Authors who want to take their books from idea to paperback must become project managers. Like any other endeavor, writing and successfully taking your novel to publication has many steps, from “what if” to proto product, and from there to completion. It doesn’t matter if you are going indie or sticking to the traditional route.
Then there is the marketing of the finished product, but that is NOT my area strength, so I won’t offer any advice on that score.
Even on the surface, writing fiction is complex.
We all know a high-quality product when we see one. The manufacturer didn’t make it out of cheap components. They put their best effort and the finest materials they could acquire into creating it. Because the manufacturer cared about their product, we are proud to own it.
For authors, the essential component we must not go cheaply on is grammar. We don’t have to be perfect—after all, the way we habitually structure our prose (our voice) adds to the feeling of depth.
However, we must have a fundamental understanding of basic mechanical skills. These rules are the law of the road, and readers expect to see them. Knowledge of standard grammar and punctuation rules prevents confusion. Readers who become confused will set the book aside and give it a one-star review.
If you have limited knowledge of grammar, your first obligation is to resolve that. The internet has many easy-to-follow self-education websites to help you gain a good understanding of basic grammar in whatever your chosen language is. One site that I like is https://grammarist.com/.
If you are writing in US English, I recommend getting a copy of the Chicago Guide to Punctuation and Grammar. If you write in UK English, purchase the Oxford A – Z of Grammar and Punctuation.
Authors who are just starting out often write erratic prose. They will be inconsistent with capitalizations, insert random commas where they think it should pause, and use exclamation points instead of allowing the narrative to show excitement. They don’t know how to punctuate dialogue, which leads to confusion and garbled prose.
We must know the rules of grammar to break them with style and consistency. How you break the rules is your unique voice.
Readers expect words to flow in a certain way. If you choose to break a grammatical rule, you must be consistent.
Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Chee, and George Saunders all have unique voices in their writing. They all break the rules in one way or another, but they are deliberate and consistent. Each of these writers has written highly acclaimed work. You never mistake their work for anyone else’s.
Alexander Chee employs run-on sentences and dispenses with quotation marks (which I find excruciating to read).
George Saunders writes as if he is speaking to you and is sometimes choppy in his delivery. But his work is wonderful to read.
We who write need a broad vocabulary, but we also need to be careful not to get too fancy. To be successful, we need an understanding of the tropes readers expect to find in our chosen genre. We must employ those tropes to satisfy the general expectations of our readers. How we do that is our twist, the flavor that is our unique “secret sauce.”
We don’t consciously think about this, but organizational skills are critical because we want the story to flow easily from scene to scene. This is why successful authors are project managers, even if they don’t realize it.
Identify your Project Goals. Your story is your invention. Your effort, your ideas, and the skills you have developed will determine the quality of the finished novel.
Each author is different, and the length of time they take on a book varies. Some authors are slow—their books are in development for years before they get to the finish line. Others are fast—their novels complete and ready to be published in a relatively short time. Regardless of your timeline, this is where project management skills really come into play.
I use a phased (or staged) approach to project management. This method breaks down and manages the work through a series of distinct steps to be completed.
Concept: You have a brilliant idea. Make a note of it so you don’t forget it.
The Planning Phase: creating the outline. Some people don’t need this step, but I do.
The Construction Phase—writing the first draft from beginning to end. Take it though as many revisions as you need in order to get it the way you envision it.
Monitoring and Controlling—This is where you build quality into your product.
- Creating a style sheet as you go. See my post on style sheets here: Self-editing: Ensuring Consistency.
- Finding beta readers and heeding their concerns in the rewrites.
- Taking the manuscript through as many drafts as you must to have the novel you envisioned.
- Employing a good line editor to ensure consistency in the quality of your product.
- Finding reliable proofreaders. (Your writing group is an invaluable resource.)
Completion—things we don’t have to worry about just yet while we are in the construction phase. But they will come up later.
- Employing a cover designer if you are going indie.
- Finding an agent if you are taking the traditional route.
- Employing a professional formatter for the print version if you are going indie.
- Courting a publisher if you are taking the traditional route.
After that comes marketing, something you must do whether you are going indie or traditional. Both paths will require serious effort on your part.
But as I said earlier, I have no skills in the area of marketing and no advice worth offering.
What I do know is this: write the basic story. Take your characters all the way from the beginning through the middle and see that they make it to the end.
Once you have completed the story and have it written from beginning to end, you can concentrate on the next level of the construction phase: revisions. This is where we flesh out scenes and add depth to the bones of our story.
Over the next few posts, I will work on some of the sublayers of depth in our next series on the craft of writing. First up, we will think about why a story isn’t finished just because it has an ending.
Lesser dramas might only touch us on a peripheral level, yet they can affect our sense of security and challenge our values.
The camera zooms out and now we see the idyllic serenity of a clear sunny morning on Spirit Lake and Harry doing his morning chores.
We writers must make our words count. We must show our characters in their comfort zone in the moments leading up to the disaster. Not too much of a lead in, but just enough to show what will soon be lost.
Many authors are prepping for NaNoWriMo 2022. They are mentally committing to writing 1,667 new words every day beginning on November 1st or a total of 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th.
Until this past June, I wrote best when I had a long stretch of time to just sit down and immerse myself. Then my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative neurological disease, and our life underwent a fundamental change. I am now the only driver in the family, and we live in an area without public transportation.
A good way to ensure you have that time is to encourage your family members to indulge in their own interests and artistic endeavors. That way, everyone has the chance to be creative in their own way during that hour, and they will understand why you value your writing time so much.
Perhaps your mind has gone blank. An idea is locked in your head, but you don’t have the words to free it. You can still advance your rough draft and meet your word count goal. Step back and view your story from a distance:
Let’s start with craft. If you are at the beginning stage of your writing life, it’s hard to know where to find help in shaping your work into a coherent story. For many years, I didn’t even know books on the craft of writing existed.
Finishing off the resources from the official NaNoWriMo store is the handbook, 
The following is the list of books that are the pillars of my reference library:
We usually start our online hunt for information by “googling” a question, no matter what browser you use. Be wary and read several articles to get a broader view of what you are looking for. I also check dates to ensure the information is current and bookmark it if it is relevant to my story. Note: Your browsing history may look a little … unusual … after a while.
www.Thesaurus.Com
So, let’s talk about writers’ groups. A good group is the best way to learn about this craft. Your area may have established writers’ groups, and some may be able to accept new members. The best way to find out is to google writer’s groups in your town and make inquiries.
Today, we will pinpoint the moment in our protagonist(s) life where the story starts. We’re locating the point where this particular memoir, poem, novel, or short story begins.
Setting: Venice in the year 1430.The weather is unseasonably cold. A bard is concealed amongst the filth and shadows in a dark, narrow alley. Sebastian hides from the soldiers of a prince he has unwisely humiliated in a comic song.
But the opening moment, the scene showing a lowly bard hiding behind a rubbish heap, is the moment in Sebastian’s life where the story the reader wants to hear starts. That scene is where this story begins regardless of how interesting Sebastian’s story, Venice’s story, or the Warlock Prince’s story was before that day. It is the beginning because this is the point where all the essential characters are in one place and are introduced:
Post two
Marco arrives at the inn. The innkeeper mentions Klaus was there, but now he’s gone. Marco sees his barge is still there, and the deckhands don’t know where he is. He goes to the gatehouse where Dinah is supposed to be on duty and immediately knows something is wrong. He fears Klaus has gotten to her, and instinct tells him to go to the Temple.
In real life, people live happily, but no one really lives deliriously happy ever after. But that’s another story and a different genre.
Now we’re going to design the conflict by creating a skeleton, a series of guideposts to write to. I write fantasy, but every story is the same, no matter the set dressing: Protagonist A needs something desperately, and Antagonist B stands in their way.
Where does our soldier’s story begin? We open the story by introducing our characters, showing them in their everyday world, and then we kick into gear with the occurrence of the “inciting incident,” which is the first plot point. That might be their arrival at their first camp in the Ardennes region.
One thing that I do is make notes that help limit my tendency toward heavy-handed foreshadowing. I try to keep it brief, but what will be enough of a hint, and where should it go?
Every world in which every story is set is imaginary. This is true whether it is a memoir, a cookbook, a math book, a sci-fi novel, a contemporary novel set in London, or an encyclopedia.
When writing our narrative, we want to avoid contradicting ourselves about our protagonist’s world. Keeping it all in your head is not a good idea, especially if you’re like me—too much data means I regularly have the eternal loading screen when trying to recall something. (I’ll never forget what’s-his-name.)
Just like we do when creating our characters, we want to begin with a paragraph that might be the encyclopedia explanation of where the action takes place. I write fantasy, so here is the one paragraph I might start with:
If I were to write a thriller set in the current 
The internet has information about every kind of environment that exists on Earth. All we have to do is use it.
These exercises will only take a few minutes unless you want to spend more time on them. They’re just a warmup, getting you thinking about your writing project. Each post will tackle a different aspect of preparation and won’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to complete. By the end of this series, my goal is for you to have a framework that will get your project started.
I recommend you create a file that contains all the ideas you have in regard to your fictional world, including the personnel files you are creating. I list all my information in an Excel workbook for each book or series, but you can use any kind of document, even handwritten. You just need to write your ideas down. See my post, 
So, who is the protagonist of my intended story? Truthfully, in some aspect or another, they will be the person I wish I were. That is how it always is for me—living a fantasy in the safe environment of the novel. Bilbo was J.R.R. Tolkien’s younger self, an inexperienced man discovering the broader world through his wartime experiences. Luke Skywalker was the hero George Lucas always wanted to be.
If we know their void, we should write it down now, along with any quirky traits they may have. Next, we decide on verbs that will be the driving force of their personality at the story’s opening. Add some adjectives to describe how they interact with the world and assign nouns to show their characteristics.
Making lists of names is essential. You want their spellings to remain consistent and being able to return to what you initially planned is a big help later on. When we commence writing the actual narrative, each character will have an arc of growth, and sometimes names will change as the story progresses. Do remember to make notes of those changes.
Short story collection
Next, check out the community tabs. The tabs will be across the top if you are in full screen. If you have the screen minimized, the button for the dropdown menu will be in the upper right corner and will look like the blue/green and black square to the left of this paragraph.
By the time November arrives, I hope that those who want to “do NaNoWriMo” will have the tools they need and the confidence to get it done.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 