[free printable!] SMART Goals & Don’t Break the Chain

5 January, 20155 January, 2015Leave a comment

I’ve updated the SMART goals and Don’t Break the Chain calendar with a printable calendar for 2015! Make and keep your resolutions with this free download.

Lara Willard

UPDATE: Links have been updated with a full 2015 calendar!

I don’t really do New Years resolutions in January. Sometimes I set goals for myself, but April is generally my goal-setting month because it’s the month in which I was born. Doesn’t hurt that it starts with April Fool’s Day, so if I make a completely unreasonable goal, I suppose I could change my mind on April 2nd.

Back in January I decided 2014 was THE year for me to once and for all finish the manuscript I’ve been working on. The past few months I’ve been reading up on productivity, attending time-management and goal-setting workshops for artists, and setting short term and long term goals.

There’s a difference between a goal, though, and a SMART goal.

Making SMART Goals

S-Specific

Your goal needs to be specific. “Be a better person” is a good ideal, but not a…

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2014 in review

31 December, 201431 December, 2014Leave a comment

12 posts and pages from 2014:

1) PRIORITIES: Eisenhower’s Decision Matrix 2) Crafting Chapter One: Resources for Writers 3) 10 Steps to Finishing a Novel

4) Telling and Selling Stories the Video Game Way 5) 7 Tips for Writing Realistic Dialogue 6) Quick & Easy Guide to Dashes

7) Formatting your Novel Manuscript (3 part series) 8) Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Sub-genres 9) Successful Twitter Pitches

10) The Kinds of Queries that Work, from Query Shark 11) Query Workshops (ongoing series) 12) Editing Prices

Author Interviews:

Agent perspective: What’s wrong with your manuscript

22 December, 201422 December, 2014Leave a comment

Carly Watters, Literary Agent

Pitching your book to no avail?

Are agents not being forthcoming with advice?

Getting ready to submit in the new year?

The definitive guide to what’s wrong with most manuscripts:

1. All internal conflict, no external conflict. Does more happen in the character’s head than in the plot? This is going to be a problem whether it’s literary or commercial fiction. Make sure enough things happen.

2. Pace. The most important thing to get an agent’s attention is to keep us turning the pages and stop us from doing other things. The moment things lag, you’ve lost us.

3. Voice. This one’s more subjective, but the way to check if your book has voice is whether we can tell the difference between whose head we’re in or who is speaking at any given time. Everything about your writing style needs personality. What makes your book special? Your voice. It’s how…

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The Kinds of Queries that Work, from Query Shark

17 December, 201430 March, 20165 Comments

Two queries on Query Shark I recommend every querying writer to read. They are #246 and #179.

From 246:

This works.

The first sentence catches my attention. The rest of the letter tells me who the main character is, what her problem is, who the antagonist is and what he wants, and what’s at stake.

If I took on YA novels, I’d ask for pages.

From 179:

Yes! This is exactly how to start a query. We know what Jessica wants, and who is trying to thwart her.

…

At this point we know the characters, what they want, and have a sense of who they are. There’s nothing extra here, but also nothing left out.

If you take a look at all of the winning queries on Query Shark, they aren’t all the same. Because there is no formula for writing good query letters.

But there are ingredients common to successful queries: Character + Want + Change + Conflict + Stakes.

Start your query with whichever drives your novel most. (See my post on WATCh) If your character and/or world is truly exceptional, and his or her choices or that world drive the plot, start with the hook. If your plot is a chain reaction of cause and effect which started at the inciting incident, start your query there.

I’ve categorized some of the winning queries from Query Shark, so you get an idea which ones might be a better model for your own query:

Ones that begin with what the character wants: 179, 174, 261, 211 (Character stories and thematic “Answer” stories)

Ones that begin with the inciting incident: 255, 246, 236, 199, 192, 191, 175, 162, 123 (Time stories and external Answer stories)

Ones that begin with an exceptional character hook: 223, 217, 212, 172, 168, 120, 114 (World*)

*Note that even World-based queries need to start with character. A query needs someone for us to empathize with. Your first line might give us the hook, your next might give us the inciting incident or what that character wants.