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Jerry Jenkins and K. M. Weiland

Master Class 16: K. M. Weiland

THE JERRY JENKINS WRITERS GUILD: Master Class #16 Unedited Transcript

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Master Class With K. M. Weiland

*The purpose of this transcript is to help you follow along with the lessons in the video. For this reason, the contents have not been extensively edited for grammar and punctuation. Jerry: Welcome to this Jerry Jenkins Writers Guild Master Class.

Today we're going to be talking about outlining. Now, if you're one who's been frustrated when I talk about outliners versus pantsers, those of us who write by the seat of our pants, and I seem to imply that you're one or the other while you're convinced you're that rare hybrid or combination of both, you'll find a kindred spirit in K. M. Weiland, novelist and writing coach. Welcome, K. M.

K.M.: Thank you so much for having me, it's an honor to be here.

Jerry: Thanks. Now many writers resist outlining because they worry it'll get in the way of serendipity and result in predictability. We pantsers like to say we write as a process of discovery and want the story to unfold and develop as we write. Now admittedly, even we have to do some planning because we need an idea, a theme, a rough concept of where we're going, and we have to keep track of what's going on and where our characters are while we're writing.

In that sense, we're outlining as we go, but Katie, you maintain that all novelists are really both outliners and pantsers or should be. Unpack that for us.

Master Class #16 Unedited Transcript Watch or listen here

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K.M.: Well, I've always liked the idea, which I've been told many times since that this has actually been disproven, but I still like it. The idea of the right brain versus the left brain, the idea that we have both creativity and logic. Of course in writing a story we want to harmonize both of those. We need both of them to be working at their optimum to be working together in order to be able to create a really solid and powerful story.

Well, I feel that if you break down the writing process, you can pretty much divide it into segments that are one or the other, that are right brain creativity, or left brain logic. The concept stage, when you first come up with an idea, obviously that's very right brain, that's really just total creativity with the ideas sometimes coming to you from a place that seems like it's beyond yourself. From your subconscious really is what's happening.

Then you sit down, and you try to form that into something that's a little more coherent, that actually has the shape of a story. If you're doing that in an outlining phase, then that's going to be primarily logic or left brain side of the process. You're bringing order to this wild creative idea that you came up with to begin with. Then when you move on to say the first draft, that again, if you've used the outline to create that form going into that, that then unleashes your ability to completely use your creativity and your right brain once again, and because you've got this foundation of knowing where the story's going, you're able to then just kind of unleash that creativity on the page and see where it goes.

Then finally after that's done you once again have to pull back into the logic segment for revisions, when once again you're looking at it through more of a critical and logical lens. With that kind of approach to viewing how the writing process works, you begin to realize that everybody does all four of


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these stages, whether they prefer to pants in the beginning, or they prefer to outline in the beginning.

Let's say you're a pantser and you're like, I don't outline at all. Obviously after you've got that raw first draft onto the page, you then have to pull back and kind of basically do what I consider a reverse outline in going through the rough first draft, and figuring out, okay, this works and this doesn't work. Sometimes completely reshaping the story arc to get it to where it needs to be to make sense as a story.

On the flip side of that, if you're an outliner, like I'm a very in depth outliner. I write 50 page outlines sometimes. For me, that's a very creative process. I like to say that really what my outline is, is a first draft that I'm pantsing. The only difference is that unlike someone who would strictly call themselves a pantser, I'm not trying to form that story into narrative, and dialogue, and perfect prose right in the beginning. I'm just throwing ideas onto the page, and thinking out loud, and just kind of working through those ideas. Then in the first draft, I'm polishing, and I have the ability to just straighten all those ideas, and bring them to life in a way that will then make sense to other people.

I really feel that it's a balance. That we all have to do all of these processes at one point or another when we're writing a book, and it just varies on what works best for us, what makes sense to the way our brains work. Also just what we're going to have the most fun doing.

Jerry: Yeah, and the way you explain it makes it makes sense. I get the sense all the time, I'm totally a pantser, so I feel like I'm not outlining and yet I know that's happening in my head anyway, and I am flipping back and forth so I can see that happening. Like you, I don't know if the right brain, left brain


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thing is actual science. There are days when I just hope I've got one or the other.

You list four key questions writers need to answer as they begin their outlines. What are those?

K.M.: All right, so for me the outlining process is very much about trying to see the big picture, and then narrowing that down to the specific questions. When you're just beginning the outline, you're looking for those really big picture questions. The first one, when you're going into it with an idea that you've already got the basic shape of it, a very general shape perhaps. That you have an idea of what you're trying to aim for in this outline. The first thing I always do is start by looking at that idea and asking the question, what general conflict does your premise provide?

This is basically something that you would be able to get a premise sentence out of. It's who are your characters? Who are your protagonist and your antagonist? What do they want? How are they getting in each other's way and creating the obstacles that will then generate the conflict? Because that's where it all starts. You have to know that before you can then work on and build up to the rest of the questions.

The second one would be a more specific: who or what is your antagonistic force? Antagonists have always been something that I've actually really struggled with, and I realized, I had a revelation last spring while I was actually listening to one of John Truby's classes. He was talking about how you need to start with the antagonist, and that completely blew my mind, because we always start with the protagonist. When we do that, what happens is we then have to generate this antagonist who's somehow, for some reason is getting in the protagonist's way, when really it's the other way around. The protagonist is just minding his own business, he wants


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whatever he wants and is trying to get it, and he only encounters that conflict because he and the antagonist, and their very individual goals, happen to run afoul of each other.

The antagonist isn't going to start out the story with this intent to destroy the protagonist, that's not his story goal. He only comes to that because the protagonist is then getting in his way. That has been a really revolutionary thing in my writing process that I've applied in this most recent book that I've been working on. It has made a huge difference in making sure that the conflict that the protagonist encounters, that whatever plans the antagonist is coming up with to stymie him, that they're actually pertinent. That creates this chain of cause and effect that is realistic and makes sense as far as the characters motives and particularly the antagonist's motives from beginning to end.

There are various levels of that too that you can explore, depending on how big your story is, and how in depth you want to go in the outlining, but something, I'm writing epic fantasy so there's huge, world stakes. What I call global stakes, that are things that are going to have the ability to impact the entire world if necessary. Then you've got international stakes, where we're dealing with perhaps international politics, countries who are at war with each other. You've got national stakes, which are politics within the nation, one single nation.

Then you've got what I call public stakes, which is on a more personal level where the character, the protagonist, is dealing with other people one on one who are creating obstacles, and creating that conflict that he has to overcome. Then of course my favorite, which is personal stakes, which would be one on one and more of a relational setting, between people who are friends or family or that kind of thing.


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Obviously not all stories are going to have all five, but if they do it's really helpful if you're able to start at the top, and just work your way down, and try to figure out what all of these antagonist's motives are, what their goals are, and then kind of an idea of the plan that's going to take them through the story. Honestly that's a lot of work up front, and a lot of people are eager to get to the protagonist, because that's the fun stuff, but I've definitely found that taking that extra time in the beginning to understand the antagonist, and how he frames the conflict, is just incredibly helpful.

Then from there the third question would be then looking at, what are your protagonist's goals and motives? Because then you can understand how they fit within that overarching frame of the antagonist's plans and motives, and understanding at what point they're going to intersect, and begin to create that conflict for one another. Then from there kind of more of a sub question that I like to look at is what secrets are the characters hiding? Because that's always, you can start mining that in the beginning. You start to get some really interesting stuff that you can use for plot reveals and plot turns and plot twists down the road. I just start at this early point in the outline, but keep a running list of any secrets I think my characters might be hiding as I go.

That's just kind of the top four questions that I like to start with as an entry point into an outline.

Jerry: Great. Let me throw you a curve, I'm going to ask you something I didn't tell you I was going to ask you, but I think you're an expert on this anyway. Why is it that personal stakes so often seem shoehorned in? You watch a TV show or a movie or whatever, and you've got maybe an official or a cop or whatever, and their assignment is a bomb is hidden in the park downtown. What do you know? It's the same day that their wife and their daughter are going to be in that very park.


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You go, really? I mean, what are the odds? It happens everywhere.

Is there a smoother way to do that? What's your take on that?

K.M.: Well, I think the problem is that it's shoehorned in. I mean, obviously it's being done with good intentions, because those personal stakes are what really engage us, and that we all relate to. I think ultimately the problem with stories like that and why it feels shoehorned in is because it's not starting with that as the foundation.

I say start big, go with the big stakes, and work your way down, but that's because the stakes at the bottom, the personal stakes are the ones that are the most important. Those are the ones that are going to drive the character and his character arc, they're the ones that are going to inform your theme.

If they are shoehorned in, then really you end up with something that's really in-cohesive when it comes to joining plot, and character, and theme, and often feels like a gimmick. We understand, yeah, the kid and the mom are in danger just because the show writers want us to be really emotionally involved at this point. Instead of letting it be an organic evolution from the beginning in understanding how these two plot lines are going to coincide, and preferably how the protagonist is somehow responsible for it through some of his choices, for putting his family in danger at some point.

Jerry: Yeah, interesting. I hear from a lot of writers who tell me that they're clear on their story idea, but they're fuzzy about whether they even have a theme. Can outlining reveal or help us determine a theme that'll drive our novel?


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K.M.: I say definitely. I think there's kind of this thing in the writing world, sometimes even with very well known, successful, wonderful writers where we're kind of afraid to look at our theme. It's like if we look at it any closer than out of the corner of our eye while we're writing, we'll either destroy it or we'll turn it into this really heavy handed moral of the story kind of a thing, which obviously completely saps the power of what we're trying to do with theme to begin with.

Actually I think that that approach to theme is completely false. It's something that we don't, we're crippling ourselves by telling ourselves that we can't or shouldn't be able to understand theme, because truthfully, if we're really digging down into the nitty gritty of story theory, I think what we find is that story is theme. Everything that we're creating in the external plot is there to prove the thematic premise of the story. This is true whether or not the author has intentionally put that thematic premise in the story, because every story well proves something.

If we're able to recognize that from the beginning, from the outline, and go into it with a conscious awareness of the theme that our plot and our characters are creating, and then use that in reverse, use the theme to then strengthen the plot and the characters, so that they're this cohesive trifecta, we can end up with something that is really cohesive, and resonant, and powerful. Something that we're in control of instead of just kind of chasing after it and hoping that we're going to get it right. We can begin to recognize how these three things create each other, and then use that to recognize where one or the other is weaker than it should be, and then to strengthen it.

Basically you find your theme at the intersection of plot and character, because what the character is doing in the external plot is going to optimally be a metaphor, an external, visual


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metaphor for what's happening within him, in his inner conflict. How he changes over the course of the story whether for good or for bad, what that proves in the end, that's going to be your theme.

As soon as you start creating your plot or brainstorming your characters, you've already started working on your theme, so I say why not look it in the eye and understand exactly what you're doing with it?

Jerry: Yeah, and I like what you say in one of your books, I think it's Character Hawk, which we'll talk about at another time, but you say if you can get those three working together, if you do one well the other two should come up to the same level.

K.M.: Yeah.

Jerry: It's an interesting dynamic. Now what do we do when we find ourselves stuck with plot holes in our outline?

K.M.: Well, you know, outlining honestly, one of my favorite reasons for outlining is because it's so wonderful for helping us avoid plot holes later on. Plot holes drive me nuts, because once you're into the first draft, and you're trying to pull all the threads together so they make sense, and then suddenly you run into a plot hole and you realize, oh wow, this isn't just something I need to fix in this scene. I have to go back maybe half the book back and fix all that to make it make sense.

The good news is that in outlining we get to try to identify all of these plot holes ahead of time, when there's very little work involved in fixing and tweaking. The way that I do that is by, and very early in the outlining process, pretty much after I've finished the first four questions that we've already talked about.


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What I like to do is sit down and just list everything I know about this story. Any scene ideas I've come up with, or if I know how I want it to end, or just anything like that. I list everything I know. Then I start looking for the holes, for the questions, what doesn't make sense here. If this is going to happen, then what needs to happen to set that up? I just start asking myself questions, and then answering the questions as they come, and inevitably as I'm answering some questions that's going to raise other questions.

I like to write my outlines long hand, in a notebook. What I do at the end of each day of writing is I use a highlighting system to color code what's going on. If I find a question that I haven't yet answered, I'll always highlight that in green, so then I can always come back to that easily and answer it, and see if it raises any new questions. I keep going with that until I feel like I've answered all of the salient questions, and then I'm able to move on and start working on another section, like say theme or character interviews, or even the theme outline. Then eventually new questions may be raised and then I can just kind of repeat that process.

Jerry: If nothing else I hope people that are listening and watching are getting the point that I try to make every time to our some 2,000 members, that this is not an avocation or a hobby or something that you play with. This is real work, and it's complicated. So often we writers, I know you get this Katie, people will say, "Oh, I have a novel in me if I just had the time." You need way more than the time. You need training like this, you need to be thinking these kind of things through.

I'm working on my gazillionth book, and I know publishers, it's nice to be in a position where publishers will say, "We want to publish your next novel, whatever it is. We know it'll be good." I can sit there and be that ultimate pantser, and say,


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"Okay, I've got this rough idea, here's the rough idea," and they let me run with it.

I'm outlining right now an epic novel that's going to cover 2,000 years, and so I can play pantser, and I could probably do it if I was just writing for myself, but the publisher is saying, "We want to know where you're going with this." I'm forced to be an outliner, and it's really giving me a sense of comfort. It's like that net for a high wire walker. Like you, I don't like to hit the potholes and go, I should have thought of this before, so it's going to be good. I'm doing this to sell in essence the proposal to the publisher, but once I have it, they know that fiction's organic, and I'm going to go off in different directions, and the story will tell itself. It's really going to be great to have.

Now you have what you call the bob and weave technique for connecting pieces of your outline. Tell us about that.

K.M.: Well, so basically as I'm creating an outline, in that part of the process, it's a very non chronological, nonlinear part of the process. I'm jumping ahead, because I find a question that needs to be answered, and its answer is going to take me, I have to figure out what happens in the climax before I can appropriately answer this question. Then I have to circle back around. It's kind of all over the place, and in order to make sure that you're covering all the bases early on, you really do have to kind of do a bob and weave in the sense that you pull one little aspect of the story along, and then you have to go back and pull another aspect up so it's in the same place.

There are several areas of the story where this happens. The main one is you've got plot, characters, and theme, which we've already talked about. They all have to work in harmony, but at the same time they are still three separate things that you are more or less going to have to develop individually in a


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way. They're all connected, so you have to develop one, develop the next, develop the next, and then come back around, because they're all going to affect each other.

I think it's important to realize when you're sitting down to outline that you don't have to sit down, plan your complete plot, and then go back and plan the complete theme, or the complete character arc, because they have to work together. You have to know how they're all going to end, and then you have to just, for each scene even, just kind of weave them all together, and be willing to do that. That non chronological dance.

Another area that we have to do it is weaving the protagonist's goals and the antagonist's goals, which we've also talked about. To create that really great cause and effect, and that pulling effect between the two characters, I like to liken it to a two man saw, where the protagonist is on one end, and the antagonist is on the other, and the each have to pull. Then the other one has to pull back. That's how the conflict works.

You have to be able to balance their goals and their overall plans, so that ultimately they're reacting to each other. Particularly the deeper you get into the story, the more closely that conflict is going to be. You have to bob and weave there to make sure that, well, if my protagonist does this, that's going to make my antagonist do this. Is what the antagonist does then going to get me where I want to go in the protagonist's next scene? Really you're just trying to maintain that realism of cause and effect throughout the story.

Jerry: Right.

K.M.: The third place that I like to focus on this technique is also in weaving your POVs, your timelines, the plot points if you've got multiple characters going on in different areas of the story


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where they're not able to share all of the structural beats. It's, like you say, the novel, I like to think of it as a very complicated problem. You have to be able to get down there in the nitty gritty and work with the finer points, but then you have to be able to pull back and see the big picture, and understand where the whole thing is going if you let it continue, if you let the finer points continue down the road that they're headed.

It is, it's just kind of like, you just have to be willing to be really flexible in your approach to it, and understand that I need to do a little work on this today, and a little work on that tomorrow, and that hopefully they all come out even in the end.

Jerry: Yeah, and that's another warning in a sense to newbies especially. They'll say, "I just tell stories. I just want to sit down and tell the story." This is what you're competing with. You're competing with professionals who think through these things. That's what your book is going to go up against, and if it's just a lay story, it's going to have logical holes all over the place, and all the other mistakes we talk about. You have a leg up on the competition because you're a member here and you're studying this kind of thing.

Katie, you advocate character interviews. Tell us what form those take and how they help you.

K.M.: Yeah, so obviously I go for the in depth side of the outlining, and I would love to say obviously that this isn't, what I do isn't necessarily the right way for everybody. You've got your own process, and I think it's really, really important for writers to learn from other writers, but ultimately to take that back and say, "Is this going to work for me? Does this make sense for me? Is this going to optimize my creativity?"


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I tend to do very in depth character interviews. I've got a list of interview questions that I've honed over the years, it's probably over 150 questions at this point. There are things that some of them are really just general things, like how old are they, what do they look like, where do they live, that kind of thing. Then some of them are more things where I'm really trying to dig deep into this person, and understand their motivation, and where they're coming from.

Understanding their fears, their greatest dreams, particularly what I call, actually this is a John Truby term as well, the back story ghost. A lot of people call this the wound in the back story. Whatever traumatic event in their past is particularly haunting them in this story, and creating the need for the change that will hopefully happen over the course of the story.

How I approach that, a lot of people what I think is a great technique, sit down and let the character talk to them. I don't actually interview my characters in the sense that I'm asking the questions and they're answering, I just kind of sit down and brainstorm, stream of conscious, see what happens as I'm examining what I understand about this person, and trying to nail that down into a very concrete understanding.

This is obviously a time intensive process for me, but it's something that I have found just incredibly worthwhile. Because even characters that I think I know inside out, I'll sit down and put them under this microscope, and discover things about their past, and their motivation, and what they're really focused on in the story that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

I generally do this obviously for the main characters, I do it for any character that I know is going to have a POV, and I'm also even though it's probably my least favorite part of the process, but I always make sure I do it for the antagonists,


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because that's really where I think I mine the most, because the antagonists are often some of the vaguer characters for me. Being forced to get down into their shoes, and whether I'm going to give them a POV or not, and really understand what makes them tick as a human being in a way that I can relate to myself, no matter how evil they are, is something that I just found really, really, really helpful. Then being able to bring them to life in a realistic way on the page.

Jerry: That's great. That's what makes us pantsers feel like pikers when we talk to you outliners, because we don't do this in advance as a rule. If you're a pantser and the whole idea that it just drives you crazy, realize you're doing it anyway. I don't do this, I don't do the interview or fill out a character form before I start, but I also find that when I do introduce a new character, they surprise me. I love the fact that you said, you're surprised even while you're doing that in essence interview, or filling in those elements. There's still that creativity and discovery to it, no matter whether you're a pantser or an outliner.

For us pantsers what happens is I've got a character that comes in, and I think I know who they are, they're an orbital character, they're there for a purpose. I don't want them to just be from cental casting to try to make it interesting. Then they say something that shocks me, or they indicate some back story, and I have to sit there sometimes for an hour or two just resting my chin in my hand, going, I need to think about who this is, and where they've been, and what they've been around. In essence, I'm doing it not on paper, but I'm getting to know this person, and then they're going to reveal more and more as they go. It works.

K.M.: You're just doing it at a different point in the process.


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Jerry: Exactly. Now do you get as detailed as outlining individual scenes, and if so how do you go about that?

K.M.: Yes. Everything that I've talked about up to this point is what I call the general sketches. As I said it's a very nonlinear, just kind of throwing ideas onto the page and seeing where they go, and trying to straighten out anything that doesn't make sense. Once I feel like I've got a really solid view of my story, after doing all of that, and I've answered all of the salient questions that I have, from there I do take it into, well I do the character interviews next. After the general sketches, then would come the character interviews.

At that point I feel like I understand this story as well as I'm going to at this point, and I'm ready to dive into that scene outline. I do a scene by scene outline, and what I do particularly is concentrating on the scene structure. I follow Dwight Swain's premise of scene structure where he divides the scene into two halves. Action, which he calls scene, and reaction, which he calls sequel.

Then the first half of that is divided into a further three parts, which is goal, which is then met by an obstacle, which is conflict, when then has an outcome, which is usually disastrous in some way. Even if the character gains his scene goal, there will be complications. That will then lead into the reaction, or sequel half, which again is broken down into three more parts, where the character has to face the dilemma of the consequences that he just ran into.

He has to react to that, and then he has to come to a decision about what to do next, and that decision is going to lead him directly into the goal for the next scene. It creates a really nice, tight chain of, kind of like the dominoes falling. When you do


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it right, everything falls into one another. I concentrate on that in doing the scene outline.

Obviously this is also where I'm focusing on making sure that the overall story structure is working out well. I divide the book into eight parts based on the integers of the three act structure. The eight parts would be the inciting event, the first plot point, the first pinch point, the mid point or what I call the second plot point, the second pinch point, the third plot point, and the third act, and then the climactic turning point halfway through the third act and through the end of the book.

That allows me to be able to estimate an even amount of scenes for each part of the story, which also helps me get a grip on trying to control word count and such, because I tend to write very long if I am not really careful. I'm doing that as I'm doing the scene question, and I like to be as thorough as possible. Obviously a lot of people prefer to just write something brief to guide them, but I prefer to be as absolutely thorough as possible.

I like to know the settings that I'm going to be dealing with, what characters are going to be present, what their goals might be if they're conflicting with the protagonists. That then is able to give me a really solid guide of understanding not just what's going to happen, but the character's mindset and background for their motivations, for this particular scene goal, when I'm then ready to go in and write the first draft.

Jerry: This has really been helpful, Katie. Thanks a lot. It's interesting. I've always wished that Swain would have used a different term than sequel.

K.M.: Me too.


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Jerry: Because it's so confusing, especially to newbies, because saying a sequel is the second work or their work in the series. Once you get into it, you understand what he's saying and all that. Thanks so much for all that input. I find writers incurably curious about how other writers work. Let's talk about your routine and practice. First, where do you write?

K.M.: Well, I have always been a creature of habit, but just here recently within the last year I've been mixing things up. Obviously my desk is my primary battle station for writing, but I found that I really have gotten a lot out of taking my writing outside when the weather's nice. I have a little table that I set up in a tree area, and there's just something about being outside. It's just this open area that I feel is really helpful for also opening up creativity. It's also you have the added bonus of the fact that it gets you away from the computer, and the internet, so you're not distracted by all of those potential procrastination devices.

I've really enjoyed doing that when the weather's nice, and just generally actually after doing that, late last summer and fall, it was so nice not being near the computer. Particularly since I was working on an outline, and it was long hand, and I didn't need the computer. Just moving myself away from the vicinity of the computer has been something that's really helpful for that.

I do a little, it just depends on the day and what feels right, whether I'm outside or inside at my desk or whatever.

Jerry: When you're past the outline stage and actually writing, can you do that? Will you write long hand sometimes outside?

K.M.: Well, this is the first time that I've really done this, but I want to. I've got one of those really old Alpha Neo Smarts, I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's like a keyboard that has a


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little LCD screen, you can see like three lines of text at once. I'm going to give that a try and see how that works for me. I've got my iPad, and I take Scrivener with me on that, so I've got all my notes. We'll see how that works, but I'm hoping that's going to be a solution for this coming year.

Jerry: I was going to ask you with all this outlining and detail work you do, if you use Scrivener. The fact that you do gives me an idea for another session. I want to have you back to talk about character arc, but we need to do a Scrivener session too. I've had Scrivener for so long, and keep telling myself when I have time I'm going to learn it, get into it. Everybody asks about it, and all my colleagues who use it swear by it. I'll probably need to learn it before I try to do a session on it, but we'll have to talk about that sometime.

K.M.: Yeah, I love Scrivener. It's just, it's fabulous. I think it's so flexible, it can fit many different author's types of processes, but it definitely fits mine to a T. It's got all these organizational nooks and crannies, and now that they've got the iOS app you can put it on your phone or your iPad or whatever, and take it on the go, which is just fabulous.

Jerry: Yeah, that sounds great. When do you write? Do you write at a certain time of day or do you just write when you have time?

K.M.: Well, again, I've kind of been mixing things up this last year. Sometimes I like writing first thing in the morning before I get on the internet or there's any distractions or any of that, but it kind of depends on what else is going on in life too. If there's something I'm working on that I need the internet for, or I'm waiting on an email that has to do with a different project, and I know I'm going to be distracted or tempted to just be procrastinating while I'm off on my email, then sometimes I


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find that I actually work better if I just get all of those pressure points out of the way.

My other favorite time of the day to write is last thing in the day, last couple of hours before I go have supper, from 4:00 to 6:00 is also one of my favorite times. It just kind of depends, I'm learning to be more in tune with my creativity, and to figure out when I think I will feel most creative instead of just trying to cram my creativity into a set schedule every day.

Jerry: Right. Do you have a daily quota? How much do you write at a time?

K.M.: In the past I've always been very anti word count goals. I've found them to be, it would be like instead of actually sitting there and getting in this zone writing, I would be checking my word count every two minutes, and it wouldn't be all that helpful. It is actually something that I've started doing here with the last book that I wrote, just because I find that if I give myself a pretty tight goal, and time it on a small, in small increments, that it helps me stay focused and stay in that zone. Because I'm writing quickly instead of goofing off, and editing that sentence five times more than it needed.

What I try to do nowadays is my goal is 300 words per 15 minutes, so I'll write in 15 minute spurts and then stop and check where I'm at. 300 words for 15 minutes is very doable for me, so sometimes I'm lucky and I pass that, but it's something that I feel like I should be able to get at least that much done in 15 minutes if I'm paying attention. That's what I try to do.

Jerry: The key training there for you beginners is to learn yourself. You don't try to copy the number of pages I do per day or the number of words per 15 minutes that Katie does. You learn yourself so that you can say, "I've got that's deadline, I need to


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do this by this time." Gives you a rough idea of how much you need to do per day, per working day, etc.

If you could leave a beginning writer with your one best piece of advice, what would it be?

K.M.: Well, I've been thinking about that lately. My standard bit of advice has always been write every day. I've been thinking about that and some of the things that I've learned lately is still what I believe is the top bit of advice, and I do. Because I think it all starts there. I'm a big fan of the Peter Devries quote where he says, "I'm inspired every day because I show up at my desk and write at 8:00 in the morning every day."

I think in establishing that kind of consistency, it doesn't have to be every day. I write five days a week. If you're writing on a consistent basis and setting that time aside every day, I think first of all the muscle memory that you build in just realizing that yes you can sit down and concentrate on this for an hour or two hours every day. It just becomes easier. The page isn't as intimidating when you do that consistently day in and day out for years.

The other thing too is I think all of the other great advice that we could come up with for how to learn the craft of writing and story theory, I think it too all comes out of that consistent habit. If you're showing up every day and practicing, and you're thinking about a story, and you're studying it, then all of the other good stuff is going to come out of that ability to be really consistent in your writing habits.

Jerry: That's great stuff, K. M. I see you have just released a new app that helps writers outline their novels. Can you give us a real quick snapshot of that?


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K.M.: Yeah, I'm excited about that. Obviously I have a book called outlining your novel, and a couple years ago I did a workbook for that, which basically broke down the whole process into hundreds of questions and exercises that people could use to help them brainstorm their way through the outlining process. Actually I was approached by a programmer who did just a fabulous job with the app, and it's the kind of thing that I would completely geek out over if I randomly discovered it.

What we've done is we've taken all of the questions from that workbook and created them in a way, in this app that people can just enter their answers directly into the app. Number one, you don't have to buy a new workbook every time you're wanting to start a new book. It's reusable and you can then take your saved files and export them, and actually import them into Scrivener so you have your notes right there if you're a Scrivener user like I am.

Anyway, I think it's just, it's a really intuitive approach to being able to corral all of your ideas and prompt the right questions to ask as you're trying to discover your story during the outlining process. I hope it's something that's going to be really helpful to people in discovering how fun outlining can be, because I think that's part of the reason that a lot of people get hung up over outlining is thinking that it's this dry, old, roman numeral outline that we had to do in high school.

It's really not. What outlining is is brainstorming. It's the fun stuff of writing where you're coming up with all of the cool ideas, and the interesting possibilities, before you get down to the hard work of actually having to put it together in a cohesive narrative with dialogue and all of that good stuff.

Anyway, I hope it's something that will prove helpful to people.


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Jerry: What do you call the app?

K.M.: It's the outlining your novel workbook app.

Jerry: Okay. Now to access that new app and see what else K.M. is up to, find her at the link below, KMWeiland.com. You can see the spelling there. Thanks so much for being with us today, Katie.

K.M.: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Jerry: That's it for today, but K. M. is also an expert as I hinted on that illusive concept of character arc, and she's agreed to come back soon to talk about that. We'll see you right here again next time.

To watch or listen to the session, click here.

https://www.jerrysguild.com/master-class-16-k-m-weiland/

master class 16: k. m. weiland - the jerry jenkins writers ...€¦ · the jerry jenkins writers...

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