James Law and the diagram of why
OK, so my new favourite thing for today? It’s when you’ve been writing professionally for 20 years and still get really excited when a writer shows you some techniques that look sexy, fun, creative – and productive.
More of that in one short second, but first, if you missed my webinar on self-publishing (or, really, on author-led marketing), then you can catch the replay here:
https://jerichowriters.com/bf-self-pub-webinar-replay/
We’ve had massively positive feedback on that webinar. People said things like:
I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed watching your self-publishing webinar the other day … I was genuinely inspired.
This is hands down the best live webinar I’ve been on. Pure value and an inoffensive pitch 😉 Thank you so much Harry.
I watched the replay last night and it was packed with really great information. You guys are definitely the best and most motivating writing resource I have found on my journey so far
Loved your webinar and your follow-up below really helped me buck up … One personal question: Did you ever figure out why your kids were wearing helmets in your kitchen?
No, I never did figure out why my kids were wearing helmets in the kitchen, but then again they found a fake fur pompom in the garden yesterday and built a hedgehog house for it, complete with bed of leaves and dish of milk. So helmets in the kitchen? That passes for normal, I’m afraid.
As for the webinars, a lot of people avoid them because they assume the content is going to be all tease and no value. We don’t do that. We just cram as much serious value into the hour as we can. We do mention a product at the very end of the webinar, but we also tell you not to buy it, so that seems fair. Oh yes, and remember that you can get all the slides from the webinar from a download link here, so no need to take notes.
Right. Bish, bosh. Next thing.
So last night, the Mighty James Law delivered a webinar yesterday on Ideas, Plotting and Planning – that whole process of coaxing a novel into shape. Some of the material was familiar to me, but much of it wasn’t and was genuinely inspirational.
In particular, I loved-loved-loved James’s willingness to state something that isn’t often enough said.
Lots of published novels are bad. They annoy the reader. In James’s candid summary:
Things that annoy me about novels
When I just don’t give a &%$£
When I have no idea why they’re doing what they’re doing
When they do something completely unexpected
(usually to bail the author out of a plot hole)
And we all know the feeling, right? You’re 100 pages into a perfectly competent novel, written by a pro author and published by some big, fancy publishing house. And you just don’t care. Or the action taken by the main character seems desperately contrived or stupid. (“No. Don’t enter the dark house where an armed gunman might be lurking. That sounds idiotic. How about you call your colleagues in the POLICE and call for ARMED BACKUP. That’s the whole point of being in the police, isn’t it?”)
Issues like that kill a novel. I don’t finish those books. I don’t buy another one by the same author. I don’t think they should have been published, or not with that much laziness in storytelling and editing.
So I am (I hope) as alert as James is to the risks. And of course if you write in a genre like ours, you are always bumping up against what the story wants (character enters dark house alone) and what reality demands (phone for backup.) So realistically, you will always be bicycling close to the edge of that precipice. You just want to avoid spilling over the edge.
My solution is rudimentary. It involves lots of writing, even more rewriting, gallons of tea, and a trust that my own editorial smarts will end up washing any plot stupidities out of the fabric. That probably works well enough in the end, but I have always worried that my process isn’t especially efficient.
James’s solution to these issues is the Why Diagram.
It’s a kind of structured attempt to drive out plot-stupidity from your novel before you write it. Why is the reader going to care about your Initiating Incident? Why should they care about your main character? Boom, boom, boom. James’s technique forces you to look at and answer the big questions before you put pen to paper. It’s basically a tool for de-stupidising your story before you even start writing. There’s lots else in his presentation too, but that’s the part that made me sit up and bark.
Plus … James has got three beautifully published books out, more on the way, and a TV deal in the oven. So you know what, I think he’s onto something. I’ll hand over to James himself for the detail.
View James’s webinar replay here
Unless you are wiser than Methusalah or as sour as a dish of crab-apples, I think you’ll learn something and I think you’ll chuckle. I’m a grizzled old SOB, and I did both.
One more webinar to go this season. It’s the Thrice-Blessed Sarah Juckes talking about How To Get Published. If you want to sign up for that (for free, of course), the sign up page is right here. Do note that the webinar is on a Wednesday; the others have been on a Thursday, so don’t get tripped up.
That’s it from me. Go and spin some sunbeams into a wreath of happiness. I’m off to find some tea in the Townhouse – like our guest in the header image.
But what about you? Do you find a lot of commercially published novels a bit disappointing? And what are your planning / idea generation techniques. Pull up an ebony chair or a duck-feather chaise longue and let’s all have a Heated Debate.
Hi. Thanks for this link Harry. I didn’t get to participate in the webinar but watched the replay. Very useful. One thing I want to comment on . . .
James repeated an oft-used statistic, namely that out of every 1,000 manuscripts sent to any one agent, only one is chosen. Like most stats, this one needs some interpretive work.
On the surface it would seem to indicate that you have on average a 0.1% chance to get taken up. I know the reason to propagate that stat, It is to say, “Hey, don’t take it personal etc.” But it is a bit of a downer nevertheless. Let’s shed some further light on it.
If each writer only sends one ms to one agent the chances for adoption are 0.1%. But most writers send multiple stories to multiple agents. If every writer sent on average 5 books to 20 agents per book then the chances of any one book getting taken up are one in ten (10%), based on the same stat. Let’s say the true average may be more like 2 books to 10 agents. The chance would be more like 2% or one in fifty.
Lastly there is the question of quality. Many or most people who submit have simply not done the work required. If, before submission, you have taken some courses, tempered your resistance to criticism and even had some assessments done, your chances accelerate by a factor of . . . hell, I don’t know but it must be good.
What I’m saying is, don’t let the one in a thousand statistic put you off. A dedicated writer can reduce those odds considerably. And, I suggest, Jericho Writers (among others) is there to help you do just that.
Yep: agree with all that – and they’re points I often make myself. And the best cheerer-upper is simply that the odds of a really great manuscript, submitted via an orderly and intelligent submissions process, being accepted is, near as dammit, 100%. We can basically tell which MSs are not good enough, which are maybes, and which are certs. The quality threshold is real, and not that hard to see.
And yes, just to blow our own trumpet & all, but our success rates are way better than that 1 in 1000 stat. I think that’s partly that we attract decent writers in the first place, but it’s also that putting in intelligent third party work always acts as a quality accelerator.
Pandavi. Thanks for revised statistic. Makes me feel a bit better!
I watched James webinar. It was great, and very useful. Am trying out his planning methods.