Believability is the Key to Good Fiction

If it’s not believable, it doesn’t belong in a short story or a novel. This concept doesn’t apply in creative non-fiction, because no matter how bizarre, facts are facts. About the only exceptions occur in science fiction and fantasy, whose readers will swallow just about anything for the story. After all, fantasy doesn’t exist except in the reader’s imagination and science fiction doesn’t yet exist.

But in regular fiction, a story’s world can be shattered when an action, even if it’s impossible, becomes unbelievable. It stops readers dead in their tracks. And it can destroy the trust they put in the writer of the story.

There’s an acceptance on the part of fantasy and science fiction readers that just doesn’t exist in other types of fiction. Readers begin reading a short story or novel expecting life in the story to be similar to real life. And while quirky things can happen in the real world, those same incidences become magnified in fiction because the rest of the world isn’t there to balance them.

All writers, fiction or non-fiction, focus on certain actions to tell a story. They ignore all other things going on at the same time because they’re just not relevant. That focus is what leads the reader through the story.

Readers approach stories wanting to believe them. They have both the intention and desire to enter a story in which everything that happens, within the narrative world that governs that story, is believable. As a writer, your goal isn’t to convince readers to suspend their disbeliefs, but rather to give them what they want by continually sustaining their belief in the story.

In the fantasy novel, Weave World, by Clive Barker, an Oriental carpet comes alive as its threads unravel to produce a world of living beings living within it. Unbelievable, yes, but plausible in this fantasy about a world of witches and warlocks and mysterious happenings.

The distinction isn’t just a matter of semantics when it comes to believability. It’s a matter of understanding the mindset and expectations of your readers. Readers want to immerse themselves in deep belief. As a writer, you need to respect them enough to keep that belief alive throughout the story.

Consistency must coexist along with believability. Once you establish an implausible concept or action, you must follow through to the end of the story. Then it, too, becomes believable. That’s exactly what Clive Barker did in Weave World.

All else being equal, as soon as readers stop believing your story, they’ll stop caring about it. It’s important to know what any character would naturally do in an implausible situation. The main character in Weave World accidentally falls onto the rug and for a fleeting moment sees life. That’s how the story begins. In the end, he jumps into the woven world of the rug and experiences chaos as it begins to unravel.

Remember, as soon as your characters act in ways that aren’t believable, either in reference to their characterizations or to the story’s progression, the reader loses faith in your ability to tell the story.

So when something that’s unbelievable or odd happens, don’t be afraid to let your character notice and respond.

If a character acts in an unbelievable way, you’ll need to give your reader a reason why. Always give your readers something believable—or something better. If you don’t, you must satisfy them with a twist or a moment of story escalation that satisfies them more than they ever expected.

The Power of Cause and Effect

Cause and effect is the most powerful tool you can use as both a writer of creative non-fiction or fiction. While in the former fact dictates what happens next because it actually happened, in the latter it’s up to you, the writer, to figure out what happens next.

One of the best places to see the bad side of cause and effect is on T.V. Here, writers face a number of challenges—time restrictions, actor availability, and budget. One of the classic snafues of cause and effect was in the primetime drama “Dallas.” Patrick Duffy gets killed off when a problem arises with his contract and then miraculously comes back to life after it’s settled by saying he dreamed it all. T.V. writers are notorious for killing off characters who have contract disputes.

You can see one of the worst uses of cause and effect in the sci-fi drama “Stargate Universe.” Unlike it’s parent series, “Stargate SG-1,” which told its story in a smooth flowing way, this series jumps around so much that it becomes hard to follow as the episodes unfold. Add to that the lack of plausibility of some of the events, and you end up with a mishmash of comings and goings that even a diehard novel reader would find hard to endure.

Everything in a story must be caused by the action or event that precedes it. That’s a fact. If you start playing with flashbacks and flash forwards, you better make damn sure that what you write is clear to the reader. And while that seems like an obvious statement, you’d be surprised how paying closer attention to cause and effect can improve your writing.

Whether you pursue creative non-fiction or fiction, your main goal should be to ensure that your reader is always emotionally present in the story—that is, you want them to empathize with your main character throughout. But when you force readers to guess why something happened or didn’t happen, even for just a split second, it causes them to intellectually disengage and distances them from the story. Rather than remaining present alongside the characters, they’ll begin to analyze or question the progression of the plot. In the process, they lose their place in the progression of things. This is exactly what happens in all episodes of Stargate Universe. .

When a reader tells you that he or she couldn’t put a book down, usually it’s because everything in the story followed logically. Stories that move forward naturally, cause to effect, keep the reader engrossed and flipping pages. If you fail to do this, it can confuse readers, kill the pace and show your weaknesses as a writer.

Let’s say you’re writing a short story in which the bad guy is chasing your lead character.

    Fumbling with the latch, he managed to lock the door because he knew the killer  would soon be on the other side.

Writing is that way, you’d break the reader’s emotional engagement with the story.

Instead, you should reverse the sentence so it reads like this:

    He knew the killer would soon be on the other side of the door, so he fumbled with the latch and finally locked it.

If you find that one sentence is serving to explain what happened in the sentence that preceded it, you can usually improve the writing by reversing the order so that you render rather than explain the action.

If you’ve written a scene in which you could connect the events with the word “because,” then you can typically improve the scene by structuring it so that you could instead connect the events with the word “so.” The stimulus leads naturally to the response.

In more complex scenes, realizations and discoveries usually happen after actions, not before them. Always build on what has been said or done, rather than laying the foundation after you’ve built the idea. Continually move the story forward, rather than forcing yourself to flip backward to give the reason something occurred.

One way of making sure things don’t go awry in complex scenes is to list each event in the order that it’s supposed to happen. By creating this visual guide, you’re more likely to stay on track. This is especially useful in flashbacks and flash forwards.

Your writing will be more effective if you show the reader what’s happening as it happens rather than explain to the reader what just happened.

However, there are three exceptions to this rule—three times when you can move from effect to cause without shattering the spell of your story.

The first occurs in scene or chapter breaks. Here, you can begin with a vague reference in dialogue that you can follow up as the scene unfolds. The reader will immediately be curious as to what’s happening and will want to continue reading to find out what happens.

The second exception occurs when one action causes two or more simultaneous reactions. Your character might sigh and look out the window, the order of which could go either way.

The final exception happens when your character deduces something the reader hasn’t yet concluded. Imagine Sherlock Holmes staring at the back of an envelope, cleaning out a drainpipe, and brushing off a nearby stick of wood, after which he announces that he’s solved the case. The reader asks, “How did he do that?” This peaks the reader’s  curiosity, and later when the character explains his deductive reasoning, the reader sees that everything followed logically from the preceding events.

If the writers took the time to make any of the above happen in the episodes of "Stargate Universe," the story wouldn’t have been so confusing. This is especially important when writing science fiction, which, in itself, can be confusing enough, particularly when the writer creates whole new worlds.

Bringing Real Characters to Life

You’d think that if you’re writing about real people in a nonfiction piece that it would be easier than making up characters in a fictional short story or novel. Actually, quite the opposite is true. While you have facts about the person to deal with, there are limitations.

Many of the same techniques for writing characters in fiction apply to nonfiction.  Through detail, through gesture, through talk, through close understanding of someone’s life before and after the scope of your story, you make your people vivid in your reader’s mind.

Characters are primary in creative nonfiction, an all-encompassing term covering the personal essays and literary journalism. The chief difference between creative nonfiction and regular nonfiction is that the writer composes the former in scenes with characters just like in fiction. But characters in nonfiction present special problems. While fiction writers base their characters on real people, nonfiction writers usually tell their readers about their characters. The trick is to use the fictional technique of showing, not telling.

When writing nonfiction, much of the work of characterization is done for you. You base your characters on facts, characterization is complete, the family history is in place, the physical description is a given. But that doesn’t make anything easier. The job is merely different. Doing justice to a real person can be difficult because you may have pre-existing biases to that person or their ideas.

Nonfiction readers get to know characters through their actions. But from who’s point of view? It’s all in the moment, all told from a particular point of view. We see the scene—a dark, stormy night off the coast of North Carolina—in the book Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Outer Banks, by Bob Brooke. The reader is in the wheelhouse with the captain, Commander George Ryan, and the officer on duty, Lieutenant W.S. French, at 1:00 A.M. as they try to steer the Huron, a converted gunship, through the swirling waters.

        “Hard over,” French shouted to the helmsman. “Leadsman take soundings.” But his orders came too late. The ship swung around toward the beach, heeling over on her port side.
        “What’s out location?, Mr. French?” asked Ryan.
        “I don’t know sir,” French replied.
        “Give the orders for all hands on deck.”
        “Aye, sir.”
        As the mist parted, Commander Ryan finally saw the coastline. “My, God, How did we get here?” he cried.

With just a few words of dialog and some short description, the writer was able to not only establish a time and place, but the military order covering the panic in the voices of the crewmen. From here, the point of view changes as the scene changes to a father and daughter on the shore, desperately trying to find a way to save the sailors.

Once you establish the scene, readers are in a particular time and don’t leave it. What changes is the point of view. Action keeps the scene moving forward.

Often nonfiction writers relate their characters personality characteristics through an as-told-to narrative. This often happens in memoirs where writers use family stories to make their characters come to life. In these, the writer stands back and lets readers draw their own conclusions and make their own judgements.

A character rarely appears fully formed. Readers get to know him or her in bits and pieces scene by scene. You’ll need to will your characters to life by drawing on your unconscious, memory, and imagination until your characters assume a clear form and, with hope, begin to act of their own accord.

This process is inherent to the success of any novel, but it’s also important in nonfiction writing. The key is first to understand what your characters require from you in order to come to life, and then to determine how you can draw on your best available resources to give them what they need.

But what happens if you don’t have all the information you need to flesh out a character in nonfiction? Unlike in fiction, you can’t just make things up. However, you can use your imagination in finding information from other sources.

For instance, let’s say you want your characters to speak but you don’t have access to the exact words of what they said. You can research the same sort of character in similar situations who most likely said something similar. This is exactly what happened in the above example. From captains’ logs of similar shipwreck scenarios, it was possible for the writer to create an exciting, nail-biting scene. He had to do this because Commander Ryan died when his lifeboat overturned and the all was lost, including his log, when the ship sank.

The same goes for how a character dresses. You may find what you need in old photographs from which you describe the type of clothes your characters wore. Similar information may appear in old letters written by a friend or relative of the character about him or her. Remember, you need to find facts about the person to fill out the characterization. Begin with what you know about the person and then do specialized research to fill in any voids in your characterization. You may not need much, just the essence.

Next Week: Characteristics of Compelling Nonfiction Characters

Tips for Effective Research

Research is an important part of most writing. The majority of writers don’t just pull ideas and facts out of their heads. While their writing may appear smooth, logical, even flawless, behind it lies good research.

What and how much you research you do depends a lot of on the finished format of your writing. A short article or blog, for instance, requires far less research than say an investigative piece or a book. Even short stories may require some research to help you become familiar with the subject.

Today, you have at your disposal a multitude of sources of information. Researching for your writing isn’t like anything you did in school. Too many beginning writers remember back to researching term papers and fail to get the right kind and amount of information they need to complete their current work.

The best research begins with good general sources. To fully understand your subject you’ll need background information. Details come later. A quick search for an article on Wikipedia, for example, should give you an overview of your subject. But be careful, some of those articles often have misinformation. You may also find the background material you need in brochures and press releases. This is especially true when writing about businesses, travel, or products. Before compiling a list of questions for an interview, it helps to know something about the subject and the person you’ll be interviewing.

Take profile writing. To write a good profile, you need to learn all you can about the person so that you’ll be able to ask intelligent questions that get to the nitty gritty about their life or business. The more you learn ahead of time, the better results you’ll obtain from your interview.

Sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious. If writing about a product that’s no longer made, you may want to look into learning about the company that produced it. The development of the product or the progression of ownership of the company will often provide interesting details to add color to your story.

All of the above pertain to writing non-fiction. If you’re planning a novel, especially an historical one, you’ll need to learn about the lifestyle of the times so that you can truly convey the atmosphere of life back then. This includes not only major events in history, but the clothing that people wore, the cultural habits and mores of the time, and even the vocabulary and speech patterns to provide authentic dialog.

Finding appropriate background information for a novel can be more complicated and widespread than for non-fiction. It may require you to make research trips to locations you plan to include in your book. While there, you may want to visit museums to find information to fill out the details like costuming and local history. Some novelists begin writing in a broad way and then fill in the details later after completing their research. Others research first and then begin writing.

Whatever type of writing you do, you’ll want to make sure not to do too much research. Overdoing it can be just as bad as finding too little information. Know when to stop. A good rule for an article is to compile twice as many pages of notes, single spaced, as the number of pages of your finished article. Doing too much more than that will result in your using far more material and, in the end, having to cut half of it out to get back to the length your intended publication requires.

If you’re writing non-fiction, you’ll use most of the research you’ve done. But if you’re writing fiction, you may use less than half since the majority of what you write will have to deal with characters and dialog. 

There’s No Guarantee of Success

Someone once said that success is one of those things that’s often impossible to predict unless you know you have it in the bag. With success, there are no guarantees.

Before you can be successful, you have to figure out just what success is for you. How do you define it? As a writer, is it getting published? And after you’re published, then what? When you first started out in writing—or if you’re just starting out—your main goal was to get published. You probably thought that getting published would prove to others, and more importantly to yourself, that you had made it as a writer. Unfortunately, one article, one short story, or one book does not a writer make.

So to truly understand what it means to be successful as a writer, you first have to understand what it means to be a writer. When someone asks you what you do, can you confidently say you’re a writer? You can and should do that only if you have a volume of work under your belt. Too many beginning writers are more enamored at the thought of being a writer—perhaps to impress your friends and family—than of actually being a writer.

Success can be and often is fleeting. There are those big successes in life, such as obtaining a college degree or raising a family, and there are those little successes, such as finishing the first draft of a novel. All of them are accomplishments. So to get a true handle on success, you must take into consideration all of your accomplishments. There’s something to be said for being an accomplished writer. That’s a person who has written and published a variety of things often in more than one subject area.

Even if you’re one of those lucky writers who publishes a book the first time out of the gate, having the book published, in essence printed, is no guarantee of success. In this case, your success amounts to how many copies of that book sold. And, even more important, how many copies have been read. Unfortunately, statistics only exist for how many copies sold, enabling you to get on a bestseller list. But a best-read list just doesn’t exist.

That said, you shouldn’t define your success as a writer by how many books you’ve written and perhaps published. Books are only part of the broader writing picture. Successful writers publish an assortment of pieces throughout their careers.

Some writers see awards as a gauge to success, collecting them at every opportunity. They figure that if someone chooses to give them an award, that they have made it as a writer. But the afterglow from an award often lasts shorter than a sunset. Once you’ve been applauded, everyone seems to forget, unless you constantly remind them.

To get an idea of just how successful you are as a writer, periodically list your accomplishments. Once a year or even every six months is often enough. You’ll be amazed at just how successful you’ve become. Remember, don’t count only the big successes in your career. Count the little ones, too. They all add up. 

Experience the Real World

Writing is a reflection of life. If you write non-fiction, it’s a documentation and interpretation of life. And if you choose to write fiction, you convert what happens in real life into fictional drama. The important thing is not to just sit in front of your computer and forget about life.  Get out and live it.

You learned to write in school. However, the academic environment of school isn’t real life. And though you studied past writers in the form of literature, you never learned about their techniques, only their ideas. In fact, too many academicians infer too much from the works of famous writers. They inject symbolism and innuendo into everyone’s work, because they can’t see into the mind of these writers at the moment of creation.

Ernest Hemingway is most noted for his adventures in the real world. He was to some extent an eccentric, but he knew that if he didn’t try all sorts of things, he wouldn’t be able to write honestly about any of them. The old saying, “Write what you know,” is key to this way of thinking.

But in school, you didn’t write what you know. When you had to write a research paper, you searched out the facts and spit them out on paper in perhaps a slightly different form. You never took the time to digest them. After all, the only reader who mattered in this process was your teacher. Only his or her opinion counted. But in real life that’s not how it works.

A good writer writes from experience. And while you may not be able to afford the time or money to experience everything in life, you do experience a lot each day. Much of it you take for granted.

You don’t have to go to some exotic locale to gain insight. If you’re like most people, you struggle with relationships day in and day out. You know how you relate to people and how they relate to you. With some acute observation, you can study the relationship of others. Everyone knows about relationships. They just take them for granted and seldom look at them as material to write about.

You probably also take a vacation once in a while. Some people go to the beach and just lie in the sun. But you can see the beach and all who are on it as one giant resource to draw on. While lying there, try playing the “What If” game. Look at the group of people nearest you and see what you can gain from observing them throughout the day. Tune in to their conversation. Do they give you any ideas that you can work into a story?

Or perhaps you prefer to go on an historic vacation, visiting historic sites nearby or far away. What are you learning about these places and the people who inhabited them? One writer visited Fort Delaware, a former POW camp for Confederate soldiers. The fort has been lovingly restored by a group of dedicated volunteers and the State of Delaware. Recently, they reconstructed one of the prisoners’ barracks which reveals the lives of the 12,000 prisoners who were incarcerated there for the duration of the war. He learned a lot about their experiences. So much so, that he was able to create an article that truly captures the POW experience at the time. Being able to sit on one of the bunks in the barracks and seeing re-enactors portraying the roles of various prisoners put him right back in the war. And the knowledge he gained on that visit help put his readers there, too.

But writing isn’t limited to pleasurable things. How about documenting a tragedy. With all the news available to you, you should be able to glean a wealth of information to use later in a short story or novel. Because the media goes into overkill on most tragedies or disasters, you won’t be able to use any of the information right away. But you can put aside what you’ve learned for a writing project in the near future. 

To experience life, you don’t have to go zipping through the cloud forest on a zip line or get in the ring with a ferocious bull. Instead, look to experience those things in life that interest you. Then you’ll really be able to write what you know.

Getting and Staying Motivated

There’s nothing harder for a writer than getting and staying motivated. In this high-tech, whirlwind world, it’s often hard to focus on the job at hand. If your cell phone isn’t buzzing to let you know someone desperately wants to speak with you, then it may be vibrating to let you know that you know that someone posted something on your Facebook Page. And then, of course, there’s your family, the stress at work, and who knows what else. What can you do to stay motivated when you’re bombarded with all this?

Well, take heart. There is a way.

There are probably lots of times when your head is just bursting with ideas. You can’t wait to get started—but you never do. If that’s the case, you have a problem with getting motivated. To sort things out, jot down as many of those ideas as you can. Look them over and pick three that stand out from all the rest.

Study those three and ask yourself why each is a good idea. Also ask how relevant each of them is. And finally ask how passionate you are about each one. One of them will stand out after asking these questions. That’s the one to start working on. At this point, forget about getting published and just get to work.

Get yourself excited about this new idea. Dive into researching it. The deeper you go in your research, the more fascinating the topic will become. You may even get so motivated that you ignore that blasted cell phone vibrating in your pocket!

But getting motivated and staying motivated are two different things. That initial surge of writing energy will only last so long, then what?

Visualize where you’d like to be with this project and your writing in general in say six months. Do you see your work being enjoyed by readers? That’s not the same as being published. While the two are intertwined, most writers don’t go beyond seeing themselves published. They forget about their readers. And the secret to success is that you just can’t do that. Your readers are the most important part of the process.

Imagine readers getting excited about what you’ve written. Imagine them laughing or crying. When a reader says they just couldn’t put a book down, that’s a testimony to good writing. Make that happen to your work.

To be sure you stay on track, set a writing time and place. Work writing into your schedule just like eating and exercising. Develop a writing routine (See “There’s Something to be Said for Routine While Working” from Feb. 17, 2014).

Ask yourself what would you like to accomplish with this piece of writing? Every piece of writing should afford you some sort of accomplishment. It may improve your writing skills. It may help you to advance your characterization skills. Or it may increase your knowledge substantially about a particular subject. No writing project is worthless. All contribute somehow to your writing ability and your outlook on life.

To stay motivated, set some goals for yourself. Look ahead. See the bigger picture. Set some long-range goals covering perhaps a year and some short-range goals covering a month or so (See “Setting Goals” from Jan. 4, 2013).

Take time out to read. Reading will stimulate your brain and give you even more ideas. Non-fiction is best. The fantasy of novels doesn’t always stimulate your brain enough because you get involved in the everyday lives of the characters in them. Everything is pretty much thought out for you. But with non-fiction, you’re often forced to think of other things related to what you’re reading.

Above all, decide why you want to write. What drives you? Why do you torture yourself with it? When you know the answers to those questions, you’ll be able to stay motivated, perhaps for a long, long time.




                                          
       

Finding Your Ideal Reader

Whether you always knew you wanted to be a writer or you’ve just recently discovered that you had some hidden talent, one of the hardest things to learn is to whom you should focus your writing.

Everyone learns to write in school, but the type of writing you learned during those years was the kind used by academics. In this type of writing, the main focus is on the writer. But to academics that seems egotistical. So many find ways to avoid drawing attention to their interests and opinions and use such devices as passive voice to direct the reader to their subject, sucking the energy out of it. 

But since you’ve gotten interested in writing for publication, you’ve probably discovered that focusing on yourself doesn’t really get you anywhere. That’s because writing outside of academia focuses on the reader. As soon as you realize this, you’ll be on your way—almost.

Focusing on the reader is only the beginning. To be successful at writing for publication, you have to focus on a specific reader. If you try to write to a whole room full of people, for example, you won’t hit your mark because each reader is different.

While this isn’t as important in writing short pieces like articles or short stories, it plays a major role when you write books. Some people say you should write a book that you would buy, but not every reader has your same likes or interests.
                                               
Perhaps you think you should write for your editor. Surely, that will impress him or her. Unfortunately not. Your editor won’t be buying your book.

To find the best reader to write for, think of someone you know that would enjoy reading about the subject of your book. This applies to both fiction and non-fiction. For instance, if you decided to write a travel book about a particular country, think of who best from the people you know would enjoy traveling there.

Another avenue of approach is to visualize one person. Let’s say it’s a man. How old is he? What does his do for a living? What’s his level of education? Is he married? Does he have a family? What are his interests? What is his name? Imagine him reading your book. What sort of questions might he have? Once you answer these questions, you’ll be able to begin writing your book.

As you work on each chapter, imagine him reading it. Is he able to understand what you wrote? If it’s a non-fiction book, is it too technical for him? If it’s a novel, is the plot too complicated?

Once you learn the tastes of your ideal reader, you’ll learn to write to those tastes.  Doing so will force you to be consistent in both style and voice in your writing.

By focusing on your ideal reader, everyone with similar interests reading your book will be drawn into it. The reaction you want to get from your reader is that he can’t put it down.  You want to enlighten and entertain your ideal reader. What results from this method is a focused effort that targets your reader. By fulfilling your ideal reader’s expectations, you’ll have a reader for life—and a successful book.

Is Writing a Book All It’s Cracked Up to Be?

It seems most beginning writers want to write a book. Some of them start out doing that without ever having written anything else for publication. Why is that? It could be that “authors” seem to get the most exposure. When was the last time you remember the name of the writer of an article or short story?  Probably never. But readers tend to remember and talk about those who write books. Remember, not all writers are authors but all authors are writers.

Perhaps it’s the title of author that seems to get more respect. Have you ever been at an event where someone asked you what you did? If you said that you’re a writer, they probably asked what you’ve written. If you only had written a short article on tips for winterizing your home, they probably wouldn’t be impressed. But turn that into a book on whole house maintenance and their ears will probably perk up.

So before you dive into writing your first book, think about the mistakes lots of beginning writers make.

First and foremost, don’t start out writing a book. It’s a huge project that will use every once of writing skill you have. Start out small writing articles or short stories. Get used to writing, itself, and improve your writing and thinking skills. Remember, an average non-fiction book equals perhaps 10-25 articles. A novel equals even more short stories. A book is so big that you may forget the beginning before you get to the end. So you’ve got to develop your planning skills as well.

Some people say not to tell anyone about your book. That’s rubbish. Discuss your idea with close friends or family members. Listen to what they have to say about it, but don’t necessarily take their advice. What you decide to do is totally up to you. However, too many beginning writers think that if they talk about what they’re doing, someone will steal their idea. As a writer, you should have lots of ideas and variations on them. But your friends and family aren’t about to steal them. Talking about your book idea may firm it up in your mind, but don’t talk about it to strangers.

Stay objective while working on your book. This is hard to do. Some writers fall in love with parts of their book. This doesn’t help when it comes to editing later on. And editing doesn’t just mean looking out for mistakes in grammar and such. Editing for continuity and length is an important part of the process. If you’re objective, you’ll be able to delete parts that don’t belong.

If you haven’t done any writing for publication before starting your book, you’re in for a big surprise. Beginning writers often think that the words will just pour out and the book will write itself. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

No matter what kind of book you’re going to write, you must set some realistic goals. Writing a book takes months of hard work, beginning with thinking about it, then intensive research, planning it out, writing the first draft, revising and re-writing, and finally editing. The idea of writing a book in a month, itself is unrealistic. So don’t follow the crowd in NaNoWriMo and plan to write your book come November.

You need to set some long-term goals for your book project and some short-term ones. Know where you want to be on the project in say six months. For short-term goals, set them to write each chapter. Consider each chapter a unit by itself. Also, set time goals. Figure how much time you’ll have to write each day and plan to write for that amount of time, no matter how many words you put down. Even if you write a little each day, it will all add up. Above all, don’t go on writing binges and work for hours on end. Limit the time you write.

Get organized from the start. Create a folder for your book in your computer, then create subfolders for each of the chapters within that. You’ll also need folders for your research within the main folder. Number your drafts to keep them separate from each other. And save your work often. Some word processors, such as Corel WordPerfect, automatically save your work after a certain number of minutes, say 10, that you specify. That means that even if your program crashes, your work is backed up. Otherwise, set a timer to go off on your smartphone every so often to remind you to save your work. At the end of each writing session, also save your book draft on a thumb or external hard drive or to the Cloud if you have that available.

Writing a book is hard work, so make sure you enjoy doing it. Pick an idea that you love and really get into it. Remind yourself why you why you decided to write a book in the first place.

Feeding Your Muse

Did you ever wonder why some writers produce an exhaustive amount of material and others very little? The same thing seems to go for songwriters. The answer is complex but usually boils down to the fact that prolific writers do some things that the others don’t. They feed their muses in a number of odd ways.

First, there are the writers that proclaim they have a book inside them waiting to get out. So why can’t it escape the confines of their brains. Usually, it’s because their writing skills aren’t advanced enough to express their idea successfully. Later on in their career, after their writing skills have developed more, they can develop that same idea with little effort.

But what about the writer who produces one successful book and then seems to disappear from the scene. Much like the musical artist that produces one hit and fades into the background, so the one-shot-wonder puts so much effort into their first work that they lose sight of the bigger picture and don’t produce anything again.

The difference lies in looking versus seeing. Most people, including the one-shot-wonders, look only where they have to to survive. They focus so hard on that first, or perhaps even second or third, work that they don’t prepare themselves for anymore. But prolific writers and musical artists embrace the world around them. They pay attention because ideas worth capturing are happening all the time right next to them. They just see it where others don’t. Eyes that look are common while eyes that see are rare.

Prolific writers know how to beat resistance—that insidious force that works to stop creativity and progress. It’s the voice that says, “You’re tired. You can do it tomorrow. You’re really not that good. You could spend ten years slaving away and, chances are, it’ll all be for nothing.” Resistance is the true enemy to success. Prolific professional writers realize this and know how to beat it by constantly keeping something in the works, by constantly keeping their irons hot. They’re constantly writing. While they may not be writing books all the time, they produce blogs, stories, and articles—all sorts of projects that require the same method of creative thinking.

Creating something is difficult, usually lonely work, for any writer. Most think they can do it, but then find out they can’t. There are probably more half-written books out there than there are completed and successful ones. Professional writers live with the fact that producing a book is hard. So if they want to be a successful, prolific writer, they have keep their head down and trudge forward when everyone else has given up.

Successful writers don’t say no to new ideas. They know what risk is all about. They’ve tried things and failed. They can taste success. Let’s face it, mediocrity loves company. Prolific writers see beyond their ideas. They believe anything is possible. Whether or not it turns out to be true doesn’t really matter. Genius is seeing the inevitable before everyone else, the possibilities before it’s even a consideration.

Above all, prolific writers have passion—a passion for writing in general and for one type of writing in particular. Some derive pleasure from writing non-fiction books, realizing that fact is often more tantalizing than fiction. Others like to delve into the fantasy world of novels, literally creating life before them. And still others fall in love with the beautiful rhymes of poetry. Whatever the end result, a writer’s passion is what’s behind a work’s success.

If you’ve ever listened to prolific writers on T.V. talk shows, they all seem to have one thing in common—a stubbornness that’s often seen as ego or attitude. Sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s simply seeing the world for what it could be and expecting nothing less than passion and belief from those who normally don’t. But nothing great ever came from mediocre minds. So feed your muse daily and sit down and write.

The Elephant in the Room

Copyright is probably the most misunderstood concept in writing. With information being so readily available on the Internet, everyone is on the defensive. If someone uses even one word of a text, the author is ready to jump on them. The same goes for ideas. Many people believe that if someone uses an idea the same as or similar to there’s without permission that they have stolen it. But actual copyright is very different from these common misconceptions.

Most beginning writers think that if they put their work out in public view that someone will steal it. If it only were good enough, someone might do just that. But most of the time it isn’t worth stealing. So how did they develop this notion.

It all started back when they were in school. Teachers ingrained in them that all their work had to be original. Let’s face it, the last time something totally original was created was at the point of the creation of the universe. Everything since then is influenced by all that came before it. Traditionally, academics have a fear that someone is after whatever they’ve uncovered or created. But that’s not how the real world works.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, copyrighting a work reserves the rights by the author to reproduce, distribute, and perform a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work. That covers a lot of territory.

It all began with the Statute of Anne, passed in England in 1710, that recognized that authors should be the primary beneficiaries of copyright law and established the idea that such copyrights should have only limited duration, after which works would pass into the public domain. The U.S. Congress enacted a similar law in the United States in 1790. Over the years, subsequent legislation changed the duration of a copyright and the necessity of registration.

Essentially, a copyright is placed on a work from a particular date onward for a period of time during which the copyright holder has exclusive rights to reproduce, modify, and distribute the work in whatever way he or she sees fit. In the U.S., that period is 70 years plus the age of the author at the time of publication. For anonymous works, that period is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation date.

A work that was created in tangible form for the first time on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death.

Copyright law protects short stories, novels, nonfiction articles, poetry, computer software, software manuals, text advertisements, manuals, catalogs, brochures, and  databases. Other categories include plays, films, musical and sound recordings and multimedia works. Copyright law doesn’t protect your ideas, facts, words, and names, although it may protect the way you express them.

You own the copyright to your work, unless you assign those rights to a third party. Copyright protection arises automatically the moment you create it. The work must be "original," and not based upon someone else's work. The fact that your short story may be similar to other stories doesn’t mean it isn’t "original” for copyright purposes, so long as you don’t copy the complete story from another source.

For works published before March 1, 1989, you needed to place a copyright notice— “Copyright © 2014 by Your Name. All Rights Reserved”—on your work in order to receive copyright law protection. That’s no longer the case. For works published after March 1, 1989, you don’t need to place a copyright notice on your work in order to be protected by copyright law.

Such a notice warns people who view your work that you take copyright issues seriously and may have a deterrent effect upon possible infringers, especially those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of copyright law. Furthermore, if your work carries a proper notice, in the event of a subsequent infringement lawsuit the defendant will be unable to claim "innocent infringement"—that he or she didn’t realize that the work was protected.

Do you have to register your copyright? Not necessarily, but if you need to take legal action, a registered copyright will hold up in court. You may register the work after someone has infringed upon the work, but the registration will only apply to infringements that occur after the registration. However, if you register your work within 90 days of publication, the statutory damages provisions apply to infringements before and after the actual registration. Registered works may be eligible for statutory damages up to $100,000 and attorney's fees in successful litigation.

Registration costs $35 per work. To register, you simply fill out the copyright application and mail it to the U.S. Copyright office with a check and a nonreturnable copy of your work—one copy if your work is unpublished and two copies if it has been published. Works that have been published must be registered within three months of publication. This is called "mandatory deposit."

Copyright registration is considered effective the day the Copyright Office receives all the materials required for registration. You may copyright the work in a pen name or pseudonym by simply checking the "Pseudonymous" box on the application.

Works published or created after January 1, 1978 aren’t subject to renewal registration. For works published or registered prior to January 1, 1978, renewal registration is optional after 28 years but does provide certain legal advantages.

The length of copyright protection depends on when the work was created, who created the work, and when the work was first distributed commercially. For works created on and after January 1, 1978, the copyright term for works created by an individual is the life of the author plus 50 years.

The term of the copyright for "works for hire" is 75 years from the date of first "publication" or 100 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first.

Remember, it’s up to you to enforce the copyright to your works.

What's the Rush?

Everyone today seems to be in a rush to do everything. And that includes writers. The trend over the last several years seems to be to write a book, namely a novel, in just 30 days. While that may not be impossible, is it good for the book or the writer? The answer is probably not.

Books like Write Your Novel in a Month and 90 Days to Your Novel from Writer’s Digest Books say something about the world we live in.

Many beginning writers look at a book as their ticket to fame. Sure, a few fine writers have achieved fame from their books but only because they were really good writers in the first place who thought out their books carefully.

This all began in 1999 with National Novel Writing Month, abbreviated to NaNoWriMo, an annual Internet-based creative writing project that takes place during November of each year. It challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel from November 1st until the deadline at 11:59 P.M. on November 30th. Supposedly, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people writing, who might not otherwise do so, and keep them motivated throughout the process.

To ensure this, the project tries to make writing seem like a fun, community activity.  And while it can be fun, writing, itself is a solitary activity. The Web site does provides participants with tips for combating writer's block, lists of local places where writers participating in the project meet, and an online support through forums.

NaNoWriMo focuses on completion instead of perfection. It emphasizes the length of a book rather than the quality, encouraging writers to finish their first draft so that it can later be edited by the author.  Encouraging creativity worldwide, the project began with  21 participants and now boasts a participation of over 200,000 – writing a total of over 2.8 billion words. That’s a lot of words, but do they mean anything.  Of the thousands of participants completing thousands of novels or parts of novels, only 100 have been published by traditional book publishers. Even taking into consideration others which have been self-published, that’s still not a great percentage for the number of would-be writers involved.

While finishing a novel in 30 days may seem like an achievement, it’s no more one than running in one of those 10K races for some charity. NaNoWriMo is essentially a race against time. And while it’s intentions are admirable, too many wannabee writers have begun to think that they should rush to get their novel done in a certain amount of time.  This is probably because they lack the long-term motivation to see a book to its completion. And in many cases, their writing skills aren’t up to writing a project of a book’s magnitude.

What many beginning writers fail to see is that what they write is a very rough draft that will need hours and hours of work to get it to the polished, published stage. The best novels and non-fiction books out there takes months, sometimes years, to write. They take careful planning and, in the case of novels, plotting. “Off and running” just won’t do.

Plotting Along

In a video interview on YouTube, Stephen King recently told a group of students, “Forget plotting. That takes all the fun out of writing.” That may be easy for him to say. As a famous writer of over 35 books and numerous short stories, plotting is second nature. But to most beginning writers, plotting fiction and blocking non-fiction is a fact of life. A necessary evil that they need to master.

The more you write, the easier it becomes. Just as any other professional, writers develop skills that become part of the routine. While Stephen King may think he’s just winging it, he’s actually plotting out his stories in his mind. He doesn’t need to plan them on paper, but you do.

Whether you’re writing articles or short stories, non-fiction books or novels, you need to know where you’re going—you need to know how it will generally will end—so that you can finally get there. Too many beginning writers start a book and only get a third to half way through before they call it quits. The article, short story, book, or novel won’t guide you. Only you can do that.

The reason most beginning writers shy away from blocking or plotting is that they associate these with outlining—that dreaded chore they had to do in school for their term papers and such. Neither is outlining.

Let’s take blocking, for instance. Blocking out an article is easy. You start by putting the word “beginning” at the top of the page and the word “ending” at the bottom of the page. In between you list what comes in the middle in whatever order you choose. This is simplifying this a bit, but, nevertheless, it’s as simple as that. You don’t have to write each step out in sentences, just make notes to yourself as to what it will contain. You may also may want to make a note as to how you plan to start your piece and how you’ll end it since endings usually wrap up where you began. You can do all of this on a napkin if you want. This isn’t a formal outline, but a flexible plan that may change as you write. But it’s a plan all the same.

Plotting a short story is similar. There are some basic plots for all short stories. So after you choose which basic plot you’ll be following, you need to write a synopsis of your story. Pretend a friend asked you what your story is going to be about, then just tell him or her, but do it on paper and limit it to one page. This will help you plot out your story. Again it’s a flexible plan. It can change as you go, but by doing this, you’ll have an idea how the story will end. So you write forwards towards that ending.

Writing isn’t easy. Anyone who tells you that or gives you that impression is only telling you what you want to hear. Writing is work—hard work. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Once you start blocking or plotting, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Yes, writing can be fun, but if you’re stressed out trying to write something, there’s no way it can be.

Going on a Writing Retreat

In today’s busy world, it’s often hard to focus on your writing. Distractions attack you from every angle—T.V.’s blaring, Internet flashing, cell phones ringing, kids screaming, spouse calling, and who knows what else. If you’re having a tough time getting any writing done, perhaps it’s time to take a break, not from writing but to writing. Perhaps it’s time for you to go on a writing retreat.

Retreats have long been used by religions to help their followers focus on their teachings and the spiritual side of their lives. Basically, to go on a retreat means to withdraw to a quiet and secluded place—away from the stress of everyday life, away from work, away from family.

Writing is difficult enough without all the distractions. And getting away from it all may just help you jump start that new novel, that short story you’ve been meaning to write, or that article that’s been nagging you to be written.

A writing retreat doesn’t have to be a big expensive affair. One writer gets together with other writer-friends of hers once a year at a one of their houses for a week of writing, eating, and sharing. They write during the day in separate areas of the house, taking a break only for lunch. In the evenings, they cook dinner together, talk about their writing, and what’s new in their lives. It’s all done in a relaxing atmosphere that results in stress reduction and more writing being done.

But the key in the above retreat is that the writer gathered with other writer-friends of hers. They all know each other and can help each other by sharing ideas and solving problems. However, in official, commercial writing retreats you’ll find by searching the Internet, you’ll be among writers you don’t know. As often as not, some of them will be very opinionated and want to impress the others about how good they are. This, in itself, creates stress, the very thing you’re trying to get away from.

Some commercial retreats offer a bare bones approach, offering a sparsely furnished room with shared bath and kitchen facilities. Others provide meals and a more luxurious atmosphere. Some require a minimum stay of two weeks. It all depends on how much you time and money you can afford to spend. But do you really need all that?

Most working writers—that is writers working 9-5 jobs—getting away for two weeks takes up all their vacation time. And if you have a family, getting away by yourself for two weeks is all but an impossibility. For most, getting away for two or three days, say over a weekend, is just the ticket. The advantage of shorter retreats is that you can do them more often.

To create your own retreat, find a vacation house, either one to rent or one belonging to a friend, that’s vacant for the time you need. The optimum word here is “vacation.” In order to keep costs down, rent it during the off season. A house at the beach is a great place for writing, especially before it gets to cold to take walks along the surf. Perhaps you can share the cost with another writer or two that you know. The same goes for a mountain cabin.

Another solution is to book a cheap hotel room with a mini fridge and perhaps a microwave. All you need is a desk and a power outlet. You can go out for dinner or get take out. Again, book in the off season. Many include breakfast. A bed and breakfast is another option. However, while these have charm and quiet, they’re usually more expensive than a hotel.

Don’t think that you have to work all the time while on your retreat. Sleep in once in a while or take an afternoon nap or a walk. Try not to work for more than two hours at a stretch. Refueling your body and mind will help your writing and make you more productive.

If you live alone and can’t get away, create a stay-at-home retreat. Plan to work at your writing throughout the day, perhaps in one-hour stints. Between each hour do something else—go for a walk, have lunch at a local diner or café, play with your dog. When you sit back down to write, you’ll find you’re refreshed and ready to continue.

If you can, vary your writing locations. If you have a laptop or tablet, you’ll be able to write just about anywhere. If the weather cooperates, take yourself outdoors and write on the patio or balcony. Take your laptop to a fast-food restaurant or doughnut shop and work while sipping some coffee or iced tea. Some places even have outdoor seating for warmer weather.

Above all, plan your home retreat ahead of time so that you won’t be distracted by sudden phone calls or other duties. And don’t forget to turn off your cell phone. If you’re not used to writing full time, then a retreat will show you how your routine needs to change should you ever wish to quit your job and become a freelance writer.