As developing your story, maintaining a sense of tension is vital. Without dramatic tension – a feeling of uncertainty in the reader about how the main character will solve (or even if he will resolve) the central problem – the story will be flat and vanilla.

Creating tension involves controlling the story’s pace. Pace is the timing by which the major events in the plot unfold and in which the big scenes are shown.

The “better” the story, then the better that the author handled the pace. “Star Wars IV: A New Hope”, the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, Douglas Adams’ comedic novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” all are examples of masterful pacing.

Every story has a different pace. Those that are more introspective tend to move at a slower pace while those that are action-packed tend to be fast. Because of this, all stories run on a “story clock”. This is a measurement in which action is internally described. As with the wider universe, however, there is no objective clock. A true sign of craftsmanship is when an author sets the story clock winding at the right pace for an individual tale.

Regardless of the story, however, good pacing always involves compression and expansion of time – In “real time,” events don’t unfold at the same rate as they do in a story. For example, a suborbital flight from New York to Tokyo in real time might take a hour, but in the story it’s handled in a phrase that takes a couple of seconds to read. Usually the authors speeds up or slows down the action to match the emotions he wants the reader to have.

Another aspect of good pacing is “travel time”. Characters don’t change their personalities or their minds about important decisions overnight. A character must “travel” a certain emotional distance to arrive at such changes. The author’s wording and dramatic action must mirror that pace.

Of course, you have only so many words to tell a story, so reducing that “travel time” is important. There are a few ways you can accomplish that without cheating on the emotional distance that a character must traverse:
• Intercut a different story – Sometimes a parallel story or subplot can help lead the character to change more quickly because he realizes, through analogy, that he must change.
• Fill intervening time with straight action – A change often doesn’t occur because one has thought through a problem but because physical experiences test and uncover what one truly believes. Straight action can be a crucible that helps the character come to a new understanding.
• Develop other characters – As with a parallel story or subplot, other characters who undergo change can affect the protagonist. Their changes can test and alter the protagonist’s beliefs.
• Offer description – Changes in the landscape and climate can symbolically represent the emotional currents in the protagonist’s thinking.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.” – Saul Bellow

“If the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it – the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.” – Ann Radcliffe

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.” – Charles Caleb Colton

“The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.” – Sir Winston Churchill

“A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.” – Tom Bissell

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

If you have a completed manuscript, you actually should to format two ebooks – one for Kindle Direct Publishing and one for Draft2Digital. This actually is less work than it sounds as you can format an ebook that will work for both Kindle and Draft2Digital.

Why create an ebook for these two retailers?

You’ll want to go with Kindle because it dominates the market. As of the beginning of 2014, about two out of three ebooks are sold on Kindle. Not going with Kindle is like selling your paper book in only 16 of the 50 states (at best). You’ll also want to use Draft2Digital so you have a version of your book available in Nook, iPad, Kobo or Sony Reader. Draft2Digital is a one-stop shop for accomplishing this and much easier than developing a separate ebook for each ereader device and uploading it at its respective company site. By uploading your ebook to both Kindle and Draft2Digital, you’ll reach about 98 percent of the ereader market in North America.

As Kindle is much more flexible than Draft2Digital in how the file you upload can appear, follow the latter’s guidelines when creating an ebook. Having said that, you should still create an ebook for Kindle first, as you’ll be able to better review it online to ensure it looks good and as we’ll need to add wording to the title page to get it uploaded on Draft2Digital.

Since Kindle offers unique marketing opportunities for books that it exclusively sells, you may want to only upload to Kindle and not Draft2Digital. Still, by formatting your Kindle ebook manuscript for Draft2Digital means that once those promotional opportunities are used up, you’ll have an ebook that can be quickly uploaded to Draft2Digital to sell books at Barnes & Noble, Apple and so on.

Start by creating a Microsoft Word document. Call it whatever you like (I usually go with the book’s title) but include the word KINDLE in its name. Make sure it’s a .doc file rather than .docx or .rtf. While Kindle accepts all of these file types, Draft2Digital (at the time of this writing) only accepts .doc.

Changing the Word document so that it’s a .doc is simple. Go to “save as” and on the pop-up window that asks you where to save the file, change “save file as” to “Microsoft Word 97 – 2003 Document”.

Next, set up your .doc file for formatting so it:
• Uses regular typeface in one font size
• Uses single spacing with a line spacing of 1.0
• Does not use the “Add Space Before Paragraph” or the “Add Space After Paragraph” function
• Does not have any pre-set tabs
• Uses normal margins, as you would for typing a letter
• Uses Align Left so that the right margin is ragged

Next, open Notepad on your computer and copy and paste your manuscript to it. This deletes a lot of hidden coding that likely will be a problem for you as formatting your ebook. Finally, cut and paste the manuscript from Notepad to your new .doc. Be forewarned that if you have tables and charts in your Word manuscript, using Notepad almost certainly will mess up their appearance. You’re much better off to convert tables and charts into photos that you’ll later insert at the appropriate spots in your ebook.

Now you’re ready to get into the nitty-gritty of formatting – which we’ll cover in future blog entries.

If you don’t sell 5,000 books, still don’t despair. Instead, get working on that next book. Perhaps that one will catch on – and then readers will discover that masterpiece you’ve previously written.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks:

Many writers will tell you “there’s no system” to writing a book. They’re right in that the craft of writing can’t be reduced to an assembly line production, at least not unless you wish to churn out cookie-cutter stories and ultimately be incredibly dissatisfied with your passion.

Still, given that writers tend to share several personality traits – such as preferring to work in isolation, a love for the sound of language, introspectiveness, a desire to constantly read – we can draw upon other authors’ processes to inform our own. As an editor and a writer, I’ve discussed this process with many writers and have read hundreds of interviews in which they were asked how they write. Indeed, looking at how published authors of novels and nonfiction books and other writers, such as journalists, there does seem to be a general system that every one of them uses.

It consists of five basic steps – brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and formatting.

One process but no single way to follow it
Of course, every writer is an individual and so utilizes his or her own approach to those five steps. For example, how much time writers spend on each step and how frequently they switch back and forth between them is entirely unique to each person. It even can change for an author with each story written.

So granted, there’s no single way to write. Sometimes you’re so inspired you can pen a masterpiece with no outline and minimal revising of the first draft. Sometimes you only need a minimal outline to get going. Sometimes you need an overly detailed outline from which you later must cut scenes. Sometimes you revise the piece dozens of times until it no longer bears any resemblance to the outline. Yet, the majority of the time, most writers still follow the five basic steps.

Thus, you might think of the five-step writing process described on this blog as a recipe. Just as every chef brings his or her own taste and flair to a dish, so each writer will bring his or her proclivities and style to a manuscript.

The pantser myth
Arguably one of the biggest mistakes aspiring authors makes is denying that these steps are necessary or that they even exist. These writers often say they don’t use or need outlines, that they write “from the seat of their pants” and proudly call themselves “pantsers.” Yet, they follow the process by brainstorming and outlining the manuscript in their head a split second before they commit their thoughts to paper. The more successful of these writers have internalized certain basic principles of writing – some novelists might always divide the plot into five parts or always ensure the protagonist is in conflict while trying to solve a goal – and imagination is enough to carry them. They are no different than the chef who bakes a pastry from memory rather than looking at a printed recipe.

So quit living in denial, pantsers.

Simply put, not being self-aware – or being only vaguely so – of one’s writing process is risking disaster. Imagine the chef who just wings it on the recipe’s steps and the ingredient amounts. The cake might turn out fine but probably not. At the very least, it could taste better. Likewise, with very few exceptions, manuscripts written by pantsing tend to require significant amounts of revision (a step, by the way, in the writing process) or even just tossing out the mess and starting over.

Productivity and creativity
Given this, awareness of the writing process helps balance creativity and productivity. Indeed, aspiring authors tend to underestimate the effort needed for their writing project. Because of this, they often feel overwhelmed and lost. A process can help writers break the project into manageable steps and to keep them on the road to completion.

Further, being aware of these five steps can allow you to better reflect on your own writing techniques and to pinpoint how you might possibly improve upon them. Sometimes when stuck on a story, you’ve skipped or not done enough work on one or more of these writing process steps, so an understanding of them can help you break through your block. Other times, these steps can provide a template to help you start and develop a great story idea that you love but feel ill-equipped to turn into a short story, a novel, or a nonfiction book.

Recognizing the uniqueness of each writer, the links below and posts elsewhere at this blog largely speak of the five-step writing process in general terms. When they do get specific, you may or may not find that particular technique useful, just as a chef may not want to add a certain spice or prefers to use a mix of milk and lemon juice rather than buttermilk. That’s all right. The goal here is to expose you to a variety of approaches, many of which you may never have thought of. Give them a try and see if they do work for you.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.” – H. G. Wells

“Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.” – Henry James

“Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.” – Anonymous

“I always wrote with the idea that what I put out there is going to stay there. Once I publish something, it has been published. I’ve never deleted more than one or two posts from my site. I don’t think that there are takebacks. I don’t feel right about it.” – Alison Headley

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” – T. S. Eliot

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks: