Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Character Development

1
 From Protagonist to Hero

Exercise: Adding Heroic Qualities

2
 Multidimensional Characters

Exercise: Opening Extra Character Dimensions .

3
 Inner Conflict

Exercise: Creating Inner Conflict

4
 Larger-Than-Life Character Qualities

Exercise: Creating Larger-Than-Life Qualities

5
 Heightening Larger-Than-Life Qualities

Exercise: Adjusting the Volume

6
 Character Turnabouts and Surprises

Exercise: Reversing Motives

7
 Personal Stakes

Exercise: Defining Personal Stakes

8
 Ultimate Stakes

Exercise: Capturing the Irrevocable Commitment

9
 Exposition

Exercise: Deepening Exposition

10 Creating Secondary Characters

Exercise: Secondary Character Development

11 Antagonists

Exercise: Developing the Antagonist

Exercise: The Antagonist's Outline

12 Enriching Your Cast

Exercise: Combining Roles

Part II: Plot Development

13 Public Stakes

Exercise: Raising Public Stakes

14
 Complications

Exercise: Making Complications Active

15 Plot Layers

Exercise: Building Plot Layers

16 Weaving a Story

Exercise: Weaving Plot Layers Together

17 Subplots

Exercise: Adding Subplots

18 Turning Points

Exercise: Heightening Turning Points

19 The Inner Journey

Exercise: Inner Turning Points

20 High Moments

Exercise: Creating High Moments

21 Bridging Conflict

Exercise: Developing Bridging Conflict

22 Low Tension Part I: The Problem With Tea

Exercise: Brewing Tension

23 Low Tension Part II: Burdensome Backstory

Exercise: Delaying Backstory

24 Low Tension Part III: Tension on Every Page

Exercise: Adding Tension to Every Page

Part III: General Story Techniques

25 First Lines/Last Lines

Exercise: Enhancing First and Last Lines

26 Moments in Time

Exercise: Freezing Moments in Time

27 Inner Change

Exercise: Measuring Inner Change

28 Setting

Exercise: The Psychology of Place

29 Point of View

Exercise: Strengthening Point of View

30 Character Delineation

Exercise: Improving Character Delineation

31
 Theme

Exercise: Alternate Endings

Exercise: The Larger Problem

Exercise: Same Problem, Other Characters Exercise: Making the Antagonist's Case

32
 Symbols

Exercise: Creating Symbols

33
 Brainstorming

Exercise: Developing Brainstorming Skills

34
 The Pitch

Exercise: Constructing the Pitch

Appendixes

Appendix A: Outlining Your Novel

Appendix B: Follow-up Work Checklist

Introduction

For twenty-five years I have watched book publishing change. Conglomeration has narrowed the number of major North American publishing corporations to five. Best-seller syndrome and bottom-line thinking are more prevalent than ever. In most houses the marketing department reigns supreme, yet for all but a handful of novels promotional budgets are nil.

As profound as these changes have been, there have been even greater changes in bookselling. The number of independent bookstores has plunged. The chains have risen, only to surrender market share to online bookselling and wholesale clubs. The consolidation of mass-market paperback distributors has halved, and halved again, the typical sale of a rack-sized paperback. Backlist cedes ever more ground to frontlist.

As a literary agent who specializes in developing fiction careers, however, I believe there is one change that has more profoundly afflicted fiction writers than any other: computerized inventory tracking. By-the-numbers ordering by booksellers has turned recent sales history into the novelist's fate. But when you cannot ship more than the net sales on your last title, how can you grow? This catch-22 has thrown hundreds, possibly thousands, of fiction careers into crisis. An equal number have ended almost as soon as they were born.

Despite that gloomy picture, I am still in the business, happier, more hopeful, and more prosperous than I've ever been. Why? Because a few years ago I looked around and realized that many novelists are getting ahead—way ahead—even in this ugly publishing environment. Better still, an examination of their work showed me the reasons for their success; and these reasons are techniques that any novelist can use.

I published the results of my study in 2001 in
Writing the Breakout Novel,
a book that has been praised to me in person, on Web sites and in hundreds of e-mails and letters. Authors' groups have debated its principles. It is required reading in a number of fiction courses. I also have used what I learned in preparing that book in my developmental work with my own clients. The results have been dramatic. Stalled careers have been turned around, agency revenue is way up, and many clients tell me that they are writing with new joy.

Even better, I have found that the principles in
Writing the Breakout Novel
can be taught. My first workshop was created for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association's annual conference in the summer of 2000.1 had just turned in the manuscript to my publisher. On the plane to Seattle I pulled out a yellow legal pad and worked up a dozen writing exercises that I thought would help writers see how to apply the techniques discussed in the book.

The positive feedback I received on that workshop was overwhelming. I began to lead the workshop at other conferences, expanded it, and eventually began to offer weekend-long Writing the Breakout Novel workshops in cities around the country. Participants are required to bring with them the manuscript of a novel or novel-in-progress. At the end of the workshop I ask how many partici-

pants will go home and devote months more effort to deepening their novels. Each time, every hand in the room goes up, often with rueful groans.

Writing a breakout novel is the hardest work you will ever do. But it can by done, and done by anyone with basic fiction writing skills and the patience and determination to take his fiction all the way to the highest level of achievement.

Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook
includes all of the writing exercises that I lead in the Writing the Breakout Novel workshops. On the following pages you will learn how to read a novel like a writer, understanding the technique and motivation behind every choice an author makes. You will find help in making your characters more memorable, adding layers of plot and weaving them together, discovering the themes hidden in your work, using time and place more effectively, and much more. There is also a first-line brainstorming session, a pitch factory, and a tension tune up—probably the most difficult yet necessary section of the book. Do not skip that one.

In addition, before each exercise, I analyze breakout fiction that you can find on bookstore shelves right now. I draw examples of the application of breakout techniques not from the classics, but from current novels. The classics have much to teach us, as do books on writing, but I believe the "new fiction" section of the bookstore is better than any textbook. It's a university all by itself. See for yourself how contemporary authors cut through our industry's malaise and, sometimes with little help from their publishers, capture the imaginations—and dollars—of editors, critics, movie producers, prize committees, and, most important, consumers. (In order to analyze these novels, I do, at times, give away a great deal of the plot.)

Not every book I examine is a
New York Times
best-seller, but every one is a novel by an author who has broken out; that is, who has made a dramatic leap in sales over her peers or even ahead of her own previous work. As those who have heard me speak at writers conferences know, I believe that writing the breakout novel is not about creating a publishing event, but breaking
through
to new, more powerful ways of story construction.

In most cases the techniques of breakout fiction are not difficult to understand. Why, then, do not more authors use them? I believe it is because these principles generally are not yet taught in enough writing books and courses. Indeed, for me to grasp them I had to read one hundred breakout novels side by side to see what made them different. The exercises in this book will show you that once you see how to apply them, breakout fiction techniques can be utilized again and again in every novel that you write.

Before using this workbook, I recommend that you read the volume that started it all:
Writing the Breakout Novel.
Participants in my workshops find that they get more out of the experience when they are not hearing and digesting concepts like
inner conflict, personal stakes,
and
plot weaving
for the first time. I think you will find this to be true, too.

I also recommend that you really take the time to work through all the exercises in this book. A breakout novel cannot be written in a weekend. Talk to authors and you will find that their breakout novel probably took them three

to five years to write; sometimes as long as ten. Each exercise that you do will change the novel that you are writing in multiple ways. For instance, the exercises that develop characters' personal stakes may well produce for you a list of new plot complications. Each one will require new scenes, even whole new narrative threads. Weave those together—that is, to find their
nodes of conjunction
—and you will find yourself shifting settings and the order of scenes.

At what stage of the writing process should you undertake these exercises? As I said before, in the live Writing the Breakout Novel workshops, I ask participants to bring the manuscript of a completed novel or novel-in-progress. It is useful to have a manuscript on which to focus, particularly in those exercises that deal with particular points in the story, like opening lines, a selected scene in which the motive will be reversed, and pages randomly chosen for a tension check.

Nevertheless, the exercises herein can be useful in earlier stages of novel construction, too. They will help you generate ideas as you flesh an idea into a premise, a premise into notes, notes into a rough outline, and a rough outline into the final outline for your novel. There is even an appendix at the back of this volume that will guide you through the outline process from beginning to end—whether you are at the planning stages or already have completed your manuscript.

It does not matter what type of novel you are writing: literary, mainstream, mystery, fantasy, romance, historical, or whatever. The techniques of breakout fiction are universal. They cross genre lines. They will tend to make a novel longer, though not necessarily. Stay open to what the exercises give you. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break.

You may wish to work through this book with your writing class or critique group. Discussion of the results can itself be productive. If nothing else, the work you do with this workbook will get your creative juices flowing. You will feel energized. Your unconscious will open, and story will flow. You will see new levels in your novel; make connections that you did not make before. Take lots of notes.