Plotting for Writers who don't Plot... A Green Room special with Paul Austin Ardoin

A bonus episode with special guest Paul Austin Ardoin. Paul is the author of Fenway Stevenson Mysteries and he joined me and Green Room members to discuss his brilliant new nonfiction book, Outlining for Novelists who don't Outline, which is packed with tips for pantser writers who want more control over their story without losing their voice.

We discuss:
If you can you pants a mystery
Creating vivid characters
Coping with disappearing sidekicks and much more!

This is the sort of stuff that we discuss in my online writing group The Green Room all the time and I'm planning on having more special guests in the future. You can join today! There's more about the Green Room here... https://markstaywrites.com/the-green-room/

LINKS
Paul's website: https://paulaustinardoin.com 
Outlining for Novelists who don't Outline: https://paulaustinardoin.com/products/outlining-for-novelists-who-dont-outline 
Bestseller Experiment Ben Aaronovitch episode: https://bestsellerexperiment.com/ep22-ben-aaronovitch-great-bollocking/  

Transcript

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Hello, I'm Mark Stay and welcome to the Green Room. What's that you say? What happened to the Creative Differences podcast? Well, it's still a thing. Don't worry. And it will return in a few weeks with an amazing guest. More on that in a moment. But if you've listened to the Creative Differences podcast, then you'll know that I bang on and on about something called The Green Room. This is an online group for writers that I run. We meet 2 or 3 times a month. We have Q&A sessions, what we call 200 word workshops where people send in excerpts from their work in progress. And it's a community of just, frankly, amazing writers, who support each other. We talk about the craft, and we all becoming better writers as a result. Now, if this is something that you think you might want to get involved with, then, just have a look at that. If you're listening to this, have a look in the show notes to the podcast, or you see up in the corner there that little QR code thing there, there we go. If you hold your phone over that, that would take you to a direct link. It's all run through a thing called Ko-Fi 20 pounds a month, no long term obligation, any of that stuff. So it's, you know, give it a go. And a new feature of the green room is we're going to be having special guests come and talk to the group. The first one is tonight, and I thought it'd be fun to release the first of these as a podcast episode two. You, dear listener, as a taste of what's to come. We're also going to be joined by some of our green room members tonight, some of whom have sent questions in advance and will no doubt be jumping in with questions later on. So let's get on with it. My guest is so damn brilliant it seemed unfair not to share his wisdom far and wide. Paul Austin Ardoin is a USA today bestselling author. He's written the Fenway Stevenson Mysteries and the Woodhead and Becker Mysteries. He also wrote an excellent book, nonfiction book called From 0 to 6 Figures, making $1,000 a month from Writing Fiction. But his new nonfiction book is outlining for authors who don't outline. And it's out now, and it's going to be the main thrust of our conversation this evening. So, Paul, how are you? So good to see you again. How are things? I am I am doing great, Mark. Thanks for having me here. My absolute pleasure. Now, I meant to ask for the recording. Am I pronouncing your name correctly there? Paul Austin Ardoin, you know, as long as you know how to spell it and people buy it from my, my website or from Amazon or cover or anything like that. Really doesn't matter how you pronounce it. Our DD1 is my, what I call my preferred mispronunciation because it's French. And hard to say if you can't roll your eyes and stuff. So good to know. Thank you. Thank you for that. Now, this book, which I've read and absolutely loved, outlining for novelists who don't outline, it's such a great read. I had this I was basically like a nodding dog all the way through it. If you're looking for a big argument today, Paul, you're not going to get one. So when did where did this book come from? Because in the introduction, you do seem to have some issues with the attitude to Pensées and Discovery. Writers tell us where this came from. So I was, I was starting to collaborate with another author on a novel. And, because I am a pantser, I pantsed my first for for novels. He was very adamant that we plot, during this process. And he had said some terms that I didn't understand story beats and things like that. And I was, kind of a newbie when it came to, to the author world, from this. So he suggested that I read a book. And one of the first things that it said, and one of the very first chapters, is, why are you a cancer? It's it's terrible to be a pantser this way. I treated pantsing like radioactive waste. And I really I really felt like it, it it talked down to me, because it, you know, and you can see this in some of the other, other books and even some of the other plotting books I talk about in the, in the book itself, they say you cannot write a successful book without plot. And of course, because I had pantsed for books, I knew that wasn't true. And those books had even gotten good ratings. On Amazon and Goodreads and so forth. And so but I also knew that I had, when I started my fifth book, I ran into a bunch of problems. And so I realized I could take some of the elements from plotting and outlining and so forth, and get to where I needed to be to solve that particular issue, and then go back to being a discovery writer, which I think is where my strengths lie. And I didn't see any books or sessions or webcasts or anything like that on outlining. That took that approach. Everything was like, no, you must be a plotter, or you're not a real author. And so that's that was the the impetus for, for this book. And this was am I right in thinking this was a locked room mystery that you're working on that where you you have decided to use this method? Can you, can you tell us a little more about that? How how? Oh, absolutely. So, so being a mystery reader most of my life, I mean, I read most of the Pro Row books when I was in junior high school. There are some really excellent locked room mysteries out there. Of course, murder on the Orient Express is probably the pinnacle of the locked room mystery genre, or at least it has enough enough of the elements of a locked room mystery, for it to be considered as such. And so I thought I would try my hand at writing this, and, I had sort of an arc from book three to book four to book five. And so writing book five, I was like, this is great. There's a courthouse. A shot rings out in the courthouse. People flee, the courtroom doors get locked and and there's a dead body and my sleuth and the murderer is in the room, and she has to find out who the killer is. Before somebody else becomes, the next victim. Now, you know, as a as a tagline or as, you know, as a, as a pitch that just sounded really good to me. And so I started writing it as a discovery writer, and then I realized, well, hang on a second. I don't have the right people in the room. So I backed up and I was like, well, I have to take this person and this person. I guess this person has to be in there. And then I started again and like, oh, they don't have access to the information they need for the clues to be revealed about who it is backed up again. And I started to write it again and I failed again and I was like, oh no, this, this is something I'm going to have to plan. And then I started to break out all over my arms. And so and so I was like, I can't go back to that terrible book that told me I wasn't a real writer and figure out how to how to outline this. So I started to do a bunch of, of, of research on my own, and, and, and I did come up with some things that helped me get past that planning stage and figure out what to do. And I explore, that in, in the book and, you know, one of the other. Yeah. And one of the other things as well as is, I, I also had to, I wrote a time loop mystery as well, which I also, came to realize I couldn't pants, at all. I've. I've just done exactly the same thing, actually, I've, I've, I, I got about two thirds of the way through mind for. Oh, no, I've got time travel. I've got a time loop. I just, yeah, I, there is a part of me thinking I, I'm going to go as far as I can. But there was a point. I said, okay, I need to figure this out. I do need to stop and figure this out. So yeah, this is all this book was very, very relatable to me. What I really like, as well as is you talk about your approach to characters now, a lot of these outlining books or courses will say, oh, do a character sheet, figure out who your character is before you write a single word, which is is never, ever worked for me. Talk about can you talk about your, approach to writing characters? You know, in, in I've taken I actually majored in creative writing when I was doing my undergrad, and I have never been so writer blocked as I've been with a blank character sheet in front of me. Yeah. You know, I think Stephen King said it best. How do I know what the character is like before I put them in a situation and see how they react? And that's exactly what I do. I might not even know what their hair color or eye color and really, you know, in, in a lot of cases, their hair color and eye color don't really matter. And they don't they don't really express the important things about the character which which the important thing about the character is how do they react in these situations. So you put them in the situation and then you see how they react. And I get surprised by, so often by, by how these people react. They'll say something that is a little bit of TMI, maybe that, that sends a relationship that, I mean, it can change the whole course of the series. I had a, I had a tertiary character in my very first Stanley Stevenson novel who I was like, oh, yeah, she's she's the admin of the new coroner in there. And, you know, she's going to appear in six, maybe seven scenes throughout the course of the series. And, and they start talking and she suddenly burst forth with, with this, really this information that she can't tell anyone else, but because because this is her boss. Because of the because it's the coroner. Because, the coroner has to investigate this killing. She's got some information, and it just comes flooding out of her. And it she became one of my sleuths, best friends in the whole series. The whole book. Changed because of the information that she came out. And it was just so exciting, like, I right now, I even have goose bumps instead of pipes. You know, it's the good kind of skin condition, that you have. Now, I love that. I love that feeling. I love that feeling because they will come out of nowhere. They will surprise you. And we talk about this a lot in the green room, which is that characters do not exist in isolation. They don't. They're not a thing until they meet someone else and encounter someone else and, you know, have some kind of conflict with someone else. It's, it's, you know, the character sheet thing is, is a complete waste of time as far as I'm concerned. You know, and I, even when I do, finally managed to complete one. It's it's like I take a left turn when I'm, you know, two scenes in and and just throw the character sheet on the fire. Yeah, I completely agree. You mentioned one thing. I mean, you talked about your character there, who you think is going to be a minor character and then suddenly is playing a really, really key role. And I, I completely relate to that because they can surprise you and you think, oh, that's amazing. But you also talked about and this is a downside of pantsing, which is the disappearing sidekick. And I was like, oh, I've now got a name for what this is. Tell tell us more about that. Well, so so I actually, I actually haven't experienced this as a writer, but I've certainly experienced this as a reader, particularly. So I'm in I'm in a couple of different writing groups. That we one of them that I, that I meet with every month, one person, submits a novel that they have finished, but that is not edited yet and is early in the editing process to all of us to critique. And in those in in several of those situations, there is a character that is introduced and that character is, you know, part of the story up until chapter ten, and then you never see them again. And I, I've, I have not really had that. Whenever there's a plotter who is in the group who has done that because they are able to say, oh, this, this is their, their character journey, and they write it on their character sheet and, and everything like that. But the answers in the group, they're the ones who have those disappearing characters or sometimes, you know, there's the character who's in the first ten scenes and then is into it doesn't reappear until the climax or the denouement or something like that. And it's just because the way that your, your mind works as a discovery writer is the story. The story comes out as it needs to be told. And sometimes, I mean, in real life we have disappearing side characters all the time, right? Oh, I haven't talked to that person in in months. Right? Yeah. Now somebody was reading the story about this. Doesn't make any sense. That character has disappeared for six months. And so as we're telling the story, it may feel very real to us as discovery writers, but it doesn't result in a great reader experience. Yeah. No, I agree, and I've I've got first drafts listed with these, but then I go back and I see them as opportunities. I'm thinking I always kind of think, okay, imagine I'm an actor playing that part. I need to give them more to do what what is their role? And then you start looking at and we'll come to this in a minute. You look at those classic structures, those archetypes of characters. You go, oh, he's a mentor, maybe, you know, but he only appears in the first third of the book. How can he play that role all the way through the story? So I look at them as opportunities because I usually, I don't know about you. If you're pantser, do you are your first drafts a bit lighter or are they, are they go along. What's it? I am definitely an underwriter. I don't think I've had a single book in which my final draft isn't at least 10% longer than my initial draft. Yeah, yeah. But structure. Let's let's go on to structure, because structure is often I think it's one of the things people get really, really hung up on because we talk about the hero's journey, we talk about the three act structure and the monomyth and all that kind of thing, which, I think it has become popular because you can teach it and you can, you know, you can sell a course based on this. And there's usually, usually some, geometric shape, you know, there's the circle of story, the trapezoid of story, the, the Christmas tree of story or whatever. And everyone's got their own version of it. But the problem with that story structure thing is they're often talking after the fact. I remember doing, a course on screenwriting, and they were talking about Thelma and Louise, which is a perfectly structured story, and they're saying, oh, this happens on page 25, and this happens on page 50, in the last ten pages of this, that and the other. But I guarantee Carly Curry, when she was writing that, wasn't thinking, oh, I've got I've got to page 25, someone has to cross a threshold, you know, but as an editorial tool, those kind of things are useful, aren't they. Can you talk a bit about structure and how you use that. Yeah. Well, so I think answers if if we have a successful story in us, I think most of the time we are story consumers and throughout human history, stories are told with a certain expected set of things that happen in order. I mean, I can tell you right now, even though the Iliad and the Odyssey have the same structure in them. No, no creative writing teacher was telling Homer, now you've got to have this beat on page 55. I mean, it was an oral history. So, you know, in stanza 308 or whatever, whatever it is. But but because our brains are wired like other humans, brains, we expect for stories to have certain, spots in order where stuff happens. I don't think it's it's the. Oh, the twist has to happen on page 73. But if we don't have something like a twist happen on the equivalent of page 73, we are, as a species, expecting that, you know, one of I, I talk a lot about how am I creative writing undergrad? It was perhaps not the best teaching tool for being an author, but one of the classes that I took was all about how the human mind organizes information, and we expect the entire world to make sense in an order that we place upon it. When in reality, you know, I was reading an article the other day, there's no such thing as a fish, right? The same. The things that we say are fish. Some of them are actually more closely related to camels than to goldfish. Right. And because they have fins and they swim and they breathe through gills, we call them a fish, except for the ones that we don't. And, and and that and and that kind of thing. And I think stories, I think stories are really the same way. There are stories that have all different shapes and are all different ways, and they can all be, satisfying for readers, even if they don't, even if they don't fit into the monomyth box or the 12 step mystery box, or the three act structure box. But and so, you know, for for answers, we don't we don't like those boxes in general. And yeah, we can write something and look at it later and go, oh yeah, I follow the 12 step mystery pretty closely. Or I followed the hero's journey pretty closely or whatever. But there are times when you're like, well, this is interesting. This doesn't follow this real well, but my readers still like it. Now, there are times when you will do that, and your readers are like, I don't know where you're going with this. And it's because you've you've flipped those expectations, to liberally. Yeah. But, but getting back on track and going, oh, I see, I see where I went off track. Let me fix that. That's kind of where this book is, is, is trying to go and trying to help writers who who have gotten off track. Yes. Very good. The example I always give, there's a great episode of The Simpsons where they're watching an episode of Itchy and Scratchy, and Itchy and Scratchy go past a sign that says to the fireworks factory, and they never reach the fireworks factory. And Milhouse is like, where do they get to the fireworks? And it's such a great lesson in storytelling if you set something like that up, but also if you're writing a murder mystery, a locked room thriller, you need to have that moment of catharsis where the killer is revealed in a way that is satisfying in the way that we expect as thriller writers, as thriller readers, rather. So, yeah, the reader expectation is is always on what? Particularly when I'm redrafting, when I'm looking at structure, where do things hit the right place? Do they, do they, you know, do we hit the ground running or do we sort of ease into it, that kind of thing? So yeah, it's do you have a preferred story structure? You mentioned things. The monomyth, the snowflake, the 12 step mystery. Do you have a preferred one that you go to when you're when you're working, working these things out? So before I started working on this book, I never thought of myself as having a set structure that, that I write. But as I started researching all the different structures out there, and I think just about everything out there is some version of the three act structure, right? You've got yeah, you got to introduce your characters and introduce the problem. And then there's a whole bunch of stuff that your characters have to go through to solve the problem. At the middle of it. And then in the middle act, which is the longest act, and then you got to wrap stuff up at the end. And whether that's on two pages or 20 pages or 100 pages, that's, that's pretty much what every story does. Yeah. So it beyond that, it's there all just where, where is that middle coming and how, how, how do you structure the middle so that it is, that it's pleasing to the vast majority of readers out there? So one of the things that I, that I did once when I was trying to figure out what to do with that locker room mystery, is I went back to the fourth novel that I wrote, which I was really I was really quite pleased with, and I started to to reverse outline it. So I took what, what was there. And then I like just a few sentences. Here's what happens in chapter one. And then I would circle the the important stuff that needed to be revealed in each of those that in each of those chapters, so that it would make sense to the reader to to read on. And and actually, that was really helpful to me because I started realizing, oh, I could actually make the end of my chapters a lot more compelling so that people will want to. Okay, I know it's midnight, but I could read one more chapter. Yeah. Which which I think my earlier work was sort of lacking. And, but, but aside aside from that, I could really tell that, oh, gosh, this is a lot more structured than I thought. It was like, I'm doing things here. And I, and I looked at, at, so there's a website called Anonymous Christy that, does a 12 step, that it has a 12 chapter outline, for it. And, you know, that web page right at the top says you can't pants a mystery. It's one of the first things, things that it does. But I, I'm like, okay, well, I don't do that, and I don't do that, and I don't do that, but and nine of these of these chapters here are, are really are really things that I do. And, and each of the books and I, and I address the same issues that are brought up in the things that I don't do. I, I'm really a lot more of a formulaic writer than I thought. And one of the things that this reverse outline made me do is I went, and I started looking at my other books, too, and then I realized, these are all 27 chapters. Every single book that I have spent so far is exactly 27 chapters. And and then I look, I'm like, yeah, the dark night of the soul is right around the end of chapter 16. Sometimes it's 17, sometimes it's 15, sometimes it's 18. But I, I'm always like the place where the sleuth is like, I, I either I can't solve this mystery or there's another murder. And it was something I didn't expect or something, something like that. It was all happening there. So I know that from reading Agatha Christie when I was in junior high, reading Encyclopedia Brown when I was in first grade, all, all of all of that stuff that I had sucked into my brain, my mind had ordered it, into what became my personal 27 chapter outline that I don't think I follow when I'm pantsing, but apparently my my brain is like, yeah, yeah, no, we're not following in at lunchtime or following, but but now that you're aware of that 27 chapter thing, do you now if you get to chapter 28, do you think, oh gosh, I'm running long. Well, so when I get to chapter. So I also write linearly. I have in, in all of the books that I've written, I have written exactly one chapter out of sequence, in the first, in the first draft. And when I get to chapter, if, if I get to chapter 18 and I haven't had a dark night of the soul, I'm like, I bet this is getting boring. And I'll go back and I'll and I'll and I'll read. And I'm like, oh, this character wouldn't do this here. She do this. And, you know, as a pantser, you know, a lot of answers are like, well, my characters are completely taking over my story. I, I don't I'm not writing it. My characters who live inside my head are, are working like, Remy the rat to the rat or to each other. And I'm, I'm just I'm just typing the stuff that the characters are playing out in my head, and I and I think, you know, and sometimes, sometimes they fall asleep at the wheel, there and and you're just writing stuff and you're like, well, what's that I just spent an hour on? That was crap. I gotta, I gotta fix that and go back and like, one of the one of the reasons why people say why plotters say that plotting is, is superior is because if you're following your outline and, and and you're a plotter who can can do this, you don't get a lot of those. What did I just write for the last three chapters? I need to throw this away because you're following, you know, and then this happens. And then I wrote very clearly that this is how that person reacted to this. And then the gunshot happens, or then the breakup happens, or then the spaceship or whatever. And so I don't think you get I don't think you get off, you don't get off the rails as a plotter nearly as often as you get, off the rails as a, as a pantser. But that's not that's not a bad thing, because I know as I know, I've talked to lots of answers, and there are times I'm like, yeah, I was like, I think this is going off the rails. Oh, wait, no it's not. Oh, that is brilliant. I am the smartest writer who has ever existed. And you know, and then you get like a burst of energy and you write 10,000 words and three hours. Yeah. And, and that also doesn't usually happen with plotters, at least not the plotters that I've talked to. Now, I, I had a moment like that yesterday. I got to the end of a chapter and a character sets. I thought, oh, of course they're going to say that. I've come and it's it is going to change. You know, I feel like, a bit like Gromit in The Wrong Trousers, where he's laying out the track at a really, really high speed. That's what it's kind of. Yeah, I might I might look 2 or 3 chapters ahead and think, okay, what are the consequences here? What could change here? I don't want to go too far ahead. But sometimes I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, we are going off track. But it's a good track. Let's, let's go and explore. Let's go and see what's down there. So yeah. And and if and when you go off track in a way that is satisfying to you as a writer, I would say nine times out of ten it's going to be very pleasing to the reader because it doesn't feel like it came out of nowhere. Yet it feels like a twist that wasn't expected, but in a good way. Yeah, I know in an organic way, as well as not being force, it's not. You're not shoehorning something in a just because your outline told you to do, or just because, you know, Joseph Campbell told you to do that. It's happening. Exactly. Driven by the character and their actions. Paul, we've got a couple of, our greenroom folks are with us today. We've got a couple of questions from them. And also Green Room, as if you've got any questions. Pop them in the chat box there as well. And we can we can run them by Paul. So we'll start with C, and free has a question, what inspired you to move from murder mystery to time loop murder mystery? Was it experimentation, market trend, the muse on overdrive, and the book that he's talking about? There is a time for murder, which is, you're, the first in your time loop detective series. Yeah. So, it was not writing to market. It wasn't anything, except I love time loop stories. Groundhog day is one of my favorite movies ever. In 2020, when, you know, everybody was at home because of the pandemic, this movie called Palm Springs, starring, Adam Sandler and Christina Milioti came out for that film. And I thought it was I thought it was great. And they never mentioned Groundhog Day and it. But they they certainly did allude to it. A little bit later that year, there was a teen romance movie called The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, which also, is a timeless movie and very, you know, and and I loved Edge of Tomorrow when it came out and, and actually it was after seeing the map of tiny perfect things, which I don't usually like teen romance movies. I mean, you know, that can be good. But it's not usually my thing. I like this so much. I was like, oh, hang on, I really like time loops. Like, this is time loops is something that I, that I really like. I wonder if anybody's done a time loop murder mystery. And I searched and there were some that are sort of kind of close. There are some time travel, murder mysteries out there where the sleuth can travel in time and do that. But nobody had ever done a time loop. Mystery. And the whole premise of this is that this, this guy, get this detective, get stuck in a time loop. When he meets another, he goes to another detective's retirement party. And this detective solves has just a fantastic celebrate. Nobody knows how she does it. And, and she there at the retirement party, they shake hands, the lights go out, and suddenly the power is transferred from her to him. And so she's sort of his, mentor in, in this sort of like the, the, the Dean Stockwell character in Quantum Loop, is sort of the, the guide to, to Samuel Beckett. And, and he has to solve the murder within within 48 hours or it goes back on itself. I had also read, in the UK, it's called The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Yes. Yeah. And and that was that is as close to a time loop mystery as, as as I've been able to find. And I loved, loved, loved, loved that book. It was probably my favorite book that came that came out the year it came out. And so I, I wanted to do this just as a passion project, from for myself. But because it was, you know, unusual. I can market it. I can put it in the science fiction time travel category. I can put it in the hardboiled mystery category, and it can get, it can get, and, I can expose myself to an audience that I might not have been able to get to with my strict, police procedurals. It's that magic word that publishers and agents love, which is crossover. Oh, you're appealing to two sets of readers, perhaps even three. It's, certainly, you know, so what we discovered when we published Ben on a witch Orion, because it was on the Garland's list and we thought was going to sell to, you know, urban fantasy fans, but all of the people or but pretty much all of the people turning up to these book signings were crime crime readers who were happy with the fantastical elements of the story. And then you get that magical crossover thing. So yeah, yeah, good luck with that. In fact, Fee Feature says I just bought this novel. Sounds brilliant. Nicely done. So all right. Thank you very. You know, you do have to be careful when you attempt a crossover because, you know, everything. I talk a lot in this book and in my, from 0 to 4 figures book about reader expectations and about how when you write your book and and you publish it the way that you market, it has to, align with the type of reading experience that the reader has. It doesn't matter. Like if you can get somebody to buy your, your book from a great cover and a great blurb. But if the inside doesn't match the experience that they have, that, that, that they have, when you know what kind of book they think they're going to get when they buy it, then you've you've lost the reader. And that's one of the reasons why. Yeah, A time for murder is kind of a pedestrian name, for a pedestrian title. And I could have done something that was more thematic or whatever, but I couldn't think of anything that it's very clear this is a story about a murder and having time and the the the big, clock guy with going like this in front of the clock, very, very clearly says there's going to be some element of temporal anomalies in here. And so people I don't think people will look at my cover and be surprised that this is a time mystery. I mean, especially since the title of the series is a time loop. Mystery. You know, there's time loop in in that itself, but I would be very careful trying to thread the needle on multiple genres unless you can. And actually, that was one of the reasons why I didn't write this story for, for a really long time, because I was like, it's going to be tricky to market this. But in the end, the and, you know, I'm like, I don't really care if if this sells. It's a book I want to write. Yeah. You just described my entire career that pull it's, marketable books that I really enjoy writing. But, Danny has a question, about, Well, I'll get Danny to ask it himself. Danny, how are you doing? You got a question about about, the locker room mystery and backtracking. Yeah. So you mentioned at the start that, that you kind of had to backtrack a bit when you were writing the murder mystery. The fifth one, I think you said. Or the sixth one. I just wondered, like when you're when you were writing your other books, did you did you pinch those crimes? So the crimes at the center of the books, were they just kind of useful? Oh, we'll make it this thing. We'll just see what happens as we go along. Or do you have to actually plan out that part of the book to make it make sense and drop clues and sort of have it? So a coherent when when I pantsed my first four novels, I, I generally I knew who the, the victim was and I knew who the killer was, and I had a pretty good idea of why the killer had killed the victim. I have spoken with other, murder mystery partners who have no idea who the murderer is when they start their book. And to me, that's like. Well, that's that's not me. I don't know that. I don't know that I can do that. I've also been, I think with my third book I had intended for, one, killer to get one person to be the killer. But as I was writing it, I other things just kept kept, fraying at the edges and in a similar way. And I was about two thirds of the way through the book, and I'm like, hang on a second. It's not this person who's the killer, it's this person who's the killer. And I think my subconscious has been fraying those edges on purpose because this person, never the person I intended to be the killer, always felt more like a red herring than than a killer. So, I mean, I had cancer problems, am I right? That, that that sort of thing I don't think would have happened had I not had studied if I had if I had outlined it, it it wouldn't have happened that way. What I do if every Agatha Christie approach, isn't it? Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know whether Agatha Christie was a pantser or a plotter. I know, I mean, I can't imagine some of her stories are so intricate that I can't imagine she didn't plot at least some of her books. She changed a lot of stuff. Like she didn't always know from who I understand that she didn't always know. Or she changed her mind on who the killer would be, depending on how the book is from from what I heard, she would get to the denouement, give everyone a reason to murder, you know, to do the murder, and then decide at the last minute and then go back and retrofit everything, which is. Well, I mean, I've, I've certainly yeah, I of course, but, obviously I'm almost as much of a genius as Agatha Christie is. I have gotten to the point where, you know, oh, three, three quarters of the way through the book that I've changed who the killer is. And I do have to go back and change the breadcrumbs and make sure that I've laid this clue down and everything like that. Again, these are not often problems. Well, maybe they are problems that plotters face face as well. But I know, you know, as as a pantser, I think we probably do that a lot more than plotters do. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Thank you. Okay. Andrea has a question about the, 0 to 4 figures book. She says she's heard a rumor. A rumor that there's a new edition coming. Is that true? Yes. So I wrote this about three years ago, and the the publishing industry has changed a bit. I think the the biggest change is, is I, and and marketing has changed, although when I went back to rewrite it, marketing actually hasn't changed as much as I thought it had. So I've added some, I've added some chapters about how to deal with, with AI and the choices that you have to make as a writer. I've been, I, I don't want to come across in the, the book as pro AI or anti anti-air because I know there are authors who feel very strongly in, in both directions. And who there are also authors who, you know, don't use AI in their writing, but who don't mind using AI tools in their marketing. So, there there is a new version coming out. I've actually finished the text of that, and it just has to be, proofread. And then I'm going to redo the, the audiobook for that. Yeah. So yes, that I'm hoping that's going to come out in the next 3 or 4 months. Excellent. Look out for that. Bruce also sent a question in advance, about pivoting to another genre. Now, Bruce's passion project is the Wessex Legacy series. He says the books are very niche, and they're proving pretty hard to sell at the great Book. So Bruce, first was fantastic. Says I'm thinking about pivoting to a more streamlined genre, maybe medical themed traditional mysteries. What advice would you have for me regarding pen names, mailing lists, covers and marketing? So, Bruce, shall we bring you to the for. Hey, Bruce. Put your clothes on. Bruce. I need to count to three to. Take you inside the tumor. Yeah. So I actually had a, look at the Amazon page for for this book and I. And from what I see, correct me if I'm wrong, but you've got one book in this series. Correct? So. Yeah. Yeah. So, now as, as an, as an indie author, it's really difficult to market a standalone book. There, you don't have a publishing house with a marketing department behind you. And, and you don't have the investment that they that needs to be made in a standalone book in order to get it in front of the people who need to see it, who would be interested in it. So, my advice, my first piece of advice, if you want to get your, your passion project, in front of more readers is to put at least three books out with a fourth one on preorder before you start marketing it. Now, the other thing, we were talking about, genre splitting for this. And I do think that when I first saw this, I thought we were talking about one of those. Why a I could academic, academy, type books with a little bit of magic in it. And then as I read, like, oh, I was totally wrong with my first impression. This is, this is a historical mystery. And I know the Amazon page at the top, the breadcrumbs, historical mystery in that. But I miss that. And the type small to and but the I don't think that that historical, mystery and I mean a lot of people don't think the 90s even even though technically it is 30 years old, is is a historical mystery. I don't think a lot of readers, align with that definition of, of, historical mystery. So, I would I would look at getting the, the genre of what that actually is and, coming to age, mystery set in, in the 90s in a, in a, finishing school for, a boarding school. Yeah. So, I mean, right there, you've got a lot of elements that are like Harry Potter. That you don't you don't want people thinking that this is like Harry Potter when, when, when you read it. So I, I would play up the mystery. There is, there is a middle grade, series of of books, written by Robin Stevens, who I believe you've had on, the bestseller experiment. My used to I used to, I used to work with her. She's fantastic. Yeah, I and I and I love that series of books. That is a historical mystery. Also set at a at a boarding school. Wonderful. And, and for adults, too. Not just just middle grade. Now, I don't think your book is is why, yeah. Even though it's a coming of age story in that the protagonists are probably in their teens. But if you can make it clear that this is a historical, this is a mystery series for adults, and it just happens to be set, in this particular place, you may find that that you are getting in front of a readership that's more interested in purchasing it. And again, I wouldn't even try marketing this until you had you had three books out. Because when readers, what readers are always worried about what they're going to read next, and if they read a book, one in a series of five books and they like it, they know the next four books they're going to they're going to buy. And so it makes your marketing and, your efforts, a lot easier. You just have to worry about getting that first book out. Yeah. To people, even if they're connected. Standalones. It's a lot easier to market connected standalones than unconnected standalones. And it's a lot easier in a market series, than any kind of standalones. So but that wasn't your question. Your question was if you want to, pivot to, a more genre friendly type of mystery, how would you do that with pen names and so forth. So I think so for me, my time loop mystery, I had to make a decision. Do I want my time loop mysteries? Under the same, name as my regular police procedural mysteries? And, you have to deal with a different website. You have to deal with different email addresses. You have to deal with the different, different types of marketing. And if I were, if I, Well, and I did I wrote three romances and I definitely decided a different name for those, but, but these were so close, I decided it probably wasn't worth it to make the additional investment and and the time investment, especially in what I would have to do to create a new pen name and market it, under there. Now, if you decide to go any, anywhere, besides, murder mystery, you might be able to get away with the same name with action adventure, or psychological thriller or something like that. But if you went into Western or if you went into, into romance, or if you went into sci fi or fantasy, I would I would definitely, use a different name because you'll get your also, bots on Amazon really messed up because, you know, people who bought your fantasy series also bought, your boarding school mysteries. And that's not going to that's not going to play nicely with the, with the robots. So thank you. We all need to play nicely with the robots, don't we? Because they're all listening. Yes. Bruce's book for those listening Footsteps of Heroes is an absolutely cracking read. Highly recommended to do. Please check it out. Faye has a question. How reliant are you on social media for book visibility or do you rely on your website and newsletter. So you're talking it in, you know, in updating your book how things had changed, you know, the from 0 to 4 figures, how the market had changed. It used to be you'd put something on Twitter and you get a lot of interest, but that's not really the case anymore, is it? No. And one of the things that you'll hear a lot in, in, in expert sessions and so forth is, don't build your house on somebody else's land. When you rely on social media, to promote your books, you're building your house on somebody else's land. Now, last year at, an author Nation in Vegas, which used to be the 20 books to 50 K show, I sat in, a session, that Becca Syme me was leading, and it was, called, I believe it was called something like marketing for introverts. And and in it, I mean, that describes 95% of, of writers out there. Yeah. And one of the things she said was, hey, you know, you hear all this stuff about what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing. What you really need to do is you need to be authentic, and you need to market in a way that doesn't sap all your energy or that makes you really struggle to be authentic. So if that means you build your house on somebody else's land, build your house on somebody else's land. If if Facebook marketing is the thing that makes you feel the most comfortable, and if you've had success there, then by all means continue to do it. Have a backup plan in case you know Facebook get shut down in six months or it becomes, whatever horrible thing it could be, can become just like Twitter did. But but but but but market it, authentically. And I think, you know, I, I've, one of my favorite writers is, Sean Inman, who, writes the Middle Falls, time travel series. Gosh, what a surprise. Paul, you like time travel books? And, he markets exclusively on, on Facebook. And it's because he doesn't like all that other stuff. He doesn't like building a newsletter. He doesn't, he he engages with people on Facebook. He writes long posts on Facebook. He's got, like, something like 300,000 people in his middle falls time travel, Facebook group. And he's really successful doing doing it. Now, is that for me? That is not for me. I, I'm fine with Facebook, but I don't. I wouldn't feel comfortable with the level and engagement that he does. On Facebook. I really like putting out a newsletter, and I'm one of those people. I do my newsletter fortnightly, and I and I have not missed an every other week in years, since I started publishing, back in 2018. Now I have author friends who really, really, really, really struggle putting together newsletters. I don't I don't have a problem coming up with an article, article stuff to write. I don't have a problem saying, hey, my my new book is kind of is coming out. And I actually I release my books on Tuesday because my newsletter goes out on Tuesday. And so every time there's a new, there's a new release, I can sync it. My news. I don't have a problem syncing it to my newsletter now, I mean it. I could have it come out on Thursday. It's probably not a big deal, but it's what I feel comfortable with. It's how I feel. Authentic. And so that's the way. That's the way I market it. Yeah, yeah. Are you, it's, you spoke earlier about, collaboration as well. I just want to come back to the, the book that we were talking about at the beginning, outlining. How have you collaborated since? Because I think it was collaborating with someone that sort of makes think, can you talk a bit more about that? That that collaboration. My, my coauthor got so frustrated with how much time it was taking me to learn how to outline. He just wound up writing the entire book himself, which was not was not ideal in terms of of how I thought, you know, things could go. But I was a new author. I didn't know what I was doing, at the time. And so. So I was fine. I was fine with that. And we're still great friends, now. So it wasn't a problem, but it certainly wasn't what I. What I expected, how I expected that to end. I have not collaborated since because because that experience was so surprising to me. And it and it it was it. I spent a lot of time without anything to show for it. At the end, however, in researching this book, I have come across, several ways that other, dancers have been successful collaborating. So, for instance, one way, to do this is to alternate chapters. If you're both dancers, you can alternate chapters. And it's I mean, you think one person writing is flying by the seat of their pants, two people writing in alternating chapters. That sounds, that sounds like, that sounds crazy to me. That's a high wire act, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. But and again, you know what they say that's so crazy. It just might work. But people have done that successfully. Other people have set, sort of half outlines where one person is a plotter and they plotted their stuff and the other person is a pantser, and they've gone in and, and set Guideposts along the way, and they're like, okay, I'm going to do some sort of reversal here. A chapter at the end of chapter 16. And they're going to find out what the big bad here is at the end of chapter 20. And I don't know what the big bad is yet, but it's going to be revealed. Right, right there. And, the, the the, the person who's that that that's actually Mark Leslie LaFave, who is, is quite well known in, in the indie author community who was, collaborating on a book with that. And he said, here's a little bit worried because his coauthor was such a plotter, but that was enough to make her feel comfortable, to, to go forward with it. And it turned out to be a very successful book. Yeah. I mean, the reason I bring it up was because I've been I've been co-writing a novel and screenplay recently, and now the novel, alternates between male and female characters, and my co-writer prefers to outline, not in a very big way, but basically that five power thing, a five act thing. And we would sit down and discuss that, and then we'd we'd have story sessions over online like this. She lives up in Scarborough and we'd have a conversation. Then I go write my chapter, then she can write hers, and then we just sort of check and read and then move forward with the screenplay. I mean, we started yesterday outlining a new idea for a screenplay. After having a conversation with the director and screenplays, you kind of have to have an outline. Because so many people get involved as well, eventually. So you know that I've learned to work both ways, if you like. I've learned to work. You know, obviously there's a episode of the bestseller experiment. We did. The 50,000 word outline won't be doing that again. But, you know, we do, you know, having it, having a basic outline. And even if I'm pantsing, I have to know how it ends. I have to know where my character ends up and how they've changed what they what their arc is. Once I've got that, I kind of feel I can start. So, Yeah, it's, it's there's no one way of doing this. This is the thing, isn't it? There's no, you know, and I actually mentioned that bestseller experiment, that episode with, Ben Aaronovitch where he, he gave you a, he admonished you rather stringently about, just, you know, about abandoning your 50,000 word outline and just and just writing it. But I also acknowledge there are people who like having long outlines like that. Yeah, yeah. And and if you decide that, hey, maybe this is what this this book needs for me to get past this problem, then by all means, you know, do it. And if you decide, oh, I it turns out I'm not a pantser. It turns out I'm a plotter. That's fine, but but, you know, the book really is like, solve your problem and then get back to the way that you, are comfortable successfully writing. Absolutely. For that. And whether your your outline is 100 words or 50,000, it doesn't really matter as long as the finished product is something that you're happy with and and something that that resonates with readers. Exactly. And frankly, there is an argument that the Pantsed first draft is just a very long outline because you're going to go back and fix stuff anyway. So, you know, it's, it's been absolutely brilliant talking to the poor folks. The book is outlining for novelists who don't outline, you can get it. And you've gone wide with this as well. So you can get it from Apple, Kobo wherever you get it, direct from Paul at his website. Again, we'll have links, for you in the, in the show notes as well, so you can check that out. That is actually just before we wrap up. I mean, it's interesting that you have you've gone why you combined with the Fenway Stevenson series, is that correct? I went live with with everything, that that that I've done. I, I went with KDP select for the first three months and I wasn't getting any Patriots, so I went wide and immediately started getting sales on Kobo. I know that's not normal. That's not that's not a comment. I should say. The, the Woodhead and Becker series is only available on Amazon, but it's because I sold that series to Vinci Books and they are on, an Amazon only, publisher. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Excellent. Wonderful. Well, Paul, it's been great speaking to you again. I learned so much every time I talk to you. And I'm reminded of those principles about writing on children and think, whatever. It's been it's been great. It's been great talking to you, too, Mark. I really appreciate the offer. Thank you. Thank you. Folks, listen, if you've enjoyed this special episode, consider joining the green room. Now, if you're watching on YouTube, you've got that little QR code thing up there you can that will take you straight to the coffee page. And if you're listening, there's going to be a link in the show notes. This is the kind of stuff that we discuss all the time. We normally do it in zoom, so there's a lot of voices at once sometimes, but it's it's a lot of fun. And, so yeah, do consider it. Paul, great to speak to you. And folks, until next time, happy writing, reading and being different. Take care.