life by making him drink too much or make her unable to commit to a relationship or contribute to his depression.  

Step 7: List the strengths and weaknesses of the character. What skills does she utilize the best or what traits help her the most?  What are the weaknesses or deficiencies in skills or behavior that come out most often or at the worst moments?

Step 8:Write about an incident, relationship or anything from the character’s upbringing that either directly or indirectly creates a behavioral or personality issue for him or her now, such as a debilitating shyness as a result of being shamed or dismissed as a child, or an underlying anger because of being abandoned by a father.

Step 9: Identify the cultural or environmental elements that might influence your character.  What ethnic or cultural traditions does he practice? What kind of sports does she play or watch? What television shows are on his DVR? Does she prefer to be in nature or the city? Is he conservative or liberal? Does she go to ballets and symphonies or rock concerts and baseball games? 

  

Step 10:After you have completed the nine steps, take stock of what you’ve written down. You should now have a better, more nuanced vision of your character. Continue to add to what you have written about your character, as you work on your story. Your notes will help you make decisions in what your character will do or think when situations arise in the story, identify the character’s personal stakes and bring out your character’s arc.

By the end of this exercise, you will know your character on a more meaningful level.  He will have a broader range of actions and reactions, because you will have a better understanding of his beliefs and morality, and his personality flaws and strengths. Your character will have a compelling inner life with tangible fears and real aspirations. He’ll have interesting quirks and eccentricities. Most of all, you’ll have a more emotionally engaging story that will keep readers invested in seeing your character’s journey to the end.

Make Your Manuscript Stand Out: Tips for Better Beginnings

No matter how interesting its premise, or how skillful the use of language, getting a literary agent to notice your manuscript in the first place, depends on how compelling is its opening. A novel's beginning is one of the most difficult writing feats to pull off well. I say this because the beginning has to flex more narrative muscles than other parts of the novel. In a short amount of space, it sets up events of the story, introduces characters, situates the reader, and immerses him deeply enough to  keep him turning the page. From the many manuscripts I've read over the past couple of years, I put together some tips on writing a better beginning for your novel.

Establish story goals and stakes clearly and promptly. Does your reader know what to expect from your beginning? If not, it needs to be revised so that it clearly shows what stands to be gained if your protagonist succeeds and what would be lost should she fail. These stakes need to be worthy of the reader’s investment. The higher the stakes, the more a reader will care about seeing the protagonist succeed. To avoid melodrama and help the reader understand how close or far the protagonist is from reaching her goals, both external and internal stakes need to be defined with concrete language and specific imagery. This should be revealed on page one, preferably within the first two paragraphs. If not, then they should be revealed no later than the second chapter. Bear in mind, the longer you wait, the greater the risk of losing your reader.

Begin in media res, or in the middle of the action. A story with a dramatic opening is an almost guaranteed hook.  The reader is brought into the story in the middle of a scene with characters in movement or taking action. This scene should carry meaning throughout the rest of the novel. It can be an inciting incident that creates the story’s conflict. It can be where the character changes direction in pursuit of the story goal. It can be a scene that exposes old wounds. By showing (external) conflict in action, the protagonist’s inner goals and struggles can be revealed. It is a way to effectively introduce the story problem and plot while hitting the ground running. The aim is to lay the foundation of the story’s forthcoming crisis, so make sure that this scene does not overshadow the rest of the novel.

Begin with a hook. A narrative hook is a powerful way to begin and the quickest way to pull a reader into a story.  It reveals something of significance that is related to the central conflict, theme or the protagonist’s desires. Effective narrative hooks are outside of narrative time and place. They reflect the style and voice of the piece. They can identify a turning point and highlight larger life themes such as love, hate, birth and death. Ideally, the hook hints at the character’s struggle or need and engages the reader on an emotional level. A well-written hook is layered with characterization, story conflict, theme, or something from the story that is tantalizing, raising questions and suspense.

Immediately orient place and time. Within the first paragraph, make sure to orient the reader to the story’s time and place. A scene that happens nowhere will have an affect of not having happened at all. Failing to establish a sense of where and when a story takes place will leave readers bored or confused. Narrative time and concrete setting help a reader to more fully engage in the story and invest in its characters. While time frames the protagonist’s life in a larger context, it also provides perspective to the story’s events as they unfold. Setting then grounds the story in a particular place at a particular moment of the character's life. 

The importance of a novel’s opening should not be underestimated.  This is not to say that sustaining the tension and energy level of your story through to the end is just as vital. But a beginning that hooks,  has high stakes, situates the story's time and place and hits the ground running gives your manuscript a competitive edge. And that might just be enough to make it stand out among the thousands of other manuscripts that are competing for a literary agent's attention.