Guest Post: Why My Critique Partners Are Smarter Than Me

Susan Kaye Quinn is a regular here at Author's Echo and one of my critique partners. She writes, she blogs, she mothers, and I understand she once politicked and rocket scienced (it's a word now -- shut up). Her new novel Open Minds, which I talked about yesterday, is out now, and to celebrate, Susan wrote like a billion blog posts.

Her book is awesome because it's about a world of mind readers and hidden mindjackers (who control minds). This guest post is cool because it talks about how smart I am. You should probably read both.

Oh, also, she's giving away prizes as part of her virtual book launch party. Information after Susan's post.


This title probably sounds like I'm kissing up to my critique partners. And while they are awesome and deserve all the praise I can give them (especially the ones that critiqued Open Minds), that's not quite what I mean.

Robert McKee, in his screenwriting book Story, talks about how the collective IQ of the audience goes up 25 points as the lights dim down. Every sense is tuned to the visual, verbal, and musical cues on the screen. Years of storytelling in the form of movies, books, and TV have trained the audience's intuition. They know the tropes by instinct, and while they probably couldn't tell you why, they just KNOW that the creepy character in the first act is going to come back and be the villain in the end.

Have you ever watched a movie where you "totally saw that coming"? Yeah, me too.

Writing a story that can keep that hyper-attuned audience in the dark until just the right reveal is an extremely difficult task. The writer has to plant just enough clues, but not too many. Provide just the right mood, but not sloppily slurp into cliché-land. Give just enough romance and meaning and depth to move the audience and not so much that it makes them cringe.

Critique partners are the movie-preview audience of the novel world.

When I was writing Open Minds, I went through round after round of critiques from different sets of writer friends who were generous enough to add their expertise to help make the story better. If you read the acknowledgements page, you'll see what I mean. A LOT of writers helped craft this story into its final form and each contributed an important insight into the story. Any reader can give feedback about whether a story "works" for them, but writer-readers are extra helpful in that they can help pinpoint how to fix it as well.

When I return the favor of a critique, I try to give feedback to my writer friend about how the story would be received by a hyper-tuned reader. But I also try to make suggestions for improvements. Sometimes I leave it vague ("more emotional connection needed here" or "I'm not really liking this character—is that the reaction you want me to have?"); sometimes I get more specific ("Reorder this scene to put the high impact point last" or "We need a kiss here"). When I'm very lucky, a crit partner will ask me to help show how to reword or rewrite a small scene. Somehow these scenes always seem to be kissing related, and I joked with a critique friend that I was changing my business card from "Author and Rocket Scientist" to "Author, Rocket Scientist, and Kissing Consultant." (Note: Yes, there are kisses in Open Minds, but nowhere as many as Life, Liberty, and Pursuit—that was a love story after all.)

I relish these times that I can pay back a small bit of the help I get from my brilliant critique partners.

When my critique partners read my MS, they are hyper-attuned like the readers that I hope will someday read the book. Those readers, as soon as they crack open my book or switch on their e-readers, will become savvy, impossibly smart story consumers. Don't underestimate them. They will see your plot twists coming. They will want to be surprised, moved to tears, made to laugh out loud. If you want to deliver a great reading experience for them, if you want to light up their imagination in a way that will rival two hours in a dark theatre, make sure you pretest your novel with critique partners. They will help you find the sluggish plot points, the stereotyped characters, and implausible action sequences before your readers do.

And if they suggest a kiss, let me know if you need a consultant. :)

*********************

When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep.

Sixteen-year-old Kira Moore is a zero, someone who can’t read thoughts or be read by others. Zeros are outcasts who can’t be trusted, leaving her no chance with Raf, a regular mindreader and the best friend she secretly loves. When she accidentally controls Raf’s mind and nearly kills him, Kira tries to hide her frightening new ability from her family and an increasingly suspicious Raf. But lies tangle around her, and she’s dragged deep into a hidden world of mindjackers, where having to mind control everyone she loves is just the beginning of the deadly choices before her.

Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy) by Susan Kaye Quinn is available in e-book (Amazon US (also UK, France and Germany), Barnes & Noble, Smashwords) and print (Amazon, Createspace, also autographed copies available from the author).

The Story of Open Minds (linked posts)
Ch 1: Where Ideas Come From: A Mind Reading World
Ch 2: A Study in Voice, or Silencing Your Inner Critic
Ch 3: I'm finished! Oh wait. Maybe not.
Ch 4: Write First, Then Outline - Wait, That's Backwards?
Ch 5: Why My Critique Partners Are Smarter Than Me
Ch 6: Facing Revisions When It Feels Like Being on the Rack
Ch 7: How to Know When to Query
Ch 8: A Writer’s Journey - Deciding to Self-Publish Open Minds (Part One)
Ch 9: Owning the Writerly Path - Deciding to Self-Publish Open Minds (Part Two)
Epilogue: Finding Time to Write the Sequel

*********************

PRIZES!

Susan Kaye Quinn is giving away an Open Books/Open Minds t-shirt, mug, and some fun wristbands to celebrate the Virtual Launch Party of Open Minds (Book One of the Mindjack Trilogy)! (Check out the prizes here.)

Three ways to enter (you can have multiple entries):

1) Leave a comment here or at the Virtual Launch Party post

2) Tweet (with tag #keepingOPENMINDS)

• Example: When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep. #keepingOPENMINDS @susankayequinn #SF #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds
• Example: Celebrate the launch of OPEN MINDS by @susankayequinn #keepingOPENMINDS #SciFi #paranormal #YA avail NOW http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

3) Facebook (tag @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn)

• Example: Celebrate the launch of paranormal/SF novel OPEN MINDS by @AuthorSusanKayeQuinn for a chance to win Open Books/Open Minds prizes! http://bit.ly/SKQOpenMinds

Books I Read: Open Minds

Susan Quinn is a regular here at Author's Echo and (I'm proud to say) one of my critique partners. She wrote this book. It comes out tomorrow.

It's pretty cool.

Title: Open Minds
Author: Susan Kaye Quinn
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Published: 2011
My Content Rating: PG-13 for make-outs, tense situations, and the occasional bullet

In a world where everyone can read minds, Kira is a zero -- a freak who can't read or be read. When she accidentally controls her best friend's mind, nearly killing him, she discovers she's a different kind of freak entirely: a mindjacker. She can't admit the truth, but fitting in means lying and controlling the minds of everyone she loves. It gets worse when she gets in over her head in the mindjacker underworld, and discovers the government knows more than it's letting on.

The best part of this book is the world. A lot of stories have mind-reading as the special power, but here it's the norm. The book does a fantastic job of exploring what that world would be like, and what it would mean to be a zero or a mindjacker.

I also love how there are no easy choices for Kira. Lying is not just about fitting in; admitting she can control minds could get her in serious trouble. But what else can she do? And really, her choices just get worse from there.

If you like sci-fi and/or paranormal (cuz this book is really that, too), check this one out.

Twitter Unfollows and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (Also, a Chart!)

I don't automatically follow people back on social media, but once I decide to follow someone, I rarely unfollow. Unfortunately, it does happen. The likelihood of getting unfollowed can be determined (sort of) from the following chart.

What constitutes signal?

• Anything funny.
• News I want to know.
• Interesting links.
• Talking to me directly (esp. saying nice things to me or retweeting my tweets).

 What constitutes noise?

• Follow Friday tweets, thank you's, and any other random list of Twitter handles I don't know.
• Non-tweets, like "Good morning" or "Good night" or "Eating justice peas again."
• Spammy links to your blog, your book, etc.
• Most tweets generated by other applications (e.g. Goodreads progress reports).
• Retweets.
• Lots of tweets at once, filling up my timeline.

Now understand, I'm not saying you should have no noise in your tweets. Everybody's got noise (I link to my blog and send retweets plenty). The important thing is to balance it out, or even signalify* the noise by making it funny or relevant.

And perhaps most importantly, there's the Relationship Factor. This is a measure of how well I know/like you. I'll tolerate a heck of a lot of noise from friends, people I enjoy talking to, or Nathan Fillion. In fact, the stronger our relationship, the more likely I am to interpret your "noise" as signal.

How do you build up the Relationship Factor? That's a different post.

I admit, it's a highly subjective algorithm, but it has to be. I'm not going to be interested in everyone's tweets. The point is, if you want to stay in people's timelines, pay attention to what most of your tweets are about. That way when you do have to pimp yourself, people will listen.


* Totally a word. Shut up.

Confessions of an Ascetic Writer

My previous confession proved to me I'm not alone in these things, and I know ascetic writers are more common than analytical ones. But still, I feel the need to confess...

I can't listen to music while I write. If there are words, I sing them (and sometimes type them -- seriously!). If there are no words, I still get caught up in the story the music is telling, and it becomes impossible to tell my own.

Sometimes I can edit with music, but even then, if I listen to an epic song during a soft moment, it severely skews how I revise the scene.

I can't eat snacks while I write. I end up eating them all in the first twenty minutes and not writing anything. Then I get gunk on my keyboard.

I can't drink while I write. It makes me have to get up and pee every fifteen minutes. (I don't understand it either. I drink just as much the rest of the day and only go every few hours. It's only when I have to write.)

I can't be near a window. Because then I stare outside at the neighbors and the gardeners and even the stinking DOGS that walk by.

But the worst thing is, I can't write in the same place with nothing to look at, nothing to drink, nothing to snack on, and nothing to listen to but the ceiling fan. I get bored and start to dread my writing time.

Seriously, I don't know how I ever get anything done.

How do you write? What do you need to be productive?

Stubborn as a Ninja

So. Naruto.

For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Naruto is a ninja orphan, shunned since birth. He's determined to make the village to notice him, even proclaiming loudly that he will be the next Hokage -- the greatest ninja in the village.

Everyone laughs because it's ridiculous. Naruto is loud, foolish, and pays zero attention. He fails most tests, and when he does pass, it's by some fluke. How could he possibly be a ninja, let alone the Hokage?

But throughout the series, Naruto has one thing nobody else has: he never gives up.

He takes on the guys no one else will. He protects the people everyone else gives up on. When two ninjas knock each other out simultaneously, Naruto is always the guy who gets up first.

He fails a lot, but he succeeds at things others think are impossible. Because he is motivated more than almost anyone else, and because of all his failures, he grows faster than most. By the time he's succeeding more than failing, he's defeating opponents even his teachers couldn't beat.

And from the beginning, even when he fails, he inspires others. People better than him who quit sooner. People weaker than him, who find a strength they didn't know they had to get up one more time.

I know, I know. It's just a frigging cartoon, right? Naruto isn't even one of my favorite characters (though he's becoming so). But man, if I could do this every time I get a story rejected? Or every time I fail at ANYTHING?

Yeah. I want that.

On Description

So, I suck at description. In the previous round of querying and beta reading, poor description was the #1 complaint. It's not that I don't know how to do it, it just doesn't come naturally to me.

But I'm learning. And the fact that it doesn't come naturally to me means I'm a good person to teach it.

Because, of course, I have an algorithm:

1. Imagine the scene. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many times I just don't care what a scene looks like as much as what happens there. So the first thing I often have to do is decide on stupid details like what color the walls are or what meaningless collection of items is on a desk. (It doesn't help that I'm not much of a decorator to begin with).
2. Write down whatever you can think of. What does it look like, sound like, and smell like? Use all five senses if you can (more if you're writing a paranormal).
3. Choose 1-3 telling details and cut the rest. Telling details are those that do double duty. They imply something about a character, rather than just tell the reader what the scene looks like. It's not always the detail itself that is telling either, but sometimes the way the narrator perceives it.

So instead of saying someone has a gun, you can show how the narrator feels about that and/or what it says about the gun-slinger. "He held the gun like he was some kind of God damn gangster, except I could still smell the perfume and massage oil on his hands. Who was this guy?"

What tips would you have for description? I need them.

Writing When You Hate Writing

Some days, this is exactly how I feel.

Sometimes it's the novel's fault. As I plow through the draft, crap gets built on crap, building into a gargantuan pile of whatsit that I'm just going to have to fix later. Mistakes and weak plot points devolve into puzzles I no longer want to solve. And I've already used all my stock phrases and have to think of new ways to make people look, shout, cry, and laugh.

Sometimes it's the query process' fault. Being a tad insane, I've been charting my rejections and requests. There is a strong correlation with my mood. Like in August, when I got a bunch of requests and was writing 1,000 words a day, and the beginning of this month when I got some hard rejections and hit a bit of a slump.*

Sometimes it's just life's fault. Social workers come to visit. Kids are home on a day I expected to have to myself. Family issues just send out negative waves.

(It's never my fault, apparently. That would just be silly.)

Whatever the reason, I feel like things will never get better and I'll never get out of it. That's crap, of course, but it doesn't change how I feel.

So what do I do when this happens? Usually I try to plow forward, and sometimes I can. Other times, I have to take a break. Even though I know accomplishing something in writing will make me feel better, sometimes I have to accept that's something I can't do yet.

But what to do on that break? Man, I don't know. Sometimes playing a game works. Exercise. Mostly, though I just have to get off the internet and remind myself what my life's really about.

What do you do?


* I'm better now, but I don't think October will be breaking any records.

Putting Your Hope Where It Belongs

By now, the entire world knows I'm querying Air Pirates and, as a result, am subject to the entire toxic cocktail of emotions that implies. (Seriously, can we nominate querying as a leading cause of bipolar disorder? That's how it works, right?)

But also I have a great many awesome friends both on and off the internet, who constantly tell me encouraging things. Yes, I most certainly am looking at you.

I got one comment in particular I want to share with you. A good friend reminded me that rejected manuscripts mean I'm doing things right (i.e. my query/story/partial is good enough that people want to read the whole thing), then said, "I honestly believe it's only a matter of time for you. If not with this one, another."

It was that last bit that got me. I love Air Pirates a lot. A LOT, a lot. But this whole "getting published" thing is not about Air Pirates. It's about me.

(Okay, that sounds totally narcissistic. But I can't think of another way to say it so I'm writing this parenthetical to let you know I didn't mean it that way.)

(Man, that was so meta.)

This definitely falls into the category of Things I Should Know But Forget Every Time Someone Rejects My Manuscript. I mean, I have 2.5 other novels written and solid ideas forming for two more. I get germs of ideas all the time, and that's not even counting sequels, spin-offs, short stories, or anything else I might come up with using ideas I've already spent time working out.

I believe what my friend said. Eventually, something will click. When an agent rejects Air Pirates, they are not rejecting me. They are rejecting the current execution of one idea I had.

I've got lots more, and so do you. If you can do it once, you can do it again, but better.

Sketch: Everyday Superhero

Cross-posted from Anthdrawlogy.

His tweet says, "Had justice peas again tonight. So. Awesome."

Why Aren't You Linking Yet?

It is 2011. The internet as we know it is old. It's older than the Matrix and Star Wars Special Edition. It was born in a time when Michael Keaton was still Batman, Joe Montana was a 49er, and people freaked out because Mortal Kombat was too bloody.

So why are people still writing comments like they've never seen a link before?

Great post! And did you hear they're casting white actors for Akira? I know, right! I blogged about it here: http://www.adamheine.com/2011/03/dear-hollywood-asians-are-cool.html

How many people, do you think, will select that link, copy it, and paste it into their address bar so they can read your post? I'll give you a hint: the nearest integer rhymes with 'hero.'

Look, I know HTML is ugly and non-intuitive, but it's not hard either, and it'll make your comments a lot less ugly than that URL up there. Here's how it works.

We'll start with bold and italics, cuz they're easy. Whatever you want formatted gets stuck between a start tag and an end tag. For example: "I <b>love</b> cookie dough!" becomes "I love cookie dough!" Tags always look the same: angle brackets around the tag name (b for bold, i for italics, etc), and an extra '/' in the end tag.

I see your eyes glazing over. Stop it! This isn't hard, and you'll look smarter and get more clicks to your blog. Keep going!

Links work the same way: their tag pair is <a></a>, but you have to add an attribute to tell it where the link goes. That's what the ugly 'href' thing is about.*


Let's fix the comment above. In the comment box, I type this:

Great post! And did you hear <a href="http://www.adamheine.com/2011/03/dear-hollywood-asians-are-cool.html">they're casting white actors for Akira</a>? I know, right!

It looks just as ugly as the first one, right? Except when the comment is posted, it'll look like this: 

Great post! And did you hear they're casting white actors for Akira? I know, right!

There, was that so hard? Nearly every comment system allows these basic HTML tags. And look! One person actually clicked on the link. Now you can get that warm fuzzy feeling that comes every time your visitor stats go up.

Oh, you...you don't know how to check those either? Well, poop.

* If it helps, 'a' is short for anchor and 'href' stands for hyperlink reference. I'm sure it made lots of sense at the time.

Patching e-books

Apparently, Amazon has been wirelessly updating error-ridden books, and it raises the obvious question: Should e-book patching even be a thing?

I'm torn. I mean, technology-wise, I think this is great, though I can see the potential abuses all too clearly.

Patching is not a new thing. Computer games have been doing it even longer than George Lucas.* Even print books get the occasional story-tweaking revision. So let's not pretend this is some new, infuriating thing that Big Publishing is doing to us. The difference now, though, is that eBooks can be patched immediately -- even automatically without the user's consent.

I'm going to say auto-patching is a Bad Idea because of Potential Abuse #1: Tweaking the story. Imagine a writer with Lucas Syndrome, endlessly fiddling with his masterpiece. You're halfway through his novel when a character references something that never happened -- except it did happen, in the revised version that got pushed to your device after you started reading.

Even without auto-patching, I fear this abuse. We'd all be arguing over whether Han or Greedo shot first, only to find out we were reading different versions.

Computer games show us Potential Abuse #2: Publishing the novel before it's done. In November, 1999, me and my fellow game developers were working 80+ hours/week to get our game finished before Christmas. We were close, but it was buggy -- critical cutscenes didn't play, others crashed the game, memory leaks made the game unplayable after an hour or so, important characters would kill the player for no reason, etc.

It sounds unplayable, and for some people it was, but they released it anyway. If we brought up a bug at status meetings, we were invariably told, "We'll fix that in the patch."

Don't get me wrong, we made a dang good game, but if you play it without that patch, I pity you. And I fear a world where authors release rough drafts of a novel for quick sales, knowing they can always "fix it in a patch."

That said, I think abuse would be the exception. I think most authors, if they updated their novels at all, would only make small changes. I say that because most film directors don't make controversial changes every time a new video format is released. Most game developers release playable games, using patches for bugs they couldn't have foreseen.

If it actually works that way, it could give e-books more value. We all know the things e-books can't do (can't loan, can't resell, DRM, etc), but print books can't be updated to make themselves better. You'd have to buy another copy for that. Mostly, I think this would be a good thing.

What do you think?


* Apparently, the term 'patching' is from the old punch-card days of computers, when a bug fix had to be literally patched onto the cards.

Why Do You Write in Your Genre?

Almost everything I write has some sort of fantasy element to it, something that defies understanding for the people in that world.

And I think the reason is my own faith. Part of my assembly code includes a belief that there's more to this world than we can see or understand. I feel like there must be.

So even when I write a story about a forgotten colony of Earth, something creeps in that is bigger than we are and beyond our understanding. Even when I try to set a story in modern-day Thailand, people start fires with their mind or something.

I'm not sure I could write a non-speculative, contemporary story even if I wanted to. Eventually, some character would discover unusual powers or receive visions of the future or at the very least witness something that may or may not be a miracle.

I can't help it.

What's your genre? And why do you write it?

Is Good Subjective?

(Remixed from a post I did a couple of years ago).

The Lost Symbol is formulaic. Twilight is simplistic, both in plot and writing. Eragon is ridden with cliches (Warning: TV Tropes link). The Shack reads like it was self-published (oh, wait).

And yet every one of these books sold millions of copies.

Millions.

For those of us who have devoted a significant portion of our lives to the written word, this can drive us nuts. It's unfair, we say. If people knew anything about quality literature, they wouldn't buy this cotton candy nonsense.

But that's just it. People don't know about quality literature. They don't know you're not supposed to start a novel with the weather. They don't know that the farm-boy-as-chosen-one plot is old. They don't know that adverbs are a Bad Thing.

But people know what they like. They know these books are thrilling, engrossing, uplifting. "But they're not!" we cry. "They don't even follow the rules!"

Okay, so here's the thing. I know this is going to be hard to hear, but...all those rules that agents and editors and critique partners keep telling us we should follow? None of them make a story good.

For those of us trying to break into the business, it's easy to convince ourselves that "good" is objective -- that all we have to do is figure out the rules and follow them. While the rules certainly increase our chances, nothing in this business is a sure thing. Nothing.

So how do you break in? Well, not having broken in myself yet, I'm going to go with the stock answer: Write lots. Write well. Get lucky.

Usually in that order.

Breaking the Rules

If you've been learning the craft for a while, you've heard the rules. Don't start with a character waking up. Don't start with dialog or the weather. Don't use a mirror as a device to describe the narrator. Et cetera.

Lies.

There's a book you might have heard about called THE HUNGER GAMES. You know what it starts with? Katniss waking up.

You may have heard of Natalie Whipple, whose X-Men-meets-Godfather debut comes out next Summer. (If you haven't, you're welcome). About her novel, she tweets, "TRANSPARENT opens with a flashback, then moves on to a mirror scene while she is getting ready for school."

I love that. You may argue that means Transparent isn't good, but then you haven't read Natalie's stuff and you would be dead wrong. I can't wait to read Transparent, and I love that it breaks the rules.

My own novel AIR PIRATES starts with dialog. While it hasn't gotten me an agent yet, it has generated a lot of requests which, if nothing else, tells me the beginning doesn't totally suck.

Listen, the rules are good things. You should know them. But don't be afraid of breaking them. Just know why you're doing it. Are you breaking the rule because you couldn't think of anything better, or is it because that's the best way to do what you want to do?

If it's the latter, I say go for it! What do you think?

(Hm. I just realized Post-Apoc Ninjas starts with the weather. Maybe I have authority issues?)

So You Think You're Ready to Query...

When I wrote my first novel, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could finish a whole novel. After 4.5 years, I did, and when my one of my two beta readers said, "I can't believe you wrote a novel! And it's good!" I thought maybe I could actually publish it.

It took me 8 months, 52 queries, and 0 requests to realize I wasn't ready. This is the post I wish I had read back then (though I probably would've ignored it and queried anyway).

HOW MUCH HAVE YOU REVISED?
Is the story basically the same as it was in the first draft? I don't mean prose and grammar. I mean big things: motivations, characters that need to be cut or added, scenes that need to be rearranged. Have you deleted/rewritten entire scenes and chapters? I barely scraped the sentence structure with my first novel, and it showed in my rejections.

Of course, it's possible you wrote something good enough the first time, but it's unlikely. I'm the most obsessive planner I know, but even I have yet to write something where I didn't delete whole scenes and rewrite entire chapters.

WHAT DO YOUR BETA READERS SAY?
Do they love it yet? If not, it's possible they might be wrong, but chances are they're not. Revise it until most of them can't put it down.

And who are your betas? Are they friends and family, or are they writers who are trying themselves to get published? Friends make fine betas, but nobody knows the business like those who have already gotten their butts kicked by it. Network. Swap critiques with people who aren't predisposed to like your work.

DO YOU KNOW YOUR MARKET?
I thought I did. I'd read books like Left Behind and Randy Ingermanson's Trangression and Oxygen and thought, "Hey! Christian sci-fi is a thing!" I was wrong.

That doesn't mean you can't write what you love, but know what you're getting into. If Christian SF was my one true love, I would've focused my attention on that market and figured out how to become the exception. But I'm easy. I shifted my focus to secular SF/F and ultimately to YA. I'm still writing what I love, but my chances have greatly improved.

HOW'S YOUR QUERY LETTER?
This is assuming you're going the traditional publishing route (although a lot of book bloggers require query letters too -- can't escape, can you?). Have you written one? Have you revised it a bazillion times? Have you read hundreds of examples, both good and bad, and then revised yours again?

Have you had any of your stuff (query, opening pages, etc.) critiqued online by anonymous strangers? It's scary, and you're likely to get conflicting advice and people that don't get it. But this is a good way to see how agents or the general public might respond to your stuff.


If I could do it all over again, I'd join an online critique group and milk it for all it's worth, critiquing and getting critiqued until every beta said, "I can't see anything wrong with this! I love it!" I'd spend hours at Query Shark, Evil Editor, Matt MacNish and JJ Debenedictis' sites reading queries and submitting my own until people were saying, "This looks good! I'd request this!" I'd do it right.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'd do it exactly the way I did. I was so excited. I couldn't help it! I just hope one of you will learn from my mistakes without making them yourself.

Veteran writers, what would you have done differently the first time around? (Assuming you got rejected. If your first novel got published, I'm not sure I want to hear it!)

Sketch: Rock, Paper, Scissors

 Cross-posted from Anthdrawlogy.

Helpful Tip: Ninja always wins.

Web Design Tips for the Cheap, Lazy, or HTML-Challenged

Everyone says you need a professional-looking website, but a professional setup and design can cost hundreds of dollars and a monthly hosting fee. If your website is making you money (for example, by selling books), that can be worth it. Otherwise, you want something that's both Free and Good Enough.

Whenever I tweak things on this site, I have four goals, many of them conflicting: (1) Make my blog nice to read/look at, (2) Differentiate it from every other blog out there, (3) Rarely mess with the template (HTML, CSS, and other scary acronyms), and (4) Spend little or no money. If that sounds good to you, read on.

STEP #1: GET A FREE BLOG.
Blogger is my favorite. It's relatively reliable and gives me a decent amount of control (though those qualifiers are important). You could also go with Wordpress.com, LiveJournal, or many others.

None of them give you total control, of course. For that, you'd have to buy your own webhost and deal with your own technical setup and issues, which defies goals (3) and (4).

STEP #2: CUSTOMIZE YOUR TEMPLATE.
As far as free templates go, Blogger has only 27 (at the moment). Wordpress.com is better with 148. But since there are a few more than 175 blogs out there, your blog will very likely look exactly like someone else's. That's why you customize the crap out of it:

1. Get a custom background. Especially if you're good with a camera/live somewhere pretty.
2. Make a custom header. Free fonts and your local Paint program can surprise you. Photoshop and a little design sense is even better.
3. Tweak the heck out of it. Blogger, for example, lets you change the format, fonts, sizes, and colors of almost every little thing. Take advantage of it.

STEP #2A: MAKE EVERYTHING READABLE.
Fancy fonts and wacky colors will definitely make your blog unique, but don't go crazy. Everyone's screen and color resolution is different (some folks are even reading you on their phones!). The text needs to be big enough and plain enough to be readable. And the text color should contrast as strongly as possible with the background.

Here's where I tell you to use dark text on a light background. I know people disagree with this, but white-on-black burns my retinas like those creepy Jesus illusions. I won't say don't do it, but at least think twice before you do.

STEP #3: ORGANIZE YOUR INFO.
People come to your blog for two reasons: (1) to read your latest update or (2) to find specific information about you/your blog. Every blog makes the former easy -- it's right there in the middle. It's your job to make the latter easy to find.

Static pages are a good place to put professional stuff. The kind of stuff agents come looking for. Pages put that info right at the top (usually), give you space to write as much info as you need/want, and keep that stuff (which is usually old news to your regular readers) from cluttering your sidebar.

The sidebar is the second place for it. People like to throw everything they can think of in their sidebars, and that's okay, but know this: Visitors will not scroll down past the first screen unless they are looking for something specific. (I will entertain arguments on this only if you've read my blog footer or clicked on the Carpe Editio flag down there. I'll bet money none of you have (until now, of course -- now you're curious...).)

Think about what you want readers to see, and put that on top.

(OPTIONAL) STEP #4: REMOVE REFERENCES TO YOUR FREE HOST.
Free hosts insert their brand everywhere. Search bars on the top, mandatory attributions in the footer, and of course the domain name. You can usually get rid of this stuff, but it requires either messing with the template or paying money.

But often, it's not hard either. Removing the Blogger search bar is a single line of CSS, for example, and a custom domain name costs only $10-15 per year. It's up to you whether that's worth it.


Many of you already have beautiful blogs (I know, I've seen them). So tell me what decisions have gone into your blog? What other tips would you offer?

What the Agent-Author Relationship Actually Is

I have to follow-up Wednesday's post for a sec, because Natalie Whipple clarified a critical point that I had trouble getting in my head until now. From her post:

It seems the vast majority of querying writers are of the opinion that the "no response" policy is rude. There have been comparisons to agents being employees, and that writers have the power even if it may not look like it at times. There have also been comparisons to "customer service," and the fact that it's just bad business not to respond to a customer.

I think writers are kind of missing the point.

Because the agent/writer relationship is NOT an employer/employee relationship. The agent/writer relationship is a partnership.

Natalie does a great job laying out what that means in her post, and I'll try not to repeat her (though repeating her makes me sound so smart, so I might a little).

A business partnership is fundamentally different from the producer/consumer or employer/employee relationships we are used to. It is symbiotic and -- here's the most important thing -- EQUAL.

Not equal as in both sides have equivalent abilities; that would be pointless. Equal in terms of power. Each side wants something the other has and is willing to give something up to get it.

The agent gives up their unpaid time and the writer gives up a percentage of their profits. That sounds like one is paying the other, but there's a subtle and significant difference. In a partnership, neither can tell the other how to do their job. And if either one fails in their job, neither gets paid.

Writers query specific agents because they believe they would make a good partner. The agent has expertise and connections you want, and you like the way they work. If "no response means no" means you don't like the way they work, then (as I've said many times before) don't request their partnership.

Agents take on writers because they believe they would make a good partner. The writer has skills and stories the agent can sell, and they like the way the writer works.

This is why there's "a call" when an agent offers representation. It's not about the book (they've read that already). It's about the person and whether or not both of them feel they can work well together.

Business partnerships don't work well if one partner believes they are better than the other. They can (it's still business, after all), but eventually one believes -- rightly or not -- that they don't need the other and they part ways. Sometimes badly. Sometimes so badly that other agents hear of it, and the writer finds that nobody wants to work with him at all anymore.

Don't laugh. It happens.

So this sense of entitlement I keep railing against just closes doors unnecessarily. It reduces your chances of finding a partner who will work with you. You probably wouldn't want an agent who treats his authors like sweatshop workers. Guess what makes most agents not want to work with you?

Okay, I'm done now, I swear.

What Do Agents Owe You?

Last week, a number of agents weighed in on whether "no response means no" is a good policy. I have some ideas for making the whole rejection process easier on everyone, but ultimately I think it doesn't matter. Querying is hard. Rejection sucks. And agents can do whatever they like; I'm still going to query them all.*

* Well, maybe not the snail-mail-only agents. That's really difficult from out here.

I agree with all three agents linked above. Rachelle says not responding allows her to get through more queries (agreed). Janet says setting up an auto-responder and a simple form reject is not that hard and is better business practice (agreed). Nathan says agents don't owe authors a response (big agreed).

That last one is today's topic. Because while the agents involved have been very nice and logical and wise, a number of writers have commented with something along the lines of, "How dare you not respond to every query. That's just common decency! It's rude to treat your customers this way."

I once talked about the sense of entitlement readers have towards authors. This is kind of the same thing.

Here's the thing: Unless you have a contract with somebody, that somebody owes you nothing.

A contract, in this case, can mean many things. And we, the unrepresented, do have a contract with the agents we query, but it's not what you think. Even the AAR canon of ethics -- the closest thing there is to a moral standard for agents -- barely mentions "potential clients," saying only that agents shouldn't charge them for anything.

We are not their customers. We are not even their clients. We are, to all purposes, applying for a job.

It's just like sending out a resume, or giving a girl (or guy) your phone number. If they're not interested, they may or may not call. It's up to us to move on.

Most agents state clearly on their websites what to expect. For example, "We accept unsolicited queries, but unfortunately we can only respond it we're interested."

There's your contract. By sending an unsolicited query to an agent (the first half), we implicitly agree to no response unless they're interested (the second half). It's not legally binding, no, but if they say they don't respond, what right do we have to get mad about it?

If you don't like it, don't query them.

But what about common decency? Well, I would argue that common decency demands we look at it from their point of view and not make a big stink about it. Just accept the no response and move on. It's not like our chances of getting published are dependent on whether or not we get that form rejection from everyone.

Janet Reid points out that writers are also readers, and that it's better for business to be as polite as possible at all times. I agree, and you know what? Agents are readers too. When writers publicly complain about how agents are snobbish and arrogant and have poor taste, that's equally bad business. Probably worse.

What do you think about "no response means no"? Do agents owe us anything?

A Letter to my Son

Dear Isaac,

I would like to apologize for your DNA.

Not that you aren't awesome. You totally are. But, well...it's because you're part of me that you get upset when you don't excel at something the first time. I will spend my whole life trying to teach you what I learned only a few years ago: that you can do anything if you work hard at it. But it won't make you feel any better when you fail, and I'm sorry for that.

It's my fault you can't sit still. I know, I know. Daddy is the most inert, quiet, non-silly man you know. But as a boy, I was exactly like you. When you get in trouble for it as much as I have, you'll learn to keep it inside too.

And it's my fault you feel everything must be in perfect order. That's why you have to put your Go Fish cards back into pairs before you can count them. That's why each piece of your orange peel must touch none of the other pieces. In the future, you will straighten stacks of cards every time you take a turn, and your friends will mock you by knocking things out of place (see #4).

It's okay. They still love you. And I'll help you fix it.

Keep in mind that for all our faults, you are still an incredibly handsome genius. Most of the credit for that goes to your mom, of course, but at least I didn't screw it up.

Though if you grow to hate your widow's peak, well, I apologize for that too.

Love you, buddy.

Dad

Books I Read: White Cat

Title: White Cat
Author: Holly Black
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Published: 2010
My Content Rating: PG-13 for violence and sexy situations

Cassel comes from a family of curse workers--people with the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, with a mere touch. Curse work is illegal, of course, so they're criminals. Except for Cassel: he hasn't got the touch. He discovers his brothers are keeping secrets from him and suspects he's part of a huge con. He has to unravel his past and his memories to outcon the conmen.

I loved this (and thank you, dear readers, for recommending it). I loved the powers, LOVED the cons, and thought the characters were great. If any of that sounds even remotely interesting to you, read this book.

There were only two things that kept the book from being perfect for me. The first was a possible-but-minor plot hole near the end. (If you've read it: when did Barron have time to read his notebooks?)

The second was the cover. It's a very cool cover, but when I read descriptive hints like this, I had to take a second look:

"Your grandfather told me that someone in your family was descended from a runaway slave," she says.... People are always coming up to me on trains and talking to me in different languages, like it's obvious I'll understand them.

Maybe it's just me, but the guy in this cover doesn't look ambiguous in his racial ancestry at all. He looks white--Italian, maybe--but not like somebody who obviously speaks a foreign language. It didn't ruin the book for me, but it surprised me that someone thought this guy fit the descriptions.

If you've read it, what do you think? About the story, I mean, though we can talk cover in the comments too.

Converting from MS Word to Plain Text

Nearly every agent out there wants sample pages--sometimes multiple chapters--pasted in the body of an e-mail. Unfortunately, not all e-mail programs handle fancy text the same. What looks beautiful in your Word doc, and even in your e-mail draft, may come out unreadable on an agent's screen.

The answer is plain text, but converting to it is not always as simple as copy/paste. You can try telling your e-mail program to use only Plain Text, or you can copy from Word and paste into a txt file, but you still might get text with no paragraph breaks or questions marks where there should be quotation marks.

Hopefully this post will help you get past that.

Before you follow any of these steps, go into your Word doc and select "Save As...". These steps will make your beautiful Word doc plain, and you still want the pretty version to send when agents ask for your full MS.

Plus, we're working with global find/replace, which is easy to screw up.

Also, keep in mind I have Word 2010. I'm fairly certain all features mentioned here exist in older versions of Word, but they might not be where I say they are. If yours works differently, please say so in the comments.


PARAGRAPH BREAKS
If you let Word do your paragraph indents (which you should, it's easier), then converting straight to plain text will not only remove the indents but leave you with one giant block of text. You need paragraph breaks. Here's how:

1. Find/Replace (Ctrl-H).
2. Click "More >>" and look for Special or Special Characters.
3. Put the cursor in the Find box, and choose the Paragraph Mark special character. It should enter "^p" into the Find box.
4. In the Replace box, put two Paragraph Marks: ^p^p.
5. Click Replace All.

Now you should have an extra line between every single paragraph. When you paste it into plain text, the automatic line indent should go away (if it doesn't, it means you're manually spacing/tabbing your paragraphs; see the next section). You should be left with text that looks like every blog you've ever read.

You might want to skim through it to make sure there aren't too many line breaks anywhere. For example, I had to remove some of the extra lines around my chapter headings, because it was just too much.


TABS
Some folks manually space their paragraphs. That's okay, but it might not paste the way you want it to. Tabs and spaces aren't the same width in every font. In some cases, tab is treated as a single space, making your manual indents all but disappear.

To fix that, follow the Find/Replace procedure for paragraph breaks above, but instead of a paragraph mark, choose the Tab Character (^t) and leave the Replace box empty.


REMOVING ITALICS (OR OTHER SPECIAL FORMATTING)
This is tricky. Special formatting usually disappears in a straight conversion. Sometimes that's okay (your chapter titles don't need to be in bold), but sometimes that italicized emphasis can change the entire meaning of a sentence (i.e. "You did?" vs "You did?").

The official way to represent emphasis in plain text is with the underscore (e.g. "_You_ did?"), though you can tweak these steps to suit your needs:

1. Find/Replace (Ctrl-H).
2. With the cursor still in the Find box, click Format-->Font.... Under Font Style choose Italic (or whichever style you are searching for), then click OK.
3. Put the cursor in the Replace box, and select the Special Character "Find What Text". It should enter "^&" in the Replace box.
4. Put underscores on either side of that character: _^&_.
5. If you also want to remove the italics (pasting to plain text will do that for you, but there may be other reasons to do this in the Word doc), then with the cursor still in the Replace box, click Format-->Font.... Under Font Style choose Regular, and click OK.
6. Click Replace All.

Now all italicized words and phrases should have underscores around them. But if there's a sentence where the spaces weren't in italics (you can't see it, but Word knows), it could change from: "I hate you!" to "_I_ _hate_ _you_!" To fix this, do another Find/Replace:

1. In the Find box, type: "_ _" (underscore space underscore).
2. Click "No Formatting", since you're not looking for italics anymore.
3. In the Replace box, type a single space.
4. Click Replace All.

FANCY QUOTES, EM-DASHES, AND ELLIPSES
By default, Word converts a lot of otherwise normal characters to special ones. The special ones look pretty, but they don't always work when pasted into plain text.

• Quotation marks are converted into fancy quotes (“ ”, also called smart quotes or curly quotes) which in plain text sometimes come out as boxes, question marks, or other things. Apostrophes and single quotes are converted the same way.
• A double-hyphen (--) is converted into an em-dash (—) or an en-dash (–). In plain text, this sometimes is converted back into a single hyphen.
• Three periods in a row (...) are converted to a single ellipsis character (…). In plain text, this can come out as boxes or question marks, or as a very compressed ellipsis character (…).

I recommend you stop Word from doing all of these. To do that:

1. Go to AutoCorrect Options (in 2010, File-->Options-->Proofing; in older versions, it's in the Tools menu).
2. Go to the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab.
3. Uncheck the options you want it to stop (e.g. "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes", Hyphens with dash, etc).
4. For the ellipsis, you may have to go to the AutoCorrect tab. Under "Replace text as you type," remove the entry for the ellipsis.

If you already have these special characters in your MS, you can use Find/Replace to get rid of them. Copy/paste one of the fancy characters into the Find box, then Replace it with the regular one.


Phew! Did I miss anything? Get anything wrong? Let me know in the comments.

What If You Don't Fit Neatly Into One Genre?

If you're not sure what genre your novel is, read this post by agent Jennifer Laughran. It's a fantastic breakdown of the (current) standard genres agents are looking for when they read your query.

So what if you don't fit neatly into one?

(An aside: The post on name pronunciation has been updated with the correct answer. Not surprisingly, most of you got it wrong. Don't worry, I still like you.)

Not fitting neatly is kind of my problem. Not just with Air Pirates, but with most things I write. I like to straddle the line between sci-fi and fantasy (apparently). Everything I've written so far--and most of my future story ideas--take place in the real world, but different. Sometimes there are time machines and immortal beings that can travel outside time. Sometimes there are steam-powered airships and stones that tell the future. Sometimes there are Burmese refugees that start fires with their minds. Sometimes there are mechs and dragons.

I generally fall back on fantasy, but that's potentially misleading. There isn't always magic, and what "magic" there is usually has some sort of science behind it (even if I don't always explain it). And only one of my stories has mythical creatures. (Although Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a fantasy magazine, so I guess Air Pirates counts).

They're not science-fiction because they're not strictly about technology or a "what if." In fact, most of them feel like fantasy (what with the dragons and overall low technology).

They're not dystopian because, although many of the worlds are in the future, it's a future that's not terribly bleak. (Though I guess the lack of food and the oppressive dictator would put Travelers in that category).

I would call them science fantasy, but that's not on the list and nobody really knows what that is.

I call most of them steampunk (for the mixture of technology in a low-tech society), but they're way out on the edge of that subgenre. There's nothing Victorian about these worlds, and I never use the word "corset."

Technically, it's all speculative fiction, but I've always found that term too broad and boring.

But I certainly can't say it doesn't fit into any genre, or it's a genre all it's own, because that's pretentious (and wrong).

People are more interested if you can give them a precise genre. I read Perdido Street Station because I heard it was steampunk, but it's a little bit of everything. I'd rather pick a genre that's close enough than have an agent skip it because they don't know what it is.

Have you ever had a problem categorizing what you write?

Pop Quiz: Name Pronunciation

[UPDATE (9/12/11): Believe it or not, my name's pronounced Hyna (like Heineken, the beer). Remember that when I'm famous and you do a vlog or podcast about me. (Also if you call me Hiney in public, I may use your own mispronunciation stories against you. I'm looking at you Matt MacNish!).]

A silly poll for the weekend. These are the five most frequent pronunciations of my last name, but only one of them is correct. Note that if you know me in real life, you are TOTALLY ALLOWED to vote. I'll update this post with the correct answer on Monday.

How do you pronounce my last name?

• Heinz (like the ketchup)
• Hine (rhymes with brine)
• Hane (like the underwear)
• Hyna (like Heineken, the beer)
• Hiney (like the word for butt)

Created on Sep 9, 2011

View Results

poll by twiigs.com

So, I had this speech class my sophomore year in high school. I hate speeches. Before HS, I sometimes intentionally took a zero just so I wouldn't have to give a speech. The teacher was a good guy. He was funny, but he had no inhibitions when it came to student humiliation (as befits a speech teacher, I guess).

Because the class was a general requirement, the students were a cross-section: nerds, jocks, actors, cheerleaders, popular kids, everything. I only had one friend in the class and was in constant fear of what the others thought of me or when they would laugh.

So the worst moment comes; the teacher calls me up for my turn. "Adam..." He squints at the role sheet. "Hiney?" Then he laughs and says, "A damn hiney?"

I laughed it off, but really I wanted to crawl into a corner and die. What's your worst name pronunciation story?

First Draft

I want to make my first draft perfect, but that's impossible.

So I try to make it decent, so it will be easy to fix later or for beta readers to find the flaws. But that's impossible too. I don't know what "decent" is.

So I try to write something interesting, so beta readers will like it and (hopefully) put more effort into making it better. But every beta reader likes different things.

Anyway, that's just a different kind of perfect.

So I try to write the best first draft that I can write at this moment. But I don't know what that is. I always doubt if what I wrote is my best, then I delete it and have to start over.

So I settle for just writing a first draft. I can worry about all that other stuff later.


(Honestly, I usually get stuck on paragraph 2. How do you approach first drafts?)

Why Haven't You Self-Published Yet?

A couple weeks ago, blog reader Lexi left this comment:

I'm interested in why you guys aren't self-publishing.

It needn't stop you querying agents, if you're set on that. Meanwhile, you could be making money from your writing, and if you do well enough, agents may approach you. Win/win approach.

 It's a totally valid question, and I answered briefly in the comments, but I thought it deserved a bit more explanation.

Understand, of course, that this is just why I haven't self-published yet. I can't speak for anybody else.

(1) I still believe I can make it traditionally. I got zero requests for my first novel. The next novel got five requests -- it was rejected, but three of those agents said they wanted to see revisions and/or my next novel. This round (which is really a revision of the second novel), I've already gotten significantly more interest than last time.

That tells me I'm getting better and leads me to believe I will continue to do so. Until I hit a wall (like where the statistics are no longer going up), I'll still believe I can do it.

(2) Self-publishing is still, statistically, a lot of work for not a lot of gain. I have no doubt the numbers have increased since I ran through them a few months ago, but I haven't seen a lot to encourage me. I'm still not convinced that self-publishing should be more than my last resort.

(3) Pursuing traditional publishing stretches me. I talked about this a couple of years ago, when self-publishing still wasn't quite legit. I think one of the reasons for the growth curve of (1) above is that I've actively gotten feedback and tried to get better. I might still do that if I self-published, but I know myself. More likely I'd revise less and sacrifice quality for churning out novels.

(4) Poor sales on a self-published novel could affect my chances of getting traditionally published. At least according to Rachelle Gardner. I'm inclined to agree with her. For me, making a little money now isn't worth killing the dream. Speaking of which...

(5) Self-publishing isn't my dream. I once had a friend who tried to shoot the moon on every round of Hearts. He lost points most of the time, but he won overall (and won big). But he didn't change his strategy even when I started sacrificing points just to take him down. When I asked him why he kept doing it, he said, "The game's just not fun otherwise."

I kinda liked that.

Traditional publishing is changing, we all know that. But it hasn't actually changed yet. It's still here and larger than life, and so is my dream. So I'm going to keep shooting and see what I can hit.

Besides, what's the worst that could happen?

For you, have you self-published or are you still shooting for traditional? Tell us why in the comments.

Ideas and French Cooking

(Remixed from an old post. Hm, that's kind of appropriate, actually.)

Madeleine L'Engle once wrote a book called Walking on Water. It's an interesting look at how faith and art overlap. In fact, to hear L'Engle tell it, the two are far more intertwined than most people realize. I'd strongly recommend this book for artists who are Christian, but I think it has something to say to non-Christian artists and Christian non-artists as well.

This post isn't about faith though. There was a passage about how L'Engle turned ideas into stories. Her method, it turns out, is a lot like mine, though she describes it much more eloquently:

When I start working on a book, which is usually several years and several books before I start to write it, I am somewhat like a French peasant cook. There are several pots on the back of the stove, and as I go by during the day's work, I drop a carrot in one, an onion in another, a chunk of meat in another. When it comes time to prepare the meal, I take the pot which is most nearly full and bring it to the front of the stove.

So it is with writing. There are several pots on those back burners. An idea for a scene goes into one, a character into another, a description of a tree in the fog into another. When it comes time to write, I bring forward the pot which has the most in it. The dropping in of ideas is sometimes quite conscious; sometimes it happens without my realizing it. I look and something has been added which is just what I need, but I don't remember when it was added.

When it is time to start work, I look at everything in the pot, sort, arrange, think about character and story line. Most of this part of the work is done consciously, but then there comes a moment of unself-consciousness, of letting go and serving the work.

Unique isn't the Same as Good

One thing I love about So You Think You Can Dance is how similar the audition process is to querying a novel. It's got everything: the people who are okay but just not strong enough, the wackos who may or may not have stepped into the wrong theater, the ones who think they're awesome but aren't, the dancers who are good enough for Vegas (I'd call that a full request), and the very very few who make it all the way to the Top 20.

Much like agents, the judges say they're looking for uniqueness, something that stands out from the average dancer. Unfortunately this has resulted in folks coming in on stilts and roller skates, dressed in drag or weird unitards made by someone's mother. Yes, these are unique, and they do stand out, but not in the way the auditionees hoped.

The writing equivalent might be a query written in first person, a literary graphic novel about a man trapped in a white room, or a query about unicorn/bovine romance written in verse. Unique, maybe. But totally weird and not what most people are looking for.

So don't use gimmicks to make your work stand out. Learn the craft, get critiqued, and write the best dang novel you can. Then let it stand out for itself. Remember:

Plan a Novel 4: Outlining and (sigh) Pantsing

There is a very, very fine line between plotters and pantsers (i.e. those who write "by the seat of their pants").* At some point, everyone has to just buckle down and make up a bunch of crap. The primary difference between these two extremes of writers is that when pantsers wing it they end up with a draft, while plotters end up with an outline.

Both of them still have a lot of work to do.

* For the record, I hate the term pantser. It reminds me of Jr. High and a desire to wear too-tight belts for "security reasons." But since I'm not a panster, and since I've never heard a better a term for them, that's the one we're rolling with.


Anyway, this is where my method starts to look like pantsing (gah, seriously, there's GOT to be a better term). I chose the idea, figured out the major plot points, fleshed it out (and worked through all the sticking points), now I'm ready to congeal my notes and outlines into Something I Can Write From.

For me, that's a chapter outline, but don't worry, the chapters come last.

I do a lot of bouncing between documents, but always revolving around my outline. Sometimes I'll jump out and write a quick doc (I think better typing random lists in a text or Word doc, but that's just me) on some aspect of world history or character backstory, or maybe a single character arc, action scene, or point of motivation. Once I've figured it out, I'll jump back into my outline, add the necessary details, and move on.

For example, in my current WIP I had to come up with a whole game to revolve a third of the plot around. I wrote a doc outlining every scene dealing with the main romance (or what passes for romance, anyway; there were only 7 mini-scenes). I brainstormed two or three docs to figure out the tactics of the climactic siege (I may have gone overboard there, it was kinda fun).

I also cheat. Technically a plotter is supposed to plan the whole thing ahead of time before they write, right? Well, I have a Word doc for those scenes I just have to get out of my head right now. I don't go into great detail with any of them. Often it reads like a crappy screenplay -- a little stage direction and a lot of dialog. Heck, sometimes the "scene" is one clever line (or what I think is clever at the time).

But writing it in its own document helps shut up my inner editor and frees me to use it or not when the time comes.

So you see, even the staunchest plotter can end up leaving gaps, writing things out of order, and making stuff up as I go. But I don't think it matters how you put together a novel, so long as you end up with a novel at the end.

What about you? Where are you on the spectrum of plotter to pantser? And what the heck can we call it other than pantsing? Please!