Hi friends,
I’m so excited to unveil my first self-published novel in eight years — MAGIC HOUR, which tells of a wedding videographer who suddenly discovers he can make anyone he want disappear by snapping his fingers… which results in pandemonium when he accidentally makes the bride and groom vanish in front of 200 wedding guests.
It’s an entertaining read priced at $2.99, just in time for Pride Month. I’d love your support!
Thanks, and enjoy!
Love,
Brian
Dear Friend,
Are you ready to be inspired by your favorite authors? My newest craft book is officially live on Amazon!
They say that reading books helps your writing, but you know what also helps? Reading inspirational quotes by 100 amazing authors who have infinite amounts of wisdom to share.
For more than a year I collected brilliant and insightful quotes from our most famous storytellers, and I’m excited to share them with all of you!
Some of the many beloved authors included in this book include…
You can download From Douglas Adams to Markus Zusak: Quotes by 100 Amazing Authors to Inspire Your Writing right now on Amazon for just $4.99! This project has been a labor of love, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you enjoy the book!
Love,
Brian
Two years in the making, my new ebook about novel writing is officially live on Amazon!
For less than a cup of coffee you can learn 100 essential tips and strategies to help you draft, revise, and publish your novel.
Some of the tips and strategies include…
So what are you waiting for? You can download Write Your Novel Now! 100 Tips & Strategies to Help You Draft, Revise, and Publish Your Book right now on Amazon for just $3.49. Yep, just $3.49.
Thanks for the support, and I look forward to your thoughts!
I can’t believe it’s already 2020. I can’t believe it’s the start of a new decade, holy cow!
I’ve been a serious writer since the beginning of 2010, so ten years now. Ten years of writing short stories and novels and essays. Two Masters degrees. Lots of failure, and some success.
There’s nothing like an entire decade to make you learn a lot, and I want you to have the best decade ever!
What kind of a writer do you want to become this year, and this decade? How do you want to build on what you’ve already accomplished?
How do you want to make this your best year of writing yet?
No matter what stage you may be in when it comes to your writing career, let this be the year you fully take charge. Let this be the year you take the steps toward your writing dreams.
Let this be the time of your life where you immerse yourself in the world of storytelling in all its tremendous aspects!
And it’s been my motto for many, many years now.
Every single day I try to surround myself with books, films, and writing. It can be just a little bit. It can be a hell of a lot. It all depends each day, of course, but any day I reach the end that had no reading, no watching, and/or no writing? It’s never as good as the day before or the day after.
I fully believe that to be a successful writer it’s important to not just write often but to also read as much as you can and watch terrific (and maybe even some not so terrific) films and television shows.
You don’t want to go too far in the extreme of either one of these. You don’t want to read for ten hours but do little writing and not watch anything. Similarly you don’t want to Netflix binge for ten hours but not read anything and only allow yourself ten minutes to do any quality writing.
Ideally you want to devote a similar amount of time to all three. Let’s say an hour to two hours of reading (all at once or at different times of the day). A two-hour movie (or maybe two episodes of television). And one to two hours of writing.
That’s about six hours of creativity. Six of twenty-four hours in the day to allow yourself to completely surrender to storytelling. Books. Films or television. Writing.
And then repeat. The next day, the day after that. Sure, some days will get crazy and all you’ll have time for is maybe a half-hour of writing and a few minutes of reading before bed.
This happens occasionally. And you know what? That’s all right.
This is why I created a publication here called Read. Watch. Write. Repeat. earlier in 2019, and it’s why I decided just today to launch a brand new Facebook group of the same name!
It’s a community I’ve been thinking about creating for a few months now, and I felt like today, the first day of a new year and a new decade, to be the perfect day to have it go live.
The group will be a place to discuss all things books, films, television, and, of course, writing. A place to discuss everything creativity. A place to help one another find great books to read, awesome movies and TV shows to see, and discover ways to make our writing flourish in the weeks and months to come.
It’s going to be a fantastic writing year, it really is. A time to discover what you really want out of your creative life. It can be anything you want it to be.
The goal, always, is to keep learning and trying new things and taking bold chances to get to where you want to be. Hopefully not at the end of this year but a whole lot sooner.
Read. Watch. Write. Repeat. Keep those four words in mind as you continue on your writing journey, and I’m telling you 2020 will be your most successful year yet!
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction is a craft book from novelist Benjamin Percy (The Dead Lands, Red Moon) that discusses various important elements in the writing of fiction. He infuses some of his chapters with a little memoir, of childhood memories, his time in graduate school, and in the successes and failures in his own writing.
But mostly the book is comprised of chapters that touch on essential fiction writing subjects like character motivations, setting description, the importance of revision, and, the central theme — mixing literary with genre. These chapters mix Percy’s own advice with examples from popular works of short fiction, novels, screenplays, and films.
He opens with the one chapter solely dedicated to memoir, in which Percy talks about his love of reading growing up and his pursuit of writing fiction from a young age. Next he talks about a mix of fascinating chapters on craft, some of which clearly relate to my own MFA thesis project, like Urgency (the need to keep readers flipping through the pages), There Will Be Blood (an entire chapter about violence in fiction and how writers need to be careful with how much is seen and how much explicit detail), and Designing Suspense (how three-dimensional character and clear motivations mixed with major conflicts and rising stakes can make for effective suspense).
He goes on to discuss such elements as Making the Extraordinary Ordinary, The Art of the Reversal, and Making the Stakes Clear. The book ends with a chapter on why revision will make a writer successful and that rejection will only make the most motivated writers even stronger in their craft.
The main theme of Percy’s craft book is to mix exciting genre work with effective literary qualities to make fantastic and memorable works of fiction. He writes,
Toss out the worst elements of genre and literary fiction — and merge the best. We might then create a new taxonomy, so that when you walk into a bookstore, the stock is divided into ‘Stories that suck’ and ‘Stories that will make your mind and heart explode with their goodness.’
Percy’s belief is that literary fiction is not inherently good and genre fiction is not inherently bad. He talks of his frustration, particularly in writing workshops, when his professors would immediately look down on anyone writing genre work and promoted the idea that everyone should focus on literary fiction. Percy writes,
Don’t forget the most basic reason we read: to discover what happens next. Make certain your devotion to pretty sentences and flesh-and-blood characters and cityscapes and exquisitely crafted metaphors works in service of story, contributing to the momentum that will propel your readers forward.
He believes that both literary fiction and genre fiction have their strong qualities but that blending the two can bring out the absolute best kind of storytelling, particularly when the writer focuses on telling a compelling, propulsive story with focus still given to stylish prose, quality descriptions, and characters over plot.
Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction is a terrific craft book. I loved how Percy weaves memoir with writing advice, sometimes discussing various tools in his writing that have worked for him over the years and why, then immediately moving into advice for the reader with clear examples from outside texts. I particularly liked that Percy doesn’t overdo the memoir, or talking about his own works; his discussion about himself is in the book just the right amount to be effective, never too much to come across as egotistical.
I admired his use of examples from not just novels but also short fiction and even a few films. I learn a lot about writing fiction from the movies I watch, and so I found it appropriate for an author to include them in the conversation.
His chapters are varied and sometimes unexpected, like his devotion to an entire chapter about the use of violence in storytelling. Percy writes,
This is the world we live in. You don’t have to look that far to find horror. And your job as a writer, no matter how uncomfortable, is to occasionally but responsibly shine a lamp lit with blood into those dark corners of human existence.
The novels he has written obviously goes to some dark, horrific places, so I was thrilled to see a chapter from him on this subject. I also especially enjoyed his chapters on the dangers of backstory, where he says,
The impulse to explain [backstory] will insult the reader. […] Stories are about forward movement, and if you turn to backstory, you have effectively yanked the gearshift into reverse.
Lastly, he wraps up the craft book with a bit of inspiration that will keep me going for a long while:
Thirty-nine rejections. Remember that the next time you’re feeling low at the keyboard or thumbing open a letter addresses, ‘Dear Writer.’ Go the distance.
He talks often about the writers that go the distance are the ones who persevere, who shrug off the rejections and keep going, keep improving their craft. Percy had to write five novels before he got one published, and his various struggles he lays out in the book give me, and should give you, the ammunition to keep going. No matter how long it takes!
In her 2012 craft book Writing Irresistible Kidlit, author Mary Kole says,
Today’s publishing marketplace is tough. Not all writers who set out to publish will see their dreams come true. And even if they do publish, readers will not automatically flock to your writing without good reason. The only thing a reader wants, at the end of the day, is to care about a character and a story. That’s it, that’s all. If you let them down here, they will not return to your pages.
A reader wants a character and a story to care about. That’s it.
A character. And a story. To care about.
Sure, there are other factors that will keep a reader flipping through the pages all the way until the end.
Big surprises. High stakes. Constant tension. A good mix of dialogue and description.
But a compelling novel especially comes to down to that one thing: a character and story to care about, deeply and completely.
I don’t know about you, but if I don’t care about both of those elements, I struggle continuing on with a novel I’m reading.
Especially when it comes to character. I don’t even need an extraordinary story if the characters mean something to me.
I just adored every minute of the third season of Stranger Things, and something that hit me by the end of the first episode was that I love the characters on the show so much that I’d still enjoy the show if nothing extraordinary happened.
If there were no monsters. If there were no big stakes.
If all the show did was explore those characters’ lives, I would still want to be there for every minute of it.
You want your characters to be so compelling that very little could happen in the story, and you would still go along for the ride.
So when you do have a lot happen throughout the narrative, when you throw endless surprises and twists at the reader, when there’s a major death nobody sees coming, when an ending reveals something about a character that changes your entire perspective on the book…. your reader will absolutely love you for it.
Mary Kole is right: the publishing marketplace is tough. There are lots of reasons for an editor to say no to your novel.
What you want to do is write a story and characters that nobody will want to say no to.
That no readers will ever be able to put down… even if they try!
All a reader wants at the end of the day is to care about a story and a character.
If you can master that part of novel writing, there’s no telling how much success you’ll be able to achieve.
In her 2012 craft book Writing Irresistible Kidlit, Mary Kole says,
Bookstores have an MG area and a YA area. They’re not sharpening their saws to build a special hybrid shelf just for your project. These guidelines will help you make an educated decision [of which market you’re writing for].
Don’t ever think you can lump them together, as Mary Kole says.
Sure, there’s the rare instance like the Harry Potter series, where the first three books are middle grade and then the rest of the books veer more into YA territory, with Harry aging and the themes growing darker.
But in pretty much all cases, MG and YA are separate things. Yes, they’re both kidlit. Yes, many literary agents will represent authors who write both MG and YA, and many editors will be on the lookout to buy both MG and YA. And many authors write both successfully!
But when it comes to your novel, it should never be a little of both. It should be either MG or YA. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. It honestly wasn’t until I picked up Mary Kole’s book in 2014 that I finally began to understand the major and minor differences between MG and YA.
Let’s take a look at the essentials of young adult fiction!
Here are some rules you should try at all times to stick to when writing YA books…
Of the twenty books I’ve written, fourteen of them are young adult. This is the market I love to write for the most. I’ve written all kinds of YA. Realistic YA, fantasy YA, horror YA, thriller YA, LGBTQ YA. I’ve tried so many different kinds of stories for the young adult market.
And one thing I have found over the years that has brought me the most success is writing main characters that are sixteen years old. This age seems to be the sweet spot. Seventeen works, too. And fifteen as well, although I’ve never actually written a YA to date about a fifteen year old.
Keep in mind that most YA readers are younger than the age of your protagonist. Like eleven, twelve, thirteen. These readers want to read up, so sixteen or seventeen is typically ideal for your character’s age.
One thing I’d recommend? Try not to write about an eighteen year old. A literary agent once told me to my face, “I can’t sell YA with an eighteen-year-old protagonist.” I was told this five years ago. Maybe things have changed.
But if you can, try to make your protagonist sixteen unless there’s a really strong and specific reason why the character needs to be older or younger.
I’ve tried all sorts of lengths in my YA books. The longest one I ever queried was 82,000 words. The shortest one was 58,000 words. I didn’t have success with either one.
You want to know the lengths of the YA novels I did have success querying? Between 65,000 and 70,000 words. That seems to be the sweet spot for YA word counts because it’s long enough to tell a complete story but not too long to overwhelm any of the agents who might request your book. 75,000 is fine, too, of course. 80,000 probably won’t raise any eyebrows.
But I’d think long and hard about querying a novel that was longer than 90,000 words unless you have a really good reason for it. If you’re writing hard science fiction or fantasy, then maybe. But as soon as you hit 100,000 words and up, you’re going to have lots of agents click over to the next query letter in a heartbeat, remember that.
Honestly this is a big reason why I often choose to write books for the YA market than the MG market. I don’t like to feel restricted about what I can and cannot do in my storytelling, and what’s so exciting about YA is that you can basically write any story you want, without restrictions, without too many rules or guidelines.
The truth is that librarians and parents are much stricter toward what MG books kids might read, but there’s not as harsh a strictness for YA books kids might read. In YA, for the most part, almost anything goes.
A few more rules to keep in mind…
Pay close attention to that first one. It’s critical that you bring authenticity and reality to your YA novels. Even if you’re no longer a teenager and aren’t around a lot of teenagers, you need to find that authenticity through any means necessary!
Follow that story you love, that compels you. It’s important to take chances in YA and offer something new and exciting we’ve never seen before.
At the same time, be sure to keep at least most of these rules in the back of your mind, especially as you begin the process of writing your latest novel.
Once you’ve master the essentials of young adult fiction, there’s no telling the kind of incredible stories you’ll be able to create!
In her 2012 craft book Writing Irresistible Kidlit, Mary Kole says,
Bookstores have an MG area and a YA area. They’re not sharpening their saws to build a special hybrid shelf just for your project. These guidelines will help you make an educated decision [of which market you’re writing for].
Don’t ever think you can lump them together, as Mary Kole says.
Sure, there’s the rare instance like the Harry Potter series, where the first three books are middle grade and then the rest of the books veer more into YA territory, with Harry aging and the themes growing darker.
But in pretty much all cases, MG and YA are separate things. Yes, they’re both kidlit. Yes, many literary agents will represent authors who write both MG and YA, and many editors will be on the lookout to buy both MG and YA. And many authors write both successfully!
But when it comes to your novel, it should never be a little of both. It should be either MG or YA. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way, and I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. It honestly wasn’t until I picked up Mary Kole’s book in 2014 that I finally began to understand the major and minor differences between MG and YA.
There are subtle differences between MG and YA which I plan to go into later. For now, let’s look at the way to tell at first glance what exactly is middle grade fiction…
Here are some rules you should try at all times to stick to when writing MG books…
I’ve written three middle grade books to date, and all three feature twelve-year-old protagonists. I just feel like that’s the perfect age for MG. The characters are just entering middle school, always an awkward and scary time in adolescence. Things are changing. Friendships are being tested. It’s a great age to write about.
Thirteen is OK, too. So is eleven. But I wouldn’t go younger than eleven. Similarly, as soon as your main character hits age fourteen, you might find yourself being pushed into YA territory.
My first middle grade novel came in at 90,000 words, and then I queried it a few months later at 80,000 words. I was so clueless I actually thought MG novels were supposed to be just as long as YA, but such is not the case. Most MG novels are much shorter than YA novels, and some have even sold at 35,000 words.
My MG novel currently on submission to editors is 45,000 words. My newest MG I’m currently revising is at 43,000 words, and I’m trying in this latest draft to build it up a bit to 45,000 or 46,000 words. My agent once said that you’re pretty safe as long as you don’t go over 60,000 words. That seems to be the max number of words for most MG novels.
At the same time, it’s important you remember to write the kind of MG novel that speaks to you. Don’t just write a high fantasy because you think it’s popular and therefore will sell. If you want to write a quieter literary MG novel, go for it. I’m writing spooky horror MG books, which seem to be getting more popular for kids with each passing year.
But it’s at least important to keep in the back of your mind the kind of genres that usually fare well with agents, editors, and readers.
A few more rules to keep in mind…
I would pay particularly close attention to those first two. Lots of boys read MG, so don’t think your audience is going to be strictly female. And make sure you think critically about cultural and racial diversity in your fiction writing as well.
Follow that story you love, that compels you. If that story is set in the 1940s in France with dog protagonists, go ahead and write it! It’s important to take chances in MG and offer something new and exciting we’ve never seen before.
At the same time, be sure to keep at least most of these rules in the back of your mind, especially as you begin the process of writing your latest novel.
Once you’ve master the essentials of middle grade fiction, there’s no telling the kind of incredible stories you’ll be able to create!
I absolutely love to read thriller novels, both for adult and for younger audiences, and here are ten of my all-time favorites…
As a gay person, I absolutely love to read LGBTQ novels, both for adult and for younger audiences. Earlier this week I shared five of my all-time favorites.
Below are five more I also adore with all my heart!
brianrowebooks.com 