169: February Q&A

 

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

  • if characters should always be wildly distinctive 2:16

  • getting into book editing as a new college grad 6:18

  • updates on my book 13:26

The Creating Strong Characters Workshop is happening March 6 at 1pm EST! Register HERE. 

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- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info

- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.


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February Q&A

Hi friends. Welcome to the February edition of our cute the February episode Q and A episode. What am I trying to say? Oh my God, I need to grab this intro and re record it, but I'm not going to the February Q and A episode. We have just a few questions to dive into this month. Reminder that if you would like to submit a question for me to answer on the podcast, you can do so at the link in the show notes, there's a form that you could fill out. It's anonymous. You don't have to put your name, and you can ask a question on writing, editing, mindset, business, social media, querying personal stuff, whatever you'd like, and I'll answer it in the next month's episode.

 

Okay, before we get into the questions, I am going to be hosting a creating strong characters workshop, happening Thursday, March 6, at 1pm Eastern Time. The link to register, and also just to get more info is in the show notes as well. And this is going to be a 60 minute workshop. I'm going to teach for most of it. There's going to be a little exercise, and then we will have time for questions at the end. Characters are my absolute favorite thing to talk about when it comes to writing, and just I adore them, and I you'll find more information about what we're going to cover if you click the link. Basically, I'm going to talk about like, developing them, creating strong characters, why it's essential, how to actually do this, common pitfalls, things that I see when I'm editing manuscripts, things to avoid, and it's going to help you in the drafting process, in the editing process, if you're editing your characters, whatever stage you're in, and it's $39 and you will get sent the replay after it's done. So if that time, Thursday, March 6, at 1pm eastern doesn't work, go ahead and register. You'll just get sent the recording, and you can watch it as many times as you want. It's yours to keep after.

 

Okay, let's get into our questions for this month. First question we have is, how to have characters with distinctive voices, when you don't want to give one of them a quirk and they have a similar background, do they even need to be extremely different? I'm really glad that someone asked this question, because it gives me a chance to clarify writing advice that I hear a lot, that I've given a lot, which is about your characters being different. So generally, yes, your character should be distinctive. But like this question says, when you have characters who are who come from a similar background, grew up together, maybe they have kind of similar personalities, it is entirely possible that those characters might speak in a similar way.

 

Now, whether that's dialog like the actual words that they're speaking out loud, or their internal dialog like their thoughts, if we're in their point of view, we're getting a chance to see how they're reacting to things, their thoughts, their feelings, etc. So those might be kind of similar. That's definitely possible. So this advice is generally true, but there is that bit of nuance to it that, yes, they don't have to be like radically different or radically distinctive. So what I what I want to add to this, though, you could have characters who come from similar backgrounds, who are kind of similar, but yet still have something distinct about the way that they act with it they speak with the way that they think. Because fiction is not just copying personalities or people or characters from real life and putting them into a novel form. You have to dial up things a bit in fiction, in order to make for a compelling story, in order to create compelling, engaging characters, you have to turn up the dial. You have to amp up those things so, no, they don't need they don't need to be radically different, but they should be different.

 

You don't want to just have copies of a character throughout where their best friend feels like essentially the same person, just with a different hair color and a different name, or their mom or their partner or their boss, it should be they should be distinct. There's advice when you are writing multiple point of view books that the voices, the way that people act and operate, whatever should be distinct enough so that when you open up a page of a novel, you should be able and you just flip to a random page, you should be able to tell right away whose point of view you're in. Now I don't think that's always accurate. I don't think that's always advice, just to. Uh, maybe it's good to strive for. It just doesn't always work in practice.

 

But I've given this advice to clients occasionally where I'm thinking of an instance recently where the character, the character, the author was writing, uh, romance with that was a dual point of view, romance and the characters, the love interests, were very different. They came from different backgrounds. They were distinct. They had different jobs, they lived in different places, like just very different people, right? And their their dialog, the words that they were saying out loud, but then also when we were in their point of view, their internal dialog, thoughts, their feelings, their interiority, it felt exactly the same. So in that case, it was not a good, not effective, because they felt like the same people, even though they were supposed to be very different. So I encourage that author in that case to just amp up the differences and or not even amp up the differences, just to have the dialog and their internal dialog, their internal narration, when we were in their point of view, to have it reflect those differences, because if they are radically different people, they're going to think differently, they're going to speak differently, they're going to have different mannerisms, all of that's going to be different. So in summary, don't have to be radically different, but they should be. There should be some differences.

 

Okay, next question, what? Would you recommend getting into editing? I'm about to graduate from graduate from college and thinking about it as a career. Thanks. I will answer this, but first I want, I just want to clarify, if you are listening and you're not sure about this difference, it's important to explain that book editing at a publisher is very different from what I do as a freelance book editor. I'm assuming, because this person asked me that they're asking about freelance book editing. But book editing is also a job that exists at publishers, and it's confusing, because it's editor and they edit books, but they also acquire books. So if you're trying to get traditionally published, meaning you get a book deal. A publisher buys your book and publishes that book for you and distributes it. You have an agent.

 

An agent sends your book to editors at these different publishers, and they're acquiring editors, so they're acquiring books for their publisher. That is a very different job. It's a different market. It's a more traditional kind of nine to five? Well, not nine to five because they work crazy hours, but there's a set level of expectations. They're working for a corporation. Their paycheck is always the same. So that's a different route than what I do. I'm sure there are resources out there that talk about that, but I would definitely recommend looking into that as a career path. If that's something you're interested in. What I do as a freelance editor is I am self employed. I work for myself. I don't work for an agency or a publisher, and clients hire me to help them with their books, and that's how I make money.

 

So I get clients through content marketing, through social media, through referrals from people, and yeah, it's in terms of, like, if I would, if I would recommend getting into this. It's hard to say, because this, this career path, this job, is not for everybody. Some it takes a certain type of person to want to be an entrepreneur, in a sense, to be self employed, to be responsible for getting your own clients. There's a level of unpredictability with this job. There's a level of fluctuation in terms of income, in terms of revenue, in terms of client work, and you have to kind of be okay with that uncertainty, and some people aren't, and that's totally fine. There's a lot of safety and security in a day job, a corporate job, some other kind of job where you know exactly what's expected of you. You report to someone, maybe you have people report to you. You have a steady paycheck. It's there's a lot of benefits in that type of job.

 

So there's nothing wrong with not wanting the unpredictability and uncertainty. Of course, the trade off is that you get to work for yourself. You get to set your own hours. There's not as much of a cap on the revenue that you can make. I mean, with editing, there is because you can only edit a certain number of manuscripts at once, but so there are a lot of good things about it as well, but I think it's just I can't ever recommend this to anyone without knowing if this is something that would be a positive thing for them or not. Some people would just hate it. And I'm aware that there are sites like fiver or an Upwork where you can use them to help you get clients. But ultimately, there's a level of scrappiness that you have to have, and you have to be okay with not making much money at first and building it up as a business like as a side hustle, not making much money at all ever, probably, but especially when you were first getting started. I want to include another little mm. Note here with this that I would not have included two years ago, but I think it's important for people who are in the writing, editing world to talk about this.

 

And I certainly feel like I want to just mention this if someone comes to me and is considering doing what I do as a career AI, the impact of AI on writing, publishing, editing, is unknown. I don't know. I mean, I'll just get specific. I don't know what my job is going to look like in 10 years. I do believe that there will always be people who prioritize and value human editors. I don't think that's going away. I think that people will always value that. So there will be clients, but there's just a level of uncertainty. And I don't think that's I also don't think I'm unique in that. I think there are a lot of jobs, a lot of industries where people aren't really sure what it's going to look like in 10,20, 30 years down the road. So if you are a new graduate or about to be graduating, that might sound really discouraging, but I just want to be honest that there is some uncertainty.

 

And I think it would be irresponsible for me to just like promote book editing is this wonderful thing without also acknowledging that I don't know what my I don't know what this is going to look like, what I do my business in even five years. I mean, I'll be honest and say that I have noticed a decrease in the amount of clients that I have had reaching out to me, like potential clients, a sharp decrease, actually, for editing and nothing has changed. I have not changed my prices. I've not changed anything else. I can pinpoint it to chat GPT coming out. That's why I'm saying that I would not include, I would not have included this disclaimer two years ago or whatever, because it just wasn't a thing that was on my radar. So I will say that again, I think it's always, there's always going to be place for human editors, that's that's not changing. There's always going to be a place for for that. But I just don't know what this is going to look like in the future. So I think you kind of have to be okay with some uncertainty and be able to pivot if this is something that you do decide to do. I am hopefully fingers crossed. I know I've said that so many years now, but fingers crossed, we'll have a book published soon, and I can be an author and add that to my business. You know, if I think about everything I do as a business, a way that I can make money.

 

But, and I really think that's what a lot of of this might be, is just editors who do multiple things and have multiple streams of income coming in, like, maybe that's what it'll look like in the future? I don't know. So anyways, all that to say, there are so many wonderful things about this. It's so rewarding to work with authors, and I get to talk about stuff that I love, which is amazing. But there's also the uncertainty piece of it. So it just take that, take that all into consideration. Hopefully that wasn't too negative, but I just want to be realistic about about what the industry is looking like right now.

 

Um, okay, our last question. Any updates on your book you can share? I would love to read it at some point, if you're open to betas. Okay? Thank you so much for saying that that's so kind. I do not have any updates to share right now I let me think about when the last time I sorry. I'm just looking back on my list here. I'm trying to think of when the last time I shared an update I don't remember. So I finished I wrote a book in the fall, and I edited it, and I sent it to my agent right around the holidays, and I'm hoping that in the next couple of weeks, I will have some feedback from her, some notes. The draft that I sent her was not like super rough, but it wasn't super polished, because I wanted her to weigh in on the direction that things were going in and before I really agonized over editing it very intensely. So once we do some edits, you know, we'll probably do a couple of rounds of edits, and then we'll send it out for set it out on submission. And so that's the status on that book.

 

My last book, the one that was on submission, is not back out. We only did one round with that one, and I think we're just kind of waiting to see what kind of response we get with we get with this one. It would be great if I could get, like, a two book deal, so that someone would want to acquire the new thriller, and also that other one. Because I we took it off submission, and they made some changes to it, and only one person has seen the revised version, one editor at a publisher. So and they passed on it. So I'm hopeful that I don't call that one dead. I don't call that one like dead and buried, because I think there's still a possibility, there's a good possibility of life for that one, but it's just not actively on submission right now with betas. I Right now I'm just looking at at getting feedback from my agent and one other person, and looking at making some changes based on their feedback to in preparation of it going on submission. So I'm not looking for betas right now, but I appreciate that, and I will keep you all posted as much as I possibly can about how things are going with this.

 

And I know I say this so often, but I'm really hoping this is the year that I get a book deal, yeah, which is entirely possible, because it's the end of February as I'm recording this, right? So a couple of weeks, I'll get notes back. I might take a couple of weeks or a month to do edits. We might do another round of edits that might take a month. I mean, it's definitely possible that we could be out on submission late spring, early summer. I don't know I'm saying that now, but it just depends on the amount of feedback. It depends on the amount of work that I have to do with the story, and it also depends how long it takes her to get back to me, because she's very busy. And, you know, she can't just drop everything when I send her a manuscript to look at it and give me feedback, so you have to factor that in as well. But hopefully the next, I don't know, four or five months, will be on submission again. I'll keep you all posted. And I, I it does get a little and I'm not saying this in response to this question.

 

 I love that you asked, and I'm happy to share updates, but I will just say for myself, it does get a little hard to continually. Have to be like, yeah, no updates. I'm just writing and editing and waiting. But the reason that I want to share about this on social media, on the podcast, is because I want to give hopefully I can encourage other writers who are in this situation, or maybe not even like this particular situation, but a similar situation where it feels like things just aren't going the way that they were hoping. They're not getting the results that they wanted. Whether it's like you haven't been able to find an agent, you have just not found success yet. As an indie author, like, whatever it is, there's, there's a lot of bumps in the road, there's a lot of obstacles to to this whole thing, especially in the traditional publishing road. And also just want to share more about the process, like behind the scenes, because there's a sense of mystery, of like, oh, once you get an agent, what happens? And people just think that it's an automatic guarantee, because you got an agent, you'll get a book deal. And that's definitely not the case.

 

So I want to be, you know, transparent about that too, because I found it. I found it helpful when I was a few steps back to learn from people and hear about their experiences with it, to help me manage my own expectations about the process. So at any rate, we'll see. I've even like started doing some brainstorming for another book, but I haven't actually started writing that yet. I think I need to do a little bit more stewing or kind of thinking about an idea first, before I actually am ready to write anything. But that might happen soon, which is exciting. All right. Again, if you have a question you want me to answer, please submit it at the forum, in the link, in the show notes, and then also check out the characters workshop happening March 6. I would love to see you. It'll be really it'll be really good.

 

Characters are essential in your novel, no matter what genre you're writing, no matter what stage of writing you're in, if you're just brainstorming, if you're writing, if you're editing, the information that we cover in the training will be really valuable. So alright, thanks for listening and watching on YouTube if you're watching, and I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is to leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts to help other people discover the show. Don't forget to follow @theKatieWolf on Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube for more content. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf