Beta Readers.

Warm up the network. You need to find people to read your story and give HONEST feedback. If they are any good, they WILL find mistakes. Probably a lot of them. You will likely slap yourself in the head and wonder what you were thinking. Me, too.

Here are a few things that you will need to keep in mind for your Beta Reading heroes.

• Friends and family are great, but they need to be able to give HONEST feedback
• You can have professional readers do it
• Acquaintances are a good option… they are more likely to be honest with you
• Don’t pin YOUR story on the feedback of any one person
• Pick people that enjoy reading and read a lot
• Embrace the criticism… thank them for finding the weaknesses and shortcomings of your story

Don’t enlist everyone. Keep a few strong beta readers in reserve… especially in the beginning. When you get back the feedback, be open to making changes. Adjust those story arcs and character growth curves. Fix those typos. Change the needed elements around to fit their improved patterns.

After you make those changes, read it as a whole and get ready to start the process again. You need to get your newly re-perfected manuscript into the hands of Beta Readers again. New ones would be better… although, some of your originals would be alright.

Now you get to edit.

I always loved seeing the instructions for carving a duck from a block of wood. It is two simple steps.

Get a block of wood.

Remove everything that isn’t a duck.

That is editing. You have a manuscript, and you need to polish it, add to it and cut from it until you have a novel. In addition to fixing the typos and dumb mistakes, you need to find the errors and omission. you need to hunt out the unneeded passages. Verify that it makes sense. Check for anachronisms.

When I wrote my first book, I had something completely different in mind. It took a few chapters for me to realize my characters had a different story in mind. As i continued to write, the real (final) story came out. But, when I edited the book, there were little pieces of a story that didn’t exist that had remained. I called them artifacts. They had to be hunted out. Characters needed different growth curves. Events needed to be adjusted. The parts of the block that weren’t a duck needed to go away.

The cool thing is that when you are done, you are only partway through the process. You will need to do it at least a couple of times. Better get comfortable with your story.

Honestly, this is where most people stop.

Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim…

They fail to fire. Never mind adjusting aim and firing again.

The first thing you likely need to do is set a realistic goal. NaNoWriMo is a good opportunity to do just that. They give as a basic goal 50,000 words in 30 days. Being realistic, since it is the month of Thanksgiving, we might call it 25 days. So, 2,000 words a day for almost a month.

As a goal, that is certainly something that one can hit. I’m by means a typist. I use two fingers and a thumb. I can’t type without looking at the keyboard. I have to form the words in my mind in order to get them on the screen. I make mistakes. Constantly.

If I can type 2,000 words a day, anyone can… assuming they have something to type on.

Here’s a secret, I don’t type 2000 words every day. Often, I will type 6,000 or even 10,000 words at a sitting. Other days, I might only type 1,000… or maybe zero. But, on my first two efforts *written one after the other) resulted in almost 200,000 words in two months. I edited out 30,000 words and turned that manuscript into my first two books. I didn’t type every day.

I would say that it was less about talent than the desire to tell a story, and the willingness to stick it out.

And in order to finish the next step, you also need that willingness to stick it out and finish the story. Sometimes it will flow like blood after a battle. Other times you will fight harder than you think possible to get the next sentence to form.

There are a few things you CAN do.

If you have outlined your story and know where it is going, if part of it sticks, move to another part. Perhaps the obstacle that is blocking you will be worked out. You might just have needed the chang e of perspective to see your way clear.

The thing you need to NOT do is find reasons to delay working on it. Don’t reorganize your space for the 16th time. Don’t fret over the fact that you haven’t found “the perfect _____” that will fix everything.

If you must… read a book. Honestly, you should be reading books anyway. They will expand you understanding of your niche (if reading in your niche) and increase your vocabulary and help you see how to better write. Read the masters. Read the unknowns. Read the classics. Read brand new authors.

I have some of each in my books. A few of my characters are barely connected with real people. Paul Murphy is one of those. He isn’t based on anyone I know. Frankly… and gladly… he was a bit too evil. Same with Jack Dixon, especially the early Jack. He is the polar opposite of Murphy… just too innocent and good.

Nicole Dixon is completely different. And Terry Gates/Dirk Bryce. They are conglomerations of people I have known. I think it has given them more depth. I won’t say who they are… and they don’t know they were used. There are just too many people involved.

I have cropped up from time to time… usually through real experienced, fictionalized for the book. But I can definitely say I am not any of my characters… although some people think I am convinced I am Nick Tower. I know I’m not.

I think that in order to create a successful character, they need to be flawed. But they also need strength… for good or bad. They need a secret or two, and they need determination to keep it that way. They can… and maybe should… lean toward good or evil, but they shouldn’t be totally one or the other. That is too transparent. Although, there can always be exceptions.

Casting in real-life experiences and emotions can transform the character from one that is flat to one that is three-dimensional. A character we can identify with and feel for… or against. Nicole Dixon, the snarky and fun aunt. Terry Gates, the screwy geek with a good heart. They provide flavor and depth to the story, and add comic relief.

And don’t be afraid to adjust them and let them grow as the story unfolds. They should. We grow and change from our experiences, and your characters should as well. Be careful of the speed and trajectory of those changes, they should make sense… but don’t limit them from growing into themselves.

Obviously, in those situations, things are wide open. And so, I would recommend having copious notes so that you don’t have anachronisms that are unplanned. Your main character (MC) probably shouldn’t whip out a laser when everyone else is using sticks for battle. Unless there is a reason.

But, if you are writing something more based in reality, that doesn’t mean you won’t be worldbuilding.

In the Dixon-Prince books, I stuck pretty close to Hampton, Virginia and some other areas… until I didn’t. I altered a few landscapes. I changed a few locations… added places that didn’t exist, or changed some that did.

An example, in You Don’t Know Jack, Amy drives her car around all four “leaves” of a cloverleaf intersection. In reality, there aren’t four at the intersection. If it ever becomes a movie, maybe they will build the other one…

Your worldbuilding might include dealing with historical events and people. There are a lot of ways in which we can record the world around us. Some of them need to be changed, others might not.

Names are always a tough thing. I tend to make them up on the fly, often using names of friends or family. Other times, I use names I’ve heard that I think are cool… or not, depending on the character. But, every once in a while I find myself stuck for a name. In those instances, I usually search out a name generator. You can use your favorite search engine (I use Duck-Duck-Go) to find a generator. But even them, I often mix it up.

BTW, I should note that my characters are fictional. They aren’t real. People are always trying to figure out who a character is… There are VERY few that are based on real people, and even then, they are often based on several people.

There ARE real situations portrayed in the stories, but they have been fictionalized. In some cases I have taken a lot from the real event. In other cases, almost nothing. But I have almost always expanded it beyond reality for the purposes of making it entertaining. At the very least, I have had to create conversations and the emotions behind them.

The first time I wrote a book, I had a plan. But it crashed into my characters, and they won. They didn’t want the story I had planned. That was how I became a “pantser” instead of a “plotter”. I wrote “by the seat of my pants” rather than to my plan.

That’s ok. But I have wanted to write to plan ever since.

As we speak, I have a rough outline for my next book. I have a couple of the characters set (they are from other books), and an idea on timeline. I have worked out several of the major plot elements, and made a plan for them. This time, there will be a written outline.

The next step is to write the book.

There are lots of experts out there that tell us that we should write the first draft without self-editing. Worry about nothing… just write the book. And that may well work for some people. I can’t do it, though. I have to read back over the story after I’ve taken a break… sometimes even a short break. I have to get back into the story. Inevitably, I change something… a better phrase or altered language. I’m ok with that, though.