Ep: 234: Should I Write a Book Proposal?

Bonus mini-episode, brought to you by my mini-coached Patrons! Question include: Should I write a book proposal? What’s fictionalized memoir, anyway? And how can I learn to revise my book? 

Books mentioned: 

Moonglow, Michael Chabon – https://amzn.to/3dmmg3Z

How Should a Person Be, Sheila Heti – https://amzn.to/3dm81fH

Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill – https://amzn.to/3abGUlh

For revision: 

Story Engineering, Larry Brooks – https://amzn.to/3gi8Rfc

Anatomy of Story, John Truby – https://amzn.to/3tq38HX

Intuitive Editing, Tiffani Yates Martin – https://amzn.to/3tntJoV

Novel Editing Workbook – https://amzn.to/3tA9DZ3

*Amazon affiliate links – please order local if you can! 

Transcript:

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #234 of “How do you Write?” This as a bonus mini episode brought to you by my patrons at the $5 and up level, you get to ask me any question that you want and I’ll answer it here on the podcast. I usually collect them until I have a couple or three or four. And then I do a mini podcast. So here is the collection of what I’ve gotten so far. And these are some good questions. The first one comes from Thomas Langer. Hi, Rachael, here’s a mini coaching question. Is there such a thing as memoir fiction, analogous to what we call historical fiction? And what is your opinion of this approach? As I write a memoir, I have created some hybrid scenes and characters and some of them are so hybrid that I think it is straying into fiction. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks. So I’m so glad that you asked there is a category it’s not easily shelvable. People do have problems shelving it, but it is called fictionalized memoir or less frequently I see the term auto fiction kind of like autobiography fiction. The important thing is, if you’re straying into something that feels like fiction and our guts always know, our guts know the difference between conflating time periods and pushing characters into one amalgam of a character and recreating dialogue, as best as we think the dialogue went on that day when the car crashed, that’s all acceptable in memoir, you get to do that. It’s just common practice. We know that memoirists are writing. They’re basically writing.

[00:01:59] A novel, like thing, bringing us into their world in a way that really no human can- most humans cannot remember things that well. So there’s a contract with the reader that says the memoirist gets to stretch what they believe the truth to be into things like dialogue action really concrete scenes. Writers do struggle with, is this fiction if I’m making it up, it is not fiction. If you follow Rachael’s 80% rule, which is if you’re 80% sure that it really happened this way, because you know these people involved and they probably said something like this, then you get to use it. If you just heard something in the background, that was my wife yelling at people on TikToK. So she’s not going to do that anymore. Real life. So you get to as a memoirist, do that. But when you start making up scenes that, you know didn’t happen, making up people that are not a composite amalgam of characters of people that you knew, but actually somebody new and fresh on the page. Then you do have to say that it’s fiction of some sort and you can call it fictionalized memoir. You can call it auto fiction. You can call it what you want, but naming it, I think is important. And it is kind of having a moment for maybe the last four or five years, people know what it is. They understand it. Michael Chabon’s book Moonglow did some historical stuff within what he imagined in his family that I thought was really well done. You may want to take a look at that also, Sheila Heti wrote, How Should A Person Be, which is obviously about her. And it is obviously also a novel at the same time. 

[00:03:46] The Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill, I thought was a remarkable, remarkable book and it reads like a memoir and in some ways it is about the dissolution of her marriage, and in other ways, it isn’t. So check out some auto fiction, see what you think about it, see how you feel about it. And then you do, at some point, you don’t have to do this on a first draft. You have to make a decision on what it’s going to be. And now that I’ve said that it might be a good thing to decide while you’re doing a first draft, which is really a rare thing for me to say, but before you do make up a lot of stuff, if you’re later going to decide, you want to write a memoir, then you’re going to have to take all of that out. So I would say, decide. Do you want to write a novel? Do you run and write a memoir or do you want to write something that you will say to people this is fictionalized memoir and it’s really kind of a nice place to be because your readers cannot decide what is real and what is true is another business anyway, it also allows you to add things that you wish happened. Add things that you wish you had done or said, or that you imagine the people around you did and said in rooms where you weren’t. So if you choose that way, excuse me, I think it can be really, really fun and really interesting. So great question. Yes. Follow your gut on this one. All right. 

[00:05:06] And this one is from Michelle. I’m just going to read the end of her question, but she was basically, she was asked to write a book proposal for a memoir for a competition that she did not enter. My question is, would it be helpful for me to do a book proposal for the competition and then use it in the future? I’ve never heard you talk about this before so I feel like it’s not necessary and would be a waste of money, but proposal seemed to be more geared towards non-fiction. Plus, I don’t want to do it. I have zero platform. I have zero plans as to how I will make money, et cetera, et cetera. I can make stuff up, but it feels fake. Thoughts? Oh, Michelle, I love this question. So yes, you’re right. Book proposals are more geared toward non-fiction and we kind of had these, we have these three buckets that we talk a lot about on the show. We have novels fictional, we have memoir and we have nonfiction. And this dovetails beautifully with Thomas’ question. Memoir is true, but memoir really fits in the novel category in terms of story, there is a story and it’s structured like a novel. So most people, most agents are not going to ask you for a book proposal for a memoir. It does happen. We do see it, especially nowadays when it’s competitive out there and agents want to know, can you pull together book proposal if I asked for one, but I’ve had people success, I’ve had students successfully get agents by only targeting the agents who didn’t want a book proposal for memoir. That is, it’s not a normal thing to request, although it is getting a little bit more seen. And your agent should be able to sell your memoir to a publisher without a book proposal, too. Memoirs are like novels they sell because of the story underneath it. 

[00:06:58] Nonfiction, when we’re talking about like, you know, how to build your platform or how to create excellent house design. I don’t know. I’m spit balling here, but non-fiction is nonfiction. Memoir is a story and novels are a story. So therefore you shouldn’t need a book proposal. If you do need to write a book proposal, any of you, Google, you know how I feel about Reedsy, Google Reedsy, nonfiction book proposal, and they have an excellent guide to doing it step by step. But Michelle, you don’t need one unless the agent of your dreams requires one, and then in which case you may want to write one. But don’t bother with it now. Great question. Okay and then let’s see. Okay, May asks, so I’m going to start querying my book soonish. Yay! I remember somewhere that you mentioned that agents will spy around and look at your website. I don’t have one. I don’t have social media under my pen name either. I have been thinking of starting a Bookstagram for it, but I haven’t yet. How important is it to have those things when querying for an agent? I feel like as a millennial, I have kind of failed by not having them, but I always thought it was important to finish the book first. Yes. Finishing the book, finishing a great book, revising it, editing it, which I know that you’ve been doing is the most important thing of all. And here’s what I think about this. You could start a Bookstagram, attached to your pen name or, and this is something I don’t know what your answer is going to be.

[00:08:36] Are you going to query under your pen name or under your real name? A lot of people query under their real name so that they can be real with the agent. The agent knows who you are, and then with your agent, after you have accepted them, or, you know, you’re working together, then you could talk about your pen name, what they think about it whether you should do it under this pen name and you may already really, really be clear on the fact that you are going to write under this pen name and that’s fine, but your agent will need to know your real name. So do you have a social media presence under your real name? Which they will know. They will have to know, and then they will spy on you there. So think about that. Do you have social media? I know you’re on Twitter, but I think you’re under your pen name on Twitter, that’s true. So my answer is, look good on the internet to whatever availability, to whatever place you’re already occupying. Like under your real name, I know you’re not a dick, but you wouldn’t want to be a dick. Like you wouldn’t want them when they find out your real name to go look you up and find out that you’ve been trolling terribly, doing things or writing caustic messages on your blog about the terrible publishers who’ve done this to you. You’re in no danger of that May, I know you, but for everybody else, that’s something to keep in mind. 

[00:09:57] Number two, thinking about your pen name and building up a following, I know that you’re querying soon. So if you try to build up a following anywhere, you know, say you do Bookstagram. So in a couple of months, when you’re carrying maybe you have 25 followers, 50 followers, that’s not going to be enough to impress them. So my Rachael answer, and this is not one you’ll hear popularly said anywhere else, but why bother. Honestly, why bother. This is your pen name. They don’t expect you to find you doing anything on your pen name, out there in the world. And then you get to speak with them as your real self, under your real name. You get to speak with the agent that you decide to work with and say, so for this pen name, May, what should I do? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to be a Bookstagram or do you want me to have Twitter? Do you want me to have Facebook? What looks best to you? And then let the agent help you with that, just when they do search for you under your real name, just be not a dick. So I think that that answers the question and I think you’re really safe May. So don’t worry about that. 

[00:10:59] And then the last question comes from Ashani, Hi, Rachael, sending in a question for the next mini episode, would you be able to recommend any good self-editing books? David Cochran recommend self-editing for fiction writers by Renee Brown and Dave King. I was wondering if you had any other resources that you’d recommend. Thanks. Okay, Ashani. So this is such a hard question and this is literally why I teach 90-day revision. I couldn’t find any good resources. I didn’t learn any good resources when I was getting my masters, everything I read about revision seem to confuse me and I read everything. I literally read everything as I learned my best ways to revise. And now that I have a method, it’s the method that I teach. And it has things that are, pick-up-able, put in your pocketable and keep-able that you will use in revision for the rest of your life. And yes, I am going to write 90-day revision and I’m going to write 90 days to done. I don’t know when, but so that book will be out there as resource at some point. And it will be my version of revision for now, though, I think that the best book that helped me most with learning revision is Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, which is not a book about revision. It is a book about story structure because when we are doing our first major revision, that second draft, which is the hardest, the heaviest lifting you’re gonna be doing for your whole book. The things that we’re trying to get in place are character arc and story structure. We don’t care about what the scenes look like, what they sound like, how well they’re written. That’s really the last thing that we’re concerned about. That was literally the last thing we’re concerned about. If we’re concerned about how a scene reads and how well it’s written, then we may accidentally get too attached to that scene and not recognize that it doesn’t fit in good, strong, compelling, emotional story structure.

[00:12:56] So really learn story structure first, have it in your bones, then take your book apart. And put it back together into good story structure while showing your incredible, impeccable character arc. I’m saying that like it’s easy. It is not easy at all. It takes time. But then later on your third draft, fourth draft, maybe in some of your passes later, because we cannot do a second draft and have your book be perfect. There’s a lot more to go after that. Then I really like the book Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin. She does talk a little bit about story structure and a book that a lot of people like I have a little bit of a problem with it, because it is really more for late revision, not for the second draft revision, which is the big, hard one. But I do like it it’s called the Novel Editing Workbook by Kris Spisak. So it is better for later in the journey. And I will put these in the show notes at HowDoYouWrite.net. So you know, don’t have to pull your car over and write these names down. That is what I recommend. But most of all, I recommend a really good book on story structure, and I love Larry Brooks’s Story Engineering, and I recommend researching and learning about character and character arc, which he also talks about in there.

[00:14:08] Another one I really love is John Truby’s, Seminole work, which now I can’t remember what it is, but it’s his really big book. And there’s a lot about character arc in drawn, John Truby’s Anatomy of A Story. That’s what it’s called. Those two books are the Larry Brooks and the John Truby are probably the books that I learned the most from and pulled all my bulldozer revision tools. We have little tiny, we have pitchforks, we had little tiny sporks that you do your revision with, but in the beginning of that second draft, we’re using bulldozers. And that’s what I would recommend to you. Great questions. Thank you all for submitting them. And now I don’t have any more questions. So if you are a patron at that level, use me, send me some questions. I meet them in Patreon, send me them in emails. Send me them in Twitter. I don’t care where they come from, but I want to hear from you. And thank you, thank you so much. You can always visit me patreon.com/Rachael and I wish you very, very happy writing my friends and keep me posted on how you’re doing. I love to hear bye. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.