If You’re Beta Reading, You Could Also Be Book Coaching

Last week, Author Accelerator's CEO Jennie Nash and I did a webinar about the difference between beta reading and book coaching. While book coaches and beta readers help authors succeed at two different points in the creative process, an organized and passionate beta reader could also become a successful book coach. Jennie is hosting a free Business of Book Coaching Summit, and she's here to tell you more about it.

“The Spun Yarn has brought a systematic, strategic approach to beta reading, which offers writers much-needed support at a critical part in the development of a book. It’s part of a new era in the world of publishing, where smart writers put together a team of people to help them write the best books they can. In a very crowded marketplace, it takes this kind of intention to break through with agents, editors, and readers. For the same reasons, many writers are also turning to book coaches to help them structure, finish, and revise their books and then navigate the path to publishing.

A beta reader brings a critical perspective to the author once a draft is complete. A book coach serves as an editorial guide and a project manager while the author is getting that draft in shape. Coaches often work with writers for long periods of time – 6 months, 9 months, a year, and even longer – and this intense 1:1 relationship is part of the deep satisfaction of the work. Coaches are intimately involved in the writer’s process while they are bringing their dream to life. (To learn more about the difference between beta reading and book coaching, listen to this webinar I did with The Spun Yarn’s Sarah Beaudette.)

If you’re drawn to beta reading, you might consider adding book coaching to your income stream as well. It will allow you to spend even more time enveloped in the world of books and writing. It’s work you can do from home, ramping up or down depending on how much time you have to devote to it and how much money you wish to make. There are five key skills you need to be an effective coach, and odds are very good that you already have some of them. If there are some you don’t, they can be taught. That’s exactly what we are doing in Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Training and Certification program. The skills are as follows:

1. Mechanical editing skills. An effective book coach understands the basic mechanics of good writing. We can identify errors such as head hopping, info dumping, and point-of- view violations, and we can explain to writers why these errors weaken the work and how they can be fixed. This teaching aspect of book coaching runs throughout each of the 5 key skills, which brings up an important point: You don’t have to be a published author to be a good book coach. Writing well is a different skill than teaching or coaching, and you can learn to be an effective book coach regardless of your record of success as a writer.

2. Narrative design. While paying attention to the details of mechanical editing, an effective book coach also has an eye on the big-picture elements of a book. We talk to our writers about the point they are trying to make, the message they hope to convey, and the impact they want to have on their ideal reader, no matter whether that impact is to entertain or to educate, or something in between. We look at the structure and shape of a story or argument, paying attention to plot holes, logical problems, and the way the work moves and flows. We look for a strong resolution and emotional payoff, since that is usually what the reader is coming for.

3. Marketplace awareness. I coach my coaches never to guarantee their writers any sort of success in the marketplace, because it’s impossible to predict what will happen in the publishing arena. Instead, a good coach will help their writers understand the way books are bought and sold, research the competition, and help determine the best publishing path for their book.

4. Project management. A book coach helps their writers complete a complex intellectual undertaking. It’s a big project, where goals need to be set and deadlines need to be met, but a coach also helps writers through the emotional aspect of producing a book. We understand the creative process, and the way doubts can plague writers, and we are there as a cheerleader and a support when the going gets tough.

5. Compassion. In my 10 years working as a book coach, I have been continually amazed at how many writers have suffered some sort of hurt around their creative work. Someone told them they had nothing to say or that they couldn’t write or that they were wasting their time. I am a tough critic to be sure, but I always give my advice with compassion for how hard it is to be a writer, and I insist that the coaches I train do this as well.

Does book coaching sound like the kind of work you might enjoy? If you would like to learn more about what book coaching is all about, please join me on January 20, for a week of free online programming at Author Accelerator’s Business of Book Coaching Summit. I have 15 experts talking about mindset, money, marketing, and business strategy for book coaches. If you feel called to this work, our Book Coach Training and Certification program and Business of Book Coaching master class are available, as is a special Business Mastermind, starting in March 2020, in which I will be working directly with a small number of coaches. Start with the Summit – it’s going to be great!”

Jennie Nash

Jennie Nash is the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to help writers write books worth reading by training book coaches to guide them through the creative process. Learn more about being coached or becoming a coach at www.authoraccelerator.com – and be sure to join the free online Business of Book Coaching Summit

Reader Spotlight: Shareca the Californian Comic Connoisseur and Consumer of all Mediums Under the Sun

 

In the Reader Spotlight series we ask our smart, diverse and multi-talented readers what makes them tick, and what they're seeing in Spun Yarn manuscripts. Our readers span the gamut of literary taste, so expect to see a little bit of everything! 

By day, Shareca is an English teacher and tutor, and is about to begin her MFA in film studies. Because that’s not enough, she also runs a Comic Book and Gaming Aficionado website at The Daily Fandom and is a longtime reader for us here at The Spun Yarn! She reads everything, but especially Young Adult, Poetry, and Mystery/Thriller.

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The Spun Yarn: Shareca, you have been with us since 2017. Why do you do it, and what about reading for us do you find rewarding?

Shareca:   My favorite aspect of the reading experience is getting to partake in the editing process. I love being able to help writers, as I am one myself. I love the fact that I can help shape a story or at the very least, give advice from my perspective as a totally new reader. It makes me feel wonderful knowing that I was a part of someone’s process. 

The Spun Yarn: You've seen a lot of manuscripts come through. In your experience, what is one thing that's hard for authors to get right?

Shareca: Can I choose two? Endings and beginnings. It’s like an essay: you either love to write introductions and hate to write conclusions or vice versa. It is astonishingly hard to grip a reader at the beginning of the story and to leave the reader with a hard-hitting life analysis at the end. You know, the stories that really make you consider your mortality. I think that’s the most troublesome part of writing. There’s never a definite way to do beginnings or endings, but I wish there were! 

The Spun Yarn: You are a passionate gamer and comic book fan, and have turned these passions into a business, is that right? Tell us about it!

Shareca: Yes! I run The Daily Fandom, I do a lot more comic book reading than gaming these days (adult life, sadly). It has been a wondrous experience to teach myself a ton of development quirks over the past two years. It was something I didn’t foresee myself doing, but one thing led to another and the former owner couldn’t take on the website anymore and I just said, “let’s do it.” Since then, I have been “doing it.” 

The Spun Yarn: Where do you live, and what do you love about living there?

Shareca: I live in Fresno, CA. I love the weather here — that’s my favorite aspect. Also, it’s a small town in California so I don’t have to deal with the traffic as much (thank goodness!) The weather, however, is my ultimate favorite reason to be here. I live about 3-4 hours max from everything in California and it’s nice to be able to drive anywhere in under 5 hours!

The Spun Yarn: You love to read, and like other passionate readers are probably on the lookout for your next favorite book. What are you in the mood to read right now, or what kind of book would you love to read that you haven't found yet?

Shareca: A healthy, romantic, dreamy, sort of detective story. I love detective stories and I feel like we don’t get much in the genre of Sherlock and Drew. I am always missing detective love stories. I haven’t found one that has gripped me yet, one day I will.

The Spun Yarn: You’re right, we could really use more classic detective narratives. Stick around, and maybe someone reading this will send us one for you!

3 Times You Ignore Reader Feedback at Your Peril

Before we curate an author's Spun Yarn Manuscript Report, we ask how far along they think they are in the editing process on a scale of 1 - 10. The average score over a hundred manuscripts? 7.3.

We also track every manuscript's scores from readers, who are comparing the manuscript they've just to other well-known books in the genre. The average overall score? 6 / 10.

There's a gap here. It's grayish, smudgy around the edges, and rrrrrreally annoying to authors.

After getting your beta reader feedback, how do you decide how much more work you really need to do? Do you really need to make the changes your readers suggest, or is the whole thing a matter of opinion? If writing and reading are subjective arts, why change the manuscript at all, especially when you've put more thought into this book than any other person on the planet?

Sometimes readers may be pointing to a valid issue, but may not have the right solution for it. Other times, readers are going to be spot on. Here are a few rules of thumb based on all the manuscript reports we've done.

1. When two or more readers independently agree on an issue, pay attention.

Hopefully, your beta readers haven't talked to one another and don't know each other at all. For example, here's a report in which two readers had the same comment at the exact same point in the manuscript:

Reader 1: "I'm struggling with the biological and scientific details that seem off the main topic.

Reader 2: "The content becomes very medically oriented in Chapter 6, and at times it's too dense to read."

As a writer, this kind of specific consensus is gold, and the change is also fairly straightforward. Go back to Chapter 6, and cut out some of the dense scientific details. Read it for tone, and make sure it's consistent with the rest of the book. These easy wins are why it's so important to have more than one beta reader read you book.

What if readers agree, but it's on a major issue that's going to require a lot of work?

For instance, what if you were writing a dystopian book about baseball, but your readers say it's actually a love story, and therefore your ending is all wrong?

This is the kind of feedback that takes some time to digest. Resist the urge to scoff. If your chest starts feeling tight just reading the feedback, it means you need to leave it on a shelf for a few days before you have the emotional energy to consider it. And then, when you're ready, you've got to consider it.

Go back to your story fundamentals and ask yourself: is this really a love story after all? Is there an arc you missed, or a reason why the arc you started out with became less compelling or relevant as the story went along?

The point here is that readers have pinpointed an issue that demands attention. They don't necessarily know the best way to address it. That's your job. But if you want a great book, you've got to pay attention when your readers agree.

2. If it's a straightforward minor change that doesn't matter too much to you, what do you have to lose?

In one of our recent manuscripts, one reader pointed out that the names of two main characters both started with a D and were sometimes hard to keep track of. Though as writers we tend to get attached to every word in our carefully wrought works of art, it can be helpful to think of editing as picking your battles. If a change is small, ask yourself what the manuscript stands to lose or gain by making the change.

3. Readers disagree on the problem, but all of them have some kind of problem with the same part of a manuscript.

At The Spun Yarn, we break a manuscript into four sections for feedback. This is another way of separating the opening, the building action, the climax, and the denouement. This is true of memoirs, and even to some extent of nonfiction manuscripts. When you have at least three readers commenting on each section, you'll begin to see trends. Particularly, you'll see that some sections have more reader comments than others.

For example, two readers think the ending was rushed, and one reader loved the action but didn't find the characters' actions consistent with their prior behavior. This is a cue that it might be in your best interest to take another look at your ending to see which issues you can address and which you'll need to leave as is. In your next revision, focus solely on what it’s delivering to readers, and how.

Even if you don't agree with readers or if they don't agree with one another, you have strong confirmation that you need to sit down with that section of the manuscript and give it a lot of thought and attention. Pretend you're a reader rather than an author, and try to diagnose the issue with fresh eyes. Just because readers don't always agree doesn't mean they aren't identifying an important trouble spot.

Cure Writer's Block With These 25 Personal Questions

Ugh. Writer’s block.

Is there anything more obnoxious (and terrifying) than going back to that creative well only to find that it’s run dry? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Every writer (and really, EVERYONE who does creative work) hits a dry spell every now and then. Luckily, writer’s block isn’t a permanent state – even if it can sometimes feel that way. In fact, there is a tried and true cure for writer’s block that virtually every writer has used to break the curse and get back to writing: Just. Keep. Writing.

“But if I could write, I wouldn’t have writer’s block! How can you expect me to keep writing??”

Good question. I’ve got a solution for you: writing prompts to beat writer’s block.

The best way to beat writer’s block is to keep writing, and the best way to continue your practice of writing is to write on a subject you know inside and out. That subject is YOU!

That’s “write” (what a terrible pun – so sorry), writing about yourself or your experiences is a great way to continue your writing habit with an aim toward curing writer’s block.

Below, you’ll find 25 personal questions to use as writing prompts. Pick one that speaks to you, write about it, then come back tomorrow and pick another. Don’t expect that any of these will ever see the light of day, but they will get you back on the writing horse and working on your masterpiece again in no time.

If you DO write something based on one of these writing prompts, send it to us here, or on Facebook or Twitter. We’d love to read it!

1. How is the world different from when you were a kid?

2. What’s your favorite possession in the whole world?

3. When did you first know what you wanted to do with your life?

4. Who is the most famous person you’ve met?

5. What was the first music concert you attended?

6. What’s your favorite memory with your childhood best friend?

7. What’s something about yourself that you would never tell anyone?

8. Who had the biggest impact on your writing?

9. What is your favorite birthday memory?

10. What’s one thing you learned from your parents?

11. Have you ever taken a big risk? How did it go?

12. Who was your favorite teacher of all time and why?

13. What’s the best gift you ever received?

14. What’s the best gift you ever gave?

15. What’s the best prank you ever pulled?

16. What’s the best trip you ever took?

17. What’s the furthest you’ve ever been from home?

18. What’s your favorite book and why?

19. How do you view yourself in retirement?

20. What’s the last meal you ate out? Describe it in detail.

21. What did your bedroom look like as a child? Describe it in detail.

22. Have you ever had a favorite pet? Describe the pet.

23. What has been your biggest success?

24. What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

25. What have you created that you are most proud of? Why?

There you have it, 25 personal questions to use as writing prompts to cure writer’s block. Now get writing!

Another way to break out of a debilitating case of writer’s block is to get some insightful feedback on your current work. That’s where a Spun Yarn Manuscript Report comes in! Check out the different reports we offer and let us know when you want to take your manuscript to the next level.

Overcome Writer's Block With These 7 Situational Writer Prompts

Writer’s block: the dreaded enemy of writers everywhere.

Knowing that “it happens to everyone” and “you’ll get over it” is well and good (and true), but it doesn’t make you feel any better as a writer when you’re struggling to traverse the creative desert of a bad case of writer’s block.

Just like a slumping Major League Baseball player, the only real way out of a slump is to keep hitting (or in your case, writing). Write anything. Write at different times of the day or night. Write in different locations. Write stuff that will never see the light of day. Just. Keep. Writing.

That’s where this article comes in.

In order to keep you writing and to get those creative juices flowing again, here are 7 situational writing prompts to help you break that writer’s block.

Simply read these prompts, pick one that speaks to you, and finish the scene or story with your own words. It doesn’t matter if it’s very long or any good, it just matters that you’re continuing the practice of writing so you can get back to your normal self: a writer brimming with creativity!

And, hey, if you write something you DO like, send it to us via email, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d love to celebrate the end of your writer’s block with you!

You got this!

Writer’s block writing prompt #1:

Sherry was ill. She’d been ill for months now and wasn’t sure how much longer she could take the constant feeling of dread that she would never feel like her old self again. Sitting in an antique rocker, her lap covered with the hand-knitted shawl from her grandmother that she’d kept with her for as long as she could remember, Sherry couldn’t hide her surprise when the door opened and in walked the last person she expected to see on this cold, wintry Iowa day…

Writer’s block writing prompt #2:

I’ve never been one for parties. Lavish events, surrounded by people (well-wishers or otherwise) looking to make small talk sounds more like a nightmare than a reason to get dressed up and put on uncomfortable shoes. So when I found myself at the White House for their annual December Gala, I was less than thrilled. That is, until I read the name on the table card at the seat next to me…

Writer’s block writing prompt #3:

It was the kind of morning that made you feel a certain way. And that certain way was nauseous. To be clear, this feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t unique to this morning. It had been growing for days. Weeks even. But this morning, as I stared out the frost-edged windows of my parents’ living room, I knew this would be the day that would change everything, for better or worse, forever. One hour from now, just as the sun peeked over the horizon, I would step out the front door and…

Writer’s block writing prompt #4:

Call me Ishmael. No, wait, that’s already taken. Call me Blake. Yeah, that’s a believable name. No, I’m not a grifter. Why would you ask? I’ve never made my living conning people out of their money. It’s just a hobby. That is, until Lynn walked into the Tipton Diner just before noon one day last July. To my surprise, she sat down on the stool next to me and proceeded to order more food than a single human could possibly eat. Then, as the waitress incredulously turned to fill her order, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “...

Writer’s block writing prompt #5:

Ruth never knew the truth. In fact, there was a lot Ruth never knew about her parents. Growing up in a hyper-religious community, removed from most of the world by miles, forests, culture, and so much more, she had assumed that the world she could see around her was the only world that existed. She never questioned that her parents may have had a life before joining the remote religious sect in which she grew up. That is, until she looked behind the old dresser in her parents’ bedroom and discovered…

Writer’s block writing prompt #6:

Lightning was a harbinger of doom. Or so Amy Stenta, who lived on a quiet street in Rahway, NJ, thought as she huddled under the overhang of her porch, eyes fixed on the end of her short driveway. The rain was falling in sheets, and had been for hours now, but the streaks of lightning illluninating the sky at regular intervals was something new. And it scared her. She knew that the last time the lightning came, it brought with it…

Writer’s block writing prompt #7:

The tapping was incessant. Lloyd Moody was nearly going out of his skull from the obnoxious sound of Tom Kehl’s cheap, blue, medium tip, Papermate pen rapidly hitting the conference room table. Walter fixated on it. He’d known Tom for years. He’d endured Tom’s constant pen tapping for nearly as long. Walter knew Tom’s history and that he was fragile, but this was the last straw. Walter stood up and approached Tom. The words that would come out of Walter’s mouth in the next second would change both of their lives in ways neither of them could have guessed. “Tom,...”

Hopefully these writing prompts and story-starters can get you back on track with your writing.

Another thing that can help with writer’s block is to get solid feedback on your writing or manuscript. Good news: that’s what we do! Check out our feedback report options to get the feedback you need.

7 Holiday Gifts Writers Actually Need

As the holiday season rolls around, you may be realizing that there are only so many notebooks, pens, and sarcastic mugs you can give the writer in your life before you have to think of something new. We feel you, and as writers ourselves, we’ve curated a smarter list of holiday gifts for writers. Check out these seven holiday gifts for writers that will impress your writer friend or relative because they’re actually things writers need and use. Don’t get us wrong, tee shirts and mugs are cool too . . . but we think you can do better.

1. Writing guides. We writers are always looking to hone our craft, and we often draw inspiration from the greats. If you'd like to give your favorite writer a writing guide, see if you can sneak a peek at their bookshelf to see which they already own. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is hands down the most touted guide to writing and life. Even if your writer isn’t a horror fan, Stephen King’s On Writing is another well-respected guide with sage advice that applies to every genre. To determine which guide is best for your particular writer, you can also check out a few blog posts to find the best fit.

• Give your writer the gift of feedback with a Spun Yarn Manuscript Critique. Chances are, the writer you love both craves and fears feedback about the project that has consumed her soul for the last few [months/years/decades.] When she's ready for feedback, she'll spend another eon biting her nails about how to get it. A Spun Yarn manuscript critique combines feedback from three trained readers who specialize in your writer's genre, and gives her a customized 30 page critique with editorial advice about exactly what to do in a next revision. The great thing about giving the gift of feedback is that the writer can choose to use it when she's ready, taking the stress out of soliciting feedback. Can’t afford the full manuscript critique package? Try out the mini critique for $35.

• Entry to a writing contest. If you're shopping for a fiction writer, short fiction contests are a perfect opportunity for him to sharpen his skills and have a lot of fun. Here are a few popular and well-respected writing contests that charge an entry fee the writing community generally agrees is worth it in exchange for the exposure and large prizes:

  1. NYC Midnight runs a contest every season, rotating contests for short stories, flash fiction, and screenplays. They offer several large cash prizes and a chance for writers to participate in multiple rounds of competition supported by a large and supportive writing community.

  2. Writer's Digest is another admired resource for writers that offers annual competitions in practically every genre and format.

  3. Glimmer Train is the holy grail of short fiction awards. A writer who places in one of these rotating competitions has a huge leg up—Glimmer Train stories appear in America's Best Fiction anthologies every year. Every literary fiction writer should give this competition a shot at least once.

• Submittable Subscription. You are truly in the know if you give the writer in your life a subscription to the world's largest online database of literary markets. For a reasonable yearly fee, Submittable allows writers to find the specific markets that fit for any piece we’re working on, and lets us track and check on the progress of our submissions. Submittable includes listings for short story, nonfiction, poetry, and full length manuscript publishers, and there's not a writer out there who won't find it useful.

• Scrivener. Every writer battles to organize all the moving pieces in a long term project. One of the most popular writing software/app products available, Scrivener makes the management of a large project possible by allowing writers to organize all the notes, drafts, and metadata in one place with a user-friendly interface. As a writing gift, writers agree that Scrivener is one of the best.

• A gift card for free books! Writers love to read, and sometimes the books we want can't be found in the local library. For a writer, a gift certificate to a bookstore is like candy to a fourth-grader, complete with greedy eye-gleaming and salivation as we unwrap your card and immediately begin planning which books to buy first.

• Want to give a more personal writer gift? Give your favorite writer the gift of time: offer a few hours of free babysitting, house-cleaning, or anything that will incentivize us to get out of the house and focus on our work. We tend to put other obligations (you know, jobs that pay actual money) ahead of our writing. Any way you can help us make time to write will be an incredible gift.

In choosing your writer holiday gift, it helps to know what kind of a writer your loved one is: fiction, memoir, short story, novel, all of the above? Many writer gifts will be tailored to the fiction writer, but all writers benefit from the gift of feedback, writing guides, and more books. We hope we’ve given you some ideas about how to score some major points with your writer, or at the very least, to avoid buying yet another notebook.

Announcing the 2018 Spun Yarn Readers' Choice Award Winner!

We can hardly believe that we've curated more than 60 manuscript reports here at The Spun Yarn! To celebrate, we'd like to award a standout manuscript with the first annual Spun Yarn Readers' Choice Award.

If you're familiar with what we do here at The Spun Yarn, you may know that each manuscript receives eight qualitative scores as part of our comprehensive report. While these scores are certainly subjective, some titles stand out for their nearly perfect ratings and rave reviews from our tough-grading but fair minded readers.

We'd like to announce that Rachel Burge has been awarded the 2018 Spun Yarn Readers' Choice Award for her spooky YA debut The Twisted Tree!

Rachel came to The Spun Yarn when her manuscript was in good shape but not quite ready for publication. Of her experience with The Spun Yarn, Rachel says "I approached The Spun Yarn for feedback on my novel at a point where I was happy with the story, but felt it needed help to shine. The [Spun Yarn Manuscript report] greatly exceeded my expectations. Professionally put together with helpful charts and diagrams, it allowed me to see where the weak areas were in the manuscript at a glance. Having feedback from three different readers at key stages of the book gave me the confidence to make informed decisions about the plot. When two out of the three beta readers said a scene wasn’t working, I removed it from the story, and it greatly improved the book. I have no doubt that feedback from The Spun Yarn helped me to secure an agent and go on to get a publishing deal."

After her manuscript report, another round of editing and the arduous process of querying agents, Rachel secured representation with Skylark Literary Agency, who sold The Twisted Tree to U.K. publisher Hot Key Books. The Twisted Tree comes out in January of 2019, but it's up for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk right now! Congratulations Rachel, we can’t wait to buy and reread The Twisted Tree!

About The Twisted Tree:

Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma's cabin and became blind in one eye.

Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor - only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose.

Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .

Set in the remote snows of contemporary Norway, The Twisted Tree is a ghost story that twists and turns - and never takes you quite where you'd expect.

Part ghost story, part Nordic thriller - this is a twisty, tense and spooky YA debut, perfect for fans of Coraline and Michelle Paver's Dark Matter.

Find Rachel on her website or on twitter, and watch for updates about The Twisted Tree!

To see how a Spun Yarn manuscript report compares to other manuscript critique services and to take advantage of our 20% Fall Forward discount, check us out at https://thespunyarn.com.

Rachel Burge, author of The Twisted Tree

Reader Spotlight: Stephen the fantasy loving hiker and his business savvy alter ego

 

In the Reader Spotlight series we ask our smart, diverse and multi-talented readers what makes them tick, and what they're seeing in Spun Yarn manuscripts. Our readers span the gamut of literary taste, so expect to see a little bit of everything! 

By day Stephen is a program manager for a national bank. Outside of work, his creative passions take the reigns. Stephen is a prolific writer, a voracious reader of Action, Fantasy, and Young Adult manuscripts for The Spun Yarn, and a frequent traveler. When he’s not teaching business courses at the local community college, Stephen and his wife visit friends all over the country in between hiking trips.  

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The Spun Yarn: Stephen, we know you’re pretty involved in your local writing community. Can you tell us a little bit about that community and how you got involved? 

Stephen:  A high school friend and I had been talking books for years, then one day we met up for coffee and found out we were both planning to write a book. It was fate. We spent the next year working on a book, and continued to talk shop even after our writing interests diverged. He writes high fantasy and I write action / thrillers. Locally, I participate in events and conferences put on by the Sisters in Crime chapter. Even though I’m not a “sister,” they welcome me with open arms and put on killer events. Last year I got to listen to Clive Cussler! 

The Spun Yarn: What do you admire about your favorite books? What do you think is one of the hardest things for authors to do well?

Stephen: I’ve always been impressed by authors who can drop a piece of information into Chapter 1 and make it pay off many chapters (or even books) later. That “aha!” moment is thrilling. It’s a sign that the author is fully in control of the story.

Lately, I’ve also been drawn to an author’s ability to tackle heavy, potentially depressing topics while maintaining a sense of hope and optimism. It’s a dreadfully tricky balance to strike, and too many authors settle into the bleak, negative outlook on life. 

The Spun Yarn: What do you find yourself commenting on most often when reading a Spun Yarn manuscript?

Stephen: The fastest way to lose me as a reader (and thus something I comment on all the time) is when a character has muddy or inconsistent motivation. I need to know WHY a character is taking an action, especially if that action is dangerous or costly. As human beings, we don’t take dangerous or costly actions unless we have good reason. It violates our innate sense of self-preservation. When a book opens with the main character risking life and limb for no discernible reason, that pulls me right out of the story. “What?! Why did John just do that?!” 

Even more painful is when a main character shifts character for no reason, for example suddenly becoming heroic after a plot full of selfishness. I find myself wondering what changed. If the story doesn’t support the change through real character development, then I struggle to keep reading.

The Spun Yarn: What was your favorite moment while reading a Spun Yarn manuscript?

Stephen: There have been a few. I enjoy providing feedback to burgeoning authors, especially those that show flashes of brilliance. While a story may need fine-tuning, there are passages that makes you sit up in your seat and pay close attention. Whether it’s strong world-building or a moment of deep character, I love encouraging a writer’s progress. 

I’ve also had the privilege of reading some stellar writing with The Spun Yarn, some fascinating stories with complex characters—the kinds of stories that just need some tweaking here or there. Being able to enjoy the story, while also providing some comments that may push it to the next level, is a real treat. And I hope to see these manuscripts on bookshelves soon!

The Spun Yarn: That’s a trait you share with the rest of our diverse cast of readers, and why we appreciate you so much. You’re all truly excited to see these books make it into the world. We love how much your constructive criticisms are driven by a real desire to see authors succeed. Thanks for being such a great reader Stephen!

The Moment that Matters in Novel Writing

“Most writers spend 100 hours alone with their manuscripts for every one hour of feedback.”

You probably couldn't be a writer if you didn't enjoy the solitary process of novel writing. My own writing ritual starts early in the morning with a dirty laptop keyboard and a cup of steaming coffee. Particularly with longer manuscripts, these solitary hours quickly add up to days and weeks or even years, alone with those words on the screen.

It's the moments when you aren't alone with your words--moments when you’re receiving feedback on your work--that are actually pretty unusual. I've never seen the calculation, but I bet it's safe to say that most writers spend 100 hours alone with their manuscripts for every one hour of feedback. Maybe it's closer to 1,000. Whatever the number, one thing is certain. These moments of feedback have a disproportionate impact on your creative process as a writer. In IDEO designer language, we would call them "moments that matter.” Even if a manuscript took 1,000 hours to write and revise, that one hour of feedback has a disproportionate impact, on the manuscript itself, but also on the author's emotional well-being.

Let's face it. Writing a novel is a highly emotional experience. There is the honeymoon phase when the words are flowing. There's the "like the dentist phase" when a writer ploughs through revision after revision. Then there’s the ‘walking on eggshells’ trepidation as query letters or contest submissions get sent. And then of course, there are the crushing rejections or often worse for me, the roaring silence of just being ignored. So many manuscripts never actually get any attention at all. They don't get any real feedback. Instead, they suffer a slow ignominious death in a solitary confinement of endless unexamined slush piles before eventually being ushered into top drawer purgatory, never to be heard from again.

True, lots of manuscripts aren't great. But so many other manuscripts with fantastic potential never actually reach this potential, not because the book is bad, but because the feedback system is broken. That feedback "moment that matters" doesn't happen correctly or occur at all. Many a jaded literary agent will tell you that there is a serious supply and demand problem in the industry. There are WAY TOO MANY authors who have written manuscripts and FAR TOO FEW actual publishers with actual budgets extending actual publishing contracts to actual writers. I totally get this state of affairs. But that's just an explanation for why that “moment that matters” is missing in so many cases. It’s certainly not how feedback needs to work in the future.

With The Spun Yarn, we've created a new way to get feedback on a manuscript in a format that is enormously useful for the author AND which doesn't cost an arm and a leg (right now, it's about $300). Put differently, we've redesigned that feedback "moment that matters" to be as useful as possible. It's worked for me personally.

I have one YA novel in particular that I've been working on for years and years. It's the writing project I always come back to. Except, I stopped coming back. I'd finally gotten the manuscript to a place where I thought it was really strong. I'd revised and revised and then I put it out into my agent network. Based upon connections with agents I'd made over the years, I was actually quite optimistic. I got crickets. And rejections. After a couple of months of query gymnastics, I packed it in. The feedback I was getting from this process seemed to be telling me that the manuscript wasn't any good. I put it in the top drawer. I moved on with life. In fact I got really distracted by starting and launching the Spun Yarn.

Fast forward about a year, and our Chief Operating Officer (Sarah) talked me into putting The Clocktower through our own Spun Yarn process. I pulled the manuscript out of the drawer, dusted it off, and nervously sent it along to Sarah’s team. We matched it up with three readers (two teenagers and an adult who likes YA). About three weeks later, the results were in. I had my feedback report, thirty pages of in-depth feedback from people who care and who had read every single word I wrote. And you know what? They didn't hate it! In fact, all three of them seemed to really enjoy the read. I definitely didn't get perfect scores and there was a lot that needed to be fixed in the next revision. But it felt so darn good to know that my novel didn't suck. Real readers had read it and real readers had given me feedback and real readers wanted to see that book out on the shelves of a bookstore some day.

This was the sort of feedback that I needed. This was a feedback moment that mattered. Over the next six months, I found time to dive back into that manuscript. And I used a lot of the suggestions and feedback from the Spun Yarn feedback report to make my book better. Even more importantly, I was emotionally reinvigorated. I'd fallen back in love with the manuscript. I had the energy to soldier through all of those solitary hours of creativity, with my coffee and my dirty laptop keyboard and those little words marching across the screen. Some moments really matter. Thanks to the Spun Yarn, I'd bought myself at least another 1,000 solitary hours to push my manuscript to the next level. And now I’m confident that when my book is ready to go back out into the world for its next “moment that matters”, that it's actually a damn good book.

--Sean Hewens, Co-Founder of the Spun Yarn

Also by Sean: Five Things I've Learned From My Novel Feedback and Harness the Power of Design Thinking, and other musings on IDEO's The Octopus Blog, which provides a designer's view on the universe.

Books We Love: Keeping You a Secret

In this post, we continue our series of personal essays about books with LGBTQ+ themes and/or characters that change readers' lives. Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters helped author Tiffany Clampet deal with the hatred she encountered when she decided to come out, and has likely helped thousands of other readers as well.

About our guest author: Tiffany Clampet is a writer, dreamer, lesbian, mom, activist, and so much more. She currently resides in New Mexico but was born in Louisiana. She works as a VeterinaryTechnician while she continues on her journey of breaking into the writing world.  

Coming out. Some fling the door open at a young age, while others take a bit longer. We all go at our own pace, and my pace happened to mean not coming out until I was 29. 

I had always identified as bisexual but as I started to dig deeply, I found that in fact I was a lesbian. I began to seek out books that would inspire me, that would tell me I wasn't alone. Keeping You A Secretby Julie Anne Peters was the book that helped me most. 

17-year-old Holland is smart, popular, and ambitious, with a loving family and adoring boyfriend. Everything is perfect until a transfer student named Cece comes into Holland’s life and her feelings for this new girl confuses everything. Holland finds herself in a new crowd while most of her friends turn their backs, abusing her with homophobic slurs and vandalizing Cece's locker and car. 

Peters paints so beautifully what can happen when you finally become yourself. As someone from a deep southern family with different views of sexuality, gender, and race, coming out is intimidating. I knew I had to be prepared for what might happen when I finally said the words “I am gay.”

Most of my family took it well. Some didn’t. Some told me I was an abomination bound for hell. Once I became engaged, it became much worse. Some people didn’t respond when I shared the news, others told me they wouldn't attend.

All of these experiences reminded me of Keeping You a Secret. The book stayed with me over the years. It kept coming back and inspired me to become more vocal about my community. For decades, the LGBTQ community was hidden, whispered about only in the shadowy recesses of society. Like many things people have grown to fear, myths and misconceptions abounds. My goal is to show that just because I love someone who happens to have the same genitalia, I’m not less than human. 

Keeping You a Secretalso reminded me that sometimes you have to do just that: keep a secret. Even in 2018, at times you decide to keep your love hushed. Not because you are ashamed, but for your own safety, even from those closest to you. Some people will forever refer to their partner as their "friend,” refusing to hold hands or show any public sign of love. This is their choice. There’s no specific way to be the right kind of gay. Of course, there are also those who are disowned, and those who are supported by people they never would have expected to stand by them.

Keeping You a Secret really prepared me for the reactions I might face when I came out. It inspired me to be me, whether that meant loud and radical or quiet and proud. 

When you step out of that closet, let that liberating moment take hold. Use it as your shield as you take on the world.

How Writing and Submitting Short Stories Improved My Novel

About our guest author: Arthur Klepchukov was born between Black Seas, Virginian Beaches, and San Franciscan waves. He adores trains, swing sets, and music that tears him outta time. Read Art’s words in The Common, Necessary Fiction, KYSO Flash, Fiction Southeast, and more at ArsenalOfWords.com

If you’re writing a novel and are nowhere near the end, why spend time on short stories? Doesn’t that distraction delay getting to the end of the current draft, a moment that always feels months away? I thought so once. One year, I wouldn’t let myself touch any other project until I’d worked on my novel every day. This lasted five months until I revisited “The End.” Again. 

Why should a novel writer devote precious writing time to short stories? After five novel drafts, two years of submitting shorter fiction, and seven publications, here are my reasons.

Do Something With All Those Ideas

Not every idea deserves a novel. And there’s something cathartic about expressing an idea soon after inspiration strikes. I’m not holding my breath and suffocating the idea because I have to focus elsewhere. As powerful as some ideas feel in the moment, most are quite happy as short stories or flash fiction or poems, or being expressed at all. I now tend to start each idea in the shortest possible form. I only expand the word count if my gut and reader feedback suggest there’s more to say. In the meantime, I grow my list of stories and drafts, not only my list of ideas.

Understand the Impact of Every Edit

An effective edit rarely moves me in the same way as what inspired the story. Revising a longer work can be a dreary process because it’s difficult to grasp the impact of my efforts. This is not the case with flash fiction. Try changing a word in a 100-word story, swap sentences in 250 words, or drop a paragraph among only 1,000 words. You’ll notice an immediate impact on the entire piece. This inspires me toward better revisions by reminding me how powerful each change can be.

Feel A Sense of Completion More Often

Novel drafts take months or years to write. Short story drafts can take weeks. Flash fiction, anything under 1,000 words, can be even briefer. I'm not saying shorter work is easier to write, or requires any less thoughtful revision. But the satisfaction of reaching the end of a draft will happen sooner with shorter fiction. This can prevent listlessness after always having the same answer for “what are you working on?” 

Practice Finding Comps

I read every market to which I submit. If I want a literary journal to publish my story, I not only follow their submission guidelines, but I prove I’ve engaged with what they’ve published. I do so by including the stories I read and liked in my cover letter to the editor. If they overlap with my subject matter or appeal to a similar audience, all the better. 

In practice, this is akin to finding comparative titles, or comps, for a novel and citing them in your query letter. Prove that you’re thoughtful and have an understanding of the market.

Strengthen Your Query Letters

Every market where I’ve submitted short fiction requires a cover letter. Writing cover letters has taught me how to address editors, present myself, discuss my work, and highlight my accomplishments. This builds confidence in writing and revising query letters to literary agents. Growing my publication history also strengthens my credibility for the next stage of my writing journey.

Give More Than One Story A Chance

I no longer believe I have to withhold myself from other creative work to finish an ambitious project like a novel draft. Novels do take intense focus and persistence, but the reasons above led me to a new strategy. 

I’m currently working on a novel during the weekdays and shorter projects on the weekend. This means that by default, the hardest thing gets the bulk of my time. Sometimes, my weekends are writing-free and the stories have to wait, but I’m always making progress. 

Though my novel may take a while before it’s ready, all those shorter pieces are out there, being submitted, rejected, accepted, and in any case, read. Don’t withhold your words from the world because your magnum opus isn’t ready.

How Anne Frank's Sexuality Helped Me Accept My Own: Books We Love for #PrideMonth

In this series, we honor #PrideMonth with a series of personal essays about books with LGBT+ themes and/or characters that change readers' lives. What better way to start than with Anne Frank's classic diary, viewed from a perspective that history tends to ignore?

How Anne Frank's Sexuality Helped Me Accept My Own

by Ana Freeman

A girl in my 8th-grade English class accidentally flashed me. She was seated facing me, her back against the wall, talking to me and some other kids sitting nearby. She was wearing loose shorts, and I saw London, France, and a whole world of desire before me. I looked away immediately, but it was too late. I was embarrassed, and I was embarrassed that I was embarrassed, and I don’t think I ever spoke a word to her again. 

It was 2007. 54% of Americans still opposed gay marriage. A few months earlier, in the same class, a group of kids had stuck a Post-It bearing a bunch of little hearts and the declaration “I love men!” on the back of a boy who had committed the crime of wearing a pink shirt. The cool kids in the class giggled. They giggled even harder when our teacher earnestly reminded us that statistically, a tenth of our class was gay. I looked around as if to say, “Who amongst us? Surely not I!” 

You know how in cheesy teen rom-coms, the main character is always reading something in school that conveniently touches on the issue they’re dealing with? That’s how that class turned out to be for me. When our teacher announced that we were reading The Diary of Anne Frank, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to sleep. As a sensitive soul and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, I thought that reading a true firsthand account of a Jew in hiding during WWII might be too much for me to bear. What I wasn’t anticipating was being awake all night due to something else entirely: excitement. 

As I devoured the diary’s pages ahead of the given reading schedule, I was immediately struck by how much I had in common with Anne. To start with, we were both 13-year-old Jewish girls with the initials “A.F.” There was more: we were the constant object of criticism in our families. We had no one to confide in. We had terrible relationships with our mothers and lived in the shadow of seemingly perfect older sisters (both of whose names started with “M!”). We both loved reading and hated algebra, engaged in constant self-analysis, and wanted to be writers someday. We both were unsure of our feelings towards boys.

Then there was this passage:                                                                                                             

I remember that once when I slept with Jacque I had a strong desire to kiss her, and that I did do so. I could not help being terribly inquisitive over her body, for she had always kept it hidden from me. I asked her whether, as a proof of our friendship, we should feel one another’s breasts, but she refused. I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman, such as Venus in my art history book, for example. It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks. If only I had a girlfriend!

I could practically have written it myself. I got funny feelings at sleepovers when my best friend and I took our shirts off and gave each other backrubs…and I’d once stolen a book titled Erotic Art of the Masters from my parents’ bookshelf and been unable to tear my eyes away from the female nudes until I heard their car in the driveway and hastily stuffed it back on the shelf, noticeably out of place. 

As a deeply closeted baby queer just beginning to come out to myself, I had been convinced that I was completely alone in these kinds of experiences. Lesbians, as far as I was aware, were lumbering, butch creatures of a different species from me or anyone I’d ever met. Bisexual women were sluts who kissed at parties for the sole purpose of attracting male attention. I didn’t believe that the gay feelings that made me so unhappy were shared by other girls my age—let alone by well-loved and deeply relatable historical figures. No one had ever mentioned this when they talked about Anne Frank!

I felt seen, relieved, brimming with possibility. I also felt…more of those same funny feelings I’d been trying to squish down since I was 11—but for the first time, I allowed myself to enjoy them. If Anne Frank could have such an appreciation for the female form and still be a nice, normal girl, why couldn’t I?

I brought up the scandalous passage to everyone at school. “Ohmygod, did you see that Anne Frank was like, totally a lesbian? Weird, right?” To my surprise, the responses were (mostly) more along the lines of “Huh," than “Ew.”

It was the beginning of my long journey towards accepting myself. Anne Frank posthumously brought herself out of hiding by leaving her words for the world to see; though my circumstances were thankfully much less grim, her words brought me out of hiding, too. She never lived long enough to get a chance to define her sexual orientation, but I’ve had the profound privilege of putting my adolescence behind me, and today I’m proud to say that I’m a queer woman. 

Reader Spotlight: Haeli the Teenaged World Traveler

 

In the Reader Spotlight series we ask our smart, diverse and multi-talented readers what makes them tick, and what they're seeing in Spun Yarn manuscripts. Our readers span the gamut of literary taste, so expect to see a little bit of everything! 

Haeli grew up and attended school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but when she turned 15 her parents decided it was time to travel before she grew older and went off on her own. Haeli's family got rid of everything they owned, sold their house, and bought an RV to travel the US and Mexico. Since then they've been to many cities in Mexico, attended a WorldSchooling conference, reunited with Haeli's exchange sister, and are now touring the National Parks. Though Haeli misses her friends, she wouldn't exchange the new Worldschooling perspective she's gained for all the lakes in Michigan. 

- - - 

The Spun Yarn: Wow Haeli, you are certainly not the average teen. We're curious – what does a typical day in your life actually look like? 

Haeli:  Lately, I hike all day, then come home to eat dinner and watch a movie. When we're not in the national parks, I usually spend my time reading, editing YouTube videos for my YouTube channel Haeli’s Layne, playing Minecraft with my little sister, and writing the middle grade chapter book I'm currently working on. Of course, I can't go a day without writing to my best friend Faith. We're even better friends now than when I left. 

The Spun Yarn: So this is tough, but we do it to everyone: pick a favorite book and tell us what you love about it.

Haeli: Harry Potter, no question. My Dad started reading the series to me when I was five or six years old, and I was hooked from Chapter 1. I wasn’t a good reader yet, because I didn’t have the patience. The special reading program in school helped a little, but I really started reading when my Dad told me he wouldn't continue the series until I had read the first three by myself. That's all I needed. It was a hard book for a seven-year-old, but I finished the third one by the time I was eight. I'd become one of the best readers in my class, because I found out I loved to read.

The Spun Yarn: You generally read YA manuscripts for us here at The Spun Yarn. What's been your favorite moment as a reader so far?

Haeii: When our editor Sarah emailed me and told me the author of the manuscript I'd just reviewed was inspired by my feedback to keep working on her book after an eight-year hiatus.  I told the author in my feedback how much I truly loved the story, and later the author put a quote from me on her wall! I literally cried when I heard how I had affected someone in such a good way! I can’t wait for that story be published!

The Spun Yarn: So what do you think makes a really fantastic YA novel stand out?

Haeli: Lately I've been into dystopias with complicated but cute romances, such as The Hunger Games, The Selection, and Divergent. I think the thing that makes a good Young Adult book, or at least one that hooks readers, is a couple's ongoing conflict, such as fighting and lying. I get so annoyed that I basically yell at the characters to TALK to each other! I have to admit that it hooks me though, and I can’t stop reading until the end when the characters are finally in a good relationship. I also think character development is very important, but there are many different tastes in YA, which is why I'm glad that my opinion on a manuscript is one of three.

The Spun Yarn: You've hit on one of the most valuable aspects of the three beta reader package. We're excited to have you read more manuscripts for us and discover new authors you love!

Tie it Up: Beta Reader Comments on Your Ending

Duh duh duh . . . oh, the nail-biting of waiting for your readers to tell you what they thought of your ending. Here's what's tough about endings: they can't be too neat, or too messy, too out-of-nowhere or too absolutely predictable. Depending on your genre, there are standards of convention for the type of resolution you want, and if you're writing a series, oh boy--you have a completely new set of considerations!

HOWEVER. We're nearing our 45th manuscript, and we've learned some rules of thumb that should help you navigate the treacherous coasts of your final literary shore.

1. Sub-plots: if you have a lot of them, you *must* tie some up before the final 25% of the story. 

If you're writing in a plot-driven genre such as Action, Thriller, Mystery, etc, or if you're writing any story with a complicated plot, you'll need a plan of action for when to resolve each plot line. Necessarily, plot lines that tie into the finale or grand reveal must be resolved together, but you can space out each of their denouements after the finale so that readers don't feel rushed. Are there any sub-plots that could be resolved earlier, between the 65-70% point of your story? Especially if you're supporting characters have their own sub-plots, it can be a good choice to resolve some of these a bit earlier to give your readers as much headspace as possible for the most important resolution. Readers hate a rushed ending that gives them no time to savor. 

2. If your story is fated to end in one way, it's all about the execution.

Chances are, even the most predictable endings leave room to delight readers with a little surprise. We see this particularly often in Romance and Action. If the Hero is destined to Catch the Bad Guys, make sure you've gone through at least five iterations of exactly how he catches them. Your first thought will be everyone else's first thought, so work in an elegant twist and a flare. Likewise in Romance, before the Heroine and Hero end up together, are there any last unexpected little wrenches you can throw in their path? OR, as in Action, have you mapped out at least five little elegant scenarios that bring them finally together and as a bonus, include a callback to an early point in their relationship? In Literary Fiction and Memoir, endings are about insights and the craft. Your writing should dazzle and arrest readers, which can mean months and months of massaging the prose, with breaks in between, to get it right. Spend that time. Readers can love 75% of your book but they'll never recommend it if they don't love the ending.

3. "I'm writing a series" is no excuse for a cliff-hanger ending.   

Don't do it. Don't make your readers throw your book at the wall. Even if your book is the first in a series, you owe the reader the satisfaction of resolving your primary conflict. That's all they ask, and it's not much, because you're still open to leave a sub-plot unresolved and make that the major conflict in Book 2. Our readers have shown the least patience for cliffhangers over anything else. 

4. Make a little mess. 

Literary fiction endings are often messy because life is messy. We've found that readers want a little mess in other genres too, believe it or not. If everyone is absolutely happy and all loose ends are perfectly tied up, your story risks feeling inauthentic. For example, in Romance or Comedy, in which happy endings rightfully abound, the mess may come from the introduction of a new ordeal we imagine the couple facing together. The thought of that chaos is actually part of the happy ending, is the author allowing us to extend her fictional universe into an eternity. In Action and Mystery, especially when the protagonist is an anti-hero, the anti-hero may resolve the external conflict, but the ending should still harken back to a persistent internal conflict. Make sense? Then get back to making messes, dear writer. 

Decoding Beta Reader Comments on Protagonists

In this post we break down four major reader reactions to your protagonist, what they mean, and what to do about them in a revision. At The Spun Yarn, feedback is what we do. After more than a hundred full manuscript critiques from diverse readers, we have some experience decoding comments for what they mean for your next revision.

Here's one of the most common reader comments about a protagonist that isn't quite working yet.

"I'm not always sure why the Protagonist does what he does. I didn't know him as well as I thought I should."

The first thing to ascertain is whether your reader thinks your protagonist is inconsistent, i.e., whether he/she demonstrates conflicting values or behavior without evidence of transformation. If the reader points out behaviors you didn't realize were inconsistent, you may need to spend more time inside your protagonist's head to make sure she's a complex but understandable, full character.  If you haven't already interviewed your protagonist, make sure you know how they'd answer these interview questions.

If a reader doesn't list specific inconsistent behaviors or thoughts, you may have a fully realized character that isn't quite translating to the page. In this case, examine whether your character should have more introspection, whether the character reacts predictably when facing certain situations, and whether your character's beliefs and world perspective are demonstrable in their spoken and internal dialogue. The problem might not be the character, but *showing* the character.

Here's another tough one.

"I thought your Protagonist was a jerk." 

It looks like you wrote a villain, or an anti-hero! If you didn't mean to do this, some revisions are in order. 

An anti-hero is just a protagonist who doesn't exhibit typical heroic traits like selflessness and optimism. Basically, every Humphrey Bogart type noir protagonist. Anti-heroes usually win readers over in the end through their growth and other redeeming qualities, so if your reader is still hating your protagonist at the end, you need to find out:

Do other readers feel the same way? If other readers liked your main character, one reader's negative reaction may just be a personality difference. A lot of us hate Holden Caulfield, but The Catcher in the Rye is still in the cannon.

If this is your only reader, we really recommend getting more readers so you can tell when it's just one person's opinion, and when it's a flaw in your WIP.

If you're writing a villain protgagonist, chances are that the narrative momentum comes from the reader's eagerness to see the villain thwarted. Consider Lauren Beukes' The Shining Girls. Here, you need to find out: so my readers hated the villain which is good, but did they still read eagerly?

If it's a total surprise to you that a reader dislikes your main character, readers may not be getting enough access to the character's internal landscape, vulnerabilities, and positive balancing traits. Here are some common unlikeable traits that can be transformed throughout a novel.

--Passive. The protagonist does little to take control of his or her own fate. Readers may also call them weak, or whiney. A character who starts out this way should end up gaining strength, and impacting the plot in important ways rather than always going with the flow.

--Selfish. Another highly unlikeable trait, perhaps because we're each already as selfish as we can handle, so we want to escape into worlds populated by characters who are better people than we are. A character who starts out selfish should end up sacrificing something important.

--Morose. Inwardly focused characters can be great, but too much introspection in the prose slows the pace, thereby annoying the reader. They're going to take that annoyance out on the source of their boredom, which is your protagonist. Sharpen it up, and balance introspection with plot events.

Above all, make sure your intentions with the character are clear, that you know his or her arc, and then find out from your readers what's translating and what needs to be amped up or toned down. 

If any of your readers said this about your main character, you've really pulled your protagonist off well:

"I didn't like the Protagonist at first, but by the end of the book I was rooting for them." 

This is one of the hardest effects to pull off: your main character has shown realistic growth throughout the book. There's nothing more compelling than an unlikeable character that readers end up liking in spite of themselves. You started by giving your character a meaty personality obstacle, you let glimmers of potential shine through, and you developed these organically throughout the book. Your main character has a full, satisfying arc. Well done!

"I really liked the Protagonist, and wanted them to succeed throughout." 

Congratulations! Depending on your genre, your main character may either be unlikeable at first, or likable from the very beginning. In Young Adult, Action / Thriller, Mystery, Horror and other plot-driven genres, a consistently likable protagonist can be an excellent guide to your reader. Protagonists should still change throughout the course of the book, but these changes may be driven by the plot, rather than the other way around, which happens often in literary fiction.

Even in plot-driven genres, if your character is likable and relatable at the very beginning, your job will be to increase readers' investment in that character as your story progresses, usually by putting them in tense, tough situations. In every story, a character must grow and show a complete arc, so if your character is always likable, make sure you know how that character is changing. No likes a flat hero.

See more of our Decoding series on Pacing here and Secondary Characters here.

Happy writing!

The Spun Yarn Team

Flash Feedback: 5 Ways to Evaluate Your Novel's Pacing

Here's a question: how much have your beta readers told you about your book's pacing? As they read, did they make myriad small comments about wording, ask questions about believability, etc? 

As a beta reader myself, I've had to reign myself back from commenting on every page of a manuscript I'm reading. Why? Because what the author needs from a beta reader is a holistic impression of the work, AS WELL AS the reader's take on its moving parts: the characters, the plot, writing, etc. 

At The Spun Yarn, we've learned that Flash Feedback check-ins are a brilliant way to show an author how readers feel about each section of your book, and about the overall pacing. When you deliberately keep your beta readers from commenting on every line, but force them to check in at every quarter mark of the book, it instantly becomes clear which parts of your book are riveting readers, and which are lagging. 

Moreover, we've discovered something completely new. ALL of the high-scoring manuscripts (and we've done 40 now) share these two traits in common:

1. Readers are intrigued by the first quarter, wondering but not knowing what's going to happen next

2. Readers love the third quarter of the book most.

 

The third quarter of your book is where your pieces should falling into place. The novel's momentum is at its peak. If you're waiting until the last 25% of your book to begin wrapping everything up, you've waited too long. Your last quarter is going to feel rushed. 

What other conclusions for your next revision can we draw from Flash Feedback check-ins?

Readers give you a lot of slack for development in the first quarter.

You must introduce a compelling conflict, but your first quarter doesn't need to be action-packed. In fact, readers expect setting, description, and world-building. We've seen manuscripts go the other way and include too much action in the first quarter. Readers have said "Wait, where and when are we? What's happening?" Your world may be clear to you, but you have to build a staircase that leads readers down slowly, gives them time to pressurize and immerse themselves in your world.

Have you considered dividing your manuscript into four quarters, and plotting out the action or plot points in each quarter?

We ask because another common problem is a weak middle. That's right, it's not good for your core strength or for your novel. The perfect novel builds throughout, with the maximum tension occurring in the third quarter. If you don't have enough action in the middle, is your plot complex enough? Did you space pivotal moments evenly, or did you pack too much into the first or last quarters?

A good middle answers some questions introduced in the first quarter, and introduces new questions as well. For example, in the middle of a good horror story, a reader may be thinking: "Ahhh, so they found this creepy house, and that's where the scary part is going to start, great! But what exactly are those two men planning to do to our three lost young friends. Are the men evil or are they fronts for a greater evil deeper within the house?" 

You get the picture.

Finally, endings are about tying pretty bows.

The kinds of bows you tie and how prettily you tie them depends on the genre. In literary fiction, it's not always good to answer every question, but you must leave the reader with a sense of finality, with a great, overall impression. In a mystery, you are booking the criminals, meting out their life sentences, and house-shopping with the newly safe heroine on a poplar lined boulevard, imagining her nervous young daughter settling into school. Endings are about satisfying the reader, hopefully in at least a few ways they didn't predict.

If you haven't looked for beta readers who can stop commenting long enough to step back and give you a big picture look at the four quarters of your book, try us--we've practiced, and we're good at it. We give you THREE different readers to check in at each quarter mark, so you can immediately say Yep, the middle is dragging for all of them or Wow, Reader 1 is not my reader but readers 2 and 3 totally get it.

We have readers who get it. 

Happy writing!