Ep 204 The Scenes Every Novel Needs

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. I'm Kat Caldwell. This is episode 200 and 4 of the podcasts, and it is Halloween today as I record this, little bit behind. Usually the ep the episode comes out on Monday.

We've been doing some things behind the scenes, had some issues with school that I had to deal with. I am first and foremost a mom of teenagers and a 10 year old who thinks she's a teenager. So those always come first, but here we are. It is Halloween. Happy Halloween.

I hope you have your costume and your candy ready to go for all those kids that are about to come up and, you know, beg for food for free food at your door. And then tomorrow starts November. How is this possible? I don't know. I was telling a friend of mine that the this time of year seems to go faster the older I get, which I don't think I like.

I don't like that idea. A, it means that I'm older. You know? So I'm having this, like, personal crisis with getting older. But, anyway so we are heading into NaNoWriMo.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? I, for 1, am not. I am not doing it. I've only ever finished it one time. I think I've said this before.

It's really, it's it's great in some ways. Everyone has mixed feelings about it. I think the idea of it is awesome. I I think that the month is the worst month ever in the entire world. Of all the months that we could choose, I think it's the worst month.

I'm not sure what other month would be good except for maybe, like, February because, a, it's shorter, and, b, like, nothing's happening in February except for maybe a Valentine's box of chocolates, but nothing else is happening. I mean, November, especially as a mother, or if you're a teacher full time, my god, it'd be horrible. It'd be so so hard. And this year, we are going to be traveling. I traveled this weekend, and then we're traveling to to Europe for Thanksgiving to see family, and it's just not gonna happen.

So I'm not gonna stress myself out. That is sort of my quarter 4 thing. I am not gonna stress myself out. But if you are participating in NaNoWriMo, good luck. May the odds be ever in your favor more or less.

You know? And and don't stress yourself out. I have a client who's going to participate in NaNoWriMo, and I said, you know, try to do as much as you can. I have learned that I love writing every day. I love getting words down onto paper every day.

With the way that my life has been in the last month, it hasn't happened, and I can feel the difference. I I would prefer to be writing at least a little bit every day. The problem with writing a certain amount every day is if you haven't really spent the time thinking about the story. And at least that's what I found when I focused on words every day. And this is something, I guess, it just depends on what story it is.

Perhaps you spent a lot of time thinking about this story. This is why people have Preptober in which they're trying to help you prep your story so that you don't get caught in the middle, so that you don't, you know, stress out, so that you don't write 50,000 words and toss 20,000 of them. On the other hand, I am a big proponent of overwriting because you can also always toss words that's easier than writing new ones. Of course, as you get further into your career, it's quite easy to write new ones as well as long as you know what you're writing. Right?

Does that make any sense to anyone? I encourage you to take time to think about your story if that is what is needed. I encourage you to take a day off if you need to. If you can write more one day, go ahead. I would look at the 50,000 as a goal.

But if it doesn't happen, the most important thing is that you did some writing that month. Right? You are further along than you would have been had you not participated. So try to find all of the good ways participate in NaNoWriMo. Please don't kill yourself.

Please still walk. You still have to get up, stand, stretch, maybe do some waga yoga, waga. We're just gonna make up something new. Walk while doing yoga. So do some yoga, take a walk, maybe borrow a puppy from somebody who has to get a walk in.

So you have to go out into the sunshine. We do not want to get sick, you know, whether physically or emotionally or mentally just for our books. Like, we don't wanna kill ourselves over our books. Right? So for me, I have been, I will not be participating, but I have been trying to figure out how I'm going to get some things done in the next 2 months.

I am on the business side, will be focusing on putting together the landing page and how I am going to put together the workshops and the payment options for that. It doesn't sound like a lot, and yet thinking through payment options for people has been a bear to figure out. And I think I finally figured it out. There will be a one chunk way to pay for it, and then there will be, like, a subscription base to the monthly workshops. So I just have to figure out kind of the bonuses to maybe the subscription base or the the pay for it all in one one's go, and pay for it all in one go, I think I will set it up per quarter.

But I kinda wanna have, like, an extra workshop or something like that. And just as we live in a a world that is run by money, I have to figure out a way in which it compensates everyone. If you don't know, I pay people to come in and and teach workshops. I believe in peep people being compensated for their time and for their knowledge. And so I have to work in how much I pay them versus, you know, how much I wanna charge people versus, how much I wanna earn.

And that's not super new for me, but it's still semi new for me. And so I have to figure out how that all fits together. And it is actually really easy to mess up and earn, like, $2 an hour because you're trying to be nice and not charge too much or, you know, maybe you overpay or you owe like, I don't know. It it has happened to me before. Yes.

It just has because my brain is not so much on the number side. And so now I am bringing things to my husband and having his his wisdom, be given to me, allowing myself to be bathed in the wisdom of a finance guy. So then he has to you know, he'll say, you should charge more, and I say no because nobody wants to spend $400 on a workshop. It's just not gonna happen. So my workshops, I think what I'll do is on a subscription base, they will probably be, $30 or under.

I have to figure out the exact. And then there will be sort of every month, a 24 hour early bird sale, and then there will the main cost of the workshop will be $47. So I'm gonna keep it to the top price being 47, and I just have to work out subscription versus early bird, you know, what incentive I want to have there, and then possibly, sort of bonuses for getting on the subscription. Yeah. So that's on the business side.

On the writing side, I finally booked a line editor. She's really awesome. Copy editor. I think I think she calls it copy editing. I always get confused.

I ask every editor who comes on here what is the difference. I don't know. I think she calls herself copy editor. She can't see my books until January, which just confirms that I have to start the Kickstarter in February, and that is just okay. So bended loyalty, I am 30 pages from finishing up the edits from the last, book coach who we brainstormed together slight changes.

So I just have to get that done. I will then be sending off spending love for developmental editing once I can just sort of read through it and make sure it's, you know, not horrendous. I haven't even had time to read through it or listen to it or anything, since I finished it. This is how crazy life has been. And in the meantime, I I am just really rearing to go to finish the historical romance.

If you guys have any tips on how these these writers are so prolific, please send them my way. I have no idea how people get everything done. I just, I really don't have any idea. We have been traveling. My grandmother turned 97 this month and had lots of kids stuff, so I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe they have a cook because dinner takes forever as well. My kids demand to be fed every day. I don't know why. So what I've been doing is going back to scenes, to the basics of scenes.

By the time I pick up the historical romance, it will have been 2 months since I touched it. I also have the, the 4 book series that I of contemporary romance that just keeps popping into my head, and I'm so excited for that series, but I haven't been able to write on it yet. So what I'm trying to do is figure out a way I'm going back to plotting, and y'all know I am not a natural plotter. It's one of those things where, like, you study. It's almost like math.

You study, and then you get to the test, and you're like, this is not what I studied. I don't understand any of this. This is a foreign language to me. So every time I think about plotting, I think I got it in my brain, and then I sit down to do it. And I'm like, I don't know what's gonna happen in chapter 3.

How do I how am I gonna do this? And it just becomes gibberish to me. So I'm trying to think of a different way to do this for myself and for you guys. And first, I I just think it will be helpful to myself, honestly. This is selfish, but I also think it'll be helpful to you.

And if you are, participating in NaNo, if you ever get stuck, I think that this will be helpful to you as well. I'm gonna try to talk into the microphone here. So I am pulling up a few things. Just we're gonna go through this fairly quickly. But just so that you know, there are certain scenes that you have to have in your book.

Okay? A couple of the scenes. And when we go through these scene, these titles, understand that it, it doesn't have to be 1 chapter. It doesn't have to be 5 chapters. A scene is not necessarily a chapter.

You can have several scenes inside a chapter. But when I say these scenes, that is up to you on how many you need. And it really depends on the genre, and it really depends on you as a writer. So the first thing that you need, the first scenes that you need is the setup world. Now I say this as a caveat.

Some people want to put their inciting incident on the first page, and that can happen. Some people, what I've seen lately as I edit some scenes, is that they want to put a hint of the inciting incident on the first page. It's all okay. You can do whatever you want. But the truth is, whether the inciting incident happens at the 10% mark or at the 1% mark, you still have to set up the world.

Whether it's sci fi, whether it's fantasy, whether it's historical, or whether it's contemporary, we need to see where the character is in their present day setting. And, again, this is easier to say to other people than it is to do to ourselves. So I find it easier to write and then go back and question myself on whether I have done this as I'm editing. But I like to tell people that the reader, in order to really understand the impact of the change and the new world at the end, we need to understand the current world, what their worldview is, who they are, how they're interacting with people, where they're living, what kind of impact that life is having on them. And you could possibly do this in 1 to 2 scenes.

You might need 10 scenes. Now the the typical Googled percentage of inciting incident, what we talk about in general, is that the inciting incident has to happen about at the 10 to 12 to 15% mark. That is to say that it needs to happen fairly soon, and that is the next set of scenes that we need to see. Now I think when we say that, as we start writing the book, it makes us anxious. And so a lot of writers then put the inciting incident as soon as possible.

And I don't want you to do that either because I don't want you to take away from setting up the world. I understand that we don't want to overwrite the worlds. Like we don't need to know every single detail about it, but we do need to know the rules. We need to know the outlook of the main character, how they see the world and how they're interacting with the world. And we can continue to see this when the inciting incident happens.

But if you want to avoid a lot of backstory, even if you don't wanna avoid a lot of backstory, like, let's say, a contemporary book with a lot of backstory is the last thing he told me. The way that that book is written is we are plunged into the world in pretty much the inciting incident at the very beginning. I think it's the 2nd page. And then we have to go backwards, and we have to get the those set up through backstory. Some people like that.

Some people don't like that. That is your choice as a writer, but you're still gonna need to spend that time on those scenes. Right? So I don't want you to feel rushed to getting the inciting incident on the page. That's my point here.

So between the 12 to 15% mark is when you're gonna want that inciting incident, which pushes the main character to realize that something has happened, something has changed, and they are going about to be forced to to step into a new world. Then the next few scenes is the main character setting up their goal, and this is usually a response to the inciting incident with their old world view still intact. So we definitely do not want the main character to completely change who they are just because the inciting incident happens. If aliens come and attack Earth, your hotshot, you know, f 35 fly a fighter pilot. I was gonna say f 16.

F whatever. We fly. Whatever is makes a lot of noise when they go over my house. They're not going to be anything else but the hotshot pilot at this point. Okay?

Maybe the the change that they're going to make by the end of it is that they're going to become more humble, but aliens invading earth is only going to make them more of a hotshot. Like, oh, these aliens decided they were going to invade my planet? No. I am going to attack them. Right?

We don't we don't change just because, life hits us in the face. In fact, we tend to dig our heels in to who we were and what our worldview is. So the the main character is going to figure out a plan. So if, the husband, the spouse leaves them, if the kids drop out of college, if they get fired, if whatever that inciting incident is, they gotta figure out a plan. And a lot of times, the plan is going to be, how do I make sure my world stays as closely resembled to what it was a day ago as possible?

That is typically their plan, unless they're super neurotic and they just like their way of dealing with stuff is leaving or completely changing things. Right? That's possible as well. That'd be really interesting, actually. Anyway, so they're gonna have a goal and then come the twists because, of course, you're gonna have plot twists in which they are going to be their goals and their plans are going to be thrown off.

Right? Because, of course, their plan can't work properly because, otherwise, there's no story there. We gotta have things throw them off. Right? We are watching The Lincoln Lawyer, my husband and I, and he was talking today.

We just started the 2nd season, and he was like, I don't understand why they do this. Like, now he's supposed to be some sort of hotshot, and I don't think I like him as much. And then I said, well, of course. They have to throw in a twist. If he was just, like, this really upstanding lawyer, defense lawyer, who we all loved and we never saw anything morally gray in his character, it wouldn't be that interesting and we'd get bored and we'd stop watching.

So, of course, you have to throw in some twists. So the twists are gonna be throughout the book, and that is really up to you. There are formulas out there. CS Lincoln has some great teaching on this, and she'll give you certain percentages on when those twists might come in to play. I encourage you to get her I think it's she has a scene course.

Maybe it's 10 scenes or something like that. So I encourage you to check that out if you really like percentages. I'm going to go with throw in some twists because these are probably the things that are just coming at you from your writer brain and your writer guts. Right? Like, the these are the things that you want.

They're gonna think it's this this killer, and then all of a sudden they're gonna end up showing up dead. And so, of course, they can't be the killer. You know, it has to be somebody else. These are the twists. You already know these twists, so you're gonna have to put them in throughout the book.

You also have, turning points. You'll see these. These are where the main character figures something out, and they either have to reaffirm their goals and their wants or they have to change them. So these are a little bit different than twists. Twists are like plot points that throw them off and sort of like get in their way.

And these these turning points is, you know, is where the main characters, like, pivoting. And I like to see it as them pivoting only a few degrees every time we we really don't want them pivoting 180 degrees. And weirdly enough, sometimes that's my problem, is I have them pivot slightly, and then they pivot a ton. And then I have to go back and fix it. So, you know, I am talking to myself as much as to anyone else out there.

And then what we call pinch points, those are different because the steaks are are either upped or a new steak is added. So maybe we know that we have to rescue the girl from the kidnappers, but now we find out that they've injected her with some poison that will start working in the next 12 hours. Like, that's where the stakes rise. So now we have a clock. We kind of had a clock before because kidnappers have their own sort of, you know, way of doing things, but now she could die or, you know, whatever within the next 12 hours, and that really adds another stake to it.

Or they lose all their money. You know, the spouse leaves and good riddance and who cares, except for now we remembered that the house is in the spouse's name, and they're gonna take it. So now we might become homeless, so that's another stake. Okay? So that's the pinch points.

Now the as we get through, this is kind of that middle muddy middle that we all kind of hate. So as you're in NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words in 1 month, you are gonna hit the middle. The average novel is between 70 to 90,000 words. So you are going to hit the middle at around 30000, 35000, 40000 words. So what you need to do in the middle, if you find yourself stuck, is to add a twist.

So something from the plot, that the main character isn't expecting, a turning point in which they have to really reevaluate their goals or their wants, and then pinch points upping the stakes or adding a new one. So that should help you get through the muddy middle. And then as nano comes to a close, you're going to have to start thinking about the climax and possibly adding a dark night of the soul as c s like and calls it or just that moment in which everything dissolves. So this is you know, readers make fun of it with romance writers, but it's like, that's the point in which they have a misunderstanding and they almost break up or do break up. This is the point in which all the superheroes get mad at each other, or they lose the battle, and Thor actually kills everyone, throughout the universe.

This is the point in which the lawyer finds out that the person is guilty and really isn't sure that they're gonna win it except that the safety of their family, you know, relies on them winning this case. This is really that moment in which everything goes dark. I think that's why she calls it dark dark night of the soul, see as they can do. But this is where, their goal isn't going to be met. They're not gonna reach it or they don't think they are or it's completely stripped from them.

They lose a battle, whether it's psychological, emotional, or an actual battle. Right? I mean, if you think about your favorite movies, your favorite books, this happens all the time. So, do not shy away from putting that in there. It can be a dark moment for the main character just emotionally and mentally, or it can be, you know, including the plot in which the aliens have completely taken over every part of the earth except for Greenland because nobody wants to live there.

Sorry to all you Greenlanders. So I don't know. Or the the South Pole because nobody wants to live there. So everything looks crazy. So if you want to escape the aliens, you are now subjugated to living on the South Pole, and that looks pretty bad, especially for those of us who don't like the snow and like to eat.

You know? But the climax is coming in which the main character or characters are going to figure out a way to banish the aliens back to outer space, and we are going to regain earth again. So somehow they come up with a new plan. So, this is, this is a lot of times, like, a turning point as well. They figure something out that will help them.

Many times, they're looking back on something that they've learned but they've missed, and now they're going to utilize that. And a lot of times the reader kind of knows this already. And so they feel vindicated in which they've figured it out before the main character, and then they use that to, you know, beat off the aliens or put the right guy in jail or find the killer. So make sure, especially in the in the climax, to go back and and find whatever red herrings you put into the book and make sure they're coming into play as well. Finding the turning points in which they've learned something and figure out a way to use those in the climax.

Sometimes I tell people to write the climax first, especially if you have it on in your head. Sometimes it helps to have a place to get to. So if you have all these things that you want to have happen and they have this big revelation, right, then you know you can break those off as the red herrings or as the turning points or as the twists in the plot and sprinkle them throughout in the beginning of the book. So if you start with the climax and then highlight those and go back, you'll be sure to put them in to the front part of the book. And so then after the climax, you still have about 5 to 12% of the book to write because you need to write about the new world and what they see.

What is the world like without aliens but all this destruction? What is the world like with the true killer finally put behind bars? What is it like for the main character who has solved the mystery or, learned to live on their own or accepted their spouse back into their life, or maybe they found new love? What does this look like to them? How has their worldview changed?

And bring back how things were in the beginning in order to tell and show the reader how they have changed now. So a lot of times we'll see this with movies or shows. They will, go out onto their porch in the beginning and they will maybe they're they're missing the fact that they're surrounded by majestic mountains because they're on their phone and they're they're setting up meetings, and they're talking to clients and all this. And the the spouse is upset about this, and that's why the spouse leaves. And then maybe the spouse comes back at the end, and now they walk out with coffee, without a phone, you know, taking in the splendor of the view.

I mean, this is kind of a boring ending, but it's what I can come up with on the, on the spot. So give time and space for the reader to breathe a sigh of relief. This again is something that, I struggle with and I usually have to go back and add more to it because by the end, I'm kind of like done with my book and I wanna move on. I have that sort of, you know, nervous energy where I'm always like, okay. Like, okay.

Finish this up and let's move on to the next one. So then, when I read it and I edit it, I'm like, okay. We have to add a little bit more here, you know, dig a little bit deeper, add a few more scenes of this new world and what is going to be happening so that the reader leaves really satisfied. You can jump time at this point if you need to or want to. Just I just encourage you to take the time to write the scenes that you need, to set that new world up.

You could even go back to the beginning of the book and make sure you have about the same amount of scenes. Whatever whoever they're talking to in the beginning, whoever's, whatever's interacting with them and and has changed by the end, I would bring them back and make sure that there is something going on in those scenes that we can see as a reader what has changed and what is better. If it's a series, what maybe isn't as great, who might be coming back in the next book. Right? So you have that time to set that up and just sort of marinate in what has just happened.

Allow the reader to see the main character possibly processing through it before they go on to the next thing, or the side characters or whoever has been brought up in the beginning and who is still with them at the end. So those are the scenes that you pretty much have to have in a novel. Now the ones in the beginning and the end, they pretty much go at the beginning and the end. Like, you cannot have the climax at the beginning unless you do that funny thing where it's at the beginning and then you go all the way back into the beginning and then you repeat the climax. Right?

Anything can happen. We are creatives and we are allowed to do what we want. But make sure as you go through NaNoWriMo that you're hitting all of the scenes, that you're getting some twists in there, some pinch points, some turning points, because that is gonna help you come out of NaNoWriMo with a much better draft than if you just sit down to write 1380 words a day. I think that's what it is. I'm not sure.

It's a lot of words, guys. So make sure that they're worth something. Make sure that they count. And if you're not participating participating in NaNoWriMo, as I am not, we can still sit down and write these, sections out and make sure that as we're writing at our own pace, that these these scenes are getting into our novel at the right part, at the right point, and so that when we finalize a draft, maybe there's less editing that we have to do. I don't know.

We shall see. I'm gonna keep trying to plot, guys. So join me in this journey if you want to. I hope that that is helpful for you. We'll be back with some interviews in November.

Until then, happy writing, everybody.