Twitter Q&A: Plot or character? Picture book dummies?

Twitter is a great source of questions and answers for writers. In this episode, Chris, Gena, and Rene answer more questions from Twitter including:

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• How complete should picture book illustrations be?
• Do you start brainstorming a new script idea from plot or character?
• How long is too long for an epic novel?

Links:

• Writing Moments – Write with us and give your writing momentum!
• twitter.com/writingmomentum

Episode 29 transcription:

[00:00:14].330] - Gena
Hi, everybody.  Welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast. I'm here with Chris and Rene. We're so glad you're joining us, and we are going to be taking questions from Twitter today. We started this last week. We're going to continue it this week. We've just gone on Twitter and picked a couple of questions that we're going to answer, and I'll let you know. Little secret here. Rene and I have no idea what the questions are. Cold. This is just gut reactions from both of us. So here we go.

[00:00:50].600] - Chris
Does that make you nervous, Rene, to be answering questions on the fly, knowing that you're being put on the spot?

[00:00:56].730] - Rene
Well, it should make our listeners feel a little nervous. So we're just saying, like, always confirm with other sources, as you should. Anyway, on all things, we will try not to get fake news. We are genuinely trying to answer these to the best of our knowledge.

[00:01:16].430] - Chris
Right. And you'll be happy to know this first question is kind of geared for you. This is a question we found on Twitter and thought this would be perfect for today. I can't read it. It's too small on my screen. How complete this isn't for you. This isn't the one that I thought was for you. Okay, I'm going to ask this anyway. Okay. The question is from this guy's name is Will Ferrell. Will Rit. Right. He says, how complete do you expect dummy illustrations for picture books to be? So he's sending a query to an editor and agent. How complete do you want the dummy illustrations to be? I can actually answer this one, but do you want to take an attempt, too?

[00:02:08].250] - Rene
I have no idea.

[00:02:09].770] - Gena
I don't think you have dummy illustrations.

[00:02:13].070] - Chris
That's the right answer.

[00:02:14].730] - Rene
Oh, good.

[00:02:15].520] - Gena
Okay. There are no dummy illustrations in a picture book. You can describe what you want on that page or on that spread, but you do not include illustrations unless you are an author illustrator combo.

[00:02:32].740] - Rene
That's what I was going to ask. What if you're an illustrator?

[00:02:35].200] - Chris
Yeah. So if you're an author illustrator combo, then, yes, you can include illustrations in your picture book. But here's the thing. You have to be a really good illustrator. Otherwise you're running the risk of your book being rejected for either your writing or your illustrations. Right. And I have found often that when I work for people who've done picture books, that often our confidence and our illustrations are maybe a little higher than they should be. Right. Because really, you want to focus on the story, make sure the writing is really well, or you want to just be an illustrator. Most people don't do both. And so what I recommend for most authors is to say, you can just make that story as good as you can. I recommend sending it in so that you just have the story standing by itself without any direction for the artist. Because really, if artists need direction, then that's something that can come as you talk out the pages. The story should be able to stand on its own without illustrations at all, at least as far as when you're going to sell it to an editor or to an agent.

[00:03:48].280] - Chris
It should be able to stand on its own. Now, it's possible that they may take pieces of it out because it can actually be told in illustration, and they might tighten it up by doing that when it's ready to go into the editing and publishing process. But as a general rule, it should entirely stand on its own. And I'll go a step further and say if you're doing rhyme in your picture book, which is what you see almost all the time when people are creating picture books, everyone wants to do their picture book in rhyme. It has to be perfect like that. Rhyming has to be perfect rhyme. You can't let the reader stumble at all. And if they do stumble, you're likely to get it rejected because there's just too much competition in this market as it is. So I always recommend if someone writes a picture book in rhyme, to also write that picture book in prose and see if it's just as strong, and you might end up wanting to do it that way anyway.

[00:04:46].050] - Gena
And I would even say when you're writing in rhyme, to make sure that you're reading out loud, don't just read it yourself, but read it out loud. Even have someone else read it out loud and listen to them read it. Because sometimes if we're writing something, we can write it in such a way that we understand where the cadence and rhythms should be. But it's good to have somebody else read it to see if they naturally find that cadence and rhythm or it'll just sound off and it won't be tight enough. And if you find that, then it's time to go back to the drawing board and start working to bring it together again.

[00:05:21].570] - Chris
Yeah, that's good. All right, so here's the question that was actually oriGenally going to be just for Rene. It's actually for all of us, but I thought Rene is going to have a lot of fun with this one. And this does ask about scripts. The question is, I'm going to put it up here at the top. For those who are viewing on YouTube, do you start brainstorming a new script? I can't get it to move to the top of the screen. Sorry, folks. Question is, do you want to start brainstorming a new script idea from plot or from character? What do you think, Rene, when you start brainstorming an idea for a script, do you start with plot or with character?

[00:06:04].170] - Rene
Okay, so I'm going to assume that what they're talking about is a screenplay. And so for screenplay, both are important. And you can start either way.

[00:06:23].120] - Rene
You can start.

[00:06:26].290] - Rene
When you're starting a manuscript to a novel, you have a lot more room to dive into character. And so a lot of novelists start with a character and build the plot. But honestly, both are so important unless you're, you know, if you are writing a character driven novel, you want to start with your character. If you're writing a plot driven novel, you want to start with your plot. If you're writing a screenplay, your plot is what's on screen driving the story. And your characters are played by actors. Of course, you do not get the inner monologue that you do with novels. So you want to make sure that you have a very strong plot when you brainstorm a screenplay. And then, of course, your character is when you're writing a screenplay, the thing you want to think is, will an actor want to play this character? Is the character interesting enough? Is the dialogue interesting enough that an actor will read the script and go, I can't pass this up. I have to play this character? So I have done it both ways. I have started with a character. In fact, right now I'm working on a script that the whole movie revolves around these two interesting characters.

[00:07:58].440] - Rene
And we're building a plot around these characters. I have also developed from a plot point of view, I think they're equally as important. I try in all of my stories to have strong characters and strong plot. Just always have. I think readers and viewers want that. So how you dive into it is up to you. Whatever drives you is up to you. Just make sure you don't forsake the other side of it and have a really interesting character that has no story to ride in, so to speak, or a plot that is interesting, but nobody cares about the character. I try to build up both and make sure that they're strong. But there is no wrong way to start brainstorming. There's never a wrong way to start brainstorming. You can start with the setting if you want. I mean, you are totally fine at the beginning of the brainstorming session to do whatever you want. I think that's my opinion.

[00:09:08].770] - Chris
How much is the writer responsible for making a character work in a script? Or is that entirely up to the actor?

[00:09:17].710] - Rene
Well, the writer is very responsible. The actor brings the character to life. And the actor a good actor can then bring a depth to the character that is really amazing to watch. But you can't write a weak character and expect the actor to save it. You've got to have a strong character for them to begin with and then whatever they add on top of it is just magic.

[00:09:47].210] - Chris
That's good. We got another question here. This is from Robert Brown. I see that 160,000 characters or I guess it's words for an epic fantasy is probably too long, but I also see some super long novels out there that are published like that. So what are your thoughts on that? Is it okay to have a really long epic fantasy or other style of novels? Is it okay when you're writing a novel or even a nonfiction book to go way over the standard word length? What do you think?

[00:10:22].830] - Gena
I think it depends on whether you want to. First of all, I think that we've said before, you've got to know the rules before you break them. So I think it's important to know what the word count rules are, the general ones, because they're usually there for a reason. And if you're going to break them, then I think you have to have a good reason. And it could just be that you are just such a great writer, you're Tolkien level, so you can write these really epic length books and work, but recognize you're I would just say recognize what the rule is before you break it, and then have a really good reason if you're going to break it. And that could go either way if you're going to write. You know, I've seen people who want to publish books, and they say, well, I've got this book. And when you talk to them about it, it's 25 pages. Well, that's not really a book. That's like a booklet. That's not really a book. And so recognize that. Well, if I'm going to write a non fiction book, then if it's a self help book, it needs to be probably about 45,000 character, 45,000 words.

[00:11:42].930] - Gena
And there's actually a range. I don't know what it is right off the top of my head. Same for novels, same for different genres and novels. Some genres I believe will allow you to go longer than that. But I think you have to have a really good reason for going above that. And it can't just be because your reader has to be invested enough to want to go on that journey with you. So it has to be good enough to carry that. So what do you guys think?

[00:12:13].870] - Rene
I agree. Genre is so important. Fantasy readers have a lot more tolerance because there's world building involved, and so they have tolerance for those extra word counts. Your romance writers don't, they typically like the quick read. I think, like you said, Gena, you're absolutely right. I mean, you have to have the skill to hold the reader's attention at 160,000 words. Some writers do, and they're really popular and multimillionaires, and they make Netflix series out of their books and that sort of thing. But if you want to sell your first novel, probably don't come out of the gate with breaking the rules immediately, and that'll give you your best chance. Once you've sold a lot of books and you want to go big on the word count. When I sold my first novel, I did not read the contract carefully to read that I had a word count cap. I was just writing my little heart out. My first novel was I turned it in at 150,000 words, and it was a suspense, and they were so kind to be like, hey, we have to cut some words. So anyway, it ended up at like 120,000, I think, which was still long.

[00:13:55].930] - Rene
But I would do it differently these days, when the better writer you get, the less words you need.

[00:14:06].550] - Chris
Yeah, I had the same thing happen with one of the novels that I did in a series for children, for middle graders. And the first one I did was it was just too long. It wasn't too much too long. It was a little too long. And they wanted to have all the books within a certain length, and so they'd all be the same, like 120 pages for this age group. And I had written, like, 140 pages worth. So I had to go in and immediately cut 20 pages out of this baby of a book of mine kind of thing. And it's hard to do that. But then once I kind of liked, as I was continuing to write books in the series, to have exactly okay, I knew how many pages it was going to be from then on, so that I knew I just have to keep meeting that quota. Right. And I know that that's exactly how long it used to be. It kind of helped me know where to make everything fall. But I actually get this question quite a bit, as I have helped people format their books, because I help people format their books for self publishing a lot of times through Amazon, whether it be a print or an e book.

[00:15:12].670] - Chris
And what's interesting is that the rules have changed a little bit when it comes to independent publishing, because a lot of times the reason publishers want you to be a certain length is not just because that's what the market expects, but it's also because they get price breaks depending on how many pages are printed in their book. Well, when you are independently self publishing, you don't necessarily have to follow those rules. So if I'm working with someone and they've got, let's say, a nonfiction self help book, and it's more like a novella, right? It's like 60 pages, that's okay. They can do that if they want to. I always encourage them to have at least as many pages so it gives them a nice spine so that you can print on the side of it the name of the book, and you can see it on the bookshelf, which usually requires about 100 pages. And so sometimes we'll add pages at the back that will be advertisements for other things or things like that, or you can put in some note pages and that sort of thing if it's a shorter book, but if it's longer, that's okay, too.

[00:16:16].670] - Chris
As long as they're willing to pay a little more to have each book printed, that's all right. But I think the rule that I always recommend for them to consider is that it should never be any longer than it takes to share their message, right. So make sure that you don't have a bunch of extra stuff in there just because you're embellishing on everything you're writing, right. You should just get across the point of what you're trying to say, get in and then get out. Because we as readers, especially, I think, with nonfiction material, we just want you to get to the point so that we can know what it's about and then move on.

[00:16:53].700] - Gena
I think that's actually one of the trip ups that I see in a lot of nonfiction material, is that they share their message, and they get so excited to share their message that they share their whole message in the first couple of paragraphs or the first couple of chapters, and then they spend the rest of the book rehashing it. That pretty much drives me crazy, because I get bored as a reader. And I have worked with clients before that when they go back through we've worked on their book, they get back, and they want to add more into chapter one or chapter two. They want to keep adding to it, like, well, I want to get this in there. And I say, well, no, you cover that in chapter ten, or you cover that in chapter eight. We want to leave something for the reader to discover later on and not just have this huge summary at the beginning that just gets rehashed.

[00:17:50].530] - Chris
Our daughter's in a book club for a nonfiction book right now, and they were requiring her to read a bunch of pages for the first meeting we had together, and she finished it, like, in a record time, and she comes out of room, out of the room, and she says, I'm done. And we said, well, how are you done? And she said, I just read the first sentence of every paragraph. And she said, I got the gist of everything they were talking about in the first three chapters because it was so redundant. Right. She could just read that first sentence, and it was enough to know exactly what the author was saying because it was so redundant as it went through. So, yeah, lesson learned there. You need to be careful not to just write stuff in there for writing sake, I guess, right?

[00:18:33].910] - Gena
Definitely. All right, well, so we talked today. We had some Q and A's that we were talking about. Remind me, Chris, what some of our topics were today.

[00:18:44].420] - Chris
We talked about when you're brainstorming, do you start with plot or with character?

[00:18:49].480] - Gena
Plot or character, yeah.

[00:18:50].760] - Chris
And then we talked about picture books and whether we can go ahead and create illustrations, dummy illustrations, or whether we shouldn't. And then of course, this last question was on the length of books and we need to follow the rules or not. Those are all good questions. Do you wish there was a way that you could just ask writers and authors questions like this?

[00:19:13].150] - Gena
Yes, actually.

[00:19:16].150] - Chris
What do you do when you have questions like this?

[00:19:18].520] - Gena
You come to the Writing Momentum Q and A, which is on what day? Chris?

[00:19:22].930] - Chris
It's on January 28. I believe July 28. You can have people showing up at all different times of place.

[00:19:32].210] - Gena
July 28th just go to writingmomentum.com and we will have information on there about what we're going to be doing. This is going to be a live Q and A that we're going to hold on Facebook and through YouTube, and we're just going to be taking questions. You're welcome to submit questions beforehand and we will be answering them to the best of our abilities and the best of our knowledge. So we hope that you will be joining us. And just to let you know, we're going to be holding these monthly. So if you missed this one, be sure to check it out, check out future ones, join us for those. And until next time, thank you so much for your time for joining us. Be sure to rate and subscribe and share this podcast. We're hoping to help as many writers as we can and just help get the message out and help writers get their work done and get their message out there. So thank you so much. Until next time, we hope your writing always has writing momentum.