Things You Shouldn't Do in Your Beginning

The beginning is a pretty important part of a novel, because most agents/publishers will leave your book at the first page if it doesn't really catch them. Some of them might be a bit more patient if your query letter looks promising, but you certainly can't count on that. And none of your readers will be reading a query letter, at most they'll take on a paragraph or two. So, here are some things that agents tend to hate in the first page, and look boring anyway:

1. The first line is a rhetorical question. This looks bad, and most readers will actually answer it with something negative in mind.

2. You introduce too many people in the first paragraph. We don't need to know all of your character's family members right off the bat.

3. Starting in the middle of an action scene which makes no sense. You might think that this will help 'hook' your reader, but it won't. What you need to do is introduce the main conflict almost right away.

4. If you want to put in a prologue, (you should ask yourself if you really need one) keep it very short. And it should be entertaining, not something that could be removed. (If you've read Eragon, you'll know that the whole prologue could have been excluded. As a matter of fact, a good fifth of the book could have been excluded, but let's not talk about that right now.)

5. Starting off with something that's cliche. If you've heard of something once, agents/publishers will have heard of it fifty times.

6. Having grammar errors or showing that you can't link paragraphs properly.

7. Starting off on some boring scene.

8. Building useless suspense regarding an object/person which isn't even important.

9. Introducing the story through some character's point of view who doesn't even have a major role for the rest of the novel.

10. Beginning by describing a scene. No one is interested if the roses sparkled with dew in the first line. Leave that kind of stuff for later.

Now, like everything with regards to writing, all of this advice should be taken with a grain of salt. The beginning is the hardest part of a book (the ending's no piece of cake either) and you'll see a whole lot of books that have been published and are successful, but break the norms. If there's a good reason for you to break one of these above rules, do it.

Synopsis

In addition to a query letter, agents/publishers will probably also ask you for a synopsis, so you might as well start on it after your first draft.

I won't bog you down with too many details on a good synopsis, because there's already so much info out there, and a lot of it conflicts with each other. I will only say this: A good synopsis should be short. (2-3 pages if it is double spaced and uses a twelve size font) Also, it should be entertaining. You shouldn't write it like a summary on Wikipedia.

If an agent likes your query letter enough to continue reading your synopsis or sample papers, then they probably won't leave your book due to the synopsis alone. But be careful, the synopsis is the only thing that tells your agent/publisher how the book will end, and please spoil the ending.

If your book is funny, enrich your manuscript with humour. Reading it should feel exciting, not like reading some sort of school report. But like I've said with a query letter, don't sweat too much over it. Yes, you should write several drafts, but don't just go bonkers on getting every single thing right.

Some Scams to Look Out For- Part 2

This is a continuation from part one.

4. Sites that are geared towards writers, not readers

The most important person in the publishing industry is the reader. Everything the publisher does is to satisfy the reader.

However, if you find a site that is geared towards writers, then there is a problem. What I mean by this is that real publishers' sites will list the books they've published on the front page, and they'll actively distribute information about their authors. The submission information is usually in a tiny corner somewhere.

But if you see a site that showcases submission information and seems to encourage writers to submit, then you've got a problem. That means that the publisher is probably making money off of its writers, not its readers. And that is very bad for your book.

5. Publishers with way too many books published

If you see a publisher which is just one year old, and yet its gotten 120 books out, that means it is what we sometimes call an 'author mill'. Such publishers don't make money by selling thousands of copies of one book, they make money by selling one hundred copies of hundreds of books. Needless to say, as an author, you don't want to go with these kinds of guys.

Remember to always check what people are saying about the books a publisher publishes. Check out the prices, sales records, check out a preview (if there's no preview available then this is another red signal), etc.

6. People who ask you to buy copies of your own book

A lot of publishers, the ones who are scams, make money by asking their writers to buy their own book copies. No real publisher will ask you to do this, or pay any upfront fee.

As a matter of fact, a real publisher will give you a small number of author copies of your book for free. Aside from that, you don't need to get any copies of your own book. And you shouldn't have to, because a publisher who asks authors to buy their own books will not bother selling out your work to actual readers.

Inserting Humour Into Your Story

Roald Dahl once said "You can write about anything for children as long as you've got humour."

This might be bit off the point, but I never found his books to be especially funny. Sure, they were all great, but there wasn't even a single moment in them in which I even giggled a little. Still, they were the best.

But coming to the point though, you're probably going to find a touch of humor in all YA books, and in some adult books as well. Unless what you're writing is a very serious story, (even in very serious stories humour can find its place once in a while) you'll probably want to insert some jokes or funny moments to engage your readers.

Now, there's one thing though: How to make your book funny? While there are no set rules, you can learn a lot by reading books that are funny (like Artemis Fowl for example). Some ideas are:

1. Use a comic relief character. While it's probably going to look overly cliche if you have someone who just exists to make things look funny, you can insert that as a trait in one of your characters.

2. Have one of your characters, maybe even the main one, have some sort of interesting quirk. Even the most serious of people have their own oddities.

3. Maybe you don't want to make any of your characters funny. Then you can turn some of the situations they get into downright bizarre.

4. Another thing you might want to try is describing people in an odd way. (The Artemis Fowl books are a good example of this. If you've read them, you probably know how Eoin Colfer describes a whole lot of things.)

But do remember one thing: Humour is a very subjective thing. It varies from person to person. What you may think is laugh-out-loud funny may just get an odd look from someone else. This is true about writing in general too, what one reader might find interesting, would be annoying to another. (But there are some things that in general, all readers will enjoy. Experiment. That's the only way you'll find out.)

The Word Counts of Some Popular YA Novels

We often go around thinking that fat, thick books with huge word counts are the best. But the thing is, that thick book that you see in a bookstore may actually contain fewer words than you think. For example, Twilight is around 120,000 words. I won't mention the Harry Potter or Inheritance series, because Harry Potter breaks the rules as it's so popular and hence word count doesn't matter, and Christopher Paolini could shave off 200 or 300 pages off of any of his Inheritance books and they'd still tell the same basic story.

But anyone, here, I'm going to go to a page in various YA books, count the number of words on one page full of text, and then multiply it with the number of pages. The result will probably be higher than the actual number, because I'm not considering the fact that pages that end when a chapter ends and begin with the beginning of a chapter have less words since the chapter name is usually spelt out, but still, as estimated word count is higher anyway, and that's what we're calculating, so these are a bit higher than normal.

1. Goosebumps: Escape From Horrorland- I know this book isn't technically YA and more qualifies as middle age, but I decided that I'd mention it anyway. But, as you're probably thinking, the Goosebumps books are usually pretty thin anyway.
Words per page: 120
Number of pages: 132
Approximate Word Count:  15,840
And another thing, R. L. Stine writes over hundreds of books in a series, so a low word count is actually acceptable.

2. Animorphs: The Revelation- Another book that's pretty thin, and it's part of a series of over fifty books, and each book was written in under a month anyway.
Words per page: 193
Number of pages: 136
Approximate Word Count: 26,248

But let's get on to some of those thicker books that you might see.

3. Sir Thursday, Fourth Book in the Keys to the Kingdom Series- Now, this book is actually the second largest of the series, with only Drowned Wednesday being thicker, but if you've seen it in your local bookstore, you'll notice that it's one of those books that make you think, 'Wow. What a big book.' Well, let's see exactly how many words it seems to have.
Words per page: Around 240 on the pages with large amounts of text.
Number of pages: 343
Approximate Word Count: 82,320
Do note that this is probably higher than what it actually is. Also note that this book is the fourth in a series by a well-established writer, and also that it is a fantasy novel, which generally adds around 14-20,000 words to any story anyway.

4. Gregor the Overlander, First Book in the Underland Chronicles: Some of you may know this book's author a bit better than the book: Suzanne Collins, the same person who wrote The Hunger Games trilogy.
This is book is also pretty large, though not as much as Sir Thursday.
Words per page: 200
Number of pages: 310
Approximate Word Count: 62,000
This is a debut novel, so something that you might want tot keep in mind.

So that's that for now. Please don't take any of the above values too literally. The point of this blog is to show that not necessarily all YA books you see have larger than life word counts. The fact is that an average of 55-65,000 words is probably a good choice. Of course, there are always exceptions, and if you think your longer novel is worth it with each word being important, than, well go for it. Unless a publisher tells you to trim it down so it can be published. In that case, cut it until it matches their standards.

The thing is, don't write a long novel just for the sake of writing a longer novel. That's the thing that you want to avoid, which is what this post is about.

Word Count is Important

As the title suggests, today's post is going to be about a very important topic: word count.

Now, the first thing that you need to know is that the word count that publishers and agents ask for isn't the one that you see that's calculated by your word processor. To find out your 'estimated' word count, take the following steps:

1. Select all of your text using ctrl+a.

2. Change the font to Courier or Courier New, and the font size to twelve.

3. Indent the paragraphs by half an inch using the indent tool on top of the page.

4. Right click on your text. An option will come 'Paragraph'. Click on that, and change line spacing to double spaced. Make the indentation 1".

5. Make sure your new chapters start on a new page. Basically, all of this is part of a standard manuscript format.

6. Multiply the page number by 250.

That's your word count. Here's some data from me comparing real/estimated word count:

1. Real: 7,474
Estimated: 8,000
Difference: 600 words

2. Real: 11,987
Estimated: 13,000
Difference: 1,000 words

3. Real: 98,310
Estimated: 110,500
Difference: 12,000

The difference is only an estimate. From the above data, we can conclude two things. First, your estimated word count is always higher than the real word count. Second, the larger your real word count, the greater the difference. See how for the last thing when my word count was 98k, it was actually 110k. That's a huge difference, especially in publishing, where a difference of only around 5k is unacceptable.

Now, you might be wondering why publishers do this. The thing is, that this gives a much better idea of how much space your novel is going to take up, and consequently how much paper and ink they're going to need to publish it, as well as how much time it will take to edit it. Word count that your word processor gives out isn't a very good estimate of this, because it doesn't take into fact that new paragraphs start on new lines, if there's a lot of dialogue, if you're words are very long, etc. That's why estimated word count is.

Another thing, don't think that a longer book is better. The average novel is only around 80,000 estimated words. It's around ten thousand words higher for science fiction/fantasy, but otherwise, if you're first novel is very long, it's usually a sign that you have a lot of excess words that you can delete in it. If you're e-publishing though, word count isn't exactly that much important.

The rule of thumb is that a shorter novel is better. Sure, it shouldn't be too short, but it being a few words short is better than it being a few words to long. There are always exceptions to this, especially if your long novel is very engaging throughout, but usually a high word count tends to scare off publishers. Of course, writers with a lot of clout might be able to write longer things, but otherwise, not really.

Here's a general guide to see if you've formatted your manuscript right:

150,000 words would be around 600 pages.

100,000 words would be around 400 pages.

80,000 words would be around 320 pages.

If your results don't match this, then you're doing something wrong.

On a final note, remember, if you're aiming for 80k words, write around 74k in real word count. Aim slightly lower in real word count while you're writing, and then find out the estimated one when you're finished. Don't bother with this word count thing while you're working on your first draft. Just set up a rough idea of how much you have to write, but otherwise, worry about it after you've written the very best that you can.

What Got You to Start Writing?

My fourth grade teacher was always enthusiastic in trying to teach us to write. He’d give us loads of tips that I continue to hear from other people today. Too bad I really didn’t pay attention to them. Back then, my writing was horrible, and I really didn’t try to change that. I finished fourth grade and then, he was no longer my teacher.

For some reason though, when I was in the fifth grade I decided that I wanted to improve. I applied something that I had been taught, and for the first time I got praise for my writing. I wanted to do it again. I continued practicing. I didn’t churn out masterpieces all of the time, but I did get better. I remember winning second place in an essay writing competition. True, it was second place, but my fourth grade self probably wouldn’t have even tried. I wrote almost everything, poems, short stories, essays, and articles.

All through that time, while I did get new advice regarding writing, I could link it all with what my fourth grade teacher taught me so long ago. Ironic, I never really listened to the man while he was teaching me, and then I pretty much regarded his words as dogma once he had completely vanished from my life. It's strange how you only realize how much your teachers did for you only when they stop doing it.

What about you though? Who inspired you to start writing? Was it your parents, your teacher, or some other incident entirely?

Why You Shouldn't Let the Statistics Get You Down

I see a lot of websites running stats on the chances of getting published. They are generally thought of to be abysmal, and the websites claim there are better chances of getting struck by lightning than landing a deal with an actual publisher. I have to say that I disagree with most of them.

                                       Did someone say they want to be struck by lightning?

For one, not every book has the same chance of getting published. Even though most publishing houses may get around 10,000 submissions per month, but 90-95% of them are just not publishable for reasons as simple as bad grammar, or maybe they don’t match with what the publisher publishes. (The number will be higher for more famous publishers.) And anyway, of the rest of the books aren’t necessarily very good. After all, publishers don’t want okay books, they want great books.

But leaving that aside, I’m going to give you some statistics on why you can get published.  My stats may not be totally accurate, true, but I still hope they give a rough idea of the situation out there.

 To run through my own statistics, let’s first take the population of America over 18. Not to belittle my fellow teenage writers, but I know very well that not all of the adult population will be capable of writing a book, so it really evens out. I would guess, though this is an overestimate, that around 240,000,000 people would be able to write a book.  (I’m getting data from the U.S. Census. Approximately.)

Well, how many people who want to write a book actually sit down to write one? Though I know a lot of people who think of writing one (mainly so that they can say that they’ve written a book in their lifetime), I know very well that actually sitting down to write it is something different. The number is actually quite low, in my opinion around 95% of those people will never start or get pass page thirty.

Even harder is actually finishing the novel. Lots of people will lose inspiration, give up, or think that they don’t have the time to write a book. I think 98% of people will never finish their novel.

So how much competition do we have now? One- thousandth of the original, or 240,000. Not exactly very good odds. Still, finishing a novel is hardly the end of the story. 

How many of those writers won’t just delete the manuscript after it is done? How many will revise and edit tirelessly until the book is perfected? How many will look for the right publisher or agent? How many will use effective queries and target the right publishers? How many will cope with rejection and not lose heart through this process? After all, let’s remember that a lot (around nine-tenths) of the submissions publishers receive are rejected for some very basic problems (the book is boring; the plot doesn’t make sense, etc.)

Let’s say it is 1%. I bet it’s actually lower, but better to overestimate. That leaves our competition at 2,400. Take the fact that 40% will be nonfiction, 1440 is left. A bit more manageable number.

I’ll stop right there, and won’t reduce it further by pointing out that you’re competing with people in a particular genre among with other things. I also haven't considered other countries as well. I’m also guessing my numbers looking a bit too good to be true, but that’s not what I want to say.

What I want to say is that the stats don’t matter. Ignore the stats. There are a hundred factors like perseverance, talent, etc. that numbers can simply not capture.

I wrote all of that to give you a feel of how the numbers are actually in your favor if you’re serious. But seriously, ignore even them. Write. Work hard, and don’t even bother with the numbers, because the statistics mean absolutely nothing. The moment you give up, your chances of being published become 0%. I repeat: Never let the statistics get you down. And as this guy would say,

                                    

As a matter of fact, don't even bother looking up any more stats pages. Come on, get writing! You can start by leaving your comments below this page.

Using Big Words For No Reason

While I was editing my novel, I decided that I needed to make myself sound a bit smarter. So, I decided to take a few of the words I was learning for the SAT (If you've studied for the SAT you'll know what I'm talking about) and peppered them over my writing.


Trust me. Don't do it. Later on, when I read it, in every single place where I had inserted one of those 'special words', it just sounded plain wrong. When your readers will come across that word, they'll think 'Huh?' and it'll just end up breaking the flow of your story. Yes, you should vary your vocabulary and try not to repeat the same phrases (Like saying 'Their lips locked' every time there's a kiss), but don't grab your thesaurus and sprinkle the most difficult-looking words all over your manuscript. It won't look natural, and trust me, if it sounds forced, it also tends to sound boring.

The same thing for the word 'said'. 'Said' is the only word that you can never overuse in your manuscript. It has a way of magically blending in with your dialogue so that your readers can concentrate only on what your characters say. The moment you insert something different in every other line, you are begging for your readers to grab the book and smack it over your head. Trust me, I inserted a dozen different words for 'said' into a chapter and saw what it looked like. Not pretty. Just leave 'said' as it is.

A Short Introduction

Hello there. If you've stumbled upon my blog, I'm guessing that you're probably on it because of the title. After all, I've seen a very small amount of information on becoming a writer directed at teens, and most of it goes along the lines of 'you probably don't have enough experience, practice, but don't get your hopes high'.

It is a bit infuriating. I know, because when I started writing my own fantasy novel Tales of Ink Sorcery I didn't get too much information either. Right now, my book is somewhere in the publishing process, but I have learned a lot.

But more importantly, there is a lot that I want to know. Despite trudging through various sites and books for several hours, I still find my information lacking. So, continue onwards in this blog to see what I've figured out (or want to figure out) and hopefully tell me what you think, because above all that's what I really want to know.