Abigail Raeke
Book Coach & Developmental Editor
Abigail Raeke is a highly respected book coach and developmental editor based in the Pacific Northwest.
With over a decade of experience in the publishing industry, Abigail has guided countless authors through the creative process, helping them shape their stories and refine their manuscripts for publication.
Her expertise spans multiple genres, from fiction to memoir, with a keen eye for structure, character development, and narrative flow.
Abigail’s personalized coaching empowers writers to find their unique voice and bring their book projects to life with clarity and purpose.
When she’s not working with clients, she is passionate about nurturing the literary community in the PNW and sharing her knowledge with aspiring authors.
Connect with Abigail
Five Phases to Build a Novel or Memoir workbook for Free.
Abigail shared answers to questions covered in the interview
Question 1:
I often joke that writing a book takes more than just writing. Because completing a successful novel or memoir is a long-term, multi-faceted project just like any other.
It requires different skill sets at different stages. A first-time or aspiring author won’t have all of the necessary skill sets, simply because they don’t have experience with this type of project yet.
Honestly, I didn’t learn how to build a book – how to finish a manuscript, how to translate a deeply personal artistic process into a product – even in my MFA program.
I loved my program – everything about the people, the process, the program, but I didn’t learn to take a wholistic approach to creating a book until I became a developmental editor and book coach.
What I teach now is the things I wish I’d known twenty years ago.
Question 2:
I’d always been involved with language-learning and administering international programs.
I taught English as a Second Language all through my MFA program, and I still equate learning to write a book with language learning.
Question 3:
Well, I tell this story as an example:
When I was teaching at a university in Ecuador, I had one student who was an English phenom. He was younger than my other students, who were mostly professionals – doctors, engineers and business people.
This teenager taught himself English by listening to rock songs, and mainly took my class because he wanted translations for popular lyrics. This was in the nineties – pre google.
That student had a rare language talent, one I haven’t seen before or since – this ability to hear English constructs and just incorporate them like he was a native speaker.
Far beyond stringing a bunch of verbs and vocab words together – the way most language-learning begins.
Some writers have this rare “language” talent in terms of writing – the ability to read books and then produce structures to support their own stories.
But the vast majority of writers need these constructs revealed, like the rest of my smart and accomplished language-learners in Ecuador.
And just like learning a language, there are straightforward techniques to improving creative writing and building a book.
We don’t question that we’ll need to study some structure and practice communicating when we learn another language, but for some reason with creative writing, this misconception persists that you either have it or you don’t.
Question 4:
Yes, this is a teaching tool I’ve developed, to help break down the overwhelming process.
The first stage is the basis for everything, the Generative / Exploratory stage.
(Getting it out of your head onto paper – butt in seat. Word/page count.)
Pansters love this phase! Sit down, write, create characters and worlds. For memoir writers, you get to go deep into your lived experiences.
Even planners need to delve in to this phase journaling, questioning, writing without structure to discover their story, and find out what it means to them, and their characters.
At this phase it’s great to be in writing groups, have writing partners, anything to keep you accountable. This stage is really about tenacity, dedication to developing a writing practice.
Question 5:
I don’t necessarily advocate feedback at this phase – unless it’s professional / educated feedback with an eye towards honing story fundamentals, which is the second phase.
Story fundamentals hone structure, the shape of your book. These are things like defining present story timeline, character arc and story drive.
The problem with getting peer or beta feedback too early in the process is that these types of exchanges focus on local edits, meaning writers get line-level feedback on ten, maybe twenty pages at a time.
If you have a draft in early phases, it can be helpful to get a manuscript evaluation that focuses on global edits, how your story and book will hang together wholistically.
An author wants to be open to peer feedback, of course, but they also want to know the overall shape and themes of their book before they allow too many cooks into that kitchen.
In early stages, most books can go in several directions. Part of the hardest work of early phases – which continue to cycle through the entire book-writing process – is for an author to figure out the story they most want to tell, and why.
This is deep work that can’t be done by committee. Which doesn’t mean that a great writing group can’t reshape a writer’s vision for their project!
But I caution any author against continuing to receive line edits on pages, until they’ve taken a step back to understand story fundamentals.
Question 6:
Yes, narrative technique. This is a big part of what I focus on with writers in book coaching.
In a nutshell, books are written with mixture of narrative techniques, such as summary, narration, reflection and scene.
Newer writers often write long-form narrative with the misconception that they want to write as much as possible “in scene.”
But authors actually want to be discerning about which story events to develop into scene – to move the plot or character arc along.
Scenes are the building blocks of novels and memoir, but scenes are meant to show the impact of story events on a protagonist.
Scenes don’t depict the usual, the expected for a character. Scene events impact a character because something different than expected happens, something that impacts a point of view character’s perspective.
There’s a bit more information about each phase on my blog, and in August …
Question 7:
Yes, there are a lot of good resources out there for story fundamentals. Save the Cat writes a Novel by Jessica Brody is a classic.
This is based on hero’s journey story structure pioneered by Joseph Campbell and translated for movie structure in Anatomy of Story by John Truby.
I like the Virgin’s Promise by Kim Hudson for those looking for an alternative to the Hero’s journey.
For memoir, I like Fast Draft Your Memoir by Racheal Herron. We graduated from the same MFA program, but not at the same time 😊
I’m a big fan of fast-drafting in the first phase. Have fun! There’s more work to do – more work than can possibly be done in a single draft, so write freely.
Once you understand the other phases, you can take that first-draft pressure off yourself and just get that book done! And then make it better, and better.
Unfortunately, I haven’t found as many good – at least quick, accessible and affordable – resources for the third phase, narrative technique, so I just released an hour-long mini-course with workbook. (If I can plug my own course 😊)
It’s the first and most important thing I teach all of my clients.
Question 8:
No, no. They could – but each individual author is going to have a unique process.
Experienced authors blend the phases – they all blend in the end – the phases I teach are a way to break down this overwhelming book-writing process, to make sure all of the important bases will be covered.
I love to help authors discover their own way in.
Each book demands different story fundamentals, as well as a different blend of narrative and craft technique.
An author doesn’t have to do everything perfectly; they just work to make their book the greater sum of its story strengths.
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