Michael Hauge's Writing Q&As

Q: What can a writer expect to receive from your coaching packages, and how might this differ from working with a freelance editor?

A: Although I always give a lot of style suggestions on manuscripts or screenplays, I’m not an editor, so when I work with novelists, what they usually want and what I feel is most valuable for them to get from me is dealing with their story. Not so much their style in presenting it, because there are editors who can really help them with things like wordiness, or typos and punctuation, or dialogue. What I’m doing is coaching novelists on the concept of the story at an early stage in the process. They’ve come up with an idea and they want to know if it’s going to work. Or, I’ll take their story concept and work with them to improve the structure of the story and the arc for the protagonist. Those are the things I feel are my strong points.

Often what I’ll tell a novelist that if they have a completed manuscript, instead of paying me for all the time it takes to read the whole manuscript, let me read two chapters and a brief outline, because that’s enough for me to get the tone of it and some sense of the style and how you want it to read, and enough so we can get down to the core issues of structure and character development.

What I’ll often recommend initially, instead of getting one of the coaching packages that you see here (http://www.storymastery.com/coaching), is to book an hour of my time first. Give me a one page outline of the story, and we’ll talk for an hour. We can accomplish so much in this time. I very rarely advise someone not to follow through with their story, but we can find the weaknesses in the concept if they’re there, and figure out if the story you want to do has commercial potential. In an hour I can usually get to the point where I can identify the five key turning points, and then if you know what that basic overall six stage structure is, and you know the concept is solid, and you know the kind of arc you’re taking the character through, then you’ve got a lot to work with and a lot more confidence going into the first draft of the manuscript or screenplay. Then, after you get further into the story, you can get a package, send me some chapters and a full outline (or a first draft, if you’re a screenwriter) and we can go into more detail with it. Starting out with a one hour session allows writers to put their foot in the water and see if the process is helpful, and can save a lot of time by making sure the story is worth pursuing before putting all that time and energy into it.