Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook
Page 1
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I: Character Development
1 From Protagonist to Hero
Exercise: Adding Heroic Qualities
2 Multidimensional Characters
Exercise: Opening Extra Character Dimensions .
3 Inner Conflict
Exercise: Creating Inner Conflict
4 Larger-Than-Life Character Qualities
Exercise: Creating Larger-Than-Life Qualities
5 Heightening Larger-Than-Life Qualities
Exercise: Adjusting the Volume
6 Character Turnabouts and Surprises
Exercise: Reversing Motives
7 Personal Stakes
Exercise: Defining Personal Stakes
8 Ultimate Stakes
Exercise: Capturing the Irrevocable Commitment
9 Exposition
Exercise: Deepening Exposition
10 Creating Secondary Characters
Exercise: Secondary Character Development
11 Antagonists
Exercise: Developing the Antagonist
Exercise: The Antagonist's Outline
12 Enriching Your Cast
Exercise: Combining Roles
Part II: Plot Development
13 Public Stakes
Exercise: Raising Public Stakes
14 Complications
Exercise: Making Complications Active
15 Plot Layers
Exercise: Building Plot Layers
16 Weaving a Story
Exercise: Weaving Plot Layers Together
17 Subplots
Exercise: Adding Subplots
18 Turning Points
Exercise: Heightening Turning Points
19 The Inner Journey
Exercise: Inner Turning Points
20 High Moments
Exercise: Creating High Moments
21 Bridging Conflict
Exercise: Developing Bridging Conflict
22 Low Tension Part I: The Problem With Tea
Exercise: Brewing Tension
23 Low Tension Part II: Burdensome Backstory
Exercise: Delaying Backstory
24 Low Tension Part III: Tension on Every Page
Exercise: Adding Tension to Every Page
Part III: General Story Techniques
25 First Lines/Last Lines
Exercise: Enhancing First and Last Lines
26 Moments in Time
Exercise: Freezing Moments in Time
27 Inner Change
Exercise: Measuring Inner Change
28 Setting
Exercise: The Psychology of Place
29 Point of View
Exercise: Strengthening Point of View
30 Character Delineation
Exercise: Improving Character Delineation
31 Theme
Exercise: Alternate Endings
Exercise: The Larger Problem
Exercise: Same Problem, Other Characters Exercise: Making the Antagonist's Case
32 Symbols
Exercise: Creating Symbols
33 Brainstorming
Exercise: Developing Brainstorming Skills
34 The Pitch
Exercise: Constructing the Pitch
Appendixes
Appendix A: Outlining Your Novel
Appendix B: Follow-up Work Checklist
Introduction
For twenty-five years I have watched book publishing change. Conglomeration has narrowed the number of major North American publishing corporations to five. Best-seller syndrome and bottom-line thinking are more prevalent than ever. In most houses the marketing department reigns supreme, yet for all but a handful of novels promotional budgets are nil.
As profound as these changes have been, there have been even greater changes in bookselling. The number of independent bookstores has plunged. The chains have risen, only to surrender market share to online bookselling and wholesale clubs. The consolidation of mass-market paperback distributors has halved, and halved again, the typical sale of a rack-sized paperback. Backlist cedes ever more ground to frontlist.
As a literary agent who specializes in developing fiction careers, however, I believe there is one change that has more profoundly afflicted fiction writers than any other: computerized inventory tracking. By-the-numbers ordering by booksellers has turned recent sales history into the novelist's fate. But when you cannot ship more than the net sales on your last title, how can you grow? This catch-22 has thrown hundreds, possibly thousands, of fiction careers into crisis. An equal number have ended almost as soon as they were born.
Despite that gloomy picture, I am still in the business, happier, more hopeful, and more prosperous than I've ever been. Why? Because a few years ago I looked around and realized that many novelists are getting ahead—way ahead—even in this ugly publishing environment. Better still, an examination of their work showed me the reasons for their success; and these reasons are techniques that any novelist can use.
I published the results of my study in 2001 in Writing the Breakout Novel, a book that has been praised to me in person, on Web sites and in hundreds of e-mails and letters. Authors' groups have debated its principles. It is required reading in a number of fiction courses. I also have used what I learned in preparing that book in my developmental work with my own clients. The results have been dramatic. Stalled careers have been turned around, agency revenue is way up, and many clients tell me that they are writing with new joy.
Even better, I have found that the principles in Writing the Breakout Novel can be taught. My first workshop was created for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association's annual conference in the summer of 2000.1 had just turned in the manuscript to my publisher. On the plane to Seattle I pulled out a yellow legal pad and worked up a dozen writing exercises that I thought would help writers see how to apply the techniques discussed in the book.
The positive feedback I received on that workshop was overwhelming. I began to lead the workshop at other conferences, expanded it, and eventually began to offer weekend-long Writing the Breakout Novel workshops in cities around the country. Participants are required to bring with them the manuscript of a novel or novel-in-progress. At the end of the workshop I ask how many partici-
pants will go home and devote months more effort to deepening their novels. Each time, every hand in the room goes up, often with rueful groans.
Writing a breakout novel is the hardest work you will ever do. But it can by done, and done by anyone with basic fiction writing skills and the patience and determination to take his fiction all the way to the highest level of achievement.
Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook includes all of the writing exercises that I lead in the Writing the Breakout Novel workshops. On the following pages you will learn how to read a novel like a writer, understanding the technique and motivation behind every choice an author makes. You will find help in making your characters more memorable, adding layers of plot and weaving them together, discovering the themes hidden in your work, using time and place more effectively, and much more. There is also a first-line brainstorming session, a pitch factory, and a tension tune up—probably the most difficult yet necessary section of the book. Do not skip that one.
In addition, before each exercise, I analyze breakout fiction that you can find on bookstore shelves right now. I draw examples of the application of breakout techniques not from the classics, but from current novels. The classics have much to teach us, as do books on writing, but I believe the "new fiction" section of the bookstore is better than any textbook. It's a university all by itself. See for yourself how contemporary authors cut through our industry's
malaise and, sometimes with little help from their publishers, capture the imaginations—and dollars—of editors, critics, movie producers, prize committees, and, most important, consumers. (In order to analyze these novels, I do, at times, give away a great deal of the plot.)
Not every book I examine is a New York Times best-seller, but every one is a novel by an author who has broken out; that is, who has made a dramatic leap in sales over her peers or even ahead of her own previous work. As those who have heard me speak at writers conferences know, I believe that writing the breakout novel is not about creating a publishing event, but breaking through to new, more powerful ways of story construction.
In most cases the techniques of breakout fiction are not difficult to understand. Why, then, do not more authors use them? I believe it is because these principles generally are not yet taught in enough writing books and courses. Indeed, for me to grasp them I had to read one hundred breakout novels side by side to see what made them different. The exercises in this book will show you that once you see how to apply them, breakout fiction techniques can be utilized again and again in every novel that you write.
Before using this workbook, I recommend that you read the volume that started it all: Writing the Breakout Novel. Participants in my workshops find that they get more out of the experience when they are not hearing and digesting concepts like inner conflict, personal stakes, and plot weaving for the first time. I think you will find this to be true, too.
I also recommend that you really take the time to work through all the exercises in this book. A breakout novel cannot be written in a weekend. Talk to authors and you will find that their breakout novel probably took them three
to five years to write; sometimes as long as ten. Each exercise that you do will change the novel that you are writing in multiple ways. For instance, the exercises that develop characters' personal stakes may well produce for you a list of new plot complications. Each one will require new scenes, even whole new narrative threads. Weave those together—that is, to find their nodes of conjunction—and you will find yourself shifting settings and the order of scenes.
At what stage of the writing process should you undertake these exercises? As I said before, in the live Writing the Breakout Novel workshops, I ask participants to bring the manuscript of a completed novel or novel-in-progress. It is useful to have a manuscript on which to focus, particularly in those exercises that deal with particular points in the story, like opening lines, a selected scene in which the motive will be reversed, and pages randomly chosen for a tension check.
Nevertheless, the exercises herein can be useful in earlier stages of novel construction, too. They will help you generate ideas as you flesh an idea into a premise, a premise into notes, notes into a rough outline, and a rough outline into the final outline for your novel. There is even an appendix at the back of this volume that will guide you through the outline process from beginning to end—whether you are at the planning stages or already have completed your manuscript.
It does not matter what type of novel you are writing: literary, mainstream, mystery, fantasy, romance, historical, or whatever. The techniques of breakout fiction are universal. They cross genre lines. They will tend to make a novel longer, though not necessarily. Stay open to what the exercises give you. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break.
You may wish to work through this book with your writing class or critique group. Discussion of the results can itself be productive. If nothing else, the work you do with this workbook will get your creative juices flowing. You will feel energized. Your unconscious will open, and story will flow. You will see new levels in your novel; make connections that you did not make before. Take lots of notes.
Then write. I do not care whether you work through all the exercises then revise, or whether you go back to work on your novel for a while after you complete each section. You will find the right pattern for you. I am concerned, though, about this: Do not rush. You are about to expand your mind and open up the possibilities in your current novel. Let them sink in, collide with each other, multiply, and dance. Enjoy the process. Writing fiction is supposed to be fun, remember?
Above all, aim high. Do not be satisfied with two or three positive changes for your novel; not even ten, twenty, or thirty. I expect that the exercises in this book will give you not just scores, but hundreds of new ideas. Use them all.
Do not be afraid. In the live Breakout Novel workshops, the part that produces the most resistance is the exercise I call "Tension on Every Page." Every experienced fiction writer knows that conflict is the essence of story; tension is necessary in all dialogue and in every scene. Well, everyone knows that in theory. Putting it into practice is something else.
As we pick pages at random and discover ways to create more tension in them, participants begin to get restless. Finding a change that puts more tension on one page that you thought was fine is a revelation. The second time. the discovery feels uncomfortable. The third time, panic can set in. It is around then that hands begin to shoot up. The question is always the same, "Can't there be too much tension in a novel?"
No, there can't. You think there can. You imagine you are exhausting your reader. (You certainly are exhausting yourself.) The novel can begin to feel to you over-laden, artificially juiced up, dumb. Nonstop action can make a novel feel pulpy, but if you closely examine the novels you most admire with a tension-sensitive eye, you will find that your favorite authors find subtle ways to infuse tension in every moment. Tension can be apprehension, a question, an inner need, uncertainty, contrasting desires, hostility hidden in humor—so many things.
When you get to this exercise, you will find that it asks you to make an improvement on every page of your novel. That's a lot of pages. That's a lot of work. Your heart will sink. I guarantee you will not want to go to all that trouble.
It is, however, utterly necessary. The big problem with 80 percent of the novels we reject at my agency is not too much tension; rather, it is too little. Indeed, not once in twenty-two years has the problem ever been too much tension. (The other 20 percent, in case you are wondering, lack truly sympathetic characters and, occasionally, have other problems.)
If you don't buy what I am saying, consider the manuscripts you read in your critique group. If you don't belong to a critique group, think about published novels. Next time you plow through a weak one, pay attention to the movement of your eyes. Watch how they skip down the page. Feel your inner impatience. Nothing is happening, you think. C'mon, move it along!
What you really mean is, make that paragraph matter. And that one. There is only one sure way to do that: to make it contribute to, deepen, or elaborate the conflict, problem, or complication at hand. When tension is present, the words matter. When tension is absent, our care diminishes on a curve.
I mention all this to advise you that at a certain point in working with this book you will want to put it down, work into your novel all the neat stuff you've come up with, and get it out the door to an agent. You will feel like you've done enough. You will feel proud and satisfied. After all, you have taken your fiction to levels it has never before achieved.
Resist the impulse to quit early. Do it all. Writing a breakout novel is a journey, an awakening, an education. Get the full benefit. You don't expect to get a B.A. after just one year of classes, do you? Here you're going for your Ph.D. Give yourself the space you need to achieve true mastery.
It takes time.
Once you have discovered what breakout techniques can do for your fiction, I believe that you will never want to go back to your old way of writing. Never again will you be satisfied with characters who have only one dimension. A single-layer plot will feel to you lightweight. You will put words together with a more demanding eye, pay attention to the effect of a setting on your characters' moods, think about how time has changed your characters' views of others and themselves, and more. You will be building the skills and honing the techniques that will make you more than
a story hack.
In my observation, genre novelists may have the hardest time making the switch from straight ahead genre novels to breakout-level fiction. Romance writers who churn out three or more books a year, as well as book-a-year mystery novelists, often long for the freedom of the stand-alone novel. They feel frustrated: stuck at a level of sales and advances that is below their potential. I understand their frustration. This workbook is designed to reveal the techniques that will lift their writing, and sales, to new levels.
What about those embarking on their first manuscripts? They should not congratulate themselves prematurely. It takes time to master the fluid and complex art form called the novel, longer still to construct one on a breakout scale. Some have done so with their first efforts (Diana Gabaldon, Terry Brooks, and John Saul come to mind), but the fact is that writing at breakout level is demanding. It takes time, and not everyone has the necessary staying power.
Does three to five years, maybe ten, sound like a lot? If you depend on quickie advances for a living, it probably does. If that is your situation, what can you do? Keep writing your category romances, your series, or your work-for-hire novels, but set aside a disciplined period of time—a few hours a day or a few months per year—to develop your breakout novel. Get support. Make sure your agent is on your side. Let your critique group cheer you on. Keep your eye on the prize: The book that truly might make you a brand name.
If you are still early in your career, I hope that the principles in Writing the Breakout Novel and in Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook will inspire you to elevate your craft and not be satisfied with merely being good enough to get published. I hope that your measure of success will be not the gratification of getting an agent or seeing your name on a cover, but putting together a novel of real depth—of having something to say and saying it in a story with lasting power.
In fact, your prosperity as a writer may depend on it. Take a lesson from the story hacks: If you can churn out minimally acceptable fiction, you may get published but you will not become a brand name. In today's world of publishing, you may not even survive beyond your second, third, or fourth book.
I created Writing the Breakout Novel for many reasons. One was to show angry and frustrated midlist writers that the problems with their careers are only in small part due to corporate publishing and its dearth of support for anyone less than a best seller. The secret of success is dazzling readers—spinning them a story that they will never forget. Those readers will pretty much take care of the rest, spreading the word-of-mouth and coming back to buy each new title as soon as it comes out. You do that, don't you? It does not take a tour or a full-page ad in The New York Times Book Review to convince you to buy your favorite author's latest title.