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Let’s say you have a character who is stuck at the bottom of a well in the middle of nowhere. Her phone is dead. What is she going to do? What are her options?

She can sit there and wait to be rescued.

She can scream for help.

She can say her prayers and wait to die.

Or she can take an action.

Is it possible for her to climb out? Are there rocks or branches in the walls that she can grab? Is there something she can throw? Is there any kind of object she can use to help herself? Is it narrow enough for her to “walk” her way up?

Whatever she does, as long as she does something, she is now an active character instead of a passive character.

And that makes all the difference. A resourceful character is a character we can admire and take interest in, even if that character is a villain. You rarely see an inactive villain.

A passive character is not interesting. But a character who initiates action is a character who can take control. And that is the kind of character who makes for a good protagonist. If the story is about George, then George should be the one taking most of the action. If something is being done to him, he must react accordingly. He cannot just sit there complaining. We will quickly get tired of him unless he tries to help himself. Worse, the story will lose interest. If George doesn’t do or say anything, whatever his problem is, then there really isn’t much of a story.

Sure, we can see his family doing something. Or the police. Or whoever. But they are all peripheral. if you want George to be a character we can love and root for, he has to be at the helm. He has to be resourceful. Otherwise, it’s not really a book about George. It’s just a situation with various people doing various things, but without a real center.

Setting is one of my favorite topics, because so many writers don’t use it well. Some don’t use it at all, which is a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Try to imagine CATCHER IN THE RYE being set anywhere other than New York City. Try imagining TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD set anywhere else but Maycomb,Alabama. It just doesn’t work. Think of all the best books you have ever read and picture the setting. More often than not, the setting played a big part, if not an essential part.

Not only does the setting let us know where we are by using all of the senses, but it helps to ground the story and define the characters. Sometimes the smallest details jump off the page and bring the entire scene into view. Like the etched glass swan double doors on a Victorian house. Or a liveried doorman walking backwards on W. 57th St. in New York with one arm up and a whistle, hailing a cab. Or the metal Coca Cola sign on an old screen door that slams on rusty hinges. All those things bring a strong sense of place, which means we are that much more transported.

Let’s break those examples down. A Victorian house can seem vague in your mind without those doors. Suddenly, you are picturing a real house, not just a blur of a house. Who would live in such a house? Who are these people and what are their lives like?

That doorman on W. 57th St. brings with him a wealth of information. It tells us we’re in an upscale neighborhood. The people who live there are comfortable and urbane. I see his cap and his white gloves. I can see the hem of his coat flapping as he walks along. I can hear the piercing shriek of the whistle over the constant noise of the traffic. I can see a cab whizzing to a halt just past the avenue at his bidding. All that from one doorman!

Oh, and that screen door. I’m picturing a café in the deep South, with ceiling fans and stools at a lunch counter. I’m seeing old-fashioned autos from the 50’s or maybe even the 20’s. I am sensing the aroma of freshly baked peach pie.

Think of all these places and ask yourself what kind of person would live there? How would that setting affect who they are, how they see the world, how they talk, and how they live? Even if that character has moved somewhere else, he or she is going to bring that background along. If you have a well-dressed businessman in Chicago, maybe he grew up in Butte, Montana. How would that affect how he talks or does business? How would he dress and style his hair? He might look like any other Chicago businessman, but if we know he’s from a craggy mountain, maybe he’s a bit craggy too.

You can’t go wrong using setting for all it’s worth. Your story will be better for it and you will have succeeded in taking your reader on a magic carpet ride to another place and time.

If I were asked what is the one thing authors get wrong, it’s this. They don’t understand that publishing is a business. The second thing is they don’t know what a plot is, but let’s stick with the business.

The purpose of a business—any business—is to make money. If it doesn’t, it will soon go out of business and that will be the end of that. It is not the job of a trade publisher to encourage literature or keep the fires burning. The only job of a trade publisher is to make money. If they fail at that, they won’t be able to publish any books at all. (I’m talking about trade publishing here—the realm of bestsellers and popular books that may be literary or not. I am not talking about university presses or small places that look for avant garde material.)

They make money where they can find it. It might be a big, important novel that becomes a classic. Or it might be a book of Sudoku puzzles. Or both. But they are always looking at the bottom line, because they have to.

So the first question you should ask yourself is how will this book make money. Are there others like it that did well and so maybe this one will too? Is it something fresh and different that catches a lot of interest? Is it a memoir about something interesting and new? Has it been told a zillion times before? If so, do you have a new twist?

Many authors think the way to write a book is to get an idea, write the book, and hope it sells. That is a backwards way of doing it.

First, look around and see what’s out there. Your task is to write something that fits in and yet has a new angle of some kind. It can be the book of your heart about your eccentric family in India or it can be a fun mystery novel because you have read many of those and you like them.

Maybe you thought writing was going to be all about being creative, baring your soul, or adding to the progress of literature. And it can be all those things. Just as long as it sells.

This happened to a younger colleague of mine. It was one of the first sales she made, but it was a doozy.
She discovered a well written urban fantasy novel.

She received an offer of one book for $6000. Okay, it was modest, but it was something.

Then someone else made an offer for three books for $10,000 each.

Competition set in and the amounts continued to climb. Some publishers dropped out when it became more than they wanted to spend.

This kept going until there were only two publishers left. One of them got on the phone with me and remarked that the young agent had a tiger by the tail. I could tell she was surprised. She thought this would be easier, and that she could snap this up for little money. After all, the agent was a beginner and so was the author. I smiled and replied that yes, she was doing very well.

The auction ended after three days at three books for $125,000 each. A far cry from the opening offer of $6000 for one book. All three books made the NY Times Bestseller list.

I love this story because it shows that you should be ready for anything. You might be bitterly disappointed, or you might get a lovely surprise, but anything is possible. You never know what the day will bring. But the bottom line is that the agent was very well versed in the genre. She knew exactly how good the material was–and how valuable. She was going to let the market dictate the price, but on her terms.

Here’s a little trick I picked up somewhere along the way. I started using it when an author had to make a decision. Say she’s got two offers and doesn’t know which one to take. Or she’s presented with two different cover designs. Or she can’t decide how to start her first page.

Here’s what you do. Get a coin. Any coin will do. Assign Option A to one side, and Option B to the other side.

Flip the coin.

Now before you look at it, ask yourself. Are you secretly hoping it will be one or the other? That’s your answer.

I have rarely encountered a situation where the secret wish wasn’t there. If it isn’t, make a list of pros and cons for each. If that doesn’t work, take a walk and don’t think about it. Then think about it very suddenly. It will come to you. It may even come to you while you are asleep, but it will come.

It’s what’s on that page or screen that counts. Not your social media. That helps to sell the book once you have been published, but it can’t get you a contract. Not the fact that we met at a conference and really hit it off. Not the recommendations of prominent author friends. Not the fact that you pitched someone at a conference and they asked to see the manuscript. Not the accolades from all your friends, your mom, and your dog. Not the freelance editor you hired and not the writing class you took.

In the end, it comes down to the reader and what’s on that screen. They are alone together, just the two of them. You cannot stand there and advise the reader that the coming section is really good or that you know you need to work on Chapter Five.

Once you send something out, let it go. Now is the time to work on something else. Don’t fret (well, you will, but try to turn your attention elsewhere). Once it’s gone, it’s out of your control.

Don’t try to edit once it’s sent. Just let it speak for itself.

That’s really all you can do. The important thing is to keep going. You can’t fail if you don’t quit.

Once upon a time, long ago, multiple submissions were verboten. They were considered to be aggressive and rude. Each publisher felt that they were entitled to an exclusive look and that they could take all the time they wanted.

[Pause here for me to stop gagging}

Imagine that. It could easily take two years to sell a book, and publishers thought that was just fine. Agents did not.

So agents began to send out multiple submissions whether the publishers liked it or not. That way you could sell a book in a matter of days or maybe a few months. It was a hell of a lot faster and more expedient. Today it is the norm. Exclusive submissions can happen, usually by prior arrangement, but they are the exception to the rule.

When you do a multiple submission, you hope to get more than one offer. When you do, you have an auction. Here’s how it works.

As soon as I know that more than one is interested, I set a closing. Publishers must offer by that date and time. The time has to be exact, because offers usually come in at the last possible second. Once I can see what’s on the table, I move forward accordingly. There are different ways to do this. But the general idea is to tell everyone what the highest bid was and do another round. This can go on for a while. If the offers are very close together, you can declare “best bids”, in which everyone makes the best offer they can make. The goal is to flush out the highest bidder in a fair and reasonable manner. That sounds simple, but it often isn’t. That is why one of the first question an editor will ask is “What are the rules?” That is a time for me to explain exactly how it’s going to go. I may ask that each bid be a certain amount more than the last. Or I may eliminate the lowest bidder of each round. Or I may accept a pre-empt at any time. That’s when you get an offer so good that you decide to just accept it, shutting the others down. To complicate things even more, the house offering the most money isn’t necessarily the winner. The author may like another house better or have a better rapport with the editor. That doesn’t happen often, because the house with the most passion for the project usually offers the most money.

No matter how well you have it planned out, something can always go wrong. We have to expect the unexpected and stay focused. If a lot of bidders are involved, you never know what might happen. They ask what the rules are, and then they break them. But I have found that if I am fair and clear from the outset, it usually goes well.

When an author sells her first book, she really has no idea what she’s getting into. All she knows is that she had this goal and now her dream has come true.

That’s lovely and it lasts for a while. Until something else happens.

Like she realizes the publisher is going to do very little to support the book. Or she hates the proposed cover design. Or she calls with questions that don’t get answered.

This is where your agent comes in. Publishers count on agents to manage author expectations, and we do, but I wish publishers would chip in more to achieve this. The reason they don’t is because they don’t want to have to say to their author “No, we rarely do much for books at this level.” Or “This is what B&N said they wanted on the cover and they will order more books if we do it their way.” No author can know the business from the inside out when she’s just starting. And it can’t be learned all at once. That would be too overwhelming. So ask your agent questions. The only stupid question is the one that doesn’t get asked.

One time I had an author who came up with the idea that his book should be distributed so widely that the booksellers couldn’t possibly ignore it. He wanted it shipped everywhere to achieve high visibility. The more books out there, he reasoned, the more that will sell.

Except it doesn’t work that way. Not at all. Here’s how it does work:

The sales force goes out to sell the book to the trade. Naturally, they try to get as many orders as they can. Publishers often create incentives to achieve this. Then the publisher ships what was ordered. They can’t very well ship more than what was ordered. That would only annoy the booksellers and they would send the extra books right back. The book sells how it sells. What doesn’t sell is sent back to the publisher. If the book does very well, more are ordered.

My author didn’t know that going in. It seemed quite reasonable to him to demand flooding the market with HIS book. But what if everyone did that? There is only so much shelf space. Even online, there is only room for so much before people’s eyes glaze over. So they have to choose carefully and they support the books they think will have a chance.

This is just one tip of a multi-tiered iceberg. There is a lot to learn. Authors should make it their business to learn it, agents should be patient and teach, and publishers should be candid about why they did what they did.

The best trait a character can have is resourcefulness. A resourceful character initiates action instead of merely responding to it. A resourceful character gets things done.

Even if the character is a villain, we will admire that character if he is clever, and knows how to work the system. If you put your character at the bottom of a well, with no way out, what is he going to do? Sit there and hope to be rescued? That’s not interesting, and it’s not even a plot. A plot means he does something about it. He figures out something very clever that will help him on his own. Sure, if a child falls down a well, we will all be sweating it out, hoping the child gets out. But what if the child contributes to his own survival? It can be something small, as long as it’s resourceful.

The essence of a plot is that someone has a problem, and we get to watch them solve it. That can’t happen when the characters sit around waiting for something to happen.

I keep a gratitude journal, and have been doing that every single day for many years. Why do I do this? Because after you do it faithfully for a few months, you start to see everything in a more positive light. It’s a feel-good mechanism.

It’s easy enough to do. Get a blank book with lined paper and write down at least five things for which you are grateful on that day. Don’t repeat yourself. Every day has something different. It could be a large thing, like you sold your first book, or you made a bestseller list. Or it could be something tiny, like the bus pulled up just as you arrived at the bus stop, or you thought you were out of bananas and then you found one.

There should be at least five, but you can add many more if you like. Some days you barely have enough room for all the good things that happened. Other days, not so much.

How does this affect writers and publishers?

It can affect a lot. Because this is not an easy business. Writing is isolating, and it’s hard—much harder than you thought it would be. Because editors have to face a lot of demands and complaints. Because authors have to face a lot of waiting and rejecting. Because we all need to value and treasure each day, even bad days.

We once had an author who published her first book and it did very well. But she thought she was a complete and utter failure because it didn’t make the NY Times Bestseller List. I felt sorry for her. She had a lot of success, but she couldn’t take it in, not even a little.

So yes, take time every day to remind yourself that no matter what, this day will never come again, for better or for worse. When you look back and read what you wrote down years ago, you will remember so many good things. Even if it was a terrible year out of a country music song—my wife left me, my dog died, and my truck was stolen—you will remember that you had a wonderful divorce lawyer, you got a new puppy, and the insurance paid for a better truck.