165: January Q&A

Free Guide:

5 tips to help you write your book

Welcome to the January Q&A episode! Topics discussed include:

choosing point of view for your novel 2:39
traditional publishing + marketing budgets 8:14
what to do when you know your character but not the plot 13:01
whether to hire an editor before you query 17:51

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January Q&A

Hi friends. Welcome to the January Q and A episode I almost forgot because it's January 21 when I'm recording this. I was recorded the week before it comes out, and I I realized this morning with a panic that I gotta record this episode today. Charleston. I live in Charleston, South Carolina, and we are about to get hit with a snowstorm, which happens like Charleston gets snow like once every three years. Maybe it just doesn't it just doesn't happen. And they're forecasting between one weather report I saw said four inches, and one set a foot. So it's gonna be a big deal. They've already closed daycare early. My mother in law is watching Audrey, and I have to go pick her up in about 30 minutes, and they've already closed daycare tomorrow just in anticipation of the snow.

And people who do not live in the south, always laugh at this, but it's like the reality is that there just are not. We don't have snow plows. We don't have salt. Like, the city just does not have the resources to deal with snow. I mean, there are a few snow plows. The roads have been salted a little bit, but you know what I'm saying? It's just not. We're just not prepared for it. And also, people don't know how to drive in snow. They don't understand. Like, I don't know. I moved to Minnesota when I was in high school, so I learned to drive in Minnesota, and so I learned to drive in winter in snow. And I kind of, yeah, I'm rusty because I haven't lived in a place with snow in a long time, but I feel like I have a basic understanding of how to drive in the snow.

And a lot of people, I just realized Edie's right behind me. Hey girl, a lot of people who live in the south just don't know how to drive it and don't understand, like giving extra distance and slowing down and all that, and so it's just like a shit show. And I guess when it snows. So we have that to look forward to, which is gonna be exciting. I think for Audrey, she did see snow in Minnesota, because we were there for Thanksgiving visiting my family, and there was a little bit of snow, so that was the first time that she saw it. But I'm curious what she'll think about it might be kind of fun to just go for a walk. I mean, it's gonna be cold, so I don't I don't know if we'll really go for a long walk. We might just pop outside tomorrow, since we'll be home.

Okay, we have just four questions to get to this month. So the first question that we got is one that I'm actually going to do a longer episode about. This is good timing in a couple weeks in February. So the question is, you may have answered this previously, but how to choose point of view first or third, multiple I am going to do. I have an episode coming out in a couple weeks that's on choosing point of view for your book, meaning, if you're picking between first person, maybe second person. But I can't imagine a lot of you are thinking about choosing second person for your novel or third person. Like, how do you pick? Do you should you have one character or multiple characters? So I'm going to give an abbreviated version of this answer, or abbreviated answer to this question, but just know that in a couple weeks, we're gonna have a longer episode coming out.

This is one that someone else requested maybe a couple weeks ago when I put something on my Instagram stories about topics for episodes. So the first thing to consider for this is, how is the book coming out? Like, when you sit down to write, you're like, Okay, this is my book. I'm gonna do a writing session. I'm gonna get started. How is the book coming out? Is it coming out in first person, or is it coming out in third person? And that doesn't mean that you have to stick with that necessarily, but I do think it's something to consider, especially for the first draft, because my stance on this is whatever we can do to lower the resistance and make it easier, we should do so if it's easy for you to just get the story out in first person, which is, I, like, I did this. My head hurt, etc.

My those kinds of pronouns, that's what you should do. If it's coming out easier in third person, that's what you should do. There are a few things to consider with point of view, including, like genre. And the thing about genre, I don't believe at all that, because a lot of, I don't know, romance, let's just say is written in first person that you have to write in first person. That's not true at all. But maybe just look at that as a consideration. Do you want to do some something that you feel like more readers will be familiar with? Or do you want to buck that and say, No, I'm going to do something different? Because that's what I'm enjoying. I read a romance recently that was third person present point of view, which I really liked, and it was all single point of view.

And so that was interesting, because that's not something that I see a lot in romance, and I thought it was really well done. So that's, you know, genre is just something that that should maybe factor into your decision, or at least like should be something to consider. But I don't think it's like, oh, well, if you write this genre, then you automatically need to write in this point of view, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. You also should consider how much I don't want to Well, in a way, it's kind of like how much access you want to have to the characters. If we're in first person point of view, first person feels very immediate. It feels very personal. It feels like we are right in the character's brain. And a lot of people like that style, like readers enjoy that, but some readers don't, because they feel like reading first person is just like reading a diary entry or a journal entry or something.

Again, my take on this is sort of like, think about that, but don't let that ultimately make the decision for you, because you can't please all readers. Some readers love first person. Some readers don't, so you're never going to make everyone happy. So I don't think that should be the main thing that factors into your decision, but yeah, there is something a little bit more immediate about being in first person, and there's a slight bit of distance when you write in third person.

So that's kind of the short answer. Again. I'll have more in a couple weeks about that, and oh, real quick on the multiple part of this question. So if you want to have a single point of view character or multiple points of view character depends what type of book you're writing, and it depends if we need to be in the perspective of other characters. Like, if you have multiple, what you would consider multiple main characters, then maybe it is worth it to be in multiple points of view. But if you really just have one protagonist, and they're all the all the other characters are just kind of supporting characters, or like, it doesn't really matter if we see anything happening in the book from their point of view, then I don't think it's really necessary to do that. I would also think about genre too, because, again, something like romance, if you are a fan of the dual point of view structure, where, you know, usually it alternates, not, not like every chapter has to alternate back and forth exactly, and each character has the same number of chapters throughout the book.

But generally speaking, it's like love interest a gets a chapter, and then love interest B gets a chapter. I'm not saying that right, because that makes it sound like there are more than one love interests, one person, one main character in your couple gets one chapter, then the other person gets a chapter, and then back and forth, back and forth. That's probably a better way to say it. And if you like that, that's something you want to pursue. Then you know you obviously need to write in have a dual point of view. Sorry, it's my timer. I have chicken in the oven. I just had a timer for half of it. Just stir it up. I don't have to get it right now. Anyways, okay, so that's what I'll say for that. I will again have more for that on an episode coming up.

Next question we got, why aren't traditional publishers putting as much money into marketing? So I can give you my thoughts on this, but just know that I'm not an expert. I'm not in traditional publishing in the sense that I'm an agent or an editor at a publisher. So and I'm also I have an agent, and I've submitted to publishers, but I don't have a book deal yet, fingers crossed. So I can't speak on this from personal experience, but I can just share from friends, from things I've seen online, like, what kind of what some of the factors might be that contribute towards this. So I think there's a common misconception.

First of all, let me just say that people think traditional publishers don't have any money for marketing. And that's not true. I mean, part of the thing, what you're signing up for when you're signing up for a traditional publishing deal is they are distributing the book for you, like they're taking care of printing. They're printing advanced reader copies for you. They're getting your book into bookstores, usually, like they're doing all of that work to try to sell your book, to try to get your book out there in the world. So there is marketing going on in that sense, always, that's always built into a traditional publishing book deal, unless it's some kind of like digital only deal.

But I am, would be in agreement from things that I've read that it does seem like there's just not as much money or effort being put into marketing overall. If you're a heavy hitter, if you're an A Lister. If you have a big, flashy book deal, then you're probably going to have more marketing money thrown towards you. But if you're a debut author with no established you know, people don't know who you are, then maybe there's not as much so part of this.Come down to the fact that the traditional publishing world, in terms of the staff, it keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. We saw was it two years ago.

Now, I'm blanking on the date, but one of the big traditional publishers went on strike because most of people who work in traditional publishing, editors, PR, people, agents. They live and work in New York City, which is very expensive, and they're making like next to nothing in terms of money. And publishers are making all of these profits, and it's not being distributed towards the people who are actually doing the work and making these this money, these profits possible. So they're basically just overworked and understaffed. That's a big part of it, and that's a big part of why there's so much turmoil and craziness in the agenting world, is because people get burned out and they leave. That's why there's there's it's an issue in the editing world, in terms of editors at publishers, not what I do, because they get burned out and they leave, they switch jobs. They're essentially getting so much more responsibility, without much what, without much pay, with fewer staff members. So it's a big issue, and I think that affects the marketing and the advertising as well.

But I think part of this, I want to, I want to shift part of this the way that I see it anyway, as someone who is like, put her toe in the door of this world and is hoping to soon get a book deal. There's really something about you, building a brand as an author and connecting with readers that is essential when it comes to selling a book, finding readers all of that like being successful as an author, right? You can't just I've seen a sentiment among authors. Sometimes it's like, I just want to focus on the writing. I just want to focus on the right the writing, the I just want to focus on making my art. And then I want a traditional publishing deal, because I don't want to do any marketing. I just want them to focus on all that. Well, first of all, it's not how it works anymore. And second of all, you have to do some marketing. You have to do it because it's a way for you to connect with readers. It's a way for you to build community. It's a way for you to just for all of those things, like, if you want longevity as an author, you have to do that, and you have to be I mean, social media is just a part of that.

And I don't think, I mean, yes, you can have the weight of a traditional publisher behind you, to get you opportunities, to get your foot in the door, to get your book in bookstores, to maybe even set up something like a book tour for you. But ultimately, you have to be the face of your book and your author brand and put yourself out there. So it can never be completely outsourced, outsourced, and it never should be completely outsourced. That's definitely something that we should be doing a lot of as well, just to connect with readers. So that's my limited understanding of it. But I'm sure there are people who are actually like in the traditional publishing world, like agents and editors and even marketing or PR people who can talk about this more in depth than than I can.

Okay, next up responses, sorry. I don't know why I'm Oh, there we go. Someone said I have this amazing story in my head, or at least I think it's amazing, and I've just started writing it, and I'm kind of lost. I have the backstory of my main character in my head, but I just can't write it or the plot. And I was wondering if you had anything that would help. Plus, I follow you in Pinterest and love your videos. Well, thank you. First of all, I'm not active on Pinterest anymore, but I keep all of my pins up and all of my videos and everything. So if you're on Pinterest, you can, you can find me there. I love Pinterest. Okay, so if you have an idea of the main character in your head, but you're struggling with the plot, I'm gonna give you a couple of things. You can do a couple of exercises to kind of flesh out the story a bit more, so that maybe you feel like you can kind of get started on that, on that part of it. So if you have some ideas about your character, first of all, that's great. That's a really good starting point.

And part of fleshing out a character, and kind of figuring out what the plot is going to be around this character, is to think about what this person wants. When you think about this character, what are they working towards? What's their goal? What are they striving for? And then, once you know that, you can think about what's standing in the way of them getting what they want. Because we can never make it too easy for our main character, right? If they want a promotion at work and they get that promotion in chapter two, what's the what's the point? Right? So we want to make them work for things. We want to throw obstacles in their way that force them to grow and change and develop. Because we need conflict. Every book needs conflict. We need it for momentum and pacing and character development and plot. So if you can figure out what your character wants and figure out what's standing in the way of them getting what they want, that's an opera.

Opportunity for conflict, and it's also an opportunity for plot development. Your character can want multiple things. Maybe they want some kind of internal like personal things that are more vague and intangible, and maybe they want some external things that are more tangible or quantifiable. So that's that's a first idea to try to think about your character and extend it a little bit more to what they want. What they want, what's standing in the way of them getting what they want to then think about conflict. The other way is to just do something called a brain dump. So I think as writers, we can be really hard on ourselves in the brainstorming process, and we judge our ideas before we even like give them give ourselves a chance. So what I want you to do is set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes, get a blank Word doc up or just a journal page.

You can do this long hand if you want, and just come up with ideas. This is not a formal, structured like story structure kind of thing. You're not putting this into a format. This truly is just allowing your mind to come up with scenarios for this character, especially if you do know what they want, with standing in the way of them getting what they want. But you, if you kind of know the world, you kind of know the character, what could happen? Start with the question, what if? What if this? What if this? And then what if this? Once you and don't worry again, don't worry about, like, oh, well, how would I do this? Or where exactly would I put that in the book? No, right now, you're not doing any of that stuff.

You are just getting ideas down. Force yourself to either come up with as many ideas as you can in 10 or 15 minutes, or just give yourself, like, some time and say, Okay, I'm gonna come up with 20 ideas. I'm just brain dumping what could happen in the book based on what I know about it so far, then you can start to look at what you have and kind of put some connective tissue in if you want to, kind of, okay, I'm going to take this scene maybe this is a good idea, because this is related to conflict, and then because of that, this character would do that. So then you start to have every plot point that you figured out kind of build upon each other. If you want a more structured outline, there are definitely outlining strategies that you can look at.

What I mean when I say outlining strategy is just there aremethods of brainstorming and plotting and developing your story where it's almost like you plug your story into a formula and it's structured in the way that you do it. There's things like safe, the cat, the W outline, the snowball method. So there are different ways that you can do this that are more structured, but this is what I'm doing to answer this question. Is just giving you kind of some looser things to try to hopefully get the momentum going so that you cankind of continue writing and figure out maybe a little bit more of the plot.

All right, last question, do I have to get an editor? I'm thinking about querying, and not sure if it's something I need. I'm writing. Thought I'm writing YA fantasy for reference depends. And I hate to say that, but it's true. It just depends. Editing is never a requirement. It's not like an agent is not going to allow you to query them if you have not worked with an editor or something. But I will say that what you really want to keep in mind with querying is that you really have one shot to impress an agent. So you want to present your best work. You don't want to give them a first draft. You don't want to send you send a manuscript that has not been edited by you. You want to make sure it's polished and like, as good as it can possibly be, not perfect, because we're never going to reach perfection, but pretty solid, right? So if you have a beta reader, someone who can look at it for you and give you feedback, to make it story, to make the story stronger, that's great.

So what I mean by making the story stronger is like, do you have someone who can give you feedback on things like plot, plot holes, inconsistencies, character development, pacing of the story, conflict, the setting, the dialog, things like that, not just I like this or and I don't like This. I think you should change it, whether or not you hire an editor is kind of a decision that you have to make, and part of it is financial, and I recognize that as an editor, because I'm an editor, but I'm also a writer who queried, and before I queried the first time and I signed with my first agent, I did hire an editor because I wanted to make sure that my story was strong. Now, there are different types of editing, so the type of editing that I did, and that I recommend most often for people who are querying, is a developmental edit or a manuscript evaluation, which is what I do, which is where you're getting feedback on those things I just mentioned, plot, characters, dialog, conflict, etc. Copy editing is a type of editing that cleans up grammar.

Punctuation, spelling, verb subject, verb agreement, verb tense, usage, etc. I don't think that's essential for querying, unless you have a real you're really not sure about grammar. You don't you feel like it's not one of your strong suits, and you have a suspicion that the manuscript is pretty messy in terms of grammar. There's nothing wrong with that. No need to be ashamed of that. By the way, you can be an incredible writer, an incredible storyteller, and not have the best understanding of grammar or sentence structure. So don't stress if that's you. But in that case, copy editing would probably be a good investment, because if it's to the point where your grammar and usage and all that affects readability, then it might be an issue if you're going to query, but if you feel like your sentences are strong and you have a good understanding of grammar, then you might not need to copy edit.

So yeah, and that's true whether this person's writing by a fantasy but it's true no matter what genre you're writing, I don't think it's genre specific. That's advice that I would give to anyone who is writing fiction and going to query. So all right, well, thank you to everyone who submitted questions for this month, I am gonna go pick up Audrey from my mother in law's and then Wish us luck with the snow. Y'all, I'm not sure what to expect, but it could be brutal, and I will see you next week. Oh, just reminder for February, if you want to submit a question for me to answer on the podcast, you can submit questions about writing, editing, mindset, creativity, brainstorming, querying, social media, personal stuff, whatever you want the link to do so is in the show notes, and the Q and A comes out the last Tuesday of every month. Alright? Thanks y'all. Thank you so much for listening.

Because the thing with it is, if you query and you do sign with an agent, you're going to go through revision. You're going to go through editing again before you send it to publishers. And then if you get a book deal, you're also going to go through more editing, so just keep that in mind. So that's that's my answer. I think it depends, but if you are considering one type of editing, I would definitely recommend a developmental edit or the manuscript evaluation. Kind of the same thing, because that's going to help you make sure that your story is ready. Because again, you don't want to send a manuscript out for querying that just is not where it needs to be, because it's not going to go well, you're not going to get a positive response from agents, and then, you know, you've kind of, this is so negative to say it this way, but it's kind of like you you blew your shot a bit, like if you send them a first draft with a story that needs a lot more work. They're probably not going to be open to looking at it again if you've if you do another round of editing on it. So I would say, just wait to query. Make sure it's solid. If you're going to hire someone, that's when to do it.

Katie WolfJanuary 28, 2025