I have always been a student of the creative process. During my early years in college, I was introduced to the work of Dostoevsky. I read of all his novels, short stories and a couple of biographies. From this man and his bizarre work, I became interested in writing and made my own first attempts at poetry and fiction.

Also during these initial college years, I was introduced to and fell in love with Greek tragedy. Sophocles had a major impact on me. From the story of Oedipus, I found my way to Freud and the “Oedipus Complex.” I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

It wasn’t until I turned thirty that I actually began work on a novel, and I was still as interested in the creative process as I was in the actual writing. There might be a certain amount of truth in the statement that I started writing to learn about the creative process. I instinctively realized that it spoke to something basic about the human condition. But I aborted my first novel after a hundred pages or so because I didn’t know where it was going. I ran out of story. I was puzzled about my failure, and wondered why the story didn’t reveal itself to me as I imagined it would.

Several years after this failed attempt, I started and finished another novel, but I knew it was rather rambling and not properly plotted. I attended some workshops on plotting and came away even more confused. I started reading books on screen writing and drama because they seemed to know more about the structure of storytelling. I came across the concept of the Premise, and the plotting process I would later use myself started to take shape.

During this time, I read the comments of other authors concerning the nature of the writing experience. The interviews in The Paris Review were my primary source. A little later in life, I went through five years of psychotherapy; and following this trying but illuminating experience, one of the most important events of my life occurred. My company laid me off. Instead of trying to find work immediately, I decided to spend my time reading about ancient Greece, and planned an extended trip about the Greek mainland and islands. Prior to leaving, I read everything I could get my hands on concerning the archaeology and mythology of ancient Greece. At the same time, I planned to use my newly developed plotting methods while writing an extended narrative of my journey through Greece.

I spent ten weeks traveling Greece alone. When I returned, I edited and expanded my travel narrative into the work I’ve had on the Internet for the last eight years and I recently published in paperback. It’s titled Oedipus on a Pale horse and is now available on Amazon.

Afterward, I continued my research into the religion and myths of ancient Greece. My primary resources were the writings of university professors, classicists published by university presses. Early in this period, I came into contact with the writings of Karl Kerényi and Carl Jung. I had always known of Jung’s work because of his association with Freud, but I had never explored his writings to any extent. I had viewed him, naive as I was, as Freud’s junior partner. Surprisingly enough, I had never heard of Kerényi. These two would become my newfound heroes. This research was really exciting because I realized that I was uncovering the psychology of writing.

Freud had always been highly interesting, but Jung’s theory of the human psyche interested me even more. I’d had many experiences during my life that had gone unexplained, even through the five years of therapy. Jung came as a revelation. His explanation of the connection between human events and mythology was simply mind-blowing. Karl Kerényi was a professor of classics and the history of religion. He wrote a series of books in association with Carl Jung on the archetypes from Greek mythology that served the ancients as patterns for human existence. Through the writings of these two, I delved deeper into this crossover field of psychology and mythology, and ran onto the archetypal psychologists James Hillman and Murray Stein. It was as if I’d found the Rosetta Stone for my own psychology, as well as a guide into the internal creative process of writing.

Then in the fall of 1999, I was approached by the head of the Continuing Education Department at New Mexico State University at Carlsbad to teach a couple of courses. She’d heard that I was a writer and interested in mythology. “Something on novel writing and Greek mythology,” she said, “would be of interesting to our older students.”

I was already primed. Since most of the students, who would be taking these courses, were college educated, some even retired teachers, I could treat the material as if I were teaching graduate school. My years of research could be put to good use. The course on Greek mythology, I taught primarily from the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. For the novel writing course, I pulled from everything I’d read through the years concerning storytelling: novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and narrative non-fiction writers. I injected good doses of Jungian and archetypal psychology.

While developing the material for the two courses, I continued to be amazed at how connected the two subjects are, that novel writing, all storytelling really, is an outgrowth of the same psychological processes that had, through the millennia, created myth. Jungian psychology goes a long ways toward explaining the techniques used by novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters. All my research into these different disciplines came together as a sort of critical mass, which resulted in an explosion of ideas concerning the craft of novel writing that I describe here.

My methodology is not the traditional approach used in creative writing. I will not tell you how to combine the words to make effective sentences and paragraphs or to describe a scene. That is taught in many wonderful textbooks and classes in schools throughout the world. But what you will not find in these classes is how to actually put a novel together. This deficiency I hope to correct with Novelsmithing.

CHAPTER 1: The Big Idea

Seems as though everyone has a big idea that they believe will make a great novel. Some of them may be right, but generally ideas that come to a novice constitute only a tiny part of the entire concept that constitutes an idea for a novel. When I lived in Boulder, Colorado, I had a physicist friend who had a Ph.D. come to me with an idea. He imagined, he said, that a man found a suitcase with a million dollars inside in airport bathroom stall. The man would be obsessed with the money and what to do with it. But the physicist couldn’t write the story beyond the first fifty pages. “There are too many possibilities,” he said. “How do I know what this guy will do with the money?” Actually, my friend had an idea for an interesting situation, but he didn’t have a full-blown idea for a novel.

It takes a multitude of ingredients to formulate a full novel concept. The ingredients involve not only situations, but also characters, conflicts, settings, and above all theme. In my friend’s situation, his character could have taken the suitcase along with the money to the police, walked away, and it would have had no impact on his life at all. But his character could also have taken it home and come into conflict with the owner, possibly a drug dealer. He could also have immediately purchased an airline ticket, flown to a foreign country and disappeared into the countryside. The possibilities are endless, and the final choice of what to do with the money will say something crucial about character and theme. So how do you formulate a story that has all the elements orchestrated so that it constitutes a fine piece of literature?

Janet Burroway, in her book Writing Fiction (probably the best book ever written on the subject) says that:

The organic unity of a work of literature cannot be taught–or, if it can, I have not discovered a way to teach it. I can suggest from time to time that concrete image is not separate from character, which is revealed in dialogue and point of view, which may be illuminated by simile, which may reveal theme, which is contained in plot as water is contained in an apple. But I cannot tell you how to achieve this…⁵

The process I have developed does precisely this.

The many books on novel writing are little more than a hodgepodge of ideas about the subject, but what we will do here gets down to revealing the secrets of where it comes from and how to put it all together. What you will need first is a description of the underlying structure that makes all novels work, the DNA of a novel, so to speak.

So, where do you begin? How do you determine the structure of your story beforehand? How are the infinity of elements related? All of these questions, I will answer shortly, but first, we must get some preliminaries out of the way.

THE NOVEL: What is it?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the novel as:

A fictitious prose narrative or tale of considerable length (now usually one long enough to fill one or more volumes), in which characters and actions representative of the real life of past or present times are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity.

I would also include the real life of future times in this definition, so as to cover science fiction. I would argue that the word “fictitious” may not always apply, because many historical novels are more historically accurate than are some history texts. Milan Kundera, the great Czech novelist, has had it said about his novels that they are “a meditation on existence,”⁶ which really leaves the subject wide open.

A novel does not present real life, but it does bear a relationship to it. Some say it is an “illusion of life.” Or it can be approached even more casually, as in Henry James’ statement that “A novel is of its very nature an ‘ado,’ an ado about something, and the larger the form it takes the greater of course the ado.”⁷ I would define the novel as: an extended dramatic narration concerning a particular subject or event.  I put forth these definitions to illustrate how ambiguous and flexible the novel art form is. And although I’ll give you specific instructions here on how to discover and structure your story, please realize that what you create may be something no one has ever seen before, and have an original structure.

NOVEL TYPE

Novels come in many forms, and the technique described here can be used to create any of them. They may be science fiction, mystery, romance, western, true crime, thriller, historical. Your novel can be mainstream or literary fiction, a children’s story or young adult. Literary fiction is more character based than mainstream, which is plot based. Know where your novel will fit among the multitude. Who is your audience? You must be writing for someone. Who is it? An author, first and foremost, should read. All these things, the author should know and do before he starts writing. Part of learning the craft is to know how others practice it and what they produce as a final product.

Some writers have broken down the techniques available to the novelist as equal parts “method and madness,” and this concept will be useful to us. The way an author constructs his novel, the craft, is the “method.” Where all the raw material comes from, the original idea, characters and events, narrative style, etc., is the “madness.” We will study craft first. We’ll say a little about where the idea for a novel, the initial impulse, comes from. But this will be fairly basic stuff, and I’ll leave the rest until later, when we’ll do what we can about studying the “madness.”

THE CENTRAL IDEA

The idea for the novel can come from anywhere. Sometimes the idea will come from some traditional story, an action drawn from life, or a personal fantasy. It can come from personal experience, or be completely imaginary, as was my friend’s fantasy about the man finding a suitcase. It can be built around a single character, as in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, or an event, as in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. It should be something you know about or are willing to learn about through extensive research. One of the best places to find an idea is in your own personal fantasies, especially those involving conflict. Dreams, particularly recurring dreams, are an excellence source. Some experts will advise you to write the type of novel you enjoy reading, but my opinion is that reading and writing are radically different activities. Write what you want to write.

Some writers borrow from other authors. Shakespeare rarely had an original storyline. Many times, he borrowed from Plutarch’s Lives. (Plutarch was a Greek who wrote in the 2nd century AD.) A Midsummer Night’s Dream came from Theseus, and Coriolaneus came from Plutarch’s biography of the ancient Greek hero. Jane Smiley took the storyline for A Thousand Acres from Shakespeare’s King Lear and won a Pulitzer. Cinderella has been disguised and retold countless times. Gothic novels are of that nature. Jane Eyre, Rebecca, the movie Working Girl are all Cinderella stories.

Other sources might include a personal event, family history, or something that happened to a friend. The TV series “Law and Order” frequently uses a story “ripped from a newspaper headline.” But the most original material will come from personal experience. If you are on the outlook for an idea, it can come from anywhere. Consider the origin of Henry James’ novel, The Spoils of Poynton, which I’ve included as Attachment I. The idea came to him suddenly during an even meal and was provoked by an innocent comment by a woman sitting next to him.

HIGH CONCEPT

If a blacksmith took an expensive piece of metal into his furnace, worked the bellows till he was blue in the face and the metal glowing white hot, and then beat on it with his hammer and tongs until it had a unique shape, you’d expect that shape to be something useful or a least something an observer could identify. But if everyone who saw it said, “What is it?” the blacksmith would be pressed into the embarrassing task of explaining what he had created. The same is true for the novelsmith. He would be well advised to create a novel with subject matter that a potential reader can identify with a minimum of scrutiny. It should immediately “resonate” with the reader.

People in publishing today (and particularly in Hollywood) are looking for works that are “high concept.” By this they mean that the main subject or essence of the work can be clearly exposed in a few words. Think of ways to express your idea so that it is immediately understandable. The statement will most likely expose the central conflict and say something about the storyline. Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment might be identified as, “A young man’s attempt to come to terms with himself after committing murder.” If you can’t summarize your story in one sentence, you probably don’t know what your own novel is about. We’ll cover how to do this in detail in the next chapter.

Writing a novel is always accomplished in the dark and is very much a process of discovery. Never mind that you have your computer screen brightness on maximum, the place your material comes from is dark and foreboding. Plus, you really don’t know the story until you’ve written it. Yet, you can’t structure it properly until you know the story. Because of this Catch 22, you must write it and rewrite it several times. To begin with, you must have the germ of an idea. Trying to apply a story structure to it will help it develop. If the idea is the art, the structure is the craft.

ART THROUGH CRAFT

The idea for a novel is like a wild horse. You have to harness it to get it under control and discipline it. Your novel will develop as you write, but you will always feel as though you are riding your horse in the dark with a little lantern to show the way. That’s why you need to work within a structure that can throw that much-needed light on the subject matter and reveal where it’s leading you. In the following pages, I will present a method for developing your idea. It will result in a first draft, so that a full novel can be written from it. Don’t be deluded into believing that this is the only way to write a novel. This method, however, will help you understand the energy inherent in any novel, and how it may be harnessed. You can then go out on your own to find unusual ways to structure your novel.

The idea, particularly if it comes from true-life experience, must undergo a transformation before it becomes a novel. Because storytelling is such a part of our lives, we think of it as a representation of life itself, but a novel has certain characteristics that take it out of the real world. In fact, the existence of any story is outside real life. As shown in Figure 1, a transformation process takes place during the creation of the novel.

The Transformation Process

This transformation is the craft of novel writing. Much of it will be identical to the ordinary storytelling we do everyday when someone asks, “How did it go at the office?” But further realize that the process is not simply a description of real-life events. A transformation takes place when we take “real-life” into the world of the novel, and that transformation occurs through craft. As an example, conversation is transformed into “dialogue” to sound “normal” within a novel. Dialogue is an abbreviated or edited version of normal conversation. Everything is magnified and has a storyline connection; therefore, the author has to develop a new set of proportions to judge the impact of his words on the reader.

“But,” you may say, “I don’t want to be a craftsman. I want to be an artist.” Craft is the method, the discipline, of dealing with all artistic endeavors. The artist, the author, must learn his craft to get his ideas into the fictional world. Art, for some reason, doesn’t want to be criticized or reviewed, perhaps because it is so ego-related. On the other hand, craftsmanship by its very nature implies an apprenticeship, a period of trial and failure, and a certain level of skill before becoming a master craftsman. Viewing novel writing, novelsmithing, as a craft takes the pressure off your initial efforts, and opens them up to critique. Plus, it means that, to learn to write, you must write, write, write until you get it right.

I use the metaphor of a blacksmith for the novelist because a blacksmith is the consummate craftsman. He gets as down and dirty as any and more than most. Plus his tools, anvil and hammer, tongs, bellows, are coarse, heavy tools, and his actions, the swing of the hammer, the whoosh of the bellows, ring throughout the countryside. This is in opposition to the actions of the novelsmith, who sits quietly at his computer, only the faint click of the keys audible above his own breathing. By viewing novel writing as smithing, we can exaggerate the novelsmiths actions to better see their complexity and gauge their importance, and to help us keep our focus on the craft.

The blacksmith is not the only metaphor that we’ll use to uncover the craft of novel writing. We’ll use other analogies as appropriate. Some may criticize the metaphor mixing, but we’ll play it loose and shoot from the hip when necessary.

*

That concludes the introductory remarks. To follow the discussion from here on, you should have an idea for the novel you wish to write. You will be developing that idea into a rough draft. But the central most important fact you should retain from this introduction is that the real world and the fictional world are radically different, and that you can only get your story into the fictional world through narrative craft.

EXERCISES

(a) Before proceeding to the next chapter, write down your own concept, your idea, for your novel. (b) List two or three of the major characters. This will help define the core of your idea, so that it it can be further fleshed out in the next chapter.

“A fishing hook needs bait and a fisherman, though, and a writing hook needs a story. An unusual situation, however intriguing, is not a story. “A family digs a swimming pool in the backyard, and finds a buried time capsule” is a great premise for a novel – but what happens next? “A family’s discovery of a time capsule buried in their backyard makes them the targets of government agents from every country in the world” – that’s a story hook, because now we know that the time capsule sets a chain of events in motion.”

But what Joseph Finder didn’t tell you is why adding the government agents makes this a “hook.” Of course, if you’ve read my chapter in Novelsmithing called “Plotting,” you already know the answer. It’s because the author has just locked the central conflict. A family finding a time capsule is just an event with a protagonist. No story. World governments after the family because of the time capsule provides an antagonist and locks the central conflict. We have a story because conflict has a time history. Conflict has to be locked, escalated, reversed, come to term with, and resolved. Story is the time-history of conflict.

Plus, understanding the nature of conflict adds theme. The family could just simply turn over the time capsule, and we still have no story. The governments could see the time capsule, realize that it’s worthless to them, and we still have no story. But if the family doesn’t want to give up the time capsule, and the governments wish to pursue the matter, we have continuing conflict, and the reasons for the family resisting and the governments pursuing the family, together with the nature of the time capsule, provide the theme. Theme is the philosophy behind the conflict. If you don’t realize this, you may have conflict and your novel plotted, but it may still not have meaning. Theme provides the story with meaning, and if you don’t understand what your story means, the reader will find it to be intellectually and philosophically bankrupt.

Describing story as “what happens next” isn’t the complete picture. If what-happens-next doesn’t follow the central conflict from locking to resolving, it doesn’t constitute a complete story.

Writing a novel will probably be the most complex and intellectually challenging project you’ll ever undertake. Proper preparation and attention to craft is crucial to seeing the project through to a successful conclusion. That has been the sole purpose of this narrative. Academics have struggled for generations trying to teach the subject, and to my way of thinking, not done very well because they teach novel writing as a part of creative writing rather than as a separate, more advanced, subject. You have to include the entire subject if you want to teach the basics of novelsmithing.

I would just like to repeat my words of caution. What you have learned from these pages should not be taken as dogma. Locking into a process like this can stifle your creativity. Many great novels would be difficult to analyze in these terms. What this approach should provide is a structure through which you can unlock many of the forces at work in literature. But trust to the dictates of the story you are telling.

You might stop by www.novelsmithing.com, and its associated blog, from time to time to see what’s up. I plan to maintain the website into the foreseeable future.

Good luck.

(This concludes the serialization of Novelsmithing. I will continue to post here on the nature of novel writing, novelsmithing.)

² Furley, William D., Studies in the Use of Fire in Ancient Greek Religion, Salem: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc., 1988, page i.

³ Homer, The Iliad, tr. by Martin Hammond, New York: Penguin Books, 1987, page 321.

⁴ As a fine example, see, von Bothmer, Dietrich, The Amasis Painter and His World, Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens, New York: Thames and Hudson ltd., and Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1985, page 44-55.

⁵ Burroway, Janet, Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, New York: Longman, 2000, page 312.

⁶ Kundera, Milan, The Art of the Novel, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1988, page 35.

⁷ James, Henry, The Art of the Novel, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1934 (1907), page 48.

⁸ Wellek, René, and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1956, page 206.

⁹ Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, page 2322.

¹⁰ For a somewhat different take on Premise, see The Art of Dramatic Writing, Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives, Chapter I, by Lajos Egri, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1960.

¹¹ James, Henry, The Art of the Novel, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1934, page 15.

¹² For a somewhat different approach to story structure, see Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field, New York: Dell Publishing, 1984.

¹³ For further information, see The Elements of Screenwriting, A Guide for Film and Television Writing, By Irwin R. Blacker, New York: Collier Books, 1986.

¹⁴ Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, page 121.

¹⁵ Colebrook, Claire, Irony, New York: Routledge, 2004, page 27.

¹⁶ Moore, T. Sturge, Art and Life, London: Methuen, 1910, page 232.

¹⁷ Mantel, Hilary, Beyond Black, New York: Henry Holt and Company LLC, 2004, pages 3-4.

¹⁸ Homer, The Iliad, tr. by Robert Fitzgerald, Franklin Center: The Franklin Library, 1952, page 47.

¹⁹ Euripides, Euripides: Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus, ed. and tr. by David Kovacs, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, LCL, 2002, page 201.

²⁰ Eliot, George, Adam Bede, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1917, page 1.

²¹ Melville, Herman, Moby Dick or, the Whale, New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1959, page 27.

²² However, Dostoevsky did not burn everything and start from scratch, as he said and many have reported. For a detailed account of his search for a narrative scheme, see Frank, Joseph, Doestoevsky, The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, Chapter 6, especially page 93.

²³ McInerney, Jay, Bright Lights, Big City. New York: Vintage Books, 1984, page 1.

²⁴ Whiteley, Opal, The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow, The Rediscovered Diary of Opal Whiteley, presented by Benjamin Hoff, New York: Ticknor & fields, 1986, page 81.

²⁵ Homer, The Odyssey, tr. by Robert Fitzgerald, Franklin Center: The Franklin Library, 1978, page 3.

²⁶ Hansen, Ron, Mariette in Ecstasy, New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991, page 29.

²⁷ Pirsig, Robert, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry into Values. New York: Bantam Books, 1974, page 3.

²⁸ Dickens, Charles, A Tale of Two Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1990, page 7.

²⁹ Walker, Alice, The Color Purple, New York: Pocket Books, 1982, page 1.

³⁰ Liddell & Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, pg 230.

³¹ Hesiod,Works and Days, lines 45-60.

³² Kerenyi, C., The Gods of the Greeks, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1951, page 207.

³³ Colebrook, Claire, Irony, London: Routledge, 2004, page 135.

³⁴ Ibid, page 23.

³⁵ Ibid, page 20.

³⁶ Ibid, page 27.

³⁷ Ibid, page 180.

³⁸ Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940, page 173.

³⁹ Ibid, page 22.

⁴⁰ Bradbury, Ray, The Martian Chronicles, New York: Bantam Books, 1958, page 80.

⁴¹ de Santillana, Giorgio, The Origins of Scientific thought, From Anaximander to Proclus, 600 B.C. to A.D 500, New York: Mentor Books, 1961, page 8.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, page 318.

⁴⁴ Wellek, René, and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1956, page 207.

⁴⁵ Hansen, Ron, Mariette in Ecstasy, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991, page 179.

⁴⁶ Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Penguin Group, 1939, pages 580-1.

⁴⁷ Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929, page 3.

⁴⁸ Ibid, page 7.

⁴⁹ Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, pages 3-4.

⁵⁰ Ibid, page 30.

⁵¹ Lee, Chang-Rae, Native Speaker, New York: Riverhead Books, 1995, page 101.

⁵² Ibid, page 346.

⁵³ Persig, Robert M., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry into Values, New York: Bantam Books, 1974, page 95.

⁵⁴ Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, tr. by Alan Russell, New York: Penguin Group, 1950, page 81.

⁵⁵ Scheid, John, and Jesper Svenbro, The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric, tr. by Carol Volk, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

⁵⁶ These examples are from Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1979.

⁵⁷ Bolen, Jean Shinoda, M.D., Gods in Everyman, A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves, New York: Harper & Row, 1989, page 223.

⁵⁸ Theophrastus: Characters, Herodas: Mimes, Sophron and Other Mime Fragments, tr. and ed. by Jeffrey Rusten and I. C. Cunningham, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, LCL, 2002, pages 73 and 97.

⁵⁹ Salter, James, Light Years, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982, page 8.

⁶⁰ Schroedinger, Erwin, What is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, page 122.

⁶¹ Lilly, John C., The Center of the Cyclone: Looking into Inner Space, Oakland: Ronin Publishing, Inc., 1972. Entire book.

⁶² Jung, Carl, Collected Works, Volume 4, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961, paragraph 728.

⁶³ Ibid, paragraph 405.

⁶⁴ Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul, Peru: Open Court, 1998, page 131.

⁶⁵ Ibid, page 132-3.

⁶⁶ Jung, C. G. and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, page 173.

⁶⁷ Stein, Murray, Jung’s Map of the Soul, Peru: Open Court, 1998, page 131.

⁶⁸ Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, A Brief Account, Dallas: Spring Publications, 1983, page 1.

⁶⁹ Ibid, page 3.

⁷⁰ From Thornton Wilder’s Introduction (1955) to: Sophocles’, Oedipus The King, translated by Francis Storr, Norwalk: The Easton Press, 1980, page 16.

⁷¹ Kerenyi, C., The Gods of the Greeks, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1951, page 170.

⁷² Jung, C. G., The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pages 73.

⁷³ Ibid, pages 81-2

⁷⁴ Burroway, Janet, Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, New York: Longman, 2000, pages 3-8.

⁷⁵ From Facing the Gods, ed. by James Hillman, Dallas: Spring Publications Inc., 1980, page 83.

⁷⁶ Jung, C. G., The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, tr. by R. F. C. Hull, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, page 104.

⁷⁷ Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989, page 16.

⁷⁸ Surmelian, Leon, Techniques of Fiction Writing, Measure and Madness, Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969, page 1.

⁷⁹ Joyce, James, Ulysses, New York: Random House, Inc., 1986, page 608.

⁸⁰ Ibid, 643-4.

⁸¹ Hemingway, Ernest, For Whom the Bell Tolls, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940, page 3.

⁸² Deleted.

⁸³ Delany, Samuel R., Dhalgren, New York: Bantam Books, 1975, page 1.

⁸⁴ Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1979.

⁸⁵ Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1965.

⁸⁶ Webster’s, 1979.

⁸⁷ Funk & Wagnalls, 1965.

⁸⁸ Rilke, Rainer Maria, Letters to a Young Poet, tr. by M. D. Herter Norton, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1934, page 29.

Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Blacker, Irwin R., The Elements of Screenwriting, New York: Collier Books, 1986.

Bolen, Jean Shinoda, M.D., Gods in Everyman, A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves, New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

Bradbury, Ray, The Martian Chronicles, New York: Bantam Books, 1958.

Burroway, Janet, Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, New York: Longman, 2000.

Colebrook, Claire, Irony, New York: Routledge, 2004.

de Santillana, Giorgio, The Origins of Scientific thought, From Anaximander to Proclus, 600 B.C. to A.D 500, New York: Mentor Books, 1961.

Dickens, Charles, A Tale of Two Cities, New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Dillard, Annie, The Writing Life, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989.

Egri, Lajos, The Art of Dramatic Writing, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1960.

Eliot, George, Adam Bede, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1917.

Euripides, Euripides: Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus, ed. and tr. by David Kovacs, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, LCL, 2002.

Field, Syd, Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting, New York: Dell Publishing, 1994.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, tr. by Alan Russell, New York: Penguin Group, 1950.

Forbes, R. J., Studies in Ancient Technology, Vol. VIII, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971.

Frank, Joseph, Doestoevsky, The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Furley, William D., Studies in the Use of Fire in Ancient Greek Religion, Salem: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc., 1988.

James, Henry, The Art of the Novel, New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1934 (1907).

Hansen, Ron, Mariette in Ecstasy, New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991.

Hemingway, Ernest, A Farewell to Arms, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929.

____, For Whom the Bell Tolls, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940.

Hesiod,Theogony, Works and Days, Shield, tr. by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology, A Brief Account, Dallas: Spring Publications, 1983.

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(The following post is not currently a part of Novelsmithing)

True confessions time.

In January 1993 I got laid off from my day job, and since I’d been writing evenings and weekends for what seemed like forever while working on a second undergraduate degree in American literature, I decided not to try to find another engineering job (I worked mostly on NASA projects, Space Shuttle and missions to the outer planets). I decided to remain unemployed so I could write, and travel. That fall, I went to Greece by myself for ten weeks traveling about the mainland and islands, even the western coast of Turkey. I went to contemplate some of the disasters in my life: an almost fatal encounter with my father, two divorces, and the disappearance of my daughter. I wrote 112,000 words while in Greece. I wrote about the archaeological sites and Greek mythology while mulling over my past personal problems. When I returned, I spent the next two years beating it into shape for a book that I titled Oedipus on a Pale Horse, Journey through Greece in Search of a Personal Mythology.

Just before I left for Greece, I had a literary agent contact me, and while I was gone, she worked at selling a novel I’d been working on for the last seven years, my first, called The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, A Novel of a 50s Family. The novel had been among the five finalists at the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Novel Competition in New Orleans. I was invited to the awards ceremony but declined because I had a non-refundable ticket to Greece, and I was afraid that if I didn’t go, I never would. If I’d abandoned my trip and gone to the ceremony, I would have probably ended up getting Bobby Ray published, but I had an agent and figured that she’d sell it while I was gone. She claimed to be hardworking and would go from major publishers down to small presses if she had to. First she wanted to present it to Jason Epstein at Random House. She knew him personally.

While I was gone, she gave it to Epstein who rejected it with a curt oneliner, so she gave it to a friend at Bantam who also rejected it. When I returned, my agent had already given up on it. She didn’t try even midrange publishers. She wanted to see what I had written while in Greece. Non-fiction is easier to sell, and she thought my story sounded interesting. I told her it wasn’t in complete form, but she wanted to see it anyway, so I sent what I had to her. Then the long silence. She dumped me.

I continued to work on the travel journal for the next two years, and during the fall of 1995, I started marketing it myself. I went straight to publishers and was told that it was a “foreign sell,” (as in Europe), and that none of my 1,400 pictures of Greece would ever see print. I tried marketing it a little more, but gave up without much of a fight.

In February 1996, I moved to Carlsbad, NM to live in an old abandoned home my maternal grandfather had built out of bomb boxes from World War II. My mother and father had been renovating it, and told me that I could have it, if I wanted to live there. I was running out of money and knew that I could make it there on next to nothing. I moved and shortly thereafter started work on a historical novel I titled The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis. I worked on it day and night, and two years later I finished and started marketing it to literary agents. I received several rejections, but then a major New York agent, who shall remain nameless, wanted to see the manuscript on an exclusive basis. The names of her clients read like a who’s who directory. She said she’d get back to me in six weeks. The six weeks came and went and after another month, I sent a second letter requesting a status update. She said she was very busy, but should have a decision for me in a couple of weeks. Several months went by, and I again requested an update. She said that her readers had loved it, and that she would get back with me in a couple of weeks. After having it for nine months on an exclusive basis, I received a one-line rejection from her.

I was rapidly running out of money, so I went to work at NMSU-Carlsbad where I took a beginner class in website design. This was the fall of 1999, just a few months after my father passed away. I’d decided to put Oedipus on a Pale Horse on the Internet, so I could also display some of the 1,400 pictures I’d taken of Greece. Even if I couldn’t get it published, maybe a few readers would enjoy it.

Once I had it up, readers started finding it immediately. I’d had a powerful experience traveling Greece, and quite soon I had enthusiastic readers from all over the world. My number of followers was growing daily. I received an email from a woman who was born at Eleusis. She was thrilled with the chapter on her hometown, and said that she read it “with great emotion.” Another wrote to me about her days growing up in Corinth. One young man from Hong Kong wrote to tell me that he and his wife and kids had gone to Greece on vacation, and that before they left, he had printed out the chapters on the places they planned to visit and that the material had greatly enhanced their visit to Greece. Another man told me that he couldn’t quit reading it at work and was worried about getting fired.

Then the academic community found it, and students were using my content for research papers and field trips to Greece. A professor from a major university wrote to thank me for putting the material up on the Internet. He had recently learned that he was Greek and had read through the entire website. Professors saw it as an educational resource. I had as much as three gigabits of data downloaded from my website every month.

One day I received an email from a publisher in South Korea who wanted to translate the entire work and publish it in four volumes along with my pictures, a coffee table book he called it. He was willing to give me a good portion of the royalties if I would help with the translation into Korean. That sounded like a good idea, so I worked with a translator for the next twelve months. I worked closely with the young woman who was translating it, so a friendship started to develop. But just as we were finishing the translation, out of the blue, I received an email saying that the South Korean economy was going south, and they had to drop the project. I believe the publisher even went out of business. Oedipus on a Pale Horse never saw print in South Korea, as far as I know.

I had another bright idea. I’d found out about CreateSpace, so I joined forces with a professional editor, and we went to work on my manuscript, which took about one year. I then pulled the material off of my website, and published it in paperback. However, I had to make some compromises, and the biggest one was that I couldn’t include the color pictures that had been so much a part of the website. Within a week it was up on Amazon just waiting for the public who couldn’t get enough of it on the Internet. When the Kindle came out, I converted the file, and soon it was an eBook and available on the Kindle, the iPhone, and the iPod Touch.

In the past year and a half, Oedipus on a Pale Horse has sold maybe fifty copies, and even this is a generous estimate. I have gone from having thousands of readers to less than a hundred, just to see it in print.

I have a similar story I could tell about Novelsmithing, which started out as notes for a class I was teaching in Continuing Education at NMSU-C. I had also put Novelsmithing (then titled Jungian Novel Writing) on the Internet as a part of the same website. I had authors from all over the world who would send me emails about how unique the materials was, and how it helped them actually finish a novel for the first time. My information on plotting, they said, is unique. Some of my students at NMSU-C got their novels published. Instructors were telling me how they were using the material in their classes and how helpful it was to their students. So I pulled it off the Internet also and published it in paperback. The sales have been better than Oedipus on a Pale Horse, but still minuscule compared to the number of people I was reaching on the Internet. The amount of money I’ve made off the sale of the books is trivial. And to get these two books in print, I’ve sacrificed all my readers.

That’s the reason I’m putting this material from Novelsmithing back on the Internet. Readership, helping people write and see their vision come to fruition is worth everything. I’m also going to put Oedipus on a Pale Horse back on the Internet along with the images and just hope that I can get one tenth of the readership that I used to have.

I realize that I didn’t have the stamina to see my way into publication with a major publishing house, but I have a friend who has published a couple of books, one of which is out of print and the other not selling. She’s won a lot of awards and is a marvelous writer. I believe someday everyone will know her name. But at one time, only a couple of years ago, I had a readership that was right up there with a lot of major authors, and I threw it away to get my books in print through self-publishing. I’m going to continue to self-publish, both print and digital, but I’m also going to make my work available online. Free.

I have also self-published The Mysteries, but as yet I’ve not started a marketing campaign. I have both volumes on Amazon and, just recently, the iPad, although SmashWords, the publishing service I used, made an error and each volume is price twice what it should be. We’ll see how that turns out. I have no plans to put it on the Internet, although I am toying with reducing the price considerably for the digital version. Traditional thinking is that when you give your content away, you devalue it. I’ve not found that to be true, but it’s difficult when dealing with something that you’ve slaved over for years, and I do so love The Mysteries. I love my main character Melaina, a young girl living in a terrible time with a terrible illness. And also her mother. I just want to do them justice. We authors are such fools for our own characters.

Publishing is in a state of liminality. It’s losing its identity and metamorphosing into something totally new. The Old is coming down and the New, this nebulous, New Way of doing business hasn’t fully exposed itself. We do know that the walls are coming down. Everyone how has access to the publishing venues. Vanity publishing, self-publishing, and mainstream publishing are merging. Everyone can write with the assurance that they will have access to the marketplace, maybe not equal access, but anyone can get their writing before the public and through blogs, Twitter, FaceBook, etc, we have a shot at developing a readership. Making a little money off of the endeavor would be nice, but to me readership is what it has always been about.

So I’ve not had a lot of luck with either traditional publishing or self-publishing, but I have had a lot of luck finding a readership by putting some of my material on the Internet. What that will do for me in the future is anyone’s guess. I’ve found the publishing business to be really difficult. I have a bachelor’s from Arizona State University and a master’s from Stanford University. I’ve taught at the college level: novel writing, Greek mythology, and astronomy. For a couple of years, I was a NASA Solar System Ambassador. When I was an engineer, I used to occasionally work with astronauts. My poetry was elected for publication by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, and has appeared in The Paris Review. At the Sierra Writing Camp, my reading of a chapter from Bobby Ray created a sensation. Yet, except for a little poetry, I remain unpublished by the establishment. I’m not used to failure. Right now, I’m going to see if I can get back my Internet readership while continuing to self-publish.

My advice to you is that no one knows what is coming. Take the path you most want to travel. Go out and invent the future.

(For Monday: Final Thoughts)

SELF-PUBLISHING

Self-publishing may not be your last choice but your first. If you have a small target market, and don’t want to run the agent/publisher gauntlet, you can publish it yourself rather easily through a print on demand (POD) service. Through the traditional approach, it takes a couple of years from the start of marketing to seeing it in print, if you’re lucky and it happens at all. With POD, if your ms is in good shape, it can take as little as a couple of weeks to have it up on Amazon. Some of the more common POD services are: LuLu, iUniverse, Publish America, and CreateSpace. Both iUniverse and Publish America will edit your work (for a fee) and print the book in either cloth or paperback. Checkout their different packages at their websites.

CreateSpace, a member of the Amazon.com group of companies, will publish your novel in paperback for no charge. You only pay for proof copies and any other final copies you want for your own use. You have to supply them with PDF files of your cover and internal text, formatted to their specifications. You can either supply the ISBN or they will supply one at no charge. If you supply the ISBN, then you are the listed publisher. If CreateSpace supplies the ISBN, they will be listed as the publisher. Your book will also appear in Books In Print and Barnes & Noble. Check the CreateSpace website for further details. Check the R. R. Bowker website to find out how to purchase an ISBN and get your book listed in Books In Print. Anyone can buy one. It’s easy. CreateSpace books are listed on Amazon as “In Stock” and are immediately available. If you sign up for an Amazon Seller Central Account, your book will appear with the “Look Inside” feature, which allows the customer to view several pages and also search the book’s text.

Publishing for mobile devices is another option that has unlimited potential for the future, which of course is today. Amazon’s Kindle, which uses an electronic-paper that displays letters in E Ink, has attracted a lot of attention, and it is rather easy to get your book published for it. Sony also has a Reader Digital Book that is quite popular. Putting your book on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch is also possible, but requires some programing knowledge to develop an application, which then must be approved by Apple. Of course, Amazon has a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so if you get it on the Kindle it is on these Apple products also by default.

The publishing world is changing rapidly. No telling what the publishing landscape will look like by the time you finish your novel. Stay abreast of the industry by periodically checking Publishers Weekly and comparable websites. Surf the Internet and follow knowledgeable people on Twitter. With the advent of Apple’s iPad, the publishing industry is trying to re-invent itself for cyber space. You can get your eBook on the iPad through SmashWords for no up-front costs and then only a small percentage of sales. SmashWords is a new service and somewhat buggy, but soon it’ll straighten itself out, and undoubtedly many alternative free services will soon be available. I suggest trying everything and see what approach is the most effective for you to create a readership. But try to think outside the box. The future of publishing is wide open and you are in the center of it. You might consider joining forces with an illustrator/animator to generate some dynamic content to support your written material. Someday soon, the digital world will change the reading experience so much for the better that no one will want to read a new book as a static hardcopy. Everything will be dynamic and interactive. So put on your seer’s hat and come up with the book of the future.

The biggest problem with self-publishing, of course, is marketing and distribution. And this means you better be prepared to market your novel yourself, both on the Internet and in public. Yes, that’s right: Twitter, FaceBook (horrors!), and a blog. Otherwise, you won’t sell even one copy outside your circle of friends and family, even if it’s on Amazon. With the way things are shaking out, you’ll probably have to do all this even if your get published by a major publisher. Publishers no longer have the marketing dollars they once had. But will any of this hard work marketing yourself help if you’re self-published? That’s the big unknown at this point.

One thing that’s making the publishing establishment uneasy right now is that mainstream publishing is merging with self-publishing and vanity publishing. We hardly have a distinction anymore, and this is driving big publishing houses crazy. They want to keep a strangle hold on what gets into print and what they consider to be quality fiction. But the floodgates have opened with POD and digital publishing, and the 99.5% of the books that are written each year and have always in the past gone unpublished are now flooding the landscape. Many published authors are mad as hell that they are losing their status, but there’s nothing they can do abut it. They’ve lost their aura of being special just by being in print, having been put there by some Guardian of the Gate, a publishing mogul in New York City. The public can no longer tell the difference. The establishment sees chaos coming and a decrease in quality of published works, and they are right. But out of the chaos will emerge a new equity that says that anyone who can develop a readership is just as valid and deserves a share of the spotlight as those who have been christened as the chosen ones.

L.S. Stavriano predicted all this back in 1976 with his book titled The Promise of the Coming Dark Age. Stavriano predicted the collapse of modern, industrial society with the advent of new technology, the most obvious of which has become the personal computer. He didn’t foresee the Internet, but I’m not sure that anyone did. He did see the leveling of the playing field, and in the publishing industry it’s happening in a very short period of time. This is democracy in action, and it is happening throughout our culture. Felicia Day is doing it with web media, and Zoe Keating is doing it in music. Zoe Keating said something a few days ago in an interview that is as important as anything I’ve read. When referring to musicians as a whole and what the music industry is going through, she said: “I had a realization at SXSW that ‘we’ the musicians, are the music industry,” And what she said is not only true about the music industry but also about publishing. Authors are the publishing industry now. This is an astounding statement, and it is undoubtedly true of many other industries that were previously controlled by a select few. The creative talent has been liberated, and the administrators have gone by the wayside. No more middlemen trying to sort through hundreds of thousands of manuscripts each year for the 0.5% they deem fit for publications.Some of our greatest writers have never been able to find the light of day. The future is brighter for novelsmiths than it has ever been. Your chances of being published have just gone up to 100%. Now it’s up to you to find your readership.

(Friday: Another Personal Experience)

FINDING AN AGENT

In Chapter 1, you determined what type of novel you were planning to write. Now you can put that information to good use. Agents are specialized. Your job is to match your work with an agent who sells that type of novel.

The first step is to find agents who belong to the Association of Authors Representatives (AAR). I recommend dealing only with AAR members; otherwise, you open yourself up to all sorts of scams and unethical agents, many of whom will want to edit your manuscript for a small fortune. Don’t fall for it. Real agents aren’t editors. AAR can be reached on the web at aaronline.org. You’ll find the names and addresses of almost all AAR agents at the website, and even more importantly, the agency web address. Find a specific agent who might be interested in representing your work.

Good agents are being bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands, of proposals every year. So you’re up against a difficult task. Do your homework. The more you know about the agent you’re querying, the better chance you have at making a favorable impression. Landing a New York City agent is preferable because that’s where most of the publishing houses are located, but once you’ve exhausted them, you’ll find good agents spread across the United States, particularly on the West Coast.

THE QUERY LETTER

Limit yourself to three, at most four, paragraphs, hopefully on a single page. State in the opening of your letter what you have and why you believe they may be interested in representing it. Your one-sentence summary of your novel will also go into the first paragraph. The one-paragraph statement of the storyline will constitute the second paragraph, with perhaps a few modifications. The third paragraph will be about yourself, and hopefully convince the agent that you are sane, educated, know your subject and have good writing skills. That’s it. Offer to provide the full manuscript, and close with “Sincerely,” etc.

Lastly, if you can’t determine whether the agency represents your type of novel, call the agency, but only to ensure that the agency still exists and to get a contact name for the query. Don’t try a sales pitch.

WHAT TO SEND

Query letter to a specific person at the agency.

First ten pages or so, maybe as many as fifty, depending on agency guidelines, if you can determine them.

Synopsis, up to twenty pages, if the agency guidelines so state. Many agencies don’t want a detailed synopsis. The synopsis is your collection of chapter summaries.

EMAIL: Many agents will now accept email queries. If they do, they probably will ask you to include your sample pages and synopsis within the text of the email. No one in their right mind will open an email attachment from someone they don’t know, so don’t even think of attaching it. You should have an ftp account somewhere where you can upload your complete ms and make it available to agents. You can tell the agent within your query that if they like your sample pages and/or synopsis they can find the full ms at such-and-such Internet address.

SNAIL Mail: Yes, I know. But some agents still require the old-fashioned contact method. Include return postage and packaging. Include a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope). If you forget the SASE, you will most certainly be rejected out of hand and never hear a word.

You should use a paper clip to hold all the pages together, but don’t staple any of it.

Query approximately 100 agents, all simultaneously. A few will receive your elaborate package, but most should get only your query letter and first chapter (~ten pages). The postage alone will probably put you in the poor house.

AGENT RESPONSES

Responses come in many forms. Some (most) will be form-letters addressed to “Dear Author.” Occasionally, you’ll get a personal response. Don’t let any of them discourage you. Persistence in the face of rejection is the name of the game.

SENDING OUT THE FULL MANUSCRIPT

Hopefully, your query letter will generate some interest. Depending on the type of novel you’ve written and how well you’ve targeted your marketing, you may have as many as fifty percent of the agents request the full manuscript. But more likely you’ll get about ten percent or less who are interested.

Most agents will request the manuscript on an exclusive basis. This means that you can’t send the full manuscript to anyone else while they have it. I have mixed feelings about complying with this, because agents won’t generally do what they say they’ll do anyway. Some will respond immediately, but others will wait months. I would at least consider sending it out to several agents (if you are so lucky to have that many interested) simultaneously, even if they request it exclusively. Just don’t tell them what you’re doing. The chance that any one of them will accept the novel is still slim, and if one says he’ll take it, you can always tell the others you want your manuscript back without giving a reason. You should be so lucky as to have two agents who want it simultaneously.

CAUTIONS:

Don’t pay a reading fee to an agency. AAR specifically forbids their agents to do this.

Avoid any agency that wants to edit your novel for a price. This is a scam. Some charge as much as $125 per hour. No reputable agency, particularly not one that belongs to AAR, will do this. Reputable agents will either accept or reject your manuscript.

Some agents will respond immediately, usually those most interested, and some will take several months. A few agents will never respond at all. Once eighty percent of the responses have come in, and your complete ms has been rejected several times, you’ll know whether you want to either pursue getting an agent or decide you’ve had enough crap from them and try to get a publisher instead.

LOOKING FOR A PUBLISHER

Most large publishing houses will no longer consider a submission from an unagented author. However, most midrange and small publishing houses will accept manuscripts directly and from unagented authors. Soho Press is one. Search the Internet for publisher websites, and follow their instructions. Their submission requirements will generally be much like those for agents. You can use the query letter and synopsis you used to look for an agent, with a few obvious modifications. This time you’ll be looking for what’s called an “acquisitions editor.” The same rules apply. Acquisitions editors deal with specific types of books, so try to find all the information you can on each person. Find out what type of books they purchase, and what they expect in a query. If you can’t find out any other way, call the publishing house. Again, don’t try to sell your novel. Be business-like, get the information you’re after and hang up.

DON’T GIVE UP!!!

I’ve had several friends who wrote great novels, received rejections from ten or so agents, tried ten or so publishers, got more rejections and quit. On the other hand, Stephen White (a psychologist who lives in Boulder, Colorado and writes psychological thrillers) wrote his first novel (Privileged Information) and tried for two years to get an agent/publisher and failed totally. Then, he talked to a friend who had a contact at Viking and the magic happened. The book became a best seller, so much so that Stephen had to quit his practice as a psychotherapist so he could devote all his time to writing.

LIFE AFTER PUBLICATION

A good friend of mine, who recently published her first novel, had a dream experience (but a real one) after a publishing house accepted her novel. She flew to New York, met her agent and publisher, went out to dinner with them (at the agent’s expense), and generally had a marvelous time. Her editor did an excellent job editing the novel with no disagreements, and generally improved the work.

But after the book was published, the publisher slumped into the background, didn’t promote it at all, and it didn’t sell well. It did receive favorable reviews, even in the New York Times Book Review.

Publishers generally put their marketing dollars into books that sell well after the first couple of weeks. Don’t expect your publisher to do all the publicity. You may have to hit the trail on your own, at your own expense, and even have to contact bookstores yourself to set up signings.

(For Thursday: Self-Publishing)

THE FINISHED MANUSCRIPT

The completed manuscript (ms) has a specific format. On the first page, at the top left, put your name and address. Also, include your telephone number and email address. On the upper right, put the number of words in your manuscript. This constitutes the heading of the first page. Right after this (still on the first page), center the following: the novel’s title in capital letters, followed two lines later by CHAPTER 1, and two lines after that, the first paragraph of the novel. The text of the manuscript follows this same format. Each chapter starts on a new page. At the very end of the manuscript you put the words THE END, centered two lines after the last word of the novel.

The body of the manuscript should be double-spaced, left-justified, and with the right edge uneven. Agents and publishers consider it unprofessional to justify the text. Margins should be at least one inch on all sides and not exceed 1.25 inches. The author’s last name, the title, or a shortened version of it, and the page number should appear at the upper right of each page, except for the first page.

The font should be 12 point and have a “clean” appearance on the full page. Some fonts, although they appear fine as individual letters, bleed into each other and generally give off strange visual effects when you see a full page. You should have 250-300 words per page, but this will be determined by your font and margins. A published novel can have almost any number of words, depending on the format the publisher chooses. The Bridges of Madison County has approximately 250 words per page, Red Storm Rising about 500. The manuscript should be no more than 100,000 words. Unpublished authors have a particularly difficult time getting a long novel published, but you will see it happen occasionally. Be forewarned that the longer the first novel, the more difficult it will be to get published.

THE DON’TS

Don’t use a separate cover sheet or title page.

No fancy fonts.

No large fancy first-letters of the first words of chapters, as they sometimes appear in a published novel. The manuscript is a bland, no frills presentation of the text.

Don’t try to imitate the format of a published novel. This is a manuscript, not a book.

Don’t put it in a binder. Manuscripts are loose-leaf.

Don’t use a cover illustration.

RESEARCHING THE MARKET

Once the manuscript is complete, it’s time to try to get a literary agent. Hopefully, all during the time you’re writing your novel you are also researching the marketplace to see what’s out there that resembles your novel. If you write genre fiction, your task will be easier. If you’ve written something a little more original, you’ll have a task ahead of you.

While you write, read and search for highly-acclaimed novels with which to compare yours. Each novel should have an “acknowledgements” section, in which the author may mention his agent or editor. This type of information will give you a first guess at who might want to represent or publish your novel.

(Up next: Finding an Agent).