Organizing: What's Holding You Back?

 

Organizing: What's Holding You Back?

 

By Randy Ingermanson

 

I recently discovered something about myself that surprised me. Something that makes me take a lot longer to get things done than I should. Something that sometimes keeps me from finishing tasks. Something that occasionally even keeps me from trying in the first place.

I'm a pessimist.

This came as quite a surprise. After all, I'm not nearly as pessimistic as "Joe," a guy I used to work with. Every time I suggested a new idea to "Joe," the first thing he'd say was, "Now be careful! There's a lot of things you haven't thought about yet." Then he'd shoot the idea down with rocket-powered grenades.

After a while, I learned not to run ideas past "Joe" because apparently, all my ideas were bad.

I haven't seen "Joe" in years, and I'm pretty sure I'm not as pessimistic as he is. But somewhere along the way, I definitely went over to the Dark Side. I became more like him than I ever imagined possible.

That's the bad news. The good news is that pessimism is not forever. You can quit being a pessimist and start being an optimist.

But should you? Aren't those pesky pessimists more in touch with reality than those annoying optimists?

Yes and no.

Yes, pessimists generally do have a better grasp of the hard realities of the situation. "Life sucks" and all that. You can prove in the lab that pessimists are better at recognizing reality.

But no, no, no, because in very real ways, you make your own reality. We all know about self-fulfilling prophecies. Those work both ways. Optimists are happier, healthier, and get more done. Because they expect to. Pessimists are less happy, less healthy, and get less done. Because they expect to. Again, you can measure that difference in the lab.

If you're a pessimist and you want to know what's holding you back in life, just go look in a mirror.

It's you. But you already knew that, and you were already down on yourself, and now you're mad at me for blaming you, but realistically, you secretly believe it's your own darned fault, so you're really just mad at me for telling you what you already knew.

Sorry about that. I feel your pain. Remember, I'm a pessimist too, and I'm probably a bigger one than you are.

I'm a pessimist, but I'm going to change. Which is actually an optimistic thing to say, and it means the cure is already working.

What is pessimism? And what is optimism? And how do you know which you are?

I'm not the expert on this. Martin Seligman is the expert, and he has been for a long time. Recently, somebody recommended Seligman's book to me. The title is LEARNED OPTIMISM.

I grabbed a copy off Amazon and began reading. Seligman hooked me right away with his account of how he and a number of other researchers broke the stranglehold on psychology that had been held for decades by the behaviorists.

Behaviorists taught that people were created by their environment. To change a person, you had to condition him to a new behavior. A person couldn't change himself merely by thinking differently, because thinking didn't matter. Only conditioning mattered.

What Seligman and others showed was that the behaviorists were wrong. The way you think matters. Thinking optimistically, you could change things for the better. Thinking pessimistically, you could change things for the worse -- or at best just wallow in the "life sucks" mud.

There's a test you can take in LEARNED OPTIMISM that helps you figure out your particular style of thinking. There are three particular aspects to measure:

* Permanence -- if things are good (or bad), do you expect them to stay like that for a long time? * Pervasiveness -- if one thing is good (or bad), do you expect everything else to be like that? * Personalization -- if things are good (or bad), who gets the credit (or blame) -- you or somebody else?

Optimists think that good things will continue on but that bad things will go away soon. Likewise, they think that good things are pervasive whereas bad things are merely aberrations from the norm. When good things happen, optimists are willing to take a fair share of the credit; when bad things happen, they're willing to let others take a fair share of the blame.

Pessimists are the opposite on all of these.

I took the test and discovered that I'm somewhat pessimistic in two of these aspects and strongly pessimistic in the other.

That's not good. But (having now read the book) it's not permanent. I can change if I want to. Furthermore, that pessimism is in my head, it's not a pervasive feature of the universe. Most importantly, my pessimism isn't entirely my fault, because I can see now who taught it to me.

The above paragraph is a model of how to change from pessimism to optimism. Both optimism and pessimism are driven by your beliefs, which are driven by what you tell yourself.

When you change your self-talk, you change your beliefs. When you change your beliefs, you change your behavior. When you change your behavior, you change your life. Chapters 12, 13, and 14 of LEARNED OPTIIMISM teach you the techniques you need to change your self-talk.

Let's be clear on one thing. Optimism is not about the alleged "power of positive thinking," not about making those wretchedly gooey self-affirmations, and not about telling lies to yourself.

Optimism is about looking for alternative plausible explanations that might lead to improving your life.

Pessimism is about looking for alternative plausible explanations that might lead to disimproving your life.

Which of those is likely to make you happier, healthier, and more productive? Bringing this home to the topic of fiction writing, which of those is likely to help you get your novel written, get it read by an agent, and get it published?

Research shows that optimism is an invaluable tool in dealing with criticism and rejection. If you've ever shut down for three days after a tough critique, or stopped sending out query letters for three months after getting a rejection from that perfect agent, then you can see the value of learning optimism.

Optimism will keep you going through the hard times as a writer. And you are going to have hard times. That will never change. What can change is how you respond to those hard times.

There is no way I can explain in 500 words exactly how it all works. The best I can do is to point you to Martin Seligman's book and tell you that I think it's gold. I expect this book is going to revolutionize my life in the next year. I hope it changes yours too.

Here's my Amazon affiliate link to LEARNED OPTIMISM.

 

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About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Writing Craft: Just in Time Backstory by Randy Ingermanson

Writing Craft: Just in Time Backstory

 

 by Randy Ingermanson

 

 

When you create your characters, you often do a lot of work to figure out their backstory—everything that happened to them before the story began.

The temptation is to tell the reader all that backstory as soon as you can. Because it’s super interesting to you, it’s easy to assume that it’s super interesting to your reader.

The problem is that your reader wants to get into the main story first, to get emotionally connected to your characters. Until your reader cares about the main story, he or she doesn’t care about your backstory. Backstory is incredibly important, but it’s like salt in the soup. A little goes a long way.

So how do you handle that? How much backstory should you tell? When should you tell it? What do you do with the backstory you never tell your reader?

To squeeze it all down to one critical question: How do you know how much backstory to write into the scene you’re working on right now?

My Rule of Thumb for Backstory

My working rule of thumb is to introduce backstory “just in time.” Meaning that when you’re writing a scene where the backstory plays a crucial role, you tell the reader whatever bit of backstory you need right when you need it. Just that and no more.

This is a rule of thumb, not an ironclad rule. Of course you’ll sometimes need to introduce backstory before you need it. But if you don’t need to, then don’t.

The reason for telling backstory just in time is that backstory tends to slow down your story. It’s a good idea to not slow it down any more than you have to.

An Example of Just in Time Backstory

A month or two ago, I read the novel The President is Missing, by James Patterson and Bill Clinton. I thought it would give me an inside look into the job of being President, and I was right. My working assumption here is that Patterson did all or most of the writing and Clinton provided the background info, which seems the most likely way they split out the duties of coauthoring situation. So in my analysis below, I’ll refer to Patterson as the writer, even though of course Clinton is a coauthor.

The protagonist of the book is President Jonathan Duncan. Cyberterrorists have targeted the US with a lethal computer virus that could bring the country to its knees. The President and eight of his closest advisors know the virus exists, and they’re desperate to prevent a catastrophe. The President also knows that one of the eight is a traitor, which makes his job even harder. He’s got to save the country and unmask the traitor, and he has two days. Congressional leaders aren’t in on the secret, so all they know is that the President is acting very weird and could possibly be committing treason.

I read the book a couple of times. The first to enjoy the story. The second to take it apart and see how it works. James Patterson is a wily author who uses every trick in the book to weave unexpected twists into his stories. I wanted to study his set of tricks.

On my second read through the book, I took note of Patterson’s careful handling of backstory. Very often, he brought it into a scene exactly when he needed it.

A nice example is the opening chapter, which begins with this bit of dialogue: “The House Select Committee will come to order …”

This is a very tricky scene to get right. The author has to introduce the protagonist, President Duncan, make it clear that he is genuinely the good guy in this story, and introduce the predatory congress-critters who are out to get the President. All from a cold start in which the reader knows nothing about the President, his congressional opposition, or the cyberthreat facing the country.

This scene could very easily be a boring encyclopedia article on how a congressional investigation goes. But it isn’t. It’s a reasonably fast-paced scene that puts our hero in danger immediately, without confusing the reader. How does Patterson make this scene work?

He does it by mixing in action, dialogue, and carefully measured-out bits of backstory.

The first paragraph is the snip of dialogue I already quoted above.

Then comes a paragraph of interior monologue about the sharks on the House Select Committee and the President’s fears in dealing with them.

Then three quick paragraphs of backstory, direct quotes from the previous night, when the President’s chief of staff urged him not to testify. This counts as backstory, but it’s told as dialogue—essentially a mini-flashback.

Then there’s a paragraph showing us what the President sees, thirteen angry congressmen. The paragraph zooms in on the nameplate of the chairman, Lester Rhodes.

Then there’s a paragraph of backstory about Rhodes, explaining why he’s so dangerous to the President. This is told as interior monologue, so it’s in the President’s voice, and it’s told in a way that makes you empathize with the President. You don’t have to be told the President is the good guy of this story, because you feel it.

Then there’s another paragraph of action. The President adjusts his mike so he won’t have to lean forward. He’s paying attention to his body language, doing everything he can to avoid looking weak. This is the sort of thing that real presidents have to think about.

Next is a paragraph of interior monologue. The President is prepping to be grilled.

The scene continues like that for the rest of the chapter. There’s a bit of action/dialogue/interior monologue. Then there’s a bit of backstory to explain what the heck is happening.

This could easily go wrong, and there are two ways to fail:

• Show too much action and dialogue, without enough backstory to understand what’s happening. This fails by confusing the reader.
• Tell too much backstory, without enough action and dialogue to keep the story moving. This fails by boring the reader.

There’s a fine line you have to walk in this kind of scene. I’ve read the scene several times, and my judgment is that Patterson nailed it. The scene is quite long, but it’s compelling and reasonably clear at all points. And it ends with a cliffhanger that forces you to turn the page.

In such a complex first scene, I don’t see any way to do it better.

Breaking the Rule of Thumb

For most of the story, Patterson follows our rule of thumb very closely. He introduces backstory just in time. But there are certain points at which he doesn’t. There are a few places where he gives you a bit of backstory for no obvious reason.

But there is a reason. If you read the book, be watching for those apparently unnecessary bits of backstory. Some of them are clues that will turn into major surprises a hundred pages down the road. Or two hundred pages.

Not all of them are clues. But some of them are. A good author seeds in clues far in advance of the surprise. Then the reader doesn’t feel cheated when he realizes he’s been misled. Because the clues were there.

A big part of the art of writing major plot twists is seeding in clues to plot twists a long time in advance, often using what appears to be innocent backstory.

I’m not in the business of spoiling other authors’ plot twists, so I won’t give examples of just how Patterson worked his magic with his plot twists. But study how Patterson hides his clues in the backstory, doing his best to make you slap your head when you reach the twist and say, “Dang! I should have seen that coming!”

And if you’re observant, you will see it coming and you can bask in the glow of your own cleverness—until you hit the next twist that you didn’t foresee.

Enjoy the Ride

You may or may not buy into the idea that a supervirus can infect machines running a wide variety of operating systems—Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and numerous other flavors of Unix. But whether you do or not, you can enjoy the story and learn from the master. This is a political thriller, not a technothriller.

Have fun!

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About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Writing Craft: Permission to be Bad By Randy Ingermanson

Permission to be Bad

 

By Randy Ingermanson

 

Writing a first draft is hard. You have to create a group of interesting characters in an interesting storyworld, force them into conflict in scene after scene, and never let the story go flat.

For some writers, writing a first draft is also fun. They write with abandon, pushing out the words, getting the story down on paper. But the problem is that when these writers finish the novel and actually look at what they wrote, they usually find that the first draft is bad.

For other writers, writing a first draft is torture. They labor over every single sentence. They sweat the small stuff and the smaller stuff. And then when the story’s finally written, and they actually look at what they wrote, they usually find that the first draft is bad.

There’s a pattern here.

The First Draft is Usually Bad

I suppose a few lucky writers don’t write bad first drafts. But most writers do.

And that’s OK.

For most writers, a bad first draft is the necessary step to writing a fairly good second draft. Which is the necessary step to writing a pretty good third draft.

And eventually, after enough drafts, the story turns into a very good final draft.

What If Your First Draft is Good?

That’s great, if your first draft is good! Super, actually. Amazing. You are not like most writers.

If you are lucky enough to write awesome first drafts, be happy. But don’t tell anyone, because most writers don’t, and some of them will get downright snippy if you tell them your first drafts are amazing.

Some of them will sneer at you and say that if you really can’t improve on your first draft, you can’t be much of a writer.

Pay no attention to those naysayers. But do get your manuscript edited, because even good manuscripts have issues.

But the fact remains that most writers write awful first drafts most of the time. I certainly do.

Is It Bad to Be Bad On the First Draft?

No, it’s not bad. It’s uncomfortable. It’s discouraging. It can be downright debilitating.

But it’s normal.

If you just remember it’s normal, that may keep you from beating yourself up.

You have permission to write a bad first draft. You have permission to be awful. You have permission to write the worst drivel ever.

Because you can fix it in the next draft. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

But you’ll never fix it unless you first write it.

So get it written, as the old slogan goes, and then get it right.

And you have permission to take as many drafts as you need to get it right.

Homework—A few questions to think about

• Are you working on the first draft of a novel right now?
• Is it coming along more slowly than you’d like?
• Are you worrying too much about making it perfect?
• Would it hurt to leave some work for the second draft?
• Would it speed things up to give yourself permission to be bad? (Just for this draft?)

It may be that none of these questions apply to you. If not, then keep doing what you’re doing. But I’m betting these questions apply to a lot of writers. 

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Permission to be Bad by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Permission to be Bad

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

Writing a first draft is hard. You have to create a group of interesting characters in an interesting storyworld, force them into conflict in scene after scene, and never let the story go flat.

For some writers, writing a first draft is also fun. They write with abandon, pushing out the words, getting the story down on paper. But the problem is that when these writers finish the novel and actually look at what they wrote, they usually find that the first draft is bad.

For other writers, writing a first draft is torture. They labor over every single sentence. They sweat the small stuff and the smaller stuff. And then when the story’s finally written, and they actually look at what they wrote, they usually find that the first draft is bad.

There’s a pattern here.

The First Draft is Usually Bad

I suppose a few lucky writers don’t write bad first drafts. But most writers do.

And that’s OK.

For most writers, a bad first draft is the necessary step to writing a fairly good second draft. Which is the necessary step to writing a pretty good third draft.

And eventually, after enough drafts, the story turns into a very good final draft.

What If Your First Draft is Good?

That’s great, if your first draft is good! Super, actually. Amazing. You are not like most writers.

If you are lucky enough to write awesome first drafts, be happy. But don’t tell anyone, because most writers don’t, and some of them will get downright snippy if you tell them your first drafts are amazing.

Some of them will sneer at you and say that if you really can’t improve on your first draft, you can’t be much of a writer.

Pay no attention to those naysayers. But do get your manuscript edited, because even good manuscripts have issues.

But the fact remains that most writers write awful first drafts most of the time. I certainly do.

Is It Bad to Be Bad On the First Draft?

No, it’s not bad. It’s uncomfortable. It’s discouraging. It can be downright debilitating.

But it’s normal.

If you just remember it’s normal, that may keep you from beating yourself up.

You have permission to write a bad first draft. You have permission to be awful. You have permission to write the worst drivel ever.

Because you can fix it in the next draft. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

But you’ll never fix it unless you first write it.

So get it written, as the old slogan goes, and then get it right.

And you have permission to take as many drafts as you need to get it right.

Homework—A few questions to think about

• Are you working on the first draft of a novel right now?
• Is it coming along more slowly than you’d like?
• Are you worrying too much about making it perfect?
• Would it hurt to leave some work for the second draft?
• Would it speed things up to give yourself permission to be bad? (Just for this draft?)

It may be that none of these questions apply to you. If not, then keep doing what you’re doing. But I’m betting these questions apply to a lot of writers.

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About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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The Five Tools for Showing by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

The Five Tools for Showing

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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Your job as a novelist is very simple: to create a movie inside your reader’s head.

Not a picture. Not a sound bite. Not a word salad.

A movie. Inside your reader’s head.

Do that, and you win.

When editors tell you to “show, don’t tell,” what they really mean is to create that movie in your reader’s head.

You have five tools for showing that movie. That’s all. Just five. Master those five tools, and you’re far along the road to novelist nirvana. Here they are:

• Action
• Dialogue
• Interior Monologue
• Interior Emotion
• Sensory Description

Action

Action is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being doing something. Some examples:

• Hermione jumped on her broomstick and raced after Malfoy.
• Michael Corleone pointed his gun at the head of the police captain and squeezed the trigger.
• C3PO pressed its fingers into the wall socket, tripping the circuit breaker and plunging the room into darkness.

Dialogue

Dialogue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being saying something. Some examples:

• “You are the last man I could ever be prevailed upon to marry,” said Elizabeth Bennet.
• “Hasta la vista, baby,” said the Terminator.
• “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” said Obi-wan Kenobi.

Interior Monologue

Interior monologue is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being thinking something. Some examples:

• I’ve got to catch that bottle of nitro before it hits the floor.
• Bad news. He loves me and he loves me not.
• It’s not enough to win this fight just for today. I need to win the fight for all time.

Interior Emotion

Interior emotion is a person or an animal or a robot or an angel or any other sentient being feeling emotion.

This is more complicated than the other tools, so we need to clarify a few points before giving an example. You don’t need to name the emotion. If you name the emotion, you aren’t showing it, you’re telling it. If you want to show the emotion, you show the character’s physiological response to the emotion, and the reader figures out the emotion and may well feel it right along with the characters.

Note that physiological responses are ambiguous. They are usually not enough to pin down the exact emotion. The reader also needs context. But once you’ve given them the right context, showing them the character’s physiological response will make them feel the emotion.

I’ll give just one example. You can easily imagine different contexts in which this physiological response might signal anger, fear, horror, or possibly other emotions:

• Luke’s face burned, but the inside of his stomach was icy cold.

Sensory Description

Sensory description is showing the environment in a way that appeals to the senses. Some examples:

• The dorm room smelled of peanut butter and dirty socks.
• Neon lights flashed red and blue and green.
• Thunder smashed outside the house. Rain pounded on the roof.

Mix and Match

You have five tools for showing your reader your story. You can mix and match them any way you like. Any paragraph you write can use any combination of these five tools. That gives you endless variety for showing your story.

There are other tools for telling your story—narrative summary and exposition are the most common. You may be asking if it’s okay to use these tools.

Of course it is! These can be powerful tools, used in the right way, at the right time in your story. It’s not possible to spend 100% of your story showing, with no telling at all. Telling gets your reader quickly and efficiently through the boring parts of the story. Showing takes your reader slowly and immersively through the exciting parts of the story.

As a novelist, you get to decide what percentage of your story to show and what percentage to tell. A modern high-octane thriller might spend 98% of the story in showing and only 2% in telling. A slower-paced, more reflective novel might spend only 60% showing and 40% telling.

Just don’t fool yourself. If you intended to show your reader mostly movie, but you wound up breaking into the movie in every paragraph to tell your reader interesting footnotes, then you didn’t do what you intended. You should at least know you’re doing that.

Homework

Look at the most recent scene you wrote for your novel. Highlight every word in the scene that is not action, dialogue, interior monologue, interior emotion, or sensory description. The parts that are not highlighted are the movie you’re creating in your reader’s head. The parts that are highlighted are the interruptions to the movie. Are you surprised how many interruptions you’ve got in your movie? Or is the proportion about right?

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About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing

Your Inciting Incident by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

Your Inciting Incident

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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A novel is not just some random collection of events.

A novel is a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they’re connected. There’s a direction to the story. The beginning is about the lead character’s pursuit of a certain ending. The middle is about all the complications that come from pursuing that ending. The ending is about whether the lead character gets the ending he wanted, or some other ending. 

The ending that the lead character wants is called the “story goal.”

But it’s a rare novel in which the lead character knows on page one what the story goal is. In many novels, the lead character doesn’t even know on page one that there is a story goal. Often, the lead character begins the story with nothing more than a vague discontent with The Way Things Are.

Something has to happen for the lead character to decide on a specific story goal. That’s often what the beginning of the story is all about. By the end of the beginning, the lead character should know what that story goal is and be committed to getting it, at any cost.

But what is it, exactly, that moves the lead character off his butt from his initial vague discontent? What leads him to begin trying to define a story goal?

The Inciting Incident

Something has to happen to change things. Very often, that “something” is external to the character. It happens to the character and focuses that vague discontent into a stronger emotion—rage or terror or desire or whatever. 

That “something” is called the “inciting incident. Every story needs an inciting incident. It can come early or it can come extremely early, but it needs to push your lead character off balance and into the story.

Example 1: The Hunger Games

In The Hunger Games, the inciting incident comes quite early. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, goes to the Reaping ceremony, just hoping her name doesn’t get drawn. That will enable her to get on with her life.

The good news is that her name isn’t drawn.

The bad news is that her little sister’s name is.

That’s the inciting incident. Up till now, Katniss has been unhappy with the way the Capitol is running things. She’s thought of escaping District 12. But she hasn’t taken any action or even decided what action she might take.

But now her sister’s name is called. Her sister is a young kid, and going to the Hunger Games is a death sentence. Katniss doesn’t even think about it. She reacts instantly, volunteering to take her sister’s place.

Her assumption is that this means she’s going to die. It hasn’t occurred to her that she might win the Hunger Games. That thought comes to her later. 

The novel is the story of Katniss’s attempt to win the Hunger Games. 

But that story would never have even been possible without the Inciting Incident—the Reaping in which Katniss is forced to volunteer.

Example 2: Pride & Prejudice

Pride & Prejudice starts fairly quickly. In the first scene, we learn that a certain eligible bachelor, Mr. Bingley, has moved into the neighborhood and he’ll be making his appearance at the coming country ball.

Our heroine, Lizzie Bennet, is not particularly interested. She finds most men to be dull and narcissistic. She suspects she’s going to die an old maid, because she wants to marry for love, and that’s just not going to happen.

At the ball, Mr. Bingley brings his best friend, Mr. Darcy. Bingley has a fine time dancing with Lizzie’s older sister, but Darcy makes a bad first impression on everybody as a man who is stiff and formal and arrogant. 

In reality, Darcy feels socially inept and is afraid to be friendly because he doesn’t know how. But he’s powerfully attracted to Lizzie Bennet, which leads him to make an off-hand comment to his friend Bingley denying his attraction. 

Unfortunately, Lizzie hears the comment and is deeply offended. She’d like nothing more than to put him in his place.

Darcy leaves the dance wrestling with the terrible fact that he’s now infatuated with a woman who is far below him socially. 

The dance is the inciting incident for this story. Early in the story, Darcy will fight his feelings and Lizzie will subtly mock him. At a certain point, Darcy will realize that it’s no use fighting. He’s going to have to pursue Lizzie, because he has to. But by this time, she’s committed to evading his pursuit.

The novel is the story of Darcy’s pursuit of Lizzie, and Lizzie’s attempts to evade. 

None of this would have happened without the Inciting Incident—the dance where Darcy and Lizzie meet.

Example 3: The Godfather

The Godfather is a massive novel about a thoroughly repugnant character, Don Corleone, the godfather of a Mafia family. 

The story begins with the wedding of the godfather’s only daughter. A lot happens at the wedding that will be relevant later. But the story really hasn’t begun yet. Fact is, the godfather is sitting rather pretty right now. He has multiple streams of income, he has the honor of his community, and he has any number of judges in his back pocket. The one nagging concern is that none of his sons is quite right to replace him as the godfather, but that’s not a big issue. He’s healthy and apparently has many years ahead of him.

Soon after this, he meets with a young gangster named Sollozzo. Sollozzo works with a rival family, and he wants to begin importing a new drug that has enormous profit potential—heroin. Sollozzo needs the godfather’s help in getting legal protection. His men are going to get arrested occasionally. It will be crucial to be able to bribe the godfather’s pet judges.

The godfather says no. He doesn’t care about the people who will be harmed by heroin. His concern is that drugs are too hot, that his judges will balk, and his empire will be harmed. So he refuses to cooperate.

But the godfather’s impetuous son Sonny expresses interest. Verbally. To Sollozzo.

Sollozzo leaves the meeting and orders a hit on the godfather. It nearly succeeds. Don Corleone is now terribly wounded and his empire is thrown into disarray. 

The novel is the story of Don Corleone’s search for a successor—one powerful enough to regain the Corleone family’s standing as the premier Mafia family. And ruthless enough to exact a stunning revenge on Sollozzo and his backers.

None of this would have happened without the Inciting Incident—the initial meeting between the godfather and Sollozzo.

Homework

1. Do you know the Inciting Incident for your novel? 
2. If so, does it begin as close to the beginning of the story as possible? 
3. If not, can you think of some scene early in your novel that could serve as your Inciting Incident if you tweaked it a bit?
4. What external forces tip your lead character off his or her balance?
5. Does your lead character have a choice after the Inciting Incident? If so, what part of his character leads him to make the decision to enter the story you want to tell?

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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How to Measure Motivation by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

How to Measure Motivation

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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Practically everything in fiction eventually comes down to your characters’ motivations. The lead character in your story wants something, One Thing. 

It’s tempting to say that the strength of your story is directly proportional to how much your lead character wants that One Thing. 

But that’s false. It’s so far from being true, it’s not even wrong.

Let me explain how you measure motivation. I’ll do that by telling you a little story…

Back in August, most of America took a day off to watch the total eclipse of the sun. By good luck, the path of totality came very close to where I live. We were scheduled to see 99% coverage at my house. Which is not bad, but I wanted more.

On the day of the eclipse, my daughter and I got up early, packed our gear, and left the house at 4 AM to beat the traffic. We drove for a couple of hours until we reached a friend’s house in Salem, Oregon, dead center in the path of totality.

Then we waited for a few hours to watch the show. 

When it was over, we waited several hours for the traffic to die down, then headed north. The freeway was slogging along at parking lot speeds. After an hour of that, we took an exit and zigzagged across the countryside on back roads, using our phones to navigate. It took us four hours to get home.

The trip burned an entire day, and it was quite an adventure, just to see two minutes of eclipse.

Why’d we do all that, when we could have watched the eclipse from our own back yard?

Because 99% isn’t 100%. It’s not even close. I watched the coverage go from 0% to 99% and it was qualitatively the same thing. Sure it was less and less sunlight, but sunlight is sunlight. Then I watched the last little bit of the sun wink out, and a hole appeared in the sky where before there had been blinding light. A hole is not sunlight.

The difference between 99% and 100% is huge. They are different kinds of things, not different amounts of the same thing. The reason is because 99% totality is 1% sunlight, whereas 100% totality is a hole in the sky—no light at all. 

Something is qualitatively different from nothing. 

When you have the chance to see a total eclipse of the sun, you should take it. The opportunity doesn’t come along very often.

But I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do when the next total eclipse comes along. I’ve seen one and it was pretty cool. But I’ve seen one and I don’t feel a strong need to see another. If it’s convenient next time, I’ll probably go watch. Otherwise, I might just give it a pass.

Now contrast my attitude with those people who get addicted to seeing total eclipses. They’ll spend thousands of dollars. They’ll take days to reach the zone of totality. They’ll camp out in insanely terrible places. They’ll charter boats or airplanes to get themselves to exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. They’ll risk the possibility of a rain-out or cloudy weather.

All for an experience that never lasts longer than seven minutes.

That is some serious motivation.

These eclipse addicts are all-in. Whereas I’m not all-in.

My level of motivation to see a second eclipse is 99%. Theirs is 100%. 

Those are qualitatively different motivations. When you’re all-in, when you’re 100% motivated, you’ll do anything, no matter how crazy, to feed your need. 

When you’re not all-in, when you’re only at 99% motivation, you’ll do whatever’s convenient.

Write stories about characters who are all-in on their story. 

Characters like Luke Skywalker, who’ll do anything to defeat the Evil Empire.

Like Lizzie Bennet, who would never think of marrying a man unless she loved him 100%.

Like Katniss Everdeen, who’ll do whatever it takes to survive the Hunger Games.

If your lead character is all-in on your story, then your readers will be all-in too.

If your lead character isn’t all-in, then you won't be either, and neither will your readers.

That’s how you measure motivation. All-in. Or not all-in. As Yoda once said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Homework

• What is the One Thing your lead character wants?
• How bad does she want it? Does she want it 100%? Or only 99%?
• If she’s not all-in on that One Thing, then fix your story or kill it.
  

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

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Why Quality is Not About Talent by Randy Ingermanson | Advanced Fiction Writing

 

Why Quality is Not About Talent

 

by Randy Ingermanson 

 

Advanced Fiction Writing

 

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( The dates are in the past, but the information is still relevant. )

 

In the January 2015 issue of this e-zine, I wrote an article titled “The Success Equation,” which spelled out my ideas at the time for why some authors are successful and most aren’t.

Over the past six years, I’ve honed those ideas by teaching them at conferences and by putting them into practice in my own life.

This year, in this e-zine, I’d like to walk you through my ideas as they stand right now. I’ll teach you what I’ve been doing since 2015.

I recently wrote a blog post, “The Success Equation,” that briefly summarizes the five factors that drive success.

Two of the factors that drive success (Target Audience size and Quality) have to do with your writing craft, and I’ll begin the discussion of those in this month’s Craft column.

A third factor that drives success is your Discoverability. This is a large topic and is going to take months to cover. We’ll get started in this month’s Marketing column.

A fourth factor that drives success is your Production, and that’s the subject of this column.

The fifth factor that drives your current success is something you have absolutely no control over--the success you’ve had in the past. You can’t change the past. But you can change the future, by taking actions now in the present to make today more successful. Because today is the yesterday you won’t be able to control tomorrow.

Why Production Matters

What is Production? It’s the speed that you publish your books.

If all other things are equal, the author who publishes five books per year is going to do better than the author who publishes one. And the author with ten books published in past years will do better than the author with only one, because some marketing methods only work when you have several books published.

That’s why your Production matters. If you want to be more successful, do your best to maximize your Production.

You might argue that the Quality of your work will suffer if you publish five books per year. That’s true for some authors and not for others. I would never tell you to publish shlock, just to publish fast. I don’t write five books per year, for three reasons:

1. I have a day job that consumes half my time. It’s a fun job that I love, and it pays well, and I don’t see any reason to give it up. I get to do science, and I get to write code, and they actually pay me! What could be better?
2. The books I write are huge. The last novel I wrote was 180k words. My current work in progress weighs in at over 240k words.
3. The books I write take a lot of research. My readers know that I connect a lot of dots. That’s my superpower, and my readers like that, but connecting dots takes a lot of time. I try to spend several weeks per year doing on-site research for my books. Time spent on research is time spent not writing. It is what it is.

So how do you set your production rate and then live with it?

Your Production Rate

The two factors you need to look at are these:

• How long does it take, realistically, to write a book?
• How many hours do you have in your time budget per week?

Once you know those, you can figure out a reasonable production rate.

For myself, once the research is done, I can write 500 to 1000 words per hour. So a book of 200k words would take 200 to 400 hours to write. And it would take another 200 hours to edit and polish.

My current time budget for writing fiction is one hour per day, every day of the year. As of this moment, I have a streak of 506 days in a row, writing one hour per day. (The only exceptions are when I’m sick or traveling. Every other day of the year, I work. That includes Christmas. And my birthday. And weekends.)

Once you know how long it takes to write a book and how many hours per week you write, you know your optimal production rate. In my case, let’s say the book will take 500 hours at 7 hours per week. So that’s about 72 weeks. Which is why I can’t publish even one book per year.

A Production Plan is a Production Habit

If you want to boost your Production, you need a Production Plan.

And a Production Plan is just another name for a Production Habit. A famous writer once said, “I write when the spirit moves me … and the spirit moves me every day.”

Stephen King writes 2000 words every day. That’s over 700k words per year. That’s Production, and that’s a key element of his success.

Your life will change amazingly if you create a Production Habit.

So how do you do that?

You do it by making it ridiculously easy:

1. Make a firm promise to yourself that you’re going to write every day of the week for at least 5 minutes. (You get to decide whether that means 5 days per week, or 6, or 7.)
2. Back up that promise with an accountability partner. If you miss even one day in a given week, then you owe your friend a $50 Amazon gift card. (It doesn’t have to be exactly $50. Make it a number that will sting, but won’t impoverish you.) You should have no problem finding a friend who will agree to be your partner on this.

You might argue that 5 minutes per day is too easy.

Yes, it’s easy. The easiness is the point. 5 minutes per day is perfect when you’re starting out. Because when you’re starting out, the value is not in the 5 minutes. The value is in creating the habit.

After you’ve spent 30 days doing 5 minutes per day, your habit will be pretty well in place. Then ramp up the time commitment to 10 minutes. Or 15.

Then after another 30 days, ramp it up again.

At a certain point, you’ll reach your natural limit for the number of minutes you can work in a day. For me, at this point in my life, my natural limit is 60 minutes. I don’t have more. So I make every minute count. Make yours count too.

A year from now, when you look back on your Production for 2021, you’re going to be astounded at how much you’ve achieved.

Astounded. Next year, this time, you’ll see.

Homework:

• How many words do you plan for your current novel? (50k to 100k is a typical range.)
• How many words per hour do you write, on average? (500 words to 2000 words per hour are typical.)
• How many hours do you estimate it would take to write your book and edit it and polish it? (Some writers need as little as 100 hours; others might need up to 500.)
• How many hours do you think you can budget each week for Production? (Most professional writers are producing new content between 5 and 20 hours per week.)
• Now do the math: How many books can you write in a year? (1 to 5 are typical.)

Please note that it’s OK to not be in the “typical” ranges quoted above. The point of the exercise is to define a Production rate goal that works for you, in your life situation

 

About The Author

Randy Ingermanson is a theoretical physicist and the award-winning author of six novels. He has taught at numerous writing conferences over the years and publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.

 

 Randy Ingermanson Books at Amazon

 

More Advanced Fiction Writing