Writers in the Storm

by Marcy Kennedy

Most of us think of a logline, tagline, and pitch as marketing tools we write after we’ve written our story so that we can use them to land an agent or as our book’s cover copy.

We’re doing it backwards.

If we wait until we’re done with our book, any problems our logline, tagline, and pitch reveal could mean major re-writes. By creating them first, we’ll save ourselves a lot of unnecessary work.

Pantsers – this is especially true for you! Even though I’m a hard core plotter, I’ve co-written a novel with an equally hard core pantser, so I know how much you hate planning. Using these tools before you start to write can make sure you have a strong idea and still give you the freedom to discover your story as you go.

And I’m about to show you how.

A logline is a one-sentence description of your book that captures your main character, the conflict they’re going to face, and the stakes if they lose.

It contains the three most important ingredients in a strong story. Leave one out and it’s like leaving the chocolate chips out of chocolate chip cookies.

In a logline, you don’t use your main character’s name, so you’re forced to figure out what makes them interesting and unique. Plotters, this forces you to distill down what’s most important about your main character from the pages of description you’ve no doubt created. Pansters, this allows you to have a clear picture of your main character without writing out the character sketches you likely find tedious. For both, your logline helps you figure out who the story belongs to.

Conflict boils down to what your main character wants and what’s standing in her way. No conflict, no story. I don’t care whether you’re writing a romance, a thriller, a fantasy, a memoir, or a work of literary fiction. If you can’t clearly state what your conflict is, you don’t have a story.

Plotters, because you write detailed outlines, you can sometimes lose sight of your main story among the subplots. Pantsers, knowing the main plot keeps you from getting so distracted by bunny trails that your first draft is a tangled knot you don’t even know how to begin untying. (Or worse, you end up without a main storyline at all.)

Usually when you hit the conflict portion of your logline, you’ll include your antagonist/villain. You do have one, don’t you? If you don’t, you don’t have a story.

Stakes are what your main character stands to lose if she fails. Why should they care what happens? If they don’t care, then the reader won’t care.

Seeing your stakes on paper this way forces you to ask if they’re big enough. Will they change your character’s life forever? James Scott Bell is fond of saying the stakes should always be death. I agree with him. Physical death. Emotional death. Spiritual death. Your character needs a reason to fight to the very end.

So a logline tells you what your book will be about. Your tag line is a catch phrase. (Don’t confuse them.)

The tagline captures the tone or emotional essence of your book. It also hints at the genre. It’s what you see on the front cover or on a movie poster.

Life is like a box of chocolates – Forrest Gump

You know you’re going to get a story that has moments of humor and yet manages to be profound. You could guess this is going to be a drama.

Don’t go into the water - Jaws

It sets the tone for a story that’s going to scare you. You know it’s going to be either horror or a thriller.

One ring to rule them all – Lord of the Rings

This is going to be an epic fantasy. Whole countries will be at stake. Maybe even the whole world.

Behind every great love is a great story - The Notebook

Romance. Probably going to be tears involved.

By writing your tagline, you know tone you’re going to use when writing your book. Will your story be dark? Funny? A real tear jerker? A consistent tone is essential. Knowing it will save you from a million rewrites because you switched your tone three times during your first draft.

Which leaves our pitch, the six- to ten-sentence summary of our book.

Your pitch should only cover the first third of your book, with emphasis on what Larry Brooks calls the First Plot Point in his book Story Engineering.

The First Plot Point should happen 25% of the way in. It’s the point from which your main character can no longer turn back. The main conflict of the story is introduced, and your MC commits to their goal. This is the important part of it—you identify what’s going to make your main character commit.

Your First Plot Point isn’t your main character being wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder. It’s his decision to escape when his bus crashes and to go on the run to catch the real killer. (From The Fugitive, one of my favorite movies.)

Knowing the First Plot Point makes you answer a key question--how are you going to convince your main character to take on a task that looks like it can only end in failure and death? If your main character could escape from their quest at this point, they would. They would take an easier road. So you need to know what’s going to make them go forward anyway.

ANNOUNCEMENT:
On Saturday, March 23, I’ll be teaching a 90-minute webinar where I give even more tips on crafting awesome loglines, taglines, and pitches. You can sign up by clicking here. If you can’t make it at the time it’s scheduled but still want to attend, sign up anyway. The webinar will be recorded and sent to registrants.

As a special thanks to for having me here at Writers In The Storm, the first two people to sign up today for the webinar (and let us know in the comments) receive a bonus: After the class, I’ll work with you via email to help you write your logline.

HUGE THANKS TO MARCY from Writers In The Storm! This post was pure awesome. Having taken Marcy's Twitter class, I can tell you she has the teaching thing nailed. :-)

Have you tried writing your logline, tagline, and pitch before writing the book? Do you think you’ll try it now? Do you have any other questions for Marcy?

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About Marcy Kennedy

Marcy is a fantasy writer who believes there’s always hope—sometimes you just have to dig a little harder to find it. In a world that can be dark and brutal and unfair, hope is one of our most powerful weapons. She writes novels that encourage people to keep fighting, to let them know that no one is beyond redemption, and that, in the end, good always wins.

Alongside her own writing, Marcy works as a freelance editor. (Check out Marcy’s editing services here.) You can find her blogging about writing on Wednesdays/Thursdays and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth on Mondays and Fridays Because Fantasy Is More Real Than You Think…

by Jenny Hansen

Earlier this year, we started talking about Microsoft Excel and all the ways writers could use it without hyperventilating.

In case you missed the other two posts, I've linked them below:

Part 1 - Excel Shortcuts and Helpful Tricks
Part 2 - Doing Formulas without Freaking Out

Laura Drake also did a post last November about Keeping Your Novel Organized In Excel. (It was excellent!)

We did all that baseline work to ensure that everyone was on the same page, with at least a moderate level of skill and comfort. I'm hoping you've been at least opening your Excel and giving it a periodic keystroke.

Today’s Part 3 is going to cover some more time-saving tricks like Quick Formulas, Data tools like Filters and Subtotals, and Saving a Workspace.

Get ready to rock some Excel!

Quick Formulas

Since I’m starting to explore some freelance writing options, my sample file details a list of all my (fake) freelance work for 2011. This is a file that I definitely need to have so I threw a quick one together (see below).

When you have a list like this, sometimes you want to have numerical information on the fly. Perhaps you need to know how much you made from your February assignments, but you don't have time to create a formula or function.

By highlighting the amounts to the right of the February dates in the example above, you can get this information from the Status Bar (located at the bottom of your screen) .

In the later versions of Excel, a right click brings up the Customize Status Bar shortcut menu, allowing you to turn on extra Functions or see your data at a glance. Select some cells with numbers in your own practice spreadsheet...now point to the Sum down in your status bar and right click. Fun, huh?

Earlier versions of Excel were not quite as detailed as what you see below:

Mac Note: The way to get the Windows “right-click” features in Excel on the Mac is to hold down the Option button on your keyboard while you click your single mouse button.

Data Tools

Take another look at the spreadsheet list above. There are a few important things to note about this file:

1. This list has column headers like Customer #, Service performed, Due Date, etc.
2. This list is filtered, which means I can see only a certain State or Service performed by clicking the drop down arrow and applying the Filter for a column.

Here is the Data Ribbon, which has all the Filter, Sort and Subtotal types of buttons so you can try this magnificence out.

Subtotaling is another cool data feature in Excel.

Note: You must Sort a list by the column that you wish to Subtotal. For example, if I want to see a total dollar amount for Blogging or Editing, I would sort by Column B before I applied the Subtotal Feature.  See below for a list that has had Subtotals applied. (When you want to remove the Subtotals, click the icon on the Data Ribbon again and hit the “Remove All” button.)

For you, this would be magic with your e-book sales. If you sorted by book title, you could see how much each book made. :-)

Excel Workspaces

Most of us work with more than one Excel file at the same time. For example we might need to see two sheets in the same workbook, or we might need to open a file that contains our royalty statements from Amazon, another from our traditional publisher, and a third file where we keep a conglomeration of ALL our book sales.

If you’re like me and you only get little pockets of time to work in, one file might take you four or five computer sessions to finish. I love Excel’s Workspace feature because it lets me open all my workbooks exactly where I left off the last time I closed Excel.

Yes, really. I can have three files open on my screen and not only save the files, but I can save the View of these files. This viewing arrangement is called a Workspace.

The Workspace button is located on the right side of the View Ribbon and looks like this:

To save a Workspace file:

1. Arrange your files as you like (use the View buttons – also located on the View Ribbon, shown below).
   
   

   

2. Before quitting your Excel session, select Files>Save Workspace (this is located in the File àSave As… dialog box in earlier versions of the program and on the View ribbon in later versions of Excel).
3. Specify a file name and choose OK (it'll have an .xlw extension)
4. To pick up where you left off in the last session, reopen the workspace file: Use File>Open and choose the workspace file.

Note: A workspace file contains only configuration information, not the actual workbooks and worksheets. Therefore, you can't simply copy the workspace file -- you'll need the workbook files, too.

So, there you have it…some quick and easy tools to keep lists in Excel and to work with multiple files.

Are you on Excel Information Overload or should I plan some more Excel posts for the future? Y’all will have to let me know!

What are your "Writerly Uses" for Excel? Do have any questions for me?

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 20 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA and here at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

Writers In The Storm welcomes back literary attorney, Susan Spann, with her next installment of her author’s business plan series.

By Susan Spann

Welcome back to our ongoing series on writing an author business plan!

We’re almost through – just two more sections to go. Today, we’re taking a look at Section 6: Operations and Management.

The Operations and Management Section of the author’s business plan contains a detailed list (sometimes more than one) of the people and entities on the author’s publishing “team.”

On one page, you should list each step in the writing, production, distribution, marketing, sales and fulfillment process for the book or other work in question, along with the name and contact information of the person (or company) who is responsible for its completion. Some authors prefer to use spreadsheets. Others like organizational apps, and still others use word processing software. The key is finding the method that works for you.

I recommend making two separate lists:

List #1:

The first is organized chronologically in accordance with the book’s production and publishing schedule.

“Writing the book” comes first – and yes, you should include that even though you’re the responsible party. Other entries might include peer editors or critique partners, professional editors, publisher names, marketing personnel and publicists. Independent authors may also have cover artists, distribution contacts, and printer information.

List #2

The second list contains all the names and contact information of everyone taking part in production, publication, and marketing the book – organized in alphabetical order for easy reference.

With the two-list system, the author uses list #1 – the chronology – to make sure each person does his or her job in the proper order and time. When properly cross-referenced with the production timeline, operations and management information is a powerful tool.

List #2 is the quick reference guide and also a helpful resource for the future. Smart authors often add notes to the contacts, identifying the ones the author intends to work with again on future projects.

The length and complexity of this section is mostly a matter of author preference.

Some people work from a list of contacts containing only basic information like telephone numbers, email and mailing addresses. Other writers like having a detailed list that names each person involved in the publishing process, along with specific functions that person will handle. At the end of the day, that choice is up to you.

At a minimum, each author should have a list of the names and contact information of people involved in the publishing process.

Keeping that information together, and easily accessible, helps the author save valuable time and energy. After all, every minute you don’t spend hunting down numbers is time you can spend on writing!

Are you writing your author business plan with us as we progress through this series, or saving the posts for use later? Do you have questions for Susan?

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Susan Spann is a publishing attorney and author from Sacramento, California. Her debut novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Minotaur Books, July 2013), is the first in the Shinobi Mystery series featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori. Susan blogs about writing, publishing law and seahorses at http://www.SusanSpann.com. Find her on Twitter @SusanSpann where she founded the #PubLaw hashtag to offer law and business instruction for authors.