July 2016 | Busybird Publishing

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World-Building

July 28, 2016

The idea for a novel bursts into your head.

How long do you wait before you start writing? Do you jump right in front of the computer? That would seem the best idea. Get into it. Write. Write. Write. The only problem is how far will inspiration take you?

Unless you’ve had some miraculous inspiration that’s envisioned

story
plot
subplots
characters
locations

you’re going to reach a point in your story where you don’t know what comes next. It happens to the best of us.

Do not trust inspiration – not wholly. It’s the spark. That’s it. It’s not the fire.

The moment you’re inspired, start planning your story. Work out as much as you can of the world your story takes place in. And take this as far as necessary.

If your story is about a family coming to terms with a loved one’s death, you’ll have to map out the family – who’s in it? Who are their partners? Who are their parents and grandparents? Who are the friends of your protagonists? Do they own a dog? A cat? Where does everybody live? What do they do for work? Do they study? Is there anything particular about the characters – e.g. goals (the family might be big in law enforcement but one character wants to go into the arts), conditions (they might suffer depression, or be diabetic)? Where does each character begin and where do they end?

Or you might have a story about a disgraced police detective whose partner is killed, and the detective works the case to find the murder. Why was the partner killed? What was the motive? Who’s in the story? Who are the suspects? What do they do? In what locations will they be found? For example, one suspect might be a bartender. Do they work in a pub, an exclusive bar, or some dive? What areas are covered? What’s the timeline?

You don’t need to know the entire story from beginning to end. Many writers begin with a basic premise that can be summed-up in a single sentence, e.g. Following a death in the family, each family member struggles with their relationships and their place, and must reconcile where they go from here, or To clear their name, a disgraced detective must investigate the murder of their partner. And all you might have outside of that are flashes of what else happens, things that’ll eventually link up.

But work out the rest of it as much as you can. And push yourself. Don’t just leave it at a handful of people and a handful of locations. You’re better off having characters you never use and places that you never visit, rather than coming to an empty hole as to where you go next, and trying to work out what’s needed.

Because that’s what’ll happen if you don’t world-build. Once inspiration burns out and leaves you stranded, the option is to be left in a world you don’t know very much about (outside of your immediate locale), or it can be in a world that you’ve mapped and know intimately, one which presents as many possibilities as things to do and places to go as any tourist location.

Role of an Agent

July 21, 2016

Most authors want a traditional publishing deal. There’s a validation that comes with that: the gratification and branding of being accepted. But, collectively, traditional publishers accept only a handful of unsolicited manuscripts yearly. Some refuse to look at unsolicited manuscripts entirely. A few have specific windows when you can submit. So how do you get published?

Something that can help is having an agent.

What does an agent do?
An agent submits your manuscript to a publisher – usually directly to an editor, as opposed to a slush pile reader. Having an agent in itself carries its own form of branding, that the author’s work merited an agent’s attention.

How do you get an agent?
Trying to get an agent is the same as trying to get a publisher: read their guidelines, submit your work (usually just a sample), wait, wait, wait. If they’re interested, they’ll ask to see the rest of it. Then wait some more. Some more. Some more. If they’re not interested, they’ll decline you and you move on. Their response times vary.

	Sidenotes
	—	Most agents will want a fresh manuscript, and not one you’ve already submitted to every publisher there is.
	—	Most agents will also prefer that you’re not submitting simultaneously to other agents.
	Important:	Don’t think you can fib an agent about either of these things. Most agents have, at some point, worked in publishing. They know everybody there is to know, so if you’re lying about something, there’s a great chance they’ll find out.

Do agents charge?
Not directly. If an agent is charging you to take you on, there’s something shifty going on. An agent earns money – a percentage – from making a deal for you. Obviously, the better the deal they get you, the more money they’ll earn.

Does having an agent guarantee you’ll get published?
Nope. It’s still a submission process.

What else will an agent do for you?
They’ll read your manuscript and offer your feedback. Remember, your manuscript is a representation of their taste, and their agency. They want to be submitting the best possible manuscript. If they have feedback – and, again, remember, they have experience in this industry – the feedback is worth considering.

Will I be obligated to the agent in any way?
You will sign some sort of agreement – usually one that involves exclusivity. But you’re not signing away your soul. You will be able to get out of it if it’s not working out for you.

Are there different sorts of agents?
Yes. They’ll have different specialties (in regards to genre and mediums), so it’s worth finding one who’ll fit your needs.

So what’s the benefit of having an agent?
They’ll be able to submit to places you can’t. If you get a contract, they’ll negotiate it for you, whereas you might be clueless. Big agencies with international offices might try to sell your book internationally, independent of your local contract, i.e. they might sell your book to a publisher here, to another publisher in the UK, and another publisher in Germany, etc.

Do I really need an agent?
No. You can still get your own publishing contract through unsolicited submission, and retain a legal professional or the Australian Society of Authors to evaluate the contract you’ve been offered.

Where can I find an agent?
You can try the Australian Writers’ Marketplace, and there’s a list on the Australian Literary Agents’ Associations website ( under Members).

Diligence

July 14, 2016

As writers, most of us want to share our stories with a greater audience. Yes, we write for ourselves. But once the story is completed, we want others to read it and enjoy it.

But what are we doing to make that a reality?

The process we follow to try get our story out there is similar for everybody:

Write
Revise!
Revise!
Revise!
Submit / Self-publish

There’s also complementary action you can take, e.g. you might join a workshop group or retain an editor to help with the revision process, or go back to school or participate in a course to improve your writing, or try secure an agent to help you get published. But, in the end, we’re left with writing our manuscript, revising our manuscript, and submitting our manuscript or self-publishing.

Let’s look at the steps.

Write
This should go without saying. You need a manuscript before you can submit it. Don’t be a writer who only ever talks about writing, and never actually writes. Sit down and write. Write daily – even in small chunks, if that’s all you can afford. But do it.

Revise! Revise! Revise
Don’t believe for a second that your first draft is flawless. It’s not. Revise. And revise. And revise. Get it the best it can be. A raw manuscript can take you only so far. It’s not going to convince your reader to overlook issues in your writing that might’ve been addressed through some diligent revision.

Submit / Self-publish
Let’s break this down further …

Self-publishing

They won’t.

Self-publishing is a valid alternative, but if it’s something you’re going to do, please, please, please, do it right. Examine the way books look – especially any books similar to yours. Make sure your prose is crisp and clean. Think about any criticisms that might come up later – queries about formatting, paper stock, structure, and copy – and address them now. Eliminate them now. You want the reader to lose themselves in your story, not in queries about the book’s production.

Submit
So you submit and a traditional publisher wants to pick you up.

Awesome!

However, make sure the deal is right. This doesn’t mean becoming a diva and making unrealistic demands, or even trying to squeeze everything you can out of them. Most publishers will be fair – or at least as fair as their own budgets allow. But contracts can have idiosyncrasies.

The Australian Society of Authors offers a contract assessment that’ll highlight any queries they have with the contract, and which you can bring back to the publisher.

Obviously, you want to get published. But don’t let acceptance blind you. Make sure the deal is fair for you.

Regardless of the course, in the end it’s about diligence.

Don’t be half-arsed in taking your journey.

Trailers

July 7, 2016

You’re sitting in the cinema, waiting to see a movie. The commercials finish. A studio’s logo comes up. Music pipes in. And then you get it .

The trailer.

It might be for a movie you’ve been hanging out for – the new Star Wars or Harry Potter or something. You’re going to watch this movie regardless. But now you’re seeing actual footage from it. Images flash across the screen. Effects blare from the speakers. The film’s score reverberates through the cinema.

Or perhaps the trailer’s for a movie you know very little about, if anything. But now the trailer introduces you to an intriguing premise. And, oh, that actor you like is in this. And the turn of events are interesting. Maybe this movie wouldn’t be a bad one to see. It’s certainly one you’ll look out for now.

Surely you’ve been in either of these situations. You might even be somebody who simply enjoys watching trailers. I know I do. A good trailer is an art form itself – an insight into a film that introduces us to the following:

that this story exists
the characters involved
the story that takes place
what’s at stake
who’s responsible for the story (e.g. director).

The trailer is a story in its own right. It teases us into wanting to know more, and then hooks us, without divulging any spoilers that can ruin the actual experience of watching the movie.

Well, that’s what the trailer should do. Unfortunately, due to Hollywood’s schism into franchising, a lot of movies are now exercises in CGI and follow a simple formula, lacking any substantive storytelling. With that being the case, often trailers become advertisements for the movie’s existence, and don’t tell you very much about what’s going on, or try to build any real story or intrigue.

If you trawl through YouTube you can see the way the trailer has evolved over the decades, and the different forms they’ve taken. Of today’s studios, Pixar and Marvel usually perform a brilliant job in generating buzz from their trailer. The trailer for Marvel’s Iron Man 3 was amazing in creating a misdirect, so that the audience went into the film with preconceptions the story could then eschew. Compare that to the early Batman vs Superman trailers, which gave away too much – Batman fights Superman, a big monster shows up, and they band together against the common enemy. Way to undermine the Batman versus Superman conflict. It’s important that the right balance is found.

We’ve accepted the existence of the trailer as a means of promoting movies, but now it’s also becoming an increasingly valid method of promoting books. But whereas a film offers a catalogue of visuals and sounds to draw on to build the body of its storytelling, a book can only rely on its story. That means everything else has to be built around it – music chosen (if any), and images created from scratch.

But the same logic applies, because what we’re trying to do is exactly what we’d do for a film – and that is to introduce the audience to the following:

that this story exists
the characters involved
the story that takes place
what’s at stake
who’s responsible for the story (e.g. director).

If you have a book that’s about to come out, or have one that’s out, think about how you could use a trailer to help create buzz around it.

It’s certainly something we’re also trying here at Busybird.

Month: July 2016

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