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    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy: Plot, First Pages, Backstory
    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy: Plot, First Pages, Backstory
    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy: Plot, First Pages, Backstory
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy: Plot, First Pages, Backstory

    By Cyn Mobley

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    About this ebook

    Novels not selling? It's probably not your fault. Most of what you've been taught about writing a novel is wrong. Get all three best-selling 30 Day Novel books in one! These practical examples dissected for you to use, checklists and explanations on the three most critical skill sets you need will help you write novels that sell.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCyn Mobley
    Release dateJul 17, 2012
    ISBN9781596771031
    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy: Plot, First Pages, Backstory
    Author

    Cyn Mobley

    USA Today bestselling author, former naval officer and lawyer. Eight Greyhounds, three Airedales, and a coupla mutts.

    Read more from Cyn Mobley

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    Book preview

    The 30 Day Novel Trilogy - Cyn Mobley

    The 30 Day Novel: Plot!

    Cyn Mobley

    Published by Greyhound Books at Smashwords

    Copyright Cyn Mobley 2007

    Originally published as BAM: Book a Month: Structure

    Discover other titles by Cyn Mobley at Smashwords.com

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    ISBN: 1-59677-100-3

    Table of Contents

    30 Days: You’re Done

    The Math

    30 Days Overview

    The Story

    The Logline

    Conflict

    Three Act Structure

    Outlining

    Chapters

    Scenes

    The Mechanics of It All

    Staying on Track

    The Rewrites

    Writing Books I Like

    More Books in Series

    A Note from Cyn

    With Thanks

    I’m fortunate to have had some great agents and great writing friends along the way.

    Marc Iverson, who was the first person to read my first novel drafts. Poor fellow. Surprised he didn’t go blind. He and Digby Diehl will never know how important they were to me early on.

    Shortly after that, I met Doug Clegg and he’s now the guy I call when I need some encouragement or regrounding. Check out his website. I want the stuff he has! Doug told me I had to write this stuff all down.

    Doug also introduced me to booklocker.com and the work Angela and Richard Hoy do. Doug passed on some words of wisdom from Angela about writing books like this. Incredible focus. Thanks, Angela

    Ken Schafer, who helped me immeasurably with my early writing and whose accomplishments continue to inspire me. He understands three act structure and twists and turns. Ken is write-brain.com. Disclaimer: I was a beta tester for Power Writer software.

    My writing group in San Diego and the Knoxville Writer’s Guild. Especially Chet Cunningham, who writes a LOT of books, more than 250 at last count. And Mark Clements, a great writer and friend. He’s about to bring out another book—yay!

    Agents Jake Elwell, the incomparable George Wieser, and Stephany Evans. Thanks, y’all!

    30 Days: You’re Done

    Let’s talk about you.

    You’ve got an idea for a book. You read a lot and you’re pretty sure it’s a good idea. You may have even started writing it and got bogged down by the sheer enormity of finishing it.

    But you probably have a real job. On top of that, there’s your family, job, church, kids, hobbies, all sorts of things demanding your time and attention.

    It’s not like you can simply drop everything and head for that classical drafty garret to sequester yourself until you finish writing it. (Even if you can find one—garrets aren’t big in architecture these days.) And on top of that, there are the realities of publishing.

    The average advance for a novelist is less than five thousand dollars a year. It takes from a year to eighteen months for a manuscript to be published by most major publishers. Most publishers do not want to bring out more than one book each year from a particular writer.

    Can you live for a year on five thousand dollars?

    So, given those facts, you’ve probably got two problems:

    •That whole real job and real life thing

    •You can’t live on what publishing is going to pay you.

    How are you supposed to make a living as a novelist? Is there any way to make your dream come true?

    Couple of ways: first, you can work your butt off on PR and sell a lot of books. That’ll result in an increase in your next advance.

    You hope. But you have no control over that part of the equation.

    Second, you can sell more than one book a year. Using a few pseudonyms, a different name for each publisher, you can generate enough income to go full time.

    I usually write six to seven books a year. Write and sell, or publish through one of the imprints I run. It’s very possible for anyone to do this. Naturally, if you don’t have all the real job/family/kids/dogs stuff, it’s easier. But even a part timer should be able to polish off two manuscripts a year.

    In this book, I’m going to show you how to do just that. This isn’t an elegant dissertation on the sheer joy of writing. It’s not a personal essay. It’s the down and dirty of how to write a book in a month.

    I should warn you ahead of time that we’ll be spending zero time on your precious inner child.

    I know this way works. It’s how I do it. It’s how I teach it.

    Think it’s impossible? Let’s do a little math.

    The Math

    How long is a novel? Come on, you’ve got to know this one. If you don’t know, you need to drop back ten yards and do your homework. You’re not ready to write, not by a long shot.

    No, do not talk to me about pages. Nobody cares how many pages you’ve typed. Nobody.

    WORDS. How many WORDS?

    Talking about ms pages (you do know ms is short for manuscript, right?) simply brands you as a novice. So does asking whether headers count. Or page numbers. Or the title.

    Just run the danged word count function in your word processor and round it off to the nearest hundred. Or thousand. That’s way close enough for novels.

    Let’s assume that novels in your genre run 80,000 words.

    Now, how fast can you type? Let’s assume you’re slow for a writer. Call it fifty words a minute.

    80,000 words. 50 words a minute.

    80,000 ÷50 = 1600 minutes

    1600 minutes ÷ 60 = 26.67 hours.

    26.67 hours ÷ 30 (30 days in a month) = .89 hours.

    You need to type .89 hours (or 54.3 minutes) each day. That’s how you do a novel a month.

    But WAIT. Is that all it is, typing?

    Sometimes. If you’ve done the hard work up front.

    Seriously? It’s that easy? So why haven’t I been able

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