Do I Need an Editor?

Hiring an editor can be expensive and scary, but do you need one? That depends on a lot of things—your publishing goals, current progress on your novel, where you are as a writer, your financial resources, etc. Ultimately, it's a question only you can answer.

Today's post is an effort to help you make that decision. I'm aware there is a potential conflict of interest in that I am an editor-for-hire, but you're all very smart. I trust you can take my opinions to make your own informed decisions.

I'm Just Starting My First Novel

If you're just starting to write—you haven't even finished a draft yet—I'm going to say no, you don't need a professional editor.

An editor could provide high-level feedback on your first chapters or even your outline. Depending on your experience and personal goals, that might be really useful to you. But for most people, you will learn far more by finishing a novel (including but not limited to whether the writing life is even for you) than you will from professional feedback at this stage.

If you really want help with that first novel, then what you might want is a writing coach, not an editor.

I Finished My First Novel

That's great! Finishing a novel is hard! The question now is what do you want to do with it? You need revisions, and you very likely need extra eyes on it for objective feedback, but do you need a professional editor for those things?

Maybe. First, consider the following:

• Do you want to publish this novel for a larger audience (i.e., people you don't know)?
• Is this novel so important that you want to get it just right? (Let it be known that most writers feel this way about their first novels.)
• Have you gotten feedback from others yet?
• Can you ruthlessly rip your novel apart? Are you willing to delete whole chapters, rewrite whole sections, or worse?
• Can you afford it? And can you afford multiple rounds of editing if it comes to that?

If the answer to most of these is no, then you might not need a professional editor yet. The price of editing has to be worth what you get out of it—including how much of the editor's advice you are able to act on!

Before seeking a professional editor, try to get feedback from people you know. You can learn a lot from other writers or even friends and family, and it won't cost you any extra.

Don't know any other writers? Dig around online. Hang out on social media. Put out a call to swap beta reads. And keep track of the people who say yes! Not only can you get extra feedback this way, but it's also a great way to find new friends.

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Let's say your novel is finished, you've gotten high-level feedback (professional or not), and you've completed your revisions. Your novel is pretty good, you'd say. Now, do you need an editor?

Depends. What do you want to do with that novel?

I Want to Get an Agent

In general, agents are looking for two things: (1) is your story something they can sell and (2) is it written well enough to sell it. After you've finished the novel, there's little you can do about the first one—the agent will either like your story or not.

The second is where an editor can play a role, but is hiring one necessary? Again, this is a maybe. If you have no other way to get feedback, then a professional editor can provide that for you. If you've received several rejections—I'm talking dozens, probably hundreds of rejections, maybe even on multiple novels—then a professional editor might be able to help you figure out why and how to move forward.

Do not assume that an agent will edit your novel for you. Most don't, and those that do are usually just looking at massaging certain selling points so they can more easily pitch it to publishers.

But also, don't assume you need a professional edit to get an agent. You do need feedback, but it may or may not need to be professional at this point. That's up to you.

I Have an Agent

If you have an agent and are shopping your novel to publishers, then ask your agent about this. That's what they're there for, after all.

If you have a publisher, then you probably don't need a freelance editor. The publisher is likely doing that work as part of your deal.

I'm Ready to Self-Publish

You've finished your novel, gotten your feedback, revised it like crazy, and now you're ready to push that button and rake in the dough. Should you get a professional edit first?

Yes. HECK yes! At the very least, you want a proofread to make sure there are no obvious errors, but you probably also want a line edit (sometimes called a copyedit) to identify weaknesses, inconsistencies, and make your prose really sing.

A publishing press will do this for you, big or small. It's part of the deal that benefits both the press and the author by putting your best foot forward. But if you are your publisher, then—just like getting a book cover, typesetting, marketing, etc.—you are the only one who's going to do this for you.

Don't assume you can catch everything yourself. I have edited for a number of excellent authors, and no matter how good or experienced they are, I have always found ways to improve their work—not because they aren't as good as they think, and not because I'm so awesome, but because a novel is never perfect, and it is always worth the money to improve it.

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This doesn't cover every possible scenario of course, but these are the most common points at which you might consider hiring a professional.

And for your second, third, or fourth novel? I'd say the calculations are the same, except now you have more experience as a writer (and possibly as an agent-seeker or a published author, depending on what you did with those first novels). If anything, you can trust your gut even more about whether a professional edit can help you.

If you are considering a professional edit, I'm happy to help. I can even provide a free sample edit to help you decide. But there are many, many other editors who can help you as well. I encourage you to do your research, compare, and find the best editor for you and your work.

If you're willing to do all of that, you are unlikely to regret it.

Prequels, Can They Ever Be Good?

The year was 1999. My generation hadn't had a new Star Wars movie in sixteen years. We believed the series was done. Over. The trilogy had been groundbreaking, but it was in the past never to be revisited. Then, George Lucas announced the release of The Phantom Menace.

It is difficult to convey to my Gen Z kids how big a deal this was, how over-the-top excited we all were to walk into that theater to see the first new Star Wars movie in sixteen years...

...and how thoroughly disappointed we were walking out.

I did not enjoy The Phantom Menace. A lot of us didn't, and this experience cemented my skepticism toward movie releases for decades.

It's pretty easy to find examples of prequel let-downs. The Star Wars prequel trilogy. The Scorpion King. The Grindelwald movies. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.* It happens so often that it raises the question: Is it possible for a prequel to be good?

* And I apologize if you love any of these examples I chose. Although you might be in the minority, I love that these bring you joy anyway. Don't let me or anyone steal that from you.

My answer—informed as it was by my teenage Star Wars disillusionment—used to be no, of course not, prequels, by definition, are a bad idea. But as more counterexamples appear, I'm beginning to change my mind. What makes prequels bad is what makes any movie bad (e.g., when it's a blatant cash grab) but they can be done well.

I think a good prequel requires three things:

• An intriguing question
• A story that stands on its own
• Characters who grow

Let's take a look.

An Intriguing Question

For a prequel to be interesting, it has to promise an answer that fans of the original actually want. Why does Maleficent hate the king and queen so much? How did Mike and Sully become friends? How did Vito Corleone become so powerful?

An intriguing question isn't enough to make a prequel good, but it's a necessary start. If the fans don't care about the mystery that connects the prequel to the original, then it's hard to care about the prequel at all.

Also...

The question can't be dumb. We don't care how Han swindled the Falcon from Lando or what Obi-Wan was doing in his cave while Luke grew up. We don't need to see how the wizard came to Oz or learn why Cruella de Vil wants to skin puppies. The originals give us enough information that we can fill these gaps in our head. The questions might be interesting, but they're not worth making a whole new story about.

The answer can't be dumb. Han Solo's name can just be his name; it doesn't have to be a thing. And God help me but the mystery of the Force was so much cooler without a scientific explanation. If you're going to use a prequel to answer some outstanding mystery, your answer has got to be cooler than any fan theory out there (spoiler: that's very hard to do).

A Story That Stands on its Own

If the goal of your prequel is solely to explain where the protagonist got all her character quirks, then it might not be a story worth telling. If you're going to write a whole novel (or make a whole movie) out of an origin story, that story should be just as compelling to a newcomer as it is to the fans.

How to do that is the same as telling any story: give the protagonist goals and motivations, obstacles, stakes, difficult choices... all the things that go into telling any story.

Do not just walk us through the protagonist's upbringing as they pick up each piece of their iconic outfit.

Characters Who Grow

This is part of telling a standalone story, but it's important enough that it demands its own section. In a prequel, your fans already know how or where the protagonist ends up. We know Elphaba becomes the wicked witch. We know Cassian ends up a jaded pilot for the Rebel Alliance. We know Obi-Wan ends up an old hermit in a cave on Tatooine. What we don't know is how they got there.

This can be great (an intriguing mystery even!) if your protagonist starts off in an unexpected place—Elphaba as a misunderstood sorceress with a heart of gold or Cassian as a down-on-his-luck orphan who wants nothing to do with the rebellion against the Empire.

It works less well if your protagonist starts in the exact same place, physically and developmentally, as they finish. The end of Revenge of the Sith had already placed Obi-Wan on Tatooine. He had already learned to keep his head down, just wanting to keep Luke and his family out of trouble from the Empire—the same place and with the same goals and motivation he had at the beginning of A New Hope.

This makes it very hard to care about his actions in the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. He's already where we know he's going to end up! There's nothing he can learn (that wouldn't undercut the action of the original movies)! He doesn't really grow, so there's no compelling reason to watch.

Ensuring that your characters grow and change in the prequel can prevent this.

What a Good Prequel Can Do for You

Done well, a good prequel can be a joy to fans of the original while also fully entertaining the uninitiated. It can give your audience those dopamine hits of fan service while still delivering a new, fantastic story.

A good prequel can also make the original better—adding depth or new perspective to an old, familiar story. It can create new fans and make existing ones want to revisit that world again.

I'm still wary about prequels. More often than not, the backstories in the audience's heads are cooler than the one you can give them. But there are ways to do it well, to expand the world of your story and tell a new story that's worth telling.

You just need to care about it and put in the work.

Writing as Resistance

Politically speaking, a lot happened since I left. I knew it would—I was traveling to the US on Election Day, after all—but the results are not what I hoped. (According to current voting counts, they're not what a majority of voters wanted either.)

It's been almost a month since the election, and people are still hurting. Still scared. Still anxious. And why wouldn't they be? We don't yet know what will happen next. I know not everyone believes the US is headed toward an autocratic hellscape, but historical precedent does us few favors here.

To those of you who are worried like me: It's okay to be anxious. Feel what you gotta feel. I'm still considering what I can do in the coming months and years, but here's one thing I do know:

We can write.

Stories give us hope. When the protagonist gets back up after being left for dead, it makes us believe we can do the same. When the heroes win against all odds—when Katara defeats Azula, when Sam carries Frodo to Mount Doom, when Luke strikes the Death Star's core—it reminds us that those in power are vulnerable.

Even the coziest stories give us joy and an escape, and these are every bit as necessary as hope. Stories also share the power of love and connection. They remind us what we are fighting for.

Stories give us symbols. Alan Moore inspired the face of Anonymous, and Katniss's three-finger salute has been considered cause for arrest. Symbols are powerful. They remind us that we are not alone. They terrify oppressors by reminding them how outnumbered they are.

Stories foster empathy. Empathy is the antidote to fascism. It is vital to creating a world we can all live in together.

No matter what you feel about the present time, even if you feel powerless, know that your stories matter and are absolutely necessary.

There's a reason fascist regimes always ban books.

It is the same reason we need to write them.

Personal Status

Some quick, personal updates for those of you who have been lacking such things.

As I said in July, my long-term gamedev contracts ended, and I am all in on the freelance train again. Honestly, I'm happy about that. I love editing. It lets me help authors (which I love) and maintain an incredibly flexible schedule (which I need). Only problem is I have to constantly find jobs.

Here are some burners I've got going to address that:

• I'm a contractor for Scribendi, Inc., editing everything from resumes to research papers to admission essays. It's not my dream job (and the pay is only okay), but it keeps me somewhat afloat (and has done since 2017; I'm very thankful for them).
• I'm now also a contractor for Cambridge Proofreading (because Scribendi work was sparse, but my daughter said, "Hey, aren't there other companies like Scribendi?"—turns out she was right).
• I have recently contracted as an editor/coach with KN Literary Arts. This is very cool in theory. Among other things, I love the idea of coaching, and this would let me work on novels and memoirs. It's still early days, though. We'll see how this pans out in terms of stability.
• And of course, I'm always seeking clients right here on the site. These are my favorite (and not just because they pay the best). I am always excited when one of you sends me an e-mail about helping you with something you've written.

All of this is slow going, but it's going. There was a time, years ago, when I was getting clients semi-regularly and also, like, streaming and playing D&D online and stuff. I hope to find some of that again.

The hard part is building trust and patience in myself. There's a lot (A LOT) to be said for predictable work and income. But freedom's pretty great too. If I can create some stability with it, that would be amazing.

What about writing?

That's happening, but it's very much back-burner at the moment. It's difficult to allocate time for it when I could be making money instead, but I haven't quit yet. Just seeking a bit more freelance stability first.

Ah, but I do have something new sitting with Broken Eye Books. Gotta wait for that, though.

Publishing, man. It's slow.

And the kids?

Well, a bunch of them have recently graduated high school or are about to, which is going to change my schedule in unpredictable ways. Theoretically, I'll have more time when they leave and/or take care of themselves, but we'll see what happens.

Like Master Yoda says...

One last administrative note: I'll be traveling for a couple of weeks, and the blog will be quiet during that time. I should return by December at the latest. Subscribe or watch my socials to stay up to date.

What Improvement Actually Looks Like

One of my favorite games of all time and one of the hardest high-precision platformers I have ever played is Celeste. This game asks you to traverse a series of deadly rooms through a combination of jumps, dashes, and wall climbs. Most rooms can be traversed in a matter of seconds, though you will often die dozens of times before that happens.

Some rooms are much longer. A successful run through the final room, for example, can take more than two minutes. Here's a clip if you want to see it (SPOILER):

I spent hours of trial and error trying to traverse this room. My kids watched sometimes, and I found an interesting phenomenon: Every time I said, "I'm getting better! Look how far I can get," I would immediately die several times on the early, "easy" parts that I thought I had figured out.

It was frustrating (and embarrassing). I felt like I'd learned nothing, like my previous successes had been luck, and I was lying to myself that I was improving at all.

That's because, like most people, I believed this:

It makes sense, right? Put the time in, and you will get better (and you'll never go back down to a previous level, because you can't! You're better now!).

But what happened to me was this:

I would get consistently better and then suddenly get worse—a lot worse, in places that I thought I had already figured out. It led me to believe that I hadn't gotten better at all. I became disillusioned, frustrated, and discouraged.

I bet you're familiar with this feeling.

This pattern—trying to improve, getting better for a bit, then failing more than we think we should—can be seen over and over again in everything: playing piano, learning to snowboard, writing more words per day, lifting weights, breaking a bad habit, improving ourselves through therapy, and on and on.

It can be frustrating when we feel like we've slid backwards, like we're not improving at all and will maybe never improve.

But if you keep going, you find a strange, new truth:

Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line. It has peaks and dips and plateaus and more dips, but so long as you continue, it always, always goes up—even when it doesn't feel like it.

Failing repeatedly in Celeste (while telling my kids, "Look what I can do!") helped prove this to myself. I wanted to finish the room, and I got frustrated every time I died. To succeed, I had to change my goal from "finish the room" to "practice toward consistency."

I would celebrate the small victories: when I did an early bit of platforming well, when I became more consistent at a part that used to give me trouble, even when I died in a way I never had before. I wasn't reaching new lengths in the room, but I was slowly improving and, perhaps more importantly, enjoying every run even though I died hundreds(!) of times.

This applies to writing too. Maybe I don't hit 1,000 words every day, but I can celebrate that I am hitting 500 every day—or 200! Or 50! I can even celebrate that I just sat down to write multiple days in a row. I can celebrate writing a sentence or even simply opening my document without fear.

And when I fail at these things, I can remember that's part of the process too. Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line, and I'm going to fail sometimes. It's impossible not to! But forward is forward.

All of which is to say: don't give up. So long as you keep going, you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Trust the process.

Using Description to Convey Emotion

I have a confession. Historically, I have been very bad at description. I didn't like it. I skimmed it when I read it (do you know how much description there is in The Count of Monte Cristo or Les Miserables?), and I paid it little attention when I wrote it (I still do in my first drafts).

Over time, I recognized how description could be good, but I still thought that I wasn't good at it. I thought I wasn't "that kind of writer."

I have since learned that description is not only vital for grounding the reader, but it is also a useful—often critical—tool for conveying emotion.

And like every skill, it is something that can be learned.

A lack of description is one of the most common weaknesses I see when editing authors' fiction. I talked about grounding the reader before. Today, I want to talk about using that grounding to convey emotion.

The Con Artist and the Ninja

This example is adapted from an old WIP of mine. Domino is a young con artist, and Ko is basically a ninja. In this scene, they have just been arrested and are on their way to the governing authorities. Domino is worried that things aren't going as he planned.

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino could be in serious trouble.

This short description is fine. Serviceable. We know who's here, where they are, and what they're doing, and the sweat on Domino's shirt even gives us a hint of his emotional state.

But we can do more. We might describe the carriage ride, for example, and use that to convey Domino's worries.

The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest.

The jolts don't directly tell us what Domino's feeling, but they imply it. If he were calm or happy, he wouldn't feel "every jolt in his chest." Instead, he might "sway with the rhythmic rocking of the carriage" or notice "the music of the wheels against the cobblestones." All of these accurately describe sound and feel of the carriage, but each one evokes different emotions.

We could also describe Ko a bit more, conveying not only how the ninja appears but how Domino feels about him.

Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Here, we get the contrast between Domino's and Ko's emotional states, and the word "irritatingly" tells us how Domino feels about it. In doing so, the reader can feel what Domino is feeling—not just worried about seeing the Marshal but frustrated that Ko doesn't feel the same.

That's probably enough description to paint the scene. (It might even be too much, but that's what editors are for.) Let's put it together and see:

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino might be in serious trouble.

It doesn't take much, just an extra line here and there to paint more of the scene while also showing the emotions you want the reader to share.

Think about what's happening in the scene—what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or even tasted. Then, think about what the characters are feeling and use that to color what is described and how.

It'll take practice, and that's okay! The original passage I started with had been through several edits and beta reads, and I still found ways to improve it just now. (Kinda makes me wanna go back to this WIP, to be honest.)

Just keep writing, keep learning, and trust that you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Should You Keep Writing?

Like I said last week, publishing is a difficult business. And there will always come a time when you wonder whether you're wasting your time—whether you should even be writing at all.

How do you know when to keep going and when it's time to quit? Ultimately, only you can decide, but personally, I would first ask...

Do you enjoy it?

If you have time to write and you enjoy it—not getting published but the act of writing itself—then don't quit! Why would you? We only have a limited number of days on this Earth. You might as well spend them doing something you love.

But nothing is fun forever, so...

What if you don't enjoy it?

This is a harder question. If writing pays your bills, that's fantastic and maybe a good reason to do it. (MAYBE.) If it's not and you're just hoping to get rich, well... that's a bad idea, statistically speaking.

So, if writing doesn't bring you joy, and it's not sustaining your existence, then that begs a more difficult question....

Why are you writing?

Truth-telling time. I've been writing seriously for decades, but the last few years, I found an increasing fear every time I sat down to write. I enjoyed being done with something, but I only got that feeling once a year or something. I wasn't making money with my novels, and I had very low prospects of doing so.

All of that's par for the course, but I was also dreading the act of writing itself. The thought that I "had to" write every day was stressing me out.

It took me a lot of therapy and inner work to figure out that a large part of why I was writing was for external validation. I wanted people to read what I wrote and think I was cool—that I had worth. Turns out, that's not a great reason to write.

But I do love writing. My mind is spinning worlds and stories all the time, and I want them to go somewhere. I've done game design, D&D, novels, short stories, and I love them all! But novels are such a great medium for the stories I want to tell that I haven't been able to give them up yet. As I'm learning to let go of the need for validation (NOT! EASY!), my self-inflicted pressure to write has eased, and I've found myself enjoying the act of writing again.*

* Not always. It's still hard, but I'm motivated to work through it. Everything's a process.

Figure out why you're writing.

Your own motivation might be a mix of things, healthy and otherwise. And that's fine! Virtually all of our motivations are like that. But when writing or trying to get published becomes hard—and it will get hard!—understanding yourself is the only way you'll know whether it's worth it to you.

And fun fact! Even if you give up writing for a time, you can always come back to it. It's not like it's going anywhere, and you might learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Control What You Can... Let Go of What You Can't

Publishing is a difficult business. Millions of new books are published each year, yet the average book sells only 1,000 copies in its lifetime and fewer than 500 become NYT bestsellers. Traditional publishers account for maybe one million of those books, and still, that's only 1–2% of the projects submitted to them.

The odds of making it rich or even just making a living by writing novels are... not great.

I don't say this to be a downer. I say it because I love data and find it very useful for making plans and managing expectations. I say it because I'm also a writer who wants to be one of those statistics (the good ones, at least), and data helps me understand what I'm getting into.

Here's some slightly more encouraging data:

• More than 95% of books that publishers reject are "poorly written, have a bad or unoriginal premise, or are irrelevant."

They call it the slush pile, but it's entirely avoidable. As you improve your writing, you'll easily rise up above the slush. This is a thing you can control.

• Nearly 67% of sales are in authors' backlists.

The odds of good sales might be bad for one book, but they increase with each book you publish. As you write more, you sell more. This is also a thing you can control.*

* With self-publishing, at least.

In every area of life, there are aspects you can control and aspects you can't. You can't control whether somebody makes you angry, but you can control what you do with that anger. You can't control whether somebody likes you, but you can control whether you like yourself.

In publishing, you cannot control the publishers, the readers, the market, or virality. You cannot control whether people will buy or enjoy your book. You cannot control how much money you make or what people say about you. But there are things you can control.

You control your writing.

You decide what words go on the page and whether there are words at all. You can improve your skill through practice. You alone decide what and how many stories you tell.

You control your schedule.

You decide how many days you write, for how long, how many words. You decide whether you're going to write a ton in one sitting or a little at a time—and both are fine! You alone decide how to balance writing with the rest of your life in a way that brings you joy.

You control whether you keep going.

You decide if you will keep writing, take a break, or stop altogether—again, all are fine decisions so long as they are your decisions designed to fit your life!

If you want to keep writing no matter what, nobody can stop you. The more you do so, the better you'll get. If writing is something you want, then the only way to fail is to give up on it.

It's important to let go of what we can't control so that we can focus our energy on what we can. I'm not saying it's easy—I know from experience it's not!—but it's possible, and it's the only way to find joy in what we do.

Control what you can. Let go of what you can't.

How to Start a Novel

There are lots of great tips out there for how to start a novel. You've probably heard some of these:

• Start in the middle of the plot (in medias res)
• Start with exciting action
• Start with a compelling mystery
• Start with an intriguing first line

These are all great ideas. They're not even mutually exclusive! But I bet you can think of stories that started with these things and were still... kinda dull? Or maybe you can't, because you stopped reading them. I know I have. And some of my favorite stories don't do any of these things!

Here's the thing about writing: There are no rules. You can start the novel however you damn well want—even with fifteen pages of world-building about Hobbits. If the reader is still enjoying themselves, nothing else matters.

The tips above come from stories that did these things and worked, or else stories that didn't do these things and that people felt were boring, but...

They're good ideas, but they can fail you if you don't understand why they work. For example...

Starting in medias res is cool because it skips boring exposition, but it can fail if the reader doesn't understand the current action or why it's happening. They'll feel lost and confused.

Starting with action is fun and exciting! But that excitement can feel bland if the reader doesn't understand the reasons for any of it. They'll get bored quickly.

Starting with a mystery is cool and intriguing. ("Where am I? Who am I?") But it can fall flat if the mystery feels forced ("Oh right, I slept over at my friend's house last night.") or if the mystery is only maintained because details are deliberately held from the reader (like a novel that refuses to name the protagonist for several pages just to be clever). The reader may feel tricked or patronized.

Intriguing first lines are basically always cool but only if you pay out on them. It could feel pretty disappointing to read "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... and then the murders began." only to find out that the "murders" are just gathering crows or something.

But if you'll look carefully, each of the above tips can fail in the same way: An opening doesn't work if the reader doesn't understand what's going on.

It's not enough to start a novel with the protagonist running for her life through a dark forest. We need to know why they're running? From whom? What happens if they get caught?

Within a page or two, the reader can ideally answer these questions:

• Who is there?
• What do they want?
• Why do they want it?
• What happens if they don't get it?

If an opening has those things, it won't matter whether the novel starts with a literal explosion or inside a quiet coffee house. Either way, you'll have an invested reader.

Characters We Care About: Goals and Motivation

Probably the most important thing a story can do is make the reader care about its characters. There are a number of factors in what makes us care about someone, but today we're going to talk about one of the most important ones: your protagonist's goals and motivations.

1. What does the character want?
2. Why does the character want it?

Readers want to root for your characters, but to do so, they have to know what they're rooting for and why. If you give them that, they'll love your characters forever.

What Does the Character Want?

If the reader doesn't know what a character wants, then very little that character does matters. They're just walking around doing stuff. Think of the beginning of A New Hope. There's a bunch of action, a bunch of people getting shot and dying, a big scary dude in a cape and mask walking onto the ship. The opening crawl covers some basic info, but it's difficult to care* until C-3P0 says, "We'll be destroyed for sure" and "There'll be no escape for the princess this time."

He cares about someone. She's in danger.

So we start to care.

The reader doesn't need this information right away, but the sooner the better. You've only got a few pages to grab most readers, and the first step in doing that is giving the reader something to root for.

*Because infodumps rarely work.

Why Does the Character Want It?

Watch any reality competition or any sports on TV. One of the main things they ask the competitors is, "Why is this win important to you?"

The competitors we care most about are those with the most compelling reasons: "I'm doing it for the folks back home." "This is my chance at a better life." "Everyone said I couldn't do it. I have to prove to myself that I can."

Compelling motivation makes for good television and great storytelling. For example:

• Harry Potter wants to succeed at Hogwarts. If he doesn't, he goes back to his awful life with the Dursley's.
• Luke Skywalker wants to find out what R2-D2's hidden message means. If he does, he'll be able to answer questions he's long held about his father and Ben Kenobi and ultimately himself.
• Katniss Everdeen doesn't just want to win the Hunger Games so she can survive. She wants to get back to her family so they can survive as well.
• Zuko wants to find the avatar, not just to restore his honor but to be allowed to return home and to prove he's worthy to be his father's son.*

*Think about it. When did you start caring about Zuko? For me, it was the episode "The Storm" when his uncle told his men why Zuko was so driven that he hurt the people around him.

It was when we learned his motivation. 

Motivations are sometimes framed as stakes, but the idea is the same. Your protagonist wants to achieve something, and they need a compelling reason to achieve it—one that the reader can stand up and cheer for.

It's one of those things that's not hard and it is at the same time. For those of us who tend to focus on world-building and plot, we can get lost in "what needs to happen" and forget about why it needs to happen. But that "why" is paramount.

Because if you can get the reader to root for your characters, then you will have found something every writer hopes to find: a fan.

On the Importance of Democracy

One of my kids told me they didn't really think they were gonna vote when they turned 18, and I felt like I failed as a father. I know that's a common feeling (am I right, fathers?), but it drove me to action. I don't want to fail them, and I don't want to fail you, so you get to be my temporary children for the next few minutes.

You gotta vote.

I don't mean that in a burdensome obligation kind of way, but in a "Hey, it's actually pretty cool we live in a time and place where our opinion has meaning!" kind of way.

It's a safe bet that you have lived your whole life in a democracy. I know I have. Because of that, it's easy to take it for granted that (1) we can always vote (that's what all countries do, right?) and (2) our vote doesn't feel like it does anything.

But here's the thing. If you live in a country without a democracy (or with a fake/failed democracy, like say Russia), your opinion is worthless—sometimes even dangerous. The people in charge of your country/state/city/school are chosen by other people for reasons you don't even get to know about. The law is whatever those leaders say it is. And there's nothing you can do to change it short of some sort of rebellion, which are notoriously difficult to organize and bad for the health of everyone involved (historically speaking).

Voting's easy though. Among other things, the organizing has been done for you, and most laws ensure a minimum of bloodshed. Most importantly, your voice matters.

Yeah, your voice doesn't make change alone—it's the collective voice of thousands or millions of people—but your voice is part of those millions. Change happens when we speak together.

Despite popular opinion, there are electable representatives who care about people and who will fight for change that serves all people. These candidates aren't always available at the highest levels of government, but guess what! The highest levels of government are not the ones that matter the most!

Sure, it'd be nice if the federal government finally ended Daylight Savings Time, raised the minimum wage, or did literally anything about 70% of the world's mass shootings. But state and local governments can and do make those kinds of changes all the time, and your vote carries orders of magnitude more weight in those elections. And when enough cities and states make a successful change, the federal government eventually just goes along with it.

And while you're there, vote for the highest levels of government too. It's just one extra dot.

Voting isn't the end-all fix to the world—nothing is. But so long as we live in a place where it's an option, voting is one of the easiest, most important ways to help.

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now. Hope is a hard thing to maintain, but hope is absolutely vital to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Voting itself is a kind of hope, and you know what they say....

AI and Why We Write in the First Place

Recently, the organization behind National Novel Writing Month (which challenges writers to write 50,000 words in the month of November) officially condoned the use of generative AI and said anyone who didn't like it was classist and ableist.

People got mad about that.

So, let's talk about AI for a bit, what it can do, what it can't do, and whether it should have any place in the writing process.

What do we mean by "AI"?

As always, let's define terms first. This post is not talking about AI that defines enemy behavior in Pac-Man nor the fictional, self-aware AIs of Terminator and I, Robot. We are specifically talking about generative AI or large language models (LLMs).

In a technical sense, generative AI is closer to Pac-Man than Skynet. In science fiction—including science fiction that I wrote!—AIs are self-aware and sentient, capable of complex and original thought. But that's not how any of our current technology works, not now nor in the foreseeable future.

What we call artificial intelligence today is not, in fact, intelligent. LLMs are very powerful, very structured predictive text generators. They are very good at putting together strings of words that sound good and are grammatically correct (i.e., modeling language), but they have no idea what any of it means. They don't even have a way to know.

This is an important point, and we can't get anywhere in discussing the topic unless we agree on it.

So.

What can AI do?

In an ideal world (not an ethical one—we'll get to that in a sec), generative AI can do a bunch of things for writers in theory, like...

• ...brainstorm a list of ideas.
• ...edit text to be grammatically correct.
• ...write a whole damn story.

And that sounds amazing, which is why the CEOs of the world have been throwing everything they have at this tech.

But there are some inherent and (because of the way LLMs fundamentally work) insurmountable problems.

What AI can't do

Remember that part about AI not understanding what anything means? Turns out, that causes some problems.

AI can't brainstorm a list of original ideas. They might sound original to you, but there is nothing AI can come up with that hasn't been thought of or remixed already. In fact, because LLMs are trained to produce something that sounds good rather than something that is unique, the list you get will be the most mediocre ideas you can pull from a quick Google search. Helpful perhaps, but never ground-breaking.

"But, Adam, didn't you say there are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has come before?"

I did! I also said that novelty doesn't come from original ideas but from combining them with your unique life, experience, voice, and story.

An AI doesn't have any of those things.

An AI editor can't ensure the author's voice or intended meaning is maintained. Again, this is because AI has no idea what words mean. It only knows which words statistically appear in a given sequence to be considered "correct" by humans (plus whatever extra guidelines and guardrails its programmers placed on top of it). Your text will sound correct, intelligent even, but it will also sound generic. You will no longer be in it.

(Note that if you are looking for a way to make your text great while maintaining your intended meaning and unique voice, that's exactly what I do.)

AI can write a whole damn story but not a story that's worth a damn. Sure, it'll sound smart. Statistical models (and a soupçon of plagiarism) ensure that. But it won't mean anything. Nothing connects. Nothing has a point, and nothing is being said, because the AI has nothing to say and isn't aware that "saying something" with your story is even a thing.

Should writers use AI at all then?

In a brighter timeline, I believe there are versions of us discussing how AI can be used to help with all the tedious stuff humans have to do so we can have more time to do something that matters—like make art. Or at the very least, we could discuss how AI can enhance our creativity rather than make it worse.

For example, brainstorming mediocre ideas isn't all that bad! I do that all the time with a Google search, helping me trigger new, unique ideas. And helping a poverty-stricken, non-native English speaker edit their story into passable English seems like a good thing. Even writing a whole damn story could be...

Well okay, I don't think that one's any good.

I mean, if I'm just using AI to churn out a story—even if I do the work of revising that story to sound good—at that point, what am I even doing then? I'm not making money. (Statistically speaking, publishing books is a terrible way to make money!) And I'm not even writing. At that point, I'm just editing someone else's mediocre prose at a loss.

In any case, those discussions are for a brighter timeline, one in which AI is 100% free and ethical. In our timeline, AIs have some ethical wrinkles:

• Big LLMs are trained on authors' writing without their permission.
• And they do an excellent job plagiarizing that writing without telling you it's plagiarized... because they have no idea.
• Corporations want LLMs to replace human writers and editors in order to increase profits for the already-rich.
• And as these corporations discover LLMs suck at writing, they try to rehire those human writers and editors to fix the LLMs' work at a fraction of their worth.
• By all accounts, training and using LLMs consumes a lot of power—like way more than it should considering what little we get out of it.

If we could get around those problems—if AI had consent for all the data it was trained on, if corporations used it to make creative lives better, if training and using one didn't consume as much electricity as a single Icelandic citizen uses in a year—then sure, maybe, AI might be useful for things like brainstorming or grammar checking.

But those are real problems, and personally, I can't get past them. (And AI's are only mediocre at brainstorming and grammar checking anyway.)

I've heard folks say the tech will get better, these problems are fixable, etc., etc. But coming from the computer science field myself and having studied LLMs back in the 20th century (GOOD GOD!), I'm unconvinced. The technology hasn't changed very much in that time, only the amount of data and server power available (and the billions of investment dollars to make it look like things are better).

So, I won't be using AI for the foreseeable future. Writing is hard, but not because humans are bad it. We're actually the only beings on Earth that are any good it! Making a computer write for me (and not very well) just makes me wonder: What am I buying with that time, when instead, I could be making something new?

That's me. I'm curious your thoughts (but do be kind in the comments if you want them to stay there).

Grounding the Reader in the Scene

In a first draft, we often write things as they occur to us. Maybe some dialogue first, an occasional gesture or action by one of the characters, throw in an emotion or two. The result might be something like this (for the purpose of illustration, I have hacked this passage from Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld):

"How long can we last without parts, Klopp?" Alek asked.

"Until someone lands a shell on us, young master."

"Until something breaks, you mean," Volger said.

Klopp shrugged. "A Cyklop Stormwalker is meant to be part of an army. We have no supply train, no tankers, no repair team."

Alek shifted the cans of kerosene in his grip. He felt like some vagabond carrying everything he owned.

A functional scene, but confusing for anyone other than the author. The reader only knows what you tell them, and the lines above don't say much by themselves.

Grounding a scene means imagining that you are painting a picture in the reader's head (because you basically are). Without any additional context, the reader has nothing in their mind, a white space with only the characters and objects you place in it as you name them.

By the end of the first line above, the reader knows there are two characters: Klopp and Alek. They might know something about these characters from previous scenes, but they don't know where the characters are or what they're doing now. All they have to imagine are two characters they know standing in empty space.

The third line adds another character: Volger. The reader now has to reimagine the scene, possibly even replaying the first two lines in their head to imagine Volger also being present. This slows the reader down as they have to rethink what they thought they knew.

The fourth line mentions a Cyklop Stormwalker, some kind of vehicle. Are they in this vehicle? Are they repairing it? Who knows? Not the reader, but they have to revise their mental image again. Finally, in the last paragraph, we get some visual. We know that Alek is carrying cans of kerosene, so maybe they're carrying these back to the Stormwalker, but where are they now? The author might know, but the reader doesn't

The most straightforward way to fix this is to ground the reader in the scene. Start the scene with a description that answers the questions: Who is here? Where is here? What are they doing?

For example in the passage above, we could add the following paragraph before the dialogue:

Alek, Klopp, and Volger trudged along the streambed, the kerosene sloshing with every step, its fumes burning Alek's lungs. With each of them carrying two heavy cans, the trip back to the Stormwalker already seemed much farther than the walk to town this morning.

With just a couple of sentences, we now know who is in the scene (Alek, Klopp, and Volger), where the scene is (along a streambed), and what they are doing (carrying kerosene back to the Stormwalker). This simple addition makes it far easier for the reader to visualize the scene, and they don't have to revise that mental image with each new line of dialogue.

But what if the reader stopped reading at the last chapter and hasn't picked the book back up in months? Or what if they were distracted when reading the last chapter? Or what if they just don't remember the details—or at least the important details—of what happened in the previous scene? It is often useful to drop a hint of where this scene occurs in the plot as well as in time and space, something like this:

And yet, thanks to Alek, they'd left behind most of what they needed.

This serves as a quick, clean reminder without needing to do a full recap. The reader knows something bad happened, and the line above will be enough to remind most readers what that thing was.

It also has the added benefit of implying what Alek feels in this scene, which is in some ways even more important.

Let's put it all together and add a little bit more of Alek's emotions to the scene (i.e., let me show you the full passage that I hacked apart for illustration):

Alek, Klopp, and Volger trudged along the streambed, the kerosene sloshing with every step, its fumes burning Alek's lungs. With each of them carrying two heavy cans, the trip back to the Stormwalker already seemed much farther than the walk to town this morning.

And yet, thanks to Alek, they'd left behind most of what they needed.

"How long can we last without parts, Klopp?" he asked.

"Until someone lands a shell on us, young master."

"Until something breaks, you mean," Volger said.

Klopp shrugged. "A Cyklop Stormwalker is meant to be part of an army. We have no supply train, no tankers, no repair team."

"Horses would have been better," Volger muttered.

Alek shifted the burden in his grip, the smell of kerosene mixing with the smoked sausages that hung around his neck. His pockets were stuffed with newspapers and fresh fruit. He felt like some vagabond carrying everything he owned.

"Master Klopp?" he said. "While the walker's still in fighting prime, why don't we take what we need?"

Now we have a scene that can be easily visualized, that doesn't require mental revision as the reader reads each new line, that reminds us what the characters are trying to accomplish, and that shows the character's emotions. In other words, we have a well-grounded scene.

Should this be what was written in the first draft? I mean, only if you already have a clear, clear idea of the scene from the start. For most of us, the first draft is essentially our pencil sketch of the story. Revision is where we make it read well, like I've done above.

I can't say that this is how Scott Westerfeld actually put this scene together, but it's how most of my scenes get put together and probably most of yours. Write what comes to mind first, then go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along.

And if you still need help, well, that's what editors are for.

Writing for the Market

A common question writers wrestle with is whether they should write what they love or write what will sell. This is an important question! But before I try to answer it, I need to drop an important truth:

Nobody knows what will sell.

I mean, we all make our guesses (and agents and editors are in a better position to gauge these winds than most of us), but it's not like Rowling sat down and decided that a story about a wizarding school was a gap in the market that would definitely be a hit. Heck, even publishers didn't know—the first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times!

Trying to write a bestseller is like hitting a moving target with a paper airplane on a breezy day. It can probably be done? But it's easier if you can just throw a thousand airplanes.

I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time.

Here's what you can do though:

(1) Know your market. Read books that target the same audience you want to target. Learn what's out there. Try to understand why it works.

(2) Enjoy your market. The number of authors who can find success writing for a genre they don't like are very, very few. Most of us write what we write because we were readers first—because we like our genre!

You don't have to enjoy everything in your target market of course, but the books you don't like are selling for a reason. You may not agree with it, but it will help you immensely to try and understand what your audience sees in them.

(3) Write what you want to read. There are multiple reasons for this. One is because if you don't enjoy it, neither will your readers, but another is because you're gonna be reading this book a lot.

(4) Put yourself in your work. There are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has ever come before, but there is no one else in the world with your life, your experience, your voice, or your story. The one thing every breakout hit has in common is novelty, and nobody can write you but you. Use that.

(5) Don't give up. Not everyone is going to be a success, but failure doesn't exist. If something doesn't work, examine why and try again.

Nobody knows what will go viral (and if you do, please explain this to me), but there are elements within your control. You just have to try stuff and see what works. Know your market, take risks, and be yourself. It's the best any of us can do.

Question for you: Is there a novel that you think shouldn't be popular but is? What do you think draws readers to it?

Sample Edits

Finding an editor for your work can be really hard. "How do I know whom to trust? What if they don't understand my work and what I'm trying to do? Do I really want to pay so much money for someone to judge my soul?"

I can't answer that last question for you, but I can help with the rest. Here are a few things to hopefully make the decision of whether to hire me less scary:

Services and rates are clearly listed. You don't have to contact me for a quote or do any guesswork. Just look at my rates, do your own calculations and comparisons, and decide if it's worth the judging of your human soul.

I offer a free sample edit. This is the best way to see whether you click with my work (or I click with yours). I'll edit your first 1,000 words for free, and you can see whether my edit sparks joy (professionally speaking). All you have to do is reach out.

And what if you don't want to reach out just yet? What if you want to know what an edit from me looks like without risking your soul? Well, I got you. Below, you can see what one of my edits looks like: a sample edit on 1,000 words of a novel (used with the author's permission).

First is an example of my Deep Edit service, where I provide developmental editing and line editing in the same package. (Alternatively, you can hire me for just a Developmental Edit [in-depth comments on how you can improve your text at a macro level] or a Line Edit [tracked changes and comments to improve your text at the sentence and paragraph level].)

Here is a quick screenshot of the sample edit, and you can view the entire Deep Edit here.

Second is an example editorial letter, which comes with most of my services. This letter provides an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of your work. My editorial letters are fairly detailed (even on short documents like this sample). If you want fast, cheap, but good feedback, you can even get the editorial letter by itself as one of my services.

Here is a quick screenshot of the sample edit, and you can view the entire editorial letter here.

I hope that providing these samples can help ease your mind as you look for someone to edit your work, whether it's me, someone else, or no one at all. Only you can decide what will best serve you and your goals, and if you think that might be me, e-mail me at adamheine@gmail.com to get started.

Using Dialogue Tags (or "He Said She Said")

A very common issue I come across while editing is overuse of "fancy" dialogue tags like these:

He exclaimed

She cried out

They pleaded

He growled

She retorted

They taunted

These dialogue tags all have one thing in common: they stick out.

Does that make them super bad? Of course not! Used once in a while, these dialogue tags can punctuate an emotional moment very effectively. They become an issue, however, when they are overused.

Usually, the reason they get overused is when writers follow the otherwise excellent advice to avoid repetition. If you say your protagonist has "hair as black as the dark behind the stars," that's pretty cool! But it loses its impact the second time you say it, and by the third and fourth time, many readers will be bored or annoyed.

Fancy dialogue tags are the same. Even if you manage to use a different one with each dialogue (no easy feat), readers will notice—and start to become annoyed—when you use them every single time a character speaks.

So, you don't want to repeat words, but you also don't want to use fancy dialogue tags. What can you do? Fortunately, there's a loophole:

"Said" is invisible.

           ("Replied" and "asked" are mostly invisible too.)

It sounds like magic, but it's true. These tags are so common that most readers learn early on to ignore them. They don't even realize they're doing it! It's the same way we don't notice the repetition of words like "the" or "and." They're utility words that serve their purpose and are quickly ignored.

I mean, yes, the reader will notice it if you tag every single spoken line with "said" (more on that in a future post), but you can get away with far more saids than any other dialogue tag without your reader even batting an eye.

And you can save the fancy tags for the most specialist special moments so they can do their work.

How to Approach Writer's Block

I wrote about writer's block way back in the beforebeforetimes, but wouldn't you know I actually learned new things in the fourteen years since? Not just about writing but also about myself.

In this post, I'm going to talk about some common causes of writer's block and what you can do about it.

But first, let's define terms.

What is writer's block?

Writer's block is when you are trying to write but can't.

Maybe you're staring at a blinking cursor and waiting for words that won't come. Maybe you're writing and deleting the same sentence over and over and over again. Or maybe you're scrolling Instagram or washing dishes or doing something else that, sure, maybe you want to do, but it's not what you're supposed be doing right now.

Writer's block can look like a lot of different things, but it often has common causes. The solutions below might not be easy (if they were, you wouldn't need this post!), but hopefully they can help you trust your process. And trusting yourself is the real way out.

So, what's the reason for your block? I know of three big ones:

1. You don't know what happens next.
2. You're afraid that what you write won't be good enough.
3. There is a legit physical or mental reason you can't write.

Let's take a quick look at each of these.

Reason #1: You don't know what happens next

You might think you do. You might know what happens two or three scenes—or even just two or three paragraphs—from now, but you don't know how to get from here to there. Or maybe you wrote yourself into a corner and you literally don't know where to go from here.

First off, know that this is perfectly normal. We've all heard of authors who sit down to write and the words come flowing out of them, but that's far from typical. (I'm not even sure it exists.) Every writer I know has had to, at some point, stop and figure out what happens next.

SOLUTION: Brainstorm. What this looks like depends on your story and your process, but here are some of the things I do:

• Make a list of whatever ideas pop into my head. I don't judge them. I just add them to the list.
• Outline the next chapter/scene/paragraph.
• Take a long walk or a shower or something similar. Let my mind wander.
• Imagine my story is a D&D game and my characters are the players. What crazy things would my players try next?
• Write down what each character in the scene wants. Sometimes I discover that I don't actually know!

What works one time might not work the next, so try different things and see what sticks.

But what if you do know what happens next? What if you just don't know how to write it?

Reason #2: You're afraid that what you write won't be good enough

Sometimes, you can't think of the right words. Or maybe you can't stop thinking how hard this will be to revise later. Or maybe you're worried that the story isn't what you hoped or is a waste of time to begin with.

Again, these are perfectly normal things to feel. Even the most experienced authors struggle with these feelings (while writing books that later become bestsellers). They'll often tell you the same things.

SOLUTION: Give yourself permission to write garbage. Because there are two important truths to remember here:

1. You cannot be objective about what is good or bad while you're writing it.
2. Anything you write can be made better later. Anything.

Turn off the internet and stare at the page. Make yourself write one word—any single word. Then write one more—just one. Keep going like that until you have a sentence. Then do it again. Don't delete them! You can do that tomorrow!

You might also trick yourself with "temp text"—words that you know won't be in the final draft but that convey enough of the story to move forward. [I like to put mine in square brackets. It tricks my anxiety brain into not editing it, and it's easy to search for later.]

But what if the reason you can't write goes beyond "I don't know what to say" and into "I literally cannot make myself write"?

Reason #3: There is a legit physical or mental reason you can't write

Sometimes writer's block isn't about writing. Sometimes it's caused by a physical need, like you're hungry or tired. Or there might be an emotional need instead. Even if you have no fear of bad words and know exactly what happens next in the story, depression, anxiety, and burnout (among other things) can make it impossible to write.

Whether the block is physical, emotional, or something else, the solution is the same.

SOLUTION: Take care of yourself. Eat a snack. Take a nap. Meditate. Exercise. Listen to your body and give it what it needs. And if your body's needs are ongoing—like, something a simple snack won't fix—take stronger measures:

• Change your writing schedule to a better time for your body or mind.
• Readjust your writing goals to put less pressure on yourself.
• Seek professional help.

That last item is for me, because my fear is far beyond "My words aren't good enough." It often becomes "If my words aren't good enough, then my story won't be good enough, and then I won't be good enough, and then every bad thing I believe about myself will be true."

Of course, I didn't know that until I sought counseling (not for writing, but my writing fears came up). Sometimes, we need help, and that's okay. I still struggle to make myself write, but at least now, I'm more aware of the actual problems I need to address.

Whatever the cause of your writer's block, and whatever emotions you might feel, know that those feelings are normal and okay to have. They don't make you any less of a writer.

If anything, they prove you are one.