Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

A popular question on panels is “Are you anything at all like your protagonist?”

It’s an interesting question, I think, because each writer feels differently about incorporating themselves into a story.

Reasons I’ve heard why writers write parts of themselves into books:

Some writers view writing as a therapeutic process, working through problems or tragic events through their characters.

It can be easier to get into a character’s head or make the character pop on the page if the character is based on the writer.

The writer’s own background, skill-set, or professional knowledge can be used in the book for a realistic touch. (The protagonist may share the writer’s occupation or hobby.)

It can give the writer an opportunity to change the outcome of a situation they were in, through fiction.

Reasons I’ve heard why writers don’t write themselves into books:

They’re private people.

Their lives don’t seem interesting enough to write about.

Also interesting to me is the way that many writers I’ve listened to will use an absolute on the subject. “No, I’m not like my protagonists,” or “Yes, I’m similar to my protagonist.”

I’ve done the same thing—I usually say, “No, I’m nothing like my protagonists.” Because, honestly, if I wrote myself into a book—no one would read it. This is why I make things up. Besides, I’m not the kind of person who is protagonist material. I don’t make things happen…I like to observe them happening.

But it’s not true that I’m nothing like my protagonists. There are bits of me in them. One protagonist is an insomniac. Two protagonists are impatient. One protagonist is distracted and forgetful. Most of the things that get a small mention are actually my shortcomings.

I’d not thought about it, but when I write my shortcomings into books, I’m poking fun at myself. It’s a good way to blow off tension because my shortcomings tend to stress me out.

So I think, that most writers will use a combination approach. If they are consciously writing themselves, then they leave some material out (at least, I’d imagine they would. I sure wouldn’t be able to let it all hang out there.) If someone thinks they never write themselves into a book…maybe, like me, they don’t even realize they’re doing it.

How much of yourself goes into a book? How much is complete fiction?

I grew up writing reports for school in longhand. When I really wanted to make a report fancy, I used a typewriter.

Computers in high school and college were rare. The odd Apple IIE was in the county library or the school’s lab. The computers bombed a lot and the printers were unreliable. I stuck with my Brother typewriter that had the capability of remembering a line of text. I could look at the line and correct it on the tiny screen before it printed out.

When I was an intern at a London magazine in college, I was given the assignment to report on spring fashion. The editor wanted it later that afternoon. There was no internet then (no internet that was accessible to regular people, at least), so I looked out the window at what people were wearing and wrote it into the story. I jotted it down in longhand on paper, then typed it up.

In fact, that’s how I wrote everything—on paper before copying it over on the typewriter.

When I started novel writing, I naturally gravitated to paper. I found it very disorganized, though—I wrote out of order sometimes and there were scenes that needed to be in other parts of the story. And frequently I knew I was writing stuff that was helping me know a character better, but it was material that was going to get axed before the last draft. I used lots of highlighters and actual scissors to help me organize my scenes.

It didn’t take me long to realize that to write faster and reach the deadlines that were starting to mount up, I needed to switch over to a computer. Besides, I’d frequently lose the different pieces of paper that my story was on.

I learned how to be creative on the computer. But I kept revising on paper. I’d print out my manuscript (which is a lot of paper, if you think about 270 or so pages, single-sided) and then I’d take the manuscript with me everywhere. I’d pull it out of my huge pocketbook and edit it while waiting for school to let out, etc.

I do think that sometimes reading on paper can help find errors that reading on a screen can’t. But still—it was a really slow process. I’d have to turn pages on the manuscript, find the change on the page, find the spot on the computer, make the change…and then make sure I’d marked that I’d made the change or else I’d forget where I left off. It was also expensive and a waste of resources to print out that much paper…and I’d keep printing new versions of the manuscript to reflect changes. I switched to revising on the computer.

My struggle and eventual switch to mainly-electronic writing made me especially interested in a post on A Brain Scientist’s Take on Writing. It involved a study (VANWAES, L., & SCHELLENS, P. (2003). Writing profiles: the effect of the writing mode on pausing and revision patterns of experienced writers Journal of Pragmatics,) on typing vs. longhand. You can read the study yourself, but I’ll quote a few of the findings (directly from Livia Blackburne’s blog:

1. The computer writers took half as much time to write the first draft than pen and paper writers.
2. The computer writers wrote texts that were approximately 20% longer.
3. The computer writers had a more fragmented writing process than the pen and paper writers.
4. Computer writers made 80% of the revisions in their first draft, as compared to pen and paper writers, who made only 50% of revisions in the first draft.

The authors observed that pen and paper writing seemed a more systematic and planned out process. This makes sense because it’s harder to make a change on pencil and paper. With computer writing, you can just start writing and make changes as you go along.

This was similar to what I’d found with my own writing. It might have been nicer to write on paper (in many ways, I find it more enjoyable), but it sure is a whole lot quicker to write on the computer.

My writing friend, Hart Johnson, ran an informal survey on her blog a while back. She was curious about the ages and backgrounds of writers who wrote longhand, vs. those who wrote on the computer. She found that the writer’s age was a factor (anyone who grew up on a computer was obviously going to find writing on a computer more natural) but also what else the writer did on a computer—if their day job was really uncreative, they might associate the computer with the non-creative day job and write longhand instead.

Do you write longhand? On computer? Or both?

Although I live in a good-sized metro area (Charlotte, North Carolina), my suburb of Matthews is fairly small. It’s small enough that, when I go out running errands, I have a couple of errand-running mom friends and acquaintances wave at me as I drive.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I decided to switch out our cars. I do most of the driving and his car makes fewer funny noises than mine does.

After making this switch, I’ve noticed that I’m getting a lot fewer waves. And I don’t think that everyone I know is mad at me. :)

But to them, part of who I am is a Honda minivan. I’m not a Honda Pilot to them. Their gaze just skips right over the car.

As I was out driving the other day and being ignored by my friends, I started thinking about habits and identifiers that can help establish characters in our readers’ minds.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m reading a book, I have a hard time immediately placing a character. The author, obviously, thinks that this character is someone that they’ve already established and they haven’t provided anything additional to jog my memory.

Because I find it frustrating as a reader, I try to make sure to somehow tag my supporting characters if they haven’t been onstage for a while.

One way to do this is obviously to say something like: Jane’s hairdresser, Sheri, opened the door.

Or: Sheri walked in. “Long day at the beauty parlor, y’all. Three customers didn’t show up!”

The first way is a total ‘tell,’ but fairly unobtrusive for the reader. The second way is a little more ‘show’ but still gets the job done and establishes the character for the reader.

Another way is to give the character a trait of some sort to identify them. This would need to obviously be a detail memorable enough so that a casual reader could tie the trait and the character together to remember them. This could either be a physical trait (an engaging dimple; cold, hollowed-out eyes, messy hair) or a habit or action (shifting from foot to foot, avoiding eye contact, looking at their reflection in every mirror, etc.)

The purpose of this identifier is really just so the reader isn’t wondering who the heck they are. But you could make it serve double-duty and have the identifier point to something that gives a little insight to the character: Jane thought again how odd it was that a manicurist would have nails bitten down to the quick. Actually, I think some of the actions I used in the example above can give some insight into characters, too.

Obviously, these identifiers can be overdone. If the secondary character is on stage fairly frequently, it would get annoying to have them reintroduced each time. The trait could get annoying, too, if done too frequently.

We also need to be mindful of clichés when making these identifiers for periphery characters. It’s easy to tag a supporting character with quick and easy tags that are stereotypical (awkward nerd, lady of the manor, dumb jock, etc.) I think that sometimes that a stereotype is a quick way to have our reader “get” a character…if the character isn’t very important to the story. If the secondary character is more important, then it’s probably worth it to flesh him out more and give him more dimension.

How do you help your readers keep supporting characters straight?

I think I drive my kids a little crazy sometimes.

Frequently I’ll be driving somewhere in town and wonder how my GPS would tell me how to reach our destination. I know how to get there. But I wonder if my route is really the most efficient way.

So I punch in the destination and the GPS lady drones on, telling me which turn to take. “Take a right on Sar-deez Road North,” she orders.

I very rarely follow the GPS lady’s advice.

“Mom,” my son will say through teeth that sound gritted, “why didn’t you make the turn that she mentioned?”

“Oh, there’s way too much traffic on that road. It’ll be bumper to bumper. And there are stoplights practically every ten feet. The GPS lady doesn’t know that. I’ll just go straight and we’ll get there faster.”

“Why then,” asks my son, very reasonably, “don’t you just turn off the GPS? Her voice is annoying. And you never follow her directions anyway.”

But I don’t turn it off. Because sometimes she gives me an interesting alternate route that I hadn’t thought of. Some days there’s an accident or a delay of some kind on my preferred route…some sort of roadblock…and I need a different direction to follow.

You can see where this is going. But this is how I look at first reader advice—whether it’s advice from a critique group or a friend or family member.

Your first readers may give advice that’s very useful. Or they may give you advice that you just listen to, thank them for, and completely disregard as you continue on your own course.

Sometimes you may get conflicting suggestions from different critique readers. I’ve heard several writers talk about how confusing that can be and how they aren’t sure whose advice they should listen to.

But then there are those helpful nuggets of advice that can put your story on a new and different course when you’ve hit a roadblock.

Ultimately, you should listen to your gut when you write your story. You usually know the best route to take with your book. Take the alternate course when it makes sense or when it’s more efficient. (Editors, of course, are a different story. I make a point of always following their suggestions.)

After all—ultimately, you’re the one behind the wheel.

A question I frequently get, and which I heard a lot this weekend at the Cape Fear Crime Festival, is “Does social media sell books?”

Many writers worry about spending time away from writing. Between the demands of job and family, it can be hard to even find time for writing. They want a good reason to invest time in social media.

What does social media give a writer? A platform.

Platform: When a writer has a healthy platform, it indicates to an agent or publisher the size of the potential audience that the writer can reach, promotion-wise, on their personal network. Or, as former literary agent Nathan Bransford put it:

Platform is the number of eyeballs you can summon as you promote your book.

The important thing, of course, is not to over-promote to this network you’ve established. That’s the fastest way to lose followers. A subtle approach is always better.

Your platform leads to a certain amount of name recognition: Let’s say there’s a writer named Bob. Bob worked for years writing a book, edited for ages, crafted a query, honed a synopsis and his publishing dream finally became a reality. Now his book is on the shelf and online with thousands of other books. What makes Bob’s book stand out from the others?

He did write a great book. Is it his reviews? Not too many readers follow reviews, though. Is it his back cover copy? His cover art? Those things do help…but what can help more than anything is name recognition for the book title or author or some recognition of the cover art. I’ve had readers email me that my book almost jumped off the shelf at them because the cover and my name were familiar—their eyes went right to it.

I’ve done the same thing myself. I took my daughter to the book store into the children’s and YA area in early December. She asked me to help her find a book—and we were in a rush, needing to get to another event. “Could you pick one out, Mama? I can’t decide,” she said. I scanned the shelves and one of Janice Hardy’s books seemed to leap at me. “Here you go,” I said. “Let’s give this one a go. Ms. Hardy is a great writer.” And off we went to the register.

Have I ever met Janice in person? No. I know Janice from the blogging and Twitter world. She writes amazing posts on the writing craft. Would I have gone right to her book—bypassing hundreds of other attractively-packaged children’s books that were nearby– without knowing Janet online? I think eventually we ‘d have discovered her wonderful books…but it would have taken us a lot longer.

I’ve heard writers worry over the fact that their social media is only reaching other writers—who are also promoting their own books. The only way I can answer that is to say that I’ve had very healthy sales and nearly sold-through my advance on pre-orders alone for last summer’s release. Who knew about my book before it came out? Writers did. They might have bought the book to support me or because of curiosity or because they thought a family member or friend might like it. But I believe that my strong numbers were nearly completely due to writers.

With social media, unless you’re tracking clicks over to a buy link, you may not have data to directly tie in your social media efforts to your sales. My data is limited to reports of sales that I’ve gotten from my network (messages from followers that they’d purchased a book), and sales in general.

But I believe that building a platform through social media results in sales. What’s more, my agent and editors believe it, too. These days, in fact, agents and editors will likely consider a writer’s platform as part of the overall package that includes their writing talent.

I know several of my regular readers have had great success with social media promoting. I know that even aside from promotion, that we all get a lot from our online network of writers. What is your impression of social media promo, either from what you’ve observed or what you’ve tried?