The Next Circle of Hell, Vol. 2

Hi everyone! Now that I've signed with my new agent (news here, squee), I'll be diving into the Next Circle of Hell for the FOURTH TIME ACKKK. Hopefully the third agent is the charm. I'm waiting for an edit letter from him, and we'll be going on sub in a couple of months. But as far as I'm concerned, it starts now.

As far as my next project, I'm re-reading Save the Cat and working on finalizing the logline and pitch before diving into the outline. So far this strategy has me really excited about this book, but I always find outlining extremely intimidating. Does anyone else use the beat sheet in Save the Cat to outline?

@hester I lasted ONE WHOLE DAY this time around. Yay NaNo? But props to everyone who's sticking with it!!!

@PutPutt I'm so sorry for the R, it must be hard to know that the editor might still be excited but her team wants her to let it go. Still, it's amazing that she sent you feedback! I've done three editor R&Rs to no avail, and the last time around, despite how excited the editor seemed on the phone, she provided no explanation as to why she rejected it (only saying something like "this isn't for us at this time"). I didn't know if the edits didn't work, or if they simply decided against the project, or what. That was heart-wrenching.

@writera I feel your pain; I also recently parted ways with an agent who also had a really low response rate from editors. Good luck with your new project and finding an agent who's more effective at getting you reads!

diana86 said:

As far as my next project, I'm re-reading Save the Cat and working on finalizing the logline and pitch before diving into the outline. So far this strategy has me really excited about this book, but I always find outlining extremely intimidating. Does anyone else use the beat sheet in Save the Cat to outline?

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Yay Diana! Welcome back!
And I totally use STC to outline. I often end up straying, but the general sense of beats gave SO much more momentum to my writing and gave me a real concept of what outlining could/should look like. Highly recommended book for people that haven't read it. Even though it's about screen writing, if you have "draggy drafts" it is especially useful.

hester said:

Shoeless, 150,000 words??? In one book?? (Falls over).

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The first book I wrote that actually got me my first agent was about... 208K I think? Subsequent books hovered around 180K-150K. For this latest book I made a concerted effort and managed to somehow get it done at 114K, but I have a sneaking suspicion the current WIP is going to blow right past that.

I have a tendency to go nuts with the word count. It's usually all action though, not huge paragraphs of purple prose or meandering inner monologues.

Wow, Shoeless, I'm impressed! My books tend to run around 80k and that's enough of a slog to get through in the rewrites.

EMaree said:

Wow, Shoeless, I'm impressed! My books tend to run around 80k and that's enough of a slog to get through in the rewrites.

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I think this probably means you have a much better sense of discipline as a writer than I do. I'm always like, "Y'know what, ONE more fight, and then we'll be done. Okay, two. Oh wait, I just thought of a neat trick with carbonized steel on a katana that would go GREAT here..."

Diana, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! So happy for you!!!!

Yeah, Nano's been a bust this year--I'm still hoping to have a workable draft of my new shiny by the end of the year, but we'll see. Never heard of Save the Cat--is it a program like Scrivener?

Shoeless, EMaree, my books tend to top off at around 50,000 words, give or take . Your word counts are impressive!

diana86 said:

Hi everyone! Now that I've signed with my new agent (news here, squee), I'll be diving into the Next Circle of Hell for the FOURTH TIME ACKKK. Hopefully the third agent is the charm. I'm waiting for an edit letter from him, and we'll be going on sub in a couple of months. But as far as I'm concerned, it starts now.

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Congratulations on the announcement! Good on you for signing with Jim. I've had a couple of near misses with him, but always felt like he'd be a good agent.

I will also have some agent related news to announce at some point soon, not anything to do with my own publication progress, but still, it's an interesting development.

hester said:

Never heard of Save the Cat--is it a program like Scrivener?

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It's a book (maybe more than one book now)-turned-writing-system that screenwriters use to break scripts into plot points, or "beats," often down to the minute. I guess writers can use it, too, to plan the beats of their stories.

Thanks so much zmethos! Sounds interesting...

Congratulations, Diana! Jim is awesome.

I'm curious about your agent news, Shoeless! What can it be . . .?

My MSs tend to finish in the 80s, whether I've written YA or adult. Although, I have a YA MS on hold that's 64k, for whatever reason.

My WIP is now 43K. I anticipate finishing in the low 70s, but might surprise myself with more. The best thing about it is that I'm having fun. I expect to finish by the end of the month.

Yay for having fun, Martina!

My books are usually mid 80s, low 90s and I write adult. Breaking 100k just seems... not likely for me and how I plot?

I'm at about 30k right now and having a blast. Hurray for the craziness of Nano. I might finish the book before the end of the year (probably not) or early next, but definitely not the end of the month

polishmuse said:

My books are usually mid 80s, low 90s and I write adult. Breaking 100k just seems... not likely for me and how I plot?

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Man, I'm a little jealous. Maybe I'm just writing two books into one or something, but these things always run away from me and just keeping unfolding with this plot event, then that one, then another one...

Diana - Congrats on signing with a new agent!!

I woke from a fantastic dream this morning - it was full of spectacular scenery and an emotional plot line that I didn't want to leave behind - and my first thought was, I need to buy that screenwriting book, Save the Cat, and try writing for the big screen. I know a lot of novelists use it, too, and I've wanted to apply it to my novel writing, but I'm extra motivated to get it now. Funny that it came up here today, too.

Diana, congratulations on signing with a new agent!! I'm so happy that after everything, you've ended with such a top agent! Yaaaay!! Here's to a quick editing process and an even quicker sale!

I used Save The Cat to help outline my last MS, and I found it pretty helpful. For my current MS, I wrote out a complete synopsis following the basic guideline of "MC makes things worse and worse and WORSE until CLIMAX SCENE and then somehow resolves it using lessons she has learned", and I'm finding the writing process with a synopsis to follow much, much easier. My synopsis is only 2K long for a 75K-long draft, so there is tons of room for discovery and stuff. This is the easiest time I have had writing a first draft, ever. Hopefully the end result isn't complete crap!

Congratulations, Diana! Will be sending you lots of sub mojo.

Putputt, I'm so sorry about the R&R. That is frustrating. Are you going to try some of the revisions she suggested in her letter for later sub rounds, or do the concerns seem particular to her?

I started my book in late October and just hit 20k, so I guess I'm not trying NaNo. My problem is that sometimes things just aren't clicking, despite my detailed outline (I did it synopsis-style, but divided into three screenplay-style acts). Then I get an idea for making things work, but it requires backtracking to revise. This happened to me yesterday: two brainstorms in quick succession. I revised to accommodate them, and now I think I have more of the tension I was lacking. We'll see.

If I were focused on making word count, I wouldn't be able to do that. I still hope to finish this ... er, by February. 75-80k is my sweet spot.

Congratulations Diana! Well done and sending all the submission luck your way : )

Hello everyone,

I haven't been around much lately...was under deadline pressure for the second book, then travelling, then back to real life stuff, trying to manage the day job demands etc! My first book is out in Feb/March and I've been doing a little bit of marketing stuff for my publishers recently, with a bit more to come around publication, including some travel. Just trying to figure out how to manage all of that on top of editing book 2, writing book 3, day job and small kids! I know, these are the problems we all want, right? So I will shut up now.

The Save the Cat thing sounds really interesting. I'm about to go into outlining so I must have a look. As for length, I write a bit short but publisher wants 100k per book so I've had to figure it out : )

Save the Cat is a great tool, especially if you haven't internalized structure. It's referring specifically to the moment in the movie Alien when Ripley goes back onto the ship -- to save the cat.

I went to grad school for screenwriting, which has been SO helpful to me writing novels now. My books are 100-125k generally but they are very tightly plotted. And plotting, really, is cause and effect, which is a lot easier to see in scripts.

Thanks so much all for the congrats! <3 <3 <3

Yes, Save the Cat was written by a screenwriter for screenwriters, but many authors find the recommended beats useful for structuring their novels. For me, I also appreciate the reminder to finalize a project's logline and pitch BEFORE diving into outlining. I usually want to just GO GO GO and then get lost a few chapters in, but when I finalize the pitch *first* and know the direction of the story, it helps me craft a better outline (but let's be real — when drafting, the characters tend to make up their own minds about the direction of a story, so I usually do deviate from the outline).

All this Save The Cat talk has gotten me to download the sample of the book from Amazon onto my Kindle. I'll check it out in between reading Stephen King.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Putputt, I'm so sorry about the R&R. That is frustrating. Are you going to try some of the revisions she suggested in her letter for later sub rounds, or do the concerns seem particular to her?

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Hrmm I'm not sure, mainly because right now I'm so focused on my WIP. I haven't really devoted any time to thinking about her edits at all, since I'm about to have another YA out on sub soon (hopefully!) and then hopefully my WIP, which is an MG, will be ready to be subbed in February/March. I guess I don't like the idea of having to go back and edit this MS, because it was my #OwnVoices MS and it's been particularly painful for me to see it get rejected...more so than other MSs. It's Own not only in the sense that the MC is of my ethnicity, but she also goes through the same things I did, and some of the rejections said some stuff isn't realistic and I'm like, IT REALLY DID HAPPEN. Heh. So I dunno, I might just ask agent to trunk it for now.

Congratulations on hitting 20K!! I'm impatiently awaiting your next book after your amazing debut!

For those of you interested in trying out Save The Cat, I found this website extremely helpful. It has a list of popular movies broken down into STC beat sheets.

Oh hey Diana, that is fantastic news! I'm hoping this agent does the trick for you. The joy of edits! I know it well.

Putputt - Ouch, no wonder that one hurts more than usual That sounds really personal. Best of luck with whatever you choose to do with it. Thanks for those beat sheets, it's really interesting stuff.

I still need to read StC, but I am a huge fan of beat sheets. Jami Gold has some great beat sheets on her website, even one geared toward romance writing. I started using on on this WIP as I was figuring out the plot, and it was a great way to get those big moments sketched in, so I had a road map of where the story was going. It's changed plenty since I started writing, but as long as I have those tentpoles in there I feel good about the story.

Putputt - ugh, I'm so sorry. I can totally imagine how much that hurts. I agree, putting it aside for now and focusing on the WIP is the smart thing to do.

Not much exciting on my end. Unless you count my laptop crapping out on me... tried to install the latest OS on my Macbook and it bricked the whole thing. Hoping the genius bar people can save it tomorrow, the laptop's only 2 years old! Ugh. And of course I have to help run a NaNo workshop at my RWA meeting since our speaker also crapped out on us. So I get to run a workshop and write-in with no laptop to get any writing done myself.

Other than that... things are great!

Congratulations Diana! Hugely interesting to see all the Save the Cat talk... I've read it, and it never really clicked with me (unlike other Beat Sheets, like the 2k-to-5k system). I need to re-read it!

Still editing away. It's always slower than I expect it to be....

Happy Friday all. Getting some serious writing done lately, and by serious I mean copious but somewhat brainless. I'm a little concerned at what this draft will look like when I'm done. Ah well! Make a mess now, get it done, and then I can make it beautiful, I guess.