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Ramy Vance:  nice picture.

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ProWritingAid: I wish I could take credit. I did not to not create these slides.

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Ramy Vance: Yeah. Ice cream.

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Ramy Vance: an unreasonable amount of time trying to find that, like a sci-fi background to the title page of the presentation.

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ProWritingAid: Thanks for joining us. We'll get started here in just a couple minutes.

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Go ahead. And some of you yeah, already know the drill. So if you can hear me drop your location in the chat.

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Ramy Vance: Nice Meredith, from Illinois. anyone from Edinburgh. That's Tip. I'm I'm in Montreal right now, but I'll give a shout out for any Eddie ends.

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Ramy Vance: Nice.

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Ramy Vance: very cool.

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ProWritingAid: Toronto Ecuador Hello again, Lisa. I remember you from an earlier session.

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Ramy Vance: Wyoming. Toronto, Canada.

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Ramy Vance: I was just there 2 weeks ago, so

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Ramy Vance: great great city, although the traffic's horrific. Let's be honest. You know.

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Ramy Vance: we're still waiting on people. Yeah, alright.

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ProWritingAid: alright. So I'm sure people will be joining us. More and more. Yup. The numbers keep ticking up. So I'm gonna cover a few housekeeping items. So hello and welcome. I'm crystal craker from pro writing aid. Thanks for being here today

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ProWritingAid: before we get started. I just want to go through a few reminders

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ProWritingAid: so you can access your replays through the hub page. That's the page that you access this webinar we upload them when they are done processing by zoom, and we unfortunately cannot control how long that takes. So please trust that as soon as we have

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ProWritingAid: access to the replays, you will have access to the replays as well. Replays are available for everyone until September 28. After this date. The replays will only be available for our Academy members

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ProWritingAid: as a reminder, because you registered for sci-fi writing week you get 40% off of an annual license of pro writing a. This gives you access to our premium features, like all of our integrations for scrivener word, and our every aware feature. Advanced suggestions. Author comparisons to dozens of best selling authors. You also have unlimited word, count, so you can improve in time

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ProWritingAid: entire chapters at a time, and you can create snippets which are text shortcuts, dictionaries, and custom house rules. You only have access to this 40 person off offer until September 20 eighth. And this is one of the biggest offers that we offer all year. So take advantage of it.

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Ramy Vance: If you wanna keep talking science fiction writing, you can join our online community at the link below. You just use your pro writing a blockin. You can also access it from the pro writing aid homepage under the learn tab and hitting community. You can talk with other sci-fi writing fans and keep up with more of our writing events, and

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ProWritingAid: like the writing events that Romney will be doing in a few weeks. He'll be doing a 3 h session for us, so you'll get to see him again. Reminders to keep your questions for romi in the QA. Box, so that we could see them. But if you want to chat with other viewers. Please use the chat function. Okay. Links to your offers from our speakers will be available on the hub. That link is there

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ProWritingAid: alright. Today we're joined by Ronnie Vance Ramy Vance, bestselling, author of the series, Gone Godworld and Fiction writing coach at Self publishing.com has been writing stories since he was a kid, but started taking his writing seriously in 2014. Since then Rami has successfully authored and co-authored more than 64 books, his current job, full time, fiction, author, loving husband, and most fun dad ever, and had fiction coach to the students of self publishing.com.

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So over to you, Rami, I'm going to stop sharing and let's begin

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Ramy Vance: alright. Well, hello, everybody thank you. Guys. Probably writing aid for having me. II am a frequent user of your stuff, and I definitely will take advantage of that offer. And that sounds awesome.

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So today, I'm gonna give a presentation on a writing sci-fi, and before I dive in, I just wanted to guide, give a little bit of context. So when I was asked to speak here. I really kinda thought about like, what should the aim of this presentation be? And so I'm really focusing this presentation on first time writers, whether you're writing your first book or your first series, so maybe you have a book or 2

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Ramy Vance: under your belt already, but you still haven't got that whole series out, and I'll be kind of looking at some of the levers that you guys can do to kind of make your books have a slightly more commercial value to them. Right? So I don't wanna diminish the art. I don't wanna diminish the story. But at the same time, when it comes to having that writing career. I wanna weight the dice as best as possible in your favor.

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So I'm gonna share my screen now. And here we go.

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Ramy Vance: And can you see my screen? If I could get a thumbs up or something like that, that would be wonderful.  yeah, we can see it perfect alright rock and roll so how to write a kick. Ass. Sci-fi series. 3 lessons from well, me. So who am I? Well, I'm this guy. Alright. I'm sorry. Let me just I'm gonna cut off the chat just because I find it a bit distracting. So

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Ramy Vance: I guess I've already been introduced, so I will avoid kind of rehashing. But the highlights are. I'm a hybrid, Kyrian, Milwaukee, and if such a thing can exist, II say, certainly glad they does. I've written 11 bestselling books, and I have over 30 solo published books, and then an additional 30 co-authored books as well.

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Ramy Vance: I've over 16 years experience in traditional and self publishing. In fact, I got my start in the publishing industry and in traditional publishing back in 2,004. So pre kindled days pre, you know, ebook days, and as a writing coach I have coached hundreds of people to publish, write and publish their first books, in fact, that I just passed the 500.

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student, Mark. Right, I'm a trained lecturer. Speech and writing coach and the U.S.A. Today best selling author. So who's this event for

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Ramy Vance: anyone who wants the quick fix overnight success formula to write your own dune Star wars and altered carbon hybrid, and if you believe that I have some snake oil for you too, cause look, here's some caveats and some realities to it. There is no quick fix overnight success formula to this.

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Ramy Vance: This is hard, right writing, good fiction and writing good fiction that sells. It's a journey, and there's a lot that goes into it all the way from idea conception to be really smart, and how you position and market your book so that your readers or your future readers rather can potentially accept it and bring it on board. And there's a lot that goes into this.

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Ramy Vance: So the caveat is anyone who tells you there's one way to make it in. This business is full, O crap and run! But there are some things that we can do, and that we can teach that will help stack the deck.

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Ramy Vance: Now, personally, in my own writing career, I have launched 4 Sci-fi series. One was an absolute home run. 2 of them did pretty well. I'm I'm very happy with their success, and one was an abysmal failure, and, in fact, I would later on in this presentation, I'll open it up for let you guys guess

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Ramy Vance: you know which falls into which category of these 4 I'm I'm curious, just based on the covers, which ones you think were the home run versus the other failure. And I certainly I learned a lot in the journey of writing sci-fi, and I've learned even more teaching young writers how to write and how to write sci-fi specifically, and a a a bunch of lessons came out of that.

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Ramy Vance: because ultimately Sci Fi is a framework in which to tell the story, but it is not the story itself.

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Ramy Vance: Young writers first time writers often confuse premise for plot right? They think they have this great sci fi concept, this great idea for this new technology, or new monster, or new spaceship or new whatever. And they mistake that K. Cast idea for actually being a plot concept or a plot point. And that's simply not true. These are 2 separate issues.

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Ramy Vance: And so again, when thinking about this presentation, I thought, Well, what could

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Ramy Vance: be the best use of my time here?

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Ramy Vance: And I looked at my students, and you know, and my own experiences, as well as well as talking to many other successful authors over the years, and I tried to ask myself, like what were the 5 things that held a young sci-fi writer back. And, by the way, when I say young sci fi writer, I mean, it's your first book or your first series. So the first one is, it's all been done before.

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I often have young writers coming to me going. I wanna write this book. But then I came across this idea or this story, and it has a very similar story concept or character concept, or whatever concept to what I wanna write. And they they're just utterly deflated. Right?

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Ramy Vance: I'm a one and done right. They have an idea for a single book, and then they're done. They don't want to do anything else with it, which, on the face of it, is cool, but in reality writers right? So if you want a career, a one and done will do it for you.

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Ramy Vance: I need a crazy world, right? They get seduced by this big sci-fi concept that it's just massive and overwhelming. And you know they spend all their time world building rather than writing

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Ramy Vance: and no support.

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Ramy Vance: A lot of times, you know. You tell your friends your family like, Hey, I wanna write. And the average response is great. Billy has something to do on the weekends, or I'm glad that Jane has a productive hobby. But in reality it's not really support they. They're just kind of giving you lip service. And then, finally, they don't grasp story fundamentals. I really feel that like these 5 peaks of author failure. If if at the very least.

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Ramy Vance: I can offer context to bring these down and like, make these less of a hurdle in your writing career hopefully, this will give you a jump start.

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Ramy Vance: So where does this go? Or how do we frame this? So there's 3 key lessons that I teach@selfpublishing.com, and that I certainly internalize for myself that I'd like to share here. So lesson number one, the 5 step writing formula anyone could follow. To write a great story. Lesson number 2. Genre is not enough. It's about sub genres, tropes and tricks.

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Ramy Vance: And then finally, Lesson number 3, the 9 out of 10 pathway to making it in fiction. Alright. So without further ado, the 5 step writing formula, anyone can write to anyone can follow to write a great sci-fi novel. So there are 3 common mistakes. Young sci-fi writers make

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Ramy Vance: the first one, and

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Ramy Vance: honestly kind of one of the more shocking ones for me is no punchable villains. Often I have young writers coming to me with this idea of like I I'll give you an actual premise that I've had to flow at least a half a dozen times over the last 8 years. Mother Earth

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Ramy Vance: hates us for all the pollution and destruction that we're doing. And so, therefore she is trying to kick us off the planet. Right? It's great. Okay, but you can't punch Mother Earth, and you know a giant celestial is coming down to destroy the planet. Eat the planet. That's great. But the average person isn't nearly big enough to punch a celestial. You need a punchable villain. You need to embrace. The fact about writing is that

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Ramy Vance: when someone is reading your book they're not reading your book to see if the hero wins. They're reading your book to see how the hero wins. There is this expectations that heroes will prevail, and the goal, as a young writer, especially for early books in your career, is to demonstrate a hero for the ages someone that our your reader can absolutely, completely and totally fall in love with

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Ramy Vance: now I know, and I always have to address this because II address this in the classes all the time. It's like, well, what about game of thrones? And what about the walking dead? These are 2 series in which we're not entirely sure if the hero win. And I'll say that's great. Those are exceptions.

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Ramy Vance: But there are exceptions that were written by master writers who really understood the craft. And so, if this is your first book, your first series. I do recommend that you follow this rule of a punchable villain and a hero that will win. And it's about your creativity and your cleverness comes into play as to how spectacular is that victory! How clever is the hero in achieving that victory!

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Ramy Vance: The second common mistake that I see young sci fi writers make is, they fail to decide between hard sci fi versus soft sci fi. So I suspect most of you are interested in being sci-fi writers just by virtue of being here. So you probably come across these terms. But just in case hard sci-fi is a sci-fi story in which there is plausible science. Right? So this could happen on some level. Yeah, perhaps the numbers and the theories are stretched out and exaggerated. But it is plausible that this could happen. So a great example of a hard sci fi book would be the Martian.

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Ramy Vance: where Andy Weir spent an absorbent in amount of time, convincing us that it is possible to survive. Mars survive being alone or stranded on Mars. Right versus soft sci-fi.

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Ramy Vance: Soft sci-fi is the science just makes absolutely no sense. It's basically Star wars, right? I mean things work. We don't know why light savers. They're magic, you know, Jedi people and stuff like that like there, there's no real explanation as to how things going up

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Ramy Vance: before you Sci-fi or Star Wars fanatics come out. I know that there's some lore out there that tries to explain some of this. But when you look at the core stories of Star Wars that really kicked it off like, especially the movies of the 19 seventies and eighties.

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Ramy Vance: You know it was implausible science. There was no scientific basis behind it. and what I find is is that young writers will come. And here's an actual case of someone I'm working with. She's a pathologist, so she wants to bring her knowledge

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Ramy Vance: to the book, which is great. But then the rest of the book is just fluffy, right? And and so she has this one part of the book which is really hard and rooted in scientific fact, and then the rest of the book is just all over the place. And you really need to pick that level of sci-fi, because

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Ramy Vance: readers of sci-fi are expecting some kind of scientific explanation, and whether it's just throw science out the window or truly embrace science, they're expecting some kind of consistency across the board.

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Ramy Vance: And then the third common mistake is that either the writer is not embracing a niche, or is unaware that niches even exist.

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Ramy Vance: and so some of the most common sci-fi niches are dystopia, military sci-fi, space, opera, cyberpunk versus steep punk

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Ramy Vance: post, apocalyptic cosmic horror. Alternate history and and the list goes on and on, and I will talk a little bit more about this in Lesson 2. But for now let's just look at the core elements of storytelling.

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Ramy Vance: So

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Ramy Vance: once you have identified your punchable bill and hard sci fi versus soft sci fi, and really understood which niche that you're going to write under the next step is to embrace the 5 milestones.

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Ramy Vance: So the 5 milestones is a system that I kind of pull together from multiple other writing structures which basically, I feel falls comfortably in the middle of a lot of different writing structures from the 3 act structure to, you know the hero's journey, and so on and so forth.

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Ramy Vance: They're the 5 core elements of the 5 core moments within a story that if they are present your reader will enjoy the story, or, if follow the story. So where does this come from? First of all?

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Ramy Vance: So here's a picture of Picasso.

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Ramy Vance: right? His later work. And you know, back in the day when I was 15 years old. My mother's a painter, in fact, if I don't know if you can see me, but like behind me are some of her paintings.

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Ramy Vance: And she showed me this picture when I was 15, and me being a 15 year old, Jerk said, I can do that. At which point my mother showed me this picture, and this is one of Picasso's earlier works from his her his red and blue period, I mean specifically Red Period. And you see that the second painting that this is near photo realism.

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Ramy Vance: So, in other words, Picasso had mastered the fundamentals of art before he started to break the rules with that first painting.

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Ramy Vance: And so often I find that young writers don't embrace the fundamentals of fiction and simply just write whatever comes to mind or comes to heart their heart because well, they've read many stories. Th! They've written, you know many words over their lifetime via essays or emails or what you know, short stories, whatever it is. And they feel that they're somehow exempt from

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Ramy Vance: truly the fundamentals of fiction. And the reality is is that you're not. II mean, would you work with any professional who didn't understand the fundamentals of fiction? The short answer is, no. So you have to embrace at least the core fundamentals.

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Ramy Vance: And one of the core fundamentals is the 5 milestones.

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Ramy Vance: because they are present in practically every story that you've engaged in. So not every single one, of course, but at least 90% of every story you've ever engaged in will have the 5 milestones in some form. We're literally trained to digest stories in this manner.

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Ramy Vance: As long as these 5 moments are properly presented, your reader will walk away from your story, liking it like the engaging in it, understanding the flow of it.

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Ramy Vance: They work for plotters and pancers. So what are plotters and panters? Think of it as a spectrum where plotters are on one side and pancers on the other. A plotter is someone who needs to know every little detail of their story before they start writing, whereas a panther is someone who flies by the seat of their pants. They have a couple of character concepts, maybe a vague idea as to how things will end, and they're just gonna write and see how it unfolds.

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Ramy Vance: And famous plotters are people like James Patterson, highest paid author of all time, and Ste. And famous pancers are people like Stephen King. and it's been my experience as a writing coach that most people believe they are panthers

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Ramy Vance: when in reality most of you are plotters.

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Ramy Vance: and as you become a more experienced writer, you get into your fourth book, your fifth book, your sixth book. You start to embrace the plotter side of this. Now, certainly this is not true of everybody, but it has been my experience, time and time again, that I've seen this sh! This shift occur with the gaining of experience.

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Ramy Vance: They're the DNA of all great stories. They're the foundation of writing a great story quickly, and they help defeat writer's blocks, and to these last 2 points your only is ever lost in your own stories. When the last milestone ended and the next milestone's gonna kick off.

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Ramy Vance: So without further ado, the 5 miles stones! What are they? They're the set up the inciting incident, the first slap, the second slap. But there's hope. And then the climax. And so when I'm gonna explain this to the backdrop of hunger games at the still pick sci-fi story. And what's the setup? So the setup is cat. This wakes up. She slides her hand across the bed, defined Primrose. She's not there. She gets up and walks into this shack right. You know this

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Ramy Vance: poor area of her house is literally a one room house where her mother is suffering from some kind of Ptsd, and immediately we understand that this is a drama of some kind and witch cat, Miss a teenager is the pay and the matriarch of the story right? But then she steps. Outside of that check we see Hovercraft, the guy dressed like storm troopers. And suddenly we realize that we're in the future. This is the dystopia.

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Ramy Vance: So then we go into the inciting incident, and in the hunger games is the moment when she volunteers for the games.

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Ramy Vance: Now this is a key point, so I would say there are kind of 5 core mistakes that young writers make, no matter what genre you're writing in. And one of these core mistakes. Of course not. Everyone makes it, but many writers make is that their inciting incident is simply not big enough.

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Ramy Vance: An inciting incident has to be so big that it is irreversible.

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Ramy Vance: and it is your job to make that inciting incident do 2 things. Number one. Show the reader what victory looks like right in the. In case of the hunger games, victory looks like will catnip survive the games. Yes or no, and, as I said earlier, I don't think many of us read that book or watch that movie going cat is gonna die right? We watched it to see how catnest survives. So a, you know, kind of planting that. And then the second thing is, make a kick. Ass.

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Ramy Vance: right? Make it mean something, make it completely irreversible and life-changing. Live or die. Catnus's life will never be the same.

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Ramy Vance: Then we hit the first lap. Now the first lap roughly happens in the middle of the story. Give or take. Okay, and it is the moment in the story. It is the moment where your reader should look at that piece of your book and go, holy Guacamole! How is the hero possibly gonna survive this.

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Ramy Vance: and in the 100 games it is the moment where she actually enters the games.

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Ramy Vance: Then we hit our slide into the second slap. Second slap again. Rule of thumb not always rule, you know, but a rule of thumb around the 80 85% mark of the story is the darkest before dawn moment. It's that second moment in your story where it's like holy Guacamole is the hero gonna survive.

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Ramy Vance: But there's hope.

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Ramy Vance: unlike the first slap where it really feels like this is the darkest is gonna get, and the second slap is, it gets darker. But there's hope. So in the case of the hunger games. It's the moment where it is announced that 2 winners can leave the games as long as they're from the same district. So catnis goes off to find Peta.

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Ramy Vance: and in going off to find Peter she discovers that he's mortally wounded. He's going to die from the wounds, and we suddenly realize that. You know this is the worst thing that could happen, for catness losing Peta is worse than she herself dying cause, at least, if she dies as peace.

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Ramy Vance: But losing Peta is not, it would just destroy her.

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Ramy Vance: And then finally, the climax. Now on the off chance that you haven't read the book or seen the movie the climax being buried, anyone and I will just leave that. There is is quite a very climax. 2 rules

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Ramy Vance: tie it to the inciting incident. In other words, pass, answer that story question of will she, or will she not survive? And how? And then number 2 make it kick-ass. Alright. So you see this in a

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Ramy Vance: separate look.

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Ramy Vance: It works with the matrix. Funny thing is, I thought about updating this slide to the new matrix. But it was practically the same thing. So just left it.

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Ramy Vance: It works for students like Jen Ebon, who

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Ramy Vance: she's a prime example of someone who came to the course

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Ramy Vance: like just simply like with this chaotic story in mind. And she writes using the 5 milestones, kept my pants or mayhem in check. I set the 5 milestones and allow them to change as my pants, and this shifted the tail. At first I thought it was too rigid for me, but now I see the light they shift it with me, kept me true to my story, and help me not get lost in the abyss.

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Ramy Vance: I need to my climax, so I always knew where I needed to drive the Spring Indian the 5 milestones save me, and so I would ask you to consider your 5 milestones when starting your story, and if you're halfway through your book, just pause, take a couple of hours to figure it out, and if you've written your book.

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Ramy Vance: Take some time to figure out your 5 milestones and go through your manuscripts during the self-editing phase to see if it's there?

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Ramy Vance: And while we're here, why don't we just take a brief moment? What is your inciting incident? I'm quite curious. You can share here. I just gotta grab the chat. So I can actually see it.

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Ramy Vance:  go.

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Ramy Vance: I think I'm a linear plotter. A animal bite, says Eric. Okay, awesome. My hero's brother dies fantastic. That's right. That's irreversible. And if even creepier, if it is reverse, is reversed in a very unnatural way, which can really set the story off a death of a friend of the protagonist.

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Ramy Vance: The fiancee is killed. Okay, the mother is set for exec execution. Okay? Fantastic, alright guys. I yeah. I think I think that you really do get it. I mean, every now and then I have someone say my hero lost their job, and it's like, Well, you know what losing your job. Isn't that big a deal right? It's a couple of months of cloud of couch surfing, and that's it. And so one of the challenges. I would ask each and every one of you is to find someone

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Ramy Vance: who understand story. You know, who who reads in your genre, for example, and run the 5 milestones by them, and then

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Ramy Vance: see if they ask you any. Follow up questions if they ask you any details to, because they wanna know more, and if they do, you have something on your hands, and if they shift and just go oh, I have a story, too, that I would like to write and just start talking about themselves. Then you fail to capture them. And this is a wonderful litmus test.

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Ramy Vance: In fact, at at the school it's probably the the favorite part of my day is like, if you join the first phone call with the coach is we go through the 5 milestones of your story and really try to make sure that they're solid.

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Ramy Vance: alright cool in the game. Well, I'm getting a lot of responses. You weren't kidding. she told me that, like this community is like massively engaged. This is awesome.

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Ramy Vance: Alright! Without further ado, let's dive into the next lesson. Genre is not enough. It's about sub genre tropes and tricks.

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Ramy Vance: Okay? So often, II think, like you, you've written this book, or you're working on this book. And it's this big journey, and it's a story that's been swimming in your head for decades. And you kind of view this book that you're producing, that you're creating as this wonderful thing that's going to bring joy to the world much like your first born child.

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Ramy Vance: Right? But the reality is is that to the Guy, sitting 3 rows behind you on the bus.

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Ramy Vance: Your kid is a screaming pile of noise and mucus. Okay? And if you are serious about being a writer. You need to be able to look at your own book. And the same way that guy, sitting 3 rows behind you on the bus, looks at your kid

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Ramy Vance: because you have to take out the emotion, the blood, sweat, and tears that you put into your story when trying to figure out how to best position it.

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Ramy Vance: And so there's a bunch of things that go into this. And earlier, I'd spoken about the niches right right still be a military sci-fi. So on and so forth.

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And I wanted to kind of just

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Ramy Vance: dial, you know. Touch upon this again, because the is that each one of these covers represent a different sci-fi niche, and I think that if you spend a little bit of time looking at these covers, you can immediately start to see the differences and how each cover offers is all sci fi.

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Ramy Vance: but offers a different story promise. And it's really important that you understand 2 things. Number one. What is the story. Promise that you are actually offering

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Ramy Vance: right? And then number 2, how do you keep that promise?

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Ramy Vance: So when you look at these stories, you know we have. Andy wears Hail, Mary, but you have hard luck, Hank, right? And is pretty obvious that this is some kind of comedy leviathan wakes as a space opera debatably. A space opera against all odds is military Sci-fi colony. One Mars, you know, a solo guy on a Mars

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Ramy Vance: on Mars. It's called calling on Mars as colonization story, and then I think very few of us are confused as to what alien zookeepers abduction is about right again. Sci-fi, with, you know, some hanky Panky, but you get the idea, and it's really incumbent on you to understand this.

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Ramy Vance: Now, there's several ways to do this, and one of the key components is not only be familiar with the niches, as I've described here, but also understanding the tropes that your stories offer. Now, I suspect that many of you know what a trope is, but I'm just gonna go over what a trope is, so that we're all on the same page. Okay. Now, please forgive me. I know this is a sci-fi presentation.

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but I chose a fantasy trope

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Ramy Vance: just simply because I figured everyone on this call would know what I'm talking about. And with Sci-fi it was a little bit more subjective as to whether or not you would, you know, engage in certain tropes. So here we have twilight

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Ramy Vance: with the ending that I think most of us hoped for. And what do we have here? Right like? So what's the twilight trope since the twilight trope is in a nutshell, it's look at him! Isn't he saucy? Oh, my God, he's a vampire right but when you boil it down to its essence. The terrifying key components of this trope is. It's a supernatural being

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Ramy Vance: pretending to be human looking for love.

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Ramy Vance: and when you look at it from that top level you start to see this trope in multiple stories. Twilight, of course, but a meet Joe Black and City of angels, and in the original Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is ultimately the story of a supernatural being, Dracula, pretending to be human

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Ramy Vance: while looking for the reincarnated soul of his dead wife.

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Ramy Vance: So tropes aren't formula. I get this all the time in in the group. Coaching calls, and the one on one calls the tropes aren't formula.

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Ramy Vance: they are a way to enhance your creativity, because what they do is they show you the playground in which you can perform in which you have to be extra clever. It is very chaotic when creativity has no bounds and is all over the place. Tropes help us kind of hone it in and keep it confined, so that we can actually reach our readers.

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Ramy Vance: and a new take on an established trope can change everything. And this is why I take twilight because what you know like, we can all make fun of sparkly vampires, and we can all make fun of, you know the whole, you know, team, Edward, Team, Jacob, and all of that stuff. But what you can't make fun of is the undeniable success of twilight.

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Ramy Vance: and when you boil down the undeniable success of twilight, and try to figure out what did they did? Part of the answer? This is not the whole answer, but part of the answer is, she took 2 very popular tropes, the love triangle.

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Ramy Vance: and you know the supernatural being pretending to be human looking for love. She took those, and she twisted them. Instead of being one supernatural being, there were 2. The love triangle, instead of being a blood sucking fiend. It's a sparkly vampire that, you know like is a force of good for all the world

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Ramy Vance: right. She took these established tropes and kept them familiar, but changed him just enough that they were somewhat new and interesting, and if you can do this

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Ramy Vance: for your own story, that's where you can have the home run. Now you don't have to do it. You may not have that like a twilight home run, but you'll definitely find that niche or that element of success, because you're standing outside of the crowd.

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Ramy Vance: but not so far outside of the crowd that you were a turn off

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Ramy Vance: to the readers, or your confusion or enigma to the readers. So how do you figure this out right? How do you figure this out? So what I'm about to say is, gonna be shocking, I'm sure. But it starts with reading. You gotta read a lot, and you gotta read

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Ramy Vance: across multiple genres.

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And once you pick your niche right once you decide on that punchable villain hard sci fi versus soft sci fi. Once you decide which niche you're in military sci-fi versus, you know, apocalyptic sci fi versus whatever you choose. Cosmic horror, it doesn't matter. Once you make those choices

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Ramy Vance: read in your niche, see what the writers who are established who are doing well in your niche, how they're doing it. And then, once you've done that, identify the main tropes

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Ramy Vance: and then outline and write with those in mind. So I recently shifted into a new

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Ramy Vance: progression has a lot of sci-fi elements in it. And what I did was I read a bunch of progression books and I started to identify the core tropes that I saw in these books as well, just in general, whether they're isolated in an individual story or across the board. And I identified 54 things that I saw as genre expectations

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just based on reading widely in that niche.

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Ramy Vance: So if you're really looking to kind of establish the career you don't have to do this from the outset, but this has to be part of your study plan. If you're serious about being full time and maintaining your full time at this, and yes, full time. In this is a word I make words for living, so find your twist.

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Ramy Vance: and then release, publish, rents, repeat, and to this last point we dive into Lesson number 3, the 9 out of 10 pathway for making it in fiction. So this is where we're gonna get into the nuts and bolts of writing the one on one of you know, the economics of writing, so to speak.

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Ramy Vance: So weeks ago I took this screenshot of the top sci-fi books on Amazon. I think this is roughly 3 weeks ago, or something like that, when I was creating this presentation.

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Ramy Vance: and what I did was, I found the common denominator of success. Was this so of the 16 books that I looked at? This is true for 11 out of the 16. And if you can identify the common denominator, I think it's pretty obvious. Sorry. They're all writing series.

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Ramy Vance: Okay? So why does that matter? Well, outside of. You know the absolute truth that writers write. In other words, if you're serious about being an author, it means that you're serious about having multiple books under your belt throughout the progression of your career.

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Ramy Vance: It makes like it's absolutely crucial in terms of book marketing, and kind of establishing your brand and establishing you in the sci-fi space.

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Ramy Vance: So let's just do some book economics 101. Let's say you have one book, and you're pricing it for $5. That means that after Amazon takes its cut you're earning roughly $3 and 40 cents. It's it's never exactly that. But I'm just kind of trying to keep the math. Simple. Okay? So that means that if you sell 10 copies $3 and 40 cents, you made 34 bucks.

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Ramy Vance: except you haven't right, because let's say you have a 2 book series and 40% of the people who read book one go on to book 2.

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Ramy Vance: So when you play out the math. that means that you've actually not made $34, you've made $47 and 60 cents

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Ramy Vance: just over a 5 book series of 40% go on to Rebook 2. And of that, 40%, 75% go on to Rebook 3. And then once you have them in Book 3. You tend to have them to the end unless you screw it up. I mean, like, write a subpar book, kill a favorite character, I mean, kill one dog. Your hero could literally kill a bus load of people, but kill one dog, and you will hear about it.

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Ramy Vance: But assuming that you don't screw it up. You know these numbers are are reasonable for an illustrative example. You're making $78 and 20 cents, which means that one book isn't worth $3 and 40 cents. It's worth $7 and 82 cents

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Ramy Vance: right? Which means that $7 and 82 cents becomes your marketing budget.

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because as long as you're spending less than $7 and 82 cents

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Ramy Vance: advertising and marketing your book.

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Ramy Vance: you are profitable and congratulations. You are a profitable earning author.

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Ramy Vance: and it's very hard to build a career off of one book, but it is much

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Ramy Vance: easier over the long run to build a career off of multiple series. I have 11 series.

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Ramy Vance: and each series has a different level of profitability. But in some

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Ramy Vance: it gives me a healthy living. And this is the one thing that, like, you know, it's hard for a young writer who's still working on their first book at the thought that, Oh, my God, like, am I really gonna get to those many books out into the world?

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But the reality is is, 8 years ago I had 0 books.

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Ramy Vance: This happens faster than you can imagine.

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Ramy Vance: and when you start to combine these 3 lessons together well, the 5 peaks of author failure, right? You know it's all been done before. I'm a one and done. I need a crazy world, no support and don't understand story fundamentals.

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Ramy Vance: Well, they become the 5 piece of an unstoppable author, because with the understanding of genre and tropes like, it's all been done before you can find your angle, and you can find your twist. It's about the series, right? I think I've explained that. Well.

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Ramy Vance: tropes and subgenres will really help you Hone, in on the parts of world building that actually matter the parts of world building that your readers actually care about.

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Ramy Vance: So I had a series. I have a series that still exists

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Ramy Vance: called the gone God World, and in the first book. And and it is a long story on how I figured this out, but II noticed that readers are dropping off at 2 points in the story, at the 15% mark and at roughly, the 40% mark.

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Ramy Vance: And when I looked at those pieces of the story where they were dropping off. They were both world building parts. because if you do too much world building, you isolate your readers.

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Ramy Vance: 5 milestones. Look, there are other fundamentals you should know, but these are one of the core fundamentals. If you embrace at least this one, you have a great head, start

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Ramy Vance: support. Look! I don't know how many people are on this call, or like over a hundred 50 of you on this call, and the reality is is that, like each, every one of you is working towards the same goal. Finding people who are working towards the same goal means that you found someone who will talk you off the ledge when all you wanna do is throw your laptop out of the window

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because they gotta understand what you're going through.

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Ramy Vance: whereas if you tell someone who isn't trying to write a book that I'm so frustrated, my character won't do what I need my character to do your friends look at you like you're insane.

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Ramy Vance: But other writers don't. They're like, Yeah, I totally get it. And I feel you. So when you start to combine these 3 lessons together, you start to become, like Waldor Rodriguez, a former student of mine, who's absolutely kicking ass with his reclaimer series, and then other sci-fi students of mine.

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Ramy Vance: So is around this time that I often get asked, is this something I can help you with

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Ramy Vance: at@publishing.com. We have several writing programs. I just should note that we are a school, which means that we are a one year. Course, we're not like a one month, or you know, here's a 30 day, little quick whatever to show you how to do this one aspect, we take a very holistic view of things.

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Ramy Vance: We look at ourselves, Jones and Gillian Michaels, and this third guy. So Indiana Jones helps blaze. The trail helps keep you on track

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Ramy Vance: and micros holds you accountable. And what we find like with working with students over long periods of time is that there are just these certain things that really cause you guys to drop off and just stop.

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Ramy Vance: So in the program outside of 34 h of video tutorial, we also have multiple one on one coaching calls. We try to pair you up with someone who's writing something similar to you. And we have 6 live weekly group coaching calls.

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Ramy Vance: daily office hours.

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Ramy Vance: daily writing rooms. and like a whole host of like kind of top level group coaching calls on things like mindset and publishing. And you know the fundamentals of writing your rough draft

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Ramy Vance: all in all like you are vastly supported as well as access to our book production partners. And then the final thing is is that when we look at students right who are struggling with their books, we see that they slow down, especially in the editing phase, because that initial metrics are getting published really intimidates people. So we do it with you. We're we're committed to getting your first book out with your cover book description, formatting keyword categories, your initial promo suite.

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Ramy Vance: We do it all for you, and we do it with the explicit goal of teaching you how to do it yourself, and removing as much obstacles out of the way so that you can get to the finish line.

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Ramy Vance: So if you're interested in learning more. And by the way, I'm gonna open up for QA. In a minute. Please. You can book a call with us. The common denominator. Success with students is right mindset, embracing the fundamentals of fiction, rolling up your sleeves and getting to work. And I really need to emphasize this point. This is hard man. If if you're in it just to make money. There's cheaper like cheaper ways. Easier ways to do it like robbing a bank is way easier than writing your personal

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Ramy Vance: and deciding to get help. The who versus how like, you know, in the community, you could reach out to older students who are there, who've gone through what you're going through, the one on one coaching and the group coaching calls the office hours and writing rooms. They're all there to help you shortcut the how.

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Ramy Vance: Alright. So if you are interested, we set aside some time to book a call with our student success team. Please. Only book. If you're serious, these guys are gonna give you real feedback on what you're doing. So it could, you know, please, I apologize. If it's harsh

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Ramy Vance: and understand that, like these guys are looking to work with. People are serious about this. So if this is something that you feel like you could benefit from, like as much as you might have learned on this presentation, spending 45 min talking to someone about your book and your specifics with someone that actually understands what's going on, it can be life changing.

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So if you want to book, it's@selfpublishing.com sci-fi. Let me know in the chat. If you booked a call, and while we're there I'm trying to open up for any Q. And as

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so, how do I do this?

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ProWritingAid: Yeah. So you see, at the bottom of the QA. Button. Or I can. Yeah. And then you can hit. Answer, live? Yeah. And then, once you're done, you can mark done, and we'll go into the answered.

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Ramy Vance: okay, cool, alright. So creative meditation be a to do

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Ramy Vance: for aspiring sci-fi writers. You know, Rob, that's that's an interesting question, and I can only answer that from the perspective of everyone's different. But for me, creative meditation is writing.

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Ramy Vance: because at a certain point I just get into the flow, and like I start to see and understand things as I'm writing. And sometimes I go on tangents

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Ramy Vance: right? And those tangents means that the 3,000 words I wrote today are not gonna be useful words for the actual publication of the book. But it was a great meditative experience, where I really got deeper into my own creativity and my own world and my own characters. And it's just absolutely wonderful. So yeah, I do think I think the creative meditation can be the writing. And and so you're kind of hitting 2 birds with one stone.

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Ramy Vance: Okay, so that's done. So when you're writing your sequel. How much do you need during the first chapter, to carry them over from the first book? So new readers not totally lost? That's a great question, Philip, and

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Ramy Vance: like this is one of those questions where like, it depends on this circumstances. So in traditional publishing, the answer is quite a bit right, because in traditional publishing, typically the time between one book and another book

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is a year plus. But as a self published author you have the opportunity to publish that. Follow up book really quickly. And what's more especially in the digital like kindle world like, there's a lot of pushing to get you into Book 2 and book 3. So the expectation is is that the readership over a series tends to happen a lot faster. And so the amount that you need to.

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Ramy Vance: Pudding is much less so. The rule of thumb in in the course. What I do is we create this workbook where it's like the 2 columns. What does the reader need to know about the story? And what does the reader need to know about the world? Right? And so you literally write out everything they need to know about the story and everything they need to know about the world. So how the technology works. You know the geopolitical background of this area. Wh. Whatever it is, right, whatever is important for the world building perspective and the story perspective.

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Ramy Vance: And then you, you try to whittle it down

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Ramy Vance: to the bare minimum. And then you try to find the absolute latest point in the story when you can reveal this tidbit. That's the key component. So it's it's about giving them as little as possible as late as possible when reintroducing them or catching them up to what happened in book one is the general rule of thumb as an Indie author. Right? And so I think most of us are looking at it from an indie space, so that would be my advice. But it's certainly something that, like.

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Ramy Vance: you know, on a one on one like it would be great to really get into the specifics of your 5 milestones and world building and stuff. Unfortunately, this is not the context for that.

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Ramy Vance: All right. So I hit done.

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Ramy Vance: How do you recover from failure. As I love that question. II actually did a website called Who Fails Wins, where I wanted to collect the 100 stories of failure. And in the website it created this funny little video where I said, and if I cannot collect a hundred stories of failure, then I guess I fail

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Ramy Vance: add failing

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Ramy Vance: and it's true I couldn't collect it because people just didn't want to talk about failure and a and that really bugs me, because the truth is is that you learn through failure

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Ramy Vance: every time you fail you are that much closer and that much more badass.

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Ramy Vance: and every time that you get up from that failure, you are that much more capable of achieving your goals.

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Ramy Vance: So I think that, like it is just that shifted mindset and understanding that you failure is just such a necessary part of this.

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Ramy Vance: Sorry I were you trying to say something

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ProWritingAid: I thought I heard. Sorry. I don't know how I became unmuted. Sorry? Oh, okay, sorry. I just thought you were

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Ramy Vance: II thought maybe you were giving me the the, you know. Thank you for your time. Yeah, get off stage alright, I'll try to answer a few more questions. Ha! When do you think it's okay. Do you think it's possible to put some illustrations in my novel book.

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Or should I say a light novel where one page is showing the entire sentence like a normal novel does. But one page after that is showing the entire illustration. Yeah. So II would think that like, if you're looking at doing an illustrated book like, for example, Children's Book, or there's a great book by Patrick Ness, called The Monster Calls, and you can get this special edition, which is quite beautifully illustrated.

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The the idea of one page writing one page. Illustration is probably easier, may have to understand that on kindle and digital publishing you need to allow your book to have reflowable text.

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and because it needs to have reflowable text.

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Ramy Vance: It it. It can throw things off a lot.

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So, having the one page one page is probably the safest way to get it to do display correctly on the kindle.

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Ramy Vance: All right. You said wrong question. So do you think it's possible to write? Oh, I see. Okay. Do you think it's possible to write a hard sci fi based on what soft Sci Fi explained on. For example, I write some fantasy elements on my sci fi book about advanced technology with supernatural powers, but with lots of scientific explanation how they work? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is what

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Ramy Vance: Star Trek. Sorry Star Trek Star Wars tried to do in the later stuff was they started to science. Why, Jedi's have the Jedi abilities. I don't think they did a very good job. Unfortunately, all you Stari, and please don't come after me, but I would suggest. If you really wanna see a series that does this beautifully. Take a look at

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Ramy Vance: the inders game series by Orson Scott card. So they're they're 2 series that kind of run par parallel. So Inders game series. And then Indoors Shadow series. And he really takes these kind of like almost magical elements, and explains it in a scientific way. And it's just beautiful. So I'd recommend taking a look at that really, really well done so. Ingrid says my story has

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Ramy Vance: if my story is a series like a sorry, it keeps bouncing around 5 to 7 books. Do my milestones needs to spread across the books. No, each book should have its own 5 milestones. Each book should have its own 5 milestones.

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Ramy Vance: Trope is a plot device. Tropes that are over used are cliches. That's correct, Emma. Thank you for that, like, yeah. So the butler did. It is a cliche, because it was O, it's overused right? But who looked at him, isn't he saucy? Oh, my God, he's a vampire, although that appears in multiple stories, is still a popular trope which genuinely can be used and creative in new ways.

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Ramy Vance: as she proved with sparkly that buyers right. What is the cost of the call? The call is at self publishing.com backslash sci-fi is free.

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Ramy Vance: They will talk about what it's like to work with us@selfpublishing.com. We're a one year course our course is not cheap. So I'm not gonna lie to you on that. But there is a ton of support, and it's all geared towards getting you to that finish line as quickly as possible, and then powering you so that you can replicate the process as often as as you are capable. Really.

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Ramy Vance: So when you're writing a sequel, how much do you need during the first chapter that carries? Oh, I already read the answer that one.

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Ramy Vance: What is your advice for an old and Shrewsville, Miss Anthrop?

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Ramy Vance: A fixed income, who came to writing at a late age. Well, Dennis, I love your question, but my advice to you is, pick a niche

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Ramy Vance: that is underserved.

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Ramy Vance: Okay? And right. Understand what readers are looking for in that niche and write a great book in that niche. That is my advice to you across the board. Okay,

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Ramy Vance: that is the best way and the quickest way for you to start making money out of your books.

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Ramy Vance: Okay, and then use your misanthropic nature to your advantage. Look at, look at both, for example. Right? You know that is a common trope.

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Ramy Vance: The misanthrop was the heart of gold. So there you go. There's your central character can writers who want to get traditionally published still enroll in your book coaching? Pro, yeah, they do, most likely you'll work with me because I have the background in traditional publishing.

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Ramy Vance: I work with a lot of students. Look, our. The course is very much focused out at Indie publishing. Make no mistake, but in the one on one coaching we talk a lot about like agent pitching, and, you know, just kind of like that whole process, and how to make your you more attractive to an agent or a traditional publishing house.

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But end of the day.

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Ramy Vance: you know, depends on what you're writing, and with the exception of literary fiction, which you know, has a very broad and kind of blurry definition behind it. Indie publishing will offer you a greater opportunity to earn income.

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Ramy Vance: So it really is a case by case of if it's even worth chasing the traditional population path.

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And and this is from someone who got his start in traditional publishing. I was in traditional publishing for

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Ramy Vance: 10 years before I shifted into Indie publishing, and I think traditional publishing is awesome. By the way, I'm not one of these, like, you know, recovering traditional publishes.

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Ramy Vance: What can use? What can set your book? Stand out from the crowd for applying to applying to agents. Okay? So with, okay. So if if you're very curious about that, like, so one of the lower hanging fruit ways of getting your book noticed is taking 2 popular pro properties and combining them. So it's like saying, if altered carbon met Star wars.

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Ramy Vance: Alright then all of a sudden. It's like, Oh, my God, okay, like I get it, you know. I see I see what's going on. In fact, like II wouldn't be surprised if altered carbon, and if you don't know all your carbon one of the greatest sci-fi novels written in the last 30 years.

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Ramy Vance: I wouldn't be surprised if Altercarvin's pitch was. If neuromancer by William Gibson meets a Sam Spade hard boiled detective novel

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Ramy Vance: right? And it's just brilliant how that combination works together, and people who understand that stuff like, I immediately intrigued, it's like, Oh, my God! Sam spade beats Eurom answer like that's insane, like, what, what does that even look like? Let me see.

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Ramy Vance: right? So that's kind of a a way to stand out from for agents.

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What is the key to your writing volume. I'm not a full time writer. Okay.

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Ramy Vance: I think this will probably be my last question, Andre, so I'll I'll hit that. I'm sorry if I couldn't get to all the questions this is really engaged group

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Ramy Vance: so when I was starting out I had a full time job. I had a very pregnant wife. Sorry I still laugh because my wife was very under, like, you know, she's like, I'm pregnant, and I'm like I wanna write my first book and take time off and do it. And she's like, Go for it. Why not like? Let's just change everything about our lives.

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Ramy Vance: But what I did in that period was, I woke up every day at 5 in the morning.

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Ramy Vance: and I wrote until 7 30, which was the last possible minute I could until I had to start doing other stuff to start my day. I did that every day for maybe 2 years probably a little last, like a year and a half.

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Ramy Vance: and I learned that, like II would just organize my day. II have modules on this in the course I organize my morning so that I could consistently write 3,400 words every morning in that 2 and a half hours.

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Ramy Vance: and you know it took some time, and it took some effort to kind of fine-tune my day, but I mean I was pre like my my coffee was poured the night before, sitting in the microwave. My laptop was on the kitchen table. My wife was as understanding as she was. She did not let me have an alarm clock, so I just learned to wake up at 5 in the morning. It was. It was quite a thing, and and then I got. I went full time.

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Ramy Vance: and I need to wake up at 5 in the morning. And I, my productivity, went to the toilet right? I just I don't know why I had all the time in the day, so what I learned was, I still wake up at 5 in the morning and work for 5 to 7, 30 every morning and get my word, Count, done the differences now I have now.

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Ramy Vance: So there you go!

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ProWritingAid: I think I think we're out of time, right? I'm not sure. Yeah, we're running out. This was fantastic. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today, and thank all of you who joined us. I know some of you were like it was like 3 30 in the morning for some of you you said so that is, that is dedication. Ramy will actually be back with providing it in October to do a 3 h version

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ProWritingAid: of this session geared toward all genres, and that will be another free event. So keep an eye on your emails for to find out about that I will drop the links. One more time in the chat. You can find the replays once it's posted in the hub and join our live event. Chat on our community. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Romi. It was a pleasure.

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ProWritingAid: Everyone have a wonderful evening.

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Ramy Vance: Thank you so much for having me alright. Take care, guys.