30 Days of Hell - The Road to Winning Kindle Scout and Getting Published, Part One

A bit about me. 

My name is Jason Luthor and I am a former writer for Blizzard Entertainment. During my time as what was essentially outsourced writing talent, I worked with the writing team to develop Protoss storylines that at the time were going to be part of the Protoss campaign for Starcraft 2. I'm not saying I was the greatest writer, but I was good enough to get paid working for a really well established entertainment company, and I had fairly solid mastery of the short story writing form.

In 2012 I was completing my Masters Degree. During what I can only call a hectic hell on earth situation, I was splitting time as a full time Masters student and a high school teacher. It wasn't glamorous and I was exhausted all the time, but one thing I did learn along the way was the importance of editing. For a few years, since my time with Blizzard, I'd been trying to get a book out the door. However I, like many short story writers, did not 'get' what it took to take a short story and keep it interesting over the length of a novel. A lot of my problems would have been solved with just some decent editing.

The major problem was that the graduate program was so writing heavy that somewhere I lost my passion. That summer, with my Masters degree in hand, I was sparked by the movie Man of Steel to start writing some Superman fanfiction. I had great reviews and decided to try Batman fanfiction and again, great reviews. One of the constant comments was that they loved my characterizations and that I'd nail the personalities.

That part's important, because it's exactly what I didn't do when I tried my hand at writing a book again. My next novel, The Dream Map, had an intriguing plot that got interest from agents. In fact I went through a lengthy process, and still maintain a close relationship with, an agent in Los Angeles. One of the greatest pieces of feedback he gave me during the editing process was this: "I can't tell your characters apart."

Something he mentioned to me that always stuck was that he could flip to any page in a Harry Potter book and tell who was speaking without having to be told by the author. That, he said, was why my book wasn't sticking. I started to think about that and realized that the successes I'd had in fanfiction were assisted by the fact that my characters had been per-developed for me. It was easy for them to each have their own voices because I'd been hearing those voices on tv, in movies, or reading them in comics for years.

Giving characters their own voice is, in my opinion, one of the greatest problems amateur writers face. So many people come up with intriguing concepts or plots, and put so much into world building, that they forget to make their characters really come alive as individuals. As one fellow writer told me, "Disney doesn't sell original stories, it sells characters." This was exactly what I'd been missing for years. I'd nailed it in short story form where you didn't need to pay so much attention for such a long span of time to characterization, and my novel length fan fictions came naturally because the comic world was hammered into my subconcious. But me? Coming up with my own characters with their own voice? Even going back to rewrite The Dream Map, I was discouraged because I realized I'd have to tear it apart root and branch to really invest it with snappy dialogue and character moments. I just didn't have it in me.

So from the verge of abandoning my individual writing entirely, how did I end up here, with people praising the character of Jackie and with my book, Floor 21, on the verge of publication?

Let's just say thank God for NaNoWriMo and the digital age of book publication. But more on that soon.