Episode Thirty-Three: How writers fail.
I’m a developmental editor & book coach who loves working with pantsers.
Failure is part of the writing life. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the writers collecting rejections as they query, or the ones complaining about bad reviews from readers, or the ones who are silently waiting for someone–anyone–to take a chance on their book in the first place.
In reality, there are things that we cannot control in our writing lives. But there are also many things that we can control. That’s what I’m talking about today. Four mistakes that writers make in their writing or revision process. Mistakes that keep them stuck when they could be more successful.
The mistakes that keep readers stuck are:
Getting too attached to their original ideas.
Prioritizing the wrong things in revision.
Trying to please everyone by watering down your ideas.
Ignoring the weak spots in their writing craft.
Listen to the full episode for all the details.
Have a reaction to this episode? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Instagram @oliviahelpswriters!
Want to hear more from me? Subscribe to my weekly newsletter, The Better Writer Weekly, here and get my Revision Kickstart Guide for free here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/revision-kickstart-guide
Here are the other resources mentioned in this episode:
Listen to the Brandon Sanderson writing lectures here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSH_xM-KC3ZvzkfVo_Dls0B5GiE2oMcLY
Listen to episode two of the podcast here: https://oliviahelpswriters.com/bwp/2
Check out my services for writers here: https://oliviahelpswriters.com/services
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.
Watch on YouTube here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia (00:00)
For fiction writers, failure is honestly a rite of passage. We submit and expect that we are going to be rejected more than we're accepted. We write drafts of novels that may never see the light of day. And we keep persevering because we know that those failures are just part of the path that we are on to learning and growing as writers. But how do we make sure that we aren't creating obstacles that are causing us to fail when we might otherwise succeed. Because saying that failure is part of the writing journey is one thing, but we also then have to take action to make sure that failure doesn't become the only story. So today I'm going to talk about why writers fail and how to make sure you are on the track towards success so that you can start creating a better story for your life as a fiction writer. All right, let's jump in.
Welcome to episode 33 of the Better Writer Podcast. I usually start every episode by saying that I am excited for the day's topic. But today I am talking about how writers fail. So that is less cheerful. I wouldn't say that failure is my favorite topic, but I do love helping writers to succeed. I love helping writers overcome the things that are keeping them stuck. So, in some ways, this is still a topic that I love, but I won't say it's my favorite today because that doesn't really fit. So, before we dive in, I want to let you know that I have a weekly newsletter that comes out every Tuesday. So if you enjoy the way that I teach, if you enjoy the way that I talk about writing, please, please, please subscribe to that newsletter. You will find a link below. When you sign up, you are also going to get my free revision kickstart guide. So click that link, grab the guide, and I will see you in your inbox every Tuesday, somewhere in the afternoon / evening. All right, now on to today's episode. So for today, I want to talk about reasons why writers fail. And I want to be clear, I'm gonna be talking more about why manuscripts fail.
Why writers fail in the process of writing their drafts, revising their drafts, etc. So this is going to be more craft focused. And that is really important to say because unfortunately for us, there are so many ways that you can fail after the draft is done. And honestly, you can have an incredible book, one that is well written and engaging.
And it can still fail. And that is especially true if you are pursuing a traditional publishing deal. You can have an amazing book that just doesn't feel sellable in the current market. And when you query agents, when you are trying to get a publishing deal, that is really the question that's being asked. It's not is this book good? It's can this book sell? And that is a very important distinction that I think some writers don't.
Always know about when they are entering the querying process that it is not about an objective measure of good or bad. It's do I see a market that will buy this right here, right now? And the answer, unfortunately, a lot of the time is no. And it could be for completely arbitrary reasons there are cyclical things that we see as well, where, for example, with series, sometimes series sell well, sometimes they do not. Right now, it is a market where
It is going to be really difficult to sell a debut novel if it is a series. If you are a first-time writer and your book does not stand alone, traditional publishing is going to be a very difficult climb for you in a way that it wouldn't be as difficult if your book was a standalone. Again, it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy in either case, but right now, from the agent perspective, it is.
Very difficult, if not, you know, nearly impossible for them to sell a debut series right now. so they are unlikely to take that risk on you. big difference also if your book is a standalone with series potential, as in book one feels complete on its own, but then you know, you could expand it. that is also a very different story. But if your book cannot stand alone.
That has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. It has nothing to do with whether or not you have met the genre conventions and done a great job building your world, everything else, you could have done it perfectly, and it's still not seen as sellable. and agents are not going to take that risk. So that was a very long caveat, but all that to say that I am not going to be addressing the marketing side, the querying side, any of that. I am talking about what goes wrong in the process.
Because I'm an editor, I'm a book coach, that is what I do. I do not work with you on marketing your book per se. I do some limited query feedback as part of my editing and book coaching packages, but my focus is on the parts of the process that you can control. And what you can control is what you write, what you do in revision. You can control the quality of the manuscript that you put out into the world. and the beautiful thing is that nowadays you have options. If you are committed to writing a series, you're not stuck because agents aren't taking those projects on right now. You can self-publish, and you know what? Series do so well self-publishing because it is actually easier.
To generate income when you are sending people into a series versus if you are sending people into a standalone book. So I also want to note that that part of the reason why I'm not going to talk about you know, failure in terms of marketing and all that is because you have so many options. There are so many different ways to market and sell your books and get them into readers' hands. That you know, if one thing fails, you can just try another. There are many, many ways to approach the writing process, but there are often similar ways that people fail in this process as well. So that is what we are focused on for this episode. All right.
So the first way that I see people failing in the writing and revision process is when they are just too attached to their original ideas. And this is so hard because that original idea.
The spark, the thing you came up with that made you want to write the story is precious. And I never want to tell someone that they have to change the core of their story. That is not what I'm talking about at all. But not everything can be precious when you are writing fiction with the intention of publishing. If you are just writing for yourself, then have at it. You are free to do whatever you want, whenever you want, because it is just for you. You can throw that up on Kindle and if you do not care if anyone else in the world reads it, great. That is really fine.
I am not talking to that person right now. I like to work with people who are trying to publish their books, whether they want to do that through a traditional publisher or if they want to do that themselves. in either case, when I edit or coach someone, I am operating under the assumption that this book is intended to be enjoyed by other people. And that sometimes means compromise because what makes perfect sense in your head just may not translate on the page. And I often see that when someone wants to attempt something a little bit creative, they've thrown in this thing that they want to be a twist, but it really is just confusing. Or they did this world building thing where there is this, you know, little tidbit of magic or world building, a rule that they are really strictly holding to that isn't actually serving the story.
And as a writer, you need to figure out what is precious, what is something that you do not want to change because it really is the core of your story. and then what isn't? And we need to triage, we need to set for those priorities because not everything can be in that bucket, because if everything is precious, if you are unwilling to make any changes, even if it is going to serve readers, that book is most likely going to fail to meet reader expectations. It's going to fail to serve the people it was intended for. again, does not mean you have to change everything you love. I think that the phrase kill your darlings gets massively overused and is massively misunderstood. Sometimes people think that kill your darlings means that.
Anything you like is dangerous, that like just because you love something, it is now somehow flawed. and that is not the case. Kill your darlings means when there is something you are attached to that is weakening your story, you have to let it go. And if you cannot do that, if you cannot let go of that idea, you are not going to be successful in reaching other people.
Fiction is also subjective. So, you know, make sure that you are getting feedback from people who are in your target audience, who know your genre, who know what you're trying to do. but then when you get that feedback, when five people have told you that something is not working, we have to let go, even if it's difficult. We could also try to change that idea, that thing, you know, in some way to make it work, but we have to be willing to let go of the things that do not serve our readers. Because they are who we are doing this for. They are the ones who are ultimately going to decide if your book is successful or not. And they are going to do that in passive ways, whether they buy your book or not, They're also going to do that in very active ways. They might be leaving reviews. They might choose to recommend your book to other people, or they might be telling all their friends that they hated your book. So I do not say this to scare you, but you know, when it comes down to those difficult decisions, we need to know what is the core of the story.
What makes the story mine? What makes the story what it is, what it is meant to be, and what is extra? What can we let go of in service of those core things that really, really matter? Because that's often what it comes down to is that those things that need to be cut that are not working are dragging down the stuff that does, the stuff that really matters and makes your story what it is, are being weakened by these secondary little things that you were holding on to simply because you cannot let them go.
So we don't want that to happen. We need to have that mental flexibility when we come into the revision process in order to make meaningful, important changes to our books.
All right, and then number two is I often see people fail when they set the wrong priorities in revision. They are jumping straight to fine-tuning their dialogue and they haven't even figured out if their structure is sound. They are focused on fine-tuning all of their descriptions, making sure that every chapter is as beautiful as possible, and they don't even know if that chapter should be there. And I have talked often about the dangers of editing before you revise. and this is kind of the step up that I think sometimes writers get into their heads that prose is the most important thing. That all that matters is having beautiful sentences and beautiful paragraphs and beautiful chapters. And oftentimes that is not the right priority. And that is especially true if you are writing genre fiction. We want our sentences to be beautiful. We want to bring in that figurative language, but for many readers, that is not the number one priority.
It's great when genre fiction is beautiful, but it needs to tell a damn good story first. It does not matter if your sentences are gorgeous, if there is no story behind them. literary fiction, you have more leeway. Literary fiction can be more about the craft of sentence-level writing. Literary fiction still needs to have a story of some sort, but you have a lot more leeway just to explore and be artistic and be lyrical and that that just doesn't exist in genre fiction in the same exact way. There is, of course, crossover as well. There are infinite ways to complicate the writing process. That is one thing that writers are very good at, is just making things more complex for ourselves. but you need to make sure that you are setting the right priorities for your genre. Do you have characters that people care about or are at least curious about or love to hate? Any of those is fine. Do we have characters that readers want to read about?
Do we have a story that is going somewhere that feels like it is moving forward? All of those things matter more because readers are more often DNFing or not finishing books because of story level issues, not prose level issues. That does happen if you have a ton of gram grammatical errors and things like that. People will also DNF books over that. But the biggest reasons that people abandon books are because of story issues. So we want to tackle those first.
All right. And then the third way that stories fail is kind of unexpected. and is when people water down their ideas because they want to appeal to everyone. And this one is so insidious because you think that the way to make your book successful is to make sure that everyone loves it, that there is nothing objectionable, nothing that could offend someone, nothing that could turn someone off. we want our book to be palatable for everyone. And counterintuitively, what happens instead is that your book just ends up being for no one. It has no personality, no spark, no opinion. There is nothing behind it besides kind of those generic tropes because you have taken yourself, your creativity, all the things that make you and your story unique, they're gone. And so I think that what we need to do instead is lean into the things that make your book perfect for its target audience. Lean into the things that make your book unpalatable to the people you are not writing for. and that is going to be most people in the world. You are going to be writing for a very specific audience and if people outside of that audience find you and want to read your book, great. They may discover that they love something that they didn't know they loved before.
But that doesn't mean that you try to write for every single person in the world because we know people are so different. They have different opinions, they have different tolerances for darkness and spice and violence and everything else. And so if you try to cater to that invisible middle that does not exist, you are going to strip your book of the things that would make someone else love it. So if your book is going to be a romance that has no spice, lean into that. Don't try to allude to spicy things because you think that you're going to capture the spicy market. You're not. You're just going to disappoint them. If you are writing a book that is graphically violent, lean into that. Don't pull your punches and then try to obscure the bloody mess that you've created because you are just going to disappoint the readers.
Who are perfectly fine with reading about violence in books. You get to decide where your comfort level is, you get decide what you want to do. There is no right or wrong answer. People are selling books in every category. I sometimes see people saying well, I don't write spice, so I'm never gonna be successful. And that's not true. There are writers out there who are selling very mild romances and they are successful. There are people out there that you have never heard of who are writing in these genres that you probably would hate and they are making money. You know, I always think about the time that I went to the writer's digest conference for the first time. This was in twenty twenty, November, so it was online, which is why I was able to go. It was so exciting.
And I was blown away by the number of presenters who were best selling authors that I had never heard of in my entire life. so I think when you are thinking about success and who is selling and what is popular, you have to remember that you are only aware of such a small snippet of the writing population out there. You are only aware of the people who have come into your orbit in some way. And there are probably
Hundreds, if not thousands, or more, best-selling authors out there that you have literally never heard of, people who are making a full-time living writing and you've never heard of them. And they might be people who are super successful in any genre that you've never heard of, that you don't care about, that you will never read. they might be people who are successful in the thing that you think cannot sell because you are telling yourself a story that only writers who do X are successful while you want to do Y.
The people successful by are probably out there, and you could be one of them if you really lean into that genre instead of trying to appeal to everyone. Because when you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. So do not do that to yourself. Get specific about who your book is for and don't shy away from that. Lean into it and make it happen.
All right, and then finally, the fourth reason why I see writers failing in their books is because they are ignoring their weak spots in the craft. And I don't think that people are doing this on purpose. I think sometimes it comes out of just not knowing what you don't know or not pursuing education as a writer. And you end up doing some things really, really well.
And then doing some things not at all, or doing them poorly, and that is going to detract from the story as a whole. Because the unfortunate thing about a novel is that everything is connected. So you can be amazing at writing dialogue, but if you have no interiority, that is most likely going to be a problem for your story. There are obviously genres where interiority is less important, but we do need to have some of it somewhere. otherwise your story is going to fall flat.
So, if you have not taken the time to make sure that you really know and understand the craft of fiction, that needs to happen at some point in the process. You have to get good at the things that are going to make your story come across as professionally written, that are going to hook readers in and keep them reading until they get to the end of your story. And that doesn't happen by accident. It happens because you have gotten the training that you need. And I am not saying that you need to run out and buy every single expensive writing course out there. I am not saying that you need an MFA or you need to go back to college or anything like that. But you do need to make sure that you have done the work to learn how to write. And there are so many amazing resources out there. Obviously, I have my own classes and coaching services. There are so many more out there that will help you and teach you how to write great books if you pursue them. I sometimes have people come to me who have never taken a writing class, they have never even thought about taking a writing class, and that is fine as a starting point
But you would not expect to start a brand new career in many other fields without any training whatsoever. You would not expect to become a mechanic without doing any work to understand cars. You would not expect to become a hairdresser without any kind of training in how to do hair. So why would you think that you are going to write a book that other people want to read and pay money for without any kind of training at all whatsoever?
And the beautiful thing about writing is that so much of that training can be self-directed. There are so many great resources out there that are not going to cost you anything or going to cost you very little. And it is much easier to become a writer than many, many other professions out there. But that doesn't mean that just, you know, your high school English class is enough. Because honestly, your high school English class has probably taught you the opposite of what you need to do to become a writer. you can go back to episode two of this podcast if you want to hear more about how your education has probably misdirected you when it comes to writing. But the bottom line is that you are going to need to figure out how to turn your weaknesses as a writer into strengths, how to keep building on the strengths that you already have so that you can write amazing books that your future readers are going to love. and it's not necessarily going to be easy. I am a believer that anyone can write a book, anyone can learn, but that doesn't mean that everyone will.
You have to take the time, build up the skills, make it happen for yourself. obviously you can also get help along the way. There like I said, there are so many resources out there. I'm not expecting you to do it all by yourself if that is not what is going to work for you. But we do need to put in the time to learn the craft.
Especially, especially, especially, especially if you are expecting to make money and turn this into a career. It takes training, it takes time. And there is nothing wrong with that. We can do hard things and we can make beautiful books if we put the time in.
All right. That was four ways that I see people failing as writers. And the thing that I want to end with, because like I said, it is not always fun to talk about failure, rejection, all those things that are sometimes part of the writing life. The thing that I want to highlight above all is that none of the things that I mentioned here are permanent conditions. None of these things are based on who you are as a person. None of these qualities are inherent to any person. These are things you can address and change and fix either in your writing process or in your mindset, whatever it takes. If you are too fixated on your ideas as a writer, this is the time to sit down and journal and figure out what is really, really essential.
And what can you let go of? This is time to sit down with a friend who can coach you through some of those difficult decisions. Whatever it takes to get to a place where you can let go of the things that are not serving your story. if you are someone who needs to take some writing classes, go find one right now. Go watch the Brandon Sanderson lectures on YouTube for free. Start somewhere.
Go to your library, get a craft book, whatever you need to do, you can take action right now to address any one of these four things that I've talked about. this is not a you know a message that you cannot do this. This is me saying, Don't make these mistakes because I see them too often. And if you take action right now, you can avoid them. again, there are so many things in the writing process and the publishing process that we cannot control.
But there are things that you can control. You can control how you write, how you revise, how you approach this process. You can control your mindset, at least somewhat. I know that one is a little bit tricky, but you can control how much time you spend working on your mindset if that's what it takes. So figure out what are you going to do today to try to improve your process, improve your manuscript. If you would like my help with that, I offer revision coaching. I also offer developmental editing.
And if that's something that you need help with, please, please, please reach out. I would love to help you if you write genre fiction, any genre, not just fantasy and romantic either. Those are my favorites. but please reach out. I would love to help to make sure that your manuscript is the best it can possibly be for your future readers All right. Thank you so so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If you've been listening to the show and enjoying it, please consider leaving a review. That is just one way that you can help other writers find me so that they can hopefully benefit from the show as well.
Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing, keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya.
