fiction writing Archives - Randall Floyd

How to format your print book for ANY PUBLISHER in less than 10 minutes

randallcfloyd — Fri, 24 May 2019 22:57:52 +0000

Formatting a book for the first time, especially to the uninitiated, can be a real pain. But, honestly, it's not that hard, once you do it a time or two. Not only that, you can do it in less than an hour. Actually, you can do it in less than 10 minutes - all you need is a little direction. So, here are the steps for formatting your book, so pay close attention!

1. Set the page size

Go to the "layout" tab, then click on "margins". Scroll down to the bottom of the dropdown list and click on "Custom Margins." There are three tabs on the top - Margins, Paper, and Layout. Click on the "Paper" tab.

At the top of the window, you'll see a heading marked "paper size." Where it says width, highlight the number and type in the width of your book (i.e 6). Where it says height, highlight the number and type in the height of your book (i.e. 9). You just need to make sure that you know what our book size it before you can type anything in. The common sizes are 6x9, 5x8, or 5.25x8. I like 5.25x8 the most, as it gives you a slightly thicker book and more room for your book cover.

Now we can move on to the next step

2. Set the margins

While still in the "Page Setup" window, click on the "margins" tab. Under the "margins" header, you should see a bunch of dropdown boxes next to the words top, bottom, left, right, gutter, and gutter position. Right now, just stick with the top bottom, left, right, and input these numbers"

Top: 0.5

Bottom: 0.5

Left: 0.75

Right: 0.5

Leave the gutter and gutter position boxes alone. Now, look down the window a little bit - down to the "Pages" header. The next line says "Multiple Pages" and has a dropdown box. It says normal right now, but you'll want to change it. To do that, click on the box and choose "mirror margins."

When you do this, you'll notice a couple of things: (1) the left and right boxes up above now read "inside" and "outside"; and (2) you can no longer choose the gutter position. Don't worry, this is supposed to happen.

3. Set the gutter

The gutter indicates how far over from the binding of the book you want your words to appear on the inside edge of the page. I'm not 100% sure why Microsoft word has both the inside setting and the gutter setting since it's just easier to account for the gutter with the inside measurement. However, this is the theory behind the gutter:

When you have a print book and you open it, you're going to want to make sure the words and the page are far enough over that they don't slide down towards the book's binding and become impossible to read. To make sure the words are still centered on the page, you generally want to account for a quarter of an inch in the gutter. If you were to do this with Word, you would go to the inside measurement and make it the same as the outside measurement. Then, on the gutter measurement, you would put 0.25. However, this is exactly the same as putting the gutter at 0 and the inside measurement at .75. So, you can do it however you want, but the two methods are EXACTLY the same.

Now it's time to prep your document to add a table of contents.

4. Mark all your headings with h1 tags

You need to do this in order to set up your table of contents later. It's very simple. All you need to do is select your first chapter heading and then click on the "Home" tab at the top of your screen. Go to the right of the header to where you see the styles section. Here you'll see a bunch of text that says AaBbCc....

Select the one that says "Heading 1" beneath it. Do this to all of your chapter headings and then you're ready to build your table of contents.

5. Set up your table of contents

Create a blank page after your dedication page. You can do this by putting the cursor after the last word on your dedication page, and simply hitting "control" + "enter" at the same time. This will create a page break. Now, at the top of the screen, click on the "References" tab

Then click on the Table of Contents button, and follow that up by clicking the first option. Now you're ready to go. Your table of contents is up and you don't have to do much else. Just check the table to make sure all of your chapters appeared there. If you, you are going to have to go back to the chapter headings that are not on the table and mark them as h1 again. If you can't remember how to do that, just go back up to step 4.

6. Set up your page numbers

This can be the most confusing part of formatting your books. The reason is that unless you know exactly what you're doing, you won't be able to have the entire book numbered correctly, but still have some pages that don't show numbers. So, here is what you do.

First, you need to find the first page you want your page numbers to actually appear on. I generally choose the page after the table of contents to by this page. The first thing you need to do is put the cursor at the bottom of the table of contents. To do this, simply click after the last number of the last entry. Then the down button.

This will put the cursor at the bottom of the page. Now, with the cursor there, click the layout tab. In the first section, on the right, you'll see a small dropdown labeled "Breaks." Click on that. Then scroll down to the "section breaks" section and click on "next page."

Once you do that, your cursor will now be at the top of the next page.

Now click on the "Insert" tab. Go to the right of the top section until you see the footer icon. Click on the footer and then scroll down the list until you see "edit footer" and click on it. Go up to the top of the page and click "design". It should be a blue link. Look to the left of the page, near the top. You'll see the words "link to previous." This box is automatically selected. Push the button to unselect it. Now we can add the page numbers.

At the top of the screen, you'll see three icons. Click on the "page number" icon. Then click on "bottom of page" and then choose one of the "plain number" options. I would recommend the one with the number centered. Now, click once more on the page numbers Icon at the top of the page and then choose the "Format Page Numbers" option.

At the bottom of the formatting window, choose the continue from a previous section and then hit "ok." Now, click on the page number on the previous page and delete it. This will delete all of the page numbers in the first section, but leave the page numbers on the rest in the rest of the book.

7. Zoom out and make sure your pages are on the proper side of the paper

There are two ways to zoom out. You can either click on the - button at the bottom right of your page until you can see 4 pages on each line, or you can hit control and then scroll down on the mouse. Then, you want to take a look at your pages. If you look closely - because you clicked the mirrored option when you were setting up your margins - the margins on your document mirror each other. Every other page.

The pages that have the larger margin on the left are the pages on the right side and the opposite is true for the other side.

Now you need to grab a book and take a look at it. Locate the title page, the copyright page, the dedication page, the table of contents, and the page of the first chapter or introduction. Take a look at what page they start on, and then take note of what side of the book these pages are.

Now, line up your document to match the book.

If a section is not on the proper side, simply go to the top of that page and put the cursor in front of the first word and then hit "control" + "enter" at the same time. Do this whenever a specific page is not on the side of the book you want it to be.

The last thing you want to do before you export the document is to go up to the table of contents. Click on the title of the table of contents. When you do this a box will magically appear above where you clicked. On the right side it says "update table." Click this and then choose the "update page numbers only" option. Then hit ok. This will update all of your pages.

Now you can format the look of the chapter headings, table of contents, title page, and even the text body, however you want.

8. Export it as a .pdf

Once you're done formatting the text, click on the file tab at the top of your screen. Then click "save as." On the left side of the screen, you will see a "Browse" button. Click on this and then locate the folder or directory you want to save your book in. Then, on the bottom of the screen, you'll see 2 long, white boxes.

The first box you can name your file. Go ahead and name your file. The second box allows you to choose the type of file you want to save as Click on this box and choose PDF. Then click save. Now, click "save as" one more time. This time, save your document in the same folder, but as a word document.

9. Send it off!

Now you're ready to send it off to your publisher - it could be Amazon, IngramSpark, BookBaby, or even Lulu Press. Hopefully, this helps get rid of any worries you might have.

If not, click here to sign up for my free email course that goes through each of these steps in a series of text and video lessons.

The post How to format your print book for ANY PUBLISHER in less than 10 minutes appeared first on Randall Floyd.

This one thing will help you finish your story

randallcfloyd — Wed, 22 May 2019 22:24:47 +0000

I was lost. Completely and utterly. It was dark and late, and I desperately needed some rest. But I couldn't rest. I blinked the sleep away as I stared at my computer screen. I had been staring at the same line of text for the past 45 minutes. But I was still lost.

Sure, I was in my home office, I had a warm fire, and I was not uncomfortable in any way, other than the needing-sleep feeling that was nagging at me.I wanted to yell in frustration. I wanted to pound my fist into something ... but the only option I had was my really expensive laptop.

At length, I decided I wasn't going to make any more progress - since I'd already been making so much progress before. So, I admitted defeat. I didn't know what else to do. It was 2:30 in the morning, and I had a meeting with a client a meager 6 hours in the future.

If only I had one thing figured out - something that would have saved me hours of staring and allowed me to move on with my life ... I mean my story.

What was that one thing?

It was a sentence. Something, that I should have done when I started my story but neglected to do because I was too excited to start. I couldn't be bothered with things like planning.

What a waste of time.

But I learned my lesson. Now all of my stories have this sentence written before I start. All of my kiddos' stories have this sentence written too. It's a sentence that can have as much or as little detail as you'd like.

You want to know what it is?

The Ending.

That's it. You need to write a sentence that tells you how your story is going to end.

Simple.

Now, how is your story going to end?

The post This one thing will help you finish your story appeared first on Randall Floyd.

3 reasons why outlining actually helps you be more creative in your writing

randallcfloyd — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 09:00:07 +0000

For eons, there have been two sides of a debate. This debate centers on how someone should take on a creative endeavor. The sides of this debate have gone by various names throughout the years, and I’m not going to go into the names. For this article, I’ll just call the two sides of this debate the plotters and the pansters.

It has been said that plotters will meticulously plot out every intricate detail of their creative endeavor, sometimes having every single word plotted out before they even begin … if that’s even possible. The thought of writing, drawing, or even speaking makes plotters short of breath, gives them clammy hands, and makes doing even the most benign and routine tasks nearly impossible.

Pantsers, on the other hand, loathe the idea of plotting out their creative endeavor. In fact, the very mention of the word “plotter” causes a series of involuntary reactions that range from small convulsive fits to hot flashes, loss of breath, and frequent blackouts.

Both conditions are serious.

Fortunately, there might be a way to overcome the need to declare oneself a pantser or a plotter, and thus suffer the resulting symptoms.

But more on that in a minute.

I made a discovery this morning that just bolstered my belief that doing one simple thing when taking on any creative endeavor, in my case, it was writing a non-action scene that involved two of the main characters speaking on the phone.

This process has probably been hashed out millions of times before I discovered it, and there are probably a million different ways to get what I wanted to do done. However, my method works best for me, since I took what I’d learned from those who went before me and applied it to my life and my circumstances.

My solution is simple: Outline your endeavor.

Outlining is not plotting, at least not in the literal sense …

Well, okay, maybe it is plotting. But that’s okay. Honestly, for you pantsers out there, while I respect your creative journey, I also am of the opinion that you are also on the grief spectrum.

You might have heard of these stages before:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

I’d wager that every one of you is somewhere along this spectrum when it comes to your views on plotting your work. I won’t go into details … you know who you are.

However, what I call outlining, is probably going to sound insufficient to many of you plotters out there. In fact, what I am about to describe will probably put you in one of the same camps as those mean, nasty panters out there.

Fortunately, there is a way for every one of you to come to terms with your condition and to finally get to the fifth stage of grief.

The power of the number 7

There is a reason the number 7 is ubiquitously awesome. There are seven days in the week, seven deadly sins, seven virtues, seven ancient wonders, seven colors in the spectrum … the list goes on. For more useless “seven” facts, read this article.

In my attempts to try and outline my novels, lessons, speeches, nonfiction works, and lectures to my kids (yes … I outline those as well … but hey, during the day I’m an attorney …) I’ve tried tons of different methods. But every single one of them ends up using some iteration of the number seven.

So, to simplify things for myself, my outlines only ever contain seven bullet points. And my bullet points are never more than 7 words. (I understand you may think I’m taking this to the extreme, and who am I to deny it. However, I more or less only use three or four words to describe my bullet points and rarely get up to the mythical number seven … for reasons I’ll go over later.)

So when I outline my novel, I have seven bullets. When I outline my three acts, I have seven bullets. When I outline my sequences I have seven bullets. This seven goes all the way down to my chapters, scenes, and sometimes even the beats within my scenes.

Additionally, I always use my bullets in a specific order. Every. Single. Time.

The bullets look something like this:

Inciting Incident
Snag 1
Snag 2
Snag 3
Crisis
Climax
Resolution

Count it if you like. There are seven bullets. No more. No less. And that is perfection.

When in doubt make a quick outline

Using this outline at every single juncture of my writing, but only as much as I need to. My outline serves three purposes.

First, it provides me with a roadmap. For my writing, it shows me the major cities I’m going to need to go through before I get to the end.

Second, it makes me feel good about myself. When I bust out an outline in less than a minute, I feel like I accomplished a whole lot, even though I only filled in seven lines.

Finally, it helps me get rid of writer’s block. Immediately. From my experience, writer’s block happens in two instances: (1) when I get lost and forget where I’m heading in my story and (2) when I need to write a scene in my story but I don’t know what to put into the scene.

To get over the first part, all I do is go back to my initial outline and figure out where I need to get to. Then I go back to the scene I’m struggling with and figure out if it helps me get there or not.

To get over the second part, I just make seven quick bullet points on the side of the page and fill them in real quick. Then I get back to writing. It’s beautiful. If anything, having my outline makes the creative process even more creative it.

Putting it together

If this outline formula is going to work for you, you’re going to need to know what those different parts of the outline mean. You’re going to need to know what the inciting incident, the climax, the crisis, the snags, and the resolutions are.

But once you nail them, outlining becomes easy. You know what you need, you just have to put your characters in a position to go through them.

So, the next time you think you’re lost, or you can’t figure out what to write, try bulleting the seven things you need to cover in your scene. Your work will look better, and you’ll be more productive …

I promise.

The post 3 reasons why outlining actually helps you be more creative in your writing appeared first on Randall Floyd.

Essential story element #3 – The Crisis

randallcfloyd — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:00:18 +0000

Have you ever found yourself with a difficult decision to make? Now, think about how stressed out you were when you made that choice.

Why were you so stressed?

What kinds of pressures were you facing?

What made your decision so difficult?

Did you put off making a decision until the last possible moment?Remember how you felt at that moment, right before you made your decision. This point in your life, in the language of storytelling, is called the crisis.

We all have crisis points in our life, and they vary in degrees of severity. But usually, we can remember them with great clarity. It turns out that in your stories, fiction or non-fiction, the biggest parts, the most memorable scenes, revolve around these crisis points.

I’ve read a bunch of books on writing. In most of them, online and elsewhere, for whatever reason, the authors fail to drive home the importance of having crisis points.

This is a travesty.

If every writer knew what the crisis was, and how every single person, EVER, can relate to a well-crafted crisis, and how to craft one in each scene of their book, his or her writing would be 100x better. Add to that the huge uptick in reader interest, and you have a very important tool in your belt.

Everything hinges on the crisis.

In theory, the crisis is a very simple thing: a question.

How your character responds to that question tells the reader a whole lot about the character.

However, not every question is a crisis. Let me lay it out for you.

The crisis is going to be one of two things. It’s either (1) a best-bad-choice scenario, or (2) an irreconcilable good situation.

In the best bad choice scenario, the main character is forced to choose between two bad situations. Neither situation will be good for the main character. She is forced to choose between two outcomes that are going to seriously hurt.

Taking a real-life example, think about a couple that’s been married for years. For whatever reason, I’m sure you could come up with one, things in their relationship aren’t going well.

They’ve tried counseling, job changes, more date nights, less time together, couple’s massage, but things aren’t getting better. Then they have an argument. It’s over something small, but it blew up in both their faces.

The husband goes to the bar, and the wife calls up her sister. After the dust settles, neither one of them can look at the other.

Let’s just add one more complication – they have 2 preschool-age children.

This is a crisis point. The couple has two choices – split up or stay together. How they split up, or how they stay together don’t really matter at this point. However, the stakes are clear. There is no good choice in this one.

If they stay together, each one of them is going to drown in discontent. Other things are going to happen that will drive the two of them even further apart.

If they separate, both of them will be able to go their own ways, but now they have to think about how they are going to split up time with the kids. They’re going to now have two separate households, and their expenses are going to increase … probably double.

No matter what the couple chooses, it’s a bad choice.

Now, this particular crisis point may not be all that compelling, but it really drives home the point that the couple is at a complete cross-roads. They have to make a choice … and not making a choice happens to be making a choice.

Show me the [irreconcilable] goods.

The other kind of crisis your characters will face involves two good outcomes. Each outcome is, shocker, good for someone. The kicker here is that these good things are at odds with each other.

The good things can’t both happen – it’s physically impossible.

One of those things is good for the hero, and bad for everyone else, while the other choice is bad for the hero, but good for everyone else.

In another real-life example, let’s look at a soldier in the middle of a firefight. His squad is surrounded, and their heads are down. The only thing keeping them from dying is a large rock giving them cover.

The team is quickly running out of ammunition, and things are looking dire. The squadron leader, looking for an escape route, can’t find anything that would help. He radios air support, and a bomber drops a small payload on the enemy, opening up a small gap in the attack.

If he goes, he’ll probably make it out alive, but there’s not enough time for the rest of the squad to get out. He thinks about his wife and kids at home. Suddenly, leaving his men to see his family again gets really tempting.

Then he looks back at his men. He’s hit with a realization – he might be able to save his men. The result, however, is that he’s going to die. The only way to get his men out of there is to distract the enemy with something big.

What’s the squad leader going to do?

It doesn’t really matter – not when it comes to the crisis. The point is that he has to make a choice.

The leader’s choice is between two good things. He can save his life, or he can save the lives of his men.

Now it’s your turn.

Let’s go to “The Son of Neptune,” and see how the crisis of the first scene plays out.

Cornered, Percy Jackson (a demi-god) has to choose between fighting two gorgons (Medusa’s sisters) in his weakened state or jumping down a mountainside.

If you chose irreconcilable goods, then you’re wrong.

This is a best-bad-choice scenario. Neither choice is good for Percy. Both of them could end up in death to the hero – one is death by monster, the other is death by falling a really long way and landing without a cushion.

As you can see, the crisis isn’t that long. But the length doesn’t matter. It’s the magnitude of your crisis that hooks your readers in.

Whatever your crisis is, all it takes is some time to give your reader clarity about what the two choices are. Once the crisis is all worked out, you can move on to the highest point of action in your scene – the climax.

This article is number three in a five-part series on writing great scenes. Here is part one, and here is part two.

The post Essential story element #3 – The Crisis appeared first on Randall Floyd.

The Art of Getting Distracted

randallcfloyd — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 09:00:36 +0000

A few years back, I found a podcast. It was a well-done show, and the guy doing most of the speaking goes by the name of James. I found what he was talking about very interesting.

I began taking notes.

I took so many notes I filled seven pages in my legal-sized notebook — front to back.

That was for the first 15 minutes.

I heard lots of things that probably should have changed my life. I made plans, plotted out dates to accomplish those plans, and made a decision, right then and there, to “choose myself.”

All told, I probably spent an hour and a half going through this stuff.

It was bliss, and I was ready to change the world, and, probably, more importantly, my life.

Then an alarm went off on my phone. The timer I’d set had just run out. It was time to hit the sack and get a good night’s sleep.

I couldn’t have timed the completion of my little excursion into the recesses of my mind any better.

There was just one problem.

That timer wasn’t supposed to tell me when to go to sleep. Nope, it was supposed to tell me when my practice test was supposed to end.

I was studying for the bar exam, and the biggest exam of my life was the very next week.

Somehow, I’d managed to get distracted again.

I’ve heard lots of stories about people who seem to have a natural ability to do something. I’ve seen natural piano players, athletes, readers, bakers, and eaters.

Apparently, I’m a natural at getting distracted.

I don’t even have to practice. Usually, it happens like this.

I start doing something important since I put it off until the last moment. I get into it, and really dig in. Something about having imminent deadlines really galvanizes my mind, body, and spirit.

But, inevitably, I start getting that itch, usually behind my left ear.

It always happens right about the time the thing I’d been dreading doing, and the reason I put off taking care of my “deadline-pending-the-next-day” task in the first place, is staring at me in the face.

Suddenly, the thing I know I should be doing becomes much less fun. That galvanized feeling usually dissipates, and I start looking around for other things that catch my fancy.

It’s quite the cycle, and without fail, it happens every. single. time.

It comes off super sinister, like the big bad wolf and red riding hood. Like something inside of me doesn’t want me to hit my deadlines, to succeed, to do anything good with my life.

Check that … It almost seems like this cycle doesn’t want me to do anything. period.

Eventually, when I finally took time to notice this was a pattern of mine, I started asking questions.

“What gives?” is usually the one I started with.

I dug in, trying to figure out what exactly gives, and the answer hit me in the face.

It hurt.

This consistent distraction circle actually has a source and a meaning. The source is my inner Jiminy Cricket. Only, it feels much less like a conscience, and much more like somebody much bigger and stronger than me, like Bill Gates, is pulling me away from the stuff I needed to do.

The meaning goes much deeper.

It turns out that this need to “distract” myself, has a much less sinister purpose than what I’d initially thought.

I’ll illustrate with a story (mostly fictional):

A while back, I was having dinner with my great-aunt Bettie. We were in the middle of Montana, in the middle of summer.

It was hot.

We were having a grand old time eating brisket in an old log cabin, in 110-degree weather, without air conditioning.

Did I mention it was hot?

Well, she gets up and walks to the kitchen to get the lemonade out of the fridge, when all of the sudden she falls over.

Granted the woman was old and rickety, and she was prone to falling over occasionally, I still feared the worst. At that point in my life, I’d never seen an actual dead person.

Being the gentleman I was, I cautiously approached the old woman. Cautiously, I called her by name.

That did it. She immediately got up and started rubbing both her knees. “Darn this arthritis!” she shouted, to go along with a couple of old-fashioned country cuss words.

The next day, we were hit with one of the biggest rainstorms in the history of Montana.

It took me a few years to figure out the significance of this event — even though it was mostly fictional. Apparently, the storm and my great-aunt’s arthritis were connected.

There happens to be a direct connection between flares up in arthritic joint pain and temperature drops of more than 10 degrees, drops in barometric pressure, and even rain.

My great-aunt’s knees were the harbinger of that massive storm that may or may not have happened.

I guess that’s why my great-aunt, as soon as she recovered (which was just took a few minutes) went outside and “battened all the hatches” on the farm and the house.

Looking back at this experience, it makes complete sense. Auntie had learned that her pain actually told her that the weather was going to change.

Distractions work in much the same way.

They are, in effect, the harbingers of greatness. You just need to recognize them for what they are.

Looking back at those times I’ve suffered from acute episodes of distractedness, I tried to find a pattern, some kind of similarity between the events.

It turns out, all I had to do was take a step back and squint my eyes a bit. Then, oddly enough, things started falling into place.

The first thing I noticed was that the distraction itself wasn’t all that important. Really, the substance of the distractions didn’t matter one bit. To the contrary, the more I looked at those distractions, the more difficult analyzing them became.

I had to look beyond those distractions, and really look at what I was doing when that distraction reared its ugly head.

This is where the magic started happening.

Every single time I was getting distracted, it was because I was on the brink of breaking through on something.

Going back to my bar exam struggles, I was right in the middle of trying to figure out secured transactions law. If you don’t know what secured transactions are, that fine, even attorneys that practice secured transactions law have difficult.

Imagine trying to shove your head into a hole the size of your fist. Now, imagine you actually did manage to get your head through the hole without traumatic brain injury. Here comes the hard part: you need to now get your head out of the hole.

That’s essentially how I felt when I was trying to learn secured transactions. It was brutal. I kept banging my head, trying to figure it out. Eventually, I got distracted. Little did I know, that the next time I sat down and actually tried to learn secured transactions, it clicked.

Time and time again I’ve noticed that those times when doing something else, instead of doing that thing you’re dreading, signals you’re about to break through.

But, in many cases, it’s not only signaling a breakthrough but something even better. I’m talking about serious personal growth here.

Distractions are necessary. We need to have them. Sometimes they help us decompress. Sometimes they get our mind of really painful stuff.

But deep down, we were given these distractions for the same reason my great-aunt was given arthritis.

We need them to succeed.

The post The Art of Getting Distracted appeared first on Randall Floyd.

Nobody Cares about your Comma Splices

randallcfloyd — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 09:00:36 +0000

I was reading a book a few weeks ago, I can’t remember the author or the title. I don’t really even remember what the book was about.

I slogged through the entire novel, and it was tough. The action didn’t build like a well-written book is supposed to, the ending didn’t hit me as right.

When I finished reading the thing, I found that nearly every single thing I liked about novels was missing.

The book would have been a huge disappointment if I were reading for entertainment purposes. But, I wasn’t.

When I picked up the book to read it, I had committed myself to a single rule: read this book until you find a grammatical mistake.

At the end of the book, I sat back in my chair and let out a breath of air. The author had done it. I couldn’t find a grammatical mistake anywhere. It was a thing of beauty – something that would make my 10th grade English teacher beam with pride.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book was garbage, but I say that in the nicest way possible.

You see, my reading exercise had two purposes. The first thing I wanted to do was see if it was possible to write a story with no grammatical errors.

Check.

The second thing I was looking for was whether or not the book, through free of typos and other mistakes, followed the rules of storytelling.

That was a resounding “No.”

The author of this novel, while well-intentioned, had fallen into one of the most common traps I see when editing novels.

Time after time, writers fail to write a book that words before they start fixing minor errors.

It’s a completely natural thing to want to do.

The problem is that this is the wrong way to to do things.

I read another story recently, this time I read it because I wanted to have a good read. The book had mistakes in almost every chapter, but I kept reading.

The story was well plotted, and the action built the way it was supposed to. When I got to the end, I once again sat back in my chair and let out another breath of air.

When I see books with errors, I tend to get distracted. I think that’s natural for most people out there. But what I found with this second book, was that because it followed the essential elements of storytelling, I was actually able to forgive the author for the mistakes, because the story was compelling, and it worked wonderfully.

What I learned with this second book was that grammar mistakes are second to following the principles of storytelling.

This is the case every time.

You might have the cleanest, most grammatical book ever written. But if it doesn’t flow the way stories are meant to flow, the book will stink, and nobody, except your high school English teacher, is going to like it.

So, the next time you think you want to start proofreading your book, take a step back and look at your global story. If it doesn’t work, ignore the typos. Figure out why your story isn’t working.

Once you do that, then you can work on the grammar.

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Essential Element #2 – The Rising Action

randallcfloyd — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 09:00:44 +0000

In his book “The Story Grid,” Shawn Coyne calls this the progressive complication. I love his words here too because they do an amazing job explaining what the point of these rising action beats is supposed to do.

The whole point of the rising action scenes is to drive your protagonist to a point where he needs to make a choice he can’t get back from. Each complication adds another layer of difficulty for your hero.

Each time something in this portion of your scene occurs, your character gets to the point of no return, where he needs to choose something.

The most important thing about your rising actions is that each beat needs to up the ante for your protagonist. Things need to get more difficult, whether it’s physically, emotionally, mentally, or any other adverb you can think of.

The whole point is to keep your readers engaged.

If your protagonist has a bunch of random things happen that don’t really make his journey in your story more difficult, your story will turn stale and, shocker, it will be boring and flat. To illustrate the proper use of rising action beats, once again I’ll turn to “The Son of Neptune.”

While Percy is running from the gorgons, we find out several more complicating factors.

The first one is that, since he’s been running for so long, he hasn’t had time to eat or sleep. This makes him weak and much more vulnerable. So, even though the gorgons can’t kill him, it looks like at some point soon he’s just going to break down from sheer fatigue.

Then Percy gets a feeling that he is about to find what he’s looking for. Unfortunately, that thing he’s looking for is way under his feet. You see, Percy is at the top of a mountain. So, getting down to the place he needs to get to will be extremely difficult.

The last beat in the rising action is where Percy gets cornered by his attackers. By themselves, these complications are fairly benign. However, when added together, they create quite the quandary for the hero.

As a matter of fact, this last complication puts Percy in a spot where he has to make a choice he can’t return from. When you get your main character to this point, you know you’ve done your job.

Getting your protagonist to this point is the purpose of your rising action. This question that your character is facing is called the crisis, and I’ll be hitting on that one in my next post.

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The First Element of Story Telling – the Inciting Incident

randallcfloyd — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 09:00:05 +0000

The inciting incident has several names, such as the initial conflict, the exposition, the beginning hook, among other things. What you call it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that your scene, your sequence, your act, and your book have one.

The inciting incident is the thing that gets your chapter going. You can think of it as the problem at the beginning of a scene that gets things going. It can come in many different shapes, sizes, and intensities.

You can even think of the inciting incident as a mini-event.

So, in order to give you an idea of what an inciting incident is, I’m going to break down the first chapter of one of my all-time favorite books.

The book is called “The Son of Neptune,” by Rick Riordan. The book is pure gold, and it’s chalk full of great examples of great writing.

The inciting incident in the first chapter of this book is really easy to identify. In typical Rick Riordan fashion, he throws you right into the action. The scene starts off with the hero trying to escape from two gorgons (Medusa’s sisters), and he can’t kill them. However, you quickly find out that they want to kill him.

It’s a great start, and the details Rick Riordan give you to make this particular chase scene more interesting are great.

The protagonist can’t remember anything about his past except for the name of a girl. He’s trying to find something, but he’s not exactly sure what that thing is. And, apparently, he can’t be killed either.

It’s quite the setup, and all of these things end up with huge payoffs later on in the story.

The post The First Element of Story Telling – the Inciting Incident appeared first on Randall Floyd.

5 Elements of each Story

randallcfloyd — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 09:00:25 +0000

Previously, I’ve written about the three basic building blocks of your story, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. In addition to the basic three-act structure that every story needs to have, there are 5 other key elements essential to storytelling.

If you don’t have them, even if you’re missing one, your book will not work. Someone is going to read it, and while it will probably be good, something just won’t quite feel right in their gut.

The conversation you might have with this person might go something like this:

You: “Well, what did you think?”

Friend: “It was pretty good.”

An awkward pause ensues. You clear your throat before continuing, trying to figure out why your friend seems to be more interested in the wad of gum on the ground than making eye contact with you.

You: “…and?”

Friend (but now you’re debating this title): “I liked it … but … oh, I don’t know. It was just missing something.”

You, expecting something a little bit more concrete, clear your throat a little louder before speaking: “What was missing?”

Frenemy (no longer loyal enough to be your friend), after another awkward pause: “I can’t put my finger on it, exactly. I just know something didn’t work.”

Then your frenemy screams and runs away because your hard stare burned a hole in her forehead. At that point, you’re left wondering what exactly was missing, or what parts of your story didn’t work.

Since the beginning of time …

What your friend couldn’t articulate, was the fact that your book is missing an essential part of every story.

She just doesn’t know it.

Every person intuitively knows how a story is supposed to work. The human race is defined by the fact that we, as a people, live and die by stories.

Stories shape our decisions, our thoughts, and how we react in a given situation. Not only that, but we tell people stories and listen to stories every single day.

Think about it for a second. How did the first caveman teach his kids about the dangers of the sabretooth tiger? He told them about the time he lost half of his left pinkie when he tried to take food from under the cat’s mouth while it was eating its fresh kill.

We have entire industries built on storytelling. Movies, books, music, theatre.

As mankind has evolved, one way to tell a story developed and remained stalwart. All the great stories have these elements. This story structure is so ingrained in our beings that we don’t even realize that we are evaluating stories based on these elements. It’s why your now frenemy couldn’t place her finger on why your book stunk. She didn’t know, exactly. The story just didn’t feel right.

But don’t worry, all is not lost. I’m going to tell you what those five elements are.

The 5 elements of storytelling are …

Get ready for this:

Inciting Incident
Rising Action
Crisis
Climax
Resolution

That’s it.

There’s nothing else to your story. If you have an inciting incident that pulls your reader in, they’ll want to read more. Then, take them along the story, making things progressively more complicated for the main character. At some point, things are going to get so complicated, the main character is going to come to a crisis point.

The crisis is simply a question that the main character faces. It’s the major turning point of the story when the hero must choose between two courses of action. One course of action will turn your hero away from his goal, and one will carry him towards it. Once the decision is made, the climax follows.

Your climax is the height of action/suspense in your story. The part of your story where, though your character has made the decision to move forward, it appears that he is going to fail because the odds are just too big for him.

After your hero gets through the climax, you need to show your readers the consequences or fallout of the climactic scene. That’s the resolution.

If you can bring all of these things together, your story will work.

So, the next time someone tells you your story just wasn’t quite right, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what you need to do to make it better. Or, better yet, you’ll be able to pinpoint it before your friend, who is no longer your frenemy, will have a chance to read it.

The post 5 Elements of each Story appeared first on Randall Floyd.

Why you shouldn’t write a spineless story

randallcfloyd — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 09:00:07 +0000

Or, why every single story or book you write must have a spine.

Steven Pressfield wrote a great article on why everybody needs to figure out their story’s spine. Go ahead and read it here. Now that you’ve read it I think you’re ready to read the rest of this post.

Like Pressfield said, your story spine is an essential building block to your story.

If you read my blog post on the basic units of every story you’ll notice that I’d said the same thing, and for good reason.

I just didn’t call it the story spine.

Each story has to have three things: a beginning and middle and end. These three aspects of your story of our literally your story’s backbone. I’ll come back to this in a minute.

Figure out your story’s spine

Think about your story, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. Think about its beginning, its middle, and its end. Now summarize each section into a single sentence. I’m not going to let you use more than one sentence per section. In fact, the shorter the sentence the more effective this will be for you.

So, let me try this again. Take a look at each one of your sections. Once you’ve done that, come up with three sentences. Limit each sentence to seven words and no more.

This might be a little tough. Just humor me on this one.

Steven Pressfield gave a couple of examples, so if you’re looking for a place to start, start with those. Just for fun here’s a couple more:

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief

Boy discovers he’s a demigod
Boy tries to stop godly civil war
Boy stops war; clears his name

Finding Nemo

Father loses son
Father tries to find son
Father finds son

The Martian

Man is stuck on Mars
Man/NASA try to get him home
Man comes home

Once you have your three sentences, write them down somewhere. Better yet, put them at the very top of your manuscript.

Never forget these three sentences.

Why your story spine matters

I told you I was going to get back to this. Like I said, your story spine is literally your story’s backbone.

You can also think of your story spine as a roadmap. If you know the three basic parts of your story then you’ll never get lost in your writing. If you’re stuck in the weeds, all you have to do is remember your story spine.

I know it’s helped me in the past. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been writing I and can’t seem to figure out where the story is going. Frustrated I would go back to my story spine and remember what I need to be working towards at that point in my story. Every single time, it helped me get back on the right track.

So, if you’re in the middle of your story, if you’re just starting out, or if you’re finished, make sure that you know what your story’s spine is.

If you have a scene that doesn’t help move your story to where it needs to go, then you know what to do to fix it. All you have to do is change the scene a little bit until it moves back towards your story’s spine.

Better yet, like Steven Pressfield said, with your spine all setup, “[you’re] setting yourself up to succeed and not to fail.”

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