This is an article from the December issue of Randy Ingermanson’s (creator of the Snowflake Method) Advanced Fiction Writing newsletter

[BTW: Check out the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog . It is updated frequently and filled with great information and answers to reader's questions.]

If you want to drive from Los Angeles to New York, you
need a roadmap. That isn’t necessarily an actual piece
of paper with roads drawn on it. It might be just a
series of steps to follow, like these:

• Get on I10 and drive east from LA
• Switch to I15 and drive to Salt Lake City
• Take I80 east to Chicago
• etc. (It gets complicated after that)

Now, each of those steps may take a short time or a
long time to execute. You’ll be on I10 for maybe an
hour. I15 will take you a full day. I80 might take a
couple of days. Along the way, there’ll be smaller
tasks you have to execute, such as stopping for gas,
food, motels, etc.

The important thing here is that the main steps are in
order. You’ll go nuts trying to get onto I80 straight
from I10, because they don’t connect. Try any trick you
want. You can even (groan) ask directions. It won’t
help. If you want to get from I10 to I80, you need to
take that pesky intermediate step of I15. You can’t
skip steps.

Of course, there are other ways to get there. You could
take I70 through Denver and Kansas City and Columbus
and on east. Or you could take the southern route on
I40. What won’t work so well is taking I5 up to
Seattle. That’s a little pointless, even if you drive
it really fast, because Seattle is further from New
York than LA is.

The roadmap to getting published isn’t quite like
driving across the country. It’s a lot fuzzier…and you
have more options. So it’s not surprising that I often
see writers doing things that are the equivalent of
trying to get onto I80 from I10, or going to New York
by way of Seattle.

I won’t claim that there is only one way to get there.
But there are more probable and less probable paths to
success. What I’ll sketch out here is a more probable
roadmap for getting published and marketing it
successfully.

I’m going to do things backward, though. Rather than
show how you get from here to there, I’ll start with
“there” and work back one step at a time through the
career of a typical novelist to the very beginning. You
can stop reading the list when you get to the point
where you are.

Here is the backwards roadmap. Take it with the
appropriate grains of salt: It’s not the only way to
get there; it’s the big picture and leaves out many
details; it’s only an approximation to reality.

• Do radio and TV interviews for book
• Launch book and e-mail your database of fans
• Edit galleys for book
• Work with publicist on campaign for book
• Revise novel after receiving editor’s comments
• Begin building your marketing platform
• Send “polished draft” to your editor
• Revise your novel
• Receive phone call from editor buying your book
• Your agent submits book to publishers
• Get an agent
• Meet agents at writing conference or by mail/email
• Write a stellar proposal
• Polish first three chapters
• Finish first draft of novel
• Start writing first draft of novel
• Design your novel before writing it
• Get brilliant idea for a novel that “can’t miss”
• Finish “Junior year” of learning the craft
• Finish “Sophomore year” of learning the craft
• Finish “Freshman year” of learning the craft
• Decide that you want to be a novelist

I want to make it clear that this process normally
takes years. You simply can’t decide today that you’re
going to be a novelist and tomorrow get an agent and
the next day have a book launch party. It doesn’t
happen that way.

Likewise, if you decide today that you want to write a
novel, and then spend six months learning how to use
some handy-dandy screenwriting software, you’ve just
taken a trip to Seattle. Writing a screenplay is a fine
goal in life, but it’s not writing a novel. Writing a
screenplay won’t make you a novelist. Writing a novel
will make you a novelist. If you want to go to Seattle,
go to Seattle. It’s a beautiful city. Just don’t kid
yourself that it’s on the way to New York.

Finally, let me note that this roadmap is pretty much
the same, whether you’re writing a bestseller or
writing a run-of-the-mill novel. The difference in
results depends very much on how well you execute the
various steps along the way. Writers who do a great job
in their Freshman year tend to become great Sophomores
and later on fabulous Juniors. They tend to get the
best ideas, write the best first drafts, create the
best proposals, land the best agents, sign on for the
best editors, and end up with the best marketed books.
So wherever you are on the road, do your best work.

Here are a few questions for you:

• Where are you on the roadmap?
• Are you working on the next logical step, or
are you trying to skip steps? If you’re skipping
steps, is it a reasonable skip or is it an impossible
one?
• Do you know how to take your next step? If not,
do you know who might be able to help you figure
out your next step?

Let me reiterate that the above roadmap is not cast in
stone. The only rules in this game are to succeed. The
roadmap is one that is typical of many of the authors
I’ve watched as they moved from green Freshmen to
polished, published authors. Use my roadmap like the
“pirate’s code” — it’s a guideline, nothing more.

The newsletter also has additional articles about Self-Editing your Fiction and How to Launch Your Book. You can download the newsletter (in PDF format) in its entirety HERE .

Filed under: Cool Blogs, Fiction, Writing Advice

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