Summary of Pre-event Development and Narrative Assignments

The following are major pre-event assignments, readings, and guides (not including Part IV - Algonkian Novel Development Program) for Algonkian events, many of which are found on our NWOE sister site. Downloading, forwarding, or copying these assignments without the prior approval of Algonkian Writer Conferences is not permitted, however, routine utilization of the content in its extant form is permitted.

• Parts I, II, and II Pre-Event (includes eBook) 
• Execution of the Pitch Model
• Assignment Recap and Dramatic Act Structure
• The Necessity of Publisher's Marketplace
• Prep for Agent Query Process

NOTE: this is an information forum, not a response forum. Utilize the appropriate forums for posting necessary responses.

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PART I

Pre-event as follows. Part I of four parts. 

 

First, a seven short assignments forum that will persuade you to consider several crucial and foundational aspects of your commercial novel project. Consider them as a primer. Complete at your convenience and post the responses. Your responses to these assignments will be reviewed by faculty with an aim towards achieving a better understanding of your project and its current stage of development.

 

NOTE: We recommend writing down the answers in a separate file and then copying them into the forum to prevent any possible loss of data. 

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PART II

The second instance of pre-event necessity as follows. Read carefully and complete in the proper order as noted. You might become a bit astonished from time to time but push through. It all makes perfect sense. 

 

Now comes the kindle eBook, or if you prefer, the same booklet found here as a PDF. In either case, you must faithfully absorb everything beginning with the first chapter, “Writer Ego and the Imaginary Bob,” and continue through “Settings are 60%.” This is vital to your potential success. It places emphasis on all the crucial core elements of novel development and editing that *will* be discussed in formal sessions. 

 

If you arrive at an Algonkian event not knowing the difference between a plot point and a pinch point, you will be swimming upstream from the first day and thereby seriously disadvantage yourself. Avoiding the study of proper technique won’t get novels published much less developed in a manner both artful and professional. 

 

Okay, much to do! Is it ever enough? No, but don’t recoil or hesitate if portions of the e-Book fail to comport with what you’ve been told elsewhere (writer groups, conferences, chat boards, etc.) because the odds are extremely high that what you’ve been told is wrong, if not potentially ruinous.

 

Keep in mind, we all stand on the shoulders of those magnificent and capable authors who’ve preceded us.

 

And remember too, there are no great writers, only great rewriters.

 

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PART III

Quite often, after scoring well in a pitch session, the faculty person will ask us, “But can they write?” Premise and plot prod the necessary attention, but so many writers don’t cross the line because their actual prose narrative is not as competitive as it should be. Fact.

In response to this circumstance we’ve created an online forum that serves two purposes. First, to demonstrate the best methods and techniques that should rightfully be considered when it comes to the creation of competitive narrative regardless of genre. Second, to act as a place where editors and agents will see the quality of your work up close.

Use one of the two links above to get started asap. Simply open the topic linked above, read the guidelines and all the examples linked to Novel Writing on Edge, then edit your own opening hook accordingly. Once done, post at least 500 words by replying to the topic post. If you cannot include first pages at this time another good sample will suffice.

 

Btw, you should already have an Author Connect member login if you’ve opened and utilized the Part I assignment (Seven Assignments). If you have not, please do so at the first opportunity.

 

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Execution of the Pitch Model

 

Like so many other things, this is crucial to your success.  

 

Before you can sell a viable commercial novel to a publishing house, you must work towards the goal of writing a viable commercial novel while simultaneously learning how to artfully pitch it. You will have a minute to deliver the actual pitch, and if you think this is not enough time, think again. It is more than enough. The idea is to communicate clearly and hook your listener. Your pitch must include a SCENE SET (as necessary), a focus on your PROTAGONIST (tell it through their point of view), sufficient PLOT TENSION deriving from a PLOT POINT (an event/circumstance/action that significantly changes the course of the story), and finally, a wrap with a CLIFFHANGER.

 

So what's a cliffhanger? Regardless of the genre, literary or thriller or SF, the cliffhanger begs the ultimate question, and it’s always the same in one way or another: WILL BECKY SAVE THE FARM AND LIVE TO TELL THE STORY? Once done, you want the conference editor or agent to ask for more.

 

Please review the following guidance at Novel Writing on Edge where you’ll find two pitch models and further elaboration. You will be using this model at the Algonkian event:

 

https://www.novelwritingonedge.com/2013/11/algonkian-writers-conference-first-prep.html

 

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Assignment Recap and Dramatic Act Structure

 

By this time, you should have in your possession three main assignment mails, namely, Part I (Seven Assignments), Part II (Development eBook), and Part III (Prose Narrative Enhancement).  These assignments serve two purposes:  to enable you to conceive and write a more perfect novel, one that might actually sell; and secondly, to instill within you with a language and knowledge base that will make meetings with publishing and tv/film professionals far more productive.

 

Now, the following statement should sound familiar. If a member of the faculty asks you to define your first major plot point, inciting incident, or last major reversal before climax, you must comprehend the nature of these plot elements (for starters!), and deliver the response in a manner that demonstrates you are a professional. Amateurs *always* stick out, and they say “um” a lot, thereby failing to live up to our motto:

 

From the heart, but smart.

 

Besides displaying a high concept premise, the faculty also expect your genre or upmarket tale to be creatively developed using a certain approach and structure—one also utilized by screenplay writers—namely, the dramatic act structure. Whether the novel is a single, coherent plot line, or a parallel plot line with two major protagonists, the overall story progression manifests a readily identifiable endoskeleton, so to speak, i.e., an array of familiar points and notes along a story arc from beginning to end. There is more than one version of this, but they all achieve pretty much the same results: the Three Act, Nine Act, and the Six Act Two-Goal. A very good example can be found here.

 

The above is included with your assignments and its importance cannot be over stressed. One of THE biggest reasons novels by unpublished writers fail is because the author is not sufficiently adept at plotting. A novel with a great start but a “saggy middle” always results from an inadequate understanding of how plot must work in order to satisfy the needs and expectations of readers, agents, and editors. Quite often, writers will bring stories and pitches to the NY event that are nothing other than circumstances, sets, and characters mixed into a quasi-amorphous stew, whirlpooled into forced fusion like fragments of a television season.

 

A sign this is the case can almost always be found in the pitch itself.

 

Acquisition editors, experienced agents, and other professionals usually don’t expect to get much traction out of the usual writer conference, but our events always surprise them. We mean to keep it that way. Our reps are on the line, and the better you look, the better we look. The more subs requested, the more contracts cut, the more willing our faculty are likely to return. No question. We also love the publicity and energy generated when the contracts flow.

 

Btw, if the information above doesn’t square with what you’ve been told up until now, then choose the wise path of change.

 

Rewrite as necessary.

 

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The Necessity of Publisher's Marketplace

 

You are well advised to join Publisher’s Marketplace. Why? Because it lists recent sales by agents to publishers broken down by genre and provides a neat story-hook line (log line) for each sale that serves as a potential model for you. PM shows precisely what type of work is now being published in your chosen genre, thereby providing a comparison for your own work, and as a bonus, you learn the identities of productive “in the loop” agents (good to know regardless of circumstances).

 

All in all, if commercial publication is your goal, PM is invaluable. The search feature is efficient and fairly straightforward. Membership is around $20 per month, but well worth it.

 

The type of knowledge PM provides will give you a distinct edge over the competition.

 

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Prep for Querying Agents 

 

Though addressing the query-agent stage of your long, hard slog to becoming a published author might seem premature at this point, questions concerning this process nevertheless always arise at Algonkian events. Rather than await the next round of probes on this matter, we’ve decided to link you to the article below. It succinctly covers the critical prep steps you must take prior to sending anything like a query to a commercial agent (if and when it comes to that). Also, it effectively overrides the usual incomplete and/or foolish advice on this matter which currently infects the Internet like an electronic pox. With these answers already in hand, further questions at the conference, in theory, should be more informed, and therefore, the answers more productive.

 

 

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FIRST ASSIGNMENT: write your story statement.

1.      Abandon one’s nature to save a love.

SECOND ASSIGNMENT: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.

2.      The antagonist is The Call. It is a covert network that was born from KGB plots to cause the collapse of the United States and Democracy as a concept by exacerbating all of the problems caused by the democratic process. The protagonist belongs to The Call and is, at first, part of the antagonist force. But the Call has no tolerance of personal wishes or one’s desire to live and love outside of the mission of the Call. It is cold in its operations and it sacrifices its agents with ease. And it is everywhere. When the protagonist abandons the Call, it turns its forces against him. Not because it needs him to succeed in its goal, but because the Call is totalitarian and requires all of the minds who serve it to be devoted to it.

THIRD ASSIGNMENT: create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed).

3.      To My Love And The End

FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?

4.      Comps

a.      THE POWER by Naomi Alderman, which explores the corrupting nature of power;

b.     THE WATER KNIFE by Paolo Bacigalupi, which offers a chillingly plausible descent from democracy into scarcity-driven control; and

c.      BANNERLESS by Carrie Vaughn, which examines the bureaucratic, institutional, and human mechanisms that might follow when “safety” replaces freedom.

FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.

5.      As an agent of chaos guides the collapse of democracy, he is forced to choose between the woman he loves and the very nature that created him.

SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.

Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?

6.      Secondary and Inner Conflict.

a.      The protagonist was born and bred to be an agent of subversion on behalf of the soviet union, a weapon—and he is. But one woman breaks him, and makes him question that nature. He is conflicted with following his path as an agent of chaos and living for his own happiness. Can people divert from their nature or calling?

b.     The work that the protagonist performs begins to threaten the woman that makes him feel. The covert network he exists in forces him to choose between it and safety of the woman he loves.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT: sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend and be aggressive with it.

The story is set-in modern-day Manhattan, with all of the current rules, laws, and social norms that govern it. It is important to because the story takes the reader through the existence of a thriving society/culture that descends into oppressive order through the creation of chaos.

Act of Story Statement

After a public and unusual heart incident, College freshman Mackenzie Webster must seduce a total stranger to take her heart back and build a future on her own terms.

Antagonist

Angela Arnett, a rude and privileged over-achiever, competes with Mac on every level possible. Though her popularity is from intimidation rather than likability, Angela still commands every room she enters with a posse of admiring social climbers at her tail. Their high school rivalry follows them into college, where Angela and Mac end up in the same section of History of Cardiac Reactivity and fight to claim a spot in the coveted Dean’s lab. When Angela joins the overly pink and suspicious sorority Kappa Phi Kappa, she tries to draw Mac in with the allure of secret practices to control one’s heart. A character who is cunning, manipulative, and the fakest sweet one could be, Angela finds a way to get under Mac’s skin and tempt her to the dark side.

Titles

Heartless
The heartless girl at Harbrook University

Comparables

BLOOD MOON- Britney Lewis- 2025
A college student discovers vampires and werewolves are real and gets sucked into their world. YA college love story with speculative/fantasy elements.

MAKE ME A MONSTER- Kaylnn Bayron- 2025
This dark romance follows a mortician’s daughter grappling with corpses coming to life after tragedy strikes.

Logline

In a world where heart metaphors take on literal meaning, heartbroken freshman Mackenzie Webster locks eyes with a stranger at college orientation and gives him her heart, throwing her life into chaos as she wrestles with opening herself up again and doing what it takes to get her heart back. 

Inner Conflict

After Mac’s high school crush Mason rejects her at the end of their senior year, she diverts from her plan to follow him to the prestigious college down the road and instead settles for the under-funded arts school nearby. When she arrives, she is determined to avoid anything to do with romance– a goal she nearly immediately fails at when she sees Ben Myers at college orientation and her heart bursts into his unsuspecting hands. And of course, her high school crush happened to have transferred to the arts college, too, and witnesses the whole gory scene.

Mac is torn between her head and her heart, questioning if she can trust the kind and humble Ben, or if she needs to close herself off to anything and everything she can’t rely on. She oscillates between adoring the new people in her life and pushing them away as she grapples with vulnerability, loneliness, and what deep connections are worth. 

Secondary Conflict

Not only does Mac give her heart to a total stranger, but she experiences an incredibly rare heart incident called love at first sight syndrome, which results in her heart fusing to Ben’s hand. While she desperately wants to transfer back to the prestigious college down the road upon seeing Mason, she is forced to stay at the arts school until she can find a way to get her heart back. 

Mason approaches Mac trying to apologize for rejecting her, and slowly works his way back into her life. Meanwhile, she gets closer to Ben, who is nothing but reliable and kind. It’s a classic love triangle, but with dangerous, and bloody, consequences.

This intensifies as the distance from her heart sets Mac on edge: the longer she goes without seeing her heart, the more distanced she feels from her emotions. Mac’s cold and unfeeling demeanor causes her friends to fall away as she makes increasingly dangerous attempts to reunite with her heart. Her growing desperation pushes her into the arms of a sorority that encourages her to distance herself from her heart and the feelings it incites, despite the body aches and tension that build with every passing day.

Setting

Though it was an arts school with a laughable reputation, the Harbrook University campus felt like being in another world.

It was technically only fifty miles from where Mac grew up, but the city landscape alone was drastically different from the cookie cutter homes and neighborhood parks comprising her hometown. Nestled in the middle of the busy city, the old brick buildings of Harbrook University seemed to grow out of the landscape like they predated the massive oak trees lining every pathway on campus. 

Something about the place felt wild, untamed, a direct contrast to the polished constructed landscape of the city surrounding it. Mac loved the tangled vines covering her favorite buildings—the library and the dining hall, in that order— and the smell of honeysuckle that permeated the winding stone paths. 
There was a quad in the middle of campus, a sprawling intersection of pathways colliding in the center at the famous brick bell tower.

A new Dean came to campus, demanding modern renovations that stuck out against the old brick buildings. A collision of opposites: old and new, city and campus, brick and steel, Harbrook University was full of secret basements for students to explore.