Reminder
Douglas
Wednesday 30 April 2014
Another good Russell Blake post
Success is all hard work.
The more I think about it my current view of what I am doing as 'Writing and Reading for Pleasure' appears so much less stressful and I will have some hours left to do other things.
Douglas
Saturday 19 April 2014
Chinese Take Out - new book by Inkplotters member Ian Mathie
MY EASTER EGG HAS HATCHED !
After a long gestation and six non-fiction books, my fist
venture into fiction is published today and available for download now.
CHINESE TAKE-OUT is a fast moving international
thriller with political and economic intrigue, nuclear secrets, a Chinese
scientist who loves the saxophone, an electronic whiz kid with a grudge, and
betrayal and skulduggery at every turn.
CHINESE TAKE-OUT will give your Easter reading real
interest and keep you turning the pages right to the end.
It is released today on Amazon as a Kindle e-book, and is a
real bargain at only - £1.84 - so get reading folks! You can find it
at:
Thursday 17 April 2014
Author Misery - final part
Posted: 16 Apr 2014 09:34 PM PDT
from Russell Blake - see also previous posts
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
In this final installment, I cover a few of the most destructive myths. A warning before you read further: if you’re looking for feel good affirmations, this ain’t gonna be your brand of cereal. But I’ve always believed that it’s best to go into any enterprise with your eyes wide open. God knows I’ve done a few where I didn’t, and those were always failures.
1) Write a good book and you will make decent money. Or write a lot of good books and you will make decent money. Would that it were so. Reality is that the overwhelming majority of good books, which is to say competently written-and-edited tomes, fail to sell much. That’s the harsh truth. If you dislike that fact, that’s fine. The world should be fair, but it’s not. Puppies starve or are crushed by cars or brutalized by sadists every day, good, hard working people are maimed or killed in horrible circumstances, and evil men who have never contributed anything worthwhile to the world prosper while screwing everyone else. So let’s get clear on that. The world is not only not fair, but it’s highly unfair much of the time. Never more so than in the arts.
In the old days of trad publishing, if you rubbed shoulders with the right people in a small area of New York, your odds of being published were off the charts compared to the great unwashed. One of the reasons is because of nepotism. It’s natural. People are more likely to sign you if they know you. Just the way things work. But even so, that was no guarantee you’d have much more than bragging rights. Because readers reject most books traditional publishing slings at them. Whether that’s because the trad establishment’s hopelessly out of touch with what the vast majority of readers prefer and are victims of their own inbred literary tastes, which are usually far more advanced and nuanced than yours or mine, or because nobody has the faintest idea what the public prefers (even on their best day), is debatable. If you’re reading this, it’s probably not your problem, because you’ve chosen to self-publish. Which is a double-edged sword.
Let’s assume you’ve written a good book. Hell, let’s assume it’s a frigging awesome book. I mean, Lord of the Flies-level prose, an incredibly innovative story with unexpected hooks and a message frenzied crowds can rally behind, mesmerizing mastery of craft…the whole shooting match. And let’s further assume you package it well, and have a competent editor polish it, and a proofreader catch most of the nits. You put it out there with an awesome cover and a breathtaking blurb, you do all the right things, you tweet, you facebook, you advertise, you blog, you do interviews, you go to bookstores and kiss babies and shake hands…and nothing happens. The book doesn’t move. You’ve lost a grand or two and are scratching your head, or if like me, are standing on the roof of your house, brandishing a broadsword and a tequila bottle, screaming incoherently at passers-by whilst making obscene gestures with your man thong. Meanwhile, your slow cousin who can barely cobble together three sentences makes a hundred grand from her zombie-vampire love triangle potboiler, with more typos per page than a prison menu and a plot that would make Dr. Seuss cringe.
That’s reality. Shit happens. If you’re writing because you think it’s your ticket out of whatever misery that is your daily grind, think again. It’s not a ticket to stardom. It can be, if you win the lottery, but that’s not a business. That’s playing the lottery. If you write you should do so because you love it. Not for any other reason. And you shouldn’t expect your first, or your fifth, or your tenth book, to put you into the black. Law of averages says you won’t do well. Sorry. And it’s not because you, or your writing, blows goats. Although you or it well might. It’s because life isn’t fair. So get over it already.
When I offer advice, I do so with the expectation that you can write decently. If you can’t, that’s not necessarily a deal killer, but it makes your chances far, far worse. My message is simple: working very hard and very smart can improve your terrible odds, but that’s all it can do. It’s not a magic pill, nor a recipe for success. There is no such thing. The concept that anyone has one is bullshit.
I can tell you how to operate your writing and publishing company intelligently, but you need to recognize that most well-run publishing companies fail. Just as most well-run any-kind-of-companies fail. Most start-ups don’t last. They go belly up. Even those with the smartest people and shiniest wow products. That’s just how it works. Don’t start a company if you’re uncomfortable with that idea. Own it, internalize it, and if you’re okay with it, then plot how to be the exception. Because being one of the majority means you won’t make it. Harsh? Yes. But that’s life.
As I write this, I realize that this topic deserves more examination than a few paragraphs. So forget the rest of the myths I was going to cover today. Let’s focus on this one.
It’s a depressing business. There’s no certainty to any of it. You dance at the king’s pleasure, and there’s no reason to it – it seems completely random…and yes, unfair. Most authors I talk to don’t like hearing that, or think that somehow, they’re the exception. Only they aren’t. Everyone thinks they’re the exception. Every. Single. Person. They’re right and they’re wrong. We’re all special snowflakes, but the world doesn’t really give a crap. So what to do?
I’m a big proponent of choosing a genre that can support you, which means one that’s popular, and sticking to it (with the caveat that if it doesn’t meet your expectations after a massive, concentrated effort, pay attention to the result you’re getting, and switch to something with better odds). I’m also big on publishing regularly, meaning every three or four months (more often if possible) if you intend to make this your living. I’m huge on pro editing and covers and proofreading. I consider your cover and your blurb essential to success. But those are the basics. Important basics, but still, building blocks.
They will narrow your long odds because most authors simply don’t do what they should to make themselves successful. Understanding that is an advantage. It means you already know more than 90% of those who will publish on Amazon this year. If you do everything right, that will make you the 10% that has a chance.
But still, it’s not a lock. By any stretch of the imagination. Get clear on that. In all businesses, this included, you can do everything absolutely, spectacularly right, and go nowhere. Because God hates you. Or because the world’s unfair. Or because you’re not good enough. Or were born under a dark star. Or didn’t get breast fed enough as a child. Pick your reason. It doesn’t matter what your reason is, as long as you recognize that in ALL industries, most businesses do not succeed.
Nobody’s holding a gun to your head, forcing you to write. It breaks my heart when I correspond with authors for whom writing is their last chance – they have no money, no prospects, their life has hit bottom, and their hope is that their book will pull them out of the swamp.
It doesn’t work that way. It can, but it’s as rare as flipping a coin and having it land on its side. Mostly, those are people whose dreams will be crushed by a cold uncaring world. Is that fair? No. Go back and reread my words about life not being fair.
I wish I could tell you how to avoid being that person. I wish there were a formula. What I’ve come up with I share openly: Pick a genre you love and that’s large enough to support you, stick to it, write a lot of seriously good books, focus on improving your grasp of craft each time you sit down to write, make each book your best ever (meaning respect your reader above all else), package and quality control your books like the pros do, market intelligently, and spend massive amounts of time and energy working smarter than everyone else. And above all, be extremely realistic about everything. Some might say, cynical. I’d say pragmatic. Don’t allow your mind to be your worst enemy. Understand you’ve taken on a difficult challenge. Eschew those who cheerlead and cajole – that won’t do you any good. Be your own motivation. Don’t rely on others. Develop a relentless drive to succeed at this, don’t take no for an answer, and build a self-perpetuating engine of achievement and determination. Make yourself essential and relevant. Don’t have an attitude, just focus on backing your mouth with product that delivers. Or have an attitude. Whatever. In the end it won’t matter. The important part is to recognize that your job, should you decide to take it, is to be one of the exceptions, and that to do so is damned hard.
Now that you want to put your head in the oven, let’s look at the positives. Right now, your odds of making decent money, even good money, are better than at any time in the history of publishing. More authors are making five and six figures self-publishing than ever. It’s happening every minute. It’s not an illusion. Every day new names appear on the bestseller lists, but perhaps more importantly, every day more authors are appearing with four, six, ten books in the #1000-#15,000 ranks, which collectively, add up to a nice living. It can be done. And you can do it. Someone has to. Why not you?
I counsel tough love. My inner dialogue isn’t particularly fluffy or fun. I’m hard-nosed as they come when I put my business hat on. I don’t bullshit myself into performance. I sit down, get clear on how hard it is to do whatever I’m thinking about doing, determine what I’ll need to do to succeed, ask myself honestly whether I’m willing to do what it takes, and if so, I spend some serious time researching how to devise a plan that will make me the exception. I’ve done that in a number of different fields. It works more often that it doesn’t. It’s not a magic bullet, but it narrows your odds.
Can you do this part time and make it? Sure you can. So can someone who starts any business part time. Just recognize that your odds of making it are lower than if you did it full time. Duh. Put in 80 hours a week, you might get better results than 10. Big surprise. Can you put in 10 or 20 and still do well? Sure. Again, anything’s possible. But you have to be unable to grasp basic business concepts if you think your odds will be the same. If they were, nobody would put in the 80. They’d all put in the 10, because their odds are identical. Figure it out.
Self-publishing is two jobs, not one.
It’s the job of being an author, and hopefully a constantly improving one who’s concerned with mastering an essentially un-masterable craft,
and it’s the job of being a publisher, which is a production, marketing and distribution engine. Two separate jobs. Both requiring an investment in time and energy.
I get a lot of emails. I talk to a lot of authors who are making decent to great money at self-publishing. They all work their asses off. Every. Single. One. They all publish regularly, are hyper-aware of the changing landscape of the marketplace, invest money in their business, and are constantly trying to improve their product. And they all love what they do, and are passionate about it. They’d be doing it if they were making a tenth what they make. Because it’s what they do.
What’s my point? That self-publishing is both exciting in its possibilities and daunting in its requirements. And that very few businesses succeed, whether it’s a new shoe shop, or a convenience store, or a restaurant, or a software start-up…or a publishing company. But it’s more possible now to succeed than at any point in the past. I’m living proof. Authors like Bella Andre (who I’ll be featuring this month on an Author Spotlight), Holly Ward, Melissa Foster, Barbara Freethy, Hugh Howey, LT Ryan, CJ Lyons, Jay Allen, Saxon Andrew, Joe Nobody, BV Larson, Colleen Hoover, and on and on and on, are doing it every day, and making bank. They’re all exceptions. Every single one. Not one chose the same path. Not one did exactly the same thing. They all made their own way, in their own way.
The good news is there’s plenty of room for more. The question is not whether there will be more, the question is whether you will be one of them, and what your plan is to get there.
Now I’m going back to writing my next one. JET – Ops Files is in the bag and will release in a week, and it’s a barn burner of a prequel to the JET series.
My co-authored action/adventure novel with Clive Cussler is already in the top 1000 as a pre-order, five months before release. Sales are good, more readers seem to like me than hate me, and I’m enjoying the hell out of writing for a living. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Friday 11 April 2014
Last and future meetings
The Inkplotters met on Wednesday 9th April. Peter and Alex were welcomed as new
members. Those present were entertained by a wide range of readings, science
fiction on death, a topical April fool political dream and three and a half
stories on the theme for the evening. The latter based on looking glass stories
about a shaky business, court room drama, Alice and casting couch.
The next meeting is on Thursday 1st May 2014 at 19.00 with up to a 1000
words on the theme of an elderly person losing their independence.
Future meetings also planned on first Thursday of each month at
19.00 on the following dates.
1st May
5th June
3rd July
7th August
The meeting with Jenn from Waterstones still has to be rearranged.
Rather than members saying they will not be coming to meetings perhaps members should advise Pauline when they are coming to a meeting.
Good reading and writing
Good reading and writing
Douglas
Tuesday 8 April 2014
What to Expect from Indie Publishing - Cynthia Griffith | Guest Post
Found this on TIPM site today
http://www.theindependentpublishingmagazine.com/
So you’ve
finally finished that novel you’ve been talking about writing for
years, or maybe you’ve
just finally started talking about writing it. If you’ve
investigated the indie publishing scene, you might have encountered some rather
unpleasant rants about the downside of the process. Before you write off the
idea, bear in mind the fact that 90% of those ranters have no experience in the
indie publishing market and are merely speculating based on rants they read
that scared them out of taking the indie plunge.
Independently publishing
your novel isn’t
nearly the sophisticated rocket science it’s
been made out to be, nor is it the best way to get rich quick, but it is
definitely a beneficial experience for the aspiring author in you. Here are a
few things you can expect from independently publishing your creative work.
Number One: Speed
The hurry up and wait book industry
picked up lightning speed when indie publishing was introduced. Landing an
agent can take years and you’ll probably wait even longer to see
your novel in print if you forge through using the traditional route. To give
you some insight on this, I sent out 12 query letters in 2012 and sparked the
interest of two high profile agents. Both agents reviewed my work for
approximately six months and at the end of the six months they both declined me
representation. I considered repeating the process, but I didn’t
want to spend another six months in limbo and another year and a half trying to
land a publishing deal. With Amazon Kindle’s
ebook service, my novel was
online in just under three days, fully complete with cover art and author bio.
Presto.
Number Two: An Agent
Now that indie publishing has been
cleared of the negative stigma that once made credible authors cringe, many
agents are scouring the indie section in search of up and coming talent. This
process gets the agents coming to you.
Number Three: A Sales Pitch
Amazon is arguably the best indie
publishing platform around, but Amazon is also a business. Expect to witness
sales pitches the instant your novel’s been uploaded. The kindle service is
free but the upgrades, such as book
trailer packages and
distribution, can be incredibly pricey.
Number Four: Strange Fonts
Had I known this ahead of time, I
might have been tempted to write the whole novel on the Kindle website rather
than using the copy/paste method. Strange fonts make their appearance in the
Kindle version if you copy and paste.
Number Five: A
Pen Name
It’s
just too tempting not to try a pen name on for size at least once in a
lifetime. Choosing a name that is easy to spell but not extremely common can
also boost sales. If you opt for a pen name, make sure to register it with the copyright
office and to include
your name on the book as the publisher.
Number Six: A Lesson in Marketing
Marketing your own novel will
inadvertently change your perspective on the trade. You will pick up on little
tidbits like colors that stimulate people to buy things and selling spiels that
seem campy but totally work.
Number Seven: A Million Dollars
Just because I didn’t
make a million dollars (yet!) doesn’t mean you won’t.
Somebody will and the only way to rule yourself out of the equation is to not
step up to the plate. If you don’t make a million dollars, you might
make a few thousand in profit and your life as an author could transition into
a rather unexpected blogging career. That was my personal experience, and I
found it so rewarding that I’m indie publishing a sequel!
Sunday 6 April 2014
National Association of Writers Groups
http://www.nawg.co.uk/
Yes - another centralised body wanting money every year £40 in this case
They do have an event in Warwick in August
Douglas
Yes - another centralised body wanting money every year £40 in this case
They do have an event in Warwick in August
Douglas
Friday 4 April 2014
5 Ways to Improve A Perfect Story
From - Write to Done
Subject: 5 Ways To Improve A Perfect Story
You’ve written a story you’re proud of.
You’ve edited it until there’s nothing left to do. It’s perfect!
Isn’t it?
Of course.
But how can you enhance it?
That’s the challenge I face every day as a “copy doctor” when members of my writing program send me their work-in-progress for my comments.
Often I despair. Their stories are excellent. What can I do?
Then I ask myself these questions and – in a few moments – I find at least five ways to improve their stories.
Apply this checklist to your own work and see for yourself!
1. Do the characters chatter in a vacuum?
Maybe the dialogue snakes down the page with no indication of where the conversation is taking place. Are we still in the kitchen or the bar or… has the story shifted to the Sinai desert?
A simple way to remind us is to drop in a ‘dialogue beat,’ some trivial intrusion from the environment.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jack said.
Jill pouted. The barman grinned.
Ah, we’re still in the bar.
By the way, did we need the dialogue tag “Jack said?” Pundits tell us we should minimize repetitions of “he said/she replied.” They’re tedious.
What people say and how they say it should, in theory, give the reader enough clues. But do they? Not always.
After the third exchange we lose track. Remind us. A dialogue beat can do that.
“What happened to my drink?”
The barman brought Jill a Campari.
Now we know it was Jill speaking, not Jack.
Bring us back us to the context, continually. The story will gain depth.
2. Are the conversations robotic?
If we want to engage the reader – and we do, don’t we? – we must embed surprise, conflict, or intrigue into every passage.
I did it just then by interrupting myself with a question. Of course, that “conflict” can be as gentle as a lover’s pillow talk. But it must be there. Because conflict provokes emotions, and emotions engage the reader.
This is particularly true of dialogue. Show us the characters’ emotions throughout. Otherwise, the conversation will be flat. The simplest way to animate dialogue is to add body language.
“You killed my father!”
“Darling, you exaggerate.”
Dramatic? Yes. But what do the words mean? Reveal the emotions behind those words.
“You killed my father!” Her voice was broken glass.
“Darling, you exaggerate.” His eyes crinkled with amusement.
The next step is to drop in the characters’ thoughts or reflections. If a scene is written from the point of view (pov) of just one character, it’s no trick to present these directly to the reader.
You arrogant bastard, Jill thought.
But how can we convey the thoughts of other characters, without head hopping between different viewpoints and confusing the reader?
Have your main pov character observe the other person’s body language and speculate on their thoughts or feelings. This helps us stay in the main pov.
She saw his fingers tremble. Maybe she had frightened him, after all?
Or
The eyes that looked back at her were cold with anger.
In a romance they might be “fierce with unrequited lust.”
Body language – and its interpretations – can be laid on with a fine brush or a trowel, according to your genre.
3. Does a descriptive passage invoke all five senses?
An inexperienced author might tell us simply what their characters see and hear. The other three senses are ignored. So the story is two-dimensional. To give it depth, show us also what the pov characters smell, taste and feel.
The chill winter air tasted of bonfire smoke. Jill warmed her hands at the crackling log fire, fragrant with apple wood, and wished devoutly she had worn shoes that did not pinch.
Now we are in that scene, exploring it through all of Jill’s senses. But did you notice how slow that passage was?
To lull the pace in any scene, drop in a lot of sensory detail. To quicken the pace, refer merely to sights and sounds. The brain understands references to sight and sound much faster than it does to the other three senses.
4. Is the story balanced in its pace?
Have you ever read a passage of beautiful prose and thought “That’s lovely but it’s dead?”
Chances are, all the sentences and paragraphs were of the same length. If you want to animate a scene – say, at a moment of tension – cut the sentences. Even to fragments.
Then give the reader a comfort break in the next paragraph by lengthening them again or perhaps, by dropping in a few dependent – that is, hanging – clauses.
Just like that.
Incidentally, an easy way to check if your paragraphs are balanced is to reset a page in Word to single-spaced, 9 points Time Roman. Justify the text. Stand back from your computer. The page will now look much as it would to the reader of a Kindle or printed book.
Has your text shrunk into one grey boring slab? Vary the paragraph lengths!
5. How tired is the story’s language?
A story need not dance with wordplay. Often, the most powerful tale is written in the most prosaic style. But the words should pull their weight. Here’s where the Find utility in Word can be a great help.
First, put the term ing into the search box. That will reveal, among many other words, all your gerunds.
Gerunds? These are weak verb forms that end with ing, like walking and sighing. Ration your gerunds to, say, just two per paragraph unless you want to send the reader to sleep.
Next, input the term ly. It will highlight most of your adverbs. Sometimes, adverbs are necessary.
If Jack laughed, did he do it happily or bitterly? We need to know.
But adverbs, which qualify verbs, can usually be replaced with a more precise verb – he grinned, leered, winked, etc. – or with a colourful expression.
He made a noise like a duck swallowing a frog.
Adjectives can be just as dangerous. If you spot more than two in one sentence, ask: could I drop them or use some figure of speech instead?
The chamber was cold, empty and forlorn, chilled by the relentless wind.
That’s too many adjectives. Why not write:
The room was as cold as a taxman’s heart?
Needless to say, there’s more than that to being a “copy doctor.”
If you don’t have a good story to start with – a structure of conflict that’s emotionally strong, and characters readers can connect with – no amount of tinkering with the language will improve it.
But if your story is otherwise competent, take action on the five steps above and you’ll turn a good tale into a great one.
What changes will you make to your perfect story? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
About the author:
Dr. John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, runs the Writers’’ Village Academy program in fiction writing and is a tutor at a UK university. He has been a successful commercial author for 42 years. You can find a wealth of ideas for writing stories that succeed in his free 14-part course at Writers’ Village.
Image: How to improve courtesy of Bigstockphoto
The post 5 Ways To Improve A Perfect Story appeared first on Write to Done.
Subject: 5 Ways To Improve A Perfect Story
You’ve written a story you’re proud of.
You’ve edited it until there’s nothing left to do. It’s perfect!
Isn’t it?
Of course.
But how can you enhance it?
That’s the challenge I face every day as a “copy doctor” when members of my writing program send me their work-in-progress for my comments.
Often I despair. Their stories are excellent. What can I do?
Then I ask myself these questions and – in a few moments – I find at least five ways to improve their stories.
Apply this checklist to your own work and see for yourself!
1. Do the characters chatter in a vacuum?
Maybe the dialogue snakes down the page with no indication of where the conversation is taking place. Are we still in the kitchen or the bar or… has the story shifted to the Sinai desert?
A simple way to remind us is to drop in a ‘dialogue beat,’ some trivial intrusion from the environment.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jack said.
Jill pouted. The barman grinned.
Ah, we’re still in the bar.
By the way, did we need the dialogue tag “Jack said?” Pundits tell us we should minimize repetitions of “he said/she replied.” They’re tedious.
What people say and how they say it should, in theory, give the reader enough clues. But do they? Not always.
After the third exchange we lose track. Remind us. A dialogue beat can do that.
“What happened to my drink?”
The barman brought Jill a Campari.
Now we know it was Jill speaking, not Jack.
Bring us back us to the context, continually. The story will gain depth.
2. Are the conversations robotic?
If we want to engage the reader – and we do, don’t we? – we must embed surprise, conflict, or intrigue into every passage.
I did it just then by interrupting myself with a question. Of course, that “conflict” can be as gentle as a lover’s pillow talk. But it must be there. Because conflict provokes emotions, and emotions engage the reader.
This is particularly true of dialogue. Show us the characters’ emotions throughout. Otherwise, the conversation will be flat. The simplest way to animate dialogue is to add body language.
“You killed my father!”
“Darling, you exaggerate.”
Dramatic? Yes. But what do the words mean? Reveal the emotions behind those words.
“You killed my father!” Her voice was broken glass.
“Darling, you exaggerate.” His eyes crinkled with amusement.
The next step is to drop in the characters’ thoughts or reflections. If a scene is written from the point of view (pov) of just one character, it’s no trick to present these directly to the reader.
You arrogant bastard, Jill thought.
But how can we convey the thoughts of other characters, without head hopping between different viewpoints and confusing the reader?
Have your main pov character observe the other person’s body language and speculate on their thoughts or feelings. This helps us stay in the main pov.
She saw his fingers tremble. Maybe she had frightened him, after all?
Or
The eyes that looked back at her were cold with anger.
In a romance they might be “fierce with unrequited lust.”
Body language – and its interpretations – can be laid on with a fine brush or a trowel, according to your genre.
3. Does a descriptive passage invoke all five senses?
An inexperienced author might tell us simply what their characters see and hear. The other three senses are ignored. So the story is two-dimensional. To give it depth, show us also what the pov characters smell, taste and feel.
The chill winter air tasted of bonfire smoke. Jill warmed her hands at the crackling log fire, fragrant with apple wood, and wished devoutly she had worn shoes that did not pinch.
Now we are in that scene, exploring it through all of Jill’s senses. But did you notice how slow that passage was?
To lull the pace in any scene, drop in a lot of sensory detail. To quicken the pace, refer merely to sights and sounds. The brain understands references to sight and sound much faster than it does to the other three senses.
4. Is the story balanced in its pace?
Have you ever read a passage of beautiful prose and thought “That’s lovely but it’s dead?”
Chances are, all the sentences and paragraphs were of the same length. If you want to animate a scene – say, at a moment of tension – cut the sentences. Even to fragments.
Then give the reader a comfort break in the next paragraph by lengthening them again or perhaps, by dropping in a few dependent – that is, hanging – clauses.
Just like that.
Incidentally, an easy way to check if your paragraphs are balanced is to reset a page in Word to single-spaced, 9 points Time Roman. Justify the text. Stand back from your computer. The page will now look much as it would to the reader of a Kindle or printed book.
Has your text shrunk into one grey boring slab? Vary the paragraph lengths!
5. How tired is the story’s language?
A story need not dance with wordplay. Often, the most powerful tale is written in the most prosaic style. But the words should pull their weight. Here’s where the Find utility in Word can be a great help.
First, put the term ing into the search box. That will reveal, among many other words, all your gerunds.
Gerunds? These are weak verb forms that end with ing, like walking and sighing. Ration your gerunds to, say, just two per paragraph unless you want to send the reader to sleep.
Next, input the term ly. It will highlight most of your adverbs. Sometimes, adverbs are necessary.
If Jack laughed, did he do it happily or bitterly? We need to know.
But adverbs, which qualify verbs, can usually be replaced with a more precise verb – he grinned, leered, winked, etc. – or with a colourful expression.
He made a noise like a duck swallowing a frog.
Adjectives can be just as dangerous. If you spot more than two in one sentence, ask: could I drop them or use some figure of speech instead?
The chamber was cold, empty and forlorn, chilled by the relentless wind.
That’s too many adjectives. Why not write:
The room was as cold as a taxman’s heart?
Needless to say, there’s more than that to being a “copy doctor.”
If you don’t have a good story to start with – a structure of conflict that’s emotionally strong, and characters readers can connect with – no amount of tinkering with the language will improve it.
But if your story is otherwise competent, take action on the five steps above and you’ll turn a good tale into a great one.
What changes will you make to your perfect story? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
About the author:
Dr. John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, runs the Writers’’ Village Academy program in fiction writing and is a tutor at a UK university. He has been a successful commercial author for 42 years. You can find a wealth of ideas for writing stories that succeed in his free 14-part course at Writers’ Village.
Image: How to improve courtesy of Bigstockphoto
The post 5 Ways To Improve A Perfect Story appeared first on Write to Done.
Thursday 3 April 2014
Author misery continued ...
Posted: 02 Apr 2014 08:07 PM PDT
More Author Myths - Russell Blake
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
Last week I covered the top 8 most insidious falsehoods I’ve heard about being a self-pubbed author. This week I continue my rant and tackle a few more:
9) We are artists, above the vagaries of commerce and filthy lucre. Sure we are. Until we want to make money by selling our work. At that point we’re in the book selling business, which is a commercial enterprise involving the production and sale of books. In the case of self-publishers, of books we have written. Our author selves may well be artists, but if you want to avoid being a starving one you need to develop the skills of a publisher, not an author. They are different. You need both.
At the risk of being obvious, if you want to make good decisions for your book selling business, ask yourself the questions you’re grappling with as though you were deciding on selling and packaging other people’s books. That removes you as the author from your publishing business decisions. Which is as it should be. If you wouldn’t sink a grand into packaging someone else’s book on making bass lures out of Coke cans, you probably shouldn’t be doing it for your own, either. Or put really simply, if something looks like dead money, don’t waste your, or your readers’, time, regardless of who wrote it.
If you don’t want to, or can’t, develop those skills, start querying agents, because you won’t have a good self-publishing experience. Uploading your screed on Amazon does not a successful or viable self-publisher make, any more than printing a thousand books and having them in your garage will make you a successful traditional publisher.
10) Your muse cannot be forced to dance. Of course it can. If you were a writer on 24 or CSI or SNL you’d be expected to perform every week or you’d be out of a job. Most who work hard enough to get those gigs don’t want to lose ‘em, so they perform. Whether they feel like it or not. Whether they’re particularly inspired or not. The notion that you need to wait for your muse to decide to infuse you with story is fine if your books sell 10 million and you can afford to wait 4 or 5 years between each one. If that’s not you, you need to develop two things: a work ethic, and a system to inspire yourself.
One technique I use is to ask myself how I can make this book, or this chapter, the best I’ve ever written. You get completely different answers depending upon what questions you ask yourself. “How can I consistently write 5K a day and enjoy it?” will get you a different answer than “How am I ever going to do this?” If you’re stuck, ask better questions.
11) Everyone’s got a book in them. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Given that most people are by definition average, most people’s books will also be average, which is to say, mediocre or middling. Yours too. If you want to be above average, you need an edge. Talent could help. But working hard to develop your grasp of craft will result in a far better result than relying on talent. Which means if you want to be a writer people are willing to pay to read (be they agents/publishers, or readers), you need to learn the basics of your craft: grammar, spelling, story structure, vocabulary. Far too many sit down and start writing believing they’ve been blessed with unique properties that will enable them to write books people want to read without having done much, or any, of the work to become competent at what they’re doing. Guess what the odds are that turns out well? The same as everyone else. Or actually, far worse, because even if 99% of all books fail to find an audience, that includes a boatload of competently executed books. If you don’t know how to write, your odds are way worse than that blended average.
If you want to make your book exceptional, expect to have to work at becoming an exceptional story teller and writer. In my experience that doesn’t happen by clicking your heels together and wishing it were so. It requires effort. A lot of it. Which means you need to study how to write a good book and learn about things like echoes (repeated words), how to vary sentence structure, how to avoid things like head hopping, etc. etc., unless you have a miraculous gift that’s one in ten million. In other words, expect to have to spend time learning your craft.
I get told I’m a big meanie for saying this. But if I were a piano teacher, I wouldn’t be considered mean if I told students they needed to spend a lot of time and energy getting good enough to be paid to perform. If I were teaching ballet and I told aspiring ballerinas they could expect to spend years before they’d be even close to competent, I wouldn’t be labeled mean. If I taught cooking, I wouldn’t be a buzz kill if I told aspirants they’d need to spend years learning the ropes. Even if you wanted to do something as workmanlike as being a cosmetologist or a plumber you’d expect to spend a while learning which end of the scissors or wrench to hold, and yet many hopeful authors’ plan amounts to, “I’ll just write a book and see how it does.” Or worse yet, “I’ll write a book and it should do well, on account of how special I am.” Here’s the newsflash: nothing worth doing’s ever easy. This, especially. If you think this is going to be easy, you came to the wrong dance.
12) I’m too busy to read. Who’s got the time? This one kills me. How in the hell do you expect to be a good writer if you don’t read a lot of good books? Intuition? Divine guidance? Magic? It’s like saying you plan to be a movie director, but don’t have time to watch films. Then how do you know anything about that which you are planning to do? Look, I understand we’re living in an instant gratification world where, if we can imagine it, we feel entitled to it, but that isn’t how this works. In order to master something, you need to do a lot of it (practice) and you need to model successful examples (reading/studying writing). Reading a lot is how you do the latter. There’s no way your writing’s going to be very good if you don’t read a lot. Sorry. Make time for it or find some other pipe dream where you don’t have to work to master it.
13) So-and-so hit big without marketing/with their first book/is illiterate/sucks. Sure. Anything at all’s possible, and you could be the one in a gazillion. But the odds are better that you won’t wake up tomorrow or will be killed by a falling coconut. Or paralyzed on the way to the market. Singling out the exceptions that defy explanation is a fun game, but it’s not particularly useful unless you can reproduce that success, which you won’t be able to. Because you aren’t them, in the same time, place, market, with the identical set of circumstances, experiences or contacts. Sorry. You aren’t. So pointing to no-talent hacks whose books sold big, while amusing, doesn’t mean your business plan should amount to “be a no-talent hack, too.” Pointing to books that defy all odds and are breakouts is a great pass time, but if it doesn’t enable you to predict the next breakout, it’s useless. Whenever I hear a variation of this, I shake my head because I know I’m hearing a rationalization for failure.
14) I don’t have time/energy/money/whatever to do this right. Fair enough. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head. But as I’m fond of saying, don’t expect full-time rewards from part-time effort. Figure out what the average part-time, unskilled or marginally skilled job pays, and that’s what your expectation should be based upon if you haven’t invested a ton of time mastering your craft (the skilled part) and can only allocate a few hours here and there (the part-time bit).
This one always pisses people off. “But that’s not necessarily true!” If not, why, exactly, not? In what world does putting in time “whenever you can” translate into a successful career at anything (and please don’t point to #13 and some outlier who was a lightning strike)? That’s not to run down those who don’t write full time. I can completely sympathize. For years I wrote whenever I could, practicing, learning my craft, while I did other things. But I didn’t expect to make full time money at it. I didn’t think it was good enough for people to pay to read. I may be many things, but delusional in that regard isn’t one of them. My expectations were reasonable: I expected to get better over time, and maybe get good enough to write for a living, or at least to be proud of what I generated as being worth readers’ money.
That’s just on the writing side. If you intend to query, you better make damned sure your work is frigging brilliant or you’ll spend forever getting rejected. Perhaps not full time, but you can spend years getting that one book just right, so that can accommodate a part-time schedule. But if you want to be a vocational self-publisher, you also have the full-time job of being the publisher, in addition to being the writer. That’s a ton of responsibility and two full-time jobs you’ll be doing part-time. So what’s your expectation?
I think the biggest killer in this business is having unreasonable expectations. They’re a recipe for disappointment. So many seem to believe that they can put something up on Amazon, after having practiced little or not at all learning their craft, and having invested nothing in editing, packaging, etc., and yet somehow do well. It’s akin to announcing oneself to be a master chef, after having spent a lifetime microwaving TV dinners and dining on fast food, and expecting folks to line up for your culinary masterpieces when you have little idea how to boil water. Not even in the movies does this turn out well. Be honest with yourself. Figure out what it will take to achieve your dreams, and then get ready for some serious sacrifice and work. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be the next EL James, but odds say not so much. Get clear on what a reasonable expectation is, then devise a plan to achieve it.
15) I’m good. I can self-edit. Why throw away money? I can’t tell you how often I hear this one. Usually by novices who grossly overestimate their own competence. Their logic goes, hey, I know how to write, so I’m qualified to edit my own stuff. Except, mmm, not so much. For instance, one writer might understand the basics of grammar, and then use the same word six times in three sentences while approving stilted dialogue that sounds idiotic and wooden. Another may simply not know they’re getting half of it wrong. I can honestly say that 99+% of serious authors I’ve met appreciate and understand why professional editing matters. Those that argue against it invariably are trying to figure out how to produce the cheapest product, not a quality one. And they will also be the loudest to howl over all the “unfair” and “mean” reviews as their sales stall to nothing. I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely try to argue this anymore. If your girlfriend or buddy or second cousin says they can edit your work, and saving those few hundred bucks are representative of your approach to this highly competitive business, knock yourself out.
That’s my slice of reality from the ink trenches this week. If you disagree, or think I’m a party pooper, that’s your right. I get paid exactly the same for being right as being wrong on this blog. It’s your career, not mine, and I’m just trying to share what I’ve learned along the way. Take it all for what it’s worth.
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
Last week I covered the top 8 most insidious falsehoods I’ve heard about being a self-pubbed author. This week I continue my rant and tackle a few more:
9) We are artists, above the vagaries of commerce and filthy lucre. Sure we are. Until we want to make money by selling our work. At that point we’re in the book selling business, which is a commercial enterprise involving the production and sale of books. In the case of self-publishers, of books we have written. Our author selves may well be artists, but if you want to avoid being a starving one you need to develop the skills of a publisher, not an author. They are different. You need both.
At the risk of being obvious, if you want to make good decisions for your book selling business, ask yourself the questions you’re grappling with as though you were deciding on selling and packaging other people’s books. That removes you as the author from your publishing business decisions. Which is as it should be. If you wouldn’t sink a grand into packaging someone else’s book on making bass lures out of Coke cans, you probably shouldn’t be doing it for your own, either. Or put really simply, if something looks like dead money, don’t waste your, or your readers’, time, regardless of who wrote it.
If you don’t want to, or can’t, develop those skills, start querying agents, because you won’t have a good self-publishing experience. Uploading your screed on Amazon does not a successful or viable self-publisher make, any more than printing a thousand books and having them in your garage will make you a successful traditional publisher.
10) Your muse cannot be forced to dance. Of course it can. If you were a writer on 24 or CSI or SNL you’d be expected to perform every week or you’d be out of a job. Most who work hard enough to get those gigs don’t want to lose ‘em, so they perform. Whether they feel like it or not. Whether they’re particularly inspired or not. The notion that you need to wait for your muse to decide to infuse you with story is fine if your books sell 10 million and you can afford to wait 4 or 5 years between each one. If that’s not you, you need to develop two things: a work ethic, and a system to inspire yourself.
One technique I use is to ask myself how I can make this book, or this chapter, the best I’ve ever written. You get completely different answers depending upon what questions you ask yourself. “How can I consistently write 5K a day and enjoy it?” will get you a different answer than “How am I ever going to do this?” If you’re stuck, ask better questions.
11) Everyone’s got a book in them. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Given that most people are by definition average, most people’s books will also be average, which is to say, mediocre or middling. Yours too. If you want to be above average, you need an edge. Talent could help. But working hard to develop your grasp of craft will result in a far better result than relying on talent. Which means if you want to be a writer people are willing to pay to read (be they agents/publishers, or readers), you need to learn the basics of your craft: grammar, spelling, story structure, vocabulary. Far too many sit down and start writing believing they’ve been blessed with unique properties that will enable them to write books people want to read without having done much, or any, of the work to become competent at what they’re doing. Guess what the odds are that turns out well? The same as everyone else. Or actually, far worse, because even if 99% of all books fail to find an audience, that includes a boatload of competently executed books. If you don’t know how to write, your odds are way worse than that blended average.
If you want to make your book exceptional, expect to have to work at becoming an exceptional story teller and writer. In my experience that doesn’t happen by clicking your heels together and wishing it were so. It requires effort. A lot of it. Which means you need to study how to write a good book and learn about things like echoes (repeated words), how to vary sentence structure, how to avoid things like head hopping, etc. etc., unless you have a miraculous gift that’s one in ten million. In other words, expect to have to spend time learning your craft.
I get told I’m a big meanie for saying this. But if I were a piano teacher, I wouldn’t be considered mean if I told students they needed to spend a lot of time and energy getting good enough to be paid to perform. If I were teaching ballet and I told aspiring ballerinas they could expect to spend years before they’d be even close to competent, I wouldn’t be labeled mean. If I taught cooking, I wouldn’t be a buzz kill if I told aspirants they’d need to spend years learning the ropes. Even if you wanted to do something as workmanlike as being a cosmetologist or a plumber you’d expect to spend a while learning which end of the scissors or wrench to hold, and yet many hopeful authors’ plan amounts to, “I’ll just write a book and see how it does.” Or worse yet, “I’ll write a book and it should do well, on account of how special I am.” Here’s the newsflash: nothing worth doing’s ever easy. This, especially. If you think this is going to be easy, you came to the wrong dance.
12) I’m too busy to read. Who’s got the time? This one kills me. How in the hell do you expect to be a good writer if you don’t read a lot of good books? Intuition? Divine guidance? Magic? It’s like saying you plan to be a movie director, but don’t have time to watch films. Then how do you know anything about that which you are planning to do? Look, I understand we’re living in an instant gratification world where, if we can imagine it, we feel entitled to it, but that isn’t how this works. In order to master something, you need to do a lot of it (practice) and you need to model successful examples (reading/studying writing). Reading a lot is how you do the latter. There’s no way your writing’s going to be very good if you don’t read a lot. Sorry. Make time for it or find some other pipe dream where you don’t have to work to master it.
13) So-and-so hit big without marketing/with their first book/is illiterate/sucks. Sure. Anything at all’s possible, and you could be the one in a gazillion. But the odds are better that you won’t wake up tomorrow or will be killed by a falling coconut. Or paralyzed on the way to the market. Singling out the exceptions that defy explanation is a fun game, but it’s not particularly useful unless you can reproduce that success, which you won’t be able to. Because you aren’t them, in the same time, place, market, with the identical set of circumstances, experiences or contacts. Sorry. You aren’t. So pointing to no-talent hacks whose books sold big, while amusing, doesn’t mean your business plan should amount to “be a no-talent hack, too.” Pointing to books that defy all odds and are breakouts is a great pass time, but if it doesn’t enable you to predict the next breakout, it’s useless. Whenever I hear a variation of this, I shake my head because I know I’m hearing a rationalization for failure.
14) I don’t have time/energy/money/whatever to do this right. Fair enough. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head. But as I’m fond of saying, don’t expect full-time rewards from part-time effort. Figure out what the average part-time, unskilled or marginally skilled job pays, and that’s what your expectation should be based upon if you haven’t invested a ton of time mastering your craft (the skilled part) and can only allocate a few hours here and there (the part-time bit).
This one always pisses people off. “But that’s not necessarily true!” If not, why, exactly, not? In what world does putting in time “whenever you can” translate into a successful career at anything (and please don’t point to #13 and some outlier who was a lightning strike)? That’s not to run down those who don’t write full time. I can completely sympathize. For years I wrote whenever I could, practicing, learning my craft, while I did other things. But I didn’t expect to make full time money at it. I didn’t think it was good enough for people to pay to read. I may be many things, but delusional in that regard isn’t one of them. My expectations were reasonable: I expected to get better over time, and maybe get good enough to write for a living, or at least to be proud of what I generated as being worth readers’ money.
That’s just on the writing side. If you intend to query, you better make damned sure your work is frigging brilliant or you’ll spend forever getting rejected. Perhaps not full time, but you can spend years getting that one book just right, so that can accommodate a part-time schedule. But if you want to be a vocational self-publisher, you also have the full-time job of being the publisher, in addition to being the writer. That’s a ton of responsibility and two full-time jobs you’ll be doing part-time. So what’s your expectation?
I think the biggest killer in this business is having unreasonable expectations. They’re a recipe for disappointment. So many seem to believe that they can put something up on Amazon, after having practiced little or not at all learning their craft, and having invested nothing in editing, packaging, etc., and yet somehow do well. It’s akin to announcing oneself to be a master chef, after having spent a lifetime microwaving TV dinners and dining on fast food, and expecting folks to line up for your culinary masterpieces when you have little idea how to boil water. Not even in the movies does this turn out well. Be honest with yourself. Figure out what it will take to achieve your dreams, and then get ready for some serious sacrifice and work. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be the next EL James, but odds say not so much. Get clear on what a reasonable expectation is, then devise a plan to achieve it.
15) I’m good. I can self-edit. Why throw away money? I can’t tell you how often I hear this one. Usually by novices who grossly overestimate their own competence. Their logic goes, hey, I know how to write, so I’m qualified to edit my own stuff. Except, mmm, not so much. For instance, one writer might understand the basics of grammar, and then use the same word six times in three sentences while approving stilted dialogue that sounds idiotic and wooden. Another may simply not know they’re getting half of it wrong. I can honestly say that 99+% of serious authors I’ve met appreciate and understand why professional editing matters. Those that argue against it invariably are trying to figure out how to produce the cheapest product, not a quality one. And they will also be the loudest to howl over all the “unfair” and “mean” reviews as their sales stall to nothing. I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely try to argue this anymore. If your girlfriend or buddy or second cousin says they can edit your work, and saving those few hundred bucks are representative of your approach to this highly competitive business, knock yourself out.
That’s my slice of reality from the ink trenches this week. If you disagree, or think I’m a party pooper, that’s your right. I get paid exactly the same for being right as being wrong on this blog. It’s your career, not mine, and I’m just trying to share what I’ve learned along the way. Take it all for what it’s worth.
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