Reddit mentions of Techniques of the Selling Writer

Here's your pacing: each action a main character takes should be in pursuit of something, and they should be faced with progressively more serious challenges. Keep ratcheting up the stakes and tension.

That's not absolute, of course. Let's say you've got three big hurdles for the protagonist to face, with the third being the climax of the story. The second should be more serious than the first, and less serious than the third. Within the lead up to each of those challenges, the things that get in the way for the character obviously won't be as big as the challenges themselves – but there should still be rising difficulty within each phase.

As long as your character is pushing forward and isn't faced with the same kind or level of challenge as they've already faced, your pacing will be fine. Though of course between each individual conflict you can give the reader a rest.

I would really recommend Techniques of the Selling Writer. The vast majority of it isn't about selling at all – it's about exactly the sort of concerns you're bringing up.

What's concerning to me in what you've told us so far is this:

> My first act is roughly fifteen scenes. I can do all of that in the first scene.

What are the other fourteen scenes for? Showing off the pretty world you designed? Backstory? Not that everything has to be packed into the first scene, but if you really could introduce the protagonist and the issue in a single scene, then there you go – your act 1 is finished and you can get on with throwing more trouble at the character.

I don't plan scenes or chapters.

I post this all the time but I love Butcher's advice on scenes: http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/2880.html

I break for chapters when I can feel that something is resolved, while at the same time there's still a question at hand. I use smallish chapters because I think it makes a book feel faster paced.

I think readers like the breaks, but I also want to make sure they make the leap to the next chapter.

FWIW /u/jeikaraerobot, I think, is referring to Dwight Swain and "Techniques of the Selling Writer" https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806111917/rsingeshomepage/

Absolutely.

The main book I would say has helped me instrumentally is this one. It was suggested to me when I had the privilege of speaking to a New York Times bestselling author. He recommended it highly, along with this book that I have not had a chance to get into yet.

The first one is a major chore to read. It is not bad or hard to comprehend in any way, just very conceptually thick. I have read books twice as thick that communicate half as much.

The second one is great too, but I realized I needed the first one more earlier on.

Anyway, I hope those help!

My two favorite books are:

• Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain -- a must-read book on the mechanics of writing scenes and structuring your book to hook the reader
  
• Writing for Emotional Impact, by Karl Iglesias. -- Great book! Tells you how to manipulate the emotions of your reader to great effect.

Here's a list of some of my favorite books on writing:

• The Art of Fiction
  
• Techniques of the Selling Writer
  
• Sin and Syntax
  
• The First Five Pages
  
• The War of Art

This one is considered one of the standards. https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917

I find general writing books are pretty good. My favorite is Techniques of the Selling Writer mainly because it teaches how to write smoothly. But, the biggest is just to keep reading erotica and find what works for you.

Feedback is great, but the foremost person to satisfy is yourself. If this story entices you, keep writing, as keepfuckingwriting will no doubt mention.

Hemingway has this great line: "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector."

In my view the detector isn't built-in. It evolves--by reading fiction and by studying the craft of writing. Read even more in your genre and branch out of it. Find mentors in writing books; some of mine are John Gardner, Chuck Wendig, and Dwight Swain.

I've been reading up on Scene - Sequel and MRUs this week, so I figured I'd throw in some useful links to jump start you!

A general overview of the Scene Sequel concept: http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene/

Then some examples:

http://storysensei.blogspot.com/2005/08/scene-and-sequel-scene.html

http://storysensei.blogspot.com/2005/08/scene-and-sequel-sequel.html

This next one is my favorite MRU post. It covers another version of the MRU called Stimulus, Internalization, Response (SRI) and has the best break down of the MRU/SRI method I've seen yet. (https://www.writingforums.com/threads/130361-Master-Class-The-MRU)

All of these methods come from a book by Dwight V. Swain. I haven't read it yet, but if you want to know more that'd be the source.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806111917/camysloft-20/

Look into the snowflake method or variations of that.

For me, I start with a beginning and an end.

1. Boy wants to be a great warrior.
   
2. Boy realizes that he never will be a great warrior.
   
   Then, add in points that would be the climaxes or high points of the story.
   
   
3. Boy wants to be a great warriors
   
4. Boy gets his chance, runs away in terror.
   
5. Boy has a fight with evil boy and does the right thing.
   
6. Boy realizes that he never will be a great warrior.
   
   By now, I got two characters to work with. I expand that out int the highlights of the story.
   
   
7. Boy wants to be a great warriors
   
8. Boy gets his chance, runs away in terror.
   
9. Boy realizes his mistake and goes back
   
10. Boy drags Boy2 across the desert to safety.
    
11. Boy has to watch Girl become the warrior he wanted to be.
    
12. Boy is almost killed by evil woman.
    
13. Evil woman doesn't kill boy.
    
14. Boy has a fight with evil boy and does the right thing.
    
15. Boy realizes that he never will be a great warrior.
    
    Once you have the highlights, treat them as a work breakdown structure (WBS). And figure out how you are going to show it.
    
    
16. Boy wants to be a great warriors
    
    1. Needs to fail at some task
       
    2. Contrast with Girl who succeeded
       
    3. His own grandmother beats him up for being pathetic
       
    4. Man tries to comfort him, Boy promises he'll be the greatest warrior
       
    5. Boy's brother shows up, he's awesome
       
    6. Boy3 and Boy4 beat on Boy, Brother has to save him
       
       And so on. Once you get the various ideas, you start to group them together in logical units (we like to call these things "chapters") and an in an order that makes sense.
       
       Once you have your logical units broken up, start expanding each one into the salient points.
       
       
17. Boy wants to be a great warriors
    
    1. Needs to fail at some task
       
       1. Trying to sneak into the shrine.
          
       2. Not very good at it.
          
       3. Gets caught and lectured
          
       4. Has to make a choice of who is going to punish him
          
       5. Chooses grandmother
          
          Basically, this is how I write things top-down. Yeah, there is a bit of refactoring (a lot), but it seems to work.
          
          I also recommend Techniques of a Selling Writer since it has a good discussion of the types of chapters/scenes (character development, plot development, action, etc).

> Am I just missing something? Where should I go to learn what I want to learn?

https://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917

Read this. It's an in-depth answer to the questions you have about turning an outline into a first draft.

As far as "Write more". I like to write my first draft long hand. Then I re-write my second draft long-hand using my first draft as a reference.

Then I type my third draft into my computer using my second draft as a reference.

Then I print out my third draft and type my fourth draft using my third draft as a reference.

For the fifth draft I cut 10%. For the sixth draft I cut another 10%. Then I polish it.

I think that's what most people here mean. Writing is re-writing.

Plot and Structure By James Scott Bell: Far and away one of the best book I've ever read on writing.
http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Structure-Techniques-Exercises-Crafting/dp/158297294X

I actually just started Techniques of the Selling Writer by Swain, which I have heard great things about but I haven't read far enough to give my own opinion.
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917

One useful tool was described by Dwight Swain in his book. I've written a post on it some time ago, and I guess I'll just copy it whole here for convenience instead of linking to it. The question it answers is very similar to yours.

***

Dwight Swain in his "Techniques of the Selling Writer" proposes a method that alternates between what he calls "scenes" and "sequels" (to those scenes). You can read the book for in-depth discussion, but long story short here's how it works:

A scene** is a sequence of the following material:

• (A) Goal: The character's short-term goal for the scene.
  
• (B) Conflict: Why the character can't just attain the goal and have a smoke.
  
• (C) Disaster: How the character fails to just do away with opposition in a jiffy.
  
  At this point the scene technically ends and what Swain calls the sequel launches, consisting of, in order:
  
• (a) Reaction: The character's initial psychological reaction to Disaster.
  
• (b) Dilemma: The price the character would or wouldn't have / decide to pay to reach the Goal.
  
• (c) Decision: The character purposefully sets a new Goal, which naturally launches the next scene.
  
  Now, back to your question. While Swain considers his "scenes" physical and, so to say, "real time", the "sequels" are psychological and, therefore, detached from time and space. In a Swainian scene the character deals with something specific and likely physical. In the "sequel" the character thinks, mulls over, fears, hopes, considers, reconsiders and makes a decision. As Swain puts it, "Where time unifies the scene, topic unifies the sequel." Such "sequel" sections can do away with the concept of time, taking form of collages that span months or years if you so wish, in as much or little text as you want.
  
  So, there's one technique to manage the passage of time without resorting to metatextual clues like chapter breaks or time passage disclaimers (all of which are perfectly valid techniques too, of course). Besides, the Swainian trick is useful for managing pacing: "If an air of improbability pervades your masterpiece, lengthen your sequels. Follow your character step by stop, in detail, as he moves logically from disaster to decision." E.g., some Golden Age comic books lack "sequel" type material almost entirely, which might make them feel caricaturic and improbable to some readers.