Writing Advice from the Masters

So there's a lot of writing advice out there.  A lot of it's great.  Some of it stinks.  I've even thrown my two amateur cents into the ring from time to time, whether good, bad or otherwise.  It all has some merit, though, when weighed with a grain of salt or two.  After all, many great authors differ greatly with the advice they give on writing.  And one can still learn from mistakes and bad advice, just as they can from the good.

On that note, I thought it fitting to compile some advice clips from the masters of the craft, those to whom we look to as the ultimate experts of the trade.  Here are ten authors talking about various aspects of storytelling.  Enjoy and learn as I did.

Ray Bradbury on writing persistently:

The most interesting part of this is how he would send short story after short story out, and wait for the rejections.  This is something I've done countless times, and at about the same ages.  Always the rejections.  I looked forward to them, to each one, hopefully with some tidbit of personal advice upon which to learn and grow.  I have close to 300 of them from short stories alone, most collected during my teens and early twenties, tucked away as mementos to perseverance and to giving my heart and soul to writing.  Most of the time between then and now has been spent writing, honing, perfecting; not trying to get published.  I've been too often in parts of the world where it was just not conducive to querying.  It's always been on my mind, even in places as foreign as Afghanistan, as quite a few rejections will testify to.

Elmore Leonard on hard work, characters, descriptions, and rhythm in writing:

"I made myself get up at five o'clock every morning to write fiction.  I had a rule that I had to begin writing, get into whatever the scene was, before I could put the coffee on.  If I hadn't done that, I don't think I'd be sitting here today."  That is a pretty powerful impetus for sitting down on your ass and cranking the words out.  Probably makes most of us, even the more successful ones, a little chagrined, more eager to jump back into a story again.  He's absolutely dead on - at least in my case - about writing four pages for every one quality page.  Writing is rewriting.  The one thing I can't agree with is writing longhand.  I've done it before, and just can't stand it.  Give me a good ol' word processor every day of the week.  That way I can go back and change a word mid-stroke when I realize it wasn't the best choice to use.

Stephen King on writing short stories:

So interesting his view on why people don't read short stories as much anymore.  He attributes it to laziness, which is probably a large percentage of the truth.  The other percentage, I think, is the way stories are promulgated to the public.  We aren't satisfied with a single peek at something.  We have to have more.  Even a movie or a single book isn't enough.  We have to have trilogies and series and goddamn sagas!  Let it never end!  And yet a short story does just that.  It's like the one night stand of literature, that fleeting kiss in the night, never to be continued, but only remembered for its fiery brevity.  I absolutely love short stories.  And in today's world of short attention span theater, and fear of commitment, I don't know how the short story isn't more popular than it is.

Kurt Vonnegut on writing short stories:

Short, sweet advice, just like a short story.  But it's some of the best advice I've ever heard.  And the thing is, all these words of wisdom are just as applicable to writing novels as they are to shorter works.  We see professionals in the literary business talking about how stories just don't start fast enough, that there's too much pre-story or world building, or character development happening before the actual story starts.  Vonnegut's advice on starting the story as close to the end as possible is just as good in these cases as it is for a piece of flash fiction.  Start with the action, make your characters want something, and then take it away from them.

Neil Gaiman with advice for new writers:

His advice, apart from going out and actually living and seeing the world is spot on. If you want to write, you have to write. The elves aren't going to magic your book into finished form. You're not going to get a sudden epiphany one day and churn out a book, slavering over an old fashioned typewriter like the classics. You're not friggin' Snoopy, sitting on your doghouse, pecking out that great work of literature without a flaw. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to write absolute crap. God knows I have. And you'll learn from it. You'll edit like there's no tomorrow, and when you're done, the finished product will look nothing like what you started with. And it's all because you wrote, and wrote, and wrote. And wrote some more.

Margaret Weiss talks with R.A. Salvatore on collaboration and how gaming affects fantasy books:

The most interesting part of this interview for me is hearing about collaboration. A story of any size is very personal; it's probably one of the most intimately personal pieces of creativity there is, and sharing that with anyone can create some complex and often problematic issues. It appears that one of the reasons why Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman have been so successful writing fantasy together is the way they have worked together. Each person has specific tasks and goals, each a certain chunk of the story they are responsible for. With less overlap, there is less a chance that the artistic vision of one author will clash with that of the other.

Louis L'Amour talks about historical accuracy and research in writing:

One thing he mentions later in this interview is his trademark lack of profanity. While he grew up in among a very rough crowd, he never saw the need for it. He didn't feel it was appropriate to use profanity, and that using it was often a crutch for a "lack of real skill". While I'll sprinkle my stories with profanity where necessary, L'Amour has a very good point - one shouldn't have to use it at all to get the point across. In the end, I'd opine that it's fine if used as a part of one's style; not if used as a crutch.

Chuck Palahniuk with a succinct analogy on writer's block:

Slightly crude or not, his point is made. And that's really the thing. Many writers advise one to write every day, to write nonstop. But Palahniuk's advice is simpler: if you don't have anything to write, there's no sense trying to force it out. But I think it goes deeper than that, and is something that is nuanced in what he says here. Many writers have tons of great ideas, filling their heads and overflowing onto the written page, whether they like it or not. But they don't have those ideas without living, without gaining experiences, because those experiences are what feed the ideas necessary to write.

Garrison Keillor with some advice to writers:

"Get out of the house," he says, and he's right, because writing isn't just about the author. In fact, I'd argue it's exactly the opposite. Writing has almost nothing to do with the writer, and everything to do with the reader. It's the reader's experience that brings a book to life, not the writer's. If you don't go out and experience life, relate to others, stay tuned to what's happening in the world, you'll end up writing a bunch of self-absorbed pretentious crap that nobody wants to read.

John Irving with encouragement to new writers:

It's tougher today than ever before to break through in this industry. The competition is not only an increasingly larger number of writers, but it's also tougher. The talent pool is larger. But that shouldn't mean discouragement. Rather it should be incentive to work all that much harder. It takes a lot to really produce a quality work of art, no matter the medium, and the higher the competition level, the better the best work is going to be.

Watching these videos, we get rather common themes from them. Write often. Read a lot. Get out there and live. Persevere. Write a variety of genres and lengths. Experiment. But over all, write, write, write. And then write some more.

Finding One's Voice

I find it odd, this thing called voice.  I read quite a wide variety of authors, both classic and contemporary, and with the good ones, no matter the genre, voice is always king.

Fellow Pacific Northwest native Tom Robbins, of which I've spoken before, has one of the most distinguishable voices there is.  His voice is magnificent!  It rises from whatever depths necessary to envelop the reader with pearls of wisdom, still wrapped in the gooey funk of the underdeep.  He grabs the reader by the stack and swivels, and woos you face to face with his wisdom and wit, whether you like it or not.  He's the only author I know who shatters George Carlin's plea on writing:

The only story I know of where clouds are important was Noah’s Ark!

- George Carlin

Tom Robbins does better than that.  "A rank of ample black clouds had been double-parked along the western horizon like limousines at a mobster’s funeral. Rather suddenly now, they wheeled away from the long green curb and congregated overhead, where, like overweight yet still athletic Harlem Globetrotters, they bobbed and weaved, passing lightning bolts trickily among themselves while the wind whistled 'Sweet Georgia Brown,'" he writes in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates.  And in another novel, I forget which at the moment, he describes clouds as "nuns having a pillow fight".

That's voice, folks, pure voice.  Few others can equal that ability to trick images to leap into our minds from a few carefully placed words on a page.  None can mimic that exact cadence and poetry he employs.  And even if he's just talking about the weather - something writers are constantly advised not to do - you want to keep on reading.

Robbins isn't alone in displaying a unique, discernible voice.

Stephen King has a voice.  So much so that people called him out on his pseudonym Richard Bachman, because after a few novels they had it figured out, just by the sound of the voice.  His voice is one of the things that sets him apart from other authors, and one of the main reasons I believe he's had so much success.

David Eddings had a unique voice as well.  So much so that one could easily identify the author just by reading a few passages of his character's dialogue.  His dry, sardonic humor seeped into his characters so well that it made them easily recognizable and made them react in familiar manners when faced with obstacles in the plot.

And that, I think, is one of the problems of having such a distinctive voice.  All authors put so much of themselves into their work that it shows through in every character, every passage of narration.  But by doing that, they give it a sense of sameness, of consistency.  And while this is good for the overall tone of the book, it has a tendency, as we've seen with some of Eddings' writing, to give all the characters a similar voice.  And if they all sound the same, it's hard to make them unique.

A certain adaptation to character is needed.

It would be nice to have a certain way of adapting to whatever voice was needed at the time, a kind of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse way of slipping into a character and making it your own.  To create characters with a sort of schizophrenia, allowing completely different personalities to seep into each.  This is why perhaps, a pool of writers such as in a television series allows a more diverse group of characters.  It's easier for different writers to focus on different characters, instead of pouring themselves into each one.

And it seems some characters lend themselves more easily to voice than others.  I have one in particular who is so insistent on being an individual that he stands out easily from the others.  He's less subtle, I guess, which helps.  He's a little harder to write because he's over the top a bit, and yet I don't want him to come across as too much so.  It would create too much of a caricature out of him, when what I really need is just the emotional energy he provides.

I think a distinctive voice comes down to two things, and both stem from copious amounts of writing.

The first is experience, simple time spend pounding the words into story.  The more you do that, the more your voice begins to take shape and the less it imitates your sources of inspiration.  You begin to see how to hone your writing, to delete excess words, identify overused words, and craft tighter sentences.  All of this lends to your voice, making it more distinct and more identifiable as yours.

The second thing necessary is an understanding of your characters.  The more a writer knows about a character, the more distinctive their voice becomes.  When they're loosely shelled out, with vague goals and moods, they're harder to define.  They have no substance, no value behind what they do and say; they're simply doing or saying those things to advance the plot.  When that happens, they fall short as believable characters.

In the end, it's just hard work.

It takes time to hone one's voice.  Time spent cloistered away from living companionship, lost with those who live only in your own mind.  It takes hours and days and months and years sitting there, crafting words, blowing them up, and crafting them all over again.  Even a cursory look at the great writers will show that they put their devotion to writing above all else.  They prioritized it, even when they had to work other jobs to put food on the table.

They say it takes 10,000 hours of doing anything to master it.  I think I've easily surpassed that mark, probably years ago.  But I think that's just the first tiny step in the longer journey of honing one's voice and mastery of storytelling.  There is always much room for improvement, and still so very much to learn.

Short and Sweet

Words: they say a picture is worth a thousand of them.  Fair enough, but I think sometimes the exact opposite is true.  Sometimes nothing can portray emotion as well as a few simple words.  Consider the shortest story Ernest Hemingway ever wrote.  As legend has it, he was once challenged to write a story in only six words.  The result, as many know, is one of the most poignant, touching stories ever written.  Hemingway himself is rumored to consider it his finest story ever:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Wow.  Adding more words wouldn't add anything else to that story.  It wouldn't heighten the pain, the loss, one feels when reading that.  More verbiage wouldn't add to the broken heart you know the mother, the whole family, suffered.  Six words is enough to know they moved on, but only out of necessity.  Six words is exactly enough to convey a punch to the gut.

Ernest Hemingway, © Penn State

I think Hemingway would have scoffed at those who say 140 characters isn't enough to adequately express oneself on Twitter. I think he would have loved Twitter. I'd have followed him for sure.  He was a master at saying exactly what he meant, and only that.

There's something to be said about brevity.  It's partly why literary agents want only a one-page query.  It's why we are told to hone, tighten, shorten, to turn the whole story into a synopsis.  To create a few-paragraph back cover blurb, and then take that blurb and shorten it into an elevator pitch.  Literary agent Rachelle Gardner has some excellent advice on creating elevator pitches.  Author David B. Coe shows us how to pare a blurb down, trim it to the bare essentials, leaving nothing but a concise pitch line.

These are things every author needs to do, if nothing more than the ability they lend to edit the story itself, and make every word count.  Kurt Vonnegut's advice on the matter was, "Every sentence must do one of two things, either reveal character or advance the plot."  Elmore Leonard's was a little simpler: "I try to leave out the parts that people skip."

It isn't easy, but then again, no one who's written anything worth a damn ever said it was.

Fun with Words: A Wee Rant

"You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride.

Seems all the time I think similar thoughts, seeing people use words the wrong way.  They're powerful things, words.  Just a single one can make a huge impact on a story, a speech, a conversation.  They can raise you up, and they can cut you right back down to size.

But words, like the character of Inigo Montoya stated so eloquently, do not always mean what one thinks they mean.  We often use words wrong, for wide variety of reasons.  And because we use them wrong, others learn them wrong and perpetuate their wrong use.

Now I'm not talking about words like "then vs. than", or the spectacular failure that seems to be our understanding of "their, there, and they're", or any other malapropism.  I'm not even going to go there, because I don't want to get that worked up.  I can do without the aneurysm.  No, I'm talking about words we mistake the meaning for, those we think we're using correctly but aren't at all.  It's irritating, because the more they're used wrong, the more their wrong use is perpetuated.  And don't give me that lame "but language is always evolving" excuse.  I know how languages work, thank you very much.

And by the way, a hearty thank you to Alanis Morissette, for the wonderful, unintentional lesson on the misuse of irony.  Irony.  That's a very good place to start, don't you think?

Irony.  i·ro·ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-] noun, plural -nies.  Several of the dictionary definitions include: The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.  An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.  Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.

Good job there, Alanis.  You very aptly described coincidence, not irony.  And the misuse of it here isn't really ironic, either.  It's unfortunate.  It would be ironic if Ms. Morissette were an English teacher instead of a singer.  As to the lyrics, hardly any are the least bit ironic.  The fact you called the song Ironic however, is quite ironic.

If I was afraid of flying and died in a plane crash, that would be a coincidence that fulfilled my paranoia.  If I was afraid of flying and took a bus because it was safer, only to die in a bus crash, that would be ironic.  If I was an aircraft safety inspector and I died in a plane crash, that would be coincidental.  If, as that aircraft safety inspector, I died in a plane crash in an attempt to show just how safe the plane was, after inspecting it myself, that would be irony.

Literally.  lit·er·al·ly [lit-er-uh-lee] adverb.  Dictionary definitions include: In the literal or strict sense.  In a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.  Actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy.

Something literal is "word for word".  It's the actual, really real definition of something.  The way it in fact is.  And it's used in place of the word "figuratively" more often than it's used correctly.  Stop it.  Literally, just stop it.

"I literally died laughing at that joke!"  No, you didn't.  You died figuratively.  If you'd have literally died, I'd literally be on my way to the morgue with your cold corpse.  Or the hospital.  How much I liked you could quite literally affect my destination, if I was figuratively that cold-hearted.

And just now, I mentally threw a book at your face for saying that.  Mentally.  Figuratively.  Not literally, because it would have been impossible to literally throw a book at you, seeing as you're not even in the same room as I.  You could use the word "figuratively" in the example above.  There's nothing wrong with that word.  You could even say "I died laughing at that joke," without any modifier, because that would be simple - and obvious - hyperbole.

Penultimate.  pe·nul·ti·mate [pi-nuhl-tuh-mit] adjective. Definitions: Next to the last.  Of or pertaining to a penult, the next-to-last syllable of a word.

This word is often misused in sports.  "They had the penultimate season!"  No, they had the ultimate season.  The team they beat in the final game had the penultimate season.  Penultimate, in this context, isn't a grand accomplishment, eclipsing all others, it's the agony of defeat, ultimately failing after getting oh-so-close.  The Seahawks won their penultimate game in the 2005 playoffs, resoundingly, only to become the penultimate team of that season.

Proverbial.  pro·ver·bi·al [pruh-vur-bee-uhl] adjective.  And the dictionary definitions: Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a proverb.  Expressed in a proverb or proverbs: proverbial wisdom.  Of the nature of or resembling a proverb.

Again, used heavily in sports broadcasting.  I don't know how many times I've heard about being on "proverbial cloud nine", or throwing the "proverbial perfect pass", or that "proverbial monkey on one's back".  It's uttered about once a game, or race, or match from some broadcaster or another.  We hear it all the time in television.  And in movies.  And it's wrong.  "Idiomatic" is usually the word they're looking for.  When they say the "proverbial perfect pass", what they really mean is the "quintessential pass".

"Cloud nine" does not come from a proverb.  It's an idiom.  And there are no proverbs that speak of throwing a touchdown, or making a daring pass on a race track, or any other sporting events for that matter.  Jesus never spoke about making that hard-to-throw spiral.  Aesop never recounted a tale about the awesomeness of being on the ninth cloud.  And a "monkey on one's back" comes from nature, not parable.  It comes from observing baby monkeys of many species, how they ride on their mothers backs, and don't come off, no matter how the mother jumps around.  It's an idiom for something you just can't shake, no matter how hard you try.

Myth.  myth [mith] noun.  With dictionary definition: A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being, hero, or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.  An imaginary or fictitious thing or person.

We owe at least a little bit of the misuse on this one to the television show Mythbusters.  Now don't get me wrong, it's a great show.  I absolutely love it!  But they're only sometimes busting myths.  Sometimes it's just misconceptions.  Snopes.com doesn't always bust myths either.  Mostly they bust inaccurate perceptions and misconceptions, based on rumors and inaccurate information.

And those constant advertorials proclaiming to have the answers for the "10 Myths about Drinking Alcohol", or 10 Myths about Mental Illness", or whatever other misconceptions there are, aren't really myths either.  There is, to my knowledge, no fictitious or imaginary being known for touting the dangers of that demon alcohol.  Say it with me now, people:  those are misconceptions, not myths.  Dionysus was a myth.  Pan was a myth.  And those are the closest things you'll ever find if you're looking for myths about drinking.

Sentient.  sen·tient [sen-shuhnt] adjective.  Having the power of perception by the senses; conscious.  Characterized by sensation and consciousness.

As a science fiction writer, this one strikes near and dear to my heart.  We see and hear it all the time.  "Ooo, a sentient being!"  Well, no shit.  There are a lot of sentient beings besides humans on the earth.  In fact, our world is teeming with them.  Your dog is sentient.  He's self-aware; he knows he exists.  He knows those are his own balls he's licking right now.  That's why he's licking them: they're his, and he can lick them all day if he wants to.

And while sometimes yes, sentience is what someone means when they're talking about a self-aware machine, what they are often referring to is sapience.  It comes from the same root as homo sapiens.  Sapiens, meaning "to be wise", or "to have taste" in Latin, refers to an ability to make decisions based on wisdom, experience and judgment.  Yes, it's very much human-like, a trait we humans share with almost nothing else on the planet.  While some animals can learn, and associate certain events with others, higher deductive reasoning and judgment is peculiar to humans.  At least until we let those mad scientists in the genetics labs go nuts.  Kidding, folks, kidding.  Only a few of us really want to see giant lab rats with super-human intelligence and cognitive reasoning.

Nemesis.  nem·e·sis [nem-uh-sis] noun, plural -ses  [-seez].  In classical mythology, the goddess of divine retribution.  An agent or act of retribution or punishment.  Something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc.  An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.

A nemesis isn't just an antagonist or an enemy.  He's not the bad guy the good guy defeats in the end.  He's more than that.  He's the one foe that knows and can exploit someone's Achilles' heel; the one thing they cannot conquer.  A nemesis is the unbeatable, that agent of retribution which one cannot defeat.  So chances are, unless the hero dies in the end, it's unlikely they met their nemesis for the last time.  They were probably the antihero's nemesis instead.  In fact, an "agent or act of retribution or punishment" sounds much more like the hero of most stories, meting out retribution to wrongdoers, instead of the villain.

Ok, I'm finished.  That's all I can produce off the top of my head.  I'm sure a few more examples will come raging to the forefront of my mind once I've posted this.   Oh well, it's probably a big enough rant for now anyway.  Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Steve Hutchinson and the Deus ex Machina

Ok.  So everyone here probably already knows I'm a pretty big Seattle Seahawks fan.  And by "pretty big", I don't mean in a large-sized sort of way.  I mean it in an I'm going to have to get a bigger closet for all my Seahawks gear when I buy another jersey sort of way.  I live and breathe Seahawks.  Twenty-four friggin' hours a day.  Drives the rest of the House of Dalar up the walls at times, especially the times when there's a game on.  'cept the boy.  He's cool like that.  I'm raising him well.

The Greatest Place on Earth, © Jonathan Dalar

So when the news broke that left guard Steve Hutchinson would be visiting the Seahawks, I naturally assumed the Mayans were right about this whole "world is ending in 2012" thing.  The writer in me took over, however, and the first thing I did was start to think about plot twists in a story.  Well, no.  Technically that was the second thing I did.  I first checked the temperature in Hell.  Astonishingly, snow was not in the forecast.

For those of you who are not following, I'll bring you up to speed with a little back story necessary to understand why this would be so improbable.  Actually the back story is the story.  The visit is simply the climax at the end.

Hutch is an absolute beast, a high-caliber player that tremendously impacts the success of a team.  He's been to the Pro Bowl seven times, four of them with the Seahawks.  They picked him with the 17th pick in the 2001 draft, and he quickly became a cog in one of the best offensive lines we've seen in the NFL.  Between 2001 and 2006, he played beside Walter Jones, forming if not the best offensive line tandem in the game, certainly one of a select few great ones.  He was tremendously valuable to the Seahawks, and a big part of their trip to Super Bowl XL* after the 2005 season.  Ah, things were going well!

But then things went sour, and they did so quickly.  In 2006, Hutch was scheduled to become a free agent.  The Seahawks front office, then led by a somewhat discordant team of head coach Mike Holmgren and president and general manager Tim Ruskell, placed the Transition Tag on Hutch instead of the safer Franchise Tag.  The move saved the team $500,000.00, but cost them the ability to secure his services for another year while they worked out a long-term contract.

The Minnesota Vikings were quick to take advantage of that situation, and offered him a huge poison pill-laden contract, at the time an unprecedented amount of money for his position.  The poison pill was two-fold: first, the contract stipulated he had to be the highest paid lineman on the team (on the Vikings he would be; on the Seahawks, Walter Jones deservedly earned more), and second, he could play no more than a half a dozen games in Washington State (the Seahawks play eight home games a year).  If either of these provisions were not followed, the entire $49 million contract was guaranteed.  Of course, that made the contract impossible for the Seahawks to match.  They took it to arbitration, but lost, and Hutch became a Viking.

It was a divorce straight from the script of The War of the Roses.  Hutch, frustrated with the Seahawks' dysfunctional front office, had very little nice to say about the split.  Seahawks fans everywhere took affront.  Hutch instantly became one of Seahawks fans' most hated players in the game.  He was branded a traitor, and much worse.  "It was all about the money!"  "What a greedy, selfish bastard!"  "Huck Futch!"  The insults came hot and heavy, and sentiment regarding Hutch didn't really change, even as the years passed and memories faded.  His money-grabbing move crippled the Seahawks' front line, triggering the team's sharp downward spiral just a season away from the Super Bowl.  He took something away from us.  Seahawks fans had every right to be pissed.

Or did we?  Hindsight is 20/20, so they say, but we don't have the luxury of hindsight when we're in the middle of a story.  We read it as it plays out, and react accordingly.  But what we see isn't necessarily all that's going on behind the scenes, and it's only at the end that we start to figure out what's really going on.  This has never been more true than with this story.

Self, © beholder via Flikr

We fans were still quite enamored at the time with Tim Ruskell.  He'd come to the team at the beginning of the 2005 season, and a few key moves that year were what propelled them to their best season yet and a trip to the big dance.  It appeared he was the mad genius, the final missing cog that brought the team to glory from a rather dismal and emotionally draining past.  "In Ruskell we trust" became many fans' byline, almost overnight.

In the years since, that façade has crumbled away, as decisions made then did the exact opposite of what we expected.  The team plodded to back-to-back horrible seasons, mired as ineffective moves came back to haunt it.  We've come to understand that there was far more dysfunction and discord in the front office than we realized.  Ruskell, no longer the hero, was now judged by his track record, and it wasn't a pretty record at all.  The decision to assign the Transition Tag to Hutchinson is viewed by many as his worst, the fatal blow that ripped the team from playoff contention and mired them once again in mediocrity.

Since those dark days, the team has had an entire reboot.  An entire new front office was installed, and the team no longer has a single player from that magical 2005 season left.  Not one.  At least not until Steve Hutchinson re-signs.  It's definitely not your daddy's "Same Old Seahawks".

Re-signing Hutchinson may be just what the team needs.  He's older, but he's still a great player, and would make an outstanding mentor to the younger linemen on the team.  As an emotionally involved fan, I'm split.  I still vividly feel those feelings of betrayal and letdown when he scorned us for better pastures.  It still hurts.  But I also realize he'd be good for the team.  This is not the same Seahawks team he left, and there's no reason to assign correlation to the old front office.  Business is business in the NFL, and this is no different.

So how does this story apply to the concept of deus ex machina?  Simple: it's the perfect example of how to write a story and avoid having to use it.  Thinking your plot through a little deeper allows you as a writer the ability to create wild, unexpected plot twists, without having to sideswipe your readers with something out of the blue, something that only serves to shove your plot in the direction you want it to go, but can't get your characters' actions to get it there.

So what if that bad guy wasn't really that bad a guy after all?  What if actions earlier were done for completely different reasons and motivations than were assumed?  Suddenly the dynamics of your plot shifts naturally, without the need for a character epiphany, or sudden change of heart, or mandate from an outside force.  In Hutch's case, he isn't having an unexpected change of heart.  He's not repenting, coming back to a team he spurned before.  He's operating exactly the same way he always has.  He's staying in character, making a move that's aligned in his best interests.  This new front office is looking for a capable, talented guard, and he could well be the man for the job.  It makes perfect sense now, even if such an ending would have been viewed as completely absurd halfway through the story.

I don't know about other Seahawks fans, but I think I'd be willing to root for him again in blue and green.  The unlikely story will have come full circle.  What was once thought impossible is now possible, because things weren't quite as we once thought they were.  It's not exactly ironic, but it is about as unexpected a plot twist as one can imagine.

And is it just me, or is it poetic justice that it's all happening on the Ides of March?

Update:  So we don't get our happy ending.  He's accepted a three-year contract with the Tennessee Titans, reuniting him with former teammate Matthew Hasselbeck, at least for now.  Still, the sentiment stands. And of course, your story is your own.  You can write the ending any damn way you please.

Cooking up a Good Story

*** Warning: the following post contains a lot of gratuitous food porn! ***

The other day I was perusing Twitter, trying valiantly not to get sucked in for too long while taking a break from editing, when I saw a few tweets by literary agent Victoria Marini ‏ (@LitAgentMarini), comparing book revisions to baking cookies.  She's one of many literary agents I follow, and often has great advice.  This is what she said:

"Revision is not just addressing some comments in the margin. It's a lengthy, pensive process in which you look at your WHOLE work again.  If you baked cookies and I said 'they're too light,' you wouldn't just add flour to the same left over dough. You'd make a new batch!  Most of the recipe would stay the same, but you'd need to revisit the whole process to get the new batch right."

Great advice!

Magic Marshmallow Crescent Puffs (with wholesome nutritious filberts). © Ryan Schierling

And it got me thinking, which is rarely a good idea.  It also got me hungry, which is never a good idea, but we'll get to that later on.  Anyway, so many parallels between cooking and writing raced through my mind at reading that, I decided to share them here.  Enjoy.  And wipe that drool from your bottom lip.

Sweet potato fries w/ gravy and over-easy egg. © Julie Munroe

Don't leave it in the oven too long.  Nobody likes that hunk of meat that's been baking for an hour too long, and they certainly won't like your overcooked novel.  It's overdone, dry, and nasty.  If it drags on and on, it's going to bog down, and your readers will put it down at some point.  And if it's dragged on long enough, they're not going to pick it back up because it isn't interesting anymore.  It doesn't matter if you have complex, flawed, and interesting characters, or if your plot is wildly unpredictable and original, if it drags on too long, readers will lose interest.  Cut it, trim it, season it, and pull it out of the oven at precisely the right time.  Do it right, and you have a mouthwatering dish that readers won't be able to put down until they scrape the last crumbs and morsels from the plate.

Sauerbraten, with semmelknodel and rotkohl. © Ryan Schierling

Know the proper measurements.  A dash is not a tablespoon.  A pinch will not suffice when the recipe calls for a cup.  There are limits, but you can get away with adding more or less of something, or using a suitable substitute.  To a point.  Similarly, an author can usually get away with an extra 20,000 words in an epic fantasy or science fiction story because of the world building, but when writing young adult, there is a much shorter word-count constraint to work with.  There are general word count boundaries that are accepted by most in the industry, and they vary by genre.  Words are not like bacon; they're like onions.  There is a limit on the amount you can add to a story and still keep it palatable.  Know the boundaries for the genre you're writing, and the lengths a literary agency or publishing house accepts; they're not always the same.

Root vegetable-creamed linguini with bacon and parsley. © Ryan Schierling

Use the right ingredients.  There have been many great pieces of advice on creating realistic, believable characters, such as this helpful blog post by literary agent Vickie Motter (@Vickie_Motter).  Thing is, you have to put in the ingredients best suited to the dish (or character) you're creating.  If you're making steak in an upscale New York restaurant, you're not going to use a low grade chuck or round cut.  Conversely, if you're going for the flavors and textures of a greasy soup kitchen meal, you're not going to use cuts of Filet Mignon or Châteaubriand.  It doesn't matter what you're making, but you have to use the ingredients that give it exactly the flavor, smell, and texture you're looking for.  The ingredients for tacos come in a wide variety of shapes and tastes, but in the end, they still make tacos.

Crock pot chicken tinga tacos. © Ryan Schierling

Create a brand and cater to that specific consumer base.  In a similar thought to the one above, a customer must be able to associate a specific product with a producer.  People go to In-N-Out Burger, expecting delicious, no-frills burgers 'n fries, and that's what they find there.  People buy a William Gibson novel expecting edgy, futuristic science fiction, and that's what he delivers.  We want to get what we expect.  If we don't know what to expect from something, we're more hesitant, especially if obtaining it costs us our hard-earned money.  Creating a brand, and sticking to it, allows readers to readily identify whether or not they'll be interested in the book.  And a brand can't be a smorgasbord.  Trying to please all of the people all of the time never really works, especially with readers.  It's possible to write in several genres, especially if they're closely related, but many authors who switch genres, or write in more than one, do so under a different pseudonym for a reason.

Now I give you everything. © Ryan Schierling

Understand and cater to known tastes.  There's a reason why certain foods are paired with specific beers and wines: the flavors work well together, complement each other.  The same principle applies to books.  There is a reason why things fall into categories like genres and sub-genres, and why those genres are standard lengths, with standard elements in them.  A strong female main character works well in women's fiction.  A larger-than-life hero works well in fantasy and stories with heavily action-oriented plots.  For the same reasons lemon and rosemary go well with baked salmon, ornery dwarfs and mysterious elves go well with high fantasy.  It just works.  You don't always have to stick with the tried and true, as you'll see below, but stereotypes and standards exist for a reason.  Understanding that will help you create an original story that still falls with the bounds of consumer taste.

Cedar-planked Alaskan King salmon, ready for some heat. © Ryan Schierling

Stick with a recipe.  People also want to know what they're getting when they buy something.  If people are in the mood for prawns or crayfish, they're not going to look in the steak section of the menu to find it, and if they're in the mood for science fiction, they're not going to browse through romance books looking for it.  Understanding elements common to the genre you're writing and sticking with them will create an identifiable, quantifiable work, something that can easily find its proper place on a bookshelf.  If you identify your story as "more of a literary science fiction mystery, but with elements of romance and chick lit", a publisher is going to have a devil of a time finding a place on a bookshelf for it.  And guess what - if they can't find a place for it on the shelf, readers won't find it there either.

Crawdads, no. Crayfish, no. Crawfish, yes. Pot pie. © Ryan Schierling

Experiment, but do so correctly.  Although I'm quite the adventurous foodie, I'm not an especially good cook.  I experiment far too much, and usually my creations (using that term loosely here) end up mangled and often garbage-bound.  Luckily I don't have to be.  The wife is a supremely talented cook, and we eat quite well in the House of Dalar.  It's good to push the envelope, though, try things a little outside the box.  That's what gives us those new, exciting, discoveries that suddenly become the next big trend everyone tries frantically to copy before it becomes old.  That's a great thing in both writing and food.  But you gotta do it right.  You can't just add ingredients without knowing what they'll do to a dish, and you can't play around with story elements, grammar, and perspective without knowing what you're doing either.  A little tweak, a dash of daring, and suddenly your creation is refreshingly new and original.  You can play around with a baked potato, but the main ingredient is still going to be a potato.

Potato pavé w/ bison Texas red chili and smoked cheddar. © Ryan Schierling

Phew, that's a lot of food porn.  You had forewarning.  And now you're hungry; I know I am.  I'm going to saunter down to the kitchen to wrangle up something to eat.  And you can saunter on over to Foie Gras Hot Dog and find the recipes where all these wonderful photos came from.  It's run by my friends Julie and Ryan, a couple of great cooks, and adventurous foodies themselves.  You can also follow them on Twitter (@FoieGrasHotDog).

Papaquiles (the imaginary friend of chilaquiles). © Ryan Schierling

By the way, one of their uniquely crafted recipes - Papaquiles - is being served by the Today Food crew's food truck at this year's SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, which starts today and runs through March 18th.  If you're in the area, be sure to check it out!

Grilled peach cobbler. © Ryan Schierling

Oh, and dessert.  Can't forget dessert.

Query Hell

Back to the obligatory pit of author despair known as Query Hell.  In other words, everything is back to normal.

Except for me, it's not really all that hellish anymore.  I've done it too long.  I've been at this game, off and on, for the better part of several decades.  To put it in perspective, when I submitted my very first short story to a magazine, skinny ties, pastels, and leg warmers were in style - everybody wanted to look like they'd come straight off Miami Vice.  The publishing world looked much different than it does today, mainly because of the online accessibility of information to authors.

Back in the day, I'd get out my well-worn Writer's Market guide and pour over it 'til I was half blind.  After compiling a number of submission-worthy candidates, I'd carefully print out the material I'd polished and crafted, stick it carefully inside a Manila envelope with an S.A.S.E., and take my submissions down to the post office.  Then I'd go back to writing, and one by one, the rejections would trickle in.  It was always an adventure getting the mail, wondering if that would be the day I'd find an actual acceptance.  I usually didn't, and became quite calloused to getting rejections.  I filed 'em all away, collecting them like trophies, keeping the giant stack like some badge of honor.  I figure I have well in excess of a couple hundred now.  I did get an acceptance finally, got the galleys and everything.  And then nothing.  Don't know if the magazine abruptly folded or what, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Of course, there were times, jetting around the world courtesy of Uncle Sam, that this just wasn't possible.  It's hard to mail submissions out and collect rejection slips if you're not home.  Long hiatuses from the submissions game have been pretty much the norm.

And things have gotten much easier with the advent of e-mail submissions.  A whole lot easier!  I never query via regular mail now.  I have no reason to.  Yes, there are still agents out there who do not accept e-queries, but at this point in time, wouldn't you be a little hesitant of an agent who hasn't caught up with technology enough to operate that way?  Hell, a lot of agents accept only e-queries.

It's far easier, too.  There's tons of information on agents out there.  What they're looking for, how to query them, what to include, pretty much anything an author would want to know.  It's a lot quicker, too.  No complicated envelope, S.A.S.E., trip to the post office, and waiting on the postman.  Just zip it off and watch your e-mail.  You already do anyway.  Now there's more time for writing.

Except that there's not.  That time has been replaced by blogging, and tweeting, and all the other endless forms of social media out there.  Most agents want an author to have a good online presence.  They want to see the author is engaged himself, has worked to market himself as much as possible already.  It makes their job all that much easier.

Looking back, things haven't gotten any easier, but I've gotten better at it.  The one thing that jumps out at me right away is how much better I understand the publishing industry.  Publishing Separate Worlds was a tremendous learning exercise for me.  This blog has been too, especially with all the research I've put into the Literary Agents tab and sidebar.  I know better how to find what I'm looking for, and how to write better what they're looking for.

So it's back to the trenches for now, writing, editing, pouring over submission guidelines and then trying not to mix 'em up with I send the queries out.  It's still frustrating at times, but I've gotten as jaded to rejections as literary agents are to bad queries, so it's all cool.  And hey, it's not personal, it's the way things are.

Aaaaaand I'm Spent!

As of midnight tonight, National Novel Writing Month comes to a close.  For some, it eases out with the pop of a champagne cork, as they celebrate 50,000+ words spilled out into a manuscript in less than thirty days.  For some, it clangs shut like a steel safe door on fingers not quite ready to let it close.  For those belonging to the former, congratulations!  For those in the latter, hey, next year contains the month of November too.

Champagne, © Chris Chapman

Writing that quickly isn't for everyone, but it's an exhilarating experience.  I've never personally participated in NaNoWriMo, but I have cranked out the requisite amount of words before.  76,000 words for a complete novel in 26 days flat.  It was quite the rush.  I was on a roll.  And I didn't stop until the novel was finished.

Agatha Christie Books, © Eric Huang

Not everyone can write that fast.  A number of authors were renowned for writing slow.  J.R.R. Tolkien took twelve years to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and didn't publish it until 17 years after The Hobbit was published.  Some authors, like Agatha Christie, could crank out a novel in a couple of weeks.  That's pretty fast for anyone, even if you're cranking out formulaic serials.  Getting pen to paper, or in today's digital age, getting pixels to word document, isn't easy.  It takes dedication, no matter how long it takes you.

Agatha Christie, © Eric Huang

So once you finish cramming in those last few thousand words, take a moment to congratulate yourselves and reflect on your accomplishment, no matter how many words you've written, even if it's Day 29, and you have 47,000 words to go.  Allow yourselves to feel like Agatha Christie for a day.

And then let it sit.  Don't send it off to a literary agent right away - ask any of them - they'll tell you the same thing.  It's going to be a long time, and several more edits, before that baby is ready for prime time.  No novel is ready after a single pass.  Hell, a lot of them aren't ready after several.  Even when you've edited it until you think it's completely perfect, it will get hacked to pieces by agents and editors and béta readers.  But that's a good thing, trust me!  After getting Separate Worlds back from my editor recently, I was shown firsthand just how much another set of eyes can do for a story.

You're full of enthusiasm now, and you can hardly wait to share your masterpiece with the world.  They'll see it all in due time.  For now, let it rest a bit, take a break, and get involved with another project.

Trunk it!

Trunk, © Brian Ford

No, not that one.  This one!

Steamer Trunk, © Justin Masterson

And once again, congrats on a job well done.

Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt: Guest Post by David Gaughran

I've been wanting to branch out and do something a little different for a while, and one of those things was to invite another author to do a guest blog here.  I think it brings a lot more to the blog than just another opinion or perspective.  It also gives me a chance to showcase someone else here and introduce you to them and their work.

Today's guest post is by David Gaughran, an up-and-coming author, blogger, and self-proclaimed proponent of self-publishing.  He has so far published two shorter works of fiction and a nonfiction book on self-publishing, which I have read and highly recommend.  Here are his thoughts on self-publishing, with some good advice based on his own experiences.

*   *   *

There is a lot of disinformation out there about self-publishing. I chose that word carefully. Some people are consciously spreading inaccurate information about self-publishing to steer writers away from it.

In the software industry, they called this FUD: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The idea was that you would create enough question marks about a competitor's product so that the customer would stick with yours.

Those who are vigorously defending the status quo, you will find, are those that have the most to lose from it changing.

However, I'm not interested in assigning blame. I'm interested in writers getting accurate information about all the new opportunities that are presenting themselves.

Prior to 2007, a writer had one viable choice: pursuing a publishing contract. Self-publishing existed, but publishers had a lock on the distribution system. Self-publishers found it next-to-impossible to get their books in stores.

Also, to publish a print book at a price that could compete with publishers meant taking the risk of splashing out on a print run, storage space for all those books, and coming up with some way of selling to customers directly. Not easy, and a lot of people lost money.

That all changed when Amazon launched their digital self-publishing platform. Suddenly, publishers no longer had a lock on the distribution network. Plus, e-books were far cheaper to produce. There were still some costs, mainly cover design and editing, but those costs only had to be covered once - there was no extra fee for going back to the printer.

When e-books really took off in November 2010, a lot of writers began to consider self-publishing for the first time. While the first people to make real money were those that previously had a successful career in trade publishing, such as Joe Konrath and Scott Nicholson, new stars such as Amanda Hocking, John Locke, Mark Edwards, and Victorine Lieske emerged.

In addition to them, writers such as Louise Voss, J Carson Black, and Bob Mayer, switched from trade publishing to self-publishing and started to make more money. A lot more money.

By now, self-publishing has proved itself as a viable career path for unpublished writers, those who have had a successful trade publishing career, and those that haven’t.

Bob Mayer, for example, made the NYT Bestseller list twice, and shifted over 1 million copies of his Atlantis series alone for his publishers. He is making more now on his own. In July alone, he made $100,000 from self-published work.

Some people might say that all of these people are exceptions to the rule, that only a tiny percentage will succeed. But isn’t this true of trade publishing? What percentage of any agent’s slushpile will make it onto the bookshelves at Barnes & Noble? What percentage will get any kind of deal at all?

One of the more common tactics to scare people away from self-publishing is to tell them that no agent or publisher will ever touch them if they go that route. Someone should really mention that to all the agents hunting in the Kindle Store for new clients.

I know of ten self-publishers that have been approached by agents in the last few months, just from hanging out on Kindle Boards. One agency alone – Trident – has signed five self-publishers that I know of this year. Every few weeks, I hear of another self-publisher that has been approached directly to sell foreign rights to their work.

I think we can say that it’s clear that self-publishing is a viable path. But is it the best path for you and your work?

That is a question that each writer will have to answer for themselves. But what writers need to understand is that it’s not either/or. Many self-publishers I know also have trade deals for some of their work. Many in trade publishing are self-publishing “side projects” such as reverted backlist titles, short stories, or novels they were unable to place.

I think this kind of “mixed portfolio” will become more common, not less common, and in fact I think it’s a prudent approach as you will get the best of both worlds: the higher royalties from self-publishing, and the audience expansion into print that’s so hard to achieve on your own.

Barry Eisler walked away from a huge trade deal to self-publish. He released three titles, then signed a trade deal with Amazon, for one book, and has indicated he will be self-publishing further titles in the future. J Carson Black just signed a 3 book deal with Amazon. She will be releasing two self-published titles in the Fall. Amanda Hocking signed a huge trade deal with St. Martin’s Press. She will be continuing to self-publish other work. Michael J Sullivan signed a six book deal with Orbit. He will also be self-publishing.

The point is, they are not mutually exclusive paths. You can self-publish some work, and pursue trade deals for other projects.

Back in March, when I was really struggling to decide whether to pull my novel from the remaining agents that were considering it and self-publish it, I didn’t know this. It was only when I realised that I could self-publish a couple of stories – as an experiment – that I broke the impasse.

And that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t have to pull my novel. It remained with the agents. And I self-published. Two months later, I had sold over 200 books. I pulled the novel.

So for anyone unsure about self-publishing, for anyone that doesn’t know if it’s something they would enjoy, or something that could work for them, I suggest doing the same. Self-publish a short story. See if you enjoy the process. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.

If you do, then you can consider publishing your novel that way. If you don’t, you’ve lost nothing other than the minimal cost involved in publishing a short, and you will at least have learned something.

I’m a huge convert to self-publishing. If you had asked me about it six months ago, I would have thought it was only viable for writers with a sizeable backlist of reverted titles. I don’t think that anymore.

But, like most self-publishers, I wouldn’t say no to a trade deal if the terms were right. However, the difference now is that if I am approached by an agent or publisher, I will be dealing from a position of strength. I made $425 last month. From self-publishing. It’s only my third month. I haven’t even got my novel out yet.

And if a publisher approached me tomorrow, and made an offer on my novel, I know exactly what the minimum terms I would accept are. I have sales records. I have built a platform. I have a rough idea of how many books I could sell.

When I was in the slushpile, I would have taken anything. Now, instead, I know the value of my work. I’m making money. And I’m writing more than ever because the joy is back.

Chasing an agent is such a grind. It’s such a negative experience. Self-publishing has been nothing but positive. I’m back in control of my life and my career. And I’m having a blast.

Self-publishing might not be for everyone. But I think even that is looking at it the wrong way. You aren’t making a career choice which is tying you down for life, closing doors. You are making a decision on one book, or story. It’s not binding.

And if you do it right, you might find that it opens doors.

- David Gaughran

*   *   *

Many thanks to Dave for sharing that post here.  He's got a few things figured out that authors, self-published or otherwise, would do well to heed.  I wish him the best of success in his own endeavors.  His blog, Let's Get Digital, is a great source of information for both writers and readers alike, and consistently has news and current information on the world of publishing.  You can find his books on Amazon.com, as well as other digital book sources on the web.

The Right Format for your Manuscript

First of all, there is no 'right' format for a manuscript.  Everyone says something a little different.  No one wants it exactly the same as anyone else.  Let me say that right up front.

Let me also say that I'm not the expert here.  I'm trying to figure things out just like all the rest of the starving authors.  But I have learned a few things along the way, and I figured I'd share them with you.  For what they're worth.

So while there are no absolutes in what agents and publishers want from an author in the form of a manuscript, there are some basics, some standards, and some general rules of thumb that you'd probably do well to follow.

Author and former literary agent Nathan Bransford wrote a really nice blog entry on the topic, as did Moira Allen in her article on Writing World.  Chuck Rothman, writing for SFWA wrote an excellent article on the subject.  Daily Writing Tips has even more advice - sixteen manuscript formatting tips, to be exact.  And if you read down into the comments of that article, you'll find people divided all over the place on the 'right' way to do things.  And this just scratches the surface of the subject.  A little more research will provide you with additional voices, each with their own advice on how they think it should be done, or what the 'right' way of formatting is.

The agent or publisher wants to be able to read your manuscript easily, make notes where necessary, and not have to work around excess garbage to do it.  It's their job to read manuscripts.  If they read everything in 10-point Lucida Calligraphy, they'd be blind by the end of the week.  Even reading something only slightly difficult to read puts a tremendous strain on a person.  Which is why they have guidelines for the type of formatting they'd like to see.

Font is the first major bone of contention.  Some folks say Times New Roman.  Some say Courier New.  Others are less picky, and include fonts like Arial, which is a sans-serif font.  Advice I've seen says that most editors don't like those fonts.  Generally, the two most preferred fonts are Courier and Times New Roman.  Now you may have some folks who mandate one or the other - and I've seen examples of each - but they're both simple and easy to read.  And you're probably not going to receive a rejection based solely on font choice.  Change the font to whatever the agent's stated preference is and send it to them.  If they don't say, I pick either one of those two and roll with it.

As far as layout goes, almost everyone agrees on some standards here.  Generally they want to see your manuscript double spaced, printed on one side of the paper only, left justified, with one inch margins.  Again, you're going for 'easy to read' here, not 'looks like a published book'.  It's your job to provide content, the actual words written down on the page.  It's the publisher's job to provide style, what they actually look like when it's finished.  You may be adamant in your ideas of how you want it to look, but frankly, they really don't care about that.  It's supposed to look like a manuscript in the manuscript stage - they want something they can work with.  Remember, you're paid for your ideas and how eloquently you put them into words.  They're paid for how the book looks when it's sitting on the shelf in Borders.

Avoid the cutesy fancy stuff.  Just open up the word document, set the spacing and margins and font and begin typing.  That's all you need to do as an author as far as formatting goes.  You may think it looks cool to try and give the story a more interesting font, or that it helps with the theme of the story to provide it with an appropriate title font.  You may think it helps with your creativity and ability to get the words down on paper.  Whatever.  If it works for you when writing, knock yourself out.  But when you format it to send to the professionals, it needs to be professional too.  And that means you axe the Comic Sans for Courier, and take out the extra spaces and neat characters that signify the end of chapters.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of neat characters, almost every piece of advice I've heard says to simplify here too.  Lose the 'smart quotes' feature, the 'em' dash, and any other auto-formatting feature, especially when e-mailing your submission.  Characters like that tend to lose something in the translation of documents, and you really want them to see what you wrote, not some squiggly messed up character that converted wrong from ASCII.  This is especially true when sending work via e-mail.

The only formatting an editor generally wants to see is for words you want italicized.  The catch is, they almost never want you to italicize them.  They'd rather you underline them instead.  In the publishing world, underlined text is almost always understood as italicized.

It all boils down to presenting an easy-to-read document that conforms to general industry standards.  It's a simple matter of making their work easier for them, and thus making it more likely they'll want to work with you and publish your novel.  Find out the particular way a particular agent or publisher wants it and give it to them that way.  If they're not specific enough in their submission guidelines, follow as close to a standard format as you can and you should be fine.  The more professional your work is, regardless of how close it looks to a 'real book', the better your chances are to turn it into a real book.