Between DVD special features, behind-the-scenes documentaries, marketing featurettes, and cast and crew interviews, it seems we know every single aspect of the movie industry.
The publication of a book, however, is much more mysterious.
Due to the opaque nature of the publishing industry, many writers don’t know where to start with the creation of their book, let alone what steps they should take on the path to publication.
In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I break down my six-step roadmap for taking a book idea from initial creation all the way through to publication.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below:
The Writing Coach Episode #143 Show Notes
Get Kevin’s FREE book: NOVEL ADVICE: MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, AND CREATIVE WRITING TIPS FOR ASPIRING AUTHORS.
The Writing Coach Episode #143 Transcript
Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. It is your host, as always, writing coach Kevin T. Johns here.
This morning I’ve been grooving on “Black” by Pearl Jam. Sometimes I like to go down these internet rabbit holes, and I was watching a video about how Pearl Jam’s record label wanted to release “Black” as the fourth single off their debut album, Ten, and Pearl Jam did not want to release it as a single, particularly Eddie Vedder. Apparently, the song was perhaps about his high school girlfriend who he was deeply in love with and who ultimately broke up with him leading him to drop out of high school and move away to be closer to family. And so clearly a very personal song to him. And then I, somewhere in the comments or something, someone was talking about how great the MTV Unplugged version is, so popped over to check that out, and then a bunch of reaction videos started showing up.
And so I watched a reaction video from a vocal coach just talking about the technical magnificence of Eddie Vedder’s singing in that song. And, you know, it’s just such a great example of how something pure and emotional as the contents of that song. And as I said, clearly personal to Eddie Vedder didn’t want it released as a single, and yet we have a vocal coach talking about all the different techniques that Eddie vets using in his vocal performance is just such a great example of how art and emotion and technique come together to create something very special.
And there’s even a moment in there where the vocal coach says, “Well, this isn’t a perfect vocal performance, but I don’t like perfect vocal performances. In fact, I don’t even believe they exist.”
And, of course, that really resonated with me. I feel the same way about writing. There is no perfect scene. There is no perfect book, but if you put heart and soul into it the way Eddie Vedder does into his songwriting and his performance, and then if you execute on technique the way he does, as his vocal coach pointed out, you get something pretty special like that song “Black.”
Now, what I want to cover in today’s episode is what I call the roadmap to publication. So many writers are in the dark about the actual book production process in terms of how do you go from coming up with an idea all the way through to publishing a book. For some reason, the publishing industry and, and the process of writing is very vague and un unlike cinema where we have special
Features and, you know, documentaries. I think everyone knows every little detail about how a movie is made. We know very little about how books are made, and as a result, a lot of writers have to dig and struggle, and they’re not quite sure what information they need or what the next steps are. So when I’m working with my clients, what I like to do is take them through a six step roadmap, a really simple step by step process to lay out the creation of a book so they know where they are in the process at any given time, as well as what steps are to come. So my six step process goes like this. Step one, story planning and craft development. Step two, writing a first draft. Step three, the revisions story phase. Step four, the revisions, amplification phase, step five, the revisions polish phase.
And step six, choosing a path to publication. Now, each of these steps obviously have multiple things involved with them. So let’s, let’s dig into that a little bit today. Let’s talk a little bit about what goes on in any step. So as I said, step one is really the story planning. Do you have to plan your story before you write it? Know, but what I always say is, at the end of the day, your story, if it’s going to be popular, needs to execute on the fundamentals of good story crap. So whether you pants your way through a book and then afterwards say, Okay, what’s my story structure? What’s my genre? What’s the theme of this book? And discover it afterwards, that’s fine, but I think it’s a lot easier to do it beforehand so that you’re not having to reverse engineer your entire book and redraft everything upon discovering what it’s really about afterwards.
So I’m a huge believer in learning the craft of writing and doing the planning ahead of time to set yourself up for the drafting process. And that’s what my story plan program is all about, right? As I record this, we’re finishing up week three of the program. As usual. It’s going great. I’m loving all the incredible progress that people are making. And in that program, I go over some of the fundamentals that I think you need to be thinking about prior to writing a book. And the, the overall breakdown of that program is week one, we look at genre and we look at conventions and obligatory scenes and iconography related to a genre. And week two, we talk about macro level story structure, really laying out the story. Physics as a Larry Brooks calls it for your book, making sure that you have a strong foundation and infrastructure to build your story upon.
In week three, we dig into character, and I’m largely interested in character in terms of arc. What is the change arc that we’re telling for our story, as well as what archetypical roles are, different characters playing in the narrative, and so do some thinking about character. And then in our final week of story plan, we do a lot of thinking about theme and controlling idea, which is really what’s this book about? What do you have to say about the world via this book? And what’s some of the thematic patterning that might play out over the course of the narrative? So these are all things I believe you should be thinking about in the story planning phase. We then move on to step two, which is writing a first draft of a book.
And as anyone who’s ever written a book knows, this is the hardest part. It is weeks if not months, of you staring at that blank page and having to fill it up with words. And a lot of things can become distractions. You have focus issues, you have productivity issues. You know, you can’t get that momentum going. There’s almost always some mindset stuff going on. You start second-guessing yourself.
I have a lot of techniques for making that first draft easier, and more fun. And that’s actually what we do in my FIRST DRAFT group coaching program. And I’ll mention that a little bit later because I’m about to bring in a new cohort for that program. So if you are interested in making the writing of a first draft a little bit easier, a little bit more fun by using some milestone development and word tracking and community techniques and continuing skill development, all that stuff, you’re going to want to check out the FIRST DRAFT program.
All right. Step three in the book development roadmap is our first stage of revisions. So I break the revisions process up into three phases. And how many drafts you do within any given phase is totally up to you, dependent on the book, on where it’s at, those sorts of things. So I use the term phase as opposed to drafts because what is a draft anyway? You know, you might go do a sweep of the book and it might be your third sweep through the book, but scene seven, you might go over three or four more times. So is that, what draft is that? Now? Who knows? Let’s think of it in terms of phase. And so the phase one is what I call the story phase. And this is when we’re sitting down, we’re looking at the manuscript, You’ve done it, you did it, you wrote a first draft.
Now what have we got here? Let’s take a look at it and see what’s working and what isn’t. And we’re largely looking at the big picture stuff here. Act two is boring. These two characters need to be combined. We are totally missing in act one. We need to establish the ordinary world better, these sorts of things, this big picture stuff. Then as you’ll see through the three phases of revisions, we’re starting at that big macro level, and then we’re working our way down to the micro level. And this is so that you’re not spending hours, days, weeks, polishing at the line level, a scene that might ultimately be deleted completely because it doesn’t work at the macro level. So we want to start with the big stuff and work our way down to the line by line stuff so that we’re using our energy in our time most effectively.
So step four in this book production roadmap is our second phase of revisions, and that’s the amplification phase. We have got the book to where it’s working. We say, This is the story, Act seven, scene two is not going to change. This character is in the book. They’re not going to be deleted. The story is basically the story. So now we ask ourselves, how do we make it better? How do we take what’s already in there in that book and amplify it, push the emotions, push the drama, make the scenes fire on all cylinders? I have a 20 question editing checklist that I like to use at this phase. If you’re looking at a scene and you’re like, I, I think it’s as good as it can get, well, that’s when I say take out the 20 question checklist, go through these 20 questions and see if your scene is actually executing on all 20 items.
And if not, hey, there’s areas for improvement. Then near the end of the amplification phase or somewhere within the Polish phase, which is our next phase, is our beta reader outreach. This is when we have a pretty solid version of the book together. We reach out to readers and ask them to read it ideally within maybe three weeks time and to get back to us with feedback. And this is, you know, by this point, we’ve normally been in the trenches of the book, looking at it at the micro level for these amplifications for a while. Now it’s an opportunity to step back to the macro level and see what’s working and what isn’t for readers. We then get in there and make the revisions in response to the comments we get from those beta readers. And now it’s time for stage five, which is the polished phase.
And this is where too many people start. People are in there trying to write the most beautiful sentence ever. That’s what you do at the end. That’s not what you do well, you’re still figuring out what your book’s about or what’s going to happen in the story. So in this final Polish phase, this is when we’re really getting in there and we’re line editing. We’re saying, Okay, the story’s the story. The scene is the scene it’s functioning on or firing on all cylinders, but now it’s beautiful <laugh> are those sentences as clear as possible? This is where you’re also cleaning up typos. You might be hiring a proof added reader at this point, point to go over and proofread it. And ideally, I recommend hiring a copy editor at this point as well, at the tail end of step five, phase three of the revisions process.
If you are querying, I recommend getting a copy editor to copy edit the first 25 pages or so of your book. Most of the agents you’re going to be querying are going to be asking for maybe 10 to 20 pages or the first couple chapters of the book. And you want to go into that query process with the best material possible. And so why not spend a little money? Get those first few pages, copyedited. Hey, one, it’ll make your query package better. And two, if this is your first book, it’s an opportunity to get a little practice working with an editor and give you a bit of a heads-up for when you do land an agent. And when you do sell the book, the types of revisions that your agent or that your publisher might ultimately be requesting or making to your manuscript. If you’re self-publishing, Hey, this is it.
Get that copy editor in there, This is the last chance to get someone else in there to help you make the book as good as it can possibly be. And then we reach step five. And step five is choosing your path to publication. We were just talking about that a bit, right? Are you going to go traditional? If so, you’re gonna put need to put together a query package with a query letter, a synopsis. You’re going to need to put together a list of agents who are accepting queries, who are interested in representing your specific genre. A lot of work goes into that query process, even if you are going traditional. The other option is that I don’t think enough people consider as small and medium presses. A lot of small and medium presses do not need an agent in order for you to pitch.
You could just directly pitch to them. There’s a conference that happens here in Ottawa called CanCon, and I know there are small presses who accept in-person live pitches at that conference every year. So wherever you are in the world, look for book conferences, conventions, things near you where you might have the opportunity to walk right up to a publisher and say, Hey, this is the idea for my book. And start developing that relationship with them. More and more, I’m seeing clients of mine lately using hybrid publishers. This is where you’re working with a publisher who is providing you with the services you need, like an editor, a cover perhaps a bit of marketing support, but rather than them paying you the way a traditional publisher might, you are paying them for their support, but you’re also joining that community of books published by that hybrid publisher.
And then finally, there is the independent publishing option. This is my world. This is the world I come from. You know, I run my own business. When I was a musician, I came from the punk rock scene. We did everything ourselves, DIY. And in today’s world, I, I think more and more self-publishing is not only easier, but is potentially the best option for you for a number of reasons, including maintaining control of your work flexibility speed of publication ability to make changes and adapt really quickly. But I’m, I’m a little bit biased. I’m biased toward self-publishing, but you know, I just laid out a bunch of different options that might be right for you. Self-Publishing is right for me. Maybe hybrid is right for you. Maybe small press is right for you. Maybe you do want to go traditional and get that, you know, the official seal of approval from a mainstream publisher.
That choice is up to you. And that is the final step in the book production process. So let’s go, go over one more time. Step one, plan your story. Learn the craft of writing and apply those fundamentals in the plan for your book, then sit down and write that first draft. And as I said, that’s probably the hardest part of this entire thing. Then we entered the revisions process. We go through the story phase, then the amplification phase, and then the Polish phase. And then we’ve got this beautiful book, We’re ready to send it out into the world. And it’s time to decide what form of publication you are going to use to share your incredible book with all the readers out there dying to read it. So there you go. Obviously a lot of mini steps and, and complexity within each of these stages.
But I think if you think of the book production process in this big six-step path roadmap, you’ll always have a sense of where you are in terms of the process and in terms of what lies ahead of you. Now, as I mentioned, I do believe writing that first draft is the most challenging process, and that’s exactly why I created a group coaching program called FIRST DRAFT, specifically focused on helping writers get that first draft written in a fast and fun manner. So I am going to be hosting a webinar next Monday, and I’ll also be releasing a podcast episode covering most of the same material that I’m going to go over in that webinar. But it’s largely about the challenges that writers face while creating a first draft and how you can address those challenges either on your own or as part of my first draft group coaching program.
So if you’re already on my mailing list, watch out for emails saying that I’m opening up the doors and bringing in a new cohort for the FIRST DRAFT program. If you want to know more right away, just drop me a line. Let me know that you are interested in learning more about the program.
And if you’re not on my mailing list yet, head on over to my website, www.kevintjohns.com. There is a tab at the top as well as a popup where you can drop your email address into the form, get on my mailing list, and I will send you a copy of my book, Novel Advice: Motivation, Inspiration, and Creative Writing Tips for Aspiring Authors. It’s a little present for you as a thank you for joining my mailing list.
All right, that is it for this episode. As I said, I’ve got another episode coming your way in just a couple of days. Keep an eye out for that, and make sure you hit the subscribe button so that you can hear every episode of The Writing Coach.
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