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So you want to be a writer part 6

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Part 6 – Writing your novel

The long awaited post…dun, dun, duuun…!

You followed my advice. You thought about an idea and found one you liked so much you wrote it down. Then, you wrote a few short stories, and all the while, you engaged people on social media. You talked about the latest action flick. You talked about what a buzzkill the latest book was. You praised the newest video game, and you told people you’re writing.

People came and peaked at your short stories. Some downloaded them. A few commented, for better or worse. You blogged, you connected, you even wrote a whole fanfiction novel. Maybe, you hired an editor or found some beta-readers. Maybe, you didn’t, but some people know you now, and some like you. Others don’t, but hey, you haven’t written that novel yet, so it’s no big deal. You even went back, and edited your earlier work, and re-released it. Maybe, you even hired a good cover artist.

Of late, all that swims through your mind is that story, that novel. You’ve even tried to get away from it, writing other, short stories, just wondering if you’re ready. You’ve asked yourself, can I do it? What is it gonna’ take? What if I can’t figure it out? What if people don’t like it?

Take a big breath and relax. Now, you are ready to write your novel. You have a feel for the process. You know you can do it because you did write, and you did release short stories. You even wrote an entire fanfiction, so yeah, you know you can do it.

You have the idea. You’ve thought about your novel so much, you can see the characters, hear the pitch of their voices. You know their mannerisms, and how they act in the world, react to the world, and interact with one another. You know the plot. You know the problems. You know the solution. Take a big breath, and start writing.

Writing is the easy part after all. Writing is just the process of transferring thoughts to paper (screen?). At this point, you know that you don’t have to worry about the fact that your beginning is shaky. You don’t need to worry that there’s no middle. You don’t need to worry that you have two or three different ideas for the ending.

At this point, you know that the only thing that matters is transferring your thoughts to paper. Write what you have. Don’t stop. Don’t fret. If you need to, go back, and read what you wrote to make certain you’re still on the same train of thought, but if you run into a roadblock, take a detour.

You have your introduction, but your dialogue is sketchy. Maybe, your dialogue is great, but you have a tough time writing action scenes; whatever the troubles are…well, they aren’t really a problem. Just write what you have, and if you need to, skip ahead. Your book is not etched in stone. It is not a published novel out for sale. Just write. Just keep writing.

Treat every chapter like a mini short story, and maybe, by the time you get to the middle, you see a different ending, but the beginning has to be changed. No biggie; you’re just writing. This is just a draft, and no one has even seen it yet.

Maybe, you can tell there isn’t much to say about the actual writing process. Contrary to what so many people believe, writing a novel is the easiest thing in the world. Nothing really matters; it’s just a draft, so draft away.

There are no rules in writing. None. There are certainly some very important rules when it comes to editing a story, but there are no rules involved in writing that story down. Did you know that you don’t even need to break a novel down into chapters? Nope, at least not until the editing process. You can just write, and write, and write until you have everything you want.

It’s a draft. It isn’t etched in stone. It isn’t a published product released to the public.

Write down absolutely everything you want to write. It doesn’t make any difference if it’s senseless, useless, crazy, boring, or even out of sequence. Just get as much down as you can. This is your time. This is the process you should be enjoying the most. While you’re writing the story, you are writing for you. You are writing something you want to read. You are unburdening your creative mind grapes and writing down all the things about your story that you want to experience.

This is certainly going to be a long process, and you will change almost everything you write by the time you’re ready to publish, so just don’t stress. Don’t worry about a routine. Nothing kills creativity like routine. Don’t turn writing your story into a job or a chore; enjoy the process. You want to write? Write! You don’t feel like writing one day? Don’t write!

Don’t ever worry about hitting a certain word goal every day. Don’t waste your time with writing exercises; they only help you do better at the exercise. That’s why you practice exercises before you write your novel. When it’s time to write your story, you just write the damned story down!

Go back. Read it. Read it again and again. You’ll see plot holes. You’ll find inconsistencies. You’ll laugh, cry, cringe, and cheer. Add everything you want to the story. Cut everything you don’t like. If it comes up short, it comes up short. If it comes out long, and it drags ass, cut the fluff out.

I’m telling you, writing the novel is the easiest part of the whole successful writer thing. All you gotta’ do is jot down what you’re thinking.

There will be times wherein you’re going to come across sections where you feel stuck. You’ll have point A and point C, but won’t know what point B is. So? Who cares? Nobody but you knows this. Just write down what you have and move on.

This is like the whole can’t see the forest for the trees thing, or maybe I have it backwards. It doesn’t matter. The point is that you cannot possibly know everything about your story until you’ve written it down.

Maybe, that sounds crazy or backwards, but I’m telling you, if you go into this process believing that you must know every, single, little, tiny detail, you’re out of your mind. You’re fooling yourself. This is precisely why people fail, or they succumb to fear; they think they must know every word, sentence, action, event, scene, whatever before writing the story.

Wrong.

Just get as much of your story down as possible, and when you get stuck, read what you have, and spend some more time thinking about the world, the characters; let the story tell itself. What you think your story is going to be is not what your story will choose for itself. If nothing comes to mind, jump ahead! Write the end then go back and re-read from the very beginning. So, you get stuck for a day, a week, a month, no big deal; go busy yourself with something else. That worked for Einstein.

I know it sounds crazy, but I’m telling you; just write. It’s that easy. It really, truly, is that simple. Anyone who writes an entire novel from start to finish in a month, two months, three, four, and then releases it is releasing crap. Now, that crap might sell. There are certainly people out there who like crap, but writing, releasing, and selling crap won’t lead to long term success.

Anyone who becomes a peddler of crap may be successful, very successful, at the onset of their career, but if they don’t begin releasing quality content, they won’t get very far, and at this point, if you’ve followed the advice in these posts, you’ve already set yourself up to sell your book, so you don’t want to release crap, and that means taking the time to write a great novel, but writing a great novel doesn’t entail doing it perfectly on your first attempt.

Again, just write what you have, what you know. Skip ahead if you must then, when you see more of your story developing, you can go back, and fill in the blanks; you can restructure, or you can even re-write the whole thing. It’s what the guy who wrote Jaws had to do. All that matters at this stage is that you have fun.

When The Godfather was submitted to the production company, the screen editors and directors thought the book was atrocious. The reviews on the Rambo books, you know the Rambo movies are based on books, right? Those reviews are pretty bad, because the books are terrible, so crap does sell, but it usually only sells after it gets turned into an awesome movie, and if it doesn’t become an awesome movie, who will buy it? What saving grace will there be?

As usual, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. You aren’t staking your entire life on one novel, but it is important to make your first novel great, not because it’s the only way to become successful, but because you want to start off the right way and save yourself the torment. You also care about your fans because they are paying you, and they are selling for you, so give them something they can enjoy.

Now, editing your novel is a totally different story, but you can’t edit or get feedback until the whole book is written, right? So get it all down then take a break because the hard part is about come up and blindside you.

Yup, before you know it, you’ve actually written down your whole novel. Yes, some parts are shaky. Yes, some transitions aren’t that great. Some of your chapters feel short and rushed. Other chapters feel long, and they tend to get boring before reaching the end. No big deal. Now, you will do one of the most important things you will ever do for your novel. You will leave it alone.

Get away from your novel. Forget all about it. Dive into something else. Write another short story. Play a new video game. Go back to playing DnD with your friends. Whatever you do, do your best to forget as much of your novel as you can. Spend at least two months away from your novel.

This is a great time to get back to everything you were doing before you wrote your novel. Get back on Google+ and Goodreads, and discuss other topics with your reader groups. Download some more short stories from Smashwords, and give ‘em a read through. Give your fans, the ones who dropped by your blog to read reviews, something new to read; a new review of a game, book, or movie.

Here’s why; you’ve been thinking, eating, breathing, living your novel for months, maybe even years. You know everything about it, all its intricacies, and you’ve done the best job you can to lay it bare for an audience, but an audience is not in your head, and there may be some thoughts, actions, or correlations that seem self evident and truthful to you, but to an audience, to a reader who has never been in your head, all of those ideas which seem logical and self evident may very well seem muddled and confusing.

This is the perfect time to do one or all three of the following:

One, post your whole book to your blogs one or two thousand words at a time two or three times a week, thus giving your fan base a chance to read it without a great commitment. Naturally, they’ll also be able to comment and discuss it. (You will eventually delete these posts before releasing the book.)

Two, kindly let people know that you are looking for beta-readers, people who are interested in reading a draft for the specific purpose of helping you better connect with your intended audience. (Assuming you are not releasing the entirety of your book to your blog. You may also do this after having released your book to your blog, gotten some feedback, edited, and then deleted those old posts.) Beta-readers are usually readers, though some are also writers, but the great thing about beta-readers is that they love rough drafts. There’s just something so much more personal, more intimate, about a draft; it’s bare; it’s the soul of the writer, but no one wants to spend money on a first draft, so do not release an unedited book to the public!

Three, hire an editor.

The first two suggestions are great, simple, easy, and free. Do not pay anyone for beta-reading. At this point, I also do not suggest peer editing with other writers anymore. This isn’t a matter of fearing intellectual theft; this is a matter of building your own, distinct voice. Teaming up with other writers is great before you write your first novel. After you’ve written it, it becomes imperative to distance yourself from other writers, so you’re better off with beta-readers, some of which will be other authors, but some are just readers and bloggers who love raw, indie work.

A lot of writers fail at this point in their careers. They’re so excited they’ve finished writing a book, and they show it to all their author buddies, and of course, being nice, supportive people, the author buddies praise the book. After all, they know the difficulty in finishing a novel, so they say it’s great, and then, the debut author releases an unedited, debut novel, and it tanks. Perhaps even worse, the book sells extremely well for two months, and then the scathing reviews come in, all of which point out the horrible typographical, grammatical, and punctuation errors—the slogging pace, the redundant information, the info dumps, the stale characters, etc. etc. Hire an editor before you release that book.

Another occurrence at this stage of the game involves the excited, debut novelist who turns to their author, support groups. Then, they get stuck trading reviews of each others’ books. That’s all well and good, but none of them are reaching readers. They’re all only reaching one another, tweeting, retweeting, or auto-tweeting, to one another. They are only promoting their books to other writers.

There are no readers in those groups. No readers, people actually looking for a new book to buy and read, have ever heard of any of those groups like ASMSG or IAN. Hundreds of thousands of indie writers have banded together, and that’s a great concept before writing your first novel, but these naïve folks have done this in an effort to find readers, but they are only finding each other. Some actually think that they can each bring a few hundred new readers to those groups, believing that if each person brings in a hundred new readers, there will be millions of people all buying the books; this is precisely what the mainstream publishers count on, but the mainstream publishers each have specific presses with specific authors with specific voices for specific genres, so yes, Penguin Random House counts on the authors published by Bantam to entice Bantam fans into buying Bantam books by other Bantam authors, but the indie, support groups aren’t following this business model. The indie groups have all kinds of writers of all qualities, genres, and voices.

It doesn’t work, not the way they’re doing it. First of all, so many of the members have no fans because they are either aspiring writers with no published books, or they are debut writers with one or two books out, and no sells or fans; they have not begun their career correctly. Second, some members write romance, others paranormal, some steam punk, so none of the steam punk readers are going to go searching for a group like ASMSG in the hopes of finding an indie, romance writer. So what happens? The group members just trade books with one another for reviews in the hopes of selling books via Amazon by way of a review bombardment. Lastly, what happens is they try to sell books to each other.

Think about it, though: if one author buys one of each book written by each author, and even if every other author does the same, in the end no money trades hands, right? If I buy all of your books, and then you buy all of mine, no money has been earned. No new fans have been found, so what do these groups do? They say stuff like: give an indie author a good review. Reviews sell books, and authors gotta’ eat, too. Well, that’s a dishonest practice.

Give a good review if the book is good. Give a bad review if the book is bad. Why? Because the review is not for the author. The review is not there to trick a reader into a buying a book. The reviews should only be given by a reader for readers. As a matter of fact, once you become a published author, you may want to stop reviewing books completely. Why? Because at that point, you’ll find yourself reviewing as a writer rather than a reader.

You know what happens then? An indie author begins racking up numerous, glowing reviews, and then a reader will buy the book only to find faults with it, and the problem then is that the skewed reviews anger the reader. They feel tricked, and so they feel compelled to provide a scathing review in order to exact vengeance, and here’s the thing; if those good reviews sell books, and the readers end up feeling shilled because of the skewed reviews, they are going to tell everyone to stay away from that book, and a book that will have started off selling well, suddenly starts losing sales, and then the writer begins to build notoriety for releasing terrible content. They lose credibility. It’s why “writers” like Gary Lindberg go around making fun of readers for posting bad reviews.

Fortunately, these posts have been designed to help you prevent such a thing. As a matter of fact, these posts are here for two reasons.

One, I personally love reading and writing so much that I want everyone with even an inkling of an idea to feel comfortable writing their idea down, and subsequently release a great book.

Two, I love readers so much that I want them to know that there is an alternative to the dreck spewed by the mainstream presses, but to that effect, what the indie writers release must not be dreck, and so it becomes imperative to teach indie writers the importance of editing, of hiring an editor, a competent editor, but indie writers must take it a step farther and start their careers off properly in order to counter act the fluff released by the mainstream press, and the fluff released by other, indie writers.

I want indie writers, or even new writers who want to go the mainstream route, to be successful, and not just sell well, but sell quality content often. It’s what the readers deserve. Are we not writing for them? Perhaps, it is more appropriate to say that we are trying to release quality content for them.

Please, please, please, even if you decide not to distance yourself from other writers, you must hire a competent editor because you are not writing and selling your books for the other writers, you are publishing for readers, and if you reach even one reader, and you turn them into a fan, they will tell others about your book, so if you’re going to find an editor, and you really do need to find one, do some work and find a competent editor, one who willingly explains and shows the editing process on a regular basis.

They are few and far between, and you might get burned once or twice, but do not let that frighten you. You need an editor, someone who understands how to read a book as a reader, someone who will look for plot holes, suspension of belief, inconsistencies, discrepancies, lack of character development, pacing issues, all kinds of stuff, and will help you to understand what those issues are and how to resolve them.

In the end, you might end up hiring a crappy editor. It happens to all writers who take the time and make the effort to hire an editor, but even a crappy editor can be helpful. If nothing else, they are a fresh pair of eyes, and when they edit your manuscript, they will pass on to you their new perspective; use it. Take what you like, and discard the rest. Then, go back, and re-read your book, and I promise, you’ll find all kinds of stuff that requires more attention.

You’ll find normal mistakes that your mind missed because it was reading what it was expecting; the mind does that; it formulates that which it already expects. You’ll find some sentences which will make you wonder just what it was that you were meaning to convey. You’ll find redundancies you hadn’t noticed before. You’ll notice that some sentences work better in a different order within the paragraph. You’ll find all kinds of stuff.

It’s very important to get away from your novel. It’s almost like making your eyes the fresh pair of eyes, and you will have to get away from your novel over and over. There should be no rush, though. As proud and excited as you are, and you should be, you must keep yourself in check. Do not release a crummy product to your audience like I did (four crummy products) because it will really hold you back.

Everything I’m telling you, no matter how crazy, I’m telling you for a reason. I absolutely want you to release a perfect product to your audience, so that they will start off loving your work. It is important to me that you are successful for a number of reasons, and you will come to understand those reasons more deeply as we progress, so you may need to step away from your novel a number of times, and you may need numerous beta-readers, and you may need to hire two or three different editors, and you may need to get away from your writer buddies, and you may well spend an arm and a leg throughout the process, but it will pay off.

Try to keep your end goal in mind. If you are striving to achieve major publication then you need to land a literary agent. To do that, you need to write a perfect query letter, and synopsis, and you can’t rush through those either; they are as important as your title, cover, and blurb. Then, if your presentation is accepted, the agent will want a part of, or the whole, manuscript. Then, if it’s up to snuff, and they think it’s marketable, they’ll help you to land a publisher. Just keep in mind that not all agents are cut from the same cloth.

If you intend to go the indie route, and you want someone like Baen or Rocking Horse Publishing to publish your work, you do not need an agent, but you still have to present your book in a professional manner. Regardless, these two avenues require a great deal of sitting, waiting around, and just going bonkers. They do not want you to submit your book to multiple publishers or agents, and they may never reply, or they may take a year to reply, and just to say, “Nah, we’re good, bruh.”

If you intend to self publish, and there are numerous reasons to do so, it’s up to you and you alone to produce a product of the highest quality. This does not mean that you cannot work with others—cover artists, proof readers, beta-readers, and editors—it just means that you are in charge of everything. The reason self publishing gets such a bad rap is because most self published authors don’t hire editors, or they hire crummy editors, and the number one complaint by readers is that the book read like a first draft.

No one wants to pay for a first draft.

This says nothing of the creativity, beauty, or complexity of the story, but you must come to understand something that’s been pointed out numerous times: if the mainstream publishers employ teams of editors to clean the works of King, Martin, and Rowling, doesn’t it stand to reason that you should also hire an editor?

Thanks for reading. I had said this was going to be the last post of this series, but I’m actually going to release one more, so stay tuned, and don’t forget to check out my Editing Services Tab.

So you want to be a writer part 4

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Welcome back to this series of posts about becoming a successful writer. As always, the most important concept to consider is the consistent and continuous release of quality content, and we’ll talk about how to improve the quality of content as we progress, or if you prefer, you can just hire an editor.

At this point, I’ve presented how to come up with an idea in order to begin writing. I’ve explained why short stories are important, and how they can help you build a fan base and credibility. I’ve also talked about fanfiction, a proven method by which a new writer can become well known. Now, instead of jumping right into writing your novel, I want to take some time and explain what sells a book, or any product, really.

You see, whether or not you choose to go the self published route or the mainstream route the principles of selling are the same; so, what sells a book?

There are four components upon which everything else is built; the title of your book, the cover art, the blurb, and networking. All of these together form your brand. You are not just trying to sell your book, you are trying to connect with readers; you are trying to sell yourself, your brand.

Kanye West once said something along the lines of: people love me or people hate me, but everybody knows me. That’s a great point to make. Kanye West the person is also Kanye West the brand, and in his case, it works. Will his brand work for you? Maybe, maybe not, but a successful writer must have their brand before the eyes of the public.

George Martin is certainly a popular and hot-selling author, but what is his brand? He doesn’t really have one, does he? No, not anymore, anyway, because he is already published by a major company, so the brand being sold is the brand of Bantam, (notice the little rooster? We’ll get back to that) which is an imprint of Random House, but did you know that he began writing A Song of Ice and Fire in 1991? Did you know the first book wasn’t published until 1996? He was perfecting his craft, creating a solid fan base, and ultimately solidifying his brand, which was picked up by Bantam.

Are you following me?

Now, for just a moment, think of yourself as a reader who is looking for a new book. You already know what you like and don’t like. You already know which authors you prefer, and which ones you dislike, and maybe you’ve only ever read books released by the mainstream publishers, but how did you know a new book was released? Are you subscribed to an e-mail list? Probably not. You probably already belong to a reading group, or you are following your favorite author or publisher on social media. Maybe, you just troll Barnes and Noble online, see what’s advertised, and follow the link.

Here’s the deal; mainstream publishers, be it Random House, Simon and Schuster, Roc Books, or whomever, regardless of the specific author or title, each publisher has a specific way of doing things, and all books released by Penguin, follow the Penguin formatting rules and guidelines; those Penguin specific editors all follow certain guidelines, too, so all the books, even if the writer, title, and voice are vastly dissimilar, still share some similarities, which probably bypass you—the style of the cover art, the lettering of titles, the blurbs, the little logo on the side of the book (remember the Bantam Rooster).

If you do get picked up by a literary agent, and you are published by a mainstream publisher, they will handle all of these factors on their own, but if you decide to go the indie route, or even before you get picked up, while you’re writing your short stories, it’s imperative to brand yourself, to present some form of consistency. For example, I only use the one cover artist, so even though the covers are as different as they can be, there is a hidden consistency.

Now, before you write your novel is the time to find your voice, your brand, and present it, consistently, to your fan base. Since you have not yet written and published your novel, this is a great time to experiment.

Let’s go back to being a reader looking for a book. First and foremost, you probably have an idea of what it is you want; someone either made a recommendation, or you know your favorite publisher or author has released something, or maybe you’re just trolling for something totally fresh. The first thing that will catch your eye is the title.

Honestly, the title won’t sell you the book, but it will make you interested enough to look closely at the cover. If the book in question is one written by your favorite author or publisher, the cover won’t really make or break your decision, but if the author is unknown to you, you will scrutinize the cover, and then, if it looks interesting, you’ll read the blurb.

The blurb is what sells a book. The blurb is the reason you buy the book we’re discussing. The blurb is the little description about the book, and it should match up with the title and the cover.

If you stumble across a book entitled: Mars Raiders, and the cover shows a cow munching on green grass, you’re probably going to pass on the blurb, right? If you don’t pass, and you do read the blurb, and the blurb says something along the lines of: Farmer John Batey falls in love with a famed actress. The ravishing beauty, Helen LaMonte, just came to L.A. to make a name for herself, but ran afoul a sexually perverse agent, and she has to do nasty things to land a part in the next, big movie, Mars Raiders; you’re probably going to pass on the book, especially if you were trying to find a new sci fi to read.

Do you see where I’m going? Everything has to match up. Yes, my example is supposed to be ridiculous, but I’m trying to show you what a brand is, how it’s constructed, and why it’s important.

Now, If you see the same title: Mars Raiders, and the cover has a one-eyed, gruff-looking bandit holding a laser rifle, and he’s crouched behind a red boulder while peeking at some smoldering, alien-looking colony in the background, the title and the cover match up, right? Then, if you read the blurb, and it’s something along the lines of: Former Major Cash McManus of Earth Army has been AWOL for nearly ten years. Now, at the edge of Mars colony, he alone fends off an onslaught of slimy, worm-like aliens, but can a single man, even one so brave as McManus, save the human colony from themselves?

It’s much more interesting, right? At this point, you might check the reviews, but we’ll talk about reviews later. The truth is that reviews or no, if you’re looking for this kind of sci fi, you’re very likely to buy the book. I also have to mention that blurbs are generally longer than what I presented, at least for full length novels, and we’ll dive into blurbs a little bit more, but first I want to talk more about the title and cover art.

A catchy title is certainly helpful, and a great cover goes a long way, and these are important concepts to remember before you write your debut novel. You need to think about the titles of your short stories. You need to find a cover artist you like. You also need to make sure that the lettering of your name and title are the right colors, the right font, and there’s really no way to be sure, unfortunately, but you can go look at popular books.

Go look at Harry Potter, also look at previous editions of Harry Potter; publishers often change covers and fonts when they release new editions. Why? Because times change. People change. Tastes change, and they have to keep up. Also, as they sell more and more books by the author, or by different authors of the same genre, or new authors, they see trends in what sells. At this point, look also at the blurbs employed by the hottest selling titles.

Start comparing and contrasting, titles, covers, and blurbs. These three components are the onset of your brand, and without them, no amount of networking and tweeting please look at my book will sell a book, or even result in a free download.

The title, cover, and blurb must work in unison to provide a complete idea, the idea of your story, to your intended audience, and you’ll have to learn about your audience, and what they enjoy, but by writing short stories with proper titles, cool covers, and smashing blurbs, you will learn all of this before releasing your debut novel. It’s a growing process, and a process you must undertake now, before writing your debut novel, or you will have a devil of a time growing your fan base with a book in which no one is interested.

All of my books have a consistency, perhaps a hidden consistency, when it comes to titles, covers, and blurbs, and it’s extremely difficult to outline what that consistency is, but let’s look at these titles; Losing Human, Raising Dead, and Expedition. All three are short stories. Now, let’s look at the covers.

There are some similarities, the fonts aren’t entirely different. All of the titles are both simple and mysterious, and all the covers, while exciting, aren’t overly fancy or flashy. Now, let’s look at the blurbs.

Losing Human: A man has a dream, a vision to see the world through eternal eyes. Dr. Heisler, roboticist, funds Project Human to advance the human race. After funding is diminished, he takes drastic measures and uploads a human awareness into a mobile robotic construct.

Raising Dead: An ancient necromancer seeks but one dream, the power of perfection, the power of immortality. What he finds leaves him speechless. Is he but chasing the wind?

Expedition: King Eidon of Ilteriel learns of a new island, far to the south. He sends an expedition in search of new resources, allies, and power. Jorunhaal, Ilteriel’s greatest warrior, is to lead the expedition. Upon setting foot on the island, one disaster after another occurs. The men battle small were-wolves, fall prey to a foul sickness in the air, and uncover demons….

Each of these short stories are also free. They have been free since I released them, and they have received numerous downloads, but the original blurbs were very different. The original blurbs, in fact, must have been what hindered downloads because the rate of downloads more than tripled after I changed the blurbs to what they are now. I can also tell you that these covers are not the original covers, but I didn’t see much change in reception from the new covers alone; I also had to update the blurbs.

I can tell you for fact, beyond doubt, that blurbs matter, probably more than anything else, with the exception of the story itself, of course.

In the end, the point to consider is that when people come across your work, they start to become acquainted with your brand; your titles, covers, and blurbs, and subsequently, your voice. If everything generates a download, and the reader enjoys the story, the reader is more likely to try another title, and when the reader is satisfied by the quality of most of the titles, the reader is more than willing to purchase your novels, which carry the same brand.

Now, here it is: you are not selling your book. I am not selling my book. Readers, fans, are selling our books. Fans, who are trolling sites for a new read, find something they like, and when they like something, they tell everyone. Why? Because when people find something they enjoy, it’s only natural to want to share that joy with friends and family. People want to belong, and they love to share and discuss similar topics, so fans of fantasy, who like your fantasy stories, will share those fantasy stories with friends and family, and bango; your fans sell your books, which are easily recognizable due to your brand’s consistency. This is the concept on which publishers count; they want fans to sell books. Otherwise, they would be releasing book trailers and commercials to television on a regular basis, but they aren’t, are they?

At this point, I truly wish I was able to tell you exactly how to title your story, and which cover is best for you, and what the perfect blurb should say, but that’s impossible. All of you are going to write different stories. All of you are going to have a different target audience. All of you are going to enjoy different methods, but hey, you haven’t written that debut novel yet, right? So, now is the time to experiment with titles, cover artists, and blurbs, now, while you’re writing and giving away free short stories, or perhaps even before you publish your short stories. Right now, while you’re building your brand, your fan base, and improving the quality of your product, you are selling yourself.

One thing you can do, which has been proven to lead to success is hire different cover artists to make different covers for a single title. Then, you can ask your fellow readers and writers to choose which cover they like. You can present numerous titles, varying blurbs, and ask readers and writers which they prefer for that one story.

Learn now, right now. Don’t get stuck on the idea of writing the perfect novel from start to finish without knowing, understanding, the basics, and what sells. Of course, in the end, since you are only writing short stories, you can always change the titles, covers, and blurbs even after they are published.

I changed the covers on all three of the titles I mentioned above. I changed the blurbs, too. I kept the titles for those particular stories, but I did change the title of another book.

A while back, I was published by a small press; I won’t go in to details at this point. I will say that the title I had chosen was rather poor in hindsight. It was an interesting title, but I hadn’t realized how much other stuff out there was called: Shadowman. After a return of rights, I employed my cover artist—so I changed the cover—changed the blurb, and even changed the title to: Otherside, which is much more fitting.

Now, these are things you can’t really do if you are picked up by a mainstream publisher, but then there’s no need to worry either. They throw all kinds of money into marketing—their brand into which you are signing—and they will help you along the way, but until you’re published by a major publisher, or if you decide against that route, you do have complete control over your content, however, if you release your debut novel today, and a year later you realize things aren’t working out for you, and you change everything, and you end up doing this for everything after you’ve already tried to establish your credibility as a writer, that credibility will vanish, and no one will take you seriously; you’ll be the writer who is always changing everything after publication, and that tells people that you don’t know what you’re doing. You won’t build a loyal fan base by consistently struggling to find your brand after you’ve already released books.

Learn what to do now. Learn what works and what doesn’t now, before you write your first novel. Learn while writing is just a hobby. Don’t wait to learn after trying to become a professional writer. Learn now before you start charging consumers for an actual product. Short stories are so good for this kind of practice, and if you really try to involve readers in the process, I promise; you will build a solid fan base.

In the end, when you do find your brand, the next key concept is the quality of your writing. If you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been writing for a while and other writers give you bangin’ reviews, but for some reason readers always give you bad reviews, it may because you need to hire an editor, or a better editor, and we’ll discuss editing more as we go along, but for now, you can check out my editing services.

Thanks for reading. As always, please share your thoughts.

So you want to be a writer part 3

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Last time, we touched on short stories, and no, I will never stop harping over how important it is to write short stories, especially at the onset of your journey to living as a successful writer. This time, however, I’m going to talk about fanfiction.

Fanfiction is very important. Fanfiction is a must for a writer. As a matter of fact, fanfiction is practically the only way a screen writer can become a working screen writer. Fanfiction is a story based on an existing world, and every writer needs to write fanfiction for a multitude of reasons, but let’s back up.

There was a time, about 20 or 30 years ago, when writers just like you were struggling to become successful, and honestly, not too much has changed. Even back then, and probably even as far back as 50 or 60 years ago, vanity presses existed, so self publishing is not the new fad the mainstream publishers are pretending it is, what has changed is the popularity and success of self publishing, but we’ll talk more about that later.

What I want to talk about is the process through which your predecessors became successful. There was a time when readers read these weird things called magazines (ma-guh-zeens), and magazines had pictures, and articles, and interviews, and ads, and short stories. Now, we see all this same stuff on Quora, Reddit, FaceBook, and other social media outlets, right? We see this stuff on websites, too. If you Google “fanfiction” all kinds of stuff will come up, right? If you Google “free short stories” all kinds of stuff will come up, right?

Well, 20 and 30 years ago, people subscribed to magazines for the same content. People don’t really subscribe to magazines anymore, but you still want to write, and you still want readers to read your stuff, right? That means you need to adapt to a changing environment, but the good news is that this environment has evolved to a stable level; enough writers have figured out how to game the system.

Last time, we talked about short stories, and they are perhaps the most important aspect of becoming a successful writer. Back in the day, writers submitted short stories to writing magazines, and they were paid pennies per word, and sometimes, they weren’t paid at all, but if the story was good enough (well edited and free of errors) it was printed in the magazine, and if readers enjoyed the story, the writer had a chance to become known, and if the writer became known and liked, the writer had a chance to submit a novel to a publisher and actually be taken seriously.

Yes, even 20 or 30 years ago, it was insanely difficult to become a published, mainstream writer. You have to go back about 100 years to reach a time when writing was easy. 100 years ago, all you had to do was be able to write a book from start to finish. Then, if you found an actual publisher, they used their editor to make sure the book was its best (hire an editor!) and the book was released to the public. 100 years ago, when half the American population didn’t know how to read, writing an entire book from start to finish was a major accomplishment, and anyone who had the time and gumption, yeah, gumption, to do so was taken seriously.

Today, practically everyone can read and write, and writing is mandatory, so writing a book from start to finish is no longer considered a big deal; everyone can do it, and actually, lots of people do do it. (Do do…but there’s no time for that now!)

Let’s get back to the present. If people aren’t really reading magazines anymore, where or what are they reading? Where were you reading before you started writing? FaceBook? Google+? LinkedIn? Maybe, you were trolling Barnes and Noble online for free material. Maybe, you were trolling Amazon for free material. Maybe, you were trolling FanFiction for free material. Maybe, you were trolling the web and stumbled onto a writer’s blog where they posted free material, so that’s where you have to post your work, and you need to post it for free, at least for now.

This is where fanfiction starts to become your key component. First and foremost, you have a favorite genre. You know what genre you enjoy, and you know what you want to write. You also know which shows, movies, books, video games, and comic books you enjoy. You want to be a successful writer, so you’re probably a nerd or a dork, and that’s okay; in fact, that’s great. Use it!

Go to where the nerds and dorks are, and give the nerds and dorks what they want. The nerds and dorks are at Wattpad, and Quotev, and especially FanFiction. Since you’re not yet trying to earn money from your novel, this also a great time to put into practice everything you learned from writing short stories.

Now, you’re going to learn the best way to structure an entire novel. You’re going to learn how to structure chapters, build suspense, slow or quicken the story’s pacing, and other integral aspects of writing. What better way than to practice with something you already know?

For one, it takes a little of the pressure off because you at least have an entire back story and cast. The problem then becomes staying true to the franchise. If you’re writing Superman fanfiction, and you make Clark Kent a popular, outgoing, ladies man, people will be turned off by your presentation. If you’re writing a Dragon Ball Z fanfiction, and you make Goku a coward, people will be very disappointed, so there is a different struggle, but if you know your subject matter inside and out, it shouldn’t be that difficult to stay true to the franchise. Then, you can focus on the technical aspects of novel writing.

At this point, you should be presenting your story as you write it (after reading what you wrote once or twice) on Wattpad, Quotev, and your blog, and sending out updates through social media.

Now, I’m gonna’ go on a bit of a detour here. Stay with me.

One of the best sites a writer can use is Goodreads. Goodreads has a blog. Readers participate in discussions. Readers and writers can join groups. Honestly, the same thing can be said for Google+ and LinkedIn, so take what I say about Goodreads, and apply it to Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

Now’s the perfect time to join groups, groups of readers, and groups of writers, and talk to the readers about what they like, and then invite them to look at your blog. Then, talk to writers about what they like, and invite them, too. Be courteous. Be respectful. Engage people as a person, not a salesman.

Post your fanfiction to Goodreads, Google+, and LinkedIn, and your personal blog, of course, and invite the people of each site to view the corresponding blog, which will also have a link back to your personal blog.

Listen to the feedback as you go along. Thank people for their time. DO NOT ENGAGE NEGATIVE PEOPLE.

Right now, If you’ve practiced writing short stories and are in the middle of writing your fanfiction, all you want to do is release something like a chapter per week to each of your blogs. It gives you something to blog about. It gives people something to read without demanding a commitment. It gives you the feeling of being a writer.

The reason you want to delay publishing your fanfiction to FanFiction is simple and important. FanFiction has some serious readers, and they expect, demand, a level of quality you may not yet be able to provide. They want their books free of errors, true to the franchise, and well structured. They want your fanfiction to be an actual book that sounds as though it was written by an actual writer, not someone who is trying to become a writer, so, for now, stick to the other sites, and get all the feedback you can get.

After your fanfiction has been written to completion, it’s time to go back and read your old short stories. You’ll have grown leaps and bounds as a writer and an editor by the time you finish your fanfiction novel. You’ll even pick up on nuances you weren’t able to grasp when you first began writing, so touch up your short stories and re-release them; it should be pretty easy to do so.

At this point, you also have something new to blog about, your journey as a writer, and you can invite people to read your updated stories. You can start getting professional covers for your short stories and your fanfiction.

It’s just as important to be a real person throughout this journey. Don’t even think about going around, telling everyone that your stuff is better than what’s out there, not yet, because right now, you want people to like you. If people like you, they will be more receptive to your posts, discussions, comments, and invitations.

Now is also a pretty good time to hire a competent editor who can teach you how to better write for an audience.

I have a style of writing that I enjoy employing, but it is not necessarily what readers enjoy reading, and it’s my job as a writer, who is charging for a product, to find a balance between what I enjoy and what my audience enjoys, hence the editing.

Regardless of what you think you know at this point, I cannot stress it enough that the best and most successful writers have the best editors. Editors are paramount. They read your work differently than you do, but you also have to be careful because until you’re published by a mainstream publisher, you’re going to have to hire your own editor. Of course, a lot of the mainstream editors are terrible anyway, I’ve written about that as well, but that’s not really the point because if you’re published by a mainstream publisher, you don’t have to spend your money, and you don’t have a say on what the book is like at the publication stage, see what I mean?

If you’re spending your money to hire an editor, you want someone who understands both the writing process and the reading process. If your publisher has an editor, which they force onto you then you have no say, no control, but their job is to sell books, and at the very least, a mainstream publisher will try to do that. This can’t be said about some of the smaller presses or hybrid presses unfortunately, but we’ll discuss different methods of publishing later on.

At any rate, once your fanfiction is polished to perfection, publish it to FanFiction. There are people—nerds, dorks, readers—trolling the site, looking specifically for stories about franchises they love; Supernatural, Twilight, The Hulk, Game of Thrones, Skyrim, and more. These readers are looking for something fresh, and new, and written by a competent fan, someone who enjoys the franchise as much as they do, and you want to be the person who supplies that fanfiction.

Why? Because if you do a good job, these dorks and nerds will become your loyal fans. These are the people who will buy your original novel. These are the people who will post a link to your work on their social media pages. These are the people who will generate buzz for your book. These are also the people who will tell you what they like and don’t like about your writing, so you will also learn what to do to please them, and you want to please them. Nerds and dorks are the foundation upon which all great writing is based. I should know; I’m one of them.

I have to add right here that I didn’t understand any of this when I started writing. I skipped so many integral steps that I really hindered my career. My only saving grace was that I had some really neat story ideas, but if I had followed the advice I’m giving now, I also would have applied these same principles to writing my original novel, and then, instead of zero sales on my quarterly reports for years, I might have actually made some money off my first books (even though they were terribly written).

Back to business now—treat your fanfiction novel as if it were your original novel. Get a professional cover made for it. Publish it to Smashwords. Be careful with copyrights, and be sure to let everyone know that the book is fanfiction and cannot be sold for a profit; for all intents and purposes, this book is your original novel, and you must use it to make a name for yourself, which also means it must be free of errors, well written, and engaging.

You may now be wondering what any of this has to do with magazines and the writers who started becoming successful 20 or 30 years ago. Well, here’s the deal. Since those magazines to which they submitted their stories don’t exist anymore, and whatever prints or digital prints there are are owned by those writers now, the mainstream publishers have purposefully built a barricade to keep out new writers.

I know, it sounds crazy, but I’m dead freaking serious. They have this special good ole’ boy club, and they have it because they are terrified. The mainstream writers have all run into a major disconnect with the fans, but this happens to every facet of the entertainment industry every decade or so.

Doesn’t music change drastically every ten years? Don’t movies and television shows change drastically every ten years? Do you know why? Because every ten to twenty years there’s a new generation of people; there’s a new culture with a new language, and a new set of goals, and the major companies can hardly keep up. The book publishers are the worst at keeping up, and that’s why they’re terrified of self publishers, but, and this is a big BUT! when they find a self published individual who is doing well, they try to swoop in and sign the writer.

This is exactly what happened to Christopher Paolini. This is kind of what happened to E. L. James.

You see, it used to be that in order to garner the attention of a literary agent, or even a publisher, one had to get published by those magazines. Now, since those magazines don’t exist, or are shutting writers out, an up and coming writer has to find a new way to break in to the world of reading, but hey, that’s exactly what I’ve been teaching you with these posts.

Right here, I want to add that it pisses me off the way The Huffington Post and other journals smear self published writing. If it’s so bad, why do the publishers and agents keep their eyes open for successful self published writers? Because self publishing is actually a great way to connect with new readers, and when a great self published writer is drawing attention, the major companies swoop in to steal, sorry, augment their success.

Well, at any rate, you want to be a writer. It’s why you’re reading this. Start by thinking about your idea. Join social media groups. Start taking part in group discussions with readers. Start reading what other up and coming writers are writing. Start your blogs now. Invite readers and writers to talk about what they like, and all the while, you can start writing your short stories.

Then, you’ll already have a network willing to look at your short stories, a network of writers and readers, which is important. Then, when the time is right, you can publish your short stories for free, and they’ll sit there, bringing you more and more fans. Next, write your fanfiction. Develop your voice, and really create a fan base. I can’t stress it enough, building a fan base before you release your debut novel is paramount, and using social media to send people to your site to buy your book doesn’t work—another topic for discussion later on.

Yes…this is going to take a great deal of effort on your part. Yes…this is going to take a long time. I know you want to write your novel today. Hell, you may have already written it and started shopping for literary agents or publishers, but without the world’s biggest rabbit’s foot, literary agents and publishers won’t take you seriously.

I’m not saying it’s impossible. In fact, it happens all the time; a first time writer writes a novel, and it gets picked up, but will that happen for you? What if it doesn’t? Shouldn’t you prepare for that possibility? Don’t you want to start off on the right foot with as many opportunities as possible?

What I’m trying to help you accomplish is the building of a solid foundation. If you follow the advice presented in these three posts, you can garner some serious attention for yourself, and then, if you want to go the mainstream route, you’ll have a better chance of being picked up by a literary agent or publisher because they want you to be marketable, they want you to bring them your fans, not the other way around. If you want to go the self publishing route, and there are numerous reasons to do so, you’ll already be setting yourself up for success in that field, too.

Now, don’t think this is the last post on how to become a successful writer. We’re only just beginning. Thanks for reading, and I implore you, if you have any kind of input; if you want to talk about your experience, your pitfalls, your successes, please share. I can’t help everyone by myself. Being an indie or self published writer doesn’t mean working alone; that’s a huge misconception. All it means is that I don’t have the backing of a major corporation, so let’s work together.

Readers, talk about what you like and don’t like. Writers, talk about your struggles and successes.

Don’t forget to check out my Editing Services. Thanks again.

What did Tolkien add to the fantasy genre that weren’t already elements of mythology?

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Since Quora likes to collapse my answers in an effort to keep me quiet, I’m copying and pasting some of the Quora Q and A’s in which I’ve participated. Here’s a question from Quora.

Question: What did Tolkien add to the fantasy genre that weren’t already elements of mythology?

Addendum: It seems that preexisting mythologies such as Norse mythology had a lot of the same elements as modern fantasy and inspired Tolkien.  What were Tolkien’s contributions that made him the father of modern fantasy?

Answer: I agree with the whole premise.

Tolkien just mished-mashed it all together, and the readers made it a success.

Frankly, I think Tolkien is a crappy writer and Martin, too, for that matter.

They added no elements that weren’t a part of the Arthurian Tales or tales of Vikings. I think both writers suck, but until now, no one has offered anything of value. That’s the problem. Readers need a new writer to rally behind.

Now, after my seething answer, allow me to elucidate.

There are no original ideas. There are only original presentations. I’ve said it before, and I won’t tire of saying it.

No writer out there today, be it Tolkien, Martin, King, or anyone else has new ideas, original concepts never before presented in stories of any genre. Yes, there can be new elements.

If, for instance, someone writes a new novel today, a sci fantasy along the lines of Final Fantasy, but in novel form, and they include something like social media, yes, that’s a new element you won’t find in Germanic Folklore, or even most current novels, but it’s a new presentation of an existing idea–communications.

See what I mean? A writer needs to find something new, but it’s a new presentation, not a new idea.

What makes a writer great, or a story great, is the presentation of the correlated ideas, not the ideas themselves.

Yes, there are readers of fantasy who consider Tolkien and Martin great writers, but compared to whom?

What other writers are there of that genre for average readers? Le Guin? She’s actually underrated, and many die hard fantasy fans prefer Le Guin to Martin or Tolkien when it comes to fantasy books. Then, there’s Jordan, who is also widely underrated.

Also, don’t forget that before the Harry Potter movies, The Lord of the Rings movies, and The Game of Thrones T.V. series, none of those writers were as popular as they are now.

There was time when only nerds and dorks read The Lord of the Rings, but after the movies came out, everyone went back and read the books.

There was a time when only children read Harry Potter, but after the movies came out, everyone went back and read the books.

There was a time when only nerds and dorks read A Song of Ice and Fire, but after Game of Thrones came out, everyone went back and read the books.

Unfortunately, the Earthsea miniseries ran Le Guin into the ground, and now she’s begging people for a kickstarter campaign to help her fund her documentary.

Are you kidding me? Is she not a successful writer?!

There are two things to take away from this post.

  1. There really are no new ideas.
  2. People will only be able to enjoy that which they find.

It has become increasingly difficult to find material worth reading, especially in the fantasy genre. Truthfully, there are numerous unknown writers like Barnitz who are far and away better than Tolkien and Martin, but if no one is making movies or shows out of their short stories, novels, and series then few people will find those great books without a great deal of leg work.

Sure, everyone thinks Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and A Song of Ice and Fire are the best of the best, but are they? Or are they just the most popular?

Structure

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self aggrandizing aaron

Welcome back, everyone. Last time we touched a little bit on the words would and could, and how they make writing sound weak.

This time, I want to touch on something a little bit different, yet it is still correlated to weak writing. I want to talk about the overall structure of sentences and paragraphs.

Once again, I’ve delved into the works of a “Best Selling Author”. I put it in quotations because this is an excerpt of the first few lines of Gary Lindberg’s The Shekinah Legacy. This is another author who simply says he’s a best seller, and he even goes so far as to photoshop a best selling award label onto the cover of his books, but if you check his books’ rankings, he’s far from best seller status.

That said, if he chose to misrepresent his books, he may have achieved Amazon Best Seller; it isn’t difficult to do. All you need is to choose an obscure set of labels for your book, like Free Masonry and Christian Murder. Then, you sell three copies, and your book is a “best seller”, for two or three hours, but long enough to snap a screen shot of your rank, and then you can show everyone how amazing you are, calling yourself a “Best Selling Author”.

Readers, however, see right through it. Readers take a look at the first pages of a book, and they know right away if the author has the makings of a best seller.

Best selling authors have great editors to translate the author’s dry account into a wonderful experience. This book either lacked an editor, or Lindberg used an incompetent editor.

As always, I have provided the original, published work—just a couple of lines, which any lookie-loo can scrutinize by taking advantage of Amazon’s look inside feature—followed by my inspection and rewrite, and the reason behind it.

Let’s take a look.

Some day you will read this, my dear, and see more clearly how things came to be. I pray to God that you will forgive me for not having had the wisdom or foresight to prevent the tragedies that befell our little family, though the great sweep of history was against us, as you know.

Alright, that’s not a terrible opener. It’s only two sentences, and paragraphs are normally a minimum of three sentences, but this is somewhat appealing; we know that someone has left someone else a note. We know there was some tragedy, but what is this business of a great sweep? The metaphor has eluded me. Furthermore, it is my belief that this should have been in italics; style matters as structure is more than the just the order of words, it is also the punctuation we see, as that punctuation changes the voice and tone in a reader’s head.

You may remember that I have always been a compulsive note taker; perhaps that’s why I was drawn to broadcast journalism where my notepad and digital voice recorder were my most faithful companions. My notes are serving me well now.

Okay, the monologue was originally referring to their little family, right? Tragedies befell them and all that; but now we see something strange. It reads You may remember that…. which begs the question; how can such a tight family forget? Obviously, they won’t, which makes that first sentence a little awkward, plus it goes on to say that perhaps, that was why he was drawn to journalism. People usually know why they enter a career field, especially one so complex and demanding as broadcast journalism, which requires years of schooling and internships. Moreover, I don’t really know what note taking has to do with broadcast journalism; they aren’t really note takers; they’re investigators, who might take notes.

I have never had trouble finding the start of a story except for this one. The real story, I’m sure, began thousands of years ago, but it seems now that the best lead-in to our story was in Iraq, so I will begin there. Every good news story starts with a teaser to grab the audience, and this one certainly got my attention.

Wait a minute! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! We just read a moment ago that his notes were serving him well. What happened? Also, the word our, which is italicized, was underlined in the original work. On top of that, we’re getting so many mixed messages that none of this makes any sense.

His notes are serving him well, but he can’t find the beginning of the story, yet he’s sure it began thousands of years ago. It’s all over the place and confusing. Let’s push forwards.

I remember that it was impossibly hot and dry on that Tuesday morning in Baghdad. The wind had stirred up a dust storm so thick that you could stare directly at the sun without hurting your eyes. Everything around us was eerily tinted orange. It was like being stuck in a block of amber looking out. I turned to my cameraman, Curt.

Hold the phone, Sally. Just a moment ago, we were told that every news story starts with a teaser to grab the audience, and that this one certainly got his attention. What’s the teaser? What’s happening? Has the internal monologue—the note—ended? Are we in the story now, or is this still the note that the person is supposedly reading? If it is, why is the weather important? What is it like to be stuck inside a block of amber? Doesn’t that cause death? Looking through a block of amber, perhaps, but this is just bad writing, bad story telling.

This is not best selling material…but it can be turned into best selling material by a real editor. I’m not questioning the appeal, ingenuity, or entertainment value of the story hidden between the poor structure; I’m questioning the value of the poor structure, but I think I can patch it up.

My rewrite:

My Dear, I hope that you read this one day and understand how things came to be. I pray to God that you will forgive my lack of wisdom, my lack of foresight, the very causes of the tragedy that befell our family. The great sweep of history, however, is against us.

(My notes: I still don’t know what a great sweep is, but I’ll leave it as it may be the author’s personal touch. You’ll noticed I italicized it all, which I’ll bet makes it sound like it’s echoing in your head now, right? It is also three sentences long.)

You know I’ve always been a compulsive note taker—it’s why I was drawn into broadcast journalism—my notepad and digital voice recorder, my eternal companions. My notes are certainly serving me well, or they were…now I find myself unable to pinpoint the beginning of a story, a story I’m sure began thousands of years ago, yet all the details point to Iraq, so I’ll begin there.

Look at that change. We know they know he was a compulsive note taker. He isn’t wondering what pulled him to journalism, his devices aren’t faithful, as that doesn’t make sense, but eternal companions, and we see that his notes were serving well, but now, there is trouble. Suspense has been built. We can practically hear the deliberation in his voice. We have been pulled in.

I cut the line about the teaser. That sentence bugged me to no end because the teaser is never provided, and I’m not going to come up with one. A real editor tells his writer to provide at least one or two lines if he’s going to mention the teaser at all. Also, I added a scene break between the previous set of lines and these following lines as I believe the note he left behind has ended, and now we are in the story.

That first Tuesday morning in Baghdad was brutally hot and dry. Such a dust storm whirled through the air; the sun was shrouded by an orange haze. It was amidst a coughing fit that I turned to my cameraman, Curt.

We still have the orange haze, we know it’s hot, we know it’s dry, and it’s so hot, dry, and dusty, that he has a coughing fit. Now, this is real. Now, this is a story, and no longer a dry account of things. This is the difference between showing and telling.

Below, read the original. Then, let’s read the rewrite and see how it feels.

Some day you will read this, my dear, and see more clearly how things came to be. I pray to God that you will forgive me for not having had the wisdom or foresight to prevent the tragedies that befell our little family, though the great sweep of history was against us, as you know.

You may remember that I have always been a compulsive note taker; perhaps that’s why I was drawn to broadcast journalism where my notepad and digital voice recorder were my most faithful companions. My notes are serving me well now.

I have never had trouble finding the start of a story except for this one. The real story, I’m sure, began thousands of years ago, but it seems now that the best lead-in to our story was in Iraq, so I will begin there. Every good news story starts with a teaser to grab the audience, and this one certainly got my attention.

I remember that it was impossibly hot and dry on that Tuesday morning in Baghdad. The wind had stirred up a dust storm so thick that you could stare directly at the sun without hurting your eyes. Everything around us was eerily tinted orange. It was like being stuck in a block of amber looking out. I turned to my cameraman, Curt.

Versus

My Dear, I hope that you read this one day and understand how things came to be. I pray to God that you will forgive my lack of wisdom, my lack of foresight, the very causes of the tragedy that befell our family. The great sweep of history, however, is against us.

You know I’ve always been a compulsive note taker—it’s why I was drawn into broadcast journalism—my notepad and digital voice recorder, my eternal companions. My notes are certainly serving me well, or they were…now I find myself unable to pinpoint the beginning of a story, a story I’m sure began thousands of years ago, yet all the details point to Iraq, so I’ll begin there.

That first Tuesday morning in Baghdad was brutally hot and dry. Such a dust storm whirled through the air; the sun was shrouded by an orange haze. It was amidst a coughing fit that I turned to my cameraman, Curt.

There’s a blatant difference in the quality of the two works, although they both insinuate similar ideas, the second version of the story reads far better. It is strong, assertive, and it leaves the reader no wiggle room to envision something else.

Thanks for reading. Comment if you agree or disagree. Share if you want.

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Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

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I would go to the store if it wasn’t raining.

I could leave the house, but there are zombies outside.

I should fix the car, but I’m saving up for a boat.

Would, could, and should are what I consider if words; they imply, they insinuate, and they excuse or absolve one from the action at hand. Generally, they make for weak writing when they’re used in prose, and for all of you who often read self published, or independently published, books, you’ll notice that every writer uses one of those words in every other sentence, on every single page.

Sometimes, would, could, and should are great words. People do use them in dialogue. At times, would, could, and should work well in prose, too, but this is a difficult maneuver.

Since they’re weak words, or implications rather than assertions, they’re great words for either a weaker character, or they can be used to show deliberation. I’ll provide examples of everything in a moment, but first I want to portray, I mean, really get across, how different prose can be with and without those words.

I always like to take a look at the works of writers who claim to be best sellers. I often check their work, their rankings, and find that they are far from best sellers. Then, I look at the reviews, and often they have 500, glowing, five star reviews, but they have about a dozen one star reviews, and when I check them out, I can see that the one star reviews are given by angered readers, and the five star reviews are given by other authors.

Why are authors doing this? They think that giving each other great reviews in exchange for great reviews sells more books, and they think that reviews are for authors, and they think that they can trick people into buying a bad book, and sometimes it works, and that’s why the readers are angry when they buy a poorly written book.

Reviews are for readers, though; a reader decides that a book was or wasn’t worth their money, their time, and they want to let others know. Readers and authors aren’t reviewing Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher to help him sell more copies.

Generally, when it comes to reviews of indie books, there’s one chief complaint- lack of editing, sometimes called clunky writing, or poor flow, or they say it reads like a draft. Why? Why does this happen to every indie writer, and why are no indie authors spotting this?

Editors spot this kind of stuff. I say it all the time: Editing is not the same as proof reading, editing software cannot make your account of events more palatable to readers; you must hire a competent editor. Editors aren’t working for authors; they’re working for readers. Readers deserve to spend their money on a well written story, regardless of whether or not they enjoyed the plot, characters, etc.; you’ll never please everyone, but an editor goes a long way.

So, I have a short excerpt from Lola Silverman’s, Escorting the Wrong Billionaire.

Excerpts can be used in reviews and discussion, so I just grabbed the first few lines from the book by using Amazon’s look inside feature, a feature that readers need to use before they buy.

Kaylee opened the window of her apartment and took a deep breath. Perching her butt on the sill, she slung her legs out onto the fire escape. She hated heights. Thank God her unit was only on the second floor. Any farther up and she would have fainted dead away before plummeting to the concrete. (Aaron’s mental note: I thought there was a fire escape.)

Someone pounded on her front door. “Kaylee! I know you’re in there. I’ve given you three weeks on the rent and I can’t give you any more. Pay up or I’m going to have you evicted!” (Aaron’s mental note. Front door? This is a second story apartment. Is there more than one door?)

Yeah, hitting her head might actually be a positive thing. (Aaron’s mental note: Not sure from where this thought came. Who gave the idea of hitting her head?) If she had a concussion, maybe Mrs. Tobolovsky would feel sorry for her and give her another week to pay her rent. Except a concussion would mean a trip to the hospital—and that Kaylee could not afford.

Let’s see…five sentences in, would. Eleven in, would. Twelve, would and could. That’s four uses in two paragraphs, but what other way is there to write out this scenario? Do readers really care about would and could or weak writing?

Aaron’s rewrite:

Kaylee opened her studio apartment’s window. There, she sat, peeking out into the monotony of the world. Her feet dangled carelessly. While she didn’t like heights—the mere thought churned her stomach—she was on the second floor and protected by the fire escape. A sudden pounding drew her attention.

“Kaylee, I know you’re in there! You’re three weeks late on the rent! How many times we gotta’ go through this?” Mrs. Tobolovsky made her regular effort to collect, yelling and pounding, in the hopes of avoiding an eviction. “Hey!” She screamed, and followed up with another set of fists to the door. “I’m tellin’ you, you get your head straight, or you’re outta’ here!”

Yeah, my head straight, Kaylee thought. Rather than paying, she felt sorry for herself, her situation, and figured she was better off with a concussion than having her head straight. Unfortunately, a concussion came with more than a headache, it came with bills, and if she didn’t have rent money, she didn’t have hospital money.

See? The original phrasing was just awkward, and it didn’t tell us what we needed to know- Kaylee is in a jam, and she doesn’t have her life together. Instead, the original prose took us into and out of different perspectives and tenses, and with a weaker voice.

Let’s see, step-by-step, what changes were made and why.

Kaylee opened the window of her apartment and took a deep breath.

Nothing wrong there. It’s a great opener.

Perching her butt on the sill, she slung her legs out onto the fire escape.

Still moving along, but that’s weird. She slung her legs onto the fire escape? How are the window and escape built? Shouldn’t her feet be on the escape? Perching her butt…we normally sit on our butt and perch on our toes, like squatting. We know Kaylee is at home, sitting on the window sill, and with her feet over the fire escape…right?

She hated heights.

If she hates heights, why is she doing this? How far up is she? Well, we get a partial answer in the next sentence.

Thank God her unit was only on the second floor.

Okay, so she hates heights, but being nearly twenty feet up in the air is okay? Besides, she’s over the fire escape, which has a platform, right? Then, we get a weird addition in the next sentence.

Any farther up and she would have fainted dead away before plummeting to the concrete.

So, what do we have? What do we know? What is this paragraph trying to tell me, the reader? It tells me Kaylee is dangling her legs out from her window, and that she’s okay doing so because she’s not up very high, but I’m also told there’s a fire escape, and then I’m told she would otherwise faint and plummet to the concrete. It’s conflicting and confusing information. As a reader, do I want to learn  more? I’m so plagued with questions.

Next, we have the following:

Someone pounded on her front door.

Alright, simple enough.

“Kaylee! I know you’re in there. I’ve given you three weeks on the rent and I can’t give you any more. Pay up or I’m going to have you evicted!”

Here, we have some dialogue, and now we get an idea of what’s going on. As a reader, now I’m assuming that Kaylee is a derelict, or that, perhaps, Tobolovsky is a horrible person. It is implied that Kaylee doesn’t pay her rent, and judging from the tone, this is a regular occurrence. Now, I’m expecting something to happen; there’s an opening for a discussion, or action, or some event.

Yeah, hitting her head might actually be a positive thing.

Okay, this is Kaylee’s internal dialogue, right? She’s having a rather strange thought from out of the blue. Who mentioned anything about hitting the head? Why is that a positive thing?

If she had a concussion, maybe Mrs. Tobolovsky would feel sorry for her and give her another week to pay her rent.

Well, that’s a strange a take on the story. Am I supposed to think that this character, Kaylee, is actually considering giving herself a concussion to avoid some rent? Why is that her first go to thought when the rent is overdue, assuming it’s overdue? I’m not really even sure that’s the case.

Except a concussion would mean a trip to the hospital—and that Kaylee could not afford.

Seems fairly obvious, but why is that sentence written that way? Why is there a dash? A comma is required. Furthermore, it’s evident, for those who live in America, that healthcare costs can outweigh the cost of an apartment, but if I’m not American, this is really confusing, and it’s confusing anyway because Kaylee must have access to all this information, which means her thoughts just don’t make sense, and why does she think, or expect us to think, or tell us to think that Tobolovsky might feel sorry and give her a break? If she’s injured, she surely won’t be able to pay the rent for that month or likely the next. It’s just baffling.

There is something here, though; we have the idea that Kaylee is a self-pitying, underachiever, who likes to make excuses for herself and not take responsibility, which has the makings of a great character if she’s made to overcome obstacles. That’s why I provided my version.

Kaylee opened her studio apartment’s window.

Okay, that’s the same opener, basically.

There, she sat, peeking out into the monotony of the world.

Ah, see, I gave her a reason to open the window and sit rather than perch; she’s looking out at the monotony of the world. Now, she sounds like a tortured soul. Besides, we know how people sit; there’s no real reason to go into it, and while there is a time for perch, now is not that time.

Her feet dangled carelessly.

That sentence further implies her angst.

While she didn’t like heights—the mere thought churned her stomach—she was on the second floor and protected by the fire escape.

I kept the fact that she didn’t like heights, and kept that confusing feeling of her odd behavior along with the fact that she doesn’t like heights; angst plus strife makes for a great read. Furthermore, the structure of the sentence flows much more naturally. We also know how she feels physically when she’s up too high, but we also know she’s fine due to the fire escape, and not the senseless idea of not being too high; if you’re afraid of heights, sitting on the second story window sill is terrifying!

A sudden pounding drew her attention.

I wrote this in this fashion to slap the reader from a rather tranquil, if confusing, scene to something alarming. You have the mental image that she spun her head to face the door in surprise, right?

“Kaylee, I know you’re in there! You’re three weeks late on the rent! How many times we gotta’ go through this?” Mrs. Tobolovsky made her regular effort to collect, yelling and pounding, in the hopes of avoiding an eviction. “Hey!” She screamed, and followed up with another set of fists to the door. “I’m tellin’ you, you get your head straight, or you’re outta’ here!”

I changed this whole dialogue block because the original was stock and somehow confusing. We were told Kaylee had been given three weeks on the rent, but not that she was overdue. Also, the reader knows Tobolovsky doesn’t want to evict. Now, I made the distinction. Furthermore, I didn’t leave it up to the reader to assume this happened before, I straight said it, and, on top of all that, tenants can’t usually get evicted for being three weeks late on the rent, and it takes a month’s notice to evict, so I changed the dialogue for a realistic feel, not to mention that the intermittent pounding sounds far more menacing than the original version of this dialogue.

Yeah, my head straight, Kaylee thought.

In keeping with the idea of giving oneself a concussions, I actually gave a reasonable lead in to this idea with Tobolovsky’s dialogue.

Rather than paying, she felt sorry for herself, her situation, and figured she was better off with a concussion than having her head straight.

Here, I explained it all. We still don’t know why Kaylee doesn’t pay, which adds a touch of mystery. Is she a broke student? Has she recently been laid off? Does she have a kid? We don’t know, but we are curious, and especially because she’s considering knocking herself out rather than forking over the dough.

Unfortunately, a concussion came with more than a headache, it came with bills, and if she didn’t have rent money, she didn’t have hospital money.

Again, explained, and all without implications. The reader now knows by way of an assertion: Kaylee has no money and while getting knocked out sounds worthwhile, she does know it isn’t useful.

When comparing the two versions, it becomes quite clear that the original version doesn’t even know where it’s going; the writer doesn’t know what she wants her readers to think, feel, or know. That’s okay, though, most writers are like this; writers provide a sequential account of events. Editors turn those accounts into a story.

Now, I want to provide some original examples of when would, could, and should are great.

“Hey, Bill, you busy,” John asked.

“Nope. What’s up, John?”

“Well,” John hesitated, rubbing his chin. “I need to go to the hardware store and pick up a new ladder, so I was hoping you would like to come along.”

Bill smiled and looked away. “I would love to help you out, bud, but my pick up truck’s in the shop. Otherwise, I could help you.”

This is a very real conversation. Now, in a more lively context, the words I would are usually written as I’d, but I didn’t want to pull focus from the use of would. At any rate, two friends discussing a project can certainly come across like that, and one friend certainly wants to help the other, and one friend certainly doesn’t want to pressure the other, so the words would show deliberation, and they are followed up by an excuse or a reason, so it isn’t weak writing in this case; it’s a real situation, however, we also know that neither John nor Bill are jerks; jerks don’t give a reason or excuse, so they won’t use would or could in dialogue, or at least, not this dialogue.

Let’s take a look in prose.

John would’ve gone outside, but the hordes of zombies were still shuffling around the neighborhood.

What do we know? There are zombies. John is scared of them. He wants to go out, but he won’t. He has an excuse not to go out; there are zombies.

This is a perfect way to convey to the reader that John wants something, but he doesn’t have what it takes to get the job done, and it’s very relatable, but we also expect, if John is the protagonist, he will get over his fear in order to grow as a character, and get the job done, and therein lies the problem; if would, could, and should keep following John around, we’re always going to feel that he’s deliberating!

Let’s see what happens when we play with words.

John didn’t want to go outside. Hordes of zombies were still shuffling around the neighborhood.

In this case, there’s nothing implied. We don’t think John wants to go out at all, zombies or no zombies; we know John doesn’t want to go out. We’re then shown that there are zombies still roaming around, but we have a totally different John. The first John wanted to go out, but was scared. This second John just doesn’t want to go out, then we find out why; he’s so scared, he isn’t even considering going outside.

Would changed absolutely everything, so there is a time to use it, but the writer/editor has to know what they want to portray.

Let’s look at one more example.

John didn’t go outside. Hordes of zombies were still shuffling around the neighborhood.

In this case, it is implied that John wants to go outside, and then we find out why he doesn’t go, but we’re led to believe that he will venture outdoors at some point, so we’re expecting something to happen, but what? We don’t know, so this creates a degree of tension, expectation.

In the end, I won’t say that there’s a right or wrong way to do something; I’ll leave that conclusion up to you, but I will say that there is a time and a place to use certain words, that every word has a special impact on storytelling, and that it is extremely important for a writer/editor to read the work as a reader, because the reader is not in our mind, and we must convey to them what to think, feel, and know.

Thank you.

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Be leery of millionaires- a tip to indie writers

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You’ve written a book! Congratulations, you’ve just accomplished the biggest step towards a successful indie writing career, but wait; you’ve been published for six months, and you’ve only sold two copies of your e-book. You joined all the prominent communities on Google + and a plethora of groups on Linkedin. All the people you speak to say they’re best sellers; they sell several copies of their books everyday; they’re rich and only work day jobs because they want to. They make hundreds of thousands of dollars off their one book, and you want to as well, but no one gives you a straight answer on how to do that. None of those rich indie writers can tell you anything more than “I do signings at my local book store”, or “I sell dozens of copies every time I do a signing”, or “I just Tweet about my book, and everyone buys it”, yet there you are with your two sold copies.

What went wrong? Nothing. Those other people are lying to you.

Here’s the truth; you’re doing just as well as everyone else, maybe even better. Take a look at the math.

You publish one e-book to Amazon’s KDP select at $.99, which yields about $.35. If you sell one copy, yes, just one copy, every day that’s 365 x $.35 = $127.75 per year supposing you do sell an e-book everyday, which would put you in Amazon’s top 100 easy, and if you follow up on those other writers, you’ll see their book–or books–is somewhere in the millions range. That means they aren’t selling one copy every day, much less enough copies to hit 5,000 a year to be a real best seller.

Certainly, they may have 400 5 star reviews, but they get those by trading their e-book with another author, and each author gives the book a 5 star review for a 5 star review, an abhorrent practice as it makes readers think they’re buying a quality product when in fact it’s barely mediocre (always read the couple of 2 star reviews the authors have for a real look into how good the book is. Those are real reviews by real readers).

Well, gee, that does sound awful, but I don’t care about that. I want to know how I can make a living off $127.75 a year. You can’t. You have to write more books, yet to even break $10,000 a year, on which you still cannot earn a living, you must sell about 80 e-books every day, so if you have written 80 e-books, and you sell one of each of them every day, you can make $10,200 every year.

But those rich, best-selling, indie authors don’t have 80 books. No, they don’t, further evidence that they’re not telling the truth, and it’s this that leads me to question Amanda Hocking’s success, but I’ve written about her before; she has several traditional print contracts with imprints from larger companies. Even James Crouch has a literary agent.

I don’t have contracts or an agent. Why do people become indie writers if they can’t make a living, and why do they lie?

Well, crazy people do crazy things, and I’d like to believe that an indie writer can make it big. I’ve talked to some writers that seem successful, and I stay positive and force myself to believe that it can be done because I need to believe that a self made person can be successful, but if you’re writing in the hopes of getting rich, you better pander to the masses, hire a team of professional editors, and write the next big book-to-movie product or you’re outta gas. Indie writers write for themselves and for the fans, which means you need to release a perfect product all on your own and abstain from trading 5 star reviews with other authors for 5 star reviews. You need to get real reviews from professional reviewers, so readers won’t be disappointed in your product and write a revenge review- an evil review to deter everyone else from even taking a chance on you.

But that will cost upwards of a $100 or more! Yes, it will, so write for the sake of telling the story!

Now, I’ve read Linkedin posts about authors who travel the country and sell print copies of their books. Let’s take a look at the math again.

A print copy of a full length book–300 pages of a 9 by 6 copy–can be priced about as low as $10  from which you’ll only make about $3 after someone makes a purchase via Amazon, so selling those at one copy per day for a year gets you $1,095, which means you need to sell about 10 copies per day, or have 10 print books available and sell one of each every day for $10,950 per year. These authors, who are supposedly showing up at places across the country, talk about buying their own copies, traveling, booking a venue, and selling their books to people. The cost of buying your own books and traveling can be astronomical.

One author purchase of a print book is half of the price, so $5 per book if it’s priced at $10, which you then sell at $10, unless you jack up the price because its signed, so we’ll even say $15 per book. How many books would you have to sell to make up your losses; that is, the cost of buying the books, traveling, and booking the venue? While you’re doing this, you can’t work your day job, either, so how much are you losing there? If you buy 1,000 print copies, that’s $5,000 dollars! Then, you have to travel the country, book hotel stays, book a venue through which you can sell and hope that people show. If you sell all your books, which won’t happen until after you’ve spent years amassing a fan base, at $15 per book that’s only $15,000 minus the $5,000 of the books purchased, which is only $10,000 minus the travelling expenses!

Don’t buy into the guff! Please, please, please don’t buy into the guff. The cold truth is that most indie writers, ones who have been on the market for less than 5 years, are probably selling one book a month, maybe less. It takes a great deal of time, effort, and money to promote your book.

This isn’t meant to be discouraging, on the contrary, it should be uplifting to know that you aren’t doing any worse than anyone else. The trick is to keep at it.

Also, get away from promotions with KDP select, which prevents you from publishing elsewhere. In fact, you may want to rid yourself of Amazon altogether; check your sales and payments, and double check your Kindle Pages Read. I promise you, Amazon is stealing from you.

Buy 5 or so print copies and do giveaways on Goodreads, blog about your books, your writing, your life. Learn the intricacies of editing and sell your services to others, but for the sake of the readers, make certain that if you do do that (heh, do do) you understand what editing is.

You can learn more about editing here.

So, to answer your question; how can I make it big? The truth is that without an agent or a big contract from a major publisher, you’re looking at peanuts, but still, writing 80 books and selling each of them every day isn’t that daunting…well maybe it is….

Write because you love it, write because you have a story to tell, write because you want readers to enjoy a mental vacation, and all the while, hone your art. You should want to break into the mainstream world; there’s nothing wrong with that.

Stephen King is a big time writer, yet he also self-publishes his own books, and he writes from a small indie press, too. Do it all. Stay positive. Keep looking for new and inventive ways to market your writing. Do what others haven’t, but don’t listen to the guff, don’t get discouraged, and if you do find someone who says they’re doing phenomenally well, have them prove it then ask them what they did.

I wanted to copy Amanda Hocking’s meteoric rise to indie stardom, and that’s how I learned a lot of this information.

So far, everyone I’ve looked into, every indie writer that is, has not become successful on their own; they have had help from editors, publishers, agents, professional marketers, etc.

Today, everyone and their mum writes books and publishes to Amazon, and some people even publish through an indie press like Del Ray, but even then, even with a renown indie press, you’re still not going to see a book sale everyday, so it takes a gargantuan effort to be a youngish, quit-your-day-job, indie author, and if you are one, or you know one, talk to me. I’d like to see some real proof and hopefully a marketing plan because I want to make it big, too.

But wait, don’t some authors get advances?

They certainly do, but the advances from an indie press are somewhere between $100 and $5,000 dollars, and that’s cash that they have to earn back before you start getting royalties, so if you do get the advance, but fail to sell enough copies to recoup that advance, you don’t get squat after the advance!

As a final note, if you are an indie writer, please do your best to release a perfect product; don’t help flood the market with mediocrity. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the indie writing name, and it’s bad for the readers. It’s these bad practices that send people running when they see the word indie before the word writer, and then they end up buying the mainstream crap that’s peddled today, and worst of all for you, when an agent or publisher sees that you’re an indie writer, they won’t touch you unless you can prove thousands of sales.

Be honest, be positive, and do your best. Thanks.