Being a Career Writer: What to Focus On

I dug out this photo from last summer - at Epcot Center after the RWA conference and me all shiny from winning the RITA® Award. Sometimes that still feels as fantastical as my troll friend here.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is one writing/publishing-related skill we want to learn/improve on this year. The writing/publishing conjunction struck me because - while I totally get that being a career writer involves both - those two aspects of being an author seem far more distant from each other than a slim slash mark would convey.

Okay, I started to write about something I saw an author tweet about the trials of self-publishing. Though I was paraphrasing, I ended up deleting because it felt unfair to call them out. But what I'm seeing is a LOT of discussion of the business of writing. That right-hand side of the slash mark. Marketing. How to get reviews. Amazon stripping reviews, stripping rank. Piracy. Best-selling rank. Marketing. Covers. How to reach readers. Marketing. Box sets. Series. Ideal release timing and spacing. Marketing.

You get my point.

So, I get that it's easier to focus on marketing. (Did I mention marketing?) There's a LOT of information out there on that stuff. In fact, many writers have gotten into the business in order to have something to market. (I've met these people. "I wanted to take advantage of Internet marketing and so I decided because romance novels sell, I'd write one and use that as my test product.) Also, the business side of the slash mark can feel much more controllable than the writing side.

This is what bothers me, however. For all the discussions I see about improving all the business end, I see maybe a tenth - if that - on improving the left hand side of the slash mark: the WRITING.

In point of fact, some self-publishing authors I know have said they don't care about improving their craft. The reasons vary, but some seem to feel it's beyond their control or irrelevant.

It's also the most difficult aspect of being a writer. Improving craft can be both humbling and infuriating. A writer has to set aside ego and take a good hard look at their work. They have to compare it to work by better writers and see where it falls short. And they have to be willing to listen to criticism without losing confidence. THEN they have to set to the frustrating and often daunting task of attempting to improve.

I get that it's hard. It's hard for me, too.

But I'm going to venture that, if you're losing readers instead of building an audience then the problem may not be with the marketing. We're in the weeding-out phase of the self-publishing boom now. Readers no longer have patience with giving books a whirl just because they're cheap or free. Or, rather, they'll give the author a chance, and if the quality isn't good, they won't try them again. I'm hearing this from many, many readers. This phase has been inevitable. The first week of the cruise is done and people have stuffed themselves with all the free food at the buffet. Now they're pickier, looking for the good stuff.

I should caveat that I'm picking on self-publishing here, because traditional publishing tends to force you to up your game to pass the various levels of tests involved in selling a work to them. However, with many editors in traditional publishing failing to give content edits, making our work the best it can be there, too, is critical.

So, what AM I wanting to improve this year? Craft! Each book is a master class in craft, meaning I learn something new with each one I write. Over the last couple of years, I've been working on my endings. I've been trying to give them as much heft and time as the beginnings - which isn't easy. I've improved, but I'm still not there. I also find I'm rarely satisfied with endings other authors write. I think this is partially why the cliff-hanger ending is so appealing. JUST DON'T EVEN TRY.

But I'm curious - who writes really good, perfectly satisfying endings? I'd love suggestions!

Putting a Button on It

When a story you love ends, it's a tragedy. You've been through the wringer with those characters. After the danger and excitement of the climax, you're looking for a satisfying wrap up to the action something that lives up to the execution of the promise the story premise made in the very beginning. Something that cements the lessons the main character learned throughout the slings and arrows of the story.

But hey, no pressure, right?

Endings are hard. There's your hero after the climax, bruised, bloodied, often broken hearted. That may be figurative. It may be literal or metaphorical, but on some level, your MC has suffered a death at the climax. That is the point in the story wherein it becomes crystal clear that this character is no longer who he or she was when the story started. And there's no going back. The MC has to return to the ordinary world after the adventure and they have to do that bearing some useful gift. The cure for whatever plague was decimating the town. The head of the dragon eating all the sheep. A Holy Grail of some kind - even if that grail is simply a relationship worth hanging onto - the gift conveyed there is the formation of the new family, whatever form that family takes.

This is what we, as readers, want to see in a resolution, then - the MC applying what he or she has learned. If you're writing genre, that's a happy thing. The gift is a benefit to the community. If you're writing literary, the gift affects no one by the MC and may carry a bit of a curse with it. Think Cassandra in the Trojan War. Gifted with the ability to see the future, cursed so that no one would believe her. If you're writing tragedy, the denouement is the fall out associated with the MC failing to learn his or her lessons through the course of the story.

I suspect that most of our readers have been trained by TV and movies to expect short denouement. But since books aren't constrained by producers watching the dollar signs with every frame of film captured, maybe it really is incumbent upon authors to luxuriate in our endings a little bit - to give readers time and space to transition out of the world of the adventure and back into their normal world. Certainly different stories will bear different treatments. If you spend very little time in your hero's everyday world at the beginning of your story, you can probably invest little time in the resolution. If you spend pages on the heroine's normal world at the beginning of your story, immersing readers in the details, you will need a denouement of similar detail at the end to contrast the differences between the two. Set up and resolution are the frame on the action of your story. You don't want a lopsided frame, right?

So really. How long should your story resolution go? Exactly as long as it needs to be to bring your characters full circle. Unless you're a terrible human being and you mean to strand your characters mid-circle. Then your denouement needs to be even weightier in order to measure the consequences of characters who failed to complete their journey(s) or who died in mid-arc. (We're looking at you on that one, GRRM.)

Do I make it sound facile? It isn't. Just go have a look at how well I follow my own advice. O_o