June Meeting Notes: C. Lill Ahrens

Presentation: The Art of Creating Standalones

Why Create and Market a Standalone:

Creating and marketing a standalone can give you “agent appeal!” When you get a standalone published, you generate interest in your story and show that you are publishable.

A “standalone” can be defined as an excerpt from a book that has been edited to stand alone outside the book. This can be either a nonfiction article or a story.

Aside from agent appeal, standalones can do the following:

1. Give you a break from writing your novel
2. Give you the boost to finish your novel
3. Improve the quality of your novel

Writing a whole book is a complicated process and fatigue can set in the midst of it. One way to remedy this problem is to take a break from the project, but not the writing. Standalones will keep you writing while giving you a needed break.

Also, a standalone publication and/or contest win can give you the energy boost to get you back in and finish your project. The validation of a publication credit and/or contest win will give you the confidence you need to know you’re on the right track.

Lastly, a standalone can help improve the quality of your novel because it polishes it. As you work on your standalone, you’re digging deep into your novel and focusing on one part. It’ll help you add depth to the chapter and assist you with finding mistakes and lack of plot threads. Doing this is never a waste a time, because it’ll greatly help you while you finish the story.

When a standalone is published, you don’t have to worry about losing the copyright, because it is reverted back to you when published and doesn’t affect the entire book.

When to Create a Standalone:

You can create a standalone at any time during the writing process. It is never too late and it is never too early. You may want to create a standalone right away because responses from publishers take time or you may want to create one later while you’re waiting on a response from an agent/editor on your entire novel.

Part 1: Finding the Raw Material, Especially the Theme

You can find raw material for standalones from nearly any type of manuscript, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. If it’s nonfiction, you might have a section from a chapter that would work great for a mini article. If it’s fiction, you might have a chapter that has all the basic storytelling elements (entertaining plot, character depth, satisfying conclusion, etc.) contained within the section. Your material doesn’t necessarily have to come from a complete chapter; a standalone can also consist of a single scene or a plot sequence from your story.

It’s very important to know your theme when you’re creating a standalone because it is connected to the character’s emotional truth and it adds depth to your story. Theme is the emotional issue your story explores. For example, the theme of Finding Nemo is loss, which is hinted at right in the title. Theme is beyond the actual plot and is the reason why a story feels like a whole.

You should discover your theme and use it as a tool for your standalone. Books and standalones usually have just one theme, otherwise the material appears unfocused. If you need a particular theme, such as for a contest, you can slant the contents of your standalone to fit it.

Part II: Shaping the Raw Material

Once you’ve decided on what you’ll use for your standalone, there are a few steps to shaping the raw material.

1. Decide on the raw material you plan to use and extract it. Take it out of book and put it in a new file. At this point, the raw material is called an excerpt.

2. Delete orphaned plot threads. Orphaned plot threads are conflicts that have no set up and/or pay off within the confines of the excerpt.

3. Delete characters that don’t affect the excerpt’s plot.

4. Determine the theme: What is the main emotional issue? Even if you have two or more themes, you need to settle on just one for the standalone. You can use your theme to shift out incidents that you don’t want to include and determine how you want to end it.

5. Determine the hook: The hook doesn’t have to include your theme because its purpose is to make the readers interested in the story. However, the beginning should show more than just the hook, it should also include the narrator’s emotional truth, the problem of a story, back-story, and setups for the payoffs that are going to come later.

Part III: Completion

Once you know your theme you can write the first draft of your standalone, but be prepared to revise and ask for reader feedback. The most important thing about completing your standalone is that the story should be clear.

Dig deeper and ask for “honest” feedback. Ask your readers which parts left them confused and then continue to polish and revise until there is no more confusion.

And, the very, very last step to creating a standalone is to find your market and submit!