Writing Fiction that Sells

Telling you how to go about writing fiction that sells isn't possible, really.

But I'm going to try to say something about the topic, because the last time I posted here, I got this question from a reader:

Please, in your next article, give some examples of why certain books sell in the different markets other than by author name recognition.

I know why books written by unknown authors break out. It's word of mouth that causes that happy circumstance. It's when people tell their friends what a great book they just read.

But what gets people juiced up and talking about one book and not about another? I can't tell you. Why did Twilight sell as many copies as it did? Why have other good books had dismal sales? No one has come up with a formula to explain these things.

We know some things about what readers, in general, like in books.

• Characters: Readers like to relate to the main character. They want to care about the character and to root for him. They want characters they can empathize with or, at least, characters they can sympathize with. They want characters that feel real and three-dimensional. Clichéd characters? Not so much.

• Plot: Readers want conflict. Why do the TV news shows run sensational story after sensational story? Because conflict interests us more than peace. When there's conflict, we need to keep reading to see how things will all turn out. Along with conflict, readers enjoy twisty surprises.

• Voice: Many readers don't notice a gorgeous voice when they read, but they will feel bored by a snoozer voice. And, yes, it's possible to have colorful characters and a thrilling plot and then to kill the whole deal with a voice that plods from paragraph to paragraph, stringing together one gray sentence after another. Pacing, word choice, rhythm, sentence variation—all of these are part of voice.

• Theme: Readers want to be moved, and the way you move them is by putting universal themes into your books. To move a reader emotionally, you need to plug into his dreams, his fears, his sorrows, or his joys. Nonfiction authors often hear that they should speak to a felt need, but what many novelists don't get is that fiction readers have mice that need to be trapped and wounds that need to be bandaged as well. Maybe fiction readers haven't identified their needs on a conscious level, but you, the author, will do well to analyze their needs before you write the book. Women who read romance want to be loved and cared for and protected, I think. What do lovers of fantasy want, do you suppose? Probably all readers want to feel safe and cared for. Those are basic human needs. So tap into those needs when you write your fiction.

In the end, though, many books that have all of these things—living, interesting, sympathetic characters, intriguing plots, lively voices, and universal themes—never break out. Many good books never sell more than a few thousand copies.

Writers can't control sales. There is no formula for writing fiction that sells. You can write good books and you can be smart about promotion, but you can't make people buy and talk about your books. So instead of worrying too much about sales, worry about the things you can control. Write well and promote well. Then leave the sales in God's capable hands.

photo credit: photo credit: Bindaas Madhavi via photopin cc

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Sally Apokedak is a literary  agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of of building a dynamite list of authors. She is also active in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. You can connect with her on her blog, where she posts about writing and publishing, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Pinterest, or on Google+. 

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Ready to Make Your Own History?

Now in the fourth year of our Slush Pile Contest for unpublished novelists, we’re taking entries in all six categories, as outlined below. 

WARNING -- the first category will close in just two days (April 10). So if you’ve been thinking of submitting that mystery you’ve been working on, get your entry in pronto!

Here’s the whole list of categories, with their submission deadlines:

Category	Submission Deadline (11:59 pm EST)
Suspense/Crime/Mystery/Thriller	April 10, 2013
General Fiction	May 10, 2013
Nonfiction	June 10, 2013
Middle Grade/Young Adult Fiction	July 10, 2013
Romance	August 10, 2013
Speculative Fiction	September 10, 2013

If you’ve completed a novel (or a nonfiction book – for the first time this year, we’re accepting entries for book-length nonfiction from writers who have never previously published nonfiction) but haven’t yet found a publishing home for it, we’d love to see it!  Check out the complete rules and submission requirements on the Launch Pad Contest tab.

In 2010, the first year of our contest, we ran through the whole list of categories twice, then chose the Grand Prize winner from the list of twelve semi-finalists. We had some excellent entries, and as we’ve reported previously, several of our early participants went on to be successful published authors.

Sally Apokedak entered the second round of the Speculative category (which we then called Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror) with a story called The Button Girl. She won the category, and then went on to be our first Grand Prize winner.

You might recognize Sally’s name, as she's now one of Novel Rocket’s regular contributors, as one of the unexpected byproducts of being our first contest winner. Here are Sally’s thoughts on having been our groundbreaker:

Most of us don't get maps ahead of time that tell us where God is taking us.

When I entered the Novel Rocket contest several years ago, I had no idea where it would lead. I won, to my delight and surprise, and within a couple of months, thanks to Gina Holmes's help, I'd signed with a real-life literary agent.

Well, that was in early 2010. And here we are 3 years later.

I can't tell you that my Novel Rocket win catapulted me to stardom and to six-figure advances. And honestly I'm glad it didn't. Because then I'd be on a different path. And I'm loving the path God has me on, even though I didn't see it coming three years ago.

So…if entering the contest didn't set me on the road to fame and riches, what did it do for me?

• It moved me along the path God has determined for me
• It let me get to know Gina Holmes (and others here), and that's been wonderful
•  It opened the door for me to see how the agent/writer relationship works
• It opened doors for me to get to know editors

And here I am three years later, a literary agent working with the wonderful Les Stobbe. I had no idea when I entered the contest that God was going to give me such wonderful experiences and opportunities.

And two days ago, my Novel Rocket contest experience came full circle when I signed as a client…

Janine Yordy! Another Novel Rocket winner. She took first place in the YA category with a lovely novel in verse.

What a kick! I went from wanting an agent to being an agent. Now God's allowing me to take part in making other people's dreams come true. What could be more fun than that?

Here's my philosophy: God will take us wonderful places if we'll keep on knocking on doors and walking through when he opens them. Grab every opportunity, always keep learning, and praise God in all things, because he has bigger plans in mind for you than you can dream up on your own.

So what do you think?

Could the Launch Pad Contest be an opportunity for you as well?

When she's not coordinating the Launch Pad Contest, Yvonne Anderson writes fiction that takes you out of this world.

Fly through the Gateway to Gannah for some serious sci-fi adventure.

Book #1, The Story in the Stars

Book #2, Words in the Wind

Book #3, Ransom in the Rock (release TBA)

Book #4, (under construction)

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Adjusting the Picture for Clarity

I used to live on a lake in Alaska. I had a gorgeous view from my deck--the little lake, full of wildlife and surrounded by rugged Alaskan mountains.

But the pictures I snapped, once developed,  looked nothing like reality. 

The snow-capped peaks in my photos were flat, small, pedestrian things. They elicited no feelings of wild, brutal power. They never stirred the passion in me that the real mountains provoked. The swans on the lake were little lumps of white in a sea of gray water. The otters and the moose were smudges of brown. 

A better photographer would have taken better pictures. He would have focused his shot to make the mountains pop out and grab me. He would have brought the wildlife forward--blurred the background instead of the subject of the shot. That's what good photographers do. They focus their shots. They freeze a moment and they make us stop and look and really see.

I suspect that even as my camera strips truth from nature, so does the bustle of our world strip meaning from life. Good novelists, like good photographers, have the power to make people stop and listen and learn. We have the opportunity to paint scenes and bring into focus things they often rush past without seeing. 

What we bring into focus, and what we blur in the background matters. 

I once critiqued a novel in which the writer painted a homosexual rape in excruciating detail. It was devastating and ugly, but worse than that, it was so brutal that it lost all power to move me emotionally. I shut down. I couldn’t look, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t connect.

I told the author that the scene would have been more powerful if she had shown the big boys moving in, and then cut away, perhaps to focus on the flower being crushed under the heel of one of the attackers. The flower would act as a metaphor and it would allow the little boy to have some privacy and dignity. Then the author could move back in to show the little boy lying in a wilted, little heap on the ground after the act was done.

We want to elicit emotion so people will grow, but people rarely grow when we bash them over the head with ugliness. They close their eyes.

I'm not saying we should paint peaches-and-cream pictures of life. Our readers don’t live in heaven and we can’t paint heaven on earth and expect anyone to care about what we say. We live in the land of brutal rapes. We can’t lie and pretend that stuff doesn’t happen. But showing ugly, raw stuff is not the answer. 

We often hear that we should show and not tell, and that's partly because people aren't moved and they don’t grow when novelists preach at them. Telling is preaching. Showing is allowing a reader to draw his own conclusions. But as we show, we need to remember to focus our shots. We don't want to show life exactly as it appears to the busy reader as he rushes through his day. 

We want to show the underlying truth that we see in life. 

Anyone can show the grime that lies on top. Anyone can show the rats in the alleys and the pot-bellied babies with flies buzzing their faces.  

We want to go deeper. Where did the grime come from? Why are the babies dying of starvation. Get to the evil heart of man and to the loving heart of God and you will get to truth. 

The truth in the brutal rape scene I mentioned earlier was not when the big boys pulled down the little boy's pants and the author spelled out what happened in detail. The truth was in the big boys approaching caring only about their selfish desires. No love. No mercy. The truth was in the little boy's humiliation. That scar went way deeper than the physical pain. The truth was in the hearts of the boys, not their body parts. 

You’re the artist. You need to play with the light in order to bring some things forward and push some things backward so that the reader will see life as it really is and not as it is appears on the surface.

How have you used metaphors, or how have you seen others use metaphors, to paint more clearly the truth behind brutal acts or beautiful ones?

photo credit: GlacierTim via photopin cc

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Sally Apokedak is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of of building a dynamite list of authors. She is also active in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

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Dialogue ~ The Voices in Your Head

Dialogue is so important, because readers like to get to know characters the same way we like to get to know people in real life. They like to hear people talk and see people act.

So if you want your readers to like your hero, you don’t need to tell the readers how wonderful he is. You don’t have to bog the novel’s opening down with backstory telling how hard life has been for the hero and how he’s done great things despite all that.

What you need to do is give him a voice. Throw him into a situation where his good qualities will show, allow him to speak, and let the readers fall in love.

How do you give your characters strong voices? 

You do it by knowing your characters. Have a picture in mind when you write. Hear the voice. Think of real people or movie characters. I’m not saying to go for a cliché. I’m saying that if you listen to a lot of dialogue in books or movies or in real life, it will be easier for you to write it, and if you have a specific accent in mind when your character speaks, she will feel more real to your readers.

The accent of a character has to be consistent, but you need not be afraid to write a strong accent for fear of forgetting to put it in. The stronger the accent the easier it is to hear and write.

“Oh, Mr. Bennett, you do delight in vexing me!” Can you hear Mrs. Bennett saying that? Every time she speaks you know what her accent is going to be and you know that she will be talking about her lack of money or her poor nerves. That's Mrs. Bennett.

Your characters need to have very strong voices, too. They need to be unique and fun, but also predictable. Meaning they need to be so well done that the reader knows who is speaking just by the line of dialogue, without any tags. 

Maybe I’m odd, but I take on the accents of other people really easily. One of my friends told me years ago that when I spoke to my kids I sounded just like an Alaskan Native. Well, my sisters-in-law were all natives and they spoke to their children a certain way, so I adopted that way of speaking without even knowing I was doing it.

I do the same thing with writing--only I do it on purpose. If I want to write for a certain magazine, I sit down with ten issues and I absorb the voice of the magazine. The next piece I write, then, has that voice.

I think we have to do the same thing with dialogue. If we want our characters to sound real, we have to have real voices playing in our heads as we write. I had a crit partner who pasted pictures of her hero and heroine up on her cork board as she wrote. So one time it was Vin Diesel in Fast and Furious. She heard his voice every time time she wrote one of his lines of dialogue  And her dialogue was some of the best I've read. 

What about you? Are your characters based on people or characters you've seen before? If so, how do you keep them from being clichéd? 

photo credit: ohhector via photopin cc

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Sally Apokedak is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of of building a dynamite list of authors. She is also active in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

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A Metaphor Is the Fizz in the Soda Pop

All writers—not just children’s writers—need to have a basket full of figures of speech in the corner of the office, where the writing books and tools are stored.

Today I want to look at two figures of speech. Two that you all know about, but that are often lacking from manuscripts I receive. Two that, if you will remember to employ them, have the power to move your writing from good to great.

Metaphor and Simile: 

Both metaphors and similes compare two items that are not alike most ways, but which are alike in some way.

Metaphors rename the item under discussion: Envy IS a green-eyed monster. 

Similes use the words “like” or “as” to make the comparison: Life is LIKE a box of chocolates. Or: I was as wound up AS a kindergartner on a sugar high. 

Writers should work to put metaphors and similes into their books, because this kind of picturesque language stays with the reader. We remember Enger’s Peace Like a River (the title of which is itself a simile), in part because of his lovely metaphors and similes:

• Winter was a train crawling north. 
• ...certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science... 
• Sleep was a warm pool. 

Good metaphors and similes have several things in common. 

• They fit the character's POV: 
• A small child wouldn’t say his toy train went as fast as a Bugatti. He’d say it went as fast as his wagon went when his brother pulled him around the yard. 
• An art history professor would be more apt to say his wife had a figure as finely formed as Michelangelo’s David, than to say the sight of her was a pleasing as the sight of new corn popping up after a long winter. 
• They are easy to understand: 
• Even if your character is a physicist, you don’t necessarily want to compare something to a quark. If you use unfamiliar terms in your comparisons, rather than describing something in a lovely, memorable way, you’ll have frustrated the reader by describing a thing he can’t picture. 
• They are memorable…in a good way: 
• It may be true that her eyes sparkled like sun on a lake, but who will remember that? That forgetful metaphor would be better, though, than this memorable one: Her eyes sparkled like diamonds shining in the sewer after a thief flushed them down the toilet when the police came knocking on his door. 

Your turn. What else makes for a good metaphor or simile?

 photo credit: h.koppdelaney via photopin cc

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Sally Apokedak is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of building a dynamite list of authors. She is also active in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

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Foreshadowing

The first time I wrote a novel I wandered around for seventeen chapters, having no idea where I was going, before I fizzled and gave in to writers’ block for six months. I finally had to take the book all the way back to chapter four and rewrite it all.

Even so, that book never worked. There was no pay-off. The ending fell flat.

Why? Because I didn’t know the end from the beginning, so I couldn’t foreshadow the end. I couldn’t build reader anticipation. I couldn’t hint early on that there was only one way to solve the character’s dilemma.
This is not to say that seat-of-the-pantsers can’t write books with stellar endings that wrap things up in a satisfying way. They can. As long as they go back to their beginnings and do a lot of revising to add in the foreshadowing.

This is a necessary step.

And yet, so many writers seem to want to skip this.

When you skip the foreshadowing, it shows in the big things—the surprise ending works as well as pudding coming from the kitchen faucet. Sure it’s funny and unexpected, but it doesn’t really work. You turned the faucet on because you wanted water, not pudding. For an ending to work, a surprise ending or any other kind of ending, the reader has to be properly prepared. He has to say, “Of course. Why didn’t I see that? It was there all along. This is exactly the way the story went and this is exactly where it was supposed to end up.”

Leaving out the foreshadowing shows in smaller ways, too. Little actions that characters take that we don’t expect,  jar us. So do things about the world that surprise us—they have a purple sun? I’m halfway through the book and I’m just now learning this?

You can’t introduce a completely new element into the middle of book. Let’s say you’ve decided that the main character needs a ladder so he can climb into a window. He’s outside a warehouse in the middle of the night. If he’s never been to that warehouse before, you might let him stumble upon the ladder left behind by the painter. But if he was casing the warehouse out that morning and you didn’t have painters there with ladders, you cannot have the ladder there later that night and have the character think, “Oh yeah. One of the painters I saw here earlier left a ladder behind.”

This kind of thing never works. The reader says, “Huh? What painters? I didn’t see any painters.”

Even if your character has never been to the warehouse before, we’ll believe a painter left behind a ladder much more readily if several chapters earlier, you established that a certain painting company had an employee who often left tools behind at sites.

This is what you want to do for your reader: You want to make him believe the story you’re telling is true. It really happened. You’re not just making it up as you go along.

But what if your fly by the seat of your pants? What if you are just making it up as you go along? Now you need a ladder so you decide that earlier in the day painters left a ladder there. Now you need a dog bite so you mention that the character has a dog, even though we’ve didn’t see the dog the last eight times we were in the house. Now you need an evil doctor so suddenly the character becomes clumsy and breaks a leg.
That’s fine as long as you go back later and add in the foreshadowing. Put the painters in well before you need the ladder, show the dog the first time we enter the apartment, and have the character trip five times before he finally breaks his leg. .

Books that are made up of a series of convenient coincidences aren’t satisfying. They feel false. We can’t get into the dream. We can’t get lost in the story world and feel like we’re visiting a real place and reading about real people.

So whether you’re a plotter and planner or a seat-of-the-pantser, take the time to foreshadow. Your readers will thank you.

photo credit: alberto.quaglia via photopin cc

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Sally Apokedak is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of building a dynamite list of authors. She is also active in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

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Cardboard Characters

Here is a problem I find in my own writing and one I see in a lot of submissions:

Characters so focused on their own agendas that they don’t react like normal human beings to what is going on around them.

Let’s make a quick scene for a character with an agenda:

Sharon was thinking about the cute new boy in her math class as she walked to school with Julie. She wondered whether Julie thought he was cute or not. If Julie was interested, Sharon didn’t stand a chance. 

“So what do you think of Barney?” Sharon asked. “The new kid in Math.” 

 “Are you talking about the kid who—”

Before Julie could finish her sentence, a car screeched around the corner and smashed into a fire hydrant not fifteen feet from where the girls stood.

Julie screamed.

Water sprayed up like a geyser.

A man crawled out of the driver’s seat, getting soaked in the process.

“You know,” Sharon said, steering Julie away from the water. “Barney. The kid who just moved here from California. What do you think of him?”

Let Go of the Agenda

Speaking, one time about characters reacting in unrealistic ways, freelance editor Rebecca LuElla Miller said:

Never let a character act or speak just to convey information to the audience. They always have to act according to their own personalities. Ask yourself, “What would she say next?” rather than asking, “What does the reader need to know now?”

I would add, “They not only have to act according to their own personalities. They also need to react to the world in a natural way. “

So on the first draft, constantly ask yourself, “What would she do/say next?”

And then…

Be Aware When Editing

My characters most often fail to react to things that I’ve edited into a second or third draft.

I write the first draft with my scene agenda in mind. For the bit I gave you above we can see that Sharon’s agenda is to find out if Julie is interested in Barney.

When I go back for a second draft I often notice that I was writing fast on the first pass and my characters are having conversations with no scenery to show us where they are. So I add in things. They are walking down the street. What does it look like? It’s a big city so there are cars going by. Then I begin to try to do two things at once. “Hey,” I’ll think, “this is a good time to foreshadow the accident that is going to occur in chapter thirteen. I’ll have a car skid around the corner. That will set up the fact that it’s a dangerous corner.”

So I’ll add in the car skidding around the corner. And then sometimes I forget that the characters have to react to the new element I’ve just added in.

There are other causes to cardboard characters. Have you read any books or manuscripts with cardboard characters? What caused them to feel unreal?

photo credit: peasap via photopin cc 

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Sally Apokedak is an associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's in the process of building a dynamite list of authors.

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Conferences for Children's Writers

ACFW is going on this week, and I'm home all alone.

Well, if you're here reading, I guess I'm not all alone. But isn't it hard to sit home while so many of our Novel Rocket plans are whooping it up at ACFW?

In order to help us not get stuck home again, I decided to list some of the best writer's conferences for children's writers to attend. I'll go in alphabetical order.

Christian

• ACFW (aka American Christian Fiction Writers):

This is not geared toward children's writers, but there are a few editors and agents there who will look at MG/YA proposals and there are plenty of YA writers in attendance. A great place to go to make new friends and meet old friends and the place to be if you want to keep in contact with the Christian publishers and agents. Held in swank hotels every fall--you'll get a good night's sleep at this one.

• Blue Ridge Christian Writer's Conference:

In the beautiful Smokey Mountains in the fall. This is a largish conference with classes for children's writers. I've heard great things about this one and they have a great faculty each year.

• Florida Christian Writers Conference:

I've never been but I'll be attending in 2013 in the spring. A smaller conference but one with a great staff and a couple of mentoring tracks for children's writers.

• Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference:

This spring conference is, I believe, the largest Christian writers conference. This one does have a children's track most years. It has publishers who will look at children's fiction and nonfiction as well as some agents who are willing to look at YA proposals. This is my favorite conference, because of the beautiful setting (in the California redwoods) and the warm, friendly people. It's a bit on the rustic side and the beds are not the most comfortable, but other than that, this conference is perfect.

• Write2Ignite:

Finally one that is aimed specifically at children's writers. A small conference. A short conference. The perfect place to go if you want intimate and less expensive.

General Market

Highlights Foundation

• Workshops

Excellent workshops all year round. Wonderful accommodations and fantastic staff. I can't gush enough about these.

SCBWI Nationals

• SCBWI--LA:

The summer conference. Very big, fantastic staff. Pay a little extra and get the paid critique. They are worth every penny. The workshops are great. This is for all children's writers--non-fiction, fiction, PBs through YA. 

• SCBWI--NY (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators)

The winter conference. Ditto all I said above.

SCBWI Regional Conferences--Spring

• Atlanta

• New England

• Oregon 

 

SCBWI Regional Conferences--Fall

• Birmingham WIK (Writing and Illustrating for Kids)

• British Isles

• Northern Ohio

• Ottawa

• Wisconsin

OK that's all I have right now. Help me out if I've missed some please, and don't forget to bookmark this page so you can find it again easily. Which is/are your favorite conference/s?
   

photo credit: RubyGoes via photo pin cc

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Sally Apokedak is a new associate agent with the Leslie H. Stobbe Literary Agency. She's looking forward to attending lots of conferences next year and hoping to build a dynamite list of children's authors (PB to YA). She is also the local liaison for SCBWI in Cobb County, Georgia.

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Make an Editor Fall for Your Story ~ Wayne Thomas Batson

Wayne Thomas Batson is the Bestselling author of nine adventure novels including the fantasy epic Door Within Trilogy, the pirate duo Isle of Swords and Isle of Fire, and the epic Dark Sea Annals. A middle school Reading and English teacher for 22 years, Batson loves to challenge—and be challenged by—his students. So, when he began writing stories to supplement the school district’s curriculum, it was his students who taught their teacher a lesson. Batson’s students were so taken by one of the stories that, over a thirteen year span, they pushed him to make it into a full-length novel. You can find Wayne at:

• www.enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com
• www.heedtheprophecies.com
• www.swordinthestars.com 

Welcome, Wayne! First, tell us about your latest release, please.

On a grand scale, The Errant King is about a world that has lost its way, a place where too many have opened doors to evil and the global consequences. 

On the personal scale, The Errant King is about a boy and a girl. Ariana lost her parents in the infamous Grey Hour Raids. Now, all she wants to do is make a name for herself in her village or leave home for a new way of life. Lochlan is the High King of the known world, but all he wants a chance for someone—anyone—to really know him without the crown’s interference.

Do you purposely weave Christian pictures into your books or does your worldview seep into the story?

It’s a little of both. Generally, the plot and characters come first, but as I get to know the people in the story and better understand the challenges they face, I start to see thematic threads emerging. Once I recognize where that theme is (or could be) heading, I do seek to create places where the theme can be woven in. That said, I’ve heard from readers about themes in my books that I never even knew were there. They just sort of “become” because of who God has made me to be.

What is your goal when weaving in the theme?

My goal in all aspects of writing: craft, story, mechanics, themes—all of it—is to honor God with quality and lead readers to ask the big questions of life. If readers are impressed with the quality of the story and they ask those big questions, I’m convinced God will meet them halfway.

Are you trying to connect with kids who go to church or to any kids? Boys or girls?

My publishers haven’t given me much demographic information. But early on, my books were selling better in the secular market than they were in the Christian market. I’m not sure if that’s still true. But I don’t write just for “anyone.” Books like The Hobbit had such a huge impact on me as a kid that I want to do my level best to write stories that will thrill readers today…without violating consciences.

One book all children should read, and why should they read it?

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. See there, I cheated. I put several books in. But really, I think all kids should be exposed to a world that is more black and white, where honor matters. I also fully believe that Tolkien’s books, with their lush description and world-building, will “wake” something up in readers, a longing for a faraway world. It is the yearning for what C.S. Lewis calls “that mysterious something” that we’re all after but that this earth can never fully satisfy.

I can see where a reader might long for heaven after spending time in the Shire.

How can I make an editor fall for a story?

Two ways:

1) The Unique Hook—this is a plot device, a scenario that the reader hasn’t seen before but is an obvious problem. A character wakes up…six feet underground or a train enters a tunnel but doesn’t come out of the other side. Something that makes the reader sit up straight and utter that famous Keanu Reeves-ism: “Whoa!”

Or:

2) Thumbscrews—this is a character driven approach where you not only bring an interesting person to life in short order, but you also dump that person into any one of a thousand worst case scenarios. He’s lost his wife; his daughter is dating a biker, and the office just called claiming that he’s responsible for a huge account failing.

But no matter which approach you use, you need to do it FAST. First line, first paragraph, first page. Spend a month just on those. Make them spectacular. You have got to be noticed out of a sea of other stories. Do it right away, or the editor may not even read on.

Heh heh. What have you got against bikers, Wayne?

But, really, I love this advice. We do have to find a way to stand out.

So you like conflict early on. What do you think is most important--conflict, characters, or voice/prose?

I think you can be successful with any approach. But why not just excel at all three. You’ll have a much wider audience that way. That said, the stories that really endure are the ones with at least one endearing character.

Why not excel at all three? Well, when you put it that way…it all sounds so simple.

Do you outline your plots?

I outline vigorously. I use a program called Scrivener that lets me use pushpin note cards to fully plot my stories, complete with art files, sound FX, pretty much anything I want. I spend about a month outlining each novel. For me, that’s the only way I can do it. Otherwise, I get lost in my own plot’s twists and turns.

Okay, let us gain from your hard-won wisdom. What do you know now that you wish you knew five years ago?

I wish I knew way back then more about the actual business of publishing. I’m grateful for the contracts I’ve gotten. But having sold close to half a million books, you’d think I would have earned enough to write full time, but not so.

Unfortunately, legacy publishing just doesn’t treat the author very well. The royalty percentages are scandalously low. Thank God that’s changing now with the advent of eBooks. It won’t be long now…traditional publishing houses will need to begin raising royalty rates or their authors will jump to eBooks.

Whoa. Okay. So what do you know now that you wish you still didn't know?

I wish I didn’t know the conflict of duties that writing professionally can trigger. I’m a full time teacher at a public middle school. I’m a husband, as well as a father of four. I’m a writer busy with several deadlines a year. And no matter what I spend my time doing, something always feels neglected. It can be very stressful and discouraging.

I can't even imagine. You work really hard.

Will you ever consider publishing with general market publisher?

If the contract is right, I would in a heartbeat. That said, I’m not sure I’ll ever sign with another print publisher. I’m under contract for seven books in the Dark Sea series. But aside from those, I plan to do the rest of my books as self pubbed.

Well, I wish you much joy and success, because writing has to be satisfying or it's not worth doing. So, what is your favorite part of writing novels for teens?

I absolutely LOVE reading my stories to kids. I tend to dress in full medieval gear and speak in English/Scottish accents, all the while reading the stories with all manner of drama.

Fun! Do you have a life verse or a Bible passage that shows the direction you want to go with your writing?

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;

Do the children read your books? Do they give you fodder for the books?

My kids have read some of my books, but they just see me as Dad. And yes, they are always targets for future characters. 

Thanks for stopping by, Wayne! 

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Sally Apokedak is the editor of the semi-annual newsletter: Best Books for Young Readers (subscribe for free and you'll be entered to win your choice of a Kindle Fire or a Google Nexus). She has published short works in a number of places and has received an SCBWI Work in Progress grant. She can usually be found blogging about young adult novels at sally-apokedak.com. 

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