019: Writing Q&A, Part 2

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Writing Q&A, Part 2

Hello, friends, I'm so excited to be bringing you another q&a episode, I did another one, or I did a part one a few weeks ago, and answered four questions. So you can go back and listen to that one if you haven't had a chance to do so. But I got a lot of messages about it. And it seems like it was a really popular episode. So I thought, Hey, what the heck, I'll do a part two. So we've got some good questions to dive into today. Let me go ahead and jump to the first one. And by the way, just like with episode, with the part one of the q&a, all of these questions were pulled from Instagram, I polled my my Instagram followers to see if they had ideas or questions that they wanted to ask for this episode.

Okay. Question number one. Do you think it's important to have a social media following before you start querying? It's funny that this question was asked because I just posted a Tik Tok not too long ago about this very same thing, this idea of having a social media presence as a way to make yourself stand out as a way to make yourself look better when you are querying to try and find a literary agent. So because most people who follow me know that I cover fiction, I'm not as well versed in nonfiction I'm I'm going to answer this as if this person is asking for fiction like they're they're writing fiction, they're going to be querying for a novel that they've written nonfiction, it is more important to have a following and to have kind of a social media presence, need to have a platform in order to get a traditional book deal, usually as a as a nonfiction author. But for fiction, it's not necessary in the sense that you don't have to have a large platform. You don't have to have at least 15,000 followers, like there's no magic number. You don't have to be extremely active on social media. None of that is is a requirement. I got my agent, when I was I don't know I had a few thousand followers maybe. I had a lot more followers on Twitter.

This is this is kind of funny, actually, I'll share this this little story. So before I started querying, I was very concerned about the fact that I didn't have a lot of social media followers. And I panicked, like, straight up panicked, to the point where I had gotten on Twitter a couple of months before that, and before I started querying, not because I love Twitter, but just because I felt like I should be on Twitter. And immediately did that thing where you follow a bunch of people, and then they follow you back. So it made it look like I had a lot of followers, but I was also following a lot of people. So I think I had like 6000 followers on Twitter, but I was probably following 7000 people. So it really wasn't. I don't know why I got all in my head about that. I think I was just stressed and it felt like something I could control about the process to increase my odds. It didn't matter. I was not getting my agent because I had 6000 Twitter followers.

No one was engaging with my stuff. No one was retweeting or responding, like it just I had only started at a couple months before it was pretty clear. I I wasn't really doing a lot on Twitter. I had maybe 2000 Instagram followers, and Facebook was like, I don't know 400 Like my family and friends. And I wasn't on Tik Tok because this was 2000 Oh gosh, 2018. So Tik Tok wasn't in the picture yet. So all that to say, I panicked because I thought I needed to have with this big social media presence. And it turns out, it just wasn't important. The story is what's important. Now, I'm sure that my agent, before she decided to offer to represent me, I'm sure that she Googled me, I'm sure that she looked at my social media profiles, just to make sure that I wasn't insane, and posting insane stuff. But that's not why she signed me. Now, I do think it can help show agents and then in turn down the road show publishers and editors that you know how to do social media. Traditional publishing, yes, you have some marketing support behind you, but you're still you know, you still have to do a lot of that stuff yourself. And so, if you have social media presence It can't hurt, it's gonna, you know, it's a benefit. But you don't need to have 1000s of followers. So I hope that puts your mind at ease whoever wrote this question.

Okay, next question is, let me get to my list here. Okay, dialogue tags, how do you approach them without becoming overwhelmed and frustrated? Oh, okay. Dialogue tags: there are two camps of people when it comes to dialogue tags. Camp A says that you should only ever use said, as in John said, Let's go to the store, or let's go to the store said, John. And that you should meet maybe occasionally, you can throw in another dialogue tag like exclaimed or yelled or something, but 99% of your dialogue tags should be said. Because what happens with said is that the reader can just kind of gloss over it. They don't get caught up on that it just sort of fades into the background and the focus is on the actual dialogue itself. what's being said, said. The other camp camp B says no, no, you need to mix it up. You need to not let it get boring for the reader, you need to vary the dialogue tags that you that you're using. So yes, use shouted and yelled and grumbled and exclaimed. All of those are great.

I am in the camp of using said. So when I'm explaining my answer to this question, just know that I'm, I have a strong opinion on this. If you use other dialogue tags, that's fine. I just find as a reader, it's so much easier for me. When it's just said, you know, I don't get caught up in in all the other, you know, dialogue tags that are being used, I can focus on reading the actual words. And I also think there's something to be said for letting the tone and letting the action that the characters are doing, letting everything else speak. So instead of just saying, he shouted, or he exclaimed or he grumbled, let the character's body language or what they're saying let other things convey the fact that maybe this character's grumbling a bit, maybe they're not happy. Instead of just saying right out, he grumbled. The other thing to keep in mind with dialogue tags, and I don't, I'm not sure if this person is getting overwhelmed or frustrated with trying to mix it up. Or if they're overwhelmed and frustrated with how often to include them or if it's something else.

So if you are getting frustrated with not knowing like how often to include them. I always err on the side of possibly including one to many dialogue tags, because I want it to be immediately clear to the reader who is speaking, that is very important in my writing. It's very important when I'm working on a client's manuscript, especially in scenes with more than two people, if you have three people, four people, five people, a group, a lot of people. It's very easy to get lost in who's saying what that doesn't mean, you need to have a he said or she said after every single line, especially two characters have been going back and forth. I just think we want to make it easy. We don't want we don't want to make the reader have to search to go to read a few lines forward or for a few lines back to discover who is speaking we want it to be clear. So the other thing I'll say with dialogue, is look at examples in books, both in your genre and outside of shop of your genre. That's one reason that I recommend writers read so much is because you can pick up on how different writers are creating dialogue, the stylistic choices that they're making, how often they include dialogue tags, you can start to get a feel for it by reading by looking at examples. So if you're really having a hard time wrapping your head around dialogue tags and like totally frustrated, look at some books just look at some examples of how people are doing this.

Question, three. Do you know when your book is going to be published? When can we read it? Oh my gosh, okay, I don't know what's going to be published. Here's the update, I'm recording this at the end of February. I got some notes, my agent and I had a call a couple of weeks ago, and I got some notes from her about my manuscript, and I'm going to make a change, while I'm gonna make. I'm gonna make a big change in the plot, I'm going to move an event that I had happened way later in the book, I'm going to move it to about the 50% mark, maybe the 60% mark in the manuscript, which is quite a quite a big undertaking, and I shared on Instagram or a few different places about procrastinating on it, because I'm just like, it was going to be a lot of work. But I'm probably halfway through the edits right now feeling good. Yes, it's a lot of work. But I think it's going to make make the manuscript so much stronger. So I'm going to check back in with her sometime in March, either to update her and let her know if I need more time, or send her the updated manuscript. Then after that, I think we're gonna go through one more round of edits, just kind of polishing things, she didn't really do it line edit, and like, give me a ton of feedback, she was just like, let's start with this big plot thing and then we'll kind of go from there. So we'll probably do one more round of polishing, and then it will go on submission to publishers.

So the thing about traditional publishing, it moves so slowly. So slowly, even best case scenario, let's say, in a dream world, this book would go out in submission, and someone would snatch it up, and I would get a book deal. You know, two weeks later, a girl can dream, right? So let's say that that happens, it might still be a year and a half, potentially even close to two years before this book is actually released. So unfortunately, it is going to be a while but I promise to keep you all in the loop as much as possible. I promise to share this journey, I promise to kind of share what's happening behind the scenes, like I will keep you all updated as much as I can. But that's where that's where things are right now. So fingers crossed and get through these edits.

Okay, last question. I can't pick a story idea. I have so many and go back and forth, but haven't been able to finish any of the books I've started writing, how can I make myself choose one? Woo. Okay. This is another question that I've gotten a few times I think this is very common. This is a common thing for me, too. I always have multiple works in progress going. Right now I have started three books. Yeah. So I'm going on one of them, I have about 8000 words written of a book, and I'm gonna try to keep going with this one, but I get it, it's very common. It happens a lot. So one reason I think this happens, I really enjoy starting the story, I get a lot of momentum, once I have the idea. It's so fun for me to get started. And then around the 10,000 word Mark, I sort of lose steam. And it's not as exciting, the newness of the story has sort of, it's sort of worn off a little bit. So I don't know the person who asked this question, maybe you're in a similar boat, where it's very easy for you start things and then you can kind of lose steam as they as you go.

What I would say is, check in with yourself, do a gut check and be honest on if the reason that you're moving to a different story and jumping to a new project is because you actually genuinely don't like the book idea that you are on. You know, sometimes that happens, like, I can get an idea for a book. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is great. And then I kind of sit with a little bit. And I'm like, actually, I can't write a full book about that. I'm not really that interested in exploring it. Let me just kind of table that. So that can happen. Do a gut check. See if the reason you don't want to go down that road is because you're genuinely just not that excited about it. Maybe you think it's a good idea. And it should be something you want to write but you don't actually want to tell that story? Or is it that you just don't want to sit down and do the work to discover who these characters are, what the conflict is, what the world is like? All of those big questions that take some time to dive into. is it that you're afraid of doing that work or don't want to do that work?

The next thing, the next piece of advice I have is to make yourself pick one story idea, put those other manuscripts away. Focus on one for maybe a month, not forever. It's not saying you have to never go back to this other manuscripts. Give yourself a solid month or two. You know, you can pick a different timeline if you want but I would say at least a month have really focusing on the manuscript on on one manuscript that you are most excited about that you are most lit up by. If at the end of that month, you're still not feeling it, it's still a slog, you're still tempted to go to your other story ideas or start something completely new, then that's something to maybe pay attention to, if you're really not enjoying the story that you're writing. But at the end of 30 days, if you are excited, like, yeah, maybe it's hard, but you're still inspired by the story and you want to keep telling it, then that's a sign too. So this requires getting honest with yourself. And also just kind of forcing yourself to see an idea through for a short period of time, you don't have to see it all the way through the end, just a month, and see how that goes.

So that was part two. I also got a question about email lists and starting an email list. But that was the episode that came out last week all about how to start an email list and talking about email lists and newsletters from more of a marketing perspective and a small business perspective, which is how I understand them. So you can definitely check out that episode for information on email lists. Okay, I will open up a call again at some point for another q&a episode. So if you have other questions, just stay tuned. You can follow me on Instagram at TheKatieWolf and make sure to watch for that. For that post, right. I asked for some more questions because I love doing this. It's a good idea for me to get content into make an episode that I know y'all are going to appreciate and it's going to be helpful. So yes, stay tuned for that.

Katie Wolf