Million Dollar Writing Series Boxed Set

Includes Million Dollar Productivity, Million Dollar Professionalism, Worldbuilding: From Small Towns to Entire Universes, and Writing As a Team Sport

Kevin J. Anderson

Contents

Million Dollar Productivity

The Million Dollar Writing Series

Introduction

I. No Excuses—Finding the Time to Write

II. The Mathematics of Productivity

III. Kevin’s Eleven—11 Tips to Increase Your Writing Productivity

Afterword

About the Author

Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer

The Million Dollar Writing Series

Introduction

I. The Professional Mindset

II. Dirty Secrets

III. The Business Mindset

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Worldbuilding

Book Description

The Million Dollar Writing Series

1. Creating Universes, Big and Small

2. Everyday Worldbuilding

3. Questions Are Your Best Building Blocks

4. A Worldbuilding Ingredients List

5. Reviewing the Ingredients

6. Conclusion

About the Author

Other WordFire Press Titles

Writing As a Team Sport

Book Description

Introduction

1. To Collaborate or Not to Collaborate (Why?)

2. How to Choose a Collaborator (Who?)

3. Methods of Collaboration (How?)

4. Decisions, Problem-Solving, and Tips (What?)

5. Worst-Case Scenarios

Summary

References

Sample Collaboration Agreement

About the Authors

If you liked this book

Other WordFire Press Titles

Million Dollar Productivity

Copyright © August 2014 WordFire, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.

The authors and publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in creating the Million Dollar Writing series. We don’t believe in magical outcomes from our advice. We do believe in hard work and helping others. The advice in our Million Dollar Writing series is intended to offer new tools and approaches to writing. We make no guarantees about any individual’s ability to get results or earn money with our ideas, information, tools or strategies. We do want to help by giving great content, direction and strategies to move writers forward faster. Nothing in this book is a promise or guarantee of future book sales or earnings. Any numbers referenced in this series are estimates or projections, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings. All numbers are for the purpose of illustration. The sole purpose of these materials is to educate and entertain. Any perceived slights to specific organizations or individuals are unintentional. The publisher and authors are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, financial, or other professional services. If legal or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

ISBN: 978-1-61475-230-1

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

Cover artwork images by Dollar Photo Club

Published by

WordFire Press, an imprint of

WordFire, Inc.

PO Box 1840

Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition August 2014

Printed in the USA

wordfirepress.com

Created with Vellum

The Million Dollar Writing Series

When seeking advice, always consider the source. Many self-appointed “experts” write how-to books without themselves ever accomplishing the thing they are trying to teach you how to do.

In the Million Dollar Writing Series, each of our authors has sold a minimum of one million dollars of commercial product in their field. They have proved themselves, and here they share their wisdom, advice, and experience with you.

There are many factors in becoming a successful writer, and we cannot guarantee that you’ll break into the top levels, but we hope you find the advice to be useful and enlightening.

Introduction

Back in the heyday of pulp fiction magazines, when freelancers struggled to pay the bills by writing stories for half a cent per word (at most), they had to produce, produce, produce. Their motto was “Be prolific or starve.” Armed only with manual typewriters and carbon paper, the most popular and productive writers managed to crank out entire novels in only a few days, stories and novelettes in a single sitting.

Today, with an arsenal of writing tools that includes word processors, email, scanners, internet research, lightning-fast printers, digital recorders, and voice-recognition software, it must be easy for modern authors to be even more prolific than their “prehistoric” predecessors. Right?

Life is crazy and hectic for most of us. We’re surrounded with personal and family obligations, jobs, fitness programs, virtual mountains of email, not to mention videogames, TV, smartphones, social networking, and millions of things to check out on the web.

With all those distractions, how does an aspiring author find time to write?

And when you do find the time, how do you make the most of it?

That’s what I’ll show with this book. You don’t have to be manically productive (though some of us consider that to be fun), but you will learn ways to get more writing out of every available moment.

Part 1

No Excuses—Finding the Time to Write

Being a Full-Time Writer

I’m not a typical writer, I admit that. I might be at the far end of the bell curve regarding the time and energy I spend on writing. This is a conversation that runs through my head:

Writing isn’t a hobby. Writing is a passion.

Writing is a way of life.

Writing is the thing that comes to mind first when you ask yourself, “What am I doing today?”

Writing is always in the back of your mind—when you’re watching football games with the family, or sitting in a meeting at work, or waiting to be served at a restaurant, or fidgeting in the dentist’s office. The voice inside keeps whispering louder and louder, “I could be writing right now!”

When you glimpse interesting people in a crowd, when you experience an unusual event, when you see a spectacular landscape, your immediate reaction is, “How can I use this in my writing?”

If those statements ring true—if you smile and say, “Hey, that’s me!”—then this book is for you.*

*Standard disclaimer: There’s nothing wrong with dabbling, either. It’s enjoyable and often therapeutic to unleash your creative impulse. Don’t worry if you can’t write all the time—you’ll still find parts of Million Dollar Productivity useful.

Comic writer/artist Howard Tayler says, “Being a full-time writer is great. You only have to work half days—and you get to decide which twelve hours that is.”

I am a full-time writer, 24/7—birthdays and holidays included, 365 days a year. Most of my full-time writer friends have a similar schedule. They center their lives around researching, writing, editing, publishing, and promoting what they write. It’s not an easy job.

What does it mean to be a writer, one hundred percent? Every aspect of life has something to do with writing, or how you can apply it to your writing. It’s how you frame the things you do in a way that they have some bearing on writing. Obsessive? Okay, maybe a little.

I have written adult books, non-fiction, young adult books, even children’s pop-up books. I have worked in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, mainstream thrillers, mysteries, horror, comedy, urban fantasy, even historicals. I have done comic books, articles, short stories, and novels so thick that whole forests tremble when my publisher contacts the printing plant for the first press run.

I have been a waiter in a restaurant, a bartender, a caretaker for white lab rats used in medical research, a farm worker, a technical writer and editor, and a co-owner of a beauty salon. I love to climb mountains or hike long wilderness trails.

I am the co-producer on a major film, as well as a public speaker, a workshop presenter, a published photographer, a graphic designer, a record producer, president of a small company, and with my wife Rebecca Moesta, the publisher of WordFire Press.

So far.

And I generally write five or more novels a year. I’ve learned how to get the most out of every possible minute I have available to write, and I’ll share some of the techniques I’ve learned.

If Only I Had the Time

During the Olympics, the world watches great athletes from all nations perform seemingly impossible feats. When those well-toned men and women receive their medals, we admire them for their almost superhuman abilities.

As we sit on the couch munching potato chips, however, most of us don’t kid ourselves that we would be just as skilled, just as fast, just as strong … if only we had the time.

But for some reason, a lot of people believe that about writing books. Anyone can write, they say. How hard can it be to string a bunch of sentences together? They could do it if they just sat down and put their minds to it. If only they had the time.

Here’s how the conversation often goes:

A person at one of my book-signings or appearances walks up to the table, shuffles feet, looks away, then looks at me. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I could write a novel.”

Me: “Oh? Why haven’t you?”

Person: “I just don’t have the time.”

Me: “Hmm. Can’t you scrape together a few hours a week to devote to the project?”

Person: “No. I’m really busy.”

Me: “You know, nobody gives me the time, either. I have to make the time, set priorities, discipline myself to write each day, no matter how tired I am. I worked a full-time regular job while I wrote my first novels, jealously stealing an hour here or there in the evenings and on weekends. That’s how I became a successful author.”

Person: “Well, you’re lucky then. I just don’t have that kind of time.”

Olympic athletes usually start their training as kids, practicing, competing, working their way up year after year. Some of them get up before dawn just to squeeze in enough hours of training during the day. They strive to improve their performance, stretch their abilities, beat their personal bests, and then beat them again. They practice until they’re ready to drop, but they keep at it. Many end up injured along the way. The vast majority of those who try out for the Olympic team don’t make it. They may win semifinals and regional competitions, but only the best of the best become part of the Olympic team—and only the very best of those will win a medal.

I’ve received dozens of letters posing the same question: “I want to write a bestselling novel. But it takes so long, and it’s an awful lot of work. What’s the shortcut?”

Does anyone really say, “I want to win a gold medal in figure skating, but I don’t have the time for all that practice and training. In fact, I don’t even own ice skates. Can you tell me the shortcut to winning a medal?”

Without doing a full comparison, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are about as many New York Times bestselling authors as there are members of the various U.S. Olympic teams. The competition among bestsellers is just as tough, and your chances of success are just as slim.

You try your best. You fail. You try again. You fail. You try harder, you get better. You still fail. You keep trying, keep getting better, keep getting battered. Failure becomes a routine, and you don’t let it bother you. Trying and trying again becomes an obsession. And finally, maybe, something works.

I got my first rejection slip at the age of thirteen, had my first story published when I was sixteen (after I had gathered eighty rejection slips), and sold my first novel by the time I was 25.

No, I don’t know any shortcuts. Sorry. But I can tell you some mistakes to avoid.

Where does this notion come from that anybody can write a novel, if they just get around to it? I never hear the claim that just anybody can be a brain surgeon, or a space shuttle commander, or the manager of a business empire. Even if we did “have the time” to raise capital and invest wisely, few people could succeed in becoming as rich as Warren Buffett.

But to the unpracticed eye, publishing a novel involves little more than stringing a lot of sentences together until you fill enough pages with words.

Every author has heard this suggestion from a friend or a fan, and the proposition never ceases to amaze me: “I’ve got a great idea for a novel. I’ll tell you the idea, you write the book, and then we can split the money.” (As if the idea is the hard part!) In all honesty, I always have plenty of ideas. In fact, I’ll never have time to flesh out all the novel possibilities that occur to me on a regular basis.

I’ve often wished I had the nerve to reply: “Why don’t we try it the other way around first? I’ll tell you an idea off the top of my head, then you do all the research, the plotting, and character development. You can write a hundred thousand words or so, then edit the manuscript (I usually do at least five to ten drafts), sell it to the publisher, work with the editor for any revisions, deal with the copy editor, proofread the galleys, then do booksignings and promotion after it’s published. Then, after all that, we’ll split the money. Sound fair?”

Now, I’m not comparing myself to an Olympic gold medalist. I can’t even stay up on ice skates. I don’t change the oil in my car, remodel the bathroom, or put in my own landscaping, though I could probably figure it out, “if only I had the time.” But I do have a solid grasp on how to write a novel. I’ve been practicing and training for most of my life.

You just have to make the time.

No Excuses

When I was in college taking creative writing courses, I fell in with a “writer’s group” that met on campus every Thursday afternoon. I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I thought hanging around with other aspiring authors would be a great way to get inspiration and make connections.

The best-laid plans …

This group of wannabees would sit in a local coffee house all afternoon, through dinner, and far into the night, sipping cappuccino or mineral water as they talked about the great novels they intended to publish someday.

And hour after hour, they bemoaned the fact that they never had enough time to write.

After listening to their complaints, I figured out a miracle solution to the problem—I stopped going to their kaffeeklatsch and spent those hours writing instead. It was amazing how productive I could be when I actually devoted my time to writing instead of talking about writing.

No excuses.

You never just HAVE time to write.

You need to MAKE time to write.

Last week I was in Hollywood for the Writers of the Future awards and workshop, where my wife and I teach. Because we had obligations—attending rehearsals, teaching classes, as well as taking several business meetings while in LA (you know, movie producers, comic company executives, potential collaborators on multimedia projects, and even just seeing old friends)—my writing time was sparse and frequently interrupted.

I had brought along notes and a (too-optimistic) list of projects I hoped to complete during the trip. In particular, I needed to write the introduction to an anthology I’m editing and also do the full proposal for a new Dune novel with Brian Herbert that my agent and publisher were waiting for. Because of the chaotic schedule, I had to take advantage of snippets of time, and I needed to focus when I did have the chance.

An anthology introduction is relatively simple to write, but you need to have something to say. During downtime (while going to sleep, for instance, or while in the shower) I mulled over what I wanted to include in the intro—a beginning, middle, end … in essence, a point. The whole thing would be only three pages or so; it wouldn’t take me long to write—I just had to find a few minutes here and there.

No excuses. It needed to be done.

There was a Starbucks in the shopping mall across the street from our hotel, and I would get coffee for Rebecca and me every morning, maybe a refill late in the morning, maybe another hot drink in the afternoon. The walk was five or ten minutes each way, each time. Not much, but those were minutes I would otherwise have wasted. In fact, it was enough time to dictate a page or so into my recorder on each trip. (I usually write my first drafts by dictating while I walk—more on that later in the book.)

And I got the intro done in a day.

The proposal for the Dune novel was a lot more involved. Brian Herbert and I had already brainstormed the plot, and I had all my notes. I needed the time, space, and concentration to get a coherent summary down on paper.

During the workshop that day, I had an hour or two between my times in front of the class, so I found a quiet, private place to use my laptop. I closed the door, sat down, put my earphones on, and started writing the “movie trailer” version of the novel Brian and I had plotted—typing a few paragraphs at a time of a plotline or a major scene. Each time I had a break, I could get several sections done before I was called back to duty.

In the afternoon, I found another hour, closed the door again, wrote some more scenes, summarized another storyline. Later that night, after dinner and socializing with some of the students, I was getting ready for bed … but the incomplete proposal weighed on me. It was still unfinished. I had only the climactic sections to write.

No excuses.

So I sat down at the hotel room desk and kept myself awake for another hour, causing much more fictional mayhem, and finished fleshing out the grand finale of the novel. I had written the entire book proposal in the odd hour here and there during other duties throughout the day. When I was done, those snippets had added up to eight completed manuscript pages.

Not bad for a day’s work full time, yet I had managed to do it in otherwise wasted minutes.

With so much else going on during the Holly-wood trip, I could have made excuses and let those minutes or hours trickle away unnoticed. Instead, I wrung out an introduction and a book proposal.

You can do it, too. What’s your excuse?

A Day at Work

Early in my career, a well-respected science fiction writer asked if I would collaborate with him on a short story. At the time, he was at the height of his career, winner of numerous awards, a New York Times bestseller. I couldn’t figure out why he would want to collaborate with a relative newbie like me. He answered, “To learn how you can be so prolific.”

After we had worked together for a few months, he had his answer. “OK, I now know how you produce so much—it’s because you write all the time!”

Everyone else has to put in a day at work—typically eight hours on the job, five days a week (more if there’s overtime).

As a full-time writer, expect to put in just as much time “at work” as anyone else who has a challenging full-time job.

A teacher is expected to be at school before the buses arrive, to teach classes all day, to stay until after the students have gone, and to grade papers into the night. A doctor sees patients all day long, usually eight hours or more. A lawyer spends the entire day writing briefs, researching cases, meeting with clients, filing papers, appearing in court.

Granted, I love to be writing—in fact, I’m even a little obsessive about it—so I like putting in time at my career. But even when people don’t like their jobs, they still have to go to work and put in their hours in order to earn a paycheck. I wouldn’t guess that sanitation engineers or snowplow drivers love their jobs, but they still go to work. It’s expected of them.

At the World Science Fiction Convention many years ago, I was on a panel with award-winning author Octavia Butler and bestselling (and also award-winning) author Dr. Jerry Pournelle. Octavia asked for advice on how to deal with writer’s block, and Jerry responded with his signature curmudgeonliness. “There’s an easy cure for writer’s block. You just sit down and write one sentence, then write the next one, then write the next one. No more writer’s block.”

Alarmed, Octavia asked, “But what if it’s not any good?”

Jerry just blinked. “Well, then you fix it!”

Do bank tellers or librarians get to stay home and wait for the muse to “inspire” them before they go to work? Nope.

Does a mail carrier say, “I think I have ‘postal delivery block,’ and I just can’t do my route today”? Nope.

Does a surgeon cancel his scheduled procedures for the day because she doesn’t feel “inspired” to perform a hernia operation? Does a barista stay home because he just doesn’t feel the creative satisfaction of making coffee that day?

Why shouldn’t a writer do a full day of work—as in actually writing for hours? Put in your time. Butt in chair, fingers on the keyboard, producing words.

A Typical Frantic Schedule

Due to a series of unfortunate commitments, travel schedules, and other book obligations, I found myself facing a tough deadline for the first book in a new trilogy set in my popular Saga of Seven Suns universe: The Dark Between the Stars. I had been planning the novel for a year, but there was always some emergency, some crunch proofing deadline, some quick project that took precedence. So I didn’t get around to starting when I thought I would.

Besides, when facing a manuscript that would be close to a thousand pages long, it was easy to procrastinate.

I had been thinking about The Dark Between the Stars for a long time, but I’d been away from the Seven Suns universe for more than five years, and so I had to reread all seven volumes, take notes, and re-load all of those details into my head. I worked on developing character sketches, fleshing out how the fictional situation had changed in twenty years since the end of the previous series.

For months, I worked on the plot, pouring out ideas, juggling them to see which storylines fell into Book 1, which ones fit better in Book 2. I wrote a very detailed chapter-by-chapter outline (itself over a hundred pages long), a full-fledged blueprint with a paragraph or two summarizing each of the book’s 130 chapters.

All of this was prep work, like a race car revving its engine, building up power, just waiting for the start light to turn green. When I had my full outline in hand, I was ready to go.

Since the draft manuscript was due to my editors in January, I needed to get writing! On October 1, armed with my detailed outline, a reasonably clear schedule, and a lot of coffee, I yelled “Banzai!” (metaphorically) and dove in.

Back in 2000, when I began to write Hidden Empire, the first volume in the Saga of Seven Suns, I went to hike a nice local trail leading up to the Palmer Lake Reservoirs; on the trail that day, armed with my microcassette recorder, I had written the first three chapters.

Hoping to recapture that magic, I did the same this time. With my notes in hand for the first few chapters in The Dark Between the Stars, I hit the Reservoir trail, digital recorder in hand (technology upgrade). I was ready to go, with 130 chapters ahead of me.

I’d had the novel’s first sentence in my head for months. “He had to run, and he fled with the boy out into the dark spaces between the stars.” From that point, all I needed to do was write the next sentence. And the next. On that day’s hike, surrounded by mountains and under clear blue skies, I wrote the first four chapters. I was off and running.

126 more chapters to go.

Each day, I would set out in the morning to do a minimum of two chapters (approximately 2,000 words each). Sometimes in the afternoon I’d go out again and write another one or two. During this marathon, my maximum was six chapters in a day, or about 12,000 words. After each session, I emailed the digital audio files to my typing service. During my most intense pace, I kept three typists busy nearly full time just to process my output.

Every day another two chapters, or three, or more.

But I was interrupted for three days to go to Toronto as a guest speaker at RushCon and then attend the Rush Clockwork Angels concert at the Toronto Air Canada Center. Then another three days in Fargo, ND, where my wife Rebecca and I were guests of honor for ValleyCon, then a five day trip to LA for Disneyland (Rebecca’s birthday), the Anaheim Rush Clockwork Angels concert, a book signing in Burbank at Dark Delicacies, and various meetings with friends. Then up to Denver one evening for a Vertical Horizon concert.

(Even if I write all the time, I do occasionally have a real life, too.)

Then back to writing to make up for lost time.

As a counterpoint to all those distracting appearances and commitments, I carved out a few days to go out to Capitol Reef National Park in Utah, where I hiked in the canyons and dictated enough chapters to get back on schedule again. I dictated new material day by day and, when transcribed chapters came back from the typists, I would try (and fail) to keep up with a first edit.

Exhausting, yes. But there was an advantage, too. The sheer fact of being so immersed in the world, the characters, and the intricate plot of The Dark Between the Stars gave me a heightened sense of focus, a momentum that kept me rolling along at full speed. I didn’t want to do anything else, just get back to those gigantic cosmic problems, throw my characters into traumatic situations, and save them (or maybe not).

Another looming distraction stood in my way, however: on December 2, Rebecca and I had to be instructors on the Sail to Success Caribbean writing cruise. I most certainly did NOT want to be derailed from my daily writing just as I was approaching the big finale! So I decided to finish before we started the cruise.

I pushed harder, wrote an extra chapter per day … and finished the final piece, chapter 130, with four days to spare.

220,000 words in 47 writing days, 900 pages … which I then had to edit, while letting my brain rest and recharge for the next project.

Which I started two weeks later.

A More Typical Day

Now, the Dark Between the Stars schedule was crazy even for me. I don’t (can’t) do that level of intensity all the time. But I’ve always been a very productive writer, and I tend to put in a full work week.

Here’s a more typical day—not that there is ever a truly typical day.

Alarm goes off at 6:45 AM. Listen to the news, have coffee, make breakfast, do a 45-minute workout in the gym (usually while listening to an audiobook, with a notepad nearby in case any ideas spring to mind).

9:30 A.M. Read and answer email, work on social media. Then study chapter notes and get set up for the day.

10:00 A.M. Head out to a local trail or bike path and dictate two chapters while hiking. Rain or shine, snow or wind.

Lunch at home, often as a brainstorming or business meeting with Rebecca.

Afternoon: Edit chapters received from the typist, make business phone calls, proofread galleys, work on outlines, or do research for future projects.

5 P.M. Cook dinner (I like cooking, and we work hard enough to deserve a good meal)—usually while listening to the news or an audiobook.

Evening: Watch TV shows (usually genre shows, which are research for possible projects), while using my laptop to answer emails and post to social media outlets; time permitting, write a blog or answer emails, answer interview questions for magazines or websites.

Before bed, I relax in a hot bath where I have time to read (although the reading usually turns out to be work-related, not pleasure reading, such as manuscripts for an anthology I’m editing, or proofing my own galleys).

Around midnight, Rebecca and I go to bed.

Next day starts the same, seven days a week … except for the numerous business trips, trade shows, conventions, and other obligations.

That’s a day at work, a fairly average one—a lot of hours spent on one aspect of writing or another, and I usually manage to be quite productive. But before I pat myself on the back too much, realize that such a schedule isn’t much different from the workday of, say, a corporate executive, the owner of a busy restaurant, or a hospital administrator.

This is my job. This is my career. This is how I make a living. And like anyone else who has a freelance occupation, if I don’t do work, I don’t get paid. If I don’t deliver what I promised, I’m not likely to get another contract with that publisher.

A professional writer treats a day at work like a day on the job.

It’s the difference between a career and a hobby.

Part 2

The Mathematics of Productivity

Literary elitists often frown on prolific authors. A productive writer, they say, can’t possibly put in the proper amount of hours and effort to create a worthy book. Only through prolonged time and muse contemplation can one possibly produce a decent novel.

Or so they claim.

The reality is, it’s virtually impossible for anybody who writes only one book per year to make a living at it, to pay the mortgage, the grocery and electric bills, the insurance, the kids’ college funds.

Now, that’s fine if you have a nice day job with benefits, and you’re content to earn your income doing something else while you dabble in writing for personal satisfaction whenever the muse hits you.

But if you want to support yourself by writing, if you want to Be A Writer, you’re going to have to be productive. It’s a numbers game.

Over my twenty-five years as a novelist, I’ve published more than 120 books—about five a year, on average. I write, and publish, 300,000–500,000 words annually.

Now, some snobs roll their eyes because of their ingrained—but completely wrong—assumption that “high productivity equals poor quality.”

How do you measure quality?

My novels have received numerous starred reviews in major magazines and have been included on several “Best of the Year” lists. To date 53 of my books have hit national or international bestseller lists, including 21 on the New York Times list. My novels have won or been nominated for most of the major awards in my field—the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, SFX Reader’s Choice Award, the Faust Lifetime Achievement Award, Science Fiction Book Club Reader’s Award, Romance Writers of America RITA Award, Private Eye Writers Association Shamus Award, American Physics Society’s Forum Award, New York Times Notable Book, and more.

Whatever your measure, something in there should denote a reasonable level of quality.

And I routinely write five books a year.

Some of the greatest writers in literature wrote quickly—many of them in longhand (even with goose quills!). Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, and Charles Dickens were amazingly prolific, and their works have remained on bookshelves for centuries.

According to Wired Magazine (Jan 2012), Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, one of the best-loved novels of all time, in a feverish frenzy that lasted about six weeks. In longhand.

William Faulkner wrote his classic As I Lay Dying also in six weeks and claimed to have published his first draft “without changing a word.”

Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in three weeks.

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in twenty days, supposedly on a single continuous roll of paper.

Ray Bradbury wrote his classic Fahrenheit 451 in nine days—on a rental typewriter at UCLA, plunking in a dime for every hour of use.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde in one week.

So … why must high productivity indicate poor quality? Let’s just dispense with that myth, shall we? Fast writing does not mean BAD writing … any more than slow writing equals good writing. A writer can spend years and years and still produce a mediocre book.

What other industry or trade actually frowns upon hard work and productivity? Imagine a carpenter receiving complaints from a customer because he worked twelve hours a day for two weeks, seven days a week, to meet a promised deadline.

Or how about a factory worker being reprimanded because he produces more than his coworkers? Or an accountant who balances the books and finishes the tax forms well ahead of schedule?

For some reason, though, literary elitists complain when a writer produces “too many books” (as determined by some arbitrary scale)—as if ideas and stories are somehow in short supply in a good writer’s imagination.

They don’t understand the mathematics of productivity.

Authors who write one book a year—which many “gatekeepers” of literature consider an “acceptable” level of productivity—almost certainly cannot support themselves by writing alone. Therefore, they have to work another full-time job to pay the bills. I’ve talked with many such authors and noted their writing schedules.

Between work and personal obligations, that person might manage an hour or two of writing in the evenings, some during the weekends. All told, it adds up to maybe ten hours per week of actual writing.

Therefore, by simple math, over the course of a year, the writer with a full-time day job might spend approximately 520 hours writing and editing a novel. Apparently, that’s the right amount of time to devote to a “good” novel, according to the literati.

520 hours.

Okay, let’s go with that.

Full-time writers, on the other hand, can work all day long, and all week long, on writing and editing. And they usually do.

For my own part, as I described in the previous section, I put in 8–10 hours a day, usually seven days a week. That’s 56 hours of writing per week, on average.

Do the math. Even at a conservative estimate, I can devote the requisite 520 hours to producing a novel manuscript—the “acceptable” amount of time a writer should spend on a book (see above)—in eleven weeks.

Run the numbers again if you need to. Eleven weeks.

At that rate, with the “right” amount of time and effort on a novel, I will produce five or six books per year.

In other words, a full-time writer who devotes the same number of hours to a writing career as, say, a dedicated restaurant owner devotes to running a restaurant, can write five books a year, spending 520 hours writing and editing each one.

As a matter of fact, that has been my average output over the course of my career as a novelist.

Slow writing ≠ good writing.

Fast writing ≠ bad writing.

Are you a good writer, or not?

Yes, the literary elitists who see an author’s byline on too many book covers over the course of a year are quick to dismiss those novels as rushed or sloppy, when in fact the author may well have spent as many hours—or more—on each manuscript as a typical one-book-per-year, part-time writer does.

It’s just simple mathematics.

Part 3

Kevin’s Eleven—11 Tips to Increase Your Writing Productivity

Introduction

By this point, I hope you’re convinced you want to be more productive. Good job. That’s fine in theory.

But how do you increase your productivity? What techniques do you use to squeeze more hours, more words, more concentration time out of every single day?

From my own experience, as well as from discussions with other prolific writers, I’ve compiled the following eleven tips to help you go a bit longer or wring out a few more words each time you write.

These suggestions aren’t applicable to every situation—in fact, some are even contradictory—but try the techniques and see if some of them work for you. It’s a toolbox for productivity.

#1 Shut Up and Write!

A writer’s muse is usually depicted as an ethereal woman with a gentle voice whispering hints and ideas that might eventually find their way into a story. Right? We all know the stereotype of writers who don’t do much more than sit around, mulling over esoterica, occasionally jotting down a phrase or two when the muse inspires them. One brilliant metaphor, and that’s enough for the day, right? What more can you expect?

I, on the other hand, have been blessed (or cursed) with a muse who’s more like a bristle-haired, gravel-voiced drill sergeant who says, “Quit dinking around, Anderson! Sit down, shut up, and WRITE!” No puttering, no procrastinating. Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard, eyeballs on screen.

Shut up and write!

If writing is a priority for you, then writing should take priority over reading the morning paper, sharing joke emails, talking to a friend on the phone, watching game shows on TV, going to a movie, making scrapbooks of last year’s family vacation, playing with the cats (or dogs, or fish, as your particular case may be), cleaning the kitchen, or going shopping. The other stuff can wait until you get your pages done.

If you don’t believe that, then writing isn’t your priority.

Writers are among the only people in the world who would rather be cleaning the bathroom than doing their job. When you do get a spare moment to write, whether it’s late at night, at lunch, or early in the morning, don’t find excuses and waste time for “just one little thing.”

Procrastination is the writer’s deadliest enemy. Learn how to spot when you’re finding excuses instead of writing. Or—to use a technical term—dinking around.

To reiterate the instructions of my drill-sergeant muse:

Butt in chair

Fingers on keyboard.

Eyeballs on screen.

If this means keeping a regular draconian writing schedule, do it—and make sure that you write during those times (i.e., “produce words that line up into sentences that are stacked in paragraphs,” rather than mulling over a metaphor that might one day be used in a poem). Don’t merely stare out the window like a kid on a rainy day—get to work.

Everybody else has to go to a job and put in their time. (See earlier section about doctors, lawyers, teachers, and sanitation engineers.) If you aim to be a professional writer, then do your job.

Shut up and write.

Be tough on yourself and on the people around you. Make sure that your chatty friends know that you are not to be disturbed during your writing time. “Sorry, I can’t talk right now. This is my work day.” Just like a teacher. Just like a doctor. Just like anyone else with a full-time job. Turn off the ringer on the phone if you need to and let voicemail do what it’s designed to do.

If you don’t take your own work seriously, you can’t expect others to.

#2 Defy the Empty Page

In any project, the most difficult sentence to type is often the first one. With a 500-page novel looming ahead of you—or even a fifteen-page short story—getting started can be like trying to push a semi truck uphill with two fingers (your typing fingers).

Staring at the empty page or blank screen is an intimidating experience, but if you can trick yourself into typing that first word, and then the first sentence, followed by the first paragraph—you’ll start the whole story rolling.

Defy the empty page. Don’t let the blank screen psych you out.

In the movie Throw Momma from the Train—a writer’s movie if there ever was one!—the writer character played by Billy Crystal spends hours producing mounds of torn and crumpled sheets of paper as he strives to complete his precious first sentence.

“The night was …”

Hour after hour, he gets no farther than that. His agonizing struggle for inspiration provides great laughs as he paces the floor and stares at his typewriter. He thinks he’s got to get the first sentence absolutely perfect before he moves on to the second sentence. After all, didn’t Mark Twain claim that the “difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug”?

No one will ever be struck by your literary “lightning,” however, if you never finish the book!

And you can’t finish until you get started.

Struggling to get your first sentence down can be a silly, but serious, hang-up. The first sentence has to be a hook, the all-important line that captures our reader.

BUT worrying overmuch about getting it Just Right can cause creative paralysis to set in. You must start your fingers typing, or your pen writing, or your recorder recording.

And the first step is to start with something.

Here’s an idea: If the “perfect first sentence” eludes you, then write the second sentence or the next paragraph—get going on the next step after the perfect first sentence and start telling your story. Just get the words moving. As you really sink into your scene, you’ll be more in tune with what makes the best opening line. Then you can come back and add it afterward.

If starting your new project still seems intimidating, then do something to get the fingers warmed up and your mind in gear. Some writers start by retyping the page where they left off the last session, or even just a random paragraph out of a nearby book, simply as a mechanical exercise to get your fingers and brain moving.

It doesn’t matter, so long as you start writing.

Once the page isn’t empty anymore, you’re over that psychological speed bump.

And before you know it, you’re off and running.

#3 Work on Different Projects at the Same Time

This tip works best for people with ADD or low boredom thresholds, and it doesn’t work for everybody, but it has helped me maintain a high productivity level through all stages of many books and stories.

From start to finish, a writing project has many phases: research, plotting, writing, multiple edits, then copyedits, proofreading, and finally the marketing and business side of publication.

And some of these tasks are more onerous than others.

To help even out the hard parts with the fun parts, I keep several different projects in different stages on the creative burner at all times. I can switch from one, to another, to another, and always keep moving forward.

Personally, I love plotting the story from scratch as well as writing the first draft. It’s like a fun creative explosion. But the first major edit after I’ve written the draft, or the last proofread after I’ve read a novel a dozen times—those seem like drudgery.

If I have several novels or stories at different stages of completion, however, I can switch from one process to another. When I get exhausted from one type of work, I can change gears and charge along at full-steam in a different direction.

The simultaneous variety also makes the tedious parts more palatable, the proverbial medicine taken with a spoonful of sugar analogy. I spend an hour researching a new novel, then write a draft chapter of a different story, then proofread galleys of another novel, answer questions in an interview for yet another project, then maybe go back to tweak an outline, or get back to doing more research.

Okay, I admit I’m a restless Type-A person, hopscotching among projects like a guy with a TV remote bouncing from channel to channel. But this method keeps me fully productive at all times.

In the few weeks before originally writing this section, I worked my way through the first rough edit of The Sisterhood of Dune, input Rebecca’s detailed copy edits to The Key to Creation, did the final proofread of the typeset galleys for Star Challengers #2: Space Station Crisis, plotted and wrote a proposal for “The Saga of Shadows,” read short story submissions for my anthology Blood Lite 3, worked out details for promotion and a book-signing tour for Hellhole Awakening, wrote and posted several blogs, and did logistical planning for our next Superstars Writing Seminar.

All of these things got juggled into the daily writing schedule, and I switched from one, to the next, to the next, always keeping my brain moving.

I find that after working on the same project for a while, it begins to lose its freshness and becomes more tedious. And when I’m not enjoying myself, the process of writing becomes a chore instead of a joy. I try not to let that happen, because I love writing. When I grow weary of one type of work (say, the drudgery of proofreading) I can reward myself with doing something else (the enjoyable process of outlining or first-draft writing, for instance), and still keep “writing.”

So far, I haven’t gotten any of my stories mixed up.

#4 Dare to Be Bad (at First) … Then Fix It

Repeat after me: It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be finished.

It’s easier to FIX existing prose than it is to write perfect prose in the first place. The crucial step is to get it down on paper.

Don’t get too obsessive the first time around. Your draft words or descriptions might be redundant. So what? They can be fixed later.

You might make grammatical mistakes. So what? Promise yourself you’ll take care of it after you’ve got the story written. Get it down on paper. No one publishes a “perfect” but only half-completed novel.

A few years ago, I wrote my award-winning, #1 bestselling X-Files novel Ground Zero in six weeks, start-to-finish: 300 published pages, 90,000 words. The publisher had already scheduled it for a breakneck production pace, and everyone was counting on me to deliver the manuscript. I could not be late. I absolutely, positively had to turn in an acceptable novel on time.

The only way I could accomplish this was just to tell my story, get it down on the page, and trust in my writing skills. See the previous section, “A Day at Work.”

I managed to write 25–30 pages a day on that book, seven days a week, until the draft was finished. Although this isn’t an exercise I recommend for most writers, the sheer, intense concentration did increase my writing speed and, I believe, my writing quality as well. By writing straight through, one scene after another without wandering back to earlier chapters to tweak the prose, I built up a “story momentum” that propelled the book along at a breakneck pace.

As soon as the first draft of Ground Zero was done, I allocated as much time as possible to polish the words, and I edited the manuscript again and again until the last second.

Surprisingly, when I went back to the initial pages, fully intending to spend weeks on major rewriting, I discovered that the constant, intense practice had taught me to produce crisp, fast-paced writing as compelling as if I’d spent hours agonizing over each page.

Remember, you can always go back and make changes—always. If you let self-doubt (or the lack of the “perfect” word or phrase) keep you from moving on to the next sentence, then you’ll never finish that paragraph—which means you’ll never finish that chapter, which means you’ll never finish that novel.

Giving yourself permission to “be bad, then fix it” frees your mind just to create. For the first draft, don’t worry about how good it is or how you can revise it. Just do the writing.

#5 Use Every Minute

How many of you have all the writing time you could possibly want?

Sure, we’d all love extended, uninterrupted hours to do nothing but sit and ponder, to write page after page while immersed in the story and characters without a distraction in the world … but that’s a luxury most of us don’t have.

If you think you can only use large blocks of time to accomplish writing, you’re kidding yourself. One sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one page at a time.

In the real world, the majority of writers—even successful, published writers—still have full-time jobs and need to squeeze in their writing around other duties. Writers have families, obligations, even—surprise!—personal lives.

I didn’t actually quit my day job until I’d published eleven bestsellers. It was a 40+ hour per week position with heavy responsibilities, involving frequent travel, as well as constant pressures and distractions. Even so, by taking advantage of snippets of time in the evenings and on weekends, and a spare lunch hour or two, I managed to write two or three novels per year. With a full-time job.

If you have only a few minutes here and there, then learn how to do something productive in those brief bursts.

You can plot a short story in the shower, develop a character background while waiting in the dentist’s office, map out a scene before drifting off to sleep at night. Make progress—however small—on your project during the five or ten minutes in the theater before the movie starts, while cooking dinner, or while doing tedious household tasks. While riding the bus or vanpool, you can write down notes, scribble outlines, even mark up a printout of an earlier chapter.

Those few minutes here and there add up.

Too often I’ve heard the lame excuse, “I don’t have enough time to do a serious amount of writing, so I’ll just [insert procrastinating activity] instead.” Science fiction writer Roger Zelazny used to advise authors to “write two sentences.”

Two sentences. Not such an insurmountable obstacle.

You may really only have time to write two sentences; in other instances, though, those two sentences might lead to two more sentences, and then two paragraphs. Ten minutes later, you’ll have a page done.

A free ten minutes is ten minutes you could be writing. Two sentences will take you two sentences closer to finishing the manuscript.

If you find yourself in a place where you really can’t jot down detailed notes (say, in the gym or waiting in line at the grocery store) use every little snatch of time to ponder what you’re going to write the next time you get a few minutes at your keyboard. Do your mulling ahead of time, so that when you do have a few spare moments to sit with your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keys, you can jump right in and get down to actual writing instead of pondering what you mean to say.

When you have a longer chunk of time to write—an hour, part of an afternoon, a day off—use it to WRITE! Get as much written as you can. This takes a lot of discipline, and it’s easy to get distracted, but set your priorities.

Do you want to be a writer? Then be one. Write.

#6 Set Goals for Yourself … and Stick to Them

I’m a goal-oriented person. Give me a target, or a list, and I’ll set out to accomplish the task, milestone by milestone.

When I moved to Colorado, I got a book that listed all of the state’s 54 mountain peaks higher than 14,000 feet, along with hiking or climbing routes to each summit. Now there was a worthy goal for an ambitious hiker! I immediately made up my mind to climb every last one of them—and I did, over the course of the next several years.

Similarly, when you set yourself a writing objective, you give yourself a target to shoot for—and therefore you have a greater chance of achieving it. You can measure the goal in different ways—set aside one hour per day of dedicated writing, or produce four pages a day, or finish a new story each month.

If you find yourself making too many excuses, try a clear-cut goal to keep yourself accountable.

A caution: Know yourself well enough to set realistic targets, rather than ridiculous ones. If you repeatedly fail to meet your goals, you’ll get discouraged.

Once you learn how to meet your goal of 1,000 words per day, for example, then up the stakes to 1,500 words a day. Push yourself.

A regular writer’s group may provide you with that incentive, such as having to complete a story before the next meeting. Join (or form) a support/competition group that sets goals for their members (e.g., each member must submit a piece of writing at each meeting for the other group members to critique).

Instead of creating undue pressure, the friendly competition can be mutual support among your fellow writers.

The members of a highly successful group in Oregon regularly engage in competitions among themselves. In “the Race,” they compete with one another, keeping track of who has the most submissions in the mail at any one time. The loser buys the others dinner.

But no one is the loser, really, because even the person with the lowest output is more productive than he or she would have been without the inspiration of those fellow writers.

Try entering writing contests; you can find many of them listed online. All of these contests have deadlines that force you to complete your entry by a certain date. In the science fiction and fantasy field, one particularly successful contest is the Writers of the Future; it’s been around for more than three decades, and Rebecca and I are both judges, along with many of the most respected writers in the genre. We highly recommend it.

The prospect of winning, as well as a set deadline for entries, may give you the nudge you need.

(Caution: Beware of contests that claim all publication rights to submissions. Don’t give up your story, no matter how good the contest sounds.)

Each November is National Novel Writing Month, during which entrants pledge to complete a 50,000-word novel manuscript in 30 days. In the most recent year’s Nanowrimo, participants produced 2.8 billion words in a single month. Even if you don’t think you’re ready for a challenge of that magnitude, follow next November’s Nanowrimo and get inspired.

#7 Know the Difference Between WRITING

Write during the writing stage.

Edit during the editing stage.

Even though both activities involve sitting at the keyboard (usually) and staring at the screen, Writing and Editing are two very different processes. Each requires a separate set of skills and talents. One taps the creative side of your brain, and the other taps the analytical side. Learn to recognize the difference, and teach yourself to focus on only one process at a time.

Writing is the creative part of the process. When you’re writing—creating—let yourself get caught up in your story and be swept away by the characters, setting, and situation as the plot unfolds. (See Tip #4.) Don’t worry about the commas. Write the story first: Tell what happens, where it happens, and who it happens to, without fiddling with the previous paragraph, polishing one bit of dialogue, rearranging the sentences, researching subtle rules of usage, looking up historical dates, or finding the proper punctuation. That will just hang you up and stall the writing. No need to get every spelling or grammar guideline correct at this stage. You’ll have ample opportunity to do that later.

Once the creative part is done, when your draft is written and the story told, then activate the analytical part of your brain. Change hats and become an Editor instead of a Writer.

Okay, now is your opportunity to look at the sentence structure, cull out the redundant phrases, correct the grammar, add the appropriate punctu-ation, run your spell check, look up Napoleon’s birthdate, double check the color of your character’s eyes.

As I’ll describe in Tip #9, I have two totally separate methods for writing and editing. I do my initial drafts by dictation while I hike. This is an advantage, since it’s not physically possible for me to worry about, or even see, cosmetic nuances of grammar or punctuation. After I dictate the first draft and have it transcribed, then I do my editing on the computer.

I’ve seen too many writers derail their creative process by stopping the action to tweak a word or a sentence. If you write a few paragraphs, then go back and polish them, you destroy all the forward momentum you had. It’s like shifting gears—forward, reverse, forward, reverse. You could burn out your mental transmission.

If you can train yourself to save the criticism for the second draft, you’ll actually finish writing and have something to polish.

#8 Create the Best Writing Environmentfor Yourself

So, you’ve developed a writing routine, set up an office or at least a place where you do your writing, and you’ve gotten accustomed to it. Why bother changing, if it works?

But sheer habit doesn’t necessarily make your setup beneficial to your writing. Just because you’ve been using a certain place at a certain time in a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s the only way you can be productive. Have you ever stepped back with an objective eye to consider whether it works best for you?

Is your “office,” whether it’s a spare bedroom, a corner of the kitchen table, or an old desk in the garage, really conducive to the most productivity? Don’t just accept whatever work environment happened to coalesce around you as you started writing. Consider other possible rooms, desks, tables in the house. Try to create a “haven” for yourself, a place that you can call a writing office, so that when you’re working there, you—and everyone else—regard it as your real workplace.

Look at where you have your computer or laptop set up. Is it on a TV tray in the middle of the living room with chaos and clutter all around? Probably not the best spot. Is it a corner of the kitchen table with any old chair pulled up? A place where it’s easy for friends and family to interrupt you for a casual chat? Is the television on nearby and distracting you?

All right, now look at your writing surface and your chair. Make sure that they’re adjusted at the proper height: your bent arms should form a loose “L” to reach the keyboard. Most regular chairs are much too low to use with a typical tabletop surface for typing. If you hunch over or have to reach up for the keyboard or mouse, you could end up with sore arms, wrists, shoulders, and so on—which can lead to serious repetitive-stress injuries such as pinched nerves, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome, or cubital tunnel syndrome, to name a few.

I know from experience—my wife has had four arm surgeries to correct damage caused by an improper office setup from when she worked a full-time office job. Sit on a pillow if you have to, or install a keyboard shelf. Get yourself set up at the proper height. It will pay off big time in the long run—and you are in this writing thing for the long run, right?

Next, in order to make the most out of your office, consider your personal habits and schedules. These will be different for each writer.

Some people write best at home in familiar surroundings, while others find the home environment too full of distractions like ringing phones and numerous little household tasks. Some writers find a coffee shop environment to be stimulating and inspirational with its constant comings and goings and background chatter, while others prefer to get away from distractions by renting a separate room to be used specifically as an office outside of the home.

For myself, I happen to be most productive when writing or editing with loud music playing; Rebecca, on the other hand, works best in total silence (yes, that means we have our offices on opposite ends of the house).

A side note: I use a set of noise-cancelling headphones while I travel. They are remarkably effective at shutting out the background hubbub of airports, train stations, and coffee shops—which lets me concentrate completely, even amidst the chaos. Try them. (I’m on an airplane editing this right now, with the headphones on.)

Now consider another thing: What time of day are your peak imagination and energy at their peak? Everyone has different cycles. I’m a morning person, and I get the most work done first thing in the day with fresh coffee running through my bloodstream. Rebecca is a lot slower to get moving and doesn’t do much creative work until later in the day, but then she stays up well beyond the time when my sleepy brain is shutting down.

If you’re a night person, try to arrange your writing time for late at night. If you’re a morning person, get up a little earlier to do your creative work. Pay attention to your own rhythms.

As an experiment, try writing under different circumstances, at various times, and in a variety of places, then determine the best environment for you. Which collection of variables allowed you to produce the most words that day? You may be surprised what you learn about yourself.

Then, once you’ve figured out how and where you can be most productive, arrange your schedule and your office environment to accommodate that. Be proactive instead of reactive.

#9 Think Outside the Keyboard

All right, now that you’ve set up your perfect writing office, keep in mind that this is not the only way you can write. Your computer isn’t the only tool you have.

Think outside the keyboard.

If you can learn different ways to write, in different places, at different times, with different tools—like a talented musician learning to play several instruments—then you can take advantage of just about any situation in which you find yourself. And you’ll get pages of writing done, no matter where you are.

I have a desktop computer in my office, where I do most of my editing. I am just as comfortable working on my laptop whenever I’m away from home—in restaurants, at hotels, on airplanes. But it doesn’t stop there.

Remember the old pad and pencil? For those times you find yourself alone in a coffee shop, or riding the bus, or sitting at a picnic table outdoors, you can jot down notes, outline a story, write a rough draft. By hand. It’s worked for a lot of writers throughout history.

My wife and I once plotted and outlined an entire Star Wars “Junior Jedi Knights” trilogy in an Italian restaurant using crayons on the white butcher-paper tablecloth. Before leaving, we tore off the wide section of paper, folded it, and took it home with us as our “notes.”

I prefer to do my initial writing with a handheld recorder. I love to go out hiking on beautiful trails and take inspiration from the scenery around me—with the added advantage that it gets me away from all the interruptions at home. If I really want to, I can even hike in places where there is no phone service. Writing by dictation lets me be productive during an already enjoyable outdoor activity.

Sometimes with the recorder I just talk myself through plot snags and let my imagination roam. I’ll develop imaginary biographies for characters or histories for my fictional worlds. Most of the time, though, I dictate finished prose, from the first line of a chapter to the last. My productivity record (so far) has been composing 45 pages of finished prose in a single, very long, hike.

Speaking finished prose out loud into a voice recorder may feel awkward until you get used to the idea. Some writers couldn’t quite get the hang of it; several told me they felt too self-conscious walking along and talking to themselves—but it’s not so different from talking on a cell phone. Nowadays, we’re all used to seeing people talking into thin air.

Any kind of writing is a learned skill and requires practice. You didn’t type 200 words a minute the first time you touched a keyboard. “Typing” seems unnatural to a beginner—the keys are in a very strange order, but you get used to it and then pick up speed.

Same with dictation.

While this might not seem to be a writer’s traditional technique, keep in mind that the story-teller’s art has always been a spoken one. Revered shamans would tell tales around the campfire, legends of monsters in the darkness or heroes who killed the biggest mammoth. Homer did not write his epics down. What could be more natural than speaking your novel aloud before committing the words to a computer hard drive or an editor’s red pencil?

Before I learned to carry my recorder along with me, I would inevitably come up with snatches of brilliant prose as I walked along far from home, and by the time I hurried back to my keyboard, I’d forgotten it. With practice, though, I now dictate finished text off the top of my head (which I still polish after the pages are transcribed).

The drawback with a recorder is that someone has to transcribe your words, which can be a tedious chore if you do it yourself. Numerous typing services are available to do this for a reasonable fee, and there’s even voice-recognition software (although science fiction terms can make the learning curve rather steep). I currently use an Olympus DSS 7000 digital voice recorder, with the attendant software to download my audio files and email them to the typist.

Other people have developed their own unique alternatives to sitting-at-the-typewriter writing. Find some for yourself, see what your natural method for storytelling is.

#10 Get Inspired!

Every creative writing teacher repeats the classic axiom, “Write what you know.”

Therefore, the more you know, the more you’ll be able to write about.

Every experience, class, interesting acquaint-tance, or place you visit goes into your pantry of “ingredients” for new material. Part of your job as a writer is to collect these ingredients so you can use them to add color and veracity to your prose. So—learn new subjects, do new things, meet new people, see new places. You never know what flavors might combine to make a fabulous dish.

Strictly to broaden my knowledge-base of experiences over the years, I’ve taken a hot-air balloon ride, gone white-water rafting and mountain climbing, traveled to various cities and countries, been a guest backstage at rock concerts, attended a world-class symphony, taken tours of high-tech scientific research installations, gone aboard a giant aircraft carrier as well as cruise ships, been on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange, gone zip-lining and indoor skydiving, summited hundreds of mountain peaks, and toured behind the scenes at FBI Headquarters.

You’ll be surprised how many doors open to someone who says “I’m a writer doing research.”

Feeling less adventurous? Then do other things to get inspired. Read extensively in a wide variety of genres, research esoteric topics, take a class about a subject you know nothing about. Sign up for a ballroom dancing group, hang out with a model-rocketry club, go outside at night and learn the constellations. Watch documentaries at random. Go to a museum—especially an oddball one. Here in Colorado Springs, for example, we have the trolley museum, the Olympics museum, a mining museum, an insect museum, a fine arts museum, a pioneer museum, a figure skating museum, a money museum, an air and space museum, a ghost town museum, a figure skating museum, an antique billiard museum, and the Pro-Rodeo Hall of Fame.

But it doesn’t have to be that formalized. In your daily life, open your eyes and observe what is around you. Every experience you have is filled with details you can absorb and use at some later time. Watch people. See what they do, observe how they act, listen to how they talk, try to understand who they are and make up biographies for them.

In short, exercise your creative muscles. Go outside your comfort zone. Stock up your mental pantry with ingredients so that you’ll have a variety of interesting things to cook with.

Of all the things you see, do, and learn, you never know what might spark a story idea or an interesting character. Being inspired will add to the energy you can put into your writing.

#11 Know When to Stop

Science fiction master Robert Heinlein proposed a set of rules for writers, starting with “You must write” and then “You must finish what you write.”

Yes, actually finishing is the key.

Endless polishing and editing and revising and polishing again and then rewriting and then editing does not make a story perfect—it just makes a story endless.

Some writers start out with a promising draft of a story, then they begin polishing … and polishing … and the story vanishes into a black hole of never-ending revisions. It’s never good enough to send out, and so it never gets sent out, and so it never gets published.

Early in my professional career, I ran a monthly writers’ workshop with a group of fellow novelists and short-story writers. One member brought in a new story to be critiqued. It was fairly good, and we suggested some improvements. He took it home, then brought in a revised version for the next month’s meeting critique, and we again made our comments.

And he did the same thing for the next three months. Same story, draft after draft, meeting after meeting. After a certain point, there was no noticeable improvement. The story was stuck in an infinite loop. As far as I know, he never submitted it anywhere.

Mike Resnick, who has won more major awards than any other writer in the history of science fiction, once told me his philosophy of diminishing returns in editing. He can get a story 95% perfect (by his measurement) in several drafts, at which point he could either work for another month to nudge the story a percentage point or two better (subtle differences that few, if any, of his fans would notice), or he could spend the same amount of time and effort writing a whole new story. “Which would my fans rather have?”

Finish the story. Send it out. Then write another one.

Don’t misunderstand: You can’t turn in a sloppy manuscript, and each submission should be as good as you can make it, but there comes a point at which you aren’t really improving, but just marching in place. Are you becoming obsessive about rewriting and polishing? Are you making cosmetic changes and circular edits that no longer improve the story?

Is it possible you’re simply looking for excuses to put off finishing the manuscript? Avoiding sending it off to an editor somewhere?

It’s done!

On to the next one.

Recap

1. Shut up and Write

2. Defy the Empty Page

3. Work on Different Projects at the Same Time

4. Dare to Be Bad (at First) … Then Fix It

5. Use Every Minute

6. Set Goals for Yourself … and Stick to Them

7. Know the Difference Between WRITING and EDITING

8. Create the Best Writing Environment for Yourself

9. Think Outside the Keyboard

10. Get Inspired!

11. Know When to Finish

Afterword

A fast writer is not necessarily a bad writer any more than a slow writer is automatically a literary genius.

No matter what your writing speed, you have to find time to write in a hectic schedule with many conflicting priorities. When you do find time to write, make the most of that time and produce finished prose.

I hope these suggestions will help you increase your writing productivity. Some of the various ideas may not work for you—they don’t all work for me, all the time—but they are techniques to help you think outside the box. Try something different and see if you find it effective.

The one absolute piece of writing advice is that authors are all different, and there’s no right way to do it.

Okay, time’s up. The book is over. Now get back to writing.

About the Author

KEVIN J. ANDERSON has published 160 books, more than fifty of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as a unique steampunk fantasy novel, Clockwork Angels, which is based on the new concept album by legendary rock group Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, including the Blood Lite series, the Five by Five series, and A Fantastic Holiday Season. Anderson and his wife Rebecca Moesta are the publishers of WordFire Press.

Million Dollar Professionalism for the Writer

Copyright © October, 2014 WordFire, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.

The authors and publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in creating the Million Dollar Writing series. We don’t believe in magical outcomes from our advice. We do believe in hard work and helping others. The advice in our Million Dollar Writing series is intended to offer new tools and approaches to writing. We make no guarantees about any individual’s ability to get results or earn money with our ideas, information, tools or strategies. We do want to help by giving great content, direction and strategies to move writers forward faster. Nothing in this book is a promise or guarantee of future book sales or earnings. Any numbers referenced in this series are estimates or projections, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings. All numbers are for the purpose of illustration. The sole purpose of these materials is to educate and entertain. Any perceived slights to specific organizations or individuals are unintentional. The publisher and authors are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, financial, or other professional services. If legal or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

ISBN: 978-1-61475-243-1

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

Cover artwork images by Dollar Photo Club

Published by

WordFire Press, an imprint of

WordFire, Inc.

PO Box 1840

Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition October, 2014

Printed in the USA

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The Million Dollar Writing Series

When seeking advice, always consider the source. Many self-appointed “experts” write how-to books without themselves ever accomplishing the thing they are trying to teach you how to do.

In the Million Dollar Writing Series, each of our authors has sold a minimum of one million dollars of commercial product in their field. They have proved themselves, and here they share their wisdom, advice, and experience with you.

There are many factors in becoming a successful writer, and we cannot guarantee that you’ll break into the top levels, but we hope you find the advice to be useful and enlightening.

Introduction

If you want to be treated as a professional writer, you need to act like a professional. Take yourself and your career seriously. Behave in a way that you would expect a professional to behave.

When you see a doctor, lawyer, banker, or business executive, you expect certain standards—that they are mature, reliable people you’d want to do business with.

You’ve probably seen writers portrayed on TV or film as eccentric, ditzy, pompous, or curmudgeonly, as if that’s the norm for a writer. They shrug. “Eh, creative people. What can you do?”

You can be professional.

When Kevin sold his first novel in 1987, he received an author questionnaire from the publisher’s publicity department, asking about his interests, his areas of expertise, and his background in doing interviews and public appearances. Before the publisher turned him loose on book signings or set up media interviews, Kevin naïvely assumed that some-one would train him. Since the publisher had a vested interest in their author making a good public impression, shouldn’t they go over a list of guidelines or standards of behavior to make sure he was ready for prime time? After all, as an author representing their publishing company, he had their reputation as well as his own on the line. Surely they gave their authors some kind of code of conduct to keep them from shooting themselves in the foot, putting their foot in their mouths, or any other foot metaphor you prefer. When he asked about it, they told Kevin, “You should just know what to do.”

Unfortunately, many authors have no idea what to do.

After a successful career spanning more than a quarter of a century, with over 125 books published and 50+ national or international bestsellers, Kevin has spent a lot of time learning how to be professsional.

He and his wife Rebecca—also an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of dozens of books—have given lectures and workshops for thousands and thousands of writers.

They have presented their seminar “Things I Wish Some Pro Had Told Me When I Was Starting Out” for two decades, often to standing-room-only crowds.

Finally, they decided it was time to put that information in writing. The need for business knowledge and professional behavior is greater than ever. With more authors choosing the indie publishing route, they are forced to be front and center—producing and promoting their books, meeting fans, talking to bookstores. No longer can socially inept authors safely tuck themselves away in a cabin so they can write, while someone else does all the legwork.

With the explosion of social media, blogs, and discussion boards, where writers have direct interact-tions with readers—not to mention the potential for unfortunate flame-wars—it is imperative that writers learn to be professional, to stand out above the crowd of amateurs and be taken seriously.

The authors hope this book helps. They’ll be watching.

Part 1

The Professional Mindset

Speak, Dress, and Act Professionally

Writers aren’t always dazzling socialites or the life of the party. In fact, writers tend to be more reclusive than average, maybe even a bit eccentric. They commute to fictional worlds for their daily work, and hang out with imaginary friends.

In the real world, though, a professional writer needs to adhere to certain basic social standards—such as grooming and hygiene. Don’t laugh: we wouldn’t be saying this if we hadn’t met so many counter-examples.

If you’re going to be in public, meeting editors, authors, and readers, follow these rules:

- Bathe

- Brush your teeth

- Wear clean clothes

- Look like someone an editor would want to do business with

Each time you talk to an editor or a publisher, whether it’s at a cocktail party, on a panel, at lunch, or just chatting in the hall, think of it as a job interview. Yes, the vintage Star Wars t-shirt that you bought at the original showing of the film back in 1977 might be your favorite shirt, but—be honest with yourself—it’s been laundered too many times and doesn’t really fit all that well anymore. No, you don’t have to wear a business suit (most authors don’t), but at least look professional.

When an editor talks to you, she will form an immediate assessment from your first impression. Is this a person I can rely on? Will this author deliver a book on time, as contracted, handle herself well in interviews, and appear at bookstore after bookstore without annoying the managers or customers? Is this somebody I want to work with?

In public, Kevin generally wears a nice sport jacket, dress shirt, slacks, no tie (it’s a challenge for him even to remember how to tie a necktie). It’s a look that Rebecca has developed and cultivated for him, and it works.

O O O

Kevin:

When I attended my very first swanky Nebula Awards ceremony in Oakland, California, I was seated at a table with a dashingly dressed Robert Silverberg and a similarly tuxedoed Dan Simmons. Much to my embarrassment, I actually did wear that old and faded Star Wars t-shirt mentioned above—and stuck out like a sore thumb. I looked like an amateur.

That was not the impression I wanted to make when sitting next to the titans of science fiction and fantasy.

Consider and create a specific look for yourself. Mega-bestseller Neil Gaiman never appears without his black leather jacket, black t-shirt, and aviator shades. Award-winning author Jay Lake and bestseller Aaron Allston were both well known for wearing bright Hawaiian shirts at every public appearance. Bestselling young adult author James A. Owen always wears a smart white shirt and black pants with a Victorian-looking vest, complete with pocket watch.

You might want to think through your branded look, though, before you choose something particularly elaborate. Bestselling dark fantasy author Sherrilyn Kenyon showed up at a large convention in a lovely crushed-velvet dress, corset, top hat, and gloves which gave her a beautiful steampunk appearance … in supremely humid and hot Atlanta in August; she told us she never wanted to do that again.

O O O

When you speak on stage or in public, even in hallway conversations, people will expect that a writer has a certain command of the language. Be articulate.

Use complete sentences. When people hear you talk, they should want to read your books.

You don’t have to be prissy and erudite Professor Higgins from My Fair Lady, but you probably don’t want to curse like a drunken sailor either—unless that’s the brash, edgy image you’re trying to project. (Even so, the longevity of brash, rude, in-your-face authors doesn’t tend to be great.)

The same goes for online interactions. When people read a posting you made, they should not roll their eyes at poor grammar, sloppy spelling, or frequent typos. Instead, they should be impressed with how interesting you are, so they will want to seek out your blogs, articles, stories, or books.

Be Reliable

If you accept a writing assignment, do what you agreed to do, because someone is relying on you. The publication process of a book or magazine or website involves a lot of moving pieces; don’t be the sand that clogs up the gears.

Turn in your stories, columns, novels, scripts

- On time

- On topic

- At the correct length.

If you’re the sort of writer who cannot operate that way—if you can’t plan ahead, be bound by contracts, and deadlines, or subject or length constraints—then don’t take the assignment in the first place. You’ll just cause headaches for yourself and for everybody who is counting on you.

That’s not to denigrate your skill as a writer, but to show courtesy to all the other people involved in the production process who need to get a job done. You’ll be better off writing your works on spec, at your own pace; once the manuscript is finished to your satisfaction, then try to find a market for it.

If you agree to do a particular story for a particular anthology, then you have made a commitment to the editor. It’s your obligation to do your part. Editors have deadlines too. They are expected to deliver the manuscript that the publisher contracted for. That editor is counting on you.

O O O

Kevin:

I signed a contract with a major publisher to deliver a 100,000-word anthology based on a popular media property with stories about a specified list of characters.

Because these were all stories set in a well-defined, pre-established universe, I chose a group of fellow authors who were familiar with the series and the characters. They were also writers I thought I could work with. As colleagues, they had made a good impression on me when I got to know them. The publisher gave me a hard deadline when I had to turn in the completed manuscript with all the stories ready to go.

This was going to be a major title for the publisher, the lead release for that month. Advertising geared up in advance. Sales representatives solicited orders from bookstores across the country. The cover art was commissioned.

Each writer promised to deliver a 5,000 word story about their character. (Note: in fiction, a request for 5,000 words is usually an estimate, and a range of 4,000–6,000 words is acceptable). The authors signed contracts to deliver by a date that gave me enough time to read all the submissions, request rewrites if necessary, and then deliver the nice, neat package to the publisher. That way, everyone could plan for the book.

Because I had invited real professionals, the authors delivered their stories just as I requested. Exactly on time. All at the right length.

Except one.

As my deadline with the publisher approached, I began to sweat, still waiting for the last story. I nudged the author, who promised me that the story was coming. Two weeks later, still no manuscript, and everything else was done. The publisher was waiting. So I prodded the author again, this time with more enthusiasm. Yes, I was promised, it was almost done. The story was coming.

Now the publisher was starting to sweat. The anxious editor wanted to know where the anthology was; everyone was ready to go into production. The release date was coming up.

So, I begged and cajoled the delinquent author, even used a threatening tone. Now, this was not a story I could just leave out of the book; it was about an absolutely vital character. And by now it was much too late for me to find a replacement writer.

Finally, weeks after the publisher had expected the complete production manuscript, I received the story. And, no, it was not the agreed-upon 5,000 words, not even within the margin of error … but three times that length. 15,000 words!

“The story got out of hand,” the writer told me. “But it’s really good. You’ll love it.”

So, not only was the story delivered more than a month late, it was vastly longer than I had been expecting.

This caused more than one problem in the line of publication dominoes. When commissioning these stories from my fellow professional authors, I had offered them a pay rate of 5¢/word. Here’s how it works: when a publisher contracts me to edit an anthology, they give me a certain amount of money to work with. The editor generally keeps half of the advance for her share and the remaining half is divided up among the authors. The editor budgets accordingly.

Expecting 5,000 word stories—which is what the authors had promised to deliver—I had divided up the advance money so I could pay for them all. But now, at the very end of the whole process, with everything else delivered and all the money paid out except for what I had budgeted for the maddeningly late author, I suddenly had to pay for three times as many words as I had anticipated!

Guess where that money comes from. The editor’s share.

I was not happy with this.

But wait—there’s more. The publisher had already been soliciting and advertising this title. They already had covers printed. Expecting a 100,000 word book, as had been contracted, they had the spine width set and an approximate number of pages. Therefore, they had established the book’s cover price—at least until I dumped an extra 10,000 words on them. That dramatically changed the page count in the printed book—by 10%—and either forced them to raise the price of the book or reset the entire volume with smaller type so that it could fit in the same number of pages.

They were not happy with this, either.

I have edited many subsequent anthologies. That particular author did not ever receive a second invitation.

We have gotten much of our continued work in the publishing industry by proving that we are reliable and professional. Together, we wrote fourteen Young Jedi Knights books for Lucasfilm, which were released every three months, forty-two months in a row. Initially, they commissioned us for three books, then six, then eleven, then fourteen. If an editor knows he can count on you, that’s one less thing for him to worry about.

When you prove that you are a reliable writer, you become a writer that the editor will work with again. And again.

Always Do Your Best Work

Everything you write and send out into the world via book, magazine, game, blog, newsletter, or other medium will be some reader’s first encounter with your work. Every piece of work you publish is an audition for future readers. There is no such thing as an insignificant story.

Yes, sometimes deadlines are tight, and you won’t have as much time to polish as you’d like, but still give your best effort in a given timeframe. Pour your focused energy into it. Don’t ever “phone it in” and let yourself create less than your best.

O O O

Kevin:

I was in Los Angeles teaching a writer’s workshop and also frantically working on the last line edits to a novel manuscript that was just about to go into production. I absolutely had to FedEx the manuscript to the publisher no later than Saturday. I worked and reworked certain scenes, polishing up the descriptions to make them as good as possible.

Expecting to finish the book ahead of deadline, I made plans to spend that Saturday with a friend. We intended to go to Universal Studios, have lunch, enjoy the day. But by Friday night, I still wasn’t satisfied with all the revisions I wanted to make on the novel.

I called my friend and postponed getting together with him until Saturday afternoon, because I needed several more hours to work on the manuscript. He was disappointed. “Come on, we’ll have fun!” Even though I insisted that my editing took priority, he kept turning the thumbscrews. “Oh, you don’t need to work so hard—and why does it matter? That’s just a Star Wars novel! Who’s going to know the difference?”

Just a Star Wars novel?

“This Star Wars novel is going to be read by hundreds of thousands of people,” I said. “If I don’t do my absolute best job, how can I expect those readers to try any of my other books?”

So, I spent Saturday morning polishing until I was satisfied, then shipped the manuscript off just before the FedEx pickup deadline. And in the afternoon I had fun with my friend.

That novel was Darksaber, which became a big bestseller and is still voted by the fans as one of the best Star Wars novels ever written. I’m glad I spent the extra time and effort.

No writing assignment is too trivial to deserve your best efforts. Once you commit to contribute, don’t change your mind and decide the work is beneath you. If you accept an invitation to write a story for the Purple Unicorn Stories anthology, for instance, don’t whine to your friends or fellow writers, “Oh, brother, I can’t believe I have to do a lame story for a ridiculous Purple Unicorn Stories anthology. I mean, who cares about purple unicorns, anyway?”

By taking on the challenge, you have agreed to do the job and are obligated to deliver your best work. Regardless of what you think about the literary merits of purple unicorns, never forget that the people who buy a book of purple unicorn stories genuinely want to read and enjoy them. They are paying for that book. You owe them the best purple unicorn experience you can produce in the given timeframe. If you have a low opinion of your readers, they will sense your attitude. Conversely, if you do your best to deliver the best darn purple unicorn story possible, you will probably earn faithful readers for your other work.

Complaining about a job that you accepted is a demonstration of bad manners. When people (especially editors) hear you disparage a project, you come across as difficult or unpleasant to work with. On the other hand, if you accept an assignment, do a good job, and act like a professional, it’s likely that more work will come your way.

O O O

We have been giving workshops on professionalism for two decades, often using the purple unicorn example. In 2014, at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado Springs, one of our other guest speakers was Lisa Mangum, the editor at a major publishing house. When she heard our lecture, she was so intrigued by the concept that she offered to edit the purple unicorn anthology, if we chose to do it.

Six months later, WordFire Press released One Horn to Rule Them All: A Purple Unicorn Anthology, with stories by Jody Lynn Nye, Todd McCaffrey, and Peter S. Beagle, as well as contributions from our writing graduates, with all profits going to a scholarship fund for the Superstars Writing Seminar.

And they are some truly exceptional purple unicorn stories!

Don’t Be a Jerk

A professional writer acts professional.

If you want to be perceived as an author who deserves the respect of your peers, your editors and publishers, and your readers, then be professional. It’s not just a façade you present when in public, it’s a fundamental attitude that you carry with you wherever you go. It’s the way you take on assign-ments, the way you treat other people in the work-place, and how you get your writing done.

Here’s the first important lesson:

Never,

never, ever,

never, never, never, never, ever

be a jerk.

(There are alternate technical terms, many of them not fit for polite company.)

Never be a jerk. Not to anyone you interact with: assistants, editors, fans online, fans you meet face to face, fellow writers, reviewers, interviewers. In fact, while we’re at it, never be a jerk to the cashier at the store either, or to the UPS driver, or to the appliance repair tech. Treating your fellow humans with respect is good for your karma, and it’s just common decency.

But other than decency, why should a writer bother being nice to the gardener, or the gas station attendant?

Because everyone—everyone—is important. The possibilities are countless. The guy ahead of you in line at the post office might become a business associate. At a writer’s conference, the person at the bar asking for more pretzels may be an editor, a publisher, a bookseller, or a fellow writer who could invite you into an anthology. The attorney you meet in a coffee shop might be willing to give you some pointers for a legal thriller you’re writing. If nothing else, each person you meet is a potential reader or supporter of your work.

There’s no drawback to being nice. That’s what professionals do.

Throughout the year, we attend many science fiction conventions, pop-culture gatherings, and writer’s conferences. We make every effort to be visible and personable. We go through the dealer’s room, talk with the booksellers, offer to autograph any copies of our books they have for sale—even used books. A used book may be a reader’s first introduction to your work, and if that reader enjoys the book, she might want to read (or buy) something else of ours. She may also recommend our books to her friends. We autograph any copy a fan brings, no matter how battered it might look.

What does it cost you? A few seconds of your time. But if you are rude, especially to a fan, then anecdotes about it will spread like wildfire across the internet. If you’re a jerk, word gets around. The best way to avoid a bad reputation is to not be a jerk in the first place.

At a convention Kevin attended, a Big Name Author was standing outside the dealer’s room when someone asked if he would go in and sign some of his books for the dealers. The author sniffed and said quite plainly, and within earshot of those book dealers, “Why should I bother? They’re just tiny stores.” As soon as he left, the dealers methodically removed his books from their shelves, stripped the paperbacks, and returned them for credit. If they carried his titles at all from that point forward, they certainly did it without enthusiasm.

The consequences of your actions can be unexpected. They might even remain invisible to you. In the case of this rude author, he may never have realized the damage he did to his reputation. But treating others well can also yield surprising reactions. Sometimes it may be years before you find out about your effect on others (if you find out at all). Here are a couple of examples.

We were attending the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland, which was held at a large conference center some distance from the hotel. After checking into our hotel, we set off for the convention center to pick up our badges. When we hailed a cab in front of the hotel, another woman was standing there, also waiting. After long years of experience, we’ve learned how to spot science fiction fans, and this woman fit the bill. When a cab pulled up, Kevin asked her, “Are you going to Worldcon? Would you like to share a cab?” The woman was surprised and agreed. We rode together, talking all the way. This fan had never read any of our books, or even heard of us, but we had fun chatting on the way to the convention center. When we got there, we paid the tab for the taxi. The fan offered to split the fare, but we said no, since we had invited her to be our guest for the ride, and it hadn’t cost any more to have her join us. She thanked us, and we went our separate ways.

About five years later, Kevin was doing a book signing at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. Among the people who showed up for the event was the woman from the taxi in Glasgow. She brought two large shopping bags filled with books. After introducing herself she said, “You were so nice to pick up that cab ride in Scotland that I looked up your books. I’ve bought every single title you ever published.”

And she had. Kevin autographed them all.

In another case, we were doing an autographing at the Book Expo America in New York, a trade show that caters to booksellers. Kevin was a featured author, and as he was signing books, a couple came up to him in the line. “You probably don’t remember us, but we own a very small book store in Sacramento, California. You signed your first novel, Resurrection, Inc., for us when it first came out. Only five people showed up for the signing, and some authors would have been angry, but you took it in stride and were so pleasant that we remembered you. Since then, we’ve featured every one of your titles as they came out, and we give them prominent placement.”

Everyone is important.

None of this could possibly have been planned. Being respectful of others is not part of some nefarious scheme to trick people into paying more attention to our books. It’s the way professionals should treat anyone they meet.

Never, never, never be a jerk.

Don’t Make Enemies or Start Feuds

As with Don’t Be a Jerk, this is good advice for life in general.

In the tight-knit publishing world, every-body knows everyone. Don’t criticize, embarrass, one-up, or denigrate anyone—either to their faces or behind their backs. Even if your agent’s secretary didn’t take a message properly. Even if you’re upset about a person in your writing group who always tears down the stories you submit. Even if a critic totally misunderstood the plot of your novel and wrote a terrible review. Do not make enemies: it will come back to haunt you.

Even if a person really is as dimwitted as you think they are, it will not improve the world for you to point it out. Nobody will think better of you because of it.

And the very enemy you make by criticizing someone, might later end up being in a position to hurt your career. People pass the word. Writers, editors, and production staff move from one publisher to another. Within a week they can change from having no power to having the power to buy or reject your work.

O O O

Rebecca:

We attended a large writing conference at which Kevin was a guest speaker. At one of the main panels, he was on stage with seven other writers in a ballroom packed with about three hundred people in the audience. The moderator asked how writers should go about choosing their next project.

Kevin explained, “I have dozens of ideas for stories at any time, so I have plenty of options. When I decide my next project, I evaluate all those ideas and consider which one might appeal to the widest possible audience. Some ideas will fit only an obscure little niche, while others are crowd pleasers. For example, a story about an internally conflicted Bosnian bicycle repairman who is also a child abuser is not as likely to become a bestseller as, say, an amusement park with cloned dinosaurs.”

The other panelists gave their own answers, and then one sneered down the table at Kevin. “I couldn’t disagree more! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” This author proceeded to verbally rip Kevin to shreds in a large room with hundreds of people watching. “A writer can only write what’s in his or her heart, without considering popularity or marketability. You can’t try to predict what people will or won’t like. You have to wrench the words from your soul, and only that way can you be faithful to your art. The story must spring forth of its own volition, and only then will you write something that is worthy of being read. If you do that, readers will find you, no matter what the subject is.”

And so on …

Then, after tearing Kevin several new orifices, the author turned to the next person, pointed toward Kevin, and whispered loudly enough for the front rows to hear, “Who is that guy, anyway?”

Not exactly professional behavior. At the time, the sneering author had no more than a few short stories published. Kevin had more than twenty novels in print with about seven million copies sold.

Fast forward several years. Kevin was editing an invitation-only anthology on a specific topic, and he had planned it out, wanting to fill very particular spots. Kevin had already invited professional, reliable authors for each story, though he often keeps one or two slots open for newer writers. One night, Kevin received a phone call from a stranger: “I heard about your anthology, and it sounds fascinating. I’ve got a great idea for a story! I’ve started researching it, and I think it would be a perfect fit for you. I’d really like to contribute.”

You guessed it: This was the same author who had torn him to shreds in front of a large audience—a person who seemed to have no memory of the incident. But Kevin remembered it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “the anthology is full.”

In fact, the anthology was full, but Kevin had made exceptions in the past—if he had good reason to do so. This author had given him no incentive to bend the rules. Why would he go out of his way to make room for a person who had demonstrated such unprofessional behavior in the past and would likely be difficult to work with?

Kevin isn’t the type to hold a long-term grudge, but the other author had done nothing to earn his confidence or friendship.

Writers, especially newer writers, love to get involved in the politics of writers’ organizations or online flame wars. That rarely has any benefit.

Sure, some authors have become successful by being provocative gadflies or standing on political soapboxes, offending half of their potential readership in order to rally the other half. Most of us can’t afford to lose half of our readers, especially over political arguments that have nothing to do with our books. Don’t give a reader any reason to steer clear of your work.

O O O

And don’t correct critics. You won’t impress anyone by trying to “call them out” in public. Maybe they did miss the point. Maybe they have an obvious ax to grind. Shrug it off.

Kevin’s first Star Wars novel Jedi Search was savaged by an initial reviewer—who complained about every aspect of the book, before ending the review with, “But I never liked Star Wars anyway.” So why would a person who didn’t like Star Wars in the first place bother to review a Star Wars novel? Who knows? Since (by his own admission) he was not the target audience for Jedi Search, it felt unfair that he would judge the book. But Kevin had to shake it off. The review did not affect the sales. To date, Jedi Search has sold more than two million copies.

We’ve seen authors get into vigorous debates with critics. Unfortunately, even if the author is factually correct (e.g., the reviewer misunderstood key aspects of the book or got facts wrong) no one comes out of the conflict unscathed in the eyes of the observers. The defensive author may feel victorious, but in fact he just looks petty.

Rise above the fray.

Don’t Begrudge Other Writers Their Success

Some authors are going to be more successful than you will ever be—probably a lot more successful. Deal with it. That doesn’t diminish your accomplishments.

Don’t begrudge others their successes. Complaining about some other writer’s work is unprofessional. You look like a whiner. And a poor sport. It does not make you look like a better writer. It does not boost your reputation. It does not improve your sales.

Writing and publishing may be an oddball industry, but it’s not actually a cutthroat competitive business like, say, rival snack chip manufacturers. If one author’s novel sells well, that doesn’t mean your book will sell less.

Readers are voracious, and most writers are readers. We want to cuddle up with a good book—something that we didn’t write ourselves—as much as anyone else. In fact, the phenomenal success of Harry Potter, the Twilight books, or The Hunger Games created a large ripple effect. Readers picked up similar books, which helped the sales of other authors. Publishers and booksellers experienced higher profits. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Fan groups have endless debates nitpicking popular books, denigrating anything that has gotten too successful. But a professional author does not badmouth her peers. Writers who make snarky comments about The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, Twilight, even the film Avatar, just seem to have sour grapes.

Kevin once made a disparaging comment about The Bridges of Madison County—a phenomenally bestselling novel that he imagined to be a lightweight, sappy romance (without having read it). Rebecca scolded him. “Instead of criticizing, read the book and figure out why it touched so many people, then see what you can learn from that.”

At the time Bridges had been on the major bestseller lists for countless weeks. The author, Robert James Waller, had obviously done something right, tapped into some particular need to attract such a flood of readers. Better to learn from that phenomenal success than to mock levels of sales that every writer dreams of. So, Kevin and Rebecca both read the book and analyzed what the author had done right and why it was such a breakout. Now we try to read every mammoth blockbuster to understand what popular nerve it touched and to see what we can learn from it to make our books better.

Cheer the fact that one of your colleagues has broken through that very thick ceiling. We’ve had many writing students over the years, and we celebrate their successes, delighted when they achieve things that we haven’t. Kevin often jokes that he hopes his writing students will become so wildly successful that one day they’ll give him a glowing blurb on one of his novels.

And that has happened several times.

Show Gratitude

Just in case you need the reminder, thank the people who help you.

You know that a lot of people participated in the writing of your novel, whether they helped you in your research, proofread the manuscript, did some typing or photocopying for you, brainstormed with you, got you coffee, babysat your kids, or just inspired you.

Editors or publishers will often take their authors out for a nice dinner. Early on, Rebecca asked Kevin to send a Thank You card after each such meal. He was puzzled. “But editors always take authors out. They don’t expect a Thank You card.” Rebecca insisted (and she can be very insistent). After he sent the first such card, Kevin received a shocked and appreciative phone call from the editor, who said that in his entire career nobody had ever bothered to send him a Thank You.

That’s the impression you want to make. And it’s just plain courteous.

Rebecca:

In graduate school, I wrote a play that was performed by me and my fellow students. Each one of us worked hard making the video; we stayed up all night finishing the project, filming, cutting the music, and so on. Our project got an A. After class, another group member and I met with my professor, who said, “Rebecca, I just knew your group would do the best job in the whole class.” It felt great to be complimented and to have all my hard work recognized. I beamed and said, “Thank you.”

Later, my classmate took me aside and asked, “Didn’t any of the rest of us do anything? Did you make that film all by yourself?” I was stunned. In my excitement, I had accepted our professor’s praise all by myself, without thinking to mention anyone else. Even though I wrote the script, starred in the video, and put in more hours than anybody else, I could not have done it without the rest of my group. I had hurt my friend and slighted my other classmates, brushing them aside. I was so proud of my work that it never occurred to me to give other people credit. It wouldn’t have cost me a thing.

Wow. I was an idiot. I apologized.

I always remember that lesson.

A lot of people’s effort goes into the work that you do. If you’re a writer, you probably have friends, a spouse, children, or other family who are giving up a lot to make sure you can do your writing. Honor anyone who helps you along the way. Putting people in the acknowledgments of your book is free, so be liberal with your gratitude.

Again, there are no unimportant people. Be friendly and professional with everyone you deal with in the business, whether it’s a low-level employee in the mail room or the head of the company. Always note the names of administrators, assistants, junior staff members. When you call your editor’s office because you need something, the assistant will be more inclined to help if you’re polite and respectful, and remember that person’s name, rather than thinking of them as “Nobody, who is the assistant to Big Name.”

We’ve seen many talented and ambitious people start out in the mail room, work their way up to Editorial Assistant, then Assistant Editor, then Editor, and even higher. You’ll be glad you treated them well when they were still on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder.

O O O

Kevin’s very first editor, who bought four novels from him at Signet Books, eventually moved over to Warner Books where he remembered Kevin and bought two more novels from him. Then he took a position at HarperCollins, where he offered Kevin three X-Files novels (a big break for him at the time), and later went on to join a large literary agency … where he is now Kevin’s agent.

O O O

Every book has a set of Acknowledgments. Remember to show your appreciation for anyone who takes time to assist you, who offered to critique the manuscript, or who gave you technical advice, as well as your editor, your agent, your publisher, other authors who supported you, and of course your patient spouse, significant other, or cat. Show that you remember what they did for you (although pets don’t generally read Acknowledgments).

Being nice doesn’t cost anything, but it can buy a lot.

Part 2

Dirty Secrets

Dirty Secret #1: Sheer Writing Talent Will Not Guarantee Success

There are many aspects to a writing career that you learn along the way, but nobody teaches you. Sometimes they are hard lessons to learn. We call them “Dirty Secrets.”

The first Dirty Secret that even brilliant writers have to face is that sheer writing talent will not guarantee success.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be the most genius writer on the planet, a person whose literary work can wring out emotion like dirty water from a soaked dishrag. But mere brilliance with words is not enough to make you a successful career author.

We knew an extremely talented, ingenious writer who won the grand prize in a major writing contest. His work was quirky, fabulous, imaginative, breathtaking. His stories—whenever he got around to writing and finishing them—were received by readers with utter delight. But he had no discipline, rarely managed to complete a work, refused to do rewrites when an editor suggested them, treated deadlines the way a race car driver views the speed limit. As a consequence, despite his incredible writing ability, he had trouble getting work, and soon vanished from the field.

Editors and publishers are running a business. They have customers to please, slots to fill, a schedule to keep. They would rather have a steady supply of really good novels that arrive on time and satisfy many readers, than the most breathtaking novel that never gets delivered and is never released. The mark of a professional writer, one who gets hired again and again, is a writer who produces consistently good work, delivers on time, is reliable in all aspects, and is pleasant and professional to work with.

When Kevin wrote his first several novels for Signet and Bantam Books, he turned in his manuscripts on time and did rewrites as requested, even though he had a full-time job. He caused his editors no stress, and they really appreciated a low-maintenance writer. He didn’t know he was auditioning.

When the opportunity to write new Star Wars novels came up, his Bantam editor was asked to suggest authors who might be appropriate for the job. Entirely without Kevin’s knowledge, the editor submitted his name to Lucasfilm, recommending him as reliable, flexible, and professional. Kevin got the job. He worked well with them, delivered his Star Wars projects on time and remained easy to work with. After he had proven himself, Lucasfilm offered him a lot more work. Eventually, he ended up doing 54 separate Star Wars projects.

Many other writers are more powerful literary magicians, but Kevin had the other qualities they were looking for—persistence, professionalism, and reliability. And that gives you an edge on plain old talent.

A Chinese proverb says “Persistence can grind an iron beam down to a needle.” Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unre-warded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and Determination alone, are omnipotent. The slogan PRESS ON has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.”

Persistence, persistence, persistence. As we will discuss below, dogged persistence and the refusal to give up will open doors and help you overcome the barriers set up against new writers where even the most brilliant prose isn’t enough. Instead of a battering ram, it’s like a steady drip of water eroding a stone wall. But you will get through.

Dirty Secret #2: Personal Connections Really Can Help

It’s a dirty secret that if you know the right people, you might get a faster response or a more favorable read. Having a personal connection with someone on the editorial staff or inside the publishing house could give you a leg up over a completely unknown new writer from outer East Podunk. That’s a fact of life.

When an editor is staring at a pile of unsolicited manuscripts, story after story by unrecognizable names, a familiar name naturally draws special attention. If you have met the editor in person, even more so. In the sea of submissions, if an editor has a face to put with a name, it works to your advantage—unless you’ve made a negative first impression. (If necessary, review Don’t Be a Jerk, above.)

How do you make that personal connection if you’re a newbie nobody?

One option is to go to writer’s gatherings or conventions, which are often crowded with editors, publishers, agents, and fellow professionals—as well as your potential readers. This is your chance to meet them all. Make friends, and make connections.

Kevin has edited more than a dozen anthologies, and most of the contributors are drawn from his peers, friends, writing students, and ambitious new authors he’s met in person. In addition to the usual social activity of hanging out with other writers, Kevin keeps an eye open for people he might like to work with, as well as noting the “never in a million years” writers. (Note, that goes for established pros as well as amateurs!) In an emergency, under a tight deadline, he can count on his circle of close writer friends to deliver a last-minute story to fill a gap.

When editing his first Star Wars anthology, Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, Kevin invited Dave Wolverton as one of the established professional contributors. The anthology was a collection of stories about the interesting characters in the famous Star Wars cantina scene, and he assigned a specific character to each writer. At the time, Dave was particularly impressed with one of his writing students who had a couple of publication credits and had just won a major writing contest. Dave suggested that the writer send samples to Kevin to see if there might be a spot for him in the book.

Now, this was a big-ticket anthology, and Kevin had all the important slots already assigned. He didn’t want word to get around that he was open to random submissions, which would then flood his mailbox. But he read the samples from this new writer, and he liked the writing a lot. He decided to take a chance, chose an unimportant bit character in the background of the Cantina scene, and contacted the new writer. “I’ll let you write a story on spec for the anthology. It’s not an important character, so if your story isn’t good enough, I can still leave it out. Your challenge is to write the absolute best story I have in the anthology. That’s the way you’ll get in.”

The writer took the challenge—and sure enough he did turn in Kevin’s favorite story in the entire book.

O O O

In order to make personal connections, meet people in all areas of your profession. You don’t always know which way a business deal will go. We know novel writers, comic book writers, Hollywood script writers, game designers. We’ve become friends with actors, directors, producers, publishers, typesetters, people at all different levels of the book publishing and the entertainment industry. You never know what interesting connection is going to result in a new project.

When we go to conventions and conferences, we encourage our former writing students to say hi. If they do—thereby demonstrating that they have a professional mindset—we go out of our way to introduce them to editors, publishers, and other professionals. Making introductions is not just a lightweight favor, either—if we go to the trouble to introduce a newbie to an editor, we’re putting our own reputations on the line. We’re vouching for the new writer, and that editor pays attention. It’s our way of paying forward.

Remember what you’ve read in this book: Present yourself well. Be polite, articulate, interesting, and considerate. Don’t talk interminably about your novel; simply mention it, give a two sentence description (if you can’t boil your novel down to a two-sentence teaser, then learn to do so), and mention that it is finished and ready to go—and it had better be ready to go. If the editor is at all interested, she will say, “Sure, send me the first fifty pages” or “Send me the whole manuscript.”

Next step—and this is very important—ACTUALLY SEND WHATEVER THE EDITOR ASKED FOR.

When you return home, package up the manuscript (or send it by email, if that’s what the editor prefers), and mail it with a polite letter to the editor.

Dear [insert Editor’s Name],

“It was nice meeting you at [insert Name of Event]. As you requested, here is the novel we discussed. Thank you for agreeing to look at it.”

Sincerely,

[insert Your Name]

Since you were polite and articulate, and demonstrated your proficiency with personal hygiene, the editor will remember who you are (in a good way). She will have a face to put with your name when the manuscript arrives with a pile of others. Because you’ve already broken the ice and made a good first impression, she will at least look at it.

From that point, it’s your job as a writer to provide such a compelling manuscript that the editor will want to buy.

Dirty Secret #3: “Overnight Successes” Usually Aren’t

Big celebrities who suddenly appear on your radar usually got there after years and years of hard work. It can take decades to achieve “overnight success.”

Some outsiders have remarked on Kevin’s “lucky breaks,” believing that he became an “overnight success” as soon as he started writing Star Wars novels. But he had been writing—steadily—since he was eight years old. He submitted his first story for publication at age twelve. He got published at age fifteen, got paid for his first story at sixteen. He sold his first novel when he was 25. Seven years and ten books later, he had his first national bestseller—at age 32, twenty years after he sent out his first story for publication. Since most people never heard of him until after his first bestseller, many considered him an “overnight success,” a young upstart who had no business hitting the New York Times bestseller list, because they thought he hadn’t worked for it. It must have been a stroke of luck. But it was two decades in the making.

Dean Koontz had dozens of novels written before one hit the bestseller list. He used five or six different pseudonyms, plugging away at writing on book after book. Fortunately, the book that launched him as a superstar—Whispers—was published under his own name. Few readers noticed his name until one book became a major bestseller, but he had been publishing long before that.

Look at the example of actress Jennifer Love Hewitt. She first began performing on stage at the age of three. When she was ten years old, she wanted so much to become an actress that she convinced her mother to move to Hollywood from Texas. Her mother, a single mom, agreed to get a job in LA and support her daughter for one year, to see if she could get her big break. So they moved to California. Jennifer had one year.

She got some parts in commercials, then on the Disney Channel series Kids Incorporated, and on a kids’ exercise video. She kept working at it. She didn’t get a big break, but she had her foot in the door. In the interim she landed small roles in numerous plays, movies, working her way up with mostly bit parts. She finally hit it big in the TV show Party of Five, then the film I Know What You Did Last Summer, then Ghost Whisperer, Law and Order, Criminal Minds, and many other appearances.

When she started to appear prominently, people called Jennifer Love Hewitt another overnight success, without realizing that she had been working at her career for more than a dozen years before she achieved stardom. This did not just “happen.”

Same with the singer and actress Brandy. She started singing and performing on stage when she was five years old. She rose to success in music at age fifteen, and became a TV star a few years later. She had been working at her career for more than ten years. Also not an overnight success.

Congratulations if phenomenal popularity lands in your lap with little or no effort on your part. But a genuine “overnight success”—somebody who instantly becomes a star without having to work their way up—is often just a flash in the pan.

The people with staying power have usually been working for decades to get where they are.

Dirty Secret #4: Don’t Let Writing Classes or Critique Groups Take the Place of Writing

A writing class is not a magic key to a successful writing career. Ask professional authors, especially bestselling authors, how many of them have advanced degrees in creative writing. You may find a few, but not many.

Of course, it’s good to have a literary background to understand plot structures and characters, how fiction works. You do have to be facile with grammar, exposition, dialogue. But taking only English courses is like an aspiring master chef collecting a shelf full of cookbooks, without ever bothering to acquire pans, bowls, utensils, or even ingredients to cook with. Writing classes do a good job of teaching part of the writing process. Learn from them, but don’t obsess on them.

Kevin has a degree in physics and astronomy, with a minor in Russian history. Rebecca has a Master’s in Business Administration.

O O O

Kevin:

At the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where I went to college, I applied for, and was accepted into, an exclusive “advanced fiction writing workshop,” the crème de la crème of the university’s writing courses. Many aspiring writers applied, but few were accepted into the elite class.

On the first day of the workshop, I learned to my surprise that the professor who would teach us how to become successful authors had published only a piece of poetry, in a no-pay literary magazine. That was his lone credential. He had never managed to publish a novel or a professional story of his own. At the time, as a sophomore in college, I already had more than a dozen short stories and articles published, and I was editing a completed novel. Hmmm, what made this guy such an expert?

When I asked whether he would be teaching the workshop students about the marketplace, how to deal with editors, how to submit to magazines and book publishers, the professor lifted his nose. “We don’t teach that sort of thing here.”

Almost weekly, I would come into class announcing a new sale or a story publication, which caused the one-poem professor a great deal of consternation. (He did give me a good grade, though.)

O O O

Also while in college, Kevin fell in with a writer’s group that met on campus every Thursday afternoon (many of them from the advanced fiction writing workshop mentioned above). He thought that hanging around with other authors would be a great way to get inspiration and make connections.

This group of aspiring writers would sit in a local coffee house all afternoon, through dinner, and far into the night, sipping cappuccino or mineral water as they talked about the great novels they would publish someday. But hour after hour, they bemoaned the fact that they never had enough time to write.

Kevin discovered that if he just stopped going to their kaffeeklatsch and spent those hours writing instead, he could be amazingly productive. He devoted his time to writing instead of talking about writing.

Writing critique groups can also be useful. A cooperative batch of test readers can help you catch mistakes or inconsistencies. You get a trial run, to see how people react to your story, learn if they understand your plot twist or if they guess the solution to your mystery, if they laugh or cry when they’re supposed to. Other critiquers might point out flaws in pacing, internal contradictions, even grammar or spelling mistakes.

Listen to the comments of a critique group, but don’t be paralyzed by them. (See the appendix to this book, Consider the Source.) A group of untried and unproven writers does not necessarily yield infallible advice. Sometimes they are just wrong. Occasionally they carry personal baggage or begrudge other writers their achievements, especially if one member of the group begins to succeed when the others don’t.

Kevin’s early critique group grumbled about one of his novels with Doug Beason, Assemblers of Infinity, but their comments didn’t ring true to him, and he published the manuscript in its original form. Assemblers of Infinity was serialized in the largest science fiction magazine, then published by Bantam Books, and was nominated for the Nebula Award, science fiction’s highest honor. In the end, it’s the opinion of the professional (paying) editor that really counts.

Dirty Secret #5: The Wrong Agent Can Be Worse Than No Agent at All

Few subjects cause more angst among newbie authors than finding an agent. People beg us for advice and recommendations on agents, often before they’ve even written their first novel. That’s planning too far ahead.

Sure, an agent can open doors for you in certain publishing companies. But many publishers will read unsolicited manuscripts, and if they do make an offer, then you can get an agent or a publishing lawyer before you sign a contract. If you don’t have any credentials, however, how do you expect to land a big name, powerful agent? It’s the old Catch-22. If you have minimal credits and connections, you’ll get only a low-tier agent, who won’t have much clout to open doors for you.

In particular, be leery of agents who advertise in writer’s magazines or on discussion boards. Every worthwhile agent we know has a full stable of writers, and none of them feels the need to advertise for unproven neophyte authors in hopes of finding the next great literary master.

O O O

Kevin:

When I was in high school, sending out my first short stories and working on book one of an epic fantasy trilogy (as everybody did in those days), I set out to get an agent. I discovered a classified ad in the back of Writer’s Digest magazine. A “respected literary agency” was looking for new clients. Oh, boy! So I wrote to the PO Box in the ad and told the agent about my education, my work up to that point, and my career plans, and I gave her a synopsis of my epic fantasy.

I received an enthusiastic letter back, promising that she would read my novel manuscript and (I’m not kidding) pointing out that since Star Wars was such a hit movie, she was sure she could sell “that kind of thing.”

And, by the way, there was also a fifty dollar reading fee.

I was just sixteen years old with big ambitions, and it was tough to come up with fifty dollars, but this was my future writing career. I wanted to be a professional writer, so I made the investment, sent her my novel, which (surprise!) she loved and was sure she could sell. She told me to send more of my work.

So, for the next year, I wrote story after story and sent every single one of them to her so she could place them in magazines. It was like throwing them down a black hole. When I grew impatient for some feedback from editors, to see some acceptances and contracts, she suddenly answered with the wonderful news that “one of the Lippincott magazines” had accepted two of my stories! She named the magazines. I had never heard of them, nor could I find them on the newsstand, but Lippincott was a name to conjure with in the publishing industry, so it had to be real, right?

I signed the contracts. I was walking on air. I was going to be a published writer! They even promised to pay me five cents a word, a princely sum, which would more than pay off the fifty dollars I had sent the agent to read my novel. I was insufferably pleased with myself for quite some time.

Then the other shoe dropped.

The agent wrote that the Lippincott magazines were upgrading their technology and purchasing an expensive new phototypesetting system. Because of their investment, they were asking all their authors to share the cost of producing their work. They wanted me to invest a hundred dollars for my stories to be typeset and then published.

Warning bells should have gone off, but I was naïve, optimistic (and a “soon to be a published author”).

By happy coincidence, however, in my high school—I was a senior by then—I was taking a graphic arts class, and our school had just acquired the very same phototypesetting machine the Lippincott magazines used. I asked my teacher, and he graciously granted me permission to stay after school and typeset my own stories, according to the magazine specs. I wrote my agent the good news that I wouldn’t need to spend the one hundred dollars because I could provide exactly the finished copy they wanted, and I asked for their detailed specs.

She wrote back a curt letter a week later, saying that, nevermind, the magazine wouldn’t need authors to pay for the typesetting after all.

Months of silence followed, despite my inquiries. Then I received a notice from the FBI saying that my agent had been arrested and charged with mail fraud. During the investigation, they returned all my manuscripts to me, my thick fantasy novel and a dozen short stories—all still in their original envelopes.

She had never submitted them anywhere.

By foolish luck, I had lost only the initial fifty dollars, so all in all, it was a relatively inexpensive lesson to learn. But I also lost a year and a half of time. I could have been submitting those stories and that novel to real markets rather than having them sit in a drawer in a fraudulent agent’s office.

I didn’t attempt to get an agent again until I had a handful of real professional publication credits from major magazines. And the next time I searched for an agent, I checked him out, talked to some of his clients, and verified the sales he had made, before I agreed to sign on. He went on to sell many books for me.

Dirty Secret #6: Advertising Is Expensive. Publicity Is Cheap

Just because your book is published, doesn’t mean anyone will buy it. How do you get the word out?

Many authors—indie authors, especially—go to great lengths to promote their new book: t-shirts, key chains, bookmarks, posters, imprinted chocolate bars. They pay for ads in magazines, do mass mailings of postcards, go on blog tours, or even actual book tours from city to city (all on their own dime).

That can add up to a lot of money, often much more than you can ever hope to make from sales of your book. Sometimes that works; more often it doesn’t. And even when your promotional efforts do catch on, you might not see any concrete results until four or more books later. Publicity is rarely instantaneous, like hitting the jackpot on a lottery ticket. It’s more like droplets of water falling onto a stone drip, drip, drip, drip, taking their effect over the course of many years.

Hoping to get ahead, some authors hire expensive publicists, or contract with marketing agencies or book-promotional services. But it’s not easy to get serious media coverage for any novel, much less an indie published novel by an unknown writer.

When Brian Herbert and Kevin sold their first major Dune contract, they believed they had something newsworthy. The new trilogy was the largest single science fiction contract in publishing history: these were the first Dune novels to be published in more than a decade. Their trilogy was a prequel to the best-selling science fiction novel of all time! How could media outlets not fall all over themselves to cover the story?

The two were talked into spending $75,000 out of pocket on a publicist who was sure to take the entertainment world by storm with all the coverage she promised to get. Slam dunk.

Over several months, though, she managed to get only a single two-line mention in one gossip column in one New York newspaper. Nothing else. Nada. For $75,000.

We’ve since worked with many other publicists, hoping we didn’t just get the lone bad apple. Some of them were from a major publisher’s publicity department, others were freelancers. Two of them were fantastic, while the rest were … less so. Paying for a marketing blitz, or hiring an expensive publicist, is probably not the wisest investment. Advertising is expensive.

Publicity, however, is cheap. If you can get your book covered in a local newspaper or trade magazine, or if you can book yourself on a local radio station, find book signing opportunities at local stores, get mentioned on large blog sites, do a library talk—those are free. If you have a newsworthy hook, if something about your novel makes you an expert in a particular field, then pitch that to media outlets. If you have done something for a prominent charity, you can get coverage for that and also mention your book.

Social media is also free, although it takes time and a lot of energy. You can build your fan base, gather like-minded people around you, keep a mailing list, entertain them, but don’t incessantly plug your novel. The main thing your followers will want is content, not advertisements.

The most important investment of time for a professional writer—a writer who intends to have a long-term career—is to write the next book and build a fan base that way.

Part 3

The Business Mindset

Get to Know Your Business

No one cares as much about your writing career as you do. No one. Not your agent, not your editor, not your accountant, not your author buddies. You have to pay attention. You have to keep track of your business, and you have to learn how the business works.

Learn about writing, develop your craft, observe other writers. Study the expectations of whatever genre you’re working in. Improve your prose, your characterization, your setting. Be the best writer you can possibly be.

But that’s just the first step.

Publishing is a complicated and even somewhat irrational business model, and the publishing world is currently undergoing great upheavals. Even well-informed experts in the field can barely stay on top of all the changes. More than ever, you have to keep track of the business of publishing and bookselling. Don’t count on someone else to do it for you.

Gone are the days when a writer can live like a hermit in a cabin, turn in a finished novel, and expect the publisher’s team to take care of everything else. Be proactive and get involved in your own career. Learn about the industry. Read trade magazines or blogs such as Publishers Weekly or Publishers Lunch. Follow the trends in the marketplace, keep an eye on changes in technology and distribution, and understand how bookselling works.

Why does one book get displayed prominently in the window while another is shelved spine out? What happens to books that can’t be sold and have to be returned? Why does Amazon feature one title prominently on their homepage, while similar books never appear on your screen? How does your novel get selected as the other title on “if you liked that book, you might also enjoy this one” recommendations?

Answering those questions would take another entire book. It’s a long process, and you need to do your homework. Study the field. Become a professional with a business mindset.

O O O

Keep track of your personal business as well, which includes your contracts, receipts, accounts receivable, future tax obligations. Learn what qualifies as a writing expense and what doesn’t. Keep track of your mileage when you drive to a book signing, your professional development expenses at writers’ conferences, your postage, your printer toner and paper, your web design fees, your travel to conventions where you talk about your novel.

Tax laws are intricate and specific to your location and your individual situation, and we are not going to advise you on those matters. Talk to your accountant, learn what you can and can’t write off, and understand how you need to file your taxes.

You are running a small business. Small businesses keep track of their operating expenses. Small businesses do their paperwork. They track bills paid and payments received. As you begin selling your work and the euphoria is over, you need to keep track of which publishers owe you money and when it is due (and when it is late), when a story or a book is set to be released, and whether or not you’ve received your contributor’s copies.

New authors may be astonished. How could you ever lose track of whether you’ve been paid for a story or book? Or whether you’ve received a published copy? Domestic publishers can run months behind in paying. Foreign publishers are notoriously slow in issuing contracts and in making their (usually modest) payments.

Foreign contracts often have a specific term, which expires after a set amount of time. If a book is translated into, say, Bulgarian, the publisher has the right to sell that book for a certain number of years, after which the contract terminates. The Bulgarian publisher isn’t going to go out of their way to tell you the term has expired and that you are free to resell those rights. Keep track of when that time expires so you can renew the contract or sell the rights elsewhere.

Read your contracts and know what you’re agreeing to. (And once you’ve agreed to the terms, don’t whine about it afterward if you decide you don’t like something.)

Contracts are negotiable. Publishers will ask for everything they could possibly want, hoping to get great terms. You don’t have to agree to everything. Some terms are firm, but publishers will often budge on certain provisions, such as the number of author copies you receive or the length of time before you can reprint a story. They may ask for worldwide rights, but will accept US/Canada rights only (allowing you to sell the non-US rights elsewhere).

You don’t know unless you ask.

Authors will complain about draconian terms and cutthroat publishers, when they simply didn’t read or negotiate their contracts. And if you don’t read your contracts before signing them, then a publisher will (legitimately) turn a deaf ear to your complaints afterward.

O O O

Kevin:

For one of my anthologies, I asked authors to write stories based on a popular media franchise. They agreed to the basic terms, the pay rate, and the deadline, after which they wrote and delivered their stories.

Then the licensor presented me with the contract I had to send them, which included one appalling provision I had never seen before. When writing work-for-hire fiction, it’s understood that the authors have to make certain sacrifices and abide by certain restrictions, but when I saw one particular clause the licensor wanted me to include, I balked. I had never seen such terrible terms before! It was non-standard and unnecessarily ruthless. As editor, I argued with the licensor, saying, “I can’t have my authors sign that clause! It’s not part of the generally accepted terms they understood when they agreed to write a story for me.”

After several back and forth conversations, the licensor compromised. Their legal department insisted that the clause needed to be in the boilerplate contract, but any author who objected to that paragraph was allowed to cross it out. That seemed a good enough solution to me, so I sent out the contracts.

Shortly thereafter, I received angry phone calls from fifteen of the sixteen contributors, outraged at the terms. After I calmed them, I told them to strike the clause, and we were fine. I heard nothing from the sixteenth author, though—and a few days later I received his signed contract back in the mail.

Being a nice editor, I contacted him. “So … I received your signed contract.”

“Yes,” he said cheerily. “I got it, signed it, and sent it right back.”

I frowned. “And you were okay with the terms in it?”

He laughed. “I never read those things. I just sign them and send them off.”

At which point, I had done as much of a good deed as I could justify. We went on to publish the anthology.

Learn to Accept Rejection

Rejection is part of the business. Think of it like riding a bicycle: When you fall down, you get back up and try again. If you don’t submit your work for publication, you will never be published. And when you do submit, you are going to be rejected. Guaranteed. No one is so brilliant as to hit every editor’s tastes every time. Don’t take it personally, but learn from any comments the editor might make.

Editors are business people with a job to do and a magazine or a book line to run. They make decisions based on their company’s criteria, the mission of their publication, the interests of their readership.

An editor might turn down your submission because the story is no good or your writing is terrible, but those aren’t the only potential reasons. It’s also possible that the publishing house had just purchased a piece along similar lines, or maybe your upbeat manuscript just doesn’t fit with the somber tone the editor wants for the magazine.

There may be even more subtle reasons for rejection, things few writers can prepare against. Your sympathetic main character might have the same name as the editor’s reviled ex-boyfriend. The politics of the story could be against the editor’s personal philosophy. The subject could be something that simply pushes the editor’s hot buttons.

One of our author friends wrote a science fiction story about thrill seekers who record their near-death experiences, which they then sell for popular entertainment. Though the editor had requested the story from him, she rejected it, explaining that she herself had had a dramatic near-death experience, and she simply couldn’t bear to read a story on the subject.

When going through a stack of manuscripts, editors are not looking for reasons to keep reading—they’re looking for any possible reason to stop. Don’t give them that reason. If sloppy prose, or a ridiculous plot twist, or an expository lump, or unbelievable dialogue knocks the editor out of the story, she’ll be relieved to toss the manuscript aside and pick up the next one in the stack.

Diana Gill, Executive Editor at Ace and Roc Books, says, “I’m being paid to read these submissions. If I’m being paid and I can’t get through a manuscript, how can I expect readers to pay to read it?”

Always start at the top. When you’ve finished polishing a story and are ready to market it, send it to the biggest, highest-paying market that is appropriate. Sure, the competition will be more fierce, but what if your story really is that good? Don’t you want it to be in the most impressive publication? Don’t you want the bigger paycheck? The widest possible audience?

Don’t take the easy way out. Sure, if you send your story to a small magazine or website, your chances of acceptance might be greater—but what if your work could have won an award, or been chosen for the Year’s Best anthology if it had been seen in the larger market? Try the top publication first, then the next one, then the next one, and work your way down.

Submit to the proper market, don’t just mail your work willy-nilly like a blindfolded man throwing darts at a board. Delivering what the editor is looking for takes due diligence on your part. Don’t send something inappropriate “just in case.” A mystery magazine editor doesn’t want to see a hard science fiction novelette. A women’s magazine doesn’t want the story of a barbarian swordsman. A science fiction magazine doesn’t want to read a teen romance story.

There are fewer surefire ways to annoy an editor than to intentionally waste his or her time.

O O O

Kevin:

My Blood Lite anthologies had a simple, clear theme: horror stories with humor. Any type of horror, dark fantasy, or thriller, so long as it was funny. I didn’t think there was anything too complicated about that.

One story came in about a serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered college women. It was disturbing, but well written, so I kept going, waiting for the big laugh. The story was grim, unsettling, violent … and as I neared the end I couldn’t imagine what the punchline would be. On the last page, the killer dispatched one victim and captured another to repeat the cycle all over again. The end.

I was shocked. In what conceivable universe did the author think that story would be appropriate for Blood Lite? When I wrote my rejection letter, I asked the author what he felt was funny in the manuscript? Where was the punchline? Why would he think I might want to include this particular story in Blood Lite? He responded, “Oh, the story wasn’t supposed to be funny, but it was the only manuscript I had ready, so I thought I’d give it a try. Why not?”

That made me really angry. I had a large stack of manuscripts to read, and I’d just spent half an hour reading a story that I could never, ever have accepted for a humorous horror anthology—and the author knew it before he submitted the manuscript. He had wasted my time!

One thing I did remember was the author’s name, and he will automatically be on my poop list if I receive a submission from him again.

Kevin started submitting stories to magazines when he was twelve years old. Granted, at the time his writing was execrable, but he was determined to be a writer. So he kept writing and kept sending stories out, undeterred by the constant stream of rejections he received. Having read some of those early efforts, Rebecca has told him that if she’d known him back then, she would have encouraged him to find another line of work.…

But Kevin was stubborn, kept mailing out story after story, writing new pieces while resubmitting the old ones to market after market (always starting at the top), and over the course of time, he got better. He collected eighty rejection slips before his first story was ever published (in a Wisconsin high school student-writings magazine, which paid only in contributor’s copies). He continued submitting, and a year later he actually sold a story—for $12.50. After that, he was a “published author” who had been paid for his work.

Persistence. Persistence. Persistence.

He has since racked up over seven hundred rejection slips, enough to earn him a genuine trophy: a golden statuette on a marble block, with an engraved placard that names him “The Writer with No Future,” because he could produce more rejection slips by weight than any other writer at an entire conference. He still proudly displays the trophy in a place of honor—atop the toilet tank in the bathroom of his office.

It’s a testament to persistence and improvement.

Many of our writing students tell us they are discouraged and ready to give up after fifteen or twenty rejections. But if Kevin had given up at twenty or fifty or seventy, he would never have been published anywhere. That was 23 million copies ago. Good thing he stuck with it.

Rebecca didn’t have quite the same mindset at first, though.

O O O

Rebecca:

My father was an English teacher, and I knew language, grammar, punctuation, and the components of a good story. I convinced myself that I could write circles around most of the people I’d read in print. Once I submitted a manuscript, I was certain the editor would read my work, fall to her knees, and weep with joy at having discovered a new literary light. She would call me and beg to publish everything I wrote from then on.

So, encouraged by Kevin, I finally sent a story to a fantasy magazine, expecting that not only would it be accepted, it would be the cover story. I’d win awards and be hailed as the next great genius.

The manuscript came back in the mail with a two-page personal rejection letter explaining why the story didn’t work. How could that be? And the editor was a friend of ours, too!

I was crushed. I was a failure. How could I ever look our editor friend in the eye again for having submitted an unacceptable piece of fiction? I was dejected.

I whined.

And Kevin, with an uncharacteristic lack of support—and many hundreds of rejection slips of his own—told me to suck it up and send out the story again.

I had to learn not to take rejection personally. I wrote more stories, submitted them again—and yes, I did eventually get published.

Rejections are a part of your job, not a referendum on your talent or your career.

We were recently instructors at a pro-level anthology workshop, along with four other established editors. Nearly fifty students submitted stories to six different themed anthologies, and the whole panel of pro editors discussed the manuscripts in front of the students, explaining whether or not we would buy each submission.

As the stories were discussed, the students listened in amazement as the six editors gave wildly different reactions to the same manuscript. One editor absolutely loved a story, while another hated it, and others were indifferent. Same story, different editors, entirely different results.

You can do your best to study the market, and also to write your best story, but you can’t predict whether or not an editor will reject it.

So write another one and submit it again. And again.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

Many of us dream about becoming full-time writers, but it doesn’t always work out that way, even for authors who are quite successful. Don’t quit your day job.

Obviously, that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. After all, we are both full-time writers—that’s how we pay the bills. But you’d be taking a gigantic risk, especially in the current tumultuous state of the publishing industry. Be very, very cautious before abandoning a regular paycheck, with benefits, for the capricious and unpredictable livelihood of a freelancer.

Once, at a science fiction convention, Kevin listened as a fellow panelist proudly announced that he had sold his first short story to Analog magazine for $350. Since he now had a professional sale in a major SF magazine, he had quit his well-paying and secure civil-service job so he could become a full-time writer.

We never heard from him again.

Just because you can sell a story or a book today doesn’t mean you’ll be able to sell the next one. Reader tastes change. Editors change. Publishers go out of business. Many writers can’t work under a deadline, or they can’t sell a project based on a premise and an outline.

Even when you have a signed contract, publishers don’t always pay on time. But your electric bill needs to be paid on time. Your rent or mortgage needs to be paid on time. You have to pay for food at the grocery store when you purchase it, not sometime later whenever the advance check comes in. Even if you have a contract guaranteeing you payment “on publication” of your book, and even though the publisher knows to the day—many months in advance—when your book will be released, the payment will usually be late. Few publishers will actually cut a check and have it in your mailbox on or before the day of publication.

And you can’t count on earning royalties either. Royalties are based on sales, which you can’t predict, and large publishers have complex and incompre-hensible algorithms in the way they report sales and royalties. They also keep large chunks of your money as a “reserve against returns,” withholding payment just in case a bookstore returns books that were shipped long before.

In a situation like that, it’s very hard to budget and do financial planning.

We don’t get paid vacation; if we take a day off and don’t do any writing, we don’t make any income that day.

We don’t get sick leave. If we’re too ill to write, we don’t make any income that day. And we have to pay for our health insurance and medical expenses out of pocket.

We don’t have any retirement plan, except for the accounts we set up ourselves. If a publisher decides not to buy our next novel and we can’t get any work, we do not collect unemployment.

Try applying for a mortgage by telling the banker that you’re an author and hope to make a living at it someday. When we bought our first house, even though we had saved a substantial down payment and Kevin had six bestsellers under his belt and multiple books under contract, the lending agency requested that we get a letter from his publisher guaranteeing they would buy the next twelve books Kevin wrote. (No, that didn’t happen!)

Kevin didn’t actually quit his day job until he had seven New York Times bestsellers, and we had set aside an entire year’s worth of expenses in a savings account. Even then, Rebecca continued working for several more years so that we could keep our benefits.

On the other hand, if you have a day job, you receive a regular, predictable check. You get vacation, sick leave, retirement. You get health benefits. You have stability.

Think carefully before you give up job security.

Build and Maintain Your Reputation

In addition to talent and imagination, one of a writer’s greatest assets is her reputation. Do you want to be known as a difficult person to deal with? An unpleasant writer in social situations? One who is perennially late? One who can’t manage money and is constantly nagging for checks that aren’t even due? A bombastic rabble-rouser who picks fights online? A curmudgeon who is rude to his fans?

Or are you someone who is reliable? Who delivers acceptable work on time. Who is polite and businesslike. Who appreciates fans and treats them well. That’s the reputation you want.

Editors and publishers have enough variables to consider in the constantly changing publishing business without adding the difficulty of a temperamental prima-donna writer. They aren’t looking for high-maintenance authors.

Keep track of your own credits. Talk up what’s good and unique about yourself and use it in your writing, your art, or your business career. If you have special talents, if you’ve immersed yourself in other cultures, if you’ve accomplished something remarkable, use that. If you’ve won awards, share that with people.

You don’t have to do it in a boastful way, and you certainly don’t want to imply that you are better than the person you are talking to, but there is nothing wrong with stating good facts about yourself.

Don’t snivel and talk yourself down, either. Everybody has failed somewhere. Everybody has goofed up. Everybody has thought something was going to take off but it fizzled. Those aren’t the things to focus on. Pick yourself up after your mistakes and move ahead. Concentrate on the things that went right.

If an interviewer or a fan or a friend brings up a failure, you don’t need to deny it—especially if it’s true. Focus on what was positive about the experience, what you learned from it.

Keep track of your statistics and reviews. How many books (or stories or articles) have you written? How many books do you have in print (or ebooks sold)? Have you hit any bestseller lists? Have you won awards? Has your work been translated into other languages? Did a reviewer call you “the next Robert Heinlein”?

These are all vital statistics for the future of your career. Put all of that information in a file and keep it up to date. Your agent won’t keep track of it. Agents have many clients to serve, each with countless bits of information to maintain. You may also switch agents at some point. Your publisher or editor or publicist will not keep track. You will probably work for a variety of publishers in your career. Only you are familiar with all of your information.

Save every positive review of your work from newspapers, magazines, professional review sites, etc. (but not casual reviews, like those posted on Amazon.com or on your blog or written for you by your friends). Take special note of general reviews of your writing, rather than just the ones that talk about a specific book or story. Nonspecific quotes can be used again and again. For example, if a review says, “Thornwoggle was a magical book,” you can only use that quote when referring to the book Thornwoggle. But if a review says you are “the most magical writer to come along since J.K. Rowling,” you can quote that review on any of your writing projects. Treasure those quotes, and don’t lose them.

You, and only you, have responsibility for creating and maintaining your reputation.

O O O

At Disney World, parts of the Magic Kingdom are public (for guests) and parts are private (for employees only). As soon as employees walk through a door to the public side, they are officially “on stage,” and as soon as they walk back behind the door they are “backstage.” Employees are referred to as Cast Members to remind them that every moment at Disney World they are playing a part and representing Disney World.

This is a good lesson for all professionals to remember: any time you’re with people, you are in public. You are “on stage.”

When you speak at a conference, you don’t suddenly disappear once you leave the microphone. Readers will still know who you are. They’ll hear you if you badmouth fans or other writers or convention staff; private conversations get relayed (and often exaggerated). To avoid this problem, it’s simplest to follow the “Thumper Rule” from the Walt Disney movie Bambi: “If you can’t say somthin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

Kevin learned early on by watching one of his mentors and writer friends, bestselling fantasy author Terry Brooks. Even when faced with a long line of fans for a signing that went on for hours, where people kept asking the same question again and again, Terry was as gracious and warm to his fans as anyone could possibly want. He stayed the extra time until the line was gone and everyone’s books were signed. He looked each person in the eye, showing that he was paying attention to them and that he genuinely appreciated that they bought and read his books.

Conversely, when Brian Herbert and Kevin were on tour for one of their bestselling Dune novels, they followed a day behind another author on the book-signing circuit. Kevin and Brian always arrive at their signings on time. They meet the bookstore staff. They shake the hands of the fans, give a friendly talk, and answer questions. Before they leave, they sign the store’s leftover stock so that anyone who missed the signing can still pick up an autographed copy.

Night after night on that tour, bookstore owners would grouse about the previous author—a comedian who was decidedly not funny in person, habitually showed up late, was rude to the fans as well as the store staff, and insulted people who bought the book. The publisher received so many complaints about this bad behavior that they pulled the author halfway through the tour, since the personal appearances were causing more harm than good.

O O O

Kevin:

When I was a young fan going to conventions, I met one of my favorite authors. I carried a first edition of his most famous novel, one I had enjoyed and told many other readers about. I wanted to get it autographed, so I could proudly display it on my shelf. Spotting the author having coffee in between panels, I politely went up to him, showed off the first edition, told him how much I loved his book, and asked for his autograph. He snapped, “Go away, I’m not signing books now,” and ignored me.

It would have taken him a few seconds to make me an extremely happy fan. But instead, I felt slapped down. And I’ve never read another one of his novels since then.

Rebecca:

I was in Germany teaching at an Army base, and we had very limited access to new books. Every month, though, a new Star Trek paperback would show up at the Stars and Stripes bookstore on base. I bought and read each one.

Years later, I was delighted to meet the author of one of those Star Trek novels that had gotten me through those days in Germany. I expressed how much I enjoyed the work, but instead of being gracious and accepting the compliment, the author grimaced. “Star Trek! Why does everybody always talk about my Star Trek book? I wish they’d read something else of mine. I’ve written a lot of books since then.”

I never want to treat one of my fans like that, no matter which books of mine they’ve read.

On the other hand, when I met the wonderful Anne McCaffrey and asked for her autograph, she gave me a very apologetic look and explained that she was in a great deal of arthritis pain. She simply couldn’t sign autographs that day, but she didn’t like to disappoint fans, so she had prepared for this possibility. She reached into a handbag, brought out an autographed bookplate, and asked if I would accept that instead.

Now that’s classy.

Take pride in all your work. If someone tells you that your writing touched them or gave them enjoyment, or that you are their (or their friend’s) favorite author, do not act modest and brush off the compliment they just gave you. And don’t say “That’s not really my best work.” When readers take time to express that your work meant something to them, always say thank you and accept the praise. You can also tell them about similar books you’ve written that they might enjoy.

Above all, be gracious.

You are responsible for your own professional image. You are in charge of feeding it, making sure it’s healthy, and letting other people know who you are. You can take charge of it.

And when you choose people to represent you—your agents, for example—choose carefully, because they are an important key to your success. How they represent you needs to be in line with how you want to be represented. There have been some authors, actors, artists, and musicians who were represented by such hard-nosed or rude agents that people assumed that the person behind the agent was actually that way, as well.

One way to maintain your good reputation is to be who you are all the time. Don’t be one way among your friends and then act in a completely different way when you’re in public. Who you are is who you are, and the way you behave is the gold standard that backs it up.

Success Breeds Success

There’s enough to go around.

Surround yourself with people who are actually doing what you want to do (rather than just talking about doing it). If you hang out with successful people in the field, some of that success might rub off. It’s not just a halo effect—you’ll be in the right place at the right time, and you’ll observe the habits, activities and attitudes of other successful people. Something worked for them. Pay attention to what it was.

A professional writing career is a gigantic and complex puzzle with numerous moving parts. Different writers at any stage of development might understand various pieces. They’ll have clues that you don’t have, and vice versa. You can help one another. You can build a support group.

Colleagues who are constantly writing and sending out stories share a pool of energy, resources, and information. And you can pay them back and do your part. When you hear about an anthology invitation or some other writing project, you may have a chance to forward the news to a friend or even tell the editor, “I know somebody who writes exactly this type of thing. They would be perfect if there’s a slot open.”

We’ve always worked hard to help other writers, whether newbies or established pros. We expect and receive the same in return.

O O O

You will see this among actors or comedians, too—a group of famous, successful people actually grew up together and have been friends for years, even when they were unknowns. How did they all become successful together? That would seem statistically unlikely. It’s because success breeds success. The people who are willing to work hard will help each other out along the way.

As a young writer, Kevin met and befriended other aspiring authors and kept in touch with them as their careers began to grow. At the time, none of them had any credits, just similar goals. And you probably know at least some of them now: David Farland, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Michael A. Stackpole, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Robert J. Sawyer, and Jennifer Roberson.

We were all new writers, learning our craft and learning the business. We poured our hearts and our energies into becoming writers. As a group of friends, we helped one another, passing along news and tips, critiquing manuscripts, sharing assignments, making introductions.

This wasn’t helping “the competition.” It was building an alliance. By pooling our knowledge, we didn’t make ourselves less likely to succeed. We didn’t become negative competition for each other—we became each others’ secret weapon.

In the years since we were all newbies together, members of our group have become national and international bestselling authors, winners of (or nominees for) almost every award in numerous genres—from the Writers of the Future Award, to the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Bram Stoker, Shamus, Edgar, Pushcart, Endeavor, Sidewise, Scribe, Locus, Mythopoeic Society, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards (and probably many others). Some have become publishers themselves, movie producers, record producers, or game designers.

We have a business mindset—a professional mindset. We are all career oriented, goal oriented, and doing exactly what we want to do. By working together and supporting one another, one success bred another success and another.

Afterword

Consider the Source

Rebecca Moesta

From a Keynote Speech for

Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium

Brigham Young University

As I was preparing to give a talk for the attendees of this symposium, I found myself thinking, Why should someone want to hear me speak—or even take advice from me? And why should you listen to what I have to say? Then I thought, well, maybe I’d better start with an entirely separate speech called “Consider the Source,” on how, or whether, to take advice from someone.

So before I even try to give you advice, I’m going to give you advice on taking advice.

I have a Master’s in Business Administration, so I tend to approach things from a business point-of-view and try to analyze cost–benefit ratios and things like that. Let me start out by analyzing what makes advice worth taking—because sometimes free advice is worth as much as you paid for it.

We all want to learn from other people’s mistakes and successes. We need to find a good source for advice, because if you reinvent the wheel, you may also be reinventing all of the mistakes that people made leading up to it. That will put you well behind where you want to be. Choose a role model or mentor, but choose wisely.

Consider the source.

It’s not a good idea to take advice about success from people who aren’t successful themselves. That may sound like an overly simplified statement, but I have made this mistake many times in my past, and I know many people who listen very seriously to people who are not successful.

If you want to be a successful writer or artist, take advice from somebody who is at a level higher than you have achieved. Don’t choose someone at the same level as you, or even below your level.

I took creative writing when I was in college, and I had a professor who hated everything I wrote. Everything I did was wrong from this teacher’s point of view. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I was crushed. Every time I listened to another student’s story—a story so good that everybody in the class was saying “Wow!” before bursting into applause—the teacher absolutely ripped it to shreds, telling them they didn’t know anything about writing.

It wasn’t until about ten years later—a decade during which I did no writing whatsoever—that I realized the professor had published only one small book of poetry in his entire career. That was it. Just a couple hundred copies of a little chapbook, and he had been interviewed on one local radio station. Other than teaching some writing classes, that booklet was the sum total of his experience with writing. He had convinced me that I was a bad writer and that I could never become a writer. So I didn’t pursue writing because I was afraid for many, many long years. I should never have listened to his advice.

You have to consider the source.

When choosing your mentor, look at whether that person is going where you want to go. One of Kevin’s mentors was Dean Koontz. That’s not to say Kevin camped out in front of Dean’s house in Southern California and asked for daily snippets of wisdom. Kevin would talk with him a couple of times a year, and if we found ourselves in an unexpected situation—something we’d never done before—he might call to consult Dean about what he would do.

No matter how much you respect a person, make sure that they have some experience in the area in which they’re giving advice. Choose somebody who has credibility. You may want to learn from me in the area of business—or maybe not—but I would suggest you don’t ask my advice in the area of, say, flying an airplane. I’ve met some very interesting Catholic priests who have great insights on building a relationship with God, but I draw the line at having them tell me the ins-and-outs of raising children, because most of them have no practical experience in that area.

There are Writer’s Digest–style books that will tell you how to write a bestselling novel, but pay attention to who wrote them. Has the author of that book actually written a bestselling novel? Use your logic filter. “Why should I listen to this person?”

Let’s say you pick up a book called Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Al Zuckerman. You probably haven’t heard of Al Zuckerman before, haven’t seen his name on the cover of bestselling novels. Why should he be giving advice? But if you read the author bio, you’ll discover that he was the agent to many major New York Times bestselling novelists, including Ken Follett and Eileen Goudge. In that case, I decided he did know enough about the subject and was qualified to write a book on it.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of other books of advice written by people who have had no success in the area in which they are promoting themselves as experts.

Aspiring writers often look to their writers’ group for advice, and I will give you another big caveat. If the other writers in the critique group are not where you want to go—or on their way to where you want to go—maybe think twice about what they say. Put it through your logic filter and ask yourself, “Does it make sense? Do they know what they’re talking about?” Don’t just accept that if they’re in a writing group they must know about writing.

Fellow professionals can be an excellent resource for advice. Again, choose from the people who are ahead of you in the area that you want to advance in. For example, if you want to go into comic writing, look for advice from a comic industry professional, but don’t necessarily take advice from them on writing a novel. Or if you want to learn how to write a TV script, look to someone who has TV credentials.

There is also the matter of practicality. Kevin’s parents were a big help here, even if he didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to be creative, to be a writer; he imagined himself doing big things with lots of readers for his work. But his parents insisted that he should get a job that would pay his bills, that he needed to cover his living expenses, to keep him afloat while he established himself as a writer.

He was disappointed that they weren’t more supportive, just embracing his dreams no matter what. In fact, they wanted him to succeed—but also to be practical. He did get a good job as a technical writer to support himself, and he kept that job for twelve years while he was building his novel-writing career until it would support him. That was being practical. His parents gave him the right advice.

A lot of people take advice from friends, family, parents, peers, but at the end of the day, you are the person who’s going to have to follow the path that you have chosen to the end of your life, after everybody else fades away or loses touch. Choose a career you can feel passionate about, something you want to keep doing, a job that will hold your enthusiasm and give you satisfaction, probably for the rest of your life.

So, that is my advice on taking advice and being successful. And it’s just advice, so don’t just take my word on all of these things. Think about it and decide for yourself.

Acknowledgments

We’re grateful to many people for their various contributions to this book, which has been a work in progress for more than two decades. Thanks to

- Writers of the Future, where we first started giving this talk, and the support of Tim Powers, David Farland, K.D. Wentworth, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Goodwin of Galaxy Press, Gunhild Jacobs and Joni Labaqui of Author Services, among many others at the Contest.

- Everyone at WordFire Press who helped make this book possible: Peter J. Wacks, Keith J. Olexa, Quincy J. Allen, Vivian Trask, Sam Knight, Diane Jones, and David Boop.

- Terry Brooks for setting a stellar example of professionalism, both in private and in public.

- Janet McDonald for the great cover.

- Our students and fellow instructors at Superstars Writing Seminars for teaching us so much, especially David Farland, Brandon Sanderson, Eric Flint, James A. Owen, and Tracy Hickman.

- Shannon & Linda Lifchez, for teaching us the concept of being “on stage” and polite at all times.

- Our friends, Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith, Sarah & Dan Hoyt, Rebecca & Alan Lickiss, Amy Baxter, Doug Beason, Mike Resnick, Lisa & Tracy Mangum, Steven L. Sears, T. Duren Jones, Neil Peart, Brian Herbert, and Debra Ray, for always being there as sounding boards for us to bounce our ideas off of.

- The workshops and conferences that gave us the opportunity to refine our presentation: Nancy Knight and Dragon Con Writers’ Track; Chris Mandeville and Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference; Brisbane Writers’ Festival; Jody Lynn Nye and her Writer’s Two-Day Intensive Workshop; Life, the Universe, and Everything at Brigham Young University; Crested Butte Writers Conference; LDStorymakers, and others.

- Jason Chen at StoryBundle.com and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for helping us reach a much wider audience.

- Mark Lefebvre at Kobo for urging us to make this information available to all professionals.

- Our parents, Andy & Dorothy Anderson and Louis & Louise Moesta, for teaching us professionalism, kindness, and our work ethic.

About the Authors

Kevin J. Anderson has published over 125 books, more than fifty of which have been national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, and Dune universes, as well as a unique steampunk fantasy novel, Clockwork Angels, based on the concept album by legendary rock group Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. He has edited numerous anthologies, including the Five by Five and Blood Lite series.

Rebecca Moesta (pronounced MESS-tuh) wanted to be an author since her early teens, but it wasn't until 1991 that she began writing in earnest. Her solo novels include Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Little Things (2002) and three novels in the Junior Jedi Knights series. With her husband, Kevin J. Anderson, she wrote the Crystal Doors trilogy, the movie novelization of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen under the pseudonym "K.J. Anderson" (2003); a movie novelization of Supernova (2000); a novelization of the popular StarCraft computer game StarCraft: Shadow of the Xel'Naga, under the pseudonym "Gabriel Mesta" (2001); and a Star Trek graphic novel, The Gorn Crisis (2001). The team, currently working on Star Challengers, a Young Adult science fiction series, has also written two young adult Titan A.E. novels (2000), two high-tech Star Wars Pop-up Books, and the 14-book Young Jedi Knights series of Star Wars novels.

Together, they are the publishers of WordFire Press.

Book Description

International bestseller Anderson has created many extensive fictional universes, ranging from sweeping galactic empires to complex steampunk fantasies, to humorous monster-filled cities. He has become known for his skill in worldbuilding.

In Worldbuilding: From Small Towns to Entire Universes he describes his techniques in creating a rich fictional setting, leading writers through the countless questions and topics one must consider. Whether it’s geography, climate, politics, economics, society, religion, science, arts, or history, all of these ingredients form the basis for a believable setting for your story to unfold.

The Million Dollar Writing Series

When seeking advice, always consider the source. Many self-appointed “experts” write how-to books without themselves ever accomplishing the thing they are trying to teach you how to do.

In the Million Dollar Writing Series, each of our authors has sold a minimum of one million dollars of commercial product in their field. They have proved themselves, and here they share their wisdom, advice, and experience with you.

There are many factors in becoming a successful writer, and we cannot guarantee that you’ll break into the top levels, but we hope you find the advice to be useful and enlightening.

Worldbuilding: From Small Towns to Entire Universes

Copyright © 2015 WordFire, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law.

The authors and publisher have strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in creating the Million Dollar Writing series. We don’t believe in magical outcomes from our advice. We do believe in hard work and helping others. The advice in our Million Dollar Writing series is intended to offer new tools and approaches to writing. We make no guarantees about any individual’s ability to get results or earn money with our ideas, information, tools or strategies. We do want to help by giving great content, direction and strategies to move writers forward faster. Nothing in this book is a promise or guarantee of future book sales or earnings. Any numbers referenced in this series are estimates or projections, and should not be considered exact, actual or as a promise of potential earnings. All numbers are for the purpose of illustration. The sole purpose of these materials is to educate and entertain. Any perceived slights to specific organizations or individuals are unintentional. The publisher and authors are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, financial, or other professional services. If legal or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

ISBN: 978-1-61475-229-5

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Art Director Kevin J. Anderson

Cover artwork images by Dollar Photo Club

Published by

WordFire Press, an imprint of

WordFire, Inc.

PO Box 1840

Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition October 2015

Printed in the USA

wordfirepress.com

Created with Vellum

1 Creating Universes, Big and Small

I’ve written 130 novels, and I’ve built a lot of worlds—some of them entirely from scratch, others similar to the neighborhoods I can visit every day, with just simple modifications and altered details. I like to paint on a big literary canvas, and I like to fill in all the details.

In my space opera series, the Saga of Seven Suns and the Saga of Shadows, I created the vast Spiral Arm, with rival galactic empires, trading conglomerates, diverse cultures (human and non-human), hundreds of planets, exotic climates, bizarre alien races, and extraterrestrial life forms—all as a backdrop for my characters to let me tell their stories.

In my Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series, I took a more whimsical fantastic approach on a modern-day America ten years after an utterly improbable sequence of cosmic coincidences unleashed werewolves, ghosts, vampires, mummies, and zombies back into the world. The monsters have set up a section of the city, the Unnatural Quarter, where they can live and let live (so to speak). They operate embalming parlors, cafes, gambling joints, All Day/All Nite fitness centers (including treadmills without mirrors, so as not to embarrass the vampire clientele). And, yes, zombie detective agencies. The monsters experience the same types of problems that normal people do, though maybe a bit more extreme. It’s all played for laughs, and it may seem silly—but I mapped out the rules, laid down the details and followed them consistently throughout.

In my ambitious “sailing ships and sea monsters” nautical fantasy trilogy, Terra Incognita, I developed a world much like Medieval Europe during the Crusades, with a partially unmapped world, ambitious sailing expeditions—as well as a smattering of magic, and of course sea monsters. Even though the fictional world was closely based on the Portugal of Prince Henry the Navigator or the Mediterranean of the Crusades, I still had to understand basic questions such as: How do sailing ships work? How do the sailors navigate? Does this civilization have accurate clocks (vital for navigation)? Do the navies have gunpowder? Do the countries have the printing press? In Uraba, my continent modeled after desert-like Arabia, where did they get the trees to build their wooden ships? Where are the mines for the metals they needed?

All those questions had to be answered—and the answers in turn drove and shaped the storyline.

I have done a lot of work in established universes based on films, TV, or well-known novels. Often the audiences are already extremely familiar with the characters and details. For instance, I’ve written numerous projects in the universes of Star Wars, Dune, X-Files, Batman, Superman, Star Trek, and most recently in the Heroes Reborn TV show. When I worked on Star Wars, I had access to multiple reference books, information gathered by generations of fans and Lucasfilm experts. In my Superman novel, The Last Days of Krypton, I had to pull together almost ninety years of scattered hints and assertions about Superman’s home planet, about his father Jor-El, about how Krypton had exploded … and much of the established canon was completely contradictory. I had to find some way to synthesize it, force it all to make sense. And sometimes such challenges led to quite wonderful solutions.

When my friend Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist for the legendary rock group Rush, invited me to work with him on a storyline and novel for their steampunk fantasy concept album “Clockwork Angels,” he told me his vision for a pleasant Victorian-era world run by a rigid but benevolent figure named the Watchmaker. In Albion, alchemy works, and the Watchmaker had discovered the secret of creating not only gold, but also a plentiful alchemical energy source called coldfire. Albion was wealthy (because of all that gold) and comfortable (because of all that cheap energy), practically a utopia. The Watchmaker wasn’t a brutal dictator; he just wanted everything to run efficiently.

But of course, not everyone wants that. Enter his nemesis, the Anarchist—a “freedom extremist” who wants to destroy all vestiges of order and civilization, so human beings can achieve true freedom by solving all of their own problems. But not everyone likes chaos either. Our hero, Owen Hardy, is a young man caught between the two forces.

When I started asking Neil detailed questions about the steampunk world of Albion, he said, “You’re the master worldbuilder. I want to see what you come up with.” So I started thinking … if gold was so plentiful, how would the economy work? Would silver then be more valued, as a rarer metal? Could people travel about freely? From the story, there had to be airships, pirates, lost cities, a steampunk carnival.

Neil made it clear that he did not want Albion to be a harsh dystopia, but a relatively pleasant place. Most people really do want the trains to run on time, and they want to be confident of a nice home, a comfortable life, and food for the table. Not everyone would be comfortable with too-rigid laws, however, so there were outliers, people who pushed the rules … like a traveling steampunk carnival or a hearty airship captain.

I began to sketch out the network of Albion’s small towns, the steamliner routes, a traveling airborne train whose mournful whistle would inspire dreams in a small-town boy like Owen Hardy. Eventually, I fleshed out the world so beautifully and added so many details, which sparked so many ideas for countless other stories and characters, we couldn’t fit it all into one book, and so we wrote a companion novel, Clockwork Lives.

* * *

In this book, I’ll lay out some of my worldbuilding techniques, show you some of the puzzle pieces you’ll need to fit together, the blanks you’ll have to fill in.

Building a world depends on more than just drawing a map and imagining some terrain. A fully fleshed-out fictional world has cultures and economics, varying climates, religions, arts, politics, social expectations. After I’ve guided you through all of the considerations, you’ll be ready to build your own fictional world.

But you don’t have to stop at just one.

2 Everyday Worldbuilding

Even the most exotic fictional worlds are built from everyday details. Let me tell you about the small town where I grew up. I’ll paint a picture with words and details.

I spent my childhood in the tiny southern Wisconsin town of Franksville, population 250. It was a place of farms, country roads, neighbors who didn’t lock their doors, bicycles, cornfields, and treehouses … and not at all a place for a nerdy kid who liked to read comics. It was a cross between Norman Rockwell and Norman Bates.

The entire vicinity around Franksville, Wisconsin, was centered on one industry—the sauerkraut factory, home of Frank’s sauerkraut in pretty green cans that were shipped out nationwide (or worldwide, for all I knew). All the farmers for miles around grew fields of cabbages. As a little kid I would watch trucks overloaded with cabbage heads rolling down the county highway. Every once in a while, one would fall off, and we kids would grab it and bring our prize home … even though none of us much cared for raw cabbage.

The sauerkraut factory processed the cabbage, fermented it, and then canned it. All the waste cabbage water and undesirable sauerkraut was dumped into drainage ditches. Now, the sauerkraut factory make kraut all year long, and in Wisconsin we have cold winters—so, all the rotten sauerkraut juice dumped into the drainage ditches would freeze solid. My mom told me about when she was a girl how she and her friends would go ice skating on the frozen sauerkraut juice pond. (She also says they learned very quickly not to slip and fall down.)

Then spring would arrive, along with warmer weather. The frozen kraut juice would thaw … and then it would rot, and an incredible stench would waft up from the environs of the factory. Our house was downwind, so we got the full brunt of it.

And now, as I mentioned in the introduction, I’m writing a series about a zombie character. Cause and effect? You decide.

Every summer, Franksville would held the Kraut Festival, with midway rides and games, crowds from all over southern Wisconsin. My mom was actually the sauerkraut queen of 1957 (I’ve seen the photos). One of the main events at the Franksville Kraut Festival was the “international championship sauerkraut eating contest.” Contestants from as far away as Germany and Japan would join local champions, all of them seated at a table on the big stage as the crowds gathered. Then each contestant received a plate piled high with a full pound of steaming kraut—and when the buzzer sounded, they had 30 seconds to down it all. After a frenzy of activity, the winner would grasp his trophy, hold it up to applause, then bolt behind the stage to vomit out all that rapidly swallowed sauerkraut.

(I know this because my friends and I once sneaked behind the stage to watch, and we witnessed the entire spectacle.)

* * *

So why did I tell you all that? I was building you a world—the world of Franksville, Wisconsin … just a small town that some would consider ordinary, but I hope I’ve given you a colorful enough picture so you can see what makes that place unique.

You probably believed everything in my description (I assure you it’s all true). Why did you believe? Because of all the little details. Anybody can paint with broad, general strokes and tell basic things about a fictional world, but when you include details like ice skating on a frozen sauerkraut juice pond, or the cabbage heads falling off the trucks, or the kraut-eating contest and its stomach churning end … nobody would know to make up those things, unless she had actually been there and experienced it.

To create a believable world, whether it’s a small town in Wisconsin or a giant galactic empire, paint your picture with broad strokes, give your reader the background information necessary, but also add the little details, tiny points of veracity that your audience can see and believe in.

On my last visit to Australia, I spent time talking with my fellow author Bevan McGuinness. Bevan has done a lot of hiking in the Outback, and since I’m an avid hiker from Colorado, we exchanged hiking stories. He told me about a particularly nasty obstacle that hikers frequently encountered in the bush. The vicious flowering grass called spinifex. The flower heads are like thistles when they bloom, big, fluffy, and white, looking like tempting cotton balls. Fields of spinifex often cover the trails, ready to trap unwary hikers. But even though the spinifex looks fluffy and cottony, it’s filled with thin, sharp spines, and as you walk through the field of spinifex, the large flowers pierce and poke and stick to everything.

Bevan says that he can always spot amateur and unprepared hikers by the ones who wear long pants instead of shorts when pushing through a spinifex obstruction. That surprised me. “Don’t you want protection from the thorns,” I asked.

He explained that, yes, with bare legs you get poked and scratched by the spines—but that’s all. You take your wounds and move on. But for anyone wearing long pants, all those spines poke through the fabric, then break off and remain stuck there … so that all day long the needles constantly scratch and tear at the skin. At night around the campfire, seasoned hikers would pluck a few leftover spinifex thorns out of their skin and dress the scratches. The amateur hikers, though, would have to take off their pants, turn them inside out, and spend hours extracting out one spinifex spine at a time … and then also bandage their far more numerous scratches and cuts.

A little detail, but a real one. Not something you can make up … unless you’ve actually been there and seen it. A real detail for worldbuilding.

3 Questions Are Your Best Building Blocks

So, you want quick answers? Not so fast.

Questions often spark more imagination and more ideas than straightforward answers do. Therefore, ask a lot of questions, keep track of your answers, then ask more questions to build on the previous answers.

Suppose I gave you a simple challenge to describe something you’re all familiar with? Say, for example we ask you to describe … Earth. Scientists, writers, artists, psychologists … in fact everybody on Earth has tried to describe the world in one way or another. As an inhabitant of Earth, you’ve spent your entire life picking up details, learning about the natives, the culture, the economy, the geography, the history, and so on.

How would you describe “Earth” as a setting for your story? What details would you choose to focus on?

Fortunately, creating a world for a novel or a short story doesn’t need to be quite so rigorous, but you do need to convey a sense of a lot more details and a lot more growth without necessarily including every tiny nuance.

You, the writer, can make up just about anything you like—then build on it, so long as it’s internally consistent. If you’re writing a fantasy adventure, do you have a magic system developed? Do you know the rules as to when magic works and when it doesn’t—and what it costs? A powerful wizard character can’t be just a surprise grab box of magic miracles; he can’t just pull out a charmed amulet with a “spell of plot convenience.” You have to know all these details so the reader can buy into your world.

Ask your questions, then align your answers with all the other answers and details you’ve developed from the first round of questions. Then go back and ask more questions. Most important, play the most ruthless, geekiest fanboy skeptic: with every answer, ask, Does it make sense?

But we can’t have you just asking random questions. For any good universe-creator, the answers need to build on one another and spark deeper, richer world creation.

For that, we’ll start with an ingredients list.

4 A Worldbuilding Ingredients List

When I was a college student and aspiring writer, I got involved in role-playing games and in small press magazines. There, I built a circle of friends who were also aspiring writers with similar goals. One of these authors was Michael A. Stackpole, who had formed his own gaming company, Flying Buffalo, that produced role-playing game modules, each one called a MythosPak.

Each MythosPak was basically a ready-built world for RPG’ers to play in; a rich setting for their game. At the time I was 18, Mike was 23. He hired me to do one of his MythosPaks, even paid me a few hundred dollars for it (which at the time was one of the biggest writing checks I had ever received). His guidelines were very detailed, and I worked through them to create a fantasy world that described all aspects of the culture, history, monetary system, religion, geography, etc. I had never asked all those questions before. It seemed never to end!

But I began writing, filling in the blanks, then filling in more blanks, then expanding on what I had already created, which led to a more detailed picture. It was like a flower unfolding, getting bigger and bigger and more detailed. I did so much work on that MythosPak that I used the world I created as the backdrop for my first three fantasy novels, The Gamearth Trilogy.

In doing that exercise, I learned a great deal on how much work goes into building an entire world. Although I’ve since lost those formal notes for the MythosPak, I remembered what I had done. I learned how to do worldbuilding by practice and by instinct.

Years later, when my stepson was in a fourth grade social studies class, his teacher used a technique to bring other lands and cultures to life for the students. He called it PERSIA. (I’ve since learned that this is a common technique in schools—and it’s a pretty good one.)

PERSIA stands for: Political, Economic, Religion, Society, Intellectual, and Arts.

That’s a very neat breakdown of categories and a good starting point. But as I worked with it and began to formalize all the steps I use in building a completely real and believable fictional world, I realized there were other vital ingredients missing. So I expanded the concept, reorganized it, and made it into a far less pronounceable acronym:

GCPESRIAH

Don’t worry—it doesn’t have to be pronounceable, it just has to be useful.

These are my key elements to consider and develop for a fully formed fictional world:

Geography

Climate

Politics

Economic

Social

Religion

Intellectual/Science

Arts

History

GEOGRAPHY

If we’re going to build a world, let’s start with the world itself—the geography, the landscape. Are your characters in a giant desert like Frank Herbert’s Dune? Is it an ice planet like Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back? Is it a lush landscape with forests and mountains like Middle Earth (or New Zealand, as Peter Jackson would have it)?

I’ve received a lot of manuscripts from aspiring fantasy authors. (No I don’t have time to read them, and, no, please don’t send me yours.) It seems that a requirement for any epic fantasy novel is a big map of the world, with suitably spaced hazards from west to east, so the characters can encounter sufficient adventures.

Some of the maps I’ve seen are simply ridiculous, drawn by writers with a great deal of story imagination, but not necessarily any geographical common sense. Oh, each map has the requisite frozen wastes in the north, impassable deserts in the south, oceans to the east and west.

Don’t succumb to “wistful fictional geography.”

I remember one map in particular, a fantasy land ringed by towering mountains on all sides—north, south, east and west. Rivers flowed from the mountains into the heartland. (Yes, rivers do tend to start in the mountains, but they drain toward the sea, not the middle of the land.) It was quite a remarkable world actually.

This particular map also had trackless and treacherous swamps pushing up against impenetrable sand-dune deserts, like the Louisiana bayous right next to the Sahara. Hmm, how would that occur? Cities had sprung up in rugged inhospitable places—for defense, I suppose, but without much consideration for trade. Historically speaking, settlements tend to arise where there’s a reason for a lot of people to be: rivers or harbors, major crossroads, the site of important resources. There are usually reasons why humans put settlements where they do.

I remember a big budget fantasy movie, in which our heroes had to complete a difficult quest to steal a powerful talisman from the Big Baddy. The Big Baddy had built a sinister, evil-looking tower in a vast desert surrounded by cracked dirt, lava rock, and black slag—out in the middle of nowhere. There were no roads, no rivers … and yet the Big Baddy had filled the evil fortress with thousands of monster henchmen.

It made great cinema. It looked very scary. But … Huh? Who builds a gigantic population center and towering fortress in the middle of a wasteland? Where did the water come from? How was food delivered for all of the monster henchmen? Any villain should have thought of those things! How was the fortress constructed? Where did the materials come from out in the wasteland, and how did all that stone and metal arrive if there were no roads? (Yes, you could postulate that the Big Baddy used a magic spell to construct the tower, but in most cases I would advise not to rely on Spontaneous Construction.)

In a properly created world, the geography itself can drive the story. As an example, let me walk you through the map for my Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy.

The basic idea comes from the Prester John legend that became popular during the Crusades, when an as yet undiscovered Christian kingdom was rumored to exist far beyond the horizon. This kingdom was ruled by Prester John, a man who possessed the actual Holy Grail as well as the Fountain of Youth and increasing numbers of magical items as the legend grow over the years.

A very sketchy historical paraphrase: During the time, the Moors were sweeping through Northern Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar and invading Spain and greater Europe. Some desperate Christian rulers decided that if only they could find the lost kingdom of Prester John, he would be a powerful ally, who would bring his own armies to help Christian Europe drive the Muslims back. The search for Prester John was one of the reasons why so many of the influential historical voyages of discovery were launched—Vasco da Gama, Balboa, and others who sailed around uncharted Africa in search of a new continent. They did discover a whole new continent and eventually a passage around the Cape of Good Hope and up to India …. although they never did find Prester John.

I used that as the core idea for my Terra Incognita trilogy, in my own fantasy world with my own cultures and my own history. My world has two continents—Tierra (the equivalent of Christian Europe) and Uraba (the equivalent of Muslim Arabia). The two continents are joined by a very narrow isthmus, at the center of which is the great city of Ishalem, an ancient city considered sacred to both religions (like Jerusalem).

After centuries of friction and occasional clashes, the king of Tierra finally reaches a peace accord with the Sultan of Uraba. They meet in the sacred city of Ishalem to sign their treaty, and there is much rejoicing. Unfortunately, during all that rejoicing, someone accidentally starts a fire, which gets out of control, and the entire holy city burns down. Both the Tierrans and the Urabans blame the other side, and the bloody war explodes.…

Now, back to the geography: Because the two continents are connected by a narrow isthmus, the sacred city becomes a natural bottleneck. That geographical fact drives a great deal of trade and military strategy. Ships go up and down the outer coast, but they cannot get into the Middle Sea, a huge body of water like the Mediterranean on the other side of the isthmus. Therefore, many major roads and transport caravans take goods from the western side of the Isthmus to waiting ships on the other (until, much later in the trilogy, one of the leaders decides to dig a canal to connect the two bodies of water).

So how does all this tie in with the Prester John legend? In my fantasy world, a similar legend exists—a godlike figure, Ondun, supposedly lives in an undiscovered kingdom far across this uncharted sea. The king of Tierra feels that if he just sends his ships sailing far off to the west to find this land, they can bring back such a powerful ally, and they can win victory over the Urabans once and for all.

But there’s a catch: the Urabans have the same legend, and they believe if they can find Ondun, then he’ll become their ally. So the king of Tierra sends his sailing ships westward across the uncharted Oceansea in search of Ondun … while the Sultan of Uraba sends his ships westward across the vast uncharted Middlesea. (And because the world is round, you can figure out what happens.…)

This grand quest leads to more important factors for the plot. In order to build those sailing ships, as well as to construct major navies to defend their lands, both Tierra and Uraba require a great deal of wood. Uraba (which is like Arabia) doesn’t have a lot of forested land. [As a matter of historical fact, during the great boom of sailing ships and maritime trade, much of England’s forests were denuded in order to construct enough ships.] Therefore, the Sultan of Uraba needs to expand into new territory where there is plentiful wood. Similarly, Uraba is poor in metals and mining, but Tierra has a rich set of mines on the northern coast of the Middlesea, the Gremurr Mines, a vulnerable place that the Urabans can attack. The mountains from the north block an easy retaliation from Tierra, unless a new road is scouted through the rugged territory.…

You see how the landscape shapes the story?

Building this world, understanding and working with the geographical limitations, as well as where the resources were lacking, helped shaped the entire trilogy. I would call it more “inspirational geography” than “wistful geography.”

CLIMATE

Climate is more than just “It was a cloudy day outside.” Climate drives an entire culture.

Think about it. A civilization that springs up on a lush tropical island, with plentiful water, fish, fruit, and moderate temperatures, will be very different from the culture that develops in an exceedingly harsh equatorial desert or in the frozen sub-arctic tundra.

Do your people live in a land with all the seasons, from hot summers to cold winters, or do they live in a temperate area where hunting, fishing, and agriculture continue throughout the year? When your survival depends on planting at a certain time, harvesting at a certain time, and preserving and storing lots of food for an entire season, your characters will have a different mindset than if they know every day is going to be basically the same.

Climate influences clothing styles and fabrics, and therefore trade in the materials to make those clothes. An extremely cold environment requires warm clothing, thick wool, or furs. The need for furs will make hunters go after game that they wouldn’t necessarily eat, such as sables or minks (thick, warm fur, but not good to eat). In an extremely hot and humid climate, however, you won’t see much demand for thick wool or warm furs. In a place like that, their clothing would be loose and cool, and traders would focus instead on fabrics like cotton and silk. The clothing styles may even be scanty or risqué, because the temperature outside is so darn hot. Or clothing is designed to keep away bugs, as in a mosquito-infested swamp.

Heavy heat and humidity can affect a culture in other ways. It’s almost a cliché to describe the slow and lethargic daily life in the Deep South; the outside climate just saps the will to run around with great energy. On the other hand, you don’t see too many sluggish, lethargic people lounging around in the bitter cold of a howling arctic storm.

Climate has an effect on food and cooking styles. In hot, moist climates where food spoils quickly, the locals tend to make heavily spiced dishes with hot peppers, which not only mask the taste of food starting to go bad, but also serve as a preservative, such as Indian food, Mexican food, or Thai food.

In colder climates where there is a seasonal component to hunting and fishing, the people have to gather and store a year’s worth of food in a fairly short time period. They have been forced to discover many different ways of preserving perishables, such as drying, salting, pickling, even freezing. The next time you order ethnic food, think about some of the causes and connections. (such as, how did deep-fried ice cream become a traditional Mexican dish?)

Climate also affects language. Eskimo and Lapland tribes have dozens of words for different types of snow, while a native Saharan tribe wouldn’t have much use for that vocabulary … although they probably have as many different descriptors for dunes and sand.

POLITICS

How does your society run?

Granted, it’s been a long time since my high school civics class. When I watch the news, I couldn’t entirely explain how our own government runs (if it actually does), but in a fictional world, you can lay out your own constitution or Magna Carta. Take over the land and run it from your authorial chair—how does it work?

Is your society a monarchy? If so, how does the succession run? First-born male child? First-born child of either sex? Is the throne run by women only, and the husbands are just figureheads? Does the leadership pass by right of mortal combat among all of the ruler’s children, and may the best candidate win?

Is the ruler a usurper or tyrant, hated by all the downtrodden people while he struggles to consolidate a new reign? Or is it a rightful king or queen whose rule is not questioned?

Or is the land run by a council of elders? A council of nobles? If so, how are they chosen? Through inheritance, or merit, or randomly chosen by nametags drawn out of a cauldron? Are the council members honorable or corrupt?

During the Iraq War, some leaders believed (completely incorrectly, as it turns out) that the Iraqi people would happily cheer the American forces, view us as liberators, and celebrate our arrival, because “everyone wants democracy.” But a democratic society requires certain cultural underpinnings and expectations from the people. Your characters would be in for a tremendous surprise if, for instance, they went back in time to 14th century France, killed off the monarchs, freed all the peasants and serfs, and said, “There, you’re independent now! Form your own democracy.” That might make for a very interesting novel, but not one, I suspect, that would have a happy ending.

Do your people live in a free culture where they are allowed to poke fun and make biting satirical commentary of the rulers, or are such comments swiftly and violently repressed?

Are the laws upheld or are they subject to bribery?

Is it a free-wheeling merchant state or a fascist dictatorship?

Even if the king, or council, or capital are far away and have little direct effect on your character’s daily life, the government system still has an effect on your story. The society will change depending on whether the ruler is hated or beloved.

ECONOMICS

What do people do for a living? How do they pay their bills?

Unless your character is a trust fund baby, a filthy rich noble lord, or an alien species who can somehow gather nutrients by photosynthesizing from sunlight, he or she will want to know where their next meal is coming from. How will they acquire the necessities of getting from day to day? Where do they get shelter?

Any society has the basics of growing or acquiring food, and then distributing it (unless your character is only one person, getting food for herself), which leads to transportation needs and providers, merchants, as well as the subsidiary industries of cooks, restaurants, inns, and on and on. The same goes for resources: woodcutters, lumber mills, carpenters … and miners, smelters, blacksmiths … and quarry workers, stonecutters, masons. Everything in your society was created and built by someone.

In a high-tech science fiction society, such things are probably far removed from most of your characters (I don’t think about where the plastic came from in the handle of my microwave oven when I push the buttons to heat up my cup of coffee), but if your society is much closer to subsistence level, those concerns really matter.

As a writer, if you have a character who is a farmer or a hunter, a fisherman, a caravan driver, a miner, you don’t have to explain what they do or why when you build your world. But what if your economics are dependent on something more interesting? Is there some special commodity that’s unique to the city or land—like the spice mélange in Dune, for example, a substance so rare and valuable that it is economically feasible for people to endure one of the most hellish environments in the Imperium just to obtain it. Or, closer to home, we have petroleum, some of the greatest reserves of which are buried under a harsh desert inhabited by often hostile people … or found by drilling in the North Sea on oil rigs where the crews have to endure terrible storms and isolation.

What is valuable in your fictional society? If something is plentiful and easy to obtain, it’s not likely to be very valuable. Is it a special kind of wood that grows in the dangerous rainforest? Is it a drug or medicine extracted from shellfish in a nearby shark-infested coral reef?

Or yak butter?

Let’s explore yak butter for a minute. Imagine a kingdom where yak butter is a popular, and therefore valuable, commodity because King Thomas loves it. Thomas puts yak butter on his toast every morning, slathers yak butter on his sandwiches at lunch, and mixes great amounts of yak butter on his pasta at dinner. Because all the nobles at court want to earn favor with the king, they also use yak butter on almost everything.

This causes an economic boom for the yak herders in the isolated hill country. Never before has the demand for their yak butter been so high! Because of the higher profits and the higher demand, the wealthiest yak herders gather larger herds, and all that new money allows them to build bigger villages, have more children (because they can feed them now). They can even have more wives now (or husbands), if this is a society that allows it. Competing yak-butter merchants buy up the product as soon as it comes out of the churns, and they see that it gets distributed throughout the kingdom, particularly to the main castle. Caravans deliver the loads of yak butter, bringing it swiftly to market before it goes rancid, which leads to more heavily traveled roads through the mountains for efficient delivery.

It’s a true boom time for the yak herders.

Unfortunately, after King Thomas dies mysteriously, his successor, King Ronald, hates yak butter. No, he loathes yak butter. He won’t let his kitchens use it. He has all the supplies dumped in the moats and sweeps it out of the castle entirely. Therefore, all the fawning nobles at court suddenly discover that they, too, hate yak butter. Caravans are turned away. No one wants to buy the stuff throughout the kingdom. The yak herders in the hills are left high and dry, and they suffer a complete economic collapse.

But let’s make it more interesting. Economics drive your story as well.

How about some characters—the main yak herder’s daughter is in love with a boy who runs a caravan taking yak butter along the perilous mountain roads all the way to market in the capital city. He has many adventures delivering his cargo, while the daughter tends the herds and waits for her love to return.

But wait … what if it turns out that King Thomas was poisoned by a bad batch of yak butter … the very yak butter that the caravan boy just delivered? The boy is suddenly thrown under suspicion, but he escapes before King Ronald’s guards can arrest him. The boy flees, running back to the shelter in the mountains to be reunited with his love, who of course believes he is innocent. King Ronald sends armies into the hills after the boy, and also to crush the yak herder settlements. He even outlaws yak butter because of the death of King Thomas … but of course Ronald is the one who slipped poison into the yak butter so that he can take the throne, and he’s using the caravan boy and the scruffy yak herders as scapegoats. Why? Because one of his scouts has discovered a large gold vein in the mountains where the yak herders live, and he wants the territory for himself.…

You make up the rest.

SOCIETY

How are people treated in your fictional world? How do they get along every day? The social structure creates a framework for everything your characters do. A budding love story set in San Francisco during the Summer of Love will have a strikingly different feel than the same love story set in the Soviet Union under Stalin or in North Korea.

Are people happy and pursuing dreams in their everyday life, or do they live in a repressive world, tight-lipped and fearful at any moment?

Is your population treated equally, or is there a rigid class system? If there is general equality among the sexes and races (and species, in certain science fiction or fantasy titles), then your character interactions can proceed however you like. A strict class system, however, adds an entirely different framework.

How do people interact inside and outside of their rigidly defined classes? Are there extremely differentiated castes, or just a general spectrum from the powerful to the powerless? The wealthy and the poor? They will act differently to one another.

Once, when I was staying in a hotel, the housekeeper had done a particularly good job (straightened my clothes, left extra towels, added a few extra touches), and I saw on the hotel’s notecard that my room had been serviced by “Desiree.” As I went to get my morning coffee, I walked past the supply room to find some of the housekeepers, chatting, working, laughing, telling jokes, generally enjoying themselves. When I returned, I passed one of the young women moving her cart along the corridor, and when I saw that her name tag said Desiree, I stopped. “Are you Desiree? Thanks for doing a very nice job with my room.” This was one of the staff who had been casually chatting and laughing with her coworkers only a few minutes earlier. I wasn’t expecting anything more than a smile and “Thanks. Enjoy your stay.” But as soon as I spoke with her, she instantly averted her eyes, took a step aside so I could easily get past her in the hall, and mumbled nervously, “Thank you, sir.” I found it very strange.

If your story operates with a system of nobility, how do the lessers address the people from above their station? Growing up in the U.S., I’ve never truly fathomed the labyrinth of titles—Sir, My Lord, Your Grace, My Liege, Eminence, and You Idiot—though I suspect it has something to do with the equally convoluted menagerie of counts, dukes, barons, viscounts, princes, grand dukes, and the like.

Are there slaves, and if so how are they treated? Are they miserable, whipped, overworked, and tortured … or are they an accepted part of society and treated reasonably well? Prisoners of war and their descendants, for example.

What about serfs and peasants, the workers of the land? Serfs are often forced into their servitude by a great debt that they owe and can never repay, nor can their descendants. What are the mechanics for how your slaves or serfs can be freed? This would certainly give a character a great deal of hope and a goal. And is it a real chance—or just a scam?

How are women treated? Are they considered objects of great beauty? Held inside a noble house and never let outside? Or forced to cover up every part of their skin so that no other men can be jealous? Are they kept barefoot and pregnant, or are they equal partners in society? Are they allowed to be educated? Are they revered and worshipped as in a great matriarchy?

Do your people have large families, celebrating as many children as possible? Or are they limited (perhaps by the government) to one or possibly two offspring?

How are children treated? Are they forced into rigid behavior, never allowed to be rambunctious, “seen and not heard,” or are they allowed to run wild, like lost boys and girls, not given any responsibilities or behavior controls until they reach near adulthood?

How does your society treat the sick and poor? Are there beggars in the streets, or can anyone find a job to earn room and board when needed? Are the sick cared for with benevolent healers, or are they abandoned, left to die? “to decrease the surplus population,” as Ebenezer Scrooge would have it.

What about the elderly? Are they revered or considered a burden and a waste of resources? When a wise old person grows shaky and infirm, is he appreciated for all his life experience and wisdom, or is he cast out from the tribe and sent into the cold to starve and die?

You will have population centers. Are the cities sprawling, open, and welcoming … or do the people huddle behind high city walls? Do they live in enclosed habitat domes, or in a vast open landscape where the nearest neighbor is hours away?

How does communication work in your society, particularly long-distance communication? How is news spread? How do people know about the rest of the world? Do they use carrier pigeons? Runners and rumor-spreaders? Are there magic scrying mirrors or contract telepaths? Does your society have the printing press for preservation and dissemination of information, or are squinty-eyed monks in dim rooms busily copying tomes as best they can?

How does the military fit into society? Does the ruler hire mercenary forces or security troops when she feels the need? Is there a large standing army (which requires a significant expense and therefore higher taxes—see Economics above)? Is it a volunteer army, or is conscription enforced? Does every young man, or young woman, know they will have to serve in the army? Does the army use horses or ground vehicles? Do they fight with swords? Gunpowder and firearms? Magic spells, telepathic blasts, bolts of lightning summoned from the clouds?

On the flip side of warfare and defense, what do the people do for fun? What are the main leisure activities? Do they let mad bulls chase them through the streets and call it fun? (No, nobody would believe that!) Are there particularly interesting sports, perhaps some that require individual exercise and physical prowess, or others that have become team sports? And in team competitions, what do the winners receive—a trophy? A large monetary reward? A free annual pass to the local brothel? And what happens to the losers? Do they go home in shame to practice for next year? Do they have their heads chopped off, as in ancient Mayan ball games? Are the players gladiators, whose very life depends on winning every match?

What about games? Nearly every society has some form of gambling for amusement. Is the gambling open or illicit?

And what about drugs? Are they commonplace and socially accepted for the most part, like caffeine, alcohol, or tobacco … or are they potent and illegal? What are the penalties for use? What are the addictions, and the consequences?

[pause]

Take a breath…

Let me pause here to let you catch your breath, and for me to give you a reality check:

You don’t have to answer every one of these questions for the world you’re creating—but at least think about them, especially the ones that have something to do with your specific story and characters.

When you start turning over the creative rocks and looking at what might scurry out, the very answers you concoct might spark story ideas or new characters, or just interesting background details that will make your world stand out.

Now you have an idea why so many of my books turn into massive tomes!

RELIGION

Religion (or rival religions) is one of the primary drivers in a world, shaping many aspects of culture and society. Unless your world is basically secular, with the people primarily concerned about politics and commerce, religion will form a strong set of guardrails on your plotline. Are they spiked iron guardrails, or cushy velvet-covered ones?

What sort of god or gods do the people worship? Are they benevolent, nurturing paternal or maternal figures, or are they scary monsters that demand sacrifices? Or are the “gods” mere philosophical concepts for comfort and enlightenment, like an esoteric Higher Power.

In some societies, the people have an up-close and personal real interaction with their god(s)—for instance, if your ruler is a godlike priest-king or if, as in Greek mythology, the pantheon of gods actually does come down to interact regularly and personally with everyday people (usually meddling, testing, or getting some poor girl pregnant).

If the gods themselves don’t have an actual walk-on role in your story, the organized religion may be powerful enough to dominate much of the activity. If you set your story in Saudi Arabia, think of how much Islam shapes every aspect of daily life. A blonde single mother searching for love in Afghanistan would be an entirely different story from a romance with the same character in Paris. If your character breaks a religious law, is he frowned upon by a prune-faced church lady, or does he have his hands chopped off?

Is your religion powerful and monolithic, like the Catholic Church in Europe in the Middle Ages? Or are there various churches, sects, cults, and traditions? If so, how are the others tolerated? Is there a grab-bag of cults all vying for new members, or are any new religions forced to meet in secret back rooms? If your character lives in a village controlled by ISIS, he’s not likely to attend public debates on comparative religions. On the other hand, Islam in the Middle Ages tended to be much more open and pragmatic. Although Islam was the official religion, Christians and Jews were tolerated, so long as they paid an extra tax.

What about the priests and the priesthood? Are they respected? Are they allowed to marry and have children? Are they literate? (Are they perhaps the only literate people in a peasant-based society?)

Note also that a formal organized church is often the basis of a codified system of laws and criminal punishment … and that certainly has a bearing on what will actually happen when the poor yak butter caravan boy is arrested on suspicion of poisoning the king.…

Even in a relatively open culture, religious aspects can permeate other activities (this overlaps with Society, above). Just try to order a normal alcoholic drink in a restaurant in southern Utah, and you’ll immediately see the Mormon influence in everyday non-church life. Once, while staying in Monticello, Utah, I asked the front desk clerk where I might buy a six-pack of beer for the refrigerator in my room. He responded with a horrified expression, as if I had tried to score heroin. “Oh, no, sir! We don’t carry any of that here in this town! You have to go fifty miles away to find a liquor store.” Even then, fifty miles away, the option was a blocky prison-like building on a side street called a “State-Run Liquor Store,” where they sold only warm beer, nothing refrigerated. When I asked if they had any cold beer, I was again greeted with similar horror. “Oh no, sir! We can’t sell cold beer, because then you might go home and drink it right away.”

No, I couldn’t make that up. Imagine the shock a complete outsider would have entering a situation like that.

Similarly, the Southern Baptist Church has made the state of Texas a patchwork of contradictions, a state full of fiercely independent people who vigorously fight against any limits on their freedoms … yet they also have seven completely dry counties where no sales of alcohol of any kind are allowed; sometimes these counties are adjacent to other completely “wet” counties featuring drive-up liquor stores where a person can pull up to the window and a helpful clerk will pop open a can of beer and hand it to you before you drive off.

When you create your fictional world, though, I suggest you have it make more sense than the real world.

INTELLECTUAL/SCIENCE

This subject goes hand-in-hand with Religion (or sometimes hand-in-fist), heart vs. mind, rational vs. faith.

How do people think the world works? When your characters hear thunder in the sky, do they believe gods are battling in the clouds, or do they know it’s hot and cold air masses colliding in the atmosphere? Do they know where the sun goes at night?

How advanced is their astronomy? Developing a basic calendar is more important than just remembering your significant other’s birthday or anniversary. In an agricultural society, knowing the turn of the seasons, when floods might come, when to plant and when to harvest, can be the difference between survival and extinction.

Does everyone have a basic scientific understanding, or are scientists—alchemists, astronomers—revered and mysterious, like high priests or magicians?

Are scientists revered or feared? Think of the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, who was basically an all-knowing wizard who could come up with the solution to any problem, related to any conceivable scientific discipline (usually using vines and coconuts as his raw materials). Or Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer who could look up the vital piece of information to be used against any monster from her mountain of ancient books (all this, obviously, before the advent of Google searches).

Again, tied in with the section on Society, how widespread is education? Is it open and available to everyone, or just to an elite? Let’s get even more basic—does everyone know how to read and write? Do they understand mathematics? Or is such knowledge limited to a secret cabal of experts?

How much does the government control the education system? Does the queen want all of her subjects to have a full education, to understand the basic geography of the world and to learn other languages? Or does the ruling council control the population through selective and cultivated ignorance?

What is the state of medicine, and hence, what is the state of biological knowledge? Are there large hospitals and medical schools with dissection laboratories, or are there just local healers using traditional remedies and “old wives tale” knowledge passed from generation to generation?

Are women allowed to be educated? And if so, are there specific professions in which they specialize? Can they be doctors or just midwives? Does the local healer who knows an herbal remedy for any ailment, practice with impunity … or is she considered an eccentric oddball in danger of being stoned as a witch?

Are philosophers allowed to ruminate on the nature of existence, to question the foundations of society and politics, on morality, on commonly held religious beliefs, or are they burned at the stake for speaking blasphemy? If they question the natural order, do they have to do it in whispers among like-minded students?

And, as mentioned earlier, how is information disseminated? Is there the printing press? Are books widely available in free libraries to anyone who wants to read them (again, assuming they can all read)? Or do secret societies keep treasure troves of repressed information? Are there elaborate scientific societies and universities, or just crackpot inventors working in a shed behind the garage?

Does your scientist character have the power to save the world or destroy it … or maybe he could just develop a chemical means to detect poison in tainted yak butter.

ARTS

Artistic expression is what gives a society its “look and feel.”

Let’s start with architecture as the most obvious example. When your character arrives in a new city or a foreign land, what does she see? Think of the graceful domes and minaret spires if the city is Istanbul or an Arabian nights Baghdad … or the cold and blocky buildings of Soviet-era Warsaw. (Yes, I have been to both.) Think of the soaring stone castles and cathedrals in Europe, the wooden churches of Scandinavia, the low adobe pueblos of the American Southwest.

Architecture and the design is usually driven by the climate and the raw materials available. (Again, refer to various sections above—see, I told you it was all connected.)

Are the city buildings painted with bright beautiful frescoes, or brilliant primary colors, or are they subdued—grays, whites, tans? Are the buildings themselves considered beautiful, or just utilitarian? Is your city cluttered with statues, fountains and monuments everywhere? And if so, are they genuine works of art—maybe free-form designs, or sculptures of great legendary heroes—or are they erected for propaganda purposes, fifty idealized statues of the current repressive leader?

Is there a specific style of music? Do the minstrels play folk songs, or impassioned religious hymns, or do they sing thinly disguised commentary on current events? Do they play interesting musical instruments—flutes, drums, stringed instruments? Accordions? The yak herders might be well known for their sweet accordion music. Maybe our caravan boy plays the accordion to himself on the long journey to trade his yak butter, as he misses his sweetheart. Note that each of those instruments is small enough and portable enough that a wandering minstrel can carry one. (You don’t see many traveling minstrels hauling a piano around with them.)

Art—decorations, paintings, sculptures, music, writing, and poetry—is an indicator of the extent of free expression. Are people allowed to be imaginative and even eccentric in creating new works? That sort of thing happens only in a free and prosperous society. In a squalid subsistence-farming village or in a nomadic tribe in the drought-stricken Serengeti, you won’t find many people supporting themselves full-time through poetry (although even harsh societies tend to value minstrels and storytellers). Of course, I should point out that there aren’t many full-time poets who can support themselves even in the modern western world.

Do painters take commissions or simply try to sell their works in the bazaar? Is there a printing press to reproduce the poems or stories so that a writer’s work can be printed and distributed, or are the tales simply passed along orally, as Homer did?

And, back to Economics, how does the artist survive in your society? Do minstrels sing for their supper? Do painters and writers have wealthy patrons who support them? Or are they like modern-day writers, writing and writing and writing, submitting and submitting and submitting, all in hopes of earning just a few cents a word?

HISTORY

Your world has a history, and even if the characters don’t know all the names and dates, they will have a general awareness of where they come from and what happened before.

When writing an epic, authors often develop the full and elaborate history of their world as background work. And after putting so much work into all that history, obviously they want to use it. All of it. But remember, no one knows all the details. It doesn’t matter what the author has written down, if the character doesn’t know the information, don’t include it.

What happened before your story starts? Has there been a long-standing peace, and your people are relaxed and confident of where they’ll be in a year or a decade, or have the characters lived through an endless succession of political upheavals and the resulting social turmoil? Is the land in the midst of a revolution (for good or bad), or is it relatively stagnant?

Is your story set in a newly formed colony where settlers are scraping out a living and starting everything from scratch? Or do they live in an ancient city steeped in centuries of history and traditions?

Were your people recently conquered and now live under disliked overlords, or are they the conquerors themselves, trying to quell any dissatisfaction among the new subjects? Remember, winners and losers will have an entirely different version of what happened—even about recent events, as well as long-standing historical occurrences.

Most people will only know the history that’s relevant to them. Don’t expect a peasant to be able to rattle off the entire succession of monarchs and the dates of their reigns. They will likely know who the current ruler is, and possibly the previous one, and maybe a particularly famous, revered, or hated one from the past.

Quick, off the top of your head—what was the greatest foreign-policy achievement of President Millard Fillmore? That’s not something likely to come up in general conversation. (I actually happen to know the answer—Fillmore was the president who opened trade with isolationist Japan to the west.)

The knowledge of major historical characters—heroes, villains, saints—was often passed along in oral legends, folklore, and songs. Most of you won’t know much about Duke Wenceslaus I who ruled Bohemia in the 10th Century, but you’ve probably heard the popular Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.”

In his epic “Song of Ice and Fire,” George R.R. Martin developed an immense history of rulers and dynasties, generations of characters, countless intricate betrayals and assassinations. Many of those details are genuinely relevant to the characters who are members of the noble families torn apart. If your family lost its prominence and went bankrupt because of the murder of a king, you would certainly know the details of that event, even if it happened generations ago, because families tend to hold grudges. Even if your character is a commoner, she might know some of that political history because of all the turmoil the entire land went through in the resulting civil wars and struggles.

But she won’t know all the details, and what she does know might not be accurate.

Let me emphasize—no matter how much meticulous detail you put into developing the entire history of your world

Don’t Include Everything!

Historical details are like seasoning thrown in to enhance, but not overwhelm, the flavor of your story.

5 Reviewing the Ingredients

Now, let’s review and put the pieces together as to how they can be applied to your writing, how the ingredients are relevant to the story you want to tell.

GCPESRIAH

Geography—My small town of Franksville was in rural Wisconsin, with rolling hills and lots of fertile farmland that made it particularly suited to growing cabbage.

Climate—Even though the sauerkraut factory kept producing all year long, the fermented cabbage juice in the drainage ditches would freeze solid in the cold Wisconsin winter, so that my mother could go ice-skating on the kraut pond. Then, in spring, all that juice would thaw, and then rot, filling the air with an amazing stench.

Politics—As a kid in a small town, the actual local politics weren’t relevant to me, though I know there was a mayor, a town council, the power brokers who ran the annual Kraut Festival, even the Rotary Club (where much of the town’s business was conducted).

Economics—The sauerkraut factory was the main industry and driving economic factor in Franksville, and sauerkraut influenced so many aspects of the area, from the crops the cabbage farmers grew, to what the truckers hauled, to the workers in the kraut factory, to the administrators of the Kraut Festival, even my father, who ran the small town bank.

Society—Franksville was a very traditional Midwestern small town with yellow school buses, red barns, 1960s-era housewives who sat around the kitchen every morning smoking cigarettes and chatting in their coffee klatsches, while their husbands went off to work. Most of my neighbors were my cousins. Everybody knew everybody, and no one locked their doors.

Religion—The only church in Franksville was the Methodist Church, with white siding, a tall steeple, and black shingled roof. When my grandmother, a staunch Sicilian Catholic, moved to town with my grandfather, she had hoped to raise her five children in the Catholic Church, but had to settle for having them attend the Methodist church, because, she said, it was better than nothing.

Intellectual/Science—I was the smart kid with thick glasses and a fascination with comic books and science fiction. I always made the honor roll, often got straight A’s. Although my parents were very pleased with this, I was mercilessly harassed by classmates who reviled me for being a “brain,” gave me wedgies, and called me names so that I was forced to pretend not to be as smart as I really was.

Arts—I wanted to be a writer from the time I was five years old. I wanted to read books, but we had no public library, and I had to rely on the infrequent (and poorly stocked) Book-Mobile. My parents purchased a library of paperback classics, which we kept at home, and I diligently worked my way through them.

History—My great grandparents, Andrew and Elsie Anderson, had come off the boat from Denmark and settled in southern Wisconsin. Their son, my grandfather, Jens Thornvig Anderson, kept up the family farm and became a pig farmer during World War II; he was not allowed to go over and fight, because farmers were considered vital to the war effort. My grandpa became the caretaker of the nearby county park, the place where the Kraut Festival was held each year.

My dad and his brother and sisters grew up in Franksville, and when they got old enough and married, they build houses on plots of land carved out from the acreage my grandpa had used in the original farm. As a high school student, my dad started work as a bookkeeper for the local fuel-oil company, and was good enough at it that he started to work for the Bank of Franksville.

(All of these details were irrelevant to my daily life, but in developing the background world, it helps to know them.)

* * *

There, you see that even painting a picture of a perfectly common small American town requires from the same worldbuilding techniques as an entire fictional universe.

6 Conclusion

Is Your World Finished?

I hope I’ve given you a lot to think about in this book, a pile of kindling to start your imagination on fire.

Most users of a How-To book come looking for answers, and I’m afraid I’ve provided mostly pages and pages of questions. But that’s the point: questions. You have to ask the questions, a lot of them, because the answers you come up with will form the very foundation of the world in which your story is set.

Let me reiterate my admonition from the previous section, though: DON’T INCLUDE EVERYTHING.

Just because I’ve listed a hundred questions, your story doesn’t require answers for all of them. You don’t need to know every single thing, if it doesn’t affect your story—and the reader certainly doesn’t know (and it probably isn’t interested in), every last detail from the beginning of the world.

Asking those questions, though, is like adding creative fertilizer. When you work with all those ingredients and build your world, your story and characters will naturally blossom from it.

About the Author

Kevin J. Anderson is the author of 130 novels, more than fifty of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 23 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, Shamus Award, the SFX Reader's Choice Award, and New York Times Notable Book.

Anderson has coauthored fourteen books in the Dune saga with Brian Herbert. Anderson's popular epic SF series, The Saga of Seven Suns, is his most ambitious work, as well as its sequel, The Saga of Shadows. He has also written a sweeping fantasy trilogy, Terra Incognita, accompanied by two rock CDs based on the novels (which he wrote and produced). He has written two steampunk fantasy adventure novels, Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, with legendary Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. He also created the popular humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI.

His novel Enemies & Allies chronicles the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s; Anderson also wrote The Last Days of Krypton. He has written numerous Star Wars projects, including the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series (with Moesta), and Tales of the Jedi comics from Dark Horse. Fans might also know him from his X-Files novels or Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son.

Other WordFire Press Titles

Our list of other WordFire Press authors and titles is always growing. To find out more and to see our selection of titles, visit us at:

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Book Description

In a creative project, are two heads better than one?

Writing partnerships can produce a remarkable synergy, building on each other’s talents to create work unlike anything the individual authors could do alone. On the other hand, unsuccessful collaboration can be disastrous and has ruined many a friendship.

Kevin J. Anderson has worked on numerous novels and stories with dozens of collaborators, and many of those projects have become bestsellers and award winners. Rebecca Moesta has written books and stories with numerous other writers. In this in-depth book, Anderson and Moesta describe various collaboration methods with frank recollections of their own experiences. You’ll learn collaborative techniques that will suit any sort of writer, as well as the pitfalls you may encounter.

This book includes a sample collaboration agreement to adapt to your own needs.

Writing as a Team Sport

The Complete Writer’s Guide to Collaboration

by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta

Writing as a Team Sport

Copyright © 2018 WordFire, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-61475-656-9

Cover design by Janet McDonald

Cover artwork images by Adobe Stock

Kevin J. Anderson, Art Director

Published by

WordFire Press, an imprint of

WordFire, LLC

PO Box 1840

Monument CO 80132

Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press ebooks Edition June 2018

Printed in the USA

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Created with Vellum

Introduction

Who We Are

Kevin J. Anderson, an international and New York Times bestselling writer, has more than 140 published books, over 100 short stories, scores of comics and graphic novels, and countless articles to his credit.

He has worked with dozens of coauthors, including his wife, Rebecca. His collaborators were chosen for a variety of reasons: because they had an area of expertise that would benefit a novel or story, because they approached him with an interesting idea or unfinished manuscript, or because they were close friends with whom he thought it might be fun to brainstorm and see what happened.

Rebecca Moesta, a New York Times bestselling author, has written or co-written more than thirty-five books, a handful of comics, and ten nonfiction workbooks, along with a smattering of short stories and articles. She has edited three young adult anthologies.

Together, we are Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta (Anderson), a pair of New York Times bestselling authors. Not only have we been married to each other for over a quarter century, we have collaborated on countless books, short stories, and song lyrics. We also teach writing workshops together, and we’re co-publishers of WordFire Press, LLC.

Considering the range of our experience in collaboration, it seemed only natural for us to write this book together, too. We hope our thoughts and experiences will help you become a successful collaborator, as well, and perhaps help you avoid some of the pitfalls.

Are Two Heads Better Than One?

Collaboration means working with someone else to accomplish or create something. It is an act of cooperation to reach a common goal.

Writing, on the other hand, is often a solitary profession, especially for those of us who write fiction. You’ve probably seen clichéd images of a wild-eyed writer, perhaps holed up in a cabin with no outside contact, staring in furious concentration at the empty page, with crumpled papers and torn up notes scattered all around. This stereotype holds elements of truth.

Most authors write alone, either in seclusion (e.g., a cottage, hotel room, or private office) or among people (e.g., in a library, the kitchen of a busy house, or a coffee shop).

There is no rule that says we have to scribble in isolation, though. If you find the idea of writing by yourself unappealing, there is an alternative: collaborate.

Some writers prefer to work alone, except for the company of their muse. Some don’t like to talk about their work in progress, because they’re afraid it might snuff out the creative spark. They don’t dare to share their core ideas, for fear someone might steal them. Some are skittish about giving a draft to test readers, because they worry that it could deflate the entire project.

Other writers, however, are more social. They believe that ideas are not a limited quantity and trust that sharing can enhance rather than diminish creative energy. Many writers nurture their ideas under the sunlight of input from their colleagues.

If you’re open to it and can be flexible about the process, your novel or story may benefit from having two (or more) heads instead of one. Writing can be a team sport.

1 To Collaborate or Not to Collaborate (Why?)

There are as many reasons to collaborate as there are potential collaborators. Later we’ll discuss what to look for in a collaborator, but first consider why you’d want to join forces with someone else.

Reasons to Collaborate

Enrich the Pool of Resources

Collaborating has the advantage of drawing on two or more different minds, areas of expertise, knowledge bases, sets of life experience, and publicity potential. Collaborators can produce a book that is unlike what either of them could have produced alone.

Let’s say you came up with a novel or short story concept that captures your imagination, but you simply don’t have the expertise to do it. No matter how much research you do, you just can’t understand the life of a Beltway politician or an Afghanistan combat veteran or an abused gay singer. You might team up with another writer who has the knowledge you need and wants to help tell that story. The other writer may not have your ability to do worldbuilding or to develop characters or plot. But combining your abilities can produce a richer, more ambitious book.

Kevin says, “My first major collaborator, Doug Beason, connected with me at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where we both worked. We had each had some short stories published, and Doug had sold his first novel, a military thriller. I worked as a technical editor, while Doug, an Air Force officer, was a high-energy physicist with a PhD and had worked for the government for many years. I had a scientific background, though I primarily wrote adventure science fiction. Pooling our expertise, Doug and I were able to produce fast-paced, heavily researched high-tech thrillers in the vein of Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton. Doug had the military and governmental background to provide the veracity that those novels needed. I brought detailed plotting, worldbuilding, and action-writing skills to the table.

We wrote and published eight novels together through major publishers, as well as a handful of short stories. In 2017, we sold and delivered Critical Mass, a credible Poseidon Adventure-type survival story of people trapped inside a high-security nuclear-waste storage depot. The new novel incorporates our individual strengths as writers. We also drew on Doug’s knowledge of the nuclear industry, his background as a former member of the President’s Science Council, and his experience as chief scientist at the Air Force Academy, to infuse the book with a level of realism neither of us would ever have managed on our own.

Learn

There’s no better way to learn different writing, plotting, characterization, and editing techniques than to work side by side with another writer and observe how he or she does it. How do they outline their stories (if at all)? How do they flesh out their characters? How do they describe a scene? How do they find time to write? How do they market their work?

Kevin says, “When I was just starting out as a writer, I collaborated with dozens of other new writers to do short stories. Many of those experiments failed, as you might expect, but I also learned valuable lessons about plot twists, brainstorming, developing an idea by taking an unexpected turn, alternating chapters with cliffhangers, adding emotion to writing. Reading a library full of writing books would not have taught me as much as working with a collaborator did.

Some lessons are vital, such as:

- There’s more than one way to write a sentence or describe a scene.

- Your words aren’t perfect, precious, or sacrosanct.

- A different take on dialogue or character might be more effective than the original one you imagined.

When developing your craft and process you can get set in your ways and think that yours is the only proper method of doing something. Collaborating with another writer can teach you otherwise.

Kevin remembers a particular “light bulb moment” with a collaborator:

“As an exercise, several new authors (including me) met together on a writing retreat to create a collaborative thriller. The plan was to hole up for a few days and bang out the entire novel, with each of us writing different chapters. In the lead-up to the retreat, we plotted a detailed outline with four separate storylines that all tied together. One of the participants wanted to develop each storyline independently, letting the events resolve in due course, unconnected to the other storylines. I disagreed, saying, “No, all of the storylines need to come to a head at the same time.” One plot thread was clearly shorter than the others, and I insisted that we adjust the pacing to match.

“We laid out the plot on a bulletin board using index cards for our chapters, each card one of four different colors corresponding to the four storylines. I shuffled the cards around, demonstrating the impact and choreography as the plot lines culminated together like the grand finale of a symphony, which was so much better than having one plot thread culminate before the others.

“(A good example of this model is in Return of the Jedi where three main plot lines build to a simultaneous grand finale: Han, Leia, and the Ewoks are on the forest moon of Endor trying to knock out the Imperial shield generator; Lando Calrissian leads the rebel fleet in the big space battle attacking the Death Star; and Luke Skywalker faces off with Darth Vader in his personal battle before the Emperor aboard the Death Star. All of these storylines reach their climactic points at the same time.)

“I’ll never forget the look on the face of the one doubtful collaborator as she got the concept and saw all the pieces fall into place.”

Regardless of your skill level as a writer, there’s always more to learn. Collaboration is an excellent way to bring new skills, techniques, and information to your repertoire.

Have Fun

For us, there’s nothing more exciting than taking an unformed idea and using another writer as a sounding board. We brainstorm together, developing stories and characters in ways that we would never do by ourselves. Plot twists come up that simply wouldn’t have occurred to us before.

When Brian Herbert and Kevin plot one of their Dune novels, they meet together for days and just brainstorm, taking down notes, jotting down or discarding ideas then adding new ones, sometimes coming back to twists that now made more sense. He compares their collaboration and brainstorming to a jazz performance with two musicians—each performer jamming without sheet music, knowing his part, yet still able to surprise his partner.

Rebecca and Kevin work the same way. He says, “I’ll take an idea and a plot outline that I’m excited about, one that I think is perfectly good, but once Rebecca starts massaging it, she pokes holes in logic that I hadn’t noticed, builds up characters I hadn’t paid attention to, and in the end it becomes a much better book.”

The synergy and shared enthusiasm of brainstorming and writing with a partner make the process so much more fun than doing it alone.

* * *

Build a Career

Established authors sometimes collaborate with junior writers to offer them experience, exposure, and publication credits. In these cases, the established writer usually helps the junior writer learn the craft, provides a foot in the door, and sells a book that the newbie wouldn’t have been able to. In turn, the newer writer does a lot of the heavy lifting of researching and writing the draft manuscript. We have both mentored many newer writers, helping them develop their craft.

Legendary science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey helped out many writers this way. She contributed her name to projects—often novels in one of her established series—and developed them with a newer writer. The newer writer did much of the plotting and writing, while Anne was there to guide them and to help promote the resulting works, many of which made the New York Times bestseller list.

Kevin says, “I’ve met many talented writers with impressive skills who were still trying to find their big break. By working with them, even on a short story, I’ve helped give them exposure they wouldn’t be able to get on their own. Likewise, my own career benefits from the energy, enthusiasm, and work the other writer brings to the project.”

Even when two collaborators are at similar places in their careers, they may help each other grow through the combination of their individual marketing platforms and fan bases.

Add Writing Accountability

Countless studies show that working out with a partner or group can significantly increase the amount of exercise we do, especially when those partners are encouraging. We tend to gravitate toward the habits of the people around us, so finding the right fitness companion can dramatically increase our likelihood of success.

Similarly, the right writing buddy can

- Hold you accountable

- Act as a teammate when you need help

- Act as a coach in areas where you have less experience

- Challenge you to stretch your ability

- Provide motivation and sometimes a bit of healthy competition

- Empower you

Make a Solitary Profession More Social

Writing can be a lonely business, so it’s not surprising that the rates of depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse are higher for writers than for the general public. Staying connected to your fellow humans is a healthy thing, and collaborating can make the writing process more social. Look for someone you click with and care about.

The right writing partner can

- Provide a support system

- Offer encouragement

- Act as a cheerleader when you are discouraged

- Pull you back on track if you’ve gotten lost in the weeds

- Jog you out of writer’s block, if need be

Increase Quality

Being part of a writing team automatically builds in one or more extra logic filters, pairs of eyes for proofing, beta readers, and editors.

Pitfalls, Dangers, and Misconceptions (Why Not?)

Thinking It Will Be Half the Work or Twice as Fast

Let’s be blunt: this is a dumb reason to collaborate. If you work out the process and create an efficient routine, collaborators can get a book done faster than one writer alone. But when multiple people work on a project, don’t assume it means you’ll each end up with proportionately less work.

Even in a collaboration that proceeds smoothly, we each still put in about 90 percent of the work we would put into writing a solo novel—and so do our coauthors. Why?

For starters, there’s more planning to do before you begin. You should make a written agreement that covers important issues, like how the money and credit will be split, what happens in cases of disagreements, disability, or death, and how to terminate the collaboration if one or more of the partners wants out.

Then, once you start the fun parts—brainstorming, outlining, and writing—there are more moving pieces, emails or phone calls, administrative details. There’s negotiating and usually more rewriting. No matter how closely you work together, some disconnects are inevitable. For example, there may be details in your chapters that don’t match, or you may want to approach a scene differently, or you may need to change a character’s voice. You’ll find a lot more back and forth.

Our close friends Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are a very productive, bestselling, and award-winning writing couple, and they’ve been together even longer than we have. They work on multiple projects, both individual novels and collaborative ones, some under their own names, some under various pen names, depending on the genre. They are so well-attuned to each other’s projects, styles, and vision for the books, they can work together as a tag team to pick up the slack if one of them falls behind.

Several years ago Kris was in a bicycle accident and severely injured her elbow. With the pain she couldn’t concentrate on writing (much less type on a keyboard) and the pain meds scrambled her thoughts. But she was under a very tight deadline for a Star Trek novel, and Dean was able to jump into the driver’s seat and finish the work.

We have done that as well, leaning on each other to fill an unforeseen gap. But don’t think that if you just pick up a collaborator, you’ll write books in half the time with half the work. Never underestimate the horse-trading, negotiating, rewriting, and delays that will happen.

Losing Control

In most cases, for a collaboration to work, you have to allow someone else to tinker with your story, scenes, and characters in ways that you may never have thought of. Writing is a very intimate thing, and you are letting someone into your most private thoughts and words. You have to let go of your precious baby and then, after all is said and done, you have to split the money!

If any of the following situations makes you break out in a cold sweat and consider running, you may not be a good candidate for collaboration:

- Revealing yourself as a writer

- Letting another writer make changes in your plot or prose

- Letting another writer deep into your creative process

- Splitting the money for a writing project

Endangering Friendship

The sting of a failed collaboration can cause deep rifts. Writing with someone puts you in very close quarters with their imagination—and you have to let them into your very personal prose, too. You’ll get to know each other very well—including all of your quirks, foibles, and flaws. It’s like spending days and days driving cross-country together in a cramped car without air conditioning. Working as a team can throw a spotlight on the weaknesses of either author. Even seemingly minor disagreements can produce resentment that builds like steam in a pressure cooker.

We’re aware of several close friendships that were shattered by an abortive collaboration. It has happened to Kevin once—and fortunately only once—with all of his collaborative partners, but it still stings a great deal.

So beware, and address potential pitfalls in advance. Many friendships have been lost when the reality of a writing partnership fell short of expectations.

2 How to Choose a Collaborator (Who?)

Before you jump in with both feet, think about who you are and who your potential collaborator is. Step back and take an honest look at yourself. What sort of creative spirit are you?

Finding the right collaborator is not unlike choosing a mate. After all, you are setting out to have creative “babies” together. Look for a person you can trust to become intimately involved with your ideas, your characters, your sentences, even your punctuation. This can be a daunting prospect. Consider not only the business advantages and disadvantages, but also the personal ones.

It helps if you’re friends to start with, because you’ll be borrowing each other’s fictional clothes, seeing each other in what amounts to your literary underwear, and putting your heads together in brainstorming that goes deeper than casual conversation. Collaboration is also a business relationship with at least one common goal—the project. Kevin has collaborated successfully with people he had never previously met, but who were nevertheless the perfect person for the job.

How much you agonize over your choice of collaborator depends on what you intend to get out of the collaboration. Is this just a quick literary fling? A one-story stand? A couple of writers dabbling with a story to see if it works? Or are you looking for a long-term relationship? Are you committed to an entire novel? A continuing series?

Basically, the choice of a collaborator boils down to chemistry between the two people. You obviously want your collaboration to be creatively rewarding, and you want it to produce good work. It’s also healthy for the heart and soul if you genuinely get along with the other person.

The more people involved in a collaboration, the higher potential there is for friction. Think of the collaborators that go into a band: drummer, guitarist, bassist, lead singer, keyboardist, and backup musicians (singers, strings, brass, tambourine?). They practice together, perform together, maybe write new music, and record together. Imagine the pressure cooker of being on the road with a group like that, driving from gig to gig in a run-down van, crashing in cheap hotels, trying not to let tempers rise. It’s no wonder that so many bands break up!

By the time the Beatles called it quits, there were so many stark personal divisions among them that some members could hardly stand to be around the others. They squabbled about touring, support staff, their manager, artistic interpretations, production style, the direction of their record label, the influence of significant others, and which recording studio to use. Despite the interpersonal strife, they produced some amazing music on their final two albums, Let it Be and Abbey Road, but by all accounts, it was not an overly pleasant experience for any of them.

We’d like to give you the best chance at having a positive writing partnership. Know yourself, and learn about your potential co-writers. Here are some things to consider when choosing a collaborator.

Writing Style: “Pantser” or “Plotter”?

Among authors, the divide between outline writers and discovery writers is almost as famous as the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

As the name suggests, “Plotters”, or outline writers, plan carefully, mapping out their book or story in detail before they write it. They may write an extensive outline, scene by scene or chapter by chapter, with character development, worldbuilding, and pacing worked out in great detail ahead of time.

Discovery writers are sometimes called “Pantsers”, because they prefer flying by the seat of their pants. They start out with a blank slate and develop the plot, the characters, and the world as they write. They may begin with a general idea of their main characters or storyline, but feel more comfortable letting the details unfold as they work.

Each method is valid and there are extremely successful authors in both camps. (Full disclosure: we are both Plotters, and Kevin’s outlines are very detailed, sometimes a hundred pages long for a 700-page manuscript.) Although there are many other factors in the success of a project, a collaboration between a structured Plotter/planner and a free-spirited seat-of-the-pants writer might not be a marriage made in heaven.

We know of one such collaboration that crashed and burned. Two well-known, talented authors decided to do a book together. One was a Plotter, the other a Pantser. Once they had discussed the story and the characters, working out what they wanted to write, the Plotter outlined the book chapter by chapter. With this roadmap in hand, the authors planned to alternate chapters. He would write the odd-numbered chapters and she would take the even-numbered ones. He wrote chapter one and sent it to his coauthor. She wrote chapter two. He wrote chapter three. Because he was on a roll and knew what the outline called for, he continued writing, completing several more of his assigned chapters (according to the agreed-upon outline) while waiting for her to write chapter four.

However, when the free-spirited Pantser wrote chapter four, she decided to go off in a completely different direction from the outline, killing off a character and choosing someone else to focus on … thereby negating the rest of the outline. We talked to the Plotter, who expressed immense frustration. When his coauthor decided not to follow the outline, it rendered all of his subsequent (and already written) chapters useless. Later, the Pantser—who seemed baffled by her collaborator’s frustration—said, “The new material was so much better, I had to go with it. How can he be upset with that?”

Not surprisingly, that book was never finished.

This isn’t to say that a collaboration between a Pantser and a Plotter can never work. Pantsers and Plotters have complementary skill sets that, when combined, can produce stronger writing than either writer alone. It’s important, however, to be aware of which camp you and your collaborator are in, then set clear guidelines (more on this later). That way, you’ll know what to expect and aren’t as likely to be blindsided, as the authors in the previous example were.

Personality Type

As an author, do you accept edits well? Do you take revision requests? Or is your work absolutely perfect in your mind? Can you go with the flow? Or is it your way or the highway?

As a collaborator, you and your partner will both need to compromise. In most cases, the work belongs to neither of you individually—you have to share custody. Are you able to accept that a sentence might not be written exactly the way you would say it, but is perfectly good nevertheless, as long as the story is good and the words are clear? Are you able to do as the theme song from Frozen says and “Let It Go”?

Are you (or is your coauthor) a diva, who thinks a sentence has to be written exactly one way, that there’s no room for discussion? If so, you won’t be a good candidate for collaboration.

In basic personality, are you both easygoing? Volatile and edgy? Are you reliable or flaky?

Is the other person someone you want to hang around with, on a personal level?

You’ll have to answer those questions for yourself in each circumstance. The creative process is different for each person, and how your partner approaches the work might be incompatible with your own method. Talk it through beforehand and be honest with each other.

Prose Styles

Take a look at the writing you each do. Is your prose style distinctive, literary, flowery, or convoluted? How is your collaborator’s prose? If one of you has transparent, workmanlike prose and the other has an ornate style, it may be painfully obvious that two different people wrote a piece. A style that might feel perfectly natural to you might be very difficult for your collaborator to match. One serious, one comedic? One light and lean, the other flowery and verbose? It might be hard to meld the two styles.

When Brian Herbert and Kevin chose to continue the stories in Frank Herbert’s classic Dune universe, they made a conscious decision not to try to mimic Frank Herbert’s distinctive style. Kevin and Brian’s combined prose is clean and fast paced, and few readers have been able to identify which author wrote the first draft of each chapter. Although the language itself does not sound just like Frank Herbert, they remained faithful to the characters and the universe, creating novels with the same “look and feel”.

When you work with a collaborator, going back and forth through the editing process, your joint style becomes a synthesis of the two. But the closer your styles are to start with, the fewer course corrections you’ll have to make.

Personal Goals

Find out what each other’s goals are. What do you want out of writing? What constitutes success for each of you? Your goals don’t have to be exactly the same, but some goals may not be compatible.

If you hope to become rich and famous, but your potential writing partner yearns to produce literary art and doesn’t care if the project ever earns a cent, you may be a mismatch. Or if you desperately want to educate and influence your readers, but your collaborator-candidate writes for fun and personal satisfaction and doesn’t care if the project ever gets published … again, probably not a good partnership.

Writers are complex beings and can have a multitude of goals. You can avoid a lot of misunderstandings if you share with each other what your main objectives are at the outset.

Public Persona

Are you the kind of person who is ready to jump in with both feet and promote your books to anyone who will listen, or are you more introverted? Do you have a platform for reaching an audience for your book? Do you each have a mailing list? A newsletter? An active social media presence? Or are you embarrassed when expected to give a “hard sell” on your book? Do you avoid posting anything online? Find out what you’re each comfortable with. If either of you is reclusive, publicity may be an uphill battle.

Speed and Work Ethic

Kevin confesses that he’s a workaholic. He writes all the time, is prolific, and charges in with a no-nonsense drive to get the job done. In choosing a collaborator, he wouldn’t be a good fit with an artsy dabbler who daydreamed while waiting for the muse to provide inspiration for a line or two. He chooses writing partners who work as hard as he does and who write at about his pace.

Early in his career he attempted a collaboration with a well-known author, who had a much bigger name than his. It seemed like a big break for Kevin as a newer writer. Kevin asked why such a luminary would want to collaborate on a story with a lesser-known person, and the other author said he had noticed how productive Kevin was and wanted to observe his techniques. They discussed the story, came up with a good basic idea, and mapped it out into five or six scenes. They planned to write alternating scenes until the story was finished, with Kevin to do the first part. Excited by the initial meeting, Kevin wrote the initial three-page scene in a couple of days and shot it off to his coauthor. Several weeks later, the author responded with one page, the next scene. Kevin read what he had written, knocked out the third scene in a day and sent it back. Two months passed, and Kevin finally received sketchy notes for the next scene, which the author hadn’t yet put together. The story was eventually stillborn because the two authors didn’t mesh when it came to speed and productivity. The other author did, however, write him afterward to say, “Now I understand how you can be so productive—you write all the time!”

Brian Herbert, on the other hand, is almost as hard driven and prolific as Kevin is. After they outline one of their Dune books and split up the chapters, Kevin charges ahead in his writing, and Brian keeps up with him. Together, they finish the first draft of a substantial Dune book—usually 150,000 to 200,000 words—in only a couple of months and then dive deep into the editing.

Are you and your potential collaborator generally in tune? Do you both have the same work ethic and the same level of productivity? If one person is significantly faster than the other, consider making adjustments. Can the faster one take a larger share of the writing while the slower collaborator compensates by doing more publicity or research, for example? There are ways around even significant differences, but be aware of them beforehand.

Who’s the Boss?

This is an important consideration in any partnership. We suggest that collaborators discuss it thoroughly beforehand.

If your collaboration involves ghostwriting, or intellectual property owned by someone else (often “work for hire”), or a Master/Apprentice situation in which you are not the Master (see Chapter 3), the primary decision-making authority almost always rests with the owner of the underlying intellectual property (e.g., Star Wars).

But what about when the authors are approximate equals? Is there a boss? If so, which partner is it?

In a worst-case scenario when the writers are at loggerheads and can’t decide which way to do a scene, who has the final say? Is there a referee? You want to minimize the chances for arguments and figure out how you’ll resolve disagreements before emotions flare up.

We (Kevin and Rebecca) didn’t resort to the “Boss” option, but when we disagreed, we split the decision-making authority according to our strengths. If our difference of opinion was about plotting or pacing, for example, Kevin made the final call. If it was about dialogue or character development, Rebecca’s was the deciding vote. And so on.

Fortunately for Kevin, he and his most frequent writing partners—Brian Herbert, Doug Beason, and Rebecca Moesta—tended to talk out differences, listen to each other’s opinions, negotiate and compromise, and come up with a mutually satisfactory solution. They never ran into a “my way or the highway” situation.

In one other collaborative team we know of, two authors collaborated on a trilogy for a major traditional publisher. Their credits were equivalent, so there was no obvious “boss”, and they were on equal footing if a creative dispute arose. When they disagreed, they each argued their side, hoping to convince the other. If they still did not agree, they resolved to come up with a Plan C together. In practice, whenever this happened, they realized that Plan C was usually a better solution than either Plan A or Plan B had been.

3 Methods of Collaboration (How?)

Broad Strategies

Collaboration strategies fall into three general categories: parallel, sequential, and interactive. [see References 1, 2]

Parallel

The work is split up by the collaborators, who then work at the same time on their portions of the project before combining them.

- Level Parallel—each partner participates at each stage of the process (plotting, writing, editing, etc.)

- Role-Based Parallel—responsibility is divided by function and then split among the partners (often used in nonfiction projects)

Sequential/Linear

- Single Linear—the team plans together, but only one person does the writing on behalf of the partners (works well for simple writing tasks)

- Sequential Linear—multiple partners do the writing, but one at a time. The first person writes his/her assigned section, then passes the project on to the next writer (and so on)

Interactive

Partners work at the same time, often in the same place, interacting with and adjusting to each other to develop and write the project.

Examples of Collaborative Styles

There are no hard and fast rules about the best way to collaborate with someone, since the “best” way is one that works for both of you. We’ve compiled a list of methods we’ve used or seen other writers use. (We named the various styles so that we can refer to them more easily.)

They won’t all work for you. Consider them, try them on like new clothes in a department store dressing room, mix and match, or come up with something new. See what works best for your unique writing team.

Full Monty

What we call the Full Monty is a comprehensive collaboration in which each partner puts in the same amount of work. Everything is developed together. The efforts and responsibilities are split equally. The process is shared every step of the way. As you might imagine, this system involves a lot of work. It’s also very rewarding, since the result is a true fusion of the skills and abilities of the collaborators. The end product is a book the partners could not have written individually.

Kevin recalls his early collaborations with Doug Beason:

My first Full Monty collaborator was Doug Beason. When we met, we discovered how much we had in common and quickly became friends. Shortly after that, we decided to collaborate as a lark and for the learning experience. No one taught us how to do it. As new writers, we developed the method ourselves through trial and error, and it seemed to work. At the time, we each had only a few short stories published in miniscule magazines.

Neither of us knew many other writers, although we had both met (as well as read and admired) Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who were the epitome of a highly successful science fiction collaborative team. Niven and Pournelle had written such classics together as The Mote in God’s Eye and Lucifer’s Hammer. Doug and I had no idea how Niven and Pournelle collaborated in a practical sense, but they certainly showed that it could be done, and done well, and done repeatedly. Obviously, Niven and Pournelle must like working together or they wouldn’t have kept writing books in collaboration.

Doug and I met face-to-face and talked about a short story idea, for fun: a space station is stranded in orbit after nuclear war on Earth cuts off supply lines, and a daring young astronaut uses an innovative solar sail to fly from one station to another to save his crew. We blocked out the various scenes in the story and decided to alternate writing them. We were ready to go.

That was when we discovered a large problem that modern-day collaborators no longer face: I wrote on a Mac and Doug used a PC. At the time, the two operating systems were bitter rivals who refused to speak to each other. When I wrote my first scene, I mailed Doug a paper printout, which he then keyed in and edited, then wrote the next scene and mailed the growing printout back to me, which I also had to retype to do my next section, and so forth. It was ridiculously tedious and inefficient, but it did let me study Doug’s writing style line by line, and he did the same with my prose.

By the time the story, “If I Fell, Would I Fall?” was published in Amazing Stories magazine, we realized we had a much bigger story to tell with that scenario. Doug and I got together again and decided to expand the story into a full novel, Lifeline. We met for hours at a time, brainstorming and plotting, developing the characters, taking copious notes, and building out the science, the space stations, the orbits, the solar-sail technology. The full novel featured three isolated space stations, a moon base, and Earth, each location with its own plotlines. The stories intertwined as the characters interacted and the stories progressed.

For new writers, this was quite an ambitious task of choreography. We covered the floor of the office with index cards, each one with a brief write-up for that chapter, color coded by character (blue for one point of view, green for another, yellow for a third, and so on). It took many days of riffing off of each other’s ideas, expanding on the scenarios, and rearranging the outline, before we got the story right. As we developed the storylines, Doug and I each developed affinities for certain characters. I wanted to write the villain, Curtis Brahms, icy and ruthless administrator of one of the stranded space stations; Doug was particularly fond of the moonbase commander, Duncan McLaris, a warmhearted man with a cute little daughter about the same age Doug’s own daughter Amanda was at the time.

After we finally settled on the outline, we broke it up into chapters. Depending on the characters we were drawn to, we each chose the chapters we wanted to write, dividing the work fifty-fifty. Lifeline has sixty-seven chapters plus an epilogue, so after some final rounds of horse-trading, we each had thirty-four chapters to write.

That was for the first draft.

We went off to our separate corners and each wrote our assigned chapters. Since the outline was detailed, and we had discussed all the events large and small, I knew what was going to happen in Doug’s chapters without reading them, and he knew what was in mine, so we could work at our own pace. We kept in touch, engaging in frequent phone calls as we came up with new ideas, details, and twists. Neither of us got too far ahead or fell too far behind. Every so often we came up with a dramatic shift that would cause repercussions throughout, and we had long brainstorming conversations. Sometimes we talked ourselves out of the change, other times we agreed on exactly what we needed to do and which adjustments had to be made in the already-written chapters.

That was the easy part.

Once all sixty-eight draft chapters were finished—thirty-four from each of us—we assembled the pieces into one giant file. Thank heavens by this time my Mac had a way to convert PC files both ways, so we didn’t have to retype all those pages! I was able to edit on my computer, and Doug edited on his. Then, one of us did the complete first draft edit. (In collaborations like this, you can decide who does the first pass by comparing each other’s workloads and calendars or, all things being equal, by the flip of a coin.)

That stage of the writing is like carving a path through a dense Amazonian jungle with a dull machete. I got first crack at the rewrite on Lifeline. I went through the manuscript, cleaning up my own prose and tackling Doug’s chapters.

Despite thoroughly discussing the details with each other, little differences had still slipped through. (This is inevitable unless you’re psychically linked to your collaborator.) I fixed any inconsistencies I found and tweaked the scenes according to my vision of the book.

I smoothed out clunky writing—both mine and his. Even though Doug and I have very close writing styles, there were sentences in Doug’s first draft that just didn’t “sound” like me. I rewrote them so they read more comfortably to my literary ear. When it was Doug’s turn, he went through a similar process to edit the book, revising my sentences that sounded clunky to him. My collaborations with Rebecca and with Brian Herbert use the same method. This first pass through each other’s chapters can be a lot of work. Hence, our suggestion to choose a collaborator whose writing isn’t dramatically different from yours.

IMPORTANT! I put that in loud capital letters because this truly is a key to a successful collaboration and maintaining a friendship. I suggest editing online, without using markup or Track Changes, so that the rewrites remain invisible, for you and your coauthor. I did not send Doug a manuscript covered in red ink to highlight every sentence I altered, every comma I added, every adverb I removed. And vice versa. Neither of us could see what the other changed, because that’s just asking for defensiveness, arguments, and questions.

Handing a marked-up manuscript back and forth is akin to a teacher delivering a graded essay to a student. By changing a word, I was fundamentally implying that my coauthor’s choice was “wrong”, and that would quickly generate resentment.

Going into our novel, Doug and I agreed to treat each other as equals and trust each other as writing partners. Trust is as essential in collaboration as it is when you choose someone to babysit your children.

Doug let me rewrite his draft however I saw fit, and when I was finished I sent the computer file back to him. He started from page one on the second draft with the same carte blanche instructions. He could change anything he wanted, rewrite any sentence, delete any paragraph. I wouldn’t necessarily know unless I went back line by line to compare—and I certainly did not do that.

If I wanted to change something substantial in the rewrite, I called Doug to discuss it with him so he wouldn’t be surprised when he had his turn. We almost never disagreed. A collaboration is a partnership. We negotiated, rather than put our foot down, although sometimes we grew quite passionate in our discussions if we held opposing views regarding a plot twist or a character reaction.

When Doug finished his second draft, he sent it back to me and I did the third edit, which by now was markedly smoother. Doug then did the fourth draft, and we continued the iterations until we felt it was done.

No sentence sounded unlike something I would write, and no sentence sounded unlike Doug’s voice. It was a perfect synthesis, and we sold Lifeline to Bantam Books.

Some of my Full Monty collaborations go through as many as twelve drafts, sometimes as few as four. Rebecca and I use the same technique, which boils down to

- Brainstorm together

- Outline in detail

- Divide outline into chapters

- Divide chapters equally between us

- Write first drafts of our assigned chapters

- Meld all chapters into a single manuscript

- Pass manuscript back and forth for editing until it’s done

Brian Herbert is my most frequent collaborator, and we use the same method. So far we’ve written eighteen books together—approximately 2.5 million words in collaboration. During all of that writing, we’ve had only one or two disputes about the work in progress. Our imaginations operate on the same wavelength, and our work is a full, true collaboration.

If you can find a partner like that, this is a very gratifying way to collaborate.

Round Robin (a.k.a. Hot Potato)

Some writers prefer less structure, letting the story go where it will. Round Robin is an exercise in writing, rewriting, flexibility, and imagination. These collaborations are freestyle (or as we hikers call it, “going commando”). This works particularly well for Pantsers (see Chapter 2). This method is on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the Full Monty above. Here’s how it works.

Two writers decide to collaborate on a novel (which could take a lot of time and still crash and burn) or a short story (quicker and safer). They probably have some idea for a character, the plot line, or at least a genre. For example, “Let’s write about a werewolf bounty hunter and see where it goes.”

The first writer bangs out the first section or chapter and sends it off to his coauthor. The coauthor reads it, lets it spark some ideas, and writes the next scene or chapter, which she sends back to her partner. The “feral story” goes back and forth in wildly unpredictable ways.

Some authors turn this method into a game of challenge where one of the writers intentionally leaves the chapter on an unresolved cliffhanger or puts the character in a seemingly impossible situation. “Write your way out of that one, partner!” This can escalate of course, because once the stranded writer manages to resolve the situation, he or she feels obligated to end the next chapter with an even more untenable scenario.

This method can stretch your abilities as a writer. It’s like being an improv comedian who is given a prompt from the audience. By the time this goes on for 70,000 words of a novel or 5,000 words of a short story, the end result may be nothing at all like what the opening paragraphs set up.

Round Robin stories can also be written by a team, with each writer taking successive chapters and rolling with it. The challenge of this type of collaboration is that it nearly always requires extensive rewriting. Someone has to go back and put in foreshadowing, make the characters consistent, add connections, and focus the plot line—especially if the story weaves back and forth like a writer who has celebrated a new book contract with too many drinks.

Another situation in which Round Robin writing may be useful is when a writer has had a false start. The writer began with a great idea, but then the manuscript fizzled out. Maybe the main character became uninteresting or the plot ran into a dead end. Enter the new eager writer who wants to collaborate and says, “Let me see what I can do.” The second author may take the false start and write the next section or possibly even complete the story. When one of your unfinished stories has gone to die, consider this as a method to breathe new life into it.

First Draft, Final Draft

Another frequently used technique between two collaborators of comparable skill and standing is for the authors to discuss the project, agree on the basic story, characters, and setting. Then one author writes the first draft, and the other author fleshes it out and does the final polish. The project is not always finished in only two drafts. Sometimes it still goes back and forth until both authors are satisfied with the polish.

First Draft, Final Draft is the technique we used for this particular book on collaboration. Kevin outlined the book and wrote the first draft while Rebecca structured it, edited it, polished the prose, and added material.

Kevin has also written novels this way with Sarah A. Hoyt and Doug Beason, and short stories with Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rush, and Rebecca. This method is advantageous because it allows the writers to accommodate each other’s schedules. If one writer has an opening while the other is busy, the first can write the initial draft and when the second author has time, he or she can take over the work and finish it.

Kevin and Sarah’s novel Uncharted: Lewis & Clark in Arcane America was already sold to Baen Books, but when it came time to write the novel and meet the deadline, Kevin was swamped with two emergency deadlines and running a writing conference. He and Sarah met and brainstormed details. Then she blocked out the chapters and wrote the entire first draft, blitzing through. She’s an extremely fast writer (and coming from Kevin, that’s saying a lot). When Kevin had cleared his schedule, he took her rough draft and spent a month polishing it and fleshing it out while Sarah was caught up in another deadline. They are both happy with the end result, and it became a #1 bestseller in its category on Amazon.

We’ve each worked both sides of this method: as the initial drafter and as the final editor. For Kevin, the writing part is more enjoyable and the editing is more tedious (the opposite of Rebecca’s preferences), but he can easily wear both hats, depending on what the project demands. One advantage to First Draft, Final Draft is that when one person writes straight through, the characters, plotting, and foreshadowing are more consistent. There’s a lot less cleanup and rewriting.

For this method to work well, it’s important to be flexible and to talk the story through beforehand to define the parameters. It ends up being a lot more work if you entirely disagree with what your coauthor wrote (“What was she thinking?”). If you end up throwing away half of the draft and rewriting entire sections, it’s not an effective collaboration.

Follow the Script

Follow the Script is a variation of the First Draft, Final Draft method—a novelization of a story in another media. In this situation, an author receives a “first draft” that consists of the script for a movie or play. The author then adapts it into a novel. The script itself may or may not match the movie, but the owner of the original material (e.g., Paramount, Sony Pictures) decides how much freedom the author has in expanding the script into a novel. Sometimes, the owner only wants the author to add internal dialogue, along with descriptions of scenes and action that appear in the script. In other cases, the author is also allowed to add scenes, characters, and entire plotlines.

We have worked on several Follow the Script projects, both together and separately. We co-wrote the novelization for the science fiction film Supernova from a script (that was quite different from the final cut of the movie). We also did novelizations for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the latter two cases, only Kevin is credited on the cover, because that’s what the contract called for. Rebecca knew this from the outset, and her name appears in the acknowledgments.

Kevin has also converted movie scripts by well-known authors into standalone novels. Dean Koontz, one of Kevin’s most important mentors early in his career, wrote the script for a modern-day reimagining of Frankenstein. He liked his script better than the movie that was actually produced and felt it should have a much wider audience among his readers. He asked Kevin to novelize the script and build it into what would become a continuing series. Kevin enjoyed the work a great deal. The resulting novel, Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, sold a million copies in its first year of release.

Along similar lines, the publisher of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction wanted a new book. Hubbard, who was extremely popular with Battlefield Earth and his Mission Earth series, died in 1986, so there was no new material possible. However, in the 1950s Hubbard wrote a spy-versus-spy comedy movie script that had never been produced. The publisher hired Kevin to flesh out the script and convert it into a novel, which went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Using Hubbard’s movie script as a first draft, Kevin produced a new “collaborative” work, even though the writing was done at a distant remove (since Hubbard was no longer alive).

Master/Apprentice

For the past decade we have spearheaded the high-level Superstars Writing Seminars, working closely with hundreds of ambitious new writers. Even before that we gave countless lectures and workshops at writers’ conferences and science fiction conventions. We ascribe to the philosophy of paying it forward, so when we can, we offer writing advice and we critique manuscripts (please don’t send us one!), helping to shape the next generation of writers. In this spirit, the Master and Apprentice method is a way for established authors to mentor up-and-coming writers.

In Master and Apprentice (or Jedi and Padawan, or Pilot and Copilot), a senior writer works with a newer writer. The established, well-known author lends his or her name to a project and offers work and guidance. The name and reputation of the established author can help sell the project to a publisher, or attract a larger audience if the book is an indie publication. This link to the more famous author can give the newer writer a tremendous career break.

Why is this important? Consider the movies bearing the label, “Steven Spielberg Presents”. The Spielberg brand on a project gives it his stamp of approval and draws attention to it. When a big name author helps a newer author by adding his or her brand name to a book, it shines a spotlight on the less-known author.

Science fiction author Anne McCaffrey helped launch the careers of numerous young and talented authors via the Master and Apprentice method. Many of her junior coauthors went on to become award-winning or New York Times bestselling authors themselves. Anne often co-wrote in universes she had already established with her solo novels. Partnering with a junior writer allowed her to continue the series, build readership, and introduce her fans to other authors she thought they would enjoy. She and the junior author developed an outline or proposal for a new book. After Anne approved it, the Apprentice wrote the complete draft. Anne would make comments, give suggestions, brainstorm solutions to weak spots she found, and mentor the writer until the novel was acceptable to her. The books were published with her name and the newer writer’s name on the cover.

Kevin receives more invitations to write short stories for commissioned anthologies than he can possibly write. Rather than turning them down, he often uses them as opportunities to present one of his writing students to a wider audience. He usually uses the First Draft, Final Draft method in the Master and Apprentice format. After they talk about the story—which might be about, say, purple unicorns or a spinoff story for the Planet of the Apes movie franchise—the junior writer writes the first draft. Then Kevin works on it and polishes it until it’s ready to go. The Apprentice author gets a short story sale and credit, Kevin keeps the anthology editors happy, and the two authors split the money. Everyone benefits.

A common pitfall in this scenario is that the publisher may try to leave off the junior coauthor’s name or drastically reduce the type size. Anne McCaffrey always insisted on giving the junior author full credit alongside her own name, and Kevin does the same, although he sometimes loses the battle about type size.

Frank Herbert, well-known author of Dune, had sold a contract for a book called The Jesus Incident, but because of other deadlines and complications in his life, as well as certain problems with the project, he saw the project delivery date looming and knew he couldn’t do what he had promised. One of his good friends was the talented writer and award-winning Pacific Northwest poet, Bill Ransom. Frank and Bill often discussed writing. Finally, during his deadline crisis, Frank went to Bill’s house, knocked on the door, and asked, “Can you write like me?”

Herbert and Ransom collaborated on The Jesus Incident plus two sequels, The Lazarus Effect and The Ascension Factor. The Jesus Incident is widely considered a classic, one of Herbert’s best. Because Frank Herbert was so well established, the publisher did not want a coauthor on the cover. Frank put his foot down, so the publisher agreed but retaliated by reducing his advance. Even so, Frank stuck to his guns. Fortunately the book sold extremely well, so the authors made money anyway. After that experience, Bill Ransom went on to write and publish three very well received science fiction novels of his own: Jaguar, Viravax, and Burn.

Similarly, the last novel that Frank Herbert published in his lifetime was a collaboration with his son Brian, Man of Two Worlds. At the time, Brian was an established and successful writer on his own, but Frank Herbert was a giant in the field and had often given his son writing advice and critiqued his manuscripts. When Brian originally set out to write Man of Two Worlds as a solo novel, Frank made extensive suggestions and eventually offered to write scenes and chapters, introducing a whole new set of characters. In his introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Man of Two Worlds, Brian talks about the experience and describes how much he learned from working so closely with his father.

Many Padawan authors grow so successful that they become Masters and take on Apprentices of their own to coauthor books. Jody Lynn Nye, one of Anne McCaffrey’s Apprentice writers, established a highly successful solo career and also wrote books with New York Times bestselling author Robert Asprin. Now, as a New York Times bestselling author in her own right, Jody has begun collaborations with some of her writing students.

Ghostwriting

Ghostwriters are hired to write much or all of the material for someone else, who is credited as the author. In most cases, the ghostwriter is a silent partner who receives little to no credit for the project. The credited author may have excellent complementary skills or may decide not to participate in the writing process at all.

The benefits of taking on such a project are different from a collaboration in which people put their heads together to see what sort of wonderful creation they can produce. Writers need to make a living, and ghostwriting can pay quite well. A ghostwriter might not get the glory, but the income may cover the mortgage and the car payment. This form of collaboration can also be a tremendous learning experience in developing a writer’s craft while still earning a paycheck.

Even before Kevin’s first novel was published, he made a living as a technical writer for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He edited scientific papers, crafted presentations for technical conferences, and wrote textbooks on respirator safety and chemical protective clothing. In most of these cases he served as the equivalent of a ghostwriter. Occasionally he was recognized on the acknowledgments page, but authorship credit on the cover went to the scientist(s) who had done the research, whether or not they could write.

A ghostwriting project may involve someone who is renowned for a skill other than writing, like a politician, athlete, actor, or other celebrity. These individuals often have a large following of fans who want to read their books. Think of all the celebrity autobiographies—most of which probably weren’t written by the celebrities themselves. In many cases, they shared their thoughts and stories in conversation, while the ghostwriter took notes, recorded the words, and crafted those ideas into a book “written by” that celebrity. Sometimes these ghostwriters are credited on the cover with phrases like “with Kevin J. Anderson” or “as told to Rebecca Moesta” in small letters under the celebrity’s big name. But ghostwriters are often required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevents them from ever admitting that they authored the book.

We have both done ghostwriting projects. We learned from them, produced books we were proud of, cashed the checks, and moved on.

In one case, a celebrity came up with a concept for a young adult series. It was a paragraph long plus some bullet points, and Rebecca was hired to develop it and write it. The book came out under the celebrity’s name, and we were sworn to secrecy. In another instance, a well-known research scientist wrote a novel centered around his highly topical work. It was relevant, with very thought-provoking science, but the plotting was problematic and the characters tissue thin. The publisher wanted to buy the novel, which showcased the celebrity’s area of expertise, but only on the condition that the scientist hire an established author to rewrite the manuscript and make it publishable. He found Kevin, who took the rough draft, put it through a rigorous boot camp, and delivered a good book that served everyone’s purposes. The novel was released under the scientist’s name and Kevin was mentioned prominently in the acknowledgments.

In some cases, a successful author simply doesn’t want to continue a series anymore, or maybe the author dies and the publisher wants more books in the popular series. Probably the best-known example of this is horror writer V.C. Andrews, who wrote the classic Flowers in the Attic and several sequels. After V.C. Andrews died in 1986, the estate hired another established author to write new novels under the name V.C. Andrews. Soon enough everyone realized that someone else was writing as “V.C. Andrews™,” and eventually it was revealed to be Andrew Niederman, a respected horror author in his own right.

So if getting credit isn’t of utmost importance to you and you can leave your ego at the door, think of yourself as a sort of surrogate mother who must give up the baby to the original parents. Then you may do well with ghostwriting.

Sandboxing

Sandboxing (which overlaps with Master and Apprentice) is working in someone else’s universe. This is often work for hire. You sign a contract and agree to play in someone else’s sandbox with their toys. This kind of writing requires flexibility and patience. It can be challenging for Pantsers, since writing a thorough outline is mandatory, and the Sandbox owner must approve it before you begin writing. (This can be a bit like collaborating with a committee.)

The owner of the universe or Sandbox has the first and final say. Some owners are easy to work with and some seem capricious. When the manuscript is written, the owner must again approve it or request changes. At any point, the owner can have a change of mind and ask for rewrites—even for parts of the manuscript that you thought were “approved” already.

The Sandbox owner keeps a percentage (often the lion’s share). Remember that their brand name is usually responsible for selling the project to the public, so this is not unreasonable.

No matter how well known or unknown you are as an author, if you agree to work in someone else’s sandbox, always remember whose toys you’re playing with. Treat the owners, the readers, and the toys with respect. Do your best work with the material and resources you are given.

If the terms of Sandboxing sound unfair, depressing, or intolerable to you, we suggest you steer well clear of this type of collaboration.

Buddy System

Two or more collaborators gather in the same room and write interactively. One of the partners usually sits at the computer and types the manuscript as they work.

Jigsaw (a.k.a. Cat Wrangling)

In this method, multiple authors write stories, articles, or parts of the whole, and one of the partners fits all of the pieces together and edits them into a cohesive work. Jigsaw is often used for “braided” novels (a multi-POV book that follows several storylines that are separate but related) or shared universes (e.g., Wild Cards or Thieves’ World).

Hybrid

Many of these methods can be combined or tweaked to make them work better to suit your particular collaboration.

4 Decisions, Problem-Solving, and Tips (What?)

Once you pick your collaborator and decide on a method to use, you’ll talk about the characters and the story. You’ll make a grand plan. You’ll imagine wild success. This will be the start of a beautiful relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. It’s always best to be frank and discuss difficult scenarios with your coauthor before tempers flare and blood pressure rises. When a conflict escalates it often becomes personal, which makes it harder to discuss rationally. Better to consider problems and brainstorm solutions while they are still theoretical.

Decisions, Decisions

Before you dive in, make a thorough agreement in writing. Discuss and agree on answers to these questions:

What kind of project is it?

Fiction, nonfiction, self-help? Script, story, treatment, novel, memoir? Boil it down to your elevator pitch. If possible, make an outline. Which rights do you plan to sell? (Publication, film/TV, game, sequel, stage, radio, merchandising?)

What are the limits of the collaboration?

Which ideas, notes, etc., belong to the project and which don’t? Which rights may each of the partners exercise individually? Sequels, prequels, or competitive works? Do any rejected ideas, characters, and scenes belong to the partner who proposed them?

* * *

What are each partner’s personal goals? What defines a project’s success?

Publication, fame, wealth, critical recognition, personal satisfaction, fulfillment of a lifelong dream, producing literature, entertaining readers, changing the world. The list of possible goals is long. It’s helpful if the partners have at least some goals in common.

How will the writing process work?

Will one partner write the narrative, and the other one flesh out dialogue and descriptions? Will you each write your draft chapters and then swap them for edits? Will you write close together or apart? Will you meet during the writing process? If so, how often and how will you meet? What does each partner need to do to meet his or her obligations? (e.g., If you decide to use the First Draft, Final Draft method the division of labor might seem obvious. But what if you spend months writing the first draft of the book and your coauthor just skims it in a few days and says “Sure, looks fine to me.” Does that really fulfill your expectations of the collaboration?)

How will editing or critiquing work?

Will you discuss these out loud? Make edits in the electronic files? Use a comments function in your software? This can be a tricky balance. The longer you work together, the easier it gets.

What is the schedule for completion?

Agree on a schedule and deadlines, but don’t expect a best-case scenario. Allow up to twice the amount of time you would have expected the project to take. Unless the project is sold to an outside entity that imposes a strict deadline, don’t be hard-nosed about the schedule. And don’t make missing a deadline into a breach of contract.

What are the ownership percentages?

In many cases, all partners own equal shares in a jointly created work, but not always. Don’t take the percentages for granted. Specify them in writing.

How will you split the income?

For authors at a comparable level in their careers, the usual answer is to split the money evenly. But there are many other scenarios:

- If one of the collaborators brings fame or higher earning potential to the table, that partner might want and deserve a larger percentage of the income. The more junior author still benefits by getting a higher rate of pay than by working alone, increasing name recognition, having association with the more famous author, getting a pro sale, etc.

- If one partner had the original idea, consider giving that partner a majority interest (e.g., 51/49 percent for two partners, or 34/33/33 percent for three).

- If one partner owns the underlying rights (such as in an established intellectual property), the split may be much larger for that partner.

- If one partner participates in more of the public appearances, consider allocating a larger proportion of the sales at those events to that partner.

How will money be collected and paid out?

Do you share the same agent? Does one author receive the payment directly and then cut a check to the other author? Or does the publisher divide the money and send separate checks to the authors or their agents?

How will the copyright be held?

Decide how the copyright will be registered: under all names, under only some of the partners’ names, under a pen name, under the name of a corporation, etc.

* * *

Who gets credit and how?

Will each partner’s name appear on the work and in what order? Will credits be listed as A and B, A with B, A presents B, or A as told to B? Will the partners use a pseudonym?

Who will represent the project?

If each of you has an agent, attorney, or manager, which individual is going to market the project? How will commissions be split? If the agents disagree, how will the disagreement be resolved?

How will you handle the dedication and acknowledgments?

Does everyone get to include a dedication for the book? Do you:

- Split the dedication page, so that each contributor gets to dedicate?

- Mutually agree on one person or group to dedicate the book to?

- Only allow one author to dedicate the book? If so, why? (Seniority? Level of contribution? Project ownership?)

Does everyone get to include people to thank in the acknowledgments? Do you:

- Split the acknowledgments page, so that each contributor gets a section?

- Combine all of the acknowledgments for all collaborators on one page?

How will you handle expenses?

If one or more partners pay for research, cover art, editing, design, additional proofreading, or marketing, do those individuals recoup their expenses before income is divided? Or should all partners simply split expenses? Do all partners have to agree on an expense for it to be reimbursed?

* * *

How will you divide any non-writing responsibilities?

Assign individual tasks. Who will hire editors or designers, negotiate contracts, field interviews, and handle social media? Don’t blithely assume all responsibilities will be shared equally. You may find a magical collaboration in which the partners do this, but don’t count on it. People have strengths and weaknesses, and we tend to avoid work we find unpleasant. Decide what is expected of each partner before something important falls through the cracks. Promotion can make or break a book. How will you divide the promotion and marketing work after publication? Do you each have a mailing list? A newsletter? An active social media presence?

What are the legal powers of each collaborator?

Do individual partners have the power to sell or license the work without the other partner’s consent (whether or not income would be shared)? Or does only one senior or originating partner have that right? You may want to agree that no partner may transfer, sell, or license, any interest in the project without consent of the other partner(s).

What are each collaborator’s legal responsibilities?

Each partner should agree in writing that all work they contribute will be original, won’t infringe on copyrights, won’t be defamatory, and won’t invade privacy or breach other rights. If you feel that a partner has contributed potentially problematic material, reject the material or rewrite it. In any case, if one of the partners violates these legal ground rules, that partner should cover costs and liabilities associated with the violation.

How will you handle disagreements?

There will be disagreements. Listen to and respect each other. Check your ego at the door and try to work toward the best result. If you can’t come to a consensus, decide up front who will have the final say. The type of collaboration may affect how the decisions are made. There are many ways to address differences of opinion and to distribute problem-solving authority. If the project has a senior partner, typically that person decides. When we (Kevin and Rebecca) couldn’t come to an agreement, we assigned jurisdiction based on areas of expertise. If the dispute had to do with plot or pacing, for example, Kevin had the final say. If it dealt with motivation or character development, Rebecca would make the final call. If you don’t agree on which partner should make a choice, you could appoint a trusted mediator.

What constitutes the collaboration?

Specify the scope of the project(s) that the writers will collaborate on. (Usually you aren’t forming a permanent business partnership.) If the partners finish the projects covered by the original agreement, it’s relatively easy to make a new agreement that is similar. A new agreement can be a great opportunity to work out any kinks from a previous version of the collaboration contract.

* * *

How will death or disability be handled?

What if one partner falls off a mountain, gets hit by lightning, or can’t continue writing? Does the remaining partner(s) continue the writing and split income and credit as before? Or does the remaining partner(s) have the right to finish the project and make a fair adjustment in credit, ownership, and income? Does all decision-making authority transfer to the remaining partner(s), or do the heirs or assigns of the deceased/disabled partner still have a vote?

How will you handle termination?

What if one of the partners wants to leave the project? Again, it’s essential to cover the worst-case scenario. You may find that the collaboration doesn’t work out. If you and your collaborator(s) part ways, what happens? Who owns the work? Who, if anyone, has the right to finish and sell the project?

* * *

How will you divide the work?

- By chapters or sections (e.g., random or specific; every other chapter)

- By storyline (geographic or subject or a/b/c storyline, e.g., all scenes with crystal mining, or all scenes involving the ship mutiny, or all scenes in Australia, or all scenes on Glarphon Prime)

- By character POV

- By subject-matter expertise (science, horses, country/language knowledge, medicine, sailing ships, or any other subject that one of the authors is more knowledgeable in)

- By preference (each author picks chapters they’d like to write the first draft of)

- By scene type (action sequences, romance, introspection, etc.)

- By function (one writes narrative, another fleshes out dialogue or scene descriptions)

Communication

Like any relationship, a writing partnership thrives on respect and communication. In writing, some of the main areas of communication involve goal setting, division of labor, brainstorming, and editing.

Be respectful of each other’s writing time. Talk about which communication methods work best for you and your coauthor and make good use of them. Which of these do you prefer:

- Phone calls

- Email

- In-person meetings

- Video chat

- Text messages

- Voicemail

- Snail mail (what—that still exists?)

The same goes for how you share files and important documents with each other. These are just a few examples of the software tools available:

- Email

- Dropbox

- Google Drive

- Hightail

- Microsoft OneDrive

- Slack

Problem-Solving

“It was a beautiful friendship.” If you decide to write a book with a close friend, be aware of the possible pitfalls. Just because you get along on everything else together doesn’t mean that you’ll be good writing partners. You need to be creatively in sync. You need to agree on the same vision for the book. We know of several severely broken friendships that occurred because of attempted collaboration.

A study on collaboration by Ede and Lunsford [see Reference 3] showed that the satisfaction level of authors in group writing projects was affected by eight factors:

1. How well goals are articulated and shared

2. The level of openness and mutual respect

3. How much control the writers have over the text

4. How much control the writers have when others modify the text

5. How credit is acknowledged

6. How conflicts are managed and disputes are resolved

7. The level of administrative restrictions imposed on the authors (e.g., external deadlines, NDAs, technical-legal requirements)

8. The perceived value of the project to the organization (e.g., the publisher)

Who has the final say? If you’re following the Master and Apprentice method, the “boss” is usually obvious. If you’re Stephen King’s Padawan and he says the adverb stays, then the adverb stays.

But what if you are equally matched as writers? As collaborators, always play to your strengths. Not everybody is good at all facets of writing. But if you don’t discuss this beforehand you might find resentment brewing. You could decide who the “boss” is based on your strengths, if they are clearly drawn. The science partner has the final say on technical or engineering questions; the historian can overrule any questions on period details. Or if one writer is acknowledged as the best plotter, the other might be the master character builder, so align decision making accordingly. Even when you are the boss, we’d advise you not to exercise the veto power too often. Try to negotiate in every possible case.

These tips can help you resolve some problems that may crop up:

- Don’t be a glory hog. No matter what the division of labor is, don’t claim all the credit. Give each other credit and use acknowledgments to thank everyone who helped any of the writing partners or otherwise contributed to the project.

- Don’t sweat the small stuff. Keep your eye on the goal. For a collaboration to work, you have to be willing to give up some level of control. Don’t butt heads over inconsequential issues. Pick your battles.

- Don’t fall into the mind-reading trap. You and your writing partner(s) may think alike on many issues, but don’t expect him or her to know what you think without being told. If you want your collaborator to be aware of something, say it in a nice way or put it politely in writing. For example, “I sometimes use adverbs that end in -ly. I believe it’s fine in moderation, so please don’t edit them all out.” Or “I’d like to use first person present tense for all four of the main POV characters. Can we try that?” Or “I work best late at night, so I don’t wake up until noon. If you want to get a message to me in the morning, please text me or use email.”

- Leave your ego at the door. Listen to your coauthor’s suggestions and respect his or her opinion. You’re raising this baby novel together, and sometimes you’ll disagree on the parenting.

- Focus on the story as paramount. Remember that you and your coauthor(s) are trying to create something together, and in most cases, the finished product will credit each collaborator (not just you).

- Don’t get personal. If you dislike part of a scene your partner wrote, don’t complain about their dog, or children, or the fact that their house is a mess. Stay objective about the writing issue.

- Learn how to share.

- Don’t see your words as too precious to change. Let it go.

- There’s no single “right” way to go about the process of writing with partners. Use the collaborative system that works best for your writing team.

- Editing online, instead of on paper, can be helpful. Don’t use Markup or Track Changes. This way the rewrites remain invisible to you and your coauthor and produce less friction.

Gratitude

No writer is an “island”. This should be especially clear when you collaborate. Give thanks and compliment your partner when he or she does something good. For example, “Hey, that scene you wrote with Lt. Rykk on the beach as the tsunami approached was really good. I was practically biting my nails.” Or “Thanks for your suggestion about how to build suspense when the blind girl arrived. It helped a lot, and I wrote that chapter in record time!”

Expressing your sincere thanks is a morale booster for everyone involved.

You’ll never lose stature in the eyes of your readers by being grateful, either. In fact, they will probably respect you more.

It’s healthy for you to spend some time remembering how many people contribute to successfully writing and publishing a book. A little bit of appreciation goes a long way. So make liberal use of the acknowledgments section in your book. Be specific about why you are thanking people.

Examples of people to thank:

* * *

- Family

- Friends

- Assistants/support staff

- Bosses

- Coworkers

- Editors

- Publishers

- First readers

- Agents

- Researchers

- Sources

- Mentors

- Teachers

- Inspirations

- Supportive organizations

- Sponsors or contributors

5 Worst-Case Scenarios

Let’s be pragmatic and look at some worst-case scenarios. Each individual case has its own solution or set of solutions. Sometimes the only way out may be just to abandon the project and cling to the lessons learned. In a worst-case scenario, questions can come up that you might not have considered beforehand. Here are some examples.

Let’s say you have a great idea for a series of dragon rodeo adventures. In your excitement, you talk to your best friend Marcy about it. She gets just as excited, tossing in some excellent suggestions, a whole storyline, and before you know it, you’ve decided to collaborate. Once Marcy added her input, which became vital to the series, the dragon rodeo series was no longer just “your” idea.

But as you work together, the two of you run into problems. You’re a Plotter and Marcy is a Pantser. In your vision, the series of young adult adventures features a scamp who runs away from his ranch and joins the rodeo because he loves dragons. Marcy, however, envisions the series as adult thrillers featuring one of the dragon rodeo clowns who solves mysteries in the towns where the rodeo travels. Soon, you two have irreconcilable differences and the whole dragon rodeo project crashes and burns. Although you and Marcy manage to stay friends, you’re never going to write that series in collaboration.

Okay, so who owns that idea? You came up with the “dragon rodeo” concept in the first place, but you shared it with Marcy. She contributed vital ideas. The two of you brainstormed and developed it together. Can you just go off and write your dragon rodeo series as you originally envisioned it, while Marcy independently writes her thriller series featuring the dragon rodeo clown? Probably not. The projects might seem too similar and the high concept would be diluted. You could negotiate a buy-out for one or the other of you, flip a coin, arm wrestle. Or the only solution might be just to abandon the idea and come up with another one.

Here’s a slightly different scenario. Let’s say you and Marcy do write the dragon rodeo series together. You sell the books to a major publisher, or decide to indie publish them together. The first book comes out and is very successful. Then Marcy is in a car accident and is unable to complete her part of the second book. In fact, she may not be in a position to go back to writing for a year or more. But the series is just taking off, and readers are already clamoring for the next installment. You signed the contract for the second book before Marcy’s accident, and the publisher is already promoting it. What do you do?

For Kevin and Brian’s Dune novels, they agreed in advance that if anything should happen to either of them, the other writer would complete the project under contract, and they would split the money as originally agreed. This solid, trusting partnership has worked well for them since the late 1990s. They trust each other to hold up their end of the agreement. They also know that personal disasters can happen to anyone, and circumstances can arise in which one of them might not be able to complete the work, no matter how much they may want to. In cases like that, they have each other’s backs.

But what if Marcy just flaked out? What if she decided to become a basket weaver at folk fairs and not do any more writing, leaving you high and dry? You complete the novel or series by yourself. Then how would you determine how the money was divided? Who owns the series? Are you allowed just to keep writing more books on your own? Would Marcy keep getting credit—and payment—even if she stopped co-writing them?

What if Marcy died? Do her heirs then get a creative say in what you do with the series? Would you really want Cousin Jennie (who “always wanted to be a writer”) to be able to tell you how to plot the next book? Or does the right to make future creative decisions on the property revert to you?

Here’s another possible wrinkle: Say you and Marcy create the successful dragon rodeo series and write several books together. What if you lose interest and you want to move on and write other things? Marcy though, loves the series and wants to keep writing them. If she goes solo in your collaborative series, how would the money be split on future volumes and how would the author credit be handled? Kevin and his past coauthors decided that in such cases the continuing author would receive 75 percent and the co-creator of the series would get 25 percent.

Whichever way you and your partner decide to resolve this, it’s best to think of the situation beforehand, when the conflict is still theoretical.

What if you and Marcy have written some books together and then bring in another collaborator down the road? One way might be for the first two authors to be listed as “creators” and the new writer to get a byline and an appropriate share of the book—but not of the underlying intellectual property.

What if a movie or TV series is made of the dragon rodeo books after Marcy abandons the series, or after you’ve brought on a third partner?

Admittedly, some of these decisions may be complex, and solutions may need to be worked out in detail with attorneys. These are just examples of ways that something can go wrong, even when the series is a success.

A collaboration agreement does not imply that you don’t trust each other. It’s an acknowledgement of the worst-case scenarios that could come up, and it provides a written record of your mutual understanding. In the appendix to this book, we’ve included a sample generic collaboration agreement that you can use or adapt to meet your needs.

Summary

Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary activity. You can share the work and your imagination to create a rewarding synergy. Some of the world’s finest examples of creativity have come from two people joining their heads, hearts, and souls together to produce wonderful works of art.

Kevin switches easily between writing solo novels and collaborative novels, and continues to do both, with many bestselling books of each kind. But if you’ve always been a solitary writer, it’s a big shift. Opening your mind and your words to someone else is more challenging than just learning to share a bathroom. It’s like getting married, agreeing on how to raise the children, then actually doing it.

Not a simple process, but so worthwhile when it succeeds.

Approach collaboration with your eyes wide open. Be prepared and be realistic. Know the advantages, the methods, and the risks. You may want to start by trying it just for fun, as a learning experience. Every writer’s technique is different, and by working together on a creative project you both can learn and grow as authors. Eventually your collaboration may become a successful and lucrative writing arrangement.

We’ve participated in many wonderful collaborative partnerships that produced books we’re immensely proud of, books we never could have written on our own. Our experiences collaborating with each other have been powerful and rewarding.

Think about it. Look around for a compatible writer. Try a story together. Lean on each other’s strengths and shore up each other’s weaknesses.

Writing can be a team sport.

References

1. Lowry, Paul Benjamin; Curtis, Aaron; Lowry, Michelle René (2004). “Building a Taxonomy and Nomenclature of Collaborative Writing to Improve Interdisciplinary Research and Practice.” Journal of Business Communication. 41: 66.

2. Onrubia, Javier; Engle, Anna (2009). “Strategies for collaborative writing and phases of knowledge construction in CSCL environments.” Computers & Education. 53 (4): 1256–1265.

3. Ede, L.; Lunsford, A. (1990). “Singular Text/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Authoring.” Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Sample Collaboration Agreement

THIS COLLABORATION AGREEMENT (“Agreement”) is entered into and made effective on ____________ (the “Effective Date”) by and between Writer A (“Writer A”), with an address of 123 Main St., Anywhere, XY 00000 and Writer B (“Writer B”), PO Box 111, Somewhere, XZ 99999. Writer A and Writer B are each referred to in this Agreement as a “Party” and collectively as the “Parties.”

WHEREAS, Writer A and Writer B desire to co-author a joint work [insert brief description];

NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the mutual covenants set forth below, and other good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged, the Parties agree as follows:

1. Obligations. The Parties agree to work together in good faith to perform the obligations under this Agreement between the Parties and with any designated publisher for the Work, including meeting deadlines and providing any edits or approvals to the publisher in a timely manner.

2. Acknowledgments.

2.1. The Work is a stand-alone project. Nothing contained in the Agreement shall be interpreted or construed to obligate Writer A and Writer B to co-create additional projects.

2.2. Nothing contained in the Agreement shall be interpreted or construed to grant to Writer A any rights, title or interest in or to any works or other intellectual property created by Writer B. Nothing contained in the Agreement shall be interpreted or construed to grant to Writer B any rights, title or interest in or to any works or other intellectual property created by Writer A.

3. Ownership. It is and has at all times been the intention of the Parties that they be joint creators of the Work in equal shares. The copyrights in the Work shall be owned jointly by the Parties. In the event that it is determined that the contribution of one of the Parties to the Work is deemed to not meet the statutory requirements of copyrightability, the remaining Party hereby assigns an interest in the Work to the other Party, so that the Work shall be jointly owned by the Parties in equal shares. No Party may divide, sell, license or otherwise dispose of any rights in the Work without the prior written approval of the remaining Party. No license or other contract with respect to the Work shall be valid without the signature of both Parties.

4. Right to Publish. No Party may unilaterally enter into an agreement to divide, sell, license or otherwise dispose of any rights of publication of the Work without the prior written approval of both Parties. No Party may unilaterally self-publish the Work.

5. Publicity. The Parties may use portions of the Text(s) to promote and advertise the Work. The Parties will work together to limit complete exposure of the Text(s) and Work in and through publicity efforts.

6. Merchandising. No Party may unilaterally enter into an agreement to divide, sell, license or otherwise dispose of any rights of merchandising of the Work without the prior written approval of both Parties.

7. Royalties and Advances. The Parties shall share equally in all net royalties and advances paid in connection with the publication and sales of the Work and any license of any rights of the Work, including but not limited to electronic rights, audio rights, multimedia rights, foreign language rights, and reprint and special edition rights. If agreeable with the publisher, all agreements for publication and sale of the Work and for the license of any rights in the Work shall provide that each Party shall be paid its equal share directly (or to such Party’s agent, if so designated). Parties acknowledge publisher may be unwilling or unable to pay one-half shares directly, and agree that the Parties will work together to designate a receiver to collect and distribute the monies in the manner and time agreed by Parties.

* * *

8. Representations and Warranties.

8.1. Writer A hereby represents, warrants and agrees that: (a) Writer A will cooperate with Writer B in the preparation of the Work; and (b) all text furnished by Writer A for use in the Work will be wholly original with Writer A, will not be copied in whole or in part from any work, will not violate, conflict with or infringe upon any personal or property rights whatsoever of any person or entity, including without limitation, any copyright, trademark or other proprietary right of others and contain no matter that is libelous, an invasion of privacy or infringement upon the copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of any person or entity, or be otherwise unlawful. The representations and warranties made by Writer A in this paragraph and the indemnity obligations, shall survive the termination for any reason of this Agreement.

8.2. Writer B hereby represents, warrants and agrees that: (a) Writer B will cooperate with Writer A in the preparation of the Work; and (b) all text furnished by Writer B for use in the Work will be wholly original with Writer B, will not be copied in whole or in part from any work, will not violate, conflict with or infringe upon any personal or property rights whatsoever of any person or entity, including without limitation, any copyright, trademark or other proprietary right of others and contain no matter that is libelous, an invasion of privacy or infringement upon the copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of any person or entity, or be otherwise unlawful. The representations and warranties made by Writer B in this paragraph and the indemnity obligations, shall survive the termination for any reason of this Agreement.

9. Copyright. Publisher shall register the Work in the name of Writer A and Writer B with the United States Copyright Office. All parties shall execute such documents as may be necessary to effectuate copyright of the Work in accordance with the Agreement.

10. Credits. Contingent upon a publisher agreement, Writer B and Writer A will receive credit as co-author of the Text. Co-author credit will appear on the Cover and the Title Page of each Work.

11. Indemnification.

11.1. With regard to the portions of the Work contributed by Writer A, Writer A shall defend, indemnify and hold Writer B harmless from and against any losses, liabilities, damages, settlements, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or for the purpose of avoiding any suit, proceeding, claim or demand or the settlement thereof, which may be brought or made against Writer B by reason of (i) the publication, sale, or distribution of the Works of the Work based on those portions of the Work contributed by Writer A, or (ii) a breach or alleged breach by Writer A of any of the representations and warranties.

11.2. With regard to the portions of the Work contributed by Writer B, Writer B shall defend, indemnify and hold Writer A harmless from and against any losses, liabilities, damages, settlements, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or for the purpose of avoiding any suit, proceeding, claim or demand or the settlement thereof, which may be brought or made against Writer A by reason of (i) the publication, sale, or distribution of the Works of the Work based on those portions of the Work contributed by Writer B, or (ii) a breach or alleged breach by Writer B of any of the representations and warranties. Such indemnification shall apply notwithstanding the fact that any portion of the Work contributed by Writer B, has been reviewed and/or approved by Writer A.

12. Term. The term of this Agreement shall be for the life of the copyrights of the Works.

13. Expenses. Writer A and Writer B shall each be responsible for their own expenses incurred in connection with the performance of this Agreement; however, the commissions and expenses owed [Agent] as literary agent in this Agreement shall be shared equally by Writer B and Writer A.

14. Miscellaneous. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between Writer A and Writer B and supersedes all prior agreements, understandings and proposals (whether oral or written) concerning the subject matter of this Agreement. No waiver or modification of any provision hereunder shall be binding unless in writing and signed by both Parties. No waiver of any breach hereof shall be construed to be a continuing waiver or consent to any subsequent breach hereof.

15. Failure to Complete Collaborative Work(s). In the event Writer B or Writer A is unable or unwilling to continue or complete any Work covered in this Agreement, the other Party may complete said Work(s) without the assistance or advice of the Party who is unable or unwilling to continue or complete the Work(s); provided, the rights of the withdrawing Party as to all matters under this Agreement, including the right to a share of monies received, credit and copyright, shall, in the absence of an agreement between the Parties, be determined based upon the amount, substantiality and value of the withdrawing Party’s contribution to the Work(s) in relation to the contributions and the continuing responsibilities to the Work(s) by the remaining Party.

16. Death or Disability.

16.1. This Agreement shall inure to the benefit of, and shall be binding upon, each party's respective executors, administrators, heirs, successors and assigns.

16.2. In the event of the death or disability of a Party before or after the Work as defined in this Agreement is completed, the surviving or non-disabled Party shall have the sole and unrestricted right to complete the Works covered in this Agreement, alone or in conjunction with others, and thereafter to publish said Work(s); provided, the rights of the deceased or disabled Party as to all matters under this Agreement, including the right to a share of monies received, credit and copyright, shall be determined based upon the amount, substantiality and value of the deceased or disabled Party’s contribution to the Work(s) in relation to the contributions and the continuing responsibilities to the Work(s) by the remaining Party. The surviving or non-disabled Party shall have the sole and unrestricted right to make all literary, editorial and business decisions with respect to the Work and to execute all documents necessary to sell or license any right of the Work.

16.3. Upon timely request, copies of all licenses and other agreements executed in connection with the Work as defined by this Agreement, as well as copies of all royalty and accounting statements received by the surviving or non-disabled Parties in connection with this Agreement, shall be furnished in a timely manner to the deceased or disabled Party’s executor or other representative.

16.4. The deceased or disabled Party shall retain credit as co-author of the Works covered in this Agreement and shall retain status as co-owner of the copyright for the Works completed jointly by Writer B and Writer A. The deceased or disabled Party shall continue to share equally with the surviving or non-disabled Party the monies received for Works completed jointly by Writer B and Writer A.

16.5. The deceased or disabled Party shall share proportionally with the surviving or non-disabled Party the monies received for the Works in progress by Writer B and Writer A and completed by the surviving or non-disabled Party—the proportion based on the amount, substantiality and value of the deceased or disabled Party’s contribution to the Works completed by the surviving or non-disabled Party.

17. Governing Law and Venue. This Collaboration Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of [State] without reference to conflicts of law principles. The Parties hereby consent that the venue for any action on this Collaboration Agreement shall be ___________ [State].

18. Severability. If and to the extent that any provision of this Agreement is held to be illegal, invalid, or unenforceable, in whole or in part, such provision or such portion thereof shall be ineffective as to the jurisdiction in which it is illegal, invalid or unenforceable to the extent of its illegality, invalidity or unenforceability and shall be deemed modified to the extent necessary to conform to applicable law so as to give the maximum effect to the intent of the Parties. The illegality, invalidity, or unenforceability of such provision in that jurisdiction shall not in any way affect the legality, validity, or enforceability of any other provision of this Agreement in any other jurisdiction. This Agreement is the entire agreement between the Parties with respect to the subject matter herein, and this Agreement may only be amended by written instrument executed by all Parties.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Parties have caused this Agreement to be executed as of __________________ [Effective Date].

ACCEPTED AND AGREED:

[signature lines]

About the Authors

Kevin J. Anderson has published 150 books, fifty-six of which were national or international bestsellers. He has written numerous novels in the Star Wars, X-Files, Dune, and DC Comics universes, as well as unique steampunk fantasy novels Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives, written with legendary rock drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept album by the band Rush. His original works include the Saga of Seven Suns series, the Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy, the Saga of Shadows trilogy, and his humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie PI. Kevin has edited numerous anthologies, written comics and games, and the lyrics to two rock CDs. He has collaborated with dozens of different coauthors, including his wife of more than a quarter century, Rebecca Moesta. He and Rebecca are the publishers of WordFire Press.

Rebecca Moesta (pronounced MESS-tuh) is the bestselling author of forty books, both solo and in collaboration with her husband, Kevin J. Anderson. Her solo work includes novels in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Junior Jedi Knights series, short stories, articles, ghostwriting, and editing anthologies. With Kevin, she has written the Crystal Doors trilogy, the Star Challengers trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series, movie and game novelizations, lyrics for rock CDs, graphic novels, pop-up books, and writing books, such as Million Dollar Professionalism for Writers.

Rebecca and Kevin are the publishers of WordFire Press. For more about them, see wordfire.com

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Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm

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Star Challengers #2: Space Station Crisis

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