C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

If your book idea feels thin at first, consider that Ice Road Truckers barreled on for 11 seasons and found an audience. If you’ve got a grand idea for a novel, but it’s not springing onto the page fully formed, I have some suggestions. If you’re unsure of yourself as a writer, I’ve got ideas about that, too.

When you lack confidence:

• You don’t have to stop where you are today.
• If you write more than one book, each level of success will vary. Think in terms of moving forward instead of dwelling on failures.
• Go deeper into characters’ back stories to find the way forward.
• Elucidate motivations and deny what each character wants. When desires conflict, you’ve got drama.
• Do you have the basics? Who, what, where, why, when and how.
• Play to your experience and strengths, but it’s not necessary to write what you know. Write what you care about.
• Go deeper on specifics without beating the reader over the head with your deepest research.
• Get the details right. For many readers, procedurals and process are porn.
• Set the scene to give the reader a sense of time and place. Don’t forget the smells and feels, the sense and impact of the location, but don’t go too hard on the weather report.
• Find the next step in your plot by finding a logical move, but don’t succumb to the first easy answer that springs to mind.
• Discover the logical surprise twist. Defy the reader’s comfort in thinking they know how the story will unfold.
• Smooth out the bumps later so it looks like you planned the entire narrative from beginning to end.
• Too much editing as you go will impede progress. You’ll have a sharp Chapter One with no Chapter 2.
• Make your characters distinctive. Giving one twin a porkpie hat he adjusts and readjusts for 200 pages isn’t special enough.
• If two characters sound alike and perform the same function in the story, they might as well be one person.
• Put the manuscript aside and give it more thought so you look like a genius later.
• Put it aside and don’t think about it. The answer often appears when you come back to it fresh.
• Don’t put a manuscript aside for too long.
• Don’t get overwhelmed or too precious about storytelling. Plenty of half-drunk half-idiots sitting around campfires have told entertaining yarns for thousands of years.
• Focus on the A to B to C in the first and second draft. Action flows from character and is character.
• Themes will emerge later. Don’t set out to write a theme. A manifesto has no plot.
• Entertainment is Goal #1. Don’t set out to educate with a novel. That souffle will fall flat.
• Your main character needs a fatal flaw or they’ll be boring. Too perfect is boring and inhuman.
• Your protagonist needs more obstacles in their way. Heroes and heroines have to be smoked in the oven a long time before they’re done.
• Your villain needs the complexity of nuance and a purpose they believe is noble. No one thinks they’re the villain.
• No character should feel like a red shirt, easily sacrificed. Henchman #3 has a family and feelings, dammit!
• Don’t allow a smart person to do a dumb thing just to make a plot work. That’s the sound of gears grinding in a rusty machine.
• Avoid a story with one tone, particularly if it’s one grim tone.
• Heroics and horror both have room for humor when the wit is well-placed (but if you aren’t funny, don’t force it).
• Fight scenes and sex scenes are similar: they both need to acknowledge the breath, heat, emotion and effort involved.
• Read more in the genre to make sure you’re hitting the tropes without surrendering to cliche.
• Drop the boring parts and concede that not every idea is worthy of a novel. Your idea for a full-length novel might make a better novella or short story.
• Make your characters more relatable but don’t succumb to the critic who says, “People don’t act like that.” This character, your character, acts like that.
• Decide your protagonist is unchanging and the series is episodic (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) or decide on a story arc that allows for character growth. Ignore reviewers who demand your character be fully actualized immediately. They don’t have the patience to understand what you’re doing with that character in the next book.
• Dare to write a bold plot point, but too many coincidences are death.
• Disguise your deceptions until the big reveals strike.
• Contextualize the fantastic with normality to enhance the suspension of disbelief.
• Read your manuscript like a reader, not like a writer.
• Pick your allies carefully. Writers are much harder to please than casual readers and their motivations are sometimes suspect. (Hint: most readers are of the casual variety looking for distraction and escape, not an argument over comma placement.)
• Let go of what isn’t working. Harvest wheat, cut chaff.
• Go deep to create an immersive page turner. Make a movie in their heads.
• Find an editor you trust who is out to help you, not tear you down. Some editors get into this biz for the wrong reasons.
• The right length is the word count that gets to the end of the story.
• Rely on feedback from your real readers, not randos.
• Rewrite to make the reading experience richer.
• Revise for clarity.
• Edit to get where you’re going at the right speed, avoiding detours, potholes and plot holes along the route.
• Drop the ten-dollar words but don’t talk down to your audience.
• Do not overwrite character descriptions. You’ll interfere with the movie in their heads.
• Have fun. If you’re having fun, readers probably will, too.
• Are you getting up from the desk often enough? Moving? Getting some air and enough sleep? Feed the body, energize the brain, charge up Ole Ink Hill.
• The only reason you dislike your manuscript might be that you’ve reread and rewritten it too many times. Your personal draft limit will vary. Send it to your editor when you hit the wall.
• Cute can work. Too twee? Less so. So much depends on what you’re writing. Consider the variables. Listen to your heart when you write. Listen to your brain when you revise. Listen to your editor before you publish.
• These are broad guidelines. Sometimes it is better to tell rather than show. If it plays, it plays.
• Some write like they talk. When done well, it will sound natural.
• Some try to write as if they’re 17th Century British nobles.
• Let the words come from you. With revisions, You the Writer will come across smoother than You the Person with Cookie Crumbs Down Your Shirt.
• Stop being so precious about writing. This is art, not a procrastination project. You want it to be excellent, not perfect.
• Lives do not hang in the balance, not even your life.
• Finish.
• Edit.
• Proof.
• Publish.
• Some will love you no matter what you do. Some will hate you no matter what. Most don’t give a shit. Let go of demanding that your family care about your high calling. Stop caring about anyone outside your target audience. What does your brother know, anyway? He’s obsessed with golf and foot fetish porn.
• Don’t depend on one book to make you famous.
• Write another book.
• Somebody’s going to hurt your feelings. Nobody hits a home run every time and not everyone’s opinion gets equal weight. Look for support in the right places.
• You’re not writing a novel. That can feel overwhelming and possibly a terrible waste of time. Instead, you’re writing a little short story each day (or most days of the week, anyway). Each short story just happens to connect to the next short story. These stories are your chapters. Writer 45 to 55 or so, and behold! A book! See? Easier than it sounded at first!
• Relax. Enjoy telling your stories. Focus on process now, not outcome.
• With enough at-bats, you have a better shot at hitting home runs.
• Don’t talk about writing more than you write.
• Don’t give up unless you hate writing.
• If you hate writing, there are plenty of other things to do that probably pay more.
• If you love writing, there’s not much else to do.
  
  *If you prefer outlining, there’s nothing wrong with that and you might end up writing faster with fewer hiccups and less anxiety. Your mileage may vary and that’s a blog post for another time.
  
  ~ If you enjoy apocalyptic epics or killer crime thrillers, I’m your guy. Find all the books by Robert Chazz Chute at my author site, AllThatChazz.com.

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