(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on May 21st, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while. We’re getting very close now, so bear with me. Soon I’ll resume regular posting and then just upload these archives in one go.)
The Easiest Way To Become A Professional Author
Long-time associate of the blog Robert Koch posted on Twitter today that a great exercise for learning how to do things is to create pastiche works.
Pastiche is the art of paying homage through creating a work inspired by someone else in their style. For example, someone who liked Picasso might find one of his paintings of a face, pick a different face as subject, but “copy” Picasso’s style and structure with the new subject. This is a pastiche because it’s the artist’s rendition of a Picasso-styled work.
This is a fantastic way to get started with creating original works, provided you change the base material; the subject in the above example, or the story if you’re writing.
A close comparison is fan fiction; most fan fiction is set in the same world, many times with the same characters, but ultimately it’s an original work. Plenty of authors have got their start by creating fan fiction and then swapping out the character names so as to avoid plagiarism.
Anyway, Robert’s tweet had me walking down memory lane, to where I successfully became a fiction author. In this article, I’ll show you how you can do the same.
The Lie That Is The “Writing Business”
Yesterday, I browsed Reddit’s writing section and it was as filled with idiots as ever. “Get your Creative Writing degree,” “Most authors don’t make any money… do it because you love it” and most importantly, “It’ll take you years to get published!”
It will take you years to master the craft of writing. Writing is a skill that you build over a lifetime. If you want to write world-changing fiction, or non-fiction, you’re going to have to dedicate many hours over many years to achieving that.
That said…
That’s not the same as the business of writing. It isn’t even close.
The, “You’ll take years to get published” is outdated and a lie from people who simply aren’t very good at the business of writing.
I got published with a traditional publisher on my first attempt at writing a short story. This was years before I was a “writer” professionally. I then did exactly the same several more times when writing fiction was little more than a hobby for me, and I possessed no experience or particular skill for writing.
How did I achieve this remarkable feat where so many have failed and continue to fail?
I wrote to market.
I browsed writing markets and contacted publishers that were putting together short story collections. I emailed the editors and asked them exactly what they wanted; the length, the genre, the feel, the subject matter and for any stories that were what they were going for.
Now, the above is a tip you’ll probably never see on Reddit’s writing section because those guys have never thought to actually contact an editor and ask them what they’re looking for.
But I did, and out of five short stories, four were published, and I got paid for one that was never published because the project didn’t come together.
That was when I knew nothing, but I simply cold-approached the people in charge and then wrote what they wanted to read.
Magical.
The Fastest Way To Become A Fiction Author
Said above people will tell you to go “traditional” if you want to make a career. That means getting an agent and then having them find a publisher who will maybe consider putting you in their waiting line for two years upon which point you’ll get half of your advance of £5000 and that’s the writer’s life.
Needless to say, this is absolutely retarded.
Agents act in a legal capacity despite not being lawyers. The traditional publishing business is going to go the way of the steam railroad behemoths in that it’s simply obsolete and kicking and screaming on its way out. Publishing deals are terrible and the contracts you as an author will sign are worse.
Instead, you should self-publish.
You can self-publish and have your book on sale almost as soon as you’ve finished it. As a publisher, you have control of your rights, your works and the responsibility of making a success.
And, most likely, the reality that you’ll be more successful than you will with a traditional publisher.
But, most of you will know that already. Let’s talk about the quickest way to get started.
Pulp Fiction
Back to Rob’s tweet from above; pastiches and aping a style.
Here’s what I did back in the tail end of Kindle Unlimited’s first iteration.
I sort-of followed what Rob says to do here, in that I found a bunch of formulas from old pulp fiction authors.
Did you know that H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Heinlein, Lester Dent and many authors who wrote for pulp magazines wrote out in detail the structures of their stories?
I’ve written about them elsewhere on the blog, but essentially, they’ve published templates on how to write pulp fiction in multiple genres.
So, I took those, broke them down into their parts, loaded them into a Word document (and later a Scrivener template) and saved that.
That was step one.
Step two was that I had a spreadsheet with ideas that I either came up with on the spot, or that I worked into a formula.
For instance, if you were writing short erotic stories, you might have:
Hero Character | Heroine | Situation | Challenge | Ending Sequence
Or something similar, where that might look like:
Billionaire Biker | Homeless Librarian | Get caught up in a drug bust gone wrong | Now the mafia are chasing them | Turns out he’s Batman and he beats them all up and they live happily ever after, with copious erotic scenes.
And you can switch those things in and out like with any other formula or template.
Step three is to write stories using the ideas + template. If you need to swallow up the writing style of your favourite authors, then do that. Get Kindle Unlimited and you’ll have access to thousands of stories in your genre for free.
I did this until I could write a 5-10000 word short in a couple of hours.
Moving On
I wrote dozens, if not more, of these short stories. I haven’t put them all up on Amazon yet, but the ones I have still sell to this day. Some of those must be four years old or more.
Now, this isn’t the most profitable part of authorship, and you’ll want to move away from this and into longer works eventually.
But this is your foot in the door, and it’ll give you an education in writing and publishing professionally. You can do this very quickly; a short story a day isn’t too difficult a feat. I’ve written two or three in a day before.
Then, when you come to write novels, you’ll know:
- What sells
- How to sell your stories
- How to write fiction
What’s more, if you read the pulp masters, you’ll realise that longer works are mostly just a set of shorter works with rising tensions. As such, the jump from shorts to novels isn’t as daunting as simply jumping straight into writing the next big thing like most novelists suffer from.
And the best part about this business model and why I always come back to it:
You don’t need a publisher. You don’t need an agent. Nor do you need to spend huge amounts on any technical business stuff. You don’t need a huge marketing budget.
It’s you vs. the keyboard until the thing is written. Then you win, take a break and start on the next one.
And over and over again, your catalogue grows, you make more in residual income and each work becomes more successful than the last.
I love the publishing business.