What is a writing coach?
How do they help writers?
What unique powers and insights do they bring to the writing process?
Writing coach Kevin T. Johns answers these questions and more in the latest episode of The Writing Coach podcast.
Listen to the episode or read the transcript now!
The Writing Coach Episode #178 Show Notes
Download the FREE Scene Alchemy Essentials Checklist Now!
The Writing Coach Episode #178 Transcript
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Hello, beloved listeners, and welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. I’m your host, as always, Writing Coach Kevin T. John’s here.
Have you ever written a scene and felt that, while it was good, you knew in your heart it wasn’t as great as it could be, but you didn’t know how to get it to where it needed to be? Well, I’ve got a tool for you. It’s called the Scene Alchemy Essentials Checklist. It is a list of over 20 questions that you can ask of your scene and use it to turn a good or average scene into literary gold.
I was thinking back recently to when I was publishing my first book and how I learned to write a book and how I learned to publish a book. It was really through going to the library and getting books on writer’s craft from the library and from the internet. There was a website called The Book Designer, which Chandler Bolt now owns as part of his self-publishing.com website. But that website back in the day was really where I learned how to self-publish a book in terms of what goes on the cover, what goes on the back, what goes in the front matter, when you have your half-title, all of these details like how to put running heads on the boo … all these things that you never really think about I learned from that website. I was thinking back to those days when it was really me reading blog posts and books from the library, and I was thinking, “Man, I wish I’d had a writing coach back then.”
I had no idea writing coaches even existed, let alone how they could help me.
I’ve been talking to writing coaches for over a decade; my friends are writing coaches. I’ve been coaching authors every day for a decade almost. So, to me, book coaching it’s second nature. Of course, people know what a writing coach is! Of course, people know what we do in our work! But, of course, the reality is this might be the first time you’ve ever listened to this podcast. This might be the first time you’ve ever heard the word “writing coach,” or even if you are familiar with the concept of book coaches or writing coaches, if you haven’t worked with one, there might be a bit of a mystery in terms of what these folks do. What is it Kevin actually does with his clients?
In today’s episode, I thought we’d really go back to first principles, go back to fundamentals, go back to the very simple question of what is a writing coach? What do I do with my coaching clients?
I think of what I do in three big general areas.
Editorial Advice
First up is I provide editorial advice and writers’ craft instruction and training. That might be my strength, my niche, perhaps. I really am a huge fan of the fundamentals of writer’s craft, of the simple—well, not always simple—but of the things you can do to make your writing better, that you just don’t know about because no one’s ever taught it to you before.
I work with people who come out of MFA programs, and they haven’t heard of some of this stuff. I’ll ask them what scene structure they’re using, and they’ll be like, “What’s scene structure?” Even the people who have done a master’s degree in writing aren’t familiar with a lot of the fundamentals of fiction writing. So I absolutely love to try to teach that stuff.
I was thinking about it back when I was in school. The courses I always loved were the first-year courses, they call them “survey courses.” I always just loved first-year English literature, where one week you’re reading Beowulf, and the next week, you’re reading Chaucer, and the next week, you’re reading Shakespeare, and the next week, you’re reading Pope, and the next week, you’re reading Wordsworth and Coleridge. You’re moving through history. I just love that stuff. I just love getting my mind blown week in and week out in my learning. I think that’s probably how I’ve approached my teaching and coaching as well.
I really don’t narrow in on a specific genre. I narrow in on the fundamentals of writer’s craft, of what is it everyone can do to make their writing better. Regardless of whether you’re writing romance, or you’re writing sci-fi, or you’re writing a thriller, or you’re doing modern contemporary drama, you still need a premise and a concept. You need to understand the fundamentals of the genre, the convention, the iconography, what audiences or readers are expecting from that type of book. You need a controlling idea; the book needs to say something, it needs to have themes and thematic patterning that provide the book with a sense of unity. I mean, something as simple as point of view. And again, I mean, even point of view sounds simple; it’s not. Most writers who come to work with me, the very first thing I do is work with them to lock down their point of view because most people write in quasi-third person/omniscient, head-hopping nightmare of a point of view. And so, we’ve got to get that stuff locked down, world-building, and reality building, and magic systems, and understanding how setting can play a role. Like I said, scene structure, so many people, I ask them, “What’s your character’s scene goal?” and they’re like, “Hmm, I don’t really know.” Or they’ll have complications, but they don’t have progressive complications, or they haven’t worked with decision points into the scene. They haven’t thought about where best to place their dialogue tags, or whether to use dialogue tags, or whether to use character action or internal narration instead of a dialogue tag.
And, of course, for a lot of people, getting through that first draft is difficult. Something I do is help people get through that first draft, but what I’ve found is actually that a lot of people find revisions even more mystifying and terrifying and complicated. So taking the revisions process and giving a stepped path for that and helping people to understand what they can do to take the book that they wrote and now make it better, and now make it extraordinary is something that I do.
I mentioned in the Scene Alchemy Essentials Checklist at the beginning. It sounds simple, right? It’s just 20 questions to ask yourself about a scene, but it took me 10 years to develop that list and understand what are really the fundamentals that apply to every scene, what are the things we want to be executing on at the craft level in each and every scene to make the scene as good as it can be.
So that’s what I do; I teach writers’ craft, and I also play a role as an editor on multiple levels.
I’m a developmental editor in terms of giving people big-picture feedback on their book and what’s working at the macro level, maybe being a bit of a creative partner for folks, and maybe sharing some ideas with people or giving people a direction they can go in that they can then run with.
There was a time when developmental editors played a huge role in the publishing industry. Of course, that is gone as publishers have been swallowed up by the big conglomerates and as the conglomerates push for more and more money and more and more cuts, the idea of an editor working with a writer over the long term to help make their book as good as it can be just doesn’t exist anymore inside the traditional publishing industry. But luckily, we now have this freelance world of writing coaches and developmental editors that people can work with and get that support and feedback that they need while developing their book.
I’m also helping folks on almost a copy-editor level in terms of fixing my client’s typos and asking them, “Is this the best way that they can formulate a sentence?”
I’m really a creative partner and editorial resource and a writing instructor all in one, and that is what I consider the first bucket, really that writer’s craft training and editorial advice.
Project Management
The second bucket where I think writing coaches can really help novelists, especially first-time novelists, or even experienced novelists looking to do things more effectively, is the Project Management bucket.
Bucket number one, let’s talk writing. Let’s talk craft. Let’s talk fundamentals. Let’s talk editing.
Bucket number two, let’s talk about the project itself.
A novel is a big project that takes many months to complete for most people, if not years. And when you’re working on a long-term project, it’s really easy to go off the rails for any number of reasons. Especially if there are no deadlines involved. For most first-time novelists, they don’t have a contract, they don’t have a deadline that they need to complete the book by, and so the book ends up taking five or six or seven or eight years to write because there is no deadline. And there’s also no real understanding of what the steps involved are.
When it comes to project managing a book, I’ve helped hundreds, if not thousands, of writers at this point through the writing and drafting and revisions and publishing process. I know the steps involved, and I can be there to help authors understand this is just step two of a 25-step process; don’t get hung up at step two, we’ve got a long way to go.
Like in any good project management process, we need to identify things like critical paths and goals and deadlines, not just, “Oh, I want this book done by the end of the year,” but, “I want this draft done by next month,” which means I need to be revising five scenes a day, four or five days a week, or whatever. Really doing the mathematics of drafting and revisions and figuring out how to keep a project on track and how to try to meet the deadlines that you set for yourselves.
Sometimes that involves productivity techniques. Sometimes it involves me saying to clients, “Okay, what can we do to get you writing more, or to get you writing faster in the scenes that you do have? How do we get more words on the page or more scenes revised faster?” And we look at different techniques for doing that.
A lot of the time, that requires analysis of key performance indicators and things like understanding how fast you as a writer can actually get a scene revised or can get words on the page because so often writers are inventing deadlines and milestones, which is great. That’s step one. A lot of people don’t even do that. But step two is actually determining whether those milestones and deadlines are reasonable or not because usually people are over-ambitious in their deadlines, and then they beat themselves up when they miss them. They don’t get any of the endorphins and good vibes and fun that come from being on track, and meeting deadlines. I’m a big proponent of measuring progress and then adjusting goals accordingly so that writers have good feelings about how their project is moving forward instead of constantly disappointing themselves, not because they fail to do anything in the execution of their work, but because they set unreasonable goals and deadlines for themselves to begin with.
On that project management side of things, I also include my network as part of the project management support. If you’re on my mailing list, you’ve probably seen me do a beta reader outreach, right? When my clients are ready to have beta readers review their books, I’ll send it out to my mailing list of thousands and thousands of writers and folks interested in writing and reading and see if we can get some beta readers for your book. Through this show, I’ve interviewed about a hundred different folks who work with writers in a variety of manners, from editors to marketing folks to book launch experts and all those things. I’ve been in this world of writing and publishing for a decade now, and I know people, so, if I don’t have the tool or if I don’t have the thing that can support you in this certain stage in your book development process, well, I probably know someone who does. That is why I include my network as part of that project management support role that I provide as a writing coach.
Also included in this project management bucket is the accountability. Accountability is so huge.
I work with a business coach, and he has me track specific metrics, and do all this kind of math stuff for my business, which I would never do if he didn’t make me. I know it’s important, I know I need to know that I have 25 clients this month, but I had 22 last month, which means I have two new people. And I have to adjust my systems and my timelines and everything to account for that. But I just don’t like to do that stuff. So, I don’t do it unless I have a coach expecting me to deliver those numbers before our next coaching call.
It’s the same thing with the writers that I work with. If you’re in one of my group programs, and you’re on the hot seat this Thursday, you better get those pages in. If you’re a one-on-one client, and you’re paying the big bucks to meet with you on a weekly basis, you better get me those pages. The reality is that people do. I charge rates now where it’s unreasonable for people to hire me and not do the work. The people I work with these days, they’re doing the work because they have invested in coaching, and they’ve invested in this project, and they take it seriously and so they do the work.
Of course, we set goals, and we try to hold ourselves accountable, but it’s so difficult to hold yourself accountable. It is so much easier to do the hard stuff when you know there’s someone on the other end waiting for you to receive the pages or the revisions or the tracking or whatever it is.
I’ll tell you a little story. There’s this business coach, Matthew Kimberly, and he has this thing called the Single Malt Mailing List or something. Basically, it’s a mailing list, and it’s pretty expensive. I think it was like $600 or something. And I did it for a year. And how it worked as that every Monday, he emails you and says, “What are you going to do this week?” And then every Friday, I think, maybe Sunday, he emails and goes, “What did you do this week?” That’s it. That’s the entire coaching program. One, because it’s expensive, and two, because I knew he was on the other side waiting for a response, I did the work. I set weekly goals on Mondays and tracked my progress, reported back to him on Fridays. He wasn’t even actively coaching in terms of saying, “Do this, do that.” He was just asking a question twice a week: “What are you going to do this week?” at the beginning of the week, and “What did you achieve this week?” at the end of the week. Even that simple accountability was so helpful.
So, accountability is huge, and I include that in the project management bucket.
Mindset Support
The final coaching bucket that I think about is the mindset support side of things.
Writing a book is not easy, and it can be really frustrating at times.
In addition, artists tend to be emotional people. We work in emotions, we delve into emotions, we’re trying to evoke emotions in the reader. There’s that famous saying: “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”
Emotions are not a separate part of writing a book; emotions are deeply involved in the craft and the effect we’re trying to have on the readers. Emotionally available people are drawn to writing because it’s an emotional art form. But it can also wear you down, make you sad, stir up traumas, and depress you. Because it’s so difficult, you need to be coached in the right way.
The best sport coaches know that some players need a hug and encouragement, while others need a stern push and direction. Different people need different support and feedback. As a writing coach, I need to not just teach people the fundamentals of writing, but also provide emotional support, as well as understand what type of feedback individuals need.
Writing can be a lonely endeavor. You stare at that page, and having a coach there to be on that emotional journey with you, and especially to celebrate the small wins along the way, is really important. There’s so many art forms where you get almost immediate gratification, but writing a book involves a lot of work without a lot of positive feedback. As a coach, I try to bring positive feedback to my clients along the way and celebrate every little victory. Every single chapter you write is an accomplishment, and every draft of a scene is an accomplishment. While very few other people in your life may understand the monumental journey you’re on when writing a book, I get it. I’ve been there, and I’m there to support you and cheer you on in the process.
You might be familiar with all of this already, or this might be completely new to you. Coaches are there to help you get your book out of your head onto the page and into readers’ hands.
If you want to take a look at one of my tools, the Scene Alchemy Essentials Checklist, you can head to my website, pick up a copy of that tool and get a sense of the types of tools that I create to help my clients improve their writing and get their books done, perhaps a little bit quicker and with a bit more fun along the way.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: writing a book is difficult, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so that you can catch the next episode of The Writing Coach.
