Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book

by Ally Carter

  Short story: 1,500–30,000 words

  Novella: 30,000–50,000 words

  Novels: 50,000 words and up

  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) gives participants the goal of writing 50,000 words in one month, and that’s usually my starting point. If you’re having trouble setting your own goal, then 50K might be a good place for you to start, too. Just aim for 50K and keep writing until you reach THE END.

  What’s the word count of your shortest book? What’s the word count of your longest book?

  Marie Lu 77,000 102,000

  Melissa de la Cruz I think about 48,000 for the Ashleys series, which was middle grade. I don’t tend to write long books, but I think maybe about 100,000 for Something in Between and Someone to Love. Those books were hard to write.

  Daniel José Older 45,000 90,000

  Elizabeth Eulberg 38,000 81,000

  Julie Murphy It will likely be the one I’m working on now, which will be about 50,000 words. But of my currently published books: 80,078. 104,078

  Stephanie Perkins 74,000 82,000

  Marissa Meyer 65,000 240,000

  Alex London 740 (it’s a picture book!) 120,000

  Sarah Rees Brennan 90,000 140,000

  My longest unpublished?

  300,000 words. I have a problem, okay?

  Jesse Andrews 57,000 88,000

  Alan Gratz 54,000 72,000

  Soman Chainani 97,000 152,000

  Holly Black 8,000 110,000

  Kiersten White 32,000 117,000

  Maggie Stiefvater 77,000 110,000

  Zoraida Córdova 77,000 92,000

  Gordon Korman 25K for middle grade (10K for chapter book) 65,000

  Rachel Caine 80,000 130,000

  Dhonielle Clayton 75,000 130,000

  Eliot Schrefer 29,000 85,000

  Z Brewer 40,000 122,000

  DEAR JAY COLES,

  What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve gotten?

  The best piece of writing advice I have is to give yourself permission to write badly. Once you get over the hurdle of staring at the blank page, I think one of the best things you can tell yourself is that all you have to do is get the words out and come back to edit later. A second piece would be read, read, read everything in your genre. It’s helpful with knowing trends, and in fiction, it helps you learn characterization and strengthens your voice.

  GETTING READY!

  Think about some of your favorite book ideas. Now try writing the back cover copy for each one.

  Read five books in genres you don’t ordinarily read. In what ways are they like the books you usually read? In what ways are they different?

  Look at your five favorite books. How much white space is on the page? How many pages are the books themselves? Do you see any variation by genre?

  Try writing a short story about an average day in your life. Don’t change anything. Just write what happens. Then think about what parts were easy and what parts were hard. What conflict could you add to make your story more interesting?

  What’s the best writing advice you ever got?

  Kiersten White Start.

  Every writer is different. In fact, every book is different! (Fair warning, I’m going to be saying that a lot because, to be honest, that’s kind of the answer to every question.)

  Some writers wake up one day with a character in their head. Or a line of dialogue. Or a scene or a question or an opening sentence. And then they sit down and they start writing—right then—by the seat of their pants.

  That’s why these writers are called pantsers.

  Other writers might start out with a seed of an idea but they don’t start writing until they’ve figured out who the characters are and what their goals might be and every single step that the plot is going to take. They outline, take notes, and often know the ending before they begin writing.

  These writers are called plotters.

  I know writers who start with nothing. And I know writers who start with outlines so detailed they are literally almost as long as the book itself. Neither way is right or wrong, good or bad.

  Every writer will have their own individual process. Hang out with writers, and you’ll hear that word over and over.

  “What’s your process?”

  “I hate my process.”

  “I’d love to streamline my process.”

  And inevitably, “I hate it, but it’s my process.”

  Finding your process is a huge part of being a writer (which is probably why we have an entire section in this book called “Finding Your Process”!)

  George R. R. Martin (of Game of Thrones fame) has a quote on this topic that I absolutely love. Instead of talking about plotters and pantsers, he theorizes that authors are either architects or gardeners. Either we build and plan and diagram our stories (like an architect), or we plant various seeds, then water and nurture them and see which ones grow (like gardeners). I really like that analogy because I tend to plant a lot of seeds as I write—things that I don’t really know what they mean or if they’ll grow into anything at all, but it’s important for me to have them in there just in case.

  I find this especially important when writing series. It’s really hard for me to know what will happen two or three books from now, but in the case of my Gallagher Girls series, I knew we would eventually have to answer the question of what happened to the heroine’s (missing) father. When I was starting Embassy Row, I knew the royal family of this fictional European country would eventually come into play, so I added a mention of a teenage prince to book one, and sure enough, he was hugely important in book three.

  In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re a plotter or a pantser, an architect or a gardener. Everyone’s writing mind works in its own way, and you will find the process that fits you best. All that really matters is that you’re a writer.

  So write!

  DEAR MARISSA MEYER,

  Are you a plotter or a pantser? What is your process like?

  Definitely a plotter. I get anxious when I don’t have a pretty solid idea of where the story is heading at any given point, and I find that it’s hard for me to start writing before I have a really structured outline in place. I’ll even go so far as to map out the specific beats in each chapter. That said, I’ve done this enough times to know that things are always going to change from the initial outline, so I try to be flexible and let the characters take charge when they need to.

  DEAR ALAN GRATZ,

  Are you a pantser or a plotter? What is your process like?

  I used to suffer from writer’s block all the time—I’d be sitting at my computer, ready to write, and have no idea what I was going to write. The clock would tick away, and with it would go the time I had to write that day. Then I’d come out of my office mad that I hadn’t gotten words on the page. Then I learned to outline, and that’s made all the difference. I now outline every novel I write, chapter by chapter, before I ever write the first word. If I hear a scene in my head, I scribble it down—when the muse speaks, you listen and take notes!—but I never try to push past the inspiration in the outline phase.

  Once I know in detail what is going to happen, I sit down at the keyboard and try to figure out how to tell it. Those are two very different processes, but most writers try to tackle them both at the same time. Separating them was a real breakthrough for me. I still get writer’s block (of a kind) when I can’t figure out what’s supposed to happen next during the outline phase, but at least then I don’t come out of my office thinking that I’ve wasted time by not getting words and paragraphs and chapters written. Once I have the outline finished, I never get writer’s block—which is important when you’re in a mood to knock out first-draft pages. I look at my outline in the morning, read what’s going to happen, and then start writing it.

  DEAR DAVID LEVITHAN,

  Are you a pantser or a plotter? What is your process like?

  I am such a pantser. I didn’t choose to be that way—it’s just the
way I am. Which is key. There’s no universal right or wrong here—you just have to find out the way your writing mind is wired, and then work with that.

  My writing mind is wired to figure out the story as I’m writing it. Part of the joy of the actual writing is, for me, finding out what happens. I always start with a premise—say, “a teen wakes up every day in a different body and a different life”—and then I explore the premise by seeing where it leads me. I will write and rewrite and rewrite my first three chapters to get to know the characters and the voice of the book. Then I’ll strike out without a map. Sometimes I’ll have some idea of where I want to go. But a lot of the time I won’t have any idea of how it’s going to end until I get closer to that end. For me, you write a novel in the same way you live a life—time is always moving you forward, and there are certainly things you aim to do … but then there will also be detours and unexpected parts that as soon as they happen become part of the story, too. And in order to get my characters’ genuine reactions to all the twists and turns, I find I have to be as unaware as they are in regard to what’s about to occur.

  It’s also a great way to keep myself going. Because the only way I’m going to figure out what happens next is to sit down and write what happens next, pulling it from my writing mind and onto the page.

  This is one of the things authors worry most about when getting started. Because, trust me, it’s not an easy thing to fix if you get it wrong.

  The first thing you’re going to have to consider is whether you should write in first person, second person, third person limited, or third person omniscient POV. I’ve written in all but second person (because it is the most rare), and they all have their pros and their cons.

  FIRST PERSON, of course, means a character is “telling” the story. Sometimes that means one character. Sometimes an author might choose to have multiple first-person narrators, switching off between sections or chapters. (If you do this, note that the characters should ideally sound really different from each other—have different voices—and that’s a hard thing to pull off sometimes.)

  Choosing first person means that the reader will know only what the first-person narrator knows—and will see only what that person sees. Living in a person’s head can be a great way of sucking in readers and making them really care about a character, but it will limit what the reader learns. Which can be a good thing. Or not.

  For example, in my Gallagher Girls and Embassy Row books, first person worked really well because I wanted those heroines to be in the dark about what was going on a lot of the time. I wanted them to be confused and worried and maybe a little bit afraid. In fact, I wanted their search for answers to be mostly what the books were about! That’s why I wanted to tell those stories through one character’s eyes.

  So how do you choose your first-person narrator? Well, that should always be the person with the most interesting view of the story—not necessarily the most interesting story. Think of it this way: If your book were a movie, your narrator is the camera lens. Most of the time that’s going to mean your POV character should be the main character. But sometimes that’s not the case. Think, for example, about The Great Gatsby. Nick is the first-person narrator of that classic novel, but Gatsby is, in every way, the star of the show.

  SECOND PERSON is perhaps the most rarely used POV because, in second person, the narrator is “you” and that’s a hard thing to maintain for an entire novel. It’s something done more frequently in short fiction or perhaps in segments of a novel.

  Third person is another really common POV option. But there are really two versions.

  In THIRD PERSON LIMITED, you are limited to one person’s POV at a time. This means you can only know what’s going on inside one person’s head at a time. So you might know what your hero is thinking, feeling, hearing, and seeing. If you want to know what your heroine is thinking, you need to have a section break or start a new chapter and switch to her POV.

  One of the biggest third-person POV mistakes that new writers make is “head hopping,” where you might “hop” from one POV to another in the same scene. For example, your hero might think about how hungry he is and then, in the next sentence, the heroine might think about how mad she is that the hero isn’t listening to her. Don’t do that. It’s confusing for readers and it will make you look like a newbie. (And the goal of this book is to make you look like a pro!)

  So, as long as you don’t head-hop, you can have as many third-person POV characters as you want, right? Well … let’s not go crazy.

  Any time you give a character a POV—any time you go into a character’s head—you are signaling to the reader that that character is important, so the reader needs to perk up and pay attention because this is one of the main characters of the story.

  Sometimes writers might break this rule intentionally to fake the reader out or set the story up in something like a prologue, but for your first few books, I’d recommend you pick one or two (or, at most, three or four) POV characters and stick with them. It’s often tempting to write in a (minor) character’s POV because then we can tell what they’re thinking, and we don’t have to show what they’re thinking. But that’s kind of cheating. And confusing. And you can do better, I promise.

  When I was writing Not If I Save You First, I had a gut instinct pretty early on that third person limited was the only way to go. Why? Because I wanted the book to have dual leads—as much his story as her story and vice versa. I saw this as the story of two people overcoming external and internal struggles to get to know each other in a new way. I wanted readers to be able to see and feel and experience the story through both of the main characters’ perspectives.

  I could have done it in alternating first person POV—that technically would have worked. But I was worried about making my hero and heroine sound different (about having different voices), and I’d been reading a lot of old-school romance novels, which are almost always told in alternating third person, so it just felt right.

  (That’s something else to remember: If you’re writing in a genre where one POV is dominant, you might want to ask yourself if there’s a reason for that and let that factor into your decision.)

  THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT POV is sometimes confused with third person limited because both use he/she/they instead of, for example, I/we, but there are some really important differences. In third person limited, you’re tied to what your POV character(s) know and see and smell, etc. In omniscient, the story is basically being told by some all-knowing, all-seeing narrator who can see inside the characters, and also into the past and the future.

  An omniscient narrator knows not just how the characters are feeling but also how the story will end.

  The story is being told by you—the author—in other words, so everything you know, you can put on the page. Which is very appealing! But it’s also where it’s easy to get into trouble.

  After all, just because you can put everything you know onto the page doesn’t mean you should. In general, new writers often like to “tell” readers everything—all at once. This is often called an info dump.

  Molly was having a very bad day, which was about to get worse with a knock on the door. She opened it to see John outside, and Molly was mad. John was, too. He and Molly used to be friends, but then she ate all the regular M&M’s and left only the peanut M&M’s even though she knew John was allergic to peanuts, which his parents found out when he had a reaction when he was four and almost died. John also had red hair and green eyes and was taller than Molly now. He liked dogs more than cats and really needed a haircut.

  See? With omniscient POV you could, theoretically, dump every bit of information about every single character and thing right on the page—boom! All in one go. Needless to say, that’s not usually a good idea.

  Part of being a writer isn’t just learning what to write; it’s learning what not to write—what you should show instead of tell (more on that later) and when you should sprinkle information into the story rather than
dumping it all down onto the page.

  But that doesn’t mean that omniscient POV doesn’t have its uses!

  When I was writing Heist Society, I knew that, most of the time, I’d be in the head of my heroine, Kat, but there would be times I’d have to show the reader stuff that my heroine wasn’t present for—like guards checking a video surveillance feed or a bank manager checking the locks on a door.

  FIRST PERSON: WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING, I HAD NO IDEA HOW BAD MY DAY WOULD BE.

  SECOND PERSON: WHEN YOU WOKE UP THIS MORNING, YOU HAD NO IDEA HOW BAD YOUR DAY WOULD BE.

  THIRD PERSON: WHEN SHE WOKE UP THIS MORNING, SHE HAD NO IDEA HOW BAD HER DAY WOULD BE.

  Heist stories are, by definition, pretty complicated. It was important for the reader to see the whole picture—not just what was going on with Kat but also what was going on elsewhere in the world/story. In this case, having an omniscient point of view helped build suspense—the reader could see things that Kat might not know, which would ratchet up the tension and keep readers on the edges of their seats. It also helped the reader to understand all the different pieces that were in play.

  Think of it like this: Sometimes your book is like a chess game. Omniscient POV is the best way to allow a reader to see the entire board. Sometimes that’s best. And sometimes it’s better to see the game only through the eyes of the queen or a knight or whoever your POV character happens to be.

  Omniscient POV also allowed the Heist Society books to have a very different voice and scale and feel from my (first person) Gallagher Girls series. We weren’t limited to one lens, in other words. The reader could see big, sweeping scenery shots or close-ups and everything in between. And I can’t imagine writing that series in any other way.

  When it comes to picking a POV for your stories, keep all of this in mind. Also, be sure you read a bunch of books done in each. Then sit down and try your story each way. One POV might feel a lot easier than the others once you start writing, and then you’ll know exactly what to do.