Process
When it comes to creating a believable setting or background for a work of fiction, sensory inspirations are very important. Writers need to evoke a world in the reader’s mind which doesn’t just involve the visual and the auditory, but also hopefully bring the other senses into play—touch, smell, taste. It’s always been important to me, as I’m sure it is for many other writers, to experience the atmosphere of places I’m evoking through my stories: I like to actually walk in their streets, to see small details, to hear the soundscapes, whether that be birds, sirens, music, machines, to listen to the tone of voices. I like to experience the smells—good or bad, strong or faint—of those places, and their tactile textures, and the taste of the food you might find there. The sensory impressions you gain from all of it are invaluable. Even if a place is imaginary, I always base it on real locations, so the sensory aspects still ring true. And that means also being able to call up those impressions even when you are back home, and not just through your memory, but through aids such as notes, photos, and video and audio clips.
That works well for the visual and auditory aspects. But what about the other senses—touch, smell, taste? Their effect cannot be fully recaptured through photos, notes, or video/audio. More ephemeral than the visual or the auditory, those three senses are nevertheless crucial to evoking atmosphere: think for example of Proust’s famous madeleines. And it’s not just about place—it’s also about many other elements in a story that will make your fictional world feel absolutely real in a reader’s mind. How, for example, to describe the taste of a dish, if you haven’t tried it? How can you evoke the scent of a particular perfume, if you’ve never smelled it? Or the feel of a particular fabric, if you’ve never touched it?
For me, the answer is to collect concrete objects that bring my story-brain into direct hands-on contact with the sensory experience itself. Over the years I’ve done a lot of that. For example, for a novel I’ve been working on, I needed to understand how different types of silk fabric and lace embellishments might interact with each other and be used in design. I didn’t just rely on my imagination, my lived knowledge of how silk feels against the skin and my observation of a seamstress at work. I also purchased a range of fabric and lace samples which would enable me to see and feel first-hand just how a particular design might work with types of silk fabric. For the same novel, where there is a small but significant mention of the perfume Joy, I didn’t just rely on my memory of my beautiful grandmother’s favourite scent, I managed to find a miniature bottle of the vintage fragrance online, so I could experience the full power of it, and be able to describe it properly. Similarly, in another novel, recently published, where I wrote about the look, smell and feel of various flowers, I needed to actually have some on hand so I could accurately evoke them. In yet another novel, which is centred around food, I didn’t just cook several […]
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The other day, while sharing pages with my critique group, I had a scene where a character finds a camera loaded with film in her dead friend’s apartment. The response from my crit partners: “Oooh, I can’t wait to find out what’s on there when she gets it developed.” My response? “Yeah, me too!” I’m only about 15,000 words in and who knows what happens next—I certainly don’t.
Clearly, I’m not a plotter. There’s a lot of talk about writers being either pantsers (writing by the seat of your pants) or plotters (scenes are laid out with white boards, index cards, or plotting programs before a single word is written). But I came across a term the other day that I prefer. I’m a “discovery writer.” Maybe you’re already familiar with the term, but it was new to me, and I felt truly seen.
After deciding to write this essay, I attended the Texas Book Festival in Austin, TX, where I live, and I had the pleasure of listening to Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of The Plot and The Sequel among others. When she was asked about her writing process, she said she doesn’t plot or outline. She discovers as she’s writing. I wanted to run up to the stage, give her a high five, and hug her.
I never liked outlining, even as a kid in school. All those Roman numerals, numbers, capital letters, lower case letters made my head spin, leaving me confused and frustrated. Not much has changed. When I write, I have an idea of how I want the story to start and how I want it to end, but that’s pretty much it. The rest I “discover” as I write. I’m the first to admit that it’s the least efficient method of storytelling. Sometimes I “discover” when I go back and reread what I’ve written, that I’ve taken the story in the wrong direction. It doesn’t jibe with what came before. So, time and effort and brain drain are involved in getting things back on track. Some might say that’s the masochistic method of writing. Maybe they’re right. But it’s out of my control.
I tried to be a plotter. I really did, or at the very least, a “plantser,” where I outline at least some of the scenes in my story. I bought index cards, a corkboard, and push pins. When that didn’t get me where I wanted to go, I bought a white board and markers. When that failed to produce a well thought out story, I tried the inside outline that so many writers and editors point to as the key to success. I think I’m allergic. My brain literally rebels and I feel like I’m breaking out in hives when I’m asked to look behind the curtain when I’m not even sure what play I’m watching. I’ve read Lisa Cron’s “Wired for Story,” Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat,” and Donald Maass’ “Writing the Breakout Novel.” I’ve watched countless videos and attended virtual workshops. Nothing works. I’m that square peg trying to force myself into a round hole. It’s never going to fit, no matter how hard I try. And no matter how much other writers and editors proselytize the virtues of outlining and try to bring […]
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Greetings, WU Family. In my first post of the year, I’m introducing you to Ann Michelle Harris. Ann Michelle is an attorney by day, and at night, she writes romantic suspense and fantasy/speculative fiction with diverse characters and positive social justice themes. In today’s Q&A, she shares how her work in the areas of poverty, abuse, and child welfare guides her, how that work inspired her novel, North, and why she feels building community is one of the most important things a writer can do for their career.
GW: One of my favorite parts of this series is learning about an author’s origin story: the thing that propelled you from someone who only thought about writing to someone who actually wrote and has a book out. So, what’s your author origin story—in other words, why did you start writing and keep writing?
AMH: I have loved reading adventure stories since I was very young. I was an English major at Penn so I loved not just stories but also story analysis, themes, and structure. Several years ago, I went through a stressful time in my life and began immersing myself in escapist stories as a form of comfort. After months of consuming other people’s stories, I decided to become a contributor of short stories to a public writing forum. Positive responses convinced me that I might have a larger story worth telling and that I could be brave enough to take the risk to try to tell it. I specifically wanted to write an adventure story in honor of my children. Shortly after this, the pandemic came and gave me even more stress but also much more time to write since I no longer had to spend hours commuting to the office each day (and it gave me plot inspiration). That extra time allowed me to dig deeper into creating a full manuscript and begin the process of querying.
GW: Can you tell us about your path to getting North published?
AMH: After completing my manuscript, I began to query it to a few agents and independent publishing houses. I got rejections, but one rejection from a large indie press had detailed feedback about the plot (particularly the ending) and that helped me tweak some elements. I also worked with a developmental editor, a beta reader, and a critique group to fine-tune the scene structure and build more tension in the story arc. By then, I had heard from a few writers that it is sometimes more accessible to directly find a publisher than to find an agent. I had another historical gothic manuscript that was getting a lot of traction with agents, but I decided to pitch North to a small press at a writing conference, and they loved it after reading the full story. After I signed the publishing contract, I continued to fine-tune the manuscript and then worked with the publisher for editing, galleys, and cover design. I tweaked everything until it was ready for submission to the distributor, and then finally it went into pre-order. I used my pre-launch time to promote the book online, connect with readers, and lean heavily on the wisdom of my more experienced writer colleagues, who were incredibly supportive. Then the big day came […]
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As the years go by, the average age of debut authors seems to get younger and younger. There’s plenty of reasons why this is great: the YA genre embracing authors who are the ages of their characters, the removal of societal assumptions that younger people can’t contribute to art in a meaningful way, the increase in opportunities for younger writers to access helpful resources, etc.
Conversation about this reality would stop there if two things didn’t start to emerge from this trend: 1) the publishing industry skewing notably toward younger writers to the point of sometimes completely shutting out older writers (meaning older than—gasp—30, 35 tops) for consideration for agent representation, publication, awards, or reviews, and 2) the assumption that the younger a writer publishes, the more “naturally gifted” of a writer they must be, and therefore a better writer than those who debut older.
I’ve taught plenty of creative writing courses, and nearly all my older students have expressed an identical concern: That because they’re older, they’ll be largely ignored by the industry both pre- and post-offer. Worries about age have even hit some of my younger students. On their end, they’ve been fed the assumption that since younger equals better, they must land a book deal right out of the gate. If they don’t, they’re failures, will soon be “too old” to publish in a way deemed meaningful, and they should just give up if their path to publication isn’t a breeze from beginning to end.
That’s just not how any of this works. As someone who’s publishing his debut, The Lilac People, at an apparently older age—To paraphrase a petulant Frasier Crane: I’m not yet “of a certain age,” I’m smack dab in the middle of “not a kid anymore.”—and spent over a decade collecting rejections from various projects, I want to set the record straight about the benefits of publishing older.
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The violent metaphor of writers killing their darlings has never appealed to me. I understand that we sometimes need to disrupt the comfort of our revision process, but may I suggest something a little less murderous? Tasty, even?
One of the treasured picture books of my childhood was Stone Soup. Have you read it? In this retelling of an old European fable, a hungry traveler approaches a village known for its miserly inhabitants. Desperate for food, he concocts a trick to get them to feed him. He sets up a large cauldron in the middle of the town square and fills it with water, then places a stone in the bottom of the cauldron. As it heats up, a villager comes to ask him what he’s doing.
“I’m making stone soup,” he replies, stirring the water and occasionally taking a sip. “It’s coming along nicely, but it would taste better with salt.”
The curious villager runs home and brings back some salt. By now, a crowd has gathered. The traveler seasons his soup with salt, takes another sip, and sighs. “An onion or two would be just the thing,” he says. A second villager brings an onion.
On and on it goes, with the additions of carrots, potatoes, and whatever else would go into a hearty stew. At the end, he fishes out his stone and shares a delicious meal with the no-longer hostile and selfish village. Together they’ve created stone soup.
This story delighted me on multiple levels. I loved the ingenuity of the newcomer, the gradual and piecemeal thawing of the villagers, the delicious soup that fed them all. I loved the chutzpah of fooling an entire town into thinking that a stone chucked into some boiling water could become something worth consuming.
As an adult, I still delight in the story of stone soup, but now I read it as a good metaphor for writing (isn’t everything?).
Your brain picks up a shiny bauble of an idea. It might be an interesting character, a fabulous setting, or a devilishly twisty plot. If a story in its most simplified form is simply a person, in a place, with a problem, then any of those three elements could be the stone tossed into the cauldron of your imagination.
The water comes to a boil as you go about your daily life. Soon, if your mind is at all like mine, your subconscious starts to sniff around. What’s cooking? Is it any good?
The nay-saying villagers who have colonized my mind, at least, can be a pretty suspicious bunch. They tell me that a rich and hearty story will never result from that bare rock sitting at the bottom of my pot—but they can be tricked into sharing the observations that are hidden inside the cupboards of my memory.
With a little persuasion, they open the cabinets and rummage around. Ideas, snatches of conversation, resonances from other books, and intriguing people I’ve met all add ingredients to the mix:
That guy with a scar that I saw at the bus stop? He’d make a perfect salty foil.
That snatch of conversation I overheard in the coffee shop? Unexpected zest.
That book I just finished reading, the one that tells its story in layers like an onion? I might slice it […]
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Therese here to introduce our newest regular contributor for Writer Unboxed, author Harper Ross! Harper’s debut novel of magical realism, The Unwritten Rules of Magic, will release on 2/25/26. We’re thrilled to have her with us. Welcome, Harper!
I wrote my first manuscript in secret. No one knew—not my husband, my kids, or even the dog. Well, okay, our dog might have suspected. I snuck in writing time whenever everyone else was occupied, relishing the freedom of creating something without the weight of anyone’s expectations, opinions, or questions. It was a magical experience, yet not one I would recommend. Why? Well, let’s just say that my fledgling novel holds far more sentimental value than commercial appeal.
It wasn’t until my third manuscript that I finally landed my agent. Those in-between years were my crash course in what it takes to go from dreaming about publishing to doing it. I dove into craft books, attended workshops, and wrestled with my personal demons, like self-doubt and perfectionist tendencies. (How many times can you rewrite a first chapter? Spoiler: far too many.)
But if I had to credit one thing that got me to the finish line, it would be finding my people.
Why a Writing Community Matters
As writers, we spend an inordinate amount of time alone with our imaginary friends. It can become slightly claustrophobic to live in your head, retreading your same “thought ruts,” as I call them. A circle of writer friends is a lifeline to the outside world. They also provide a creative brain trust. Unlike a lone wolf, a team can cover all the angles: brainstorming ideas, giving honest feedback, sharing industry know-how, and, most importantly, offering moral support when the writing life inevitably gets messy.
Of course, many writers are introverts, which makes the idea of “putting yourself out there” as appealing as signing up for an insurance industry networking event. Add in a rural setting or a lack of MFA connections, and it’s easy to feel like building a community is impossible.
But don’t worry—I’ve done the legwork and am happy to share my experiences.
Places to Find Your People
Writer Unboxed
Let’s start with the obvious: if you’re reading this, you’re already halfway there. Writer Unboxed has been a constant source of craft advice, writerly encouragement, and solidarity in the face of self-doubt. While online communities serve an important function, nothing beats personal contacts. If you ever get the chance to attend one of its in-person conferences, go. Seriously. There’s something thrilling about meeting your “virtual friends” in real life. The only thing that might be more delightful would be bringing your characters to life. At any rate, by the end of the conference, you will have found at least one or two writers with whom you spark, and from there you can explore offline ways to help each other along.
Genre-Specific Writing Groups
Organizations like the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Romance Writers of America are goldmines for connections and even offer membership levels for unpublished authors. Yes, there are annual dues (ranging from $50 to $500), but they often include benefits like critique partner programs, mentorships, and access to private online groups. Taking advantage of these opportunities affords you more continual contact with […]
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While I have earned nothing beyond a BA in English, I’ve never let that stop me from pretending I have a vast array of training and advanced degrees at my fingertips. Need a marriage therapist who’s willing to work for free? I’m your gal. Looking for a pro bono private investigator? You’ve come to the right place! Hoping to stumble upon a psychiatrist who specializes in diagnosing those who don’t know they need a diagnosis? Yep, I can do that too.
On December 24th, I found myself at Safeway, picking up the items I had forgotten to purchase on the grocery runs I had made on the 22nd and 23rd. Safeway is my go-to because I grew up shopping at Safeway. And I am a cheapskate. It’s also a little gritty, which I appreciate, because at the chichi grocery store that’s a little closer to my house, the apples are too beautiful, the specialty items too special, the shoppers too coiffed. At Safeway? I feel perfectly at home log-rolling myself from bed to car to Safeway. No coiffing required.
It was in the produce section that I found myself picking green beans from a heap and standing about fifteen feet from a couple near the potatoes. I noticed them because they appeared both too coiffed to be shopping at Safeway and too calm to be shopping on Christmas Eve. But there was something else about them that piqued my interest.
Summoning everything I learned while earning my pretend PhD in Psychology, I began my initial assessment of the couple. I guessed they were in their early 40s. She had a sassy blonde bob and wore denim trousers and a Santa hat. He was well-dressed and conventionally handsome; if you Google “generic handsome man,” you will see many iterations of him. They each wore a ring on their wedding finger. Mr. Handsome was pushing the cart.
They looked nice enough, but something was vaguely rotten in this aisle of Safeway.
Knowing I needed to move physically closer to the couple, I called on the acting skills I had learned during my pretend years at Julliard. Pretending to be checking my grocery list, then pretending I had ALMOST forgotten the onions, I pushed my cart over to the onion section. Sometimes you pretend you need a Walla Walla sweet, even if you already have onions at home, so you can eavesdrop on a couple in the nearby potato section.
And eavesdrop I did! I listened as the couple spoke of their butter lettuce options as if butter lettuce could make or break Christmas. They discussed the gift card they had purchased for his parents (at the fancy Italian restaurant down the street) and the gift card they would buy for her parents (at the fancy bakery up the street). They discussed stocking stuffers for their kids, the wrapping of gifts they needed to do that evening, the bourbon they wanted to get at the fancy liquor store. All this, while I committed, acting-wise, to finding the most perfect onion I didn’t even need.
It wasn’t the content of their conversation that felt off; it was their tentative, cautious tone and […]
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It’s that season of the year when things feel both more hectic and slowing down, as everyone scrambles to get everything done before the holidays, and end of year catch-ups and parties proliferate. In this time, it’s not easy to concentrate on starting–or continuing–any long-form writing. What if you still want to exercise that inspirational muscle before the festive torpor hits–or even, heroically, during it ? Then lightning stories, otherwise known as flash fiction, are the way to go, being both energizing and relaxing–and not just at this time of the year either!
Here are some quick tips to help catch the lightning:
Plot:
Only one plot, no sub-plots at all. Keep scenes to a minimum. But they need to lead to a climax and resolution: flash fiction is a proper story, not an impressionistic scene or a prose poem.
Setting:
You don’t have time to build up a detailed setting but your story should still have a sense of place/atmosphere. Imagery is important, used sparingly but strongly.
Character:
No more, and no less, than two characters. Remember, plot at its essence is the interaction of character. But having too many characters will clutter up your lightning story.
Point of view:
First person or third person works equally. Even second person can work, if you do it carefully.
Narrative structure:
Up to you! Mostly linear narrative only or linear with flashback or even flash forward. But take care not to clutter the narrative with them. One brief flashback/flashforward is enough.
Beginning and end
Beginnings should immediately take you into the action/main character (no time for setting up), and endings should have a surprise or twist.
Length
Up to you, but I find up to 500 words works well. And certainly no more than 1000.
Title
Needs to be short and punchy!
I’d love to hear about your own experiences of writing (and reading) lightning stories. What makes a good one—and a not-so-good one?
And to everyone who’s read and commented on my posts over 2024—thank you and many good wishes for a happy, peaceful and relaxing holiday season. See you again in 2025!
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Please welcome back today’s guest: author Alison Hammer—who is half of the writing duo Ali Brady; the USA TODAY Bestselling author of romantic, heartwarming, funny novels including The Beach Trap, The Comeback Summer, Until Next Summer, and Battle of the Bookstores. Their books have been “best of summer” picks by The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Parade, and Katie Couric Media. Alison lives in Chicago and works as an advertising creative director. She is also the Founder and Co-President of The Artists Against Antisemitism, and the author of You and Me and Us and Little Pieces of Me.
The duo recently released a holiday novella—and Alison is here to share the story behind the story and tell us how letting go of the rules and trying something new was just the spark they needed.
Creativity can come in many forms—including the way you tell and share a story.
This October, my co-author and I found ourselves faced with something we haven’t really had before: a break. Instead of rushing to start our next project after we turned our Summer 2025 book in, we had some time to think about what we wanted to do next and even (gasp!) try writing something just for the fun of it.
Like millions of other people, Bradeigh and I both loved the Netflix series NOBODY WANTS THIS. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a hot rabbi (Adam Brody) who falls in love with “shiksa” – a non-Jewish woman (Kristin Bell).
This past year has been a difficult one for the Jewish community, so it was REALLY refreshing to see the general public get so excited about a Jewish story. (And yes, I know there has been some controversy around the depiction of Jewish women in that series…but that’s another topic for another day.)
While our Ali Brady books have always featured Jewish representation, the success of that show inspired us to try and think of a way we could tell a story that elevated the Jewish experience even more. Once we realized the first night of Hanukkah was on Christmas day for the first time in twenty years, a story was born.
A CREATIVE APPROACH TO WRITING
When Bradeigh and I are writing a full-length novel together, we usually spend a few weeks working on the plot and the characters, getting to know their personality and their story arc. Then we take about five or six months to write the first draft.
For this story, we had about one month total to write, edit and publish it. Which meant we had to shake things up and rethink the way we “always” did things.
Instead of our usual few weeks, we spent an hour one evening brainstorming and coming up with the characters, a loose plot for the story and a title—ONE NIGHT, TWO HOLIDAYS—and then we started to write.
While we knew the general beats of the story, we didn’t have time to make our usual chapter-by-chapter outline. So Bradeigh had the idea to lean into the fun of it and treat the writing process like improv.
One of us would write a scene then post it in our shared doc. Then the other person would read the pages (we tried to […]
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I have just finished three 10-hour days of painting and pulling carpet and (worse!) carpet staples in my new house. Even worse–on a sprained ankle. Every muscle and joint in my body hurts. My fingers are swollen and blistered and can barely make a fist.
My boyfriend of 7 years and I bought a house together. Before that, we prepped each of the houses we were living in for sale. At various points during those painting and repairing weeks we’d remind each other that we could half-ass some things because we weren’t going to be living in these houses anymore–they just had to be nice and functional enough to sell well.
But this house, our first place together, we are whole-assing.
We’re buying the good paint and paying to get things fixed properly and not accepting half measures because we’re staying in this house until we die. Seriously. I’m never moving again. Tonight, during the carpet-and-staple pulling party, we each hit a low point of exhaustion and overwhelm. Luckily not at the same time, so the other could say, “Remember, we’re whole-assing this house.” And we’d nod and put our back into it again.
While I paint I’ve been listening to Saturday Night Live alumna Molly Shannon’s memoir, Hello, Molly! It’s a great listen. I was struck by her relationship with one of her most memorable SNL characters: Mary Katherine Gallagher.
MKG is a Catholic school high schooler who is awkward, accident-prone, over-confident, and boy crazy. She runs into things and knocks stuff over, like chairs. And walls. Here is her first appearance:
After that show, Molly Shannon was assigned her own stunt coordinator, Brian (I’m listening to the book, so I only know his name sounds like Smigh). One of his main jobs was to inspect the sets built for an MKG sketch to make sure Molly wouldn’t seriously hurt herself. Brian treated MKG as a separate person who was impossible to control, because once on that stage she would do anything. Molly said, “When I was performing the character, I was so in the moment that I couldn’t feel anything.” When Brian would tell the set designers that they needed to change a certain feature, they’d say, “We’ve talked with Molly and she said she wouldn’t go through the wall.” And the stunt coordinator would come back with, “Molly wouldn’t go through the wall, but we’re not dealing with Molly on the stage. MKG will definitely go through the wall.” Indeed, she went through the wall. Every time.
Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher is the very definition of whole-assing it (and not just because the skirt is way too short). She is all in, every time, doing whatever she needs to make the scene work without regard to personal safety.
Which got me to thinking: What if we whole-assed our writing?
No being careful. No worrying about what Aunt Judy will think about the sex scenes. No convincing yourself out of really going for it (whatever that means to you at your stage in your writing journey). No cutting corners. No accepting good-enough.
What if you did that for all of 2025? How different would your work in progress be? How much more joyful might your writing sessions be? Would it help to give […]
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photo adapted / Horia Varlan
Novel openings don’t always start with a bang. Or at a run, such as in the example I analyzed in last month’s post. This month, thanks to a suggestion by community member Barbara Morrison, I’ll look at how three other types of openings invite the reader into the story—and at the end, leave one for you to dissect.
Hit the Ground Walking
Character movement can create the sense that the reader is merging into a story that’s already in progress. Like last month’s example, the character here is moving—but slower. Here’s the opening of The Girl in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian, set in the spring of 1923.
Ada smelled the swamp before she reached it. The mingling of sulfur and rot worked with memory to knot her stomach and burn the back of her throat. She was returning with little more than she had taken with her a year before, everything she counted worthy of transporting only half filling the pillowcase slung over her shoulder. It might have been filled with bricks, the way she bent under it, but mostly it was loss that weighed her down. The past few days had swept her clean of hope, and a few trinkets in a pillowcase were all that was left to mark a time when she had not lived isolated in this green-shaded, stagnant setting. When she was a little girl, she had believed she loved this place, the trees offering themselves as steadfast companions, the wildflowers worthy confidants, but passing through now with eyes that had taken in other wonders and a heart that had allowed an outsider to slip in, she knew she had only been resigned to it. As she was again.
In addition to putting the protagonist in purposeful motion—Ada is is not meandering, but showing agency by pursuing a goal—this opening creates story movement by:
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Today’s “ad post” is also a valuable blog post written by our own Barry Knister, detailing his experience with two editors while preparing his novel, Someone Better Than You, for publication. Enjoy!
Deciding to work with an editor is a major decision. It costs money, and calls on the writer to do something analogous to what all good parents must do: love their children enough to let them go (at least until they come home and move into the basement).
That’s what the writer does when she turns over her baby to an editor. This person will get to know the fledging novel or memoir, but usually with no knowledge of how it came to be. That means, when the baby comes home, the writer must will herself into a kind of amnesia, in order to absorb and respond to the stranger’s reactions.
That’s why I urge writers to read a report, but to then put it aside for a week or more before going back to it. Otherwise, they risk acting or reacting on impulse.
Recently, I worked with two editors on my forthcoming novel, Someone Better Than You. By coincidence, both people are past editors for Penguin. In every respect, working with these editors led to improvements in my novel. I acted on most but not all of their suggestions, and what follows is my attempt to summarize the process.
RONIT WAGMAN
I first hired Ronit in 2020 to read and report on the full manuscript of what was then titled Ashley and the Jell-O Hour. Although she liked the story (“the world of the novel and the characters that dwelled in it felt deeply authentic to me”), she had several major criticisms.
AGENCY
In the version Ronit read, my main character Brady “Buzz” Ritz is a retired newspaper editor. His life is upended when he publishes a book of his anonymously published satirical columns. He blunders mightily by publishing the book’s second edition under his own name.
In this first version, Brady’s book comes about through the actions of others. The editor of Grumble (the little magazine that first published his column) talks Brady into developing a book of his work. Ritz’s best friend from his newspaper days gets an agent friend to find a publisher. Most importantly, the best friend shames Ritz into using his own name for the second edition.
As Ronit explained, I had made my main character the passive pawn of others. Someone else pushes him to develop the book, and someone else arranges for it to be published. Most importantly, someone else is responsible for Ritz publishing the second edition under his own name.
Ronit’s guidance led me to make Ritz less a passive actor, and more the responsible agent for his story. He still gets the idea for the book from his editor, but as Ronit pointed out, no agent would take on such a manuscript from an “anonymous” writer—because no publisher would be interested in such a book.
So, I replaced a commercial publisher with a university press whose editor has the freedom to publish something by an unknown writer. I also got rid of the idea of a second edition. Once I made these changes, I was free to make Brady responsible for the […]
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INTERMEZZO (noun) As per Merriam-Webster: a movement coming between the major sections of an extended musical work.
Usually, I draft my quarterly WU posts about a month before they’re due. This time, I’ve ditched my intended topic. Best laid plans and all that. The piece I find myself working on today is not prescriptive writing advice, nor is it about the angst of the author’s journey. This week, I’m at my father’s house, working with him—at his request—to edit the obituary he wrote for himself. Also, in the quiet of my childhood bedroom, I’m drafting a eulogy. Since I arrived on November 6th, I’ve avoided national news and haven’t begun to process my feelings about the election results.
Real life intrudes. Sometimes endings aren’t clearly visible from the start.
In late October, my ninety-five-year-old father went into the hospital with atrial fibrillation. A week later, on Election Day, he received a stage-four cancer diagnosis with months to live. Hospice entered the plot. The scenery changed, with the guest room of Dad’s house quickly reconfigured into a hospital room. Time changed; with glimpses of future holidays, minus the main character. Simultaneously, present time ticks relentlessly forward as he loses strength. Days and hours drag in a kind of static monotony measured in loads of laundry and empty cubes in the big plastic organizer that holds rainbow-colored meds.
My father’s mind is still razor-sharp. He knows the grass-cutting service needs to be paid. He explains to me how to configure the tube on his nebulizer breathing apparatus. I didn’t know he’d written his own obit until he asked me, from his hospital bed, to edit it for him.
My father’s obituary is a first-person thank-you note for what he calls his “charmed” life, starting with his parents and siblings and expressing gratitude to both institutions and people who’ve helped him along through life. Frankly, if I were being paid to edit it as a personal essay, I’d call his work self-indulgent, rambling, and unevenly paced, burdened by an overabundance of backstory and flashback, with too many named characters. Under the circumstances, I’m doing my best to correct punctuation and grammar and get the great-grandkids’ names right. My brothers and I plan to run whatever version Dad approves.
In the past weeks, on the three-hour drive from my home to Dad’s, I’ve listened to multiple audiobooks. I’ve just finished Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo. Set in Dublin over four months in 2022, Rooney’s main characters are two brothers who are different as night and day. Their father died recently from cancer and they’re grieving his loss at the same time, but not together. On one hand, it’s a story that—at times—proceeds with the painful slowness of pulling off a Band-Aid. Despite the prolonged discomfort, I found myself engrossed, helpless to look away from what lay unhealed and oozing beneath. Brothers Ivan and Peter are so fully realized, and Rooney’s portrayals are so intimate that we cringe when they cringe. We hold our breath through many awkwardly squirmy exchanges. We observe pettiness, and the brothers butting heads, blurting out what they’ve been holding inside and stewing over. And then we see their regret.
For me, this resonates this week.
Rooney’s structure alternates chapters between Ivan and Peter and also switches […]
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This month’s post takes its title from a long-running off-Broadway show. I’ve never seen the musical myself, but the title is one of those phrases that just sort of hangs out in the arena of general pop culture awareness. As I was thinking about the current state of publishing, it struck me as the right way of expressing a particular trend.
I love you, you’re perfect, now change.
In a way, of course, it’s not a trend at all. Authors in traditional publishing, and to a certain degree those who self-publish as well, have always been asked to thread a particular needle: your books need to be enough like proven successful books to strike a chord with a large readership, but they also need to stand out from the crowd. Debut authors come up against this with their first idea—how will publishers describe the book to their acquisitions committees, to sales teams, to bookstores, to readers themselves? Mid-career writers also get a brand of it—how do you ensure that the readers who loved what you’ve written so far will also love your next book and the book after that? We’ve always been asked to do the same thing but a little differently.
But the need to change seems more prevalent now than ever before. Soft sales in many areas over the past few years are creating even more tension and worry on publishing teams. Authors who’ve been comfortable publishing in a particular groove are now being asked to think about heading in a different direction. If an author whose historical romances you’ve loved for years happens to pop up with a contemporary murder mystery with an illustrated cover, it might be their choice, or it might be something their agent or editor asked them to do.
I love you, you’re perfect, now change.
As an author, on one hand, this seems frustrating. If you’ve put a lot of work establishing yourself in a certain market, spinning off in a different direction can be uncomfortable or even impossible. Most authors can’t just flip a switch and come up with a killer idea in a new genre, not as easily as they can brainstorm ideas in a subgenre they’ve been writing and reading in for ages.
On the other hand, what an opportunity, right? For years, we’ve been hearing the advice that once you establish yourself as a certain type of author, you should stick to that genre to keep your readers happy. But most readers read more than one genre—and most authors are certainly capable of writing more than one. From my personal experience trying my hand at epic fantasy after years of writing historical fiction, I found it immensely freeing to let my creativity loose and not be bound by pesky facts like whether a small-town sheriff’s office would have had a telephone in 1905 or what year sequins were invented.
Some of the greatest success stories of publishing in the last 20 years are from writers who became known for a particular type of writing but then struck out in a new direction with a new idea. Rebecca Yarros with Fourth Wing. Taylor Jenkins Reid with The Seven […]
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