Aaron Dennis's Blog - Posts Tagged "readers"
Why Doesn't America Read?
Why doesn’t America read?
Well, it isn’t a simple answer. Certainly, there are still many out there perusing internet articles for current events or scanning various sites for information, but where are all the Americans who read for entertainment?
Anyone who does actually read will claim that there are large communities of readers on sites like Goodreads, that there are plenty of places to download e-books like Smaswhords, and that the big boom in books released through Amazon and to e-readers would prove that there plenty of readers in America, but in truth, it’s a very small fraction of the country that engages in the lost art of reading.
Here’s a quick quote from the L.A. Times
The study found that overall, 72% of American adults have read a book in the past year, while the percentage for millennials, ages 18 to 29, was higher: 80%. The percentage of overall book readers dropped from the previous year, when 76% of American adults reported having read a book, either all or part of one.
Do you see? These are people who have read a book in a year, and not even a whole book; lot’s of people try to read and then give up after a few pages, but why? Furthermore, the study doesn’t discuss what kind of book was read and why; some people glance at a non-fiction book for information, but does that count as reading?
The major presses are releasing tons of books for entertainment in America and other countries, but the presses are way out of touch with today’s audience; they don’t post book releases and reviews to social media outlets, they don’t really show any commercials for new releases on television, and unless someone is already a subscriber to Reader’s Digest, there isn’t anyone out there reading magazines containing book releases, but is marketing the problem?
No, it isn’t. The problem is that today, everyone and their grandmother can sit down at their computer, type out 50,000 words, buy a cover from some photoshop artist, and release it through Amazon, Smashwords, and Lulu. These people are often called indie authors, but that’s incorrect; indie authors are published through indie presses like Baen, actual presses with editors, marketers, and printers. The correct term is self published author, and these authors release their books through POD companies like Friesen Press; it’s a flurry of unedited mush, and, all too often, self published authors also release e-books, which flood the market, through Amazon and Smashwords.
But why is that a bad thing? Is it inappropriate to write a book and release it? Would not the readers and the market decide if the author and book are worth buying? In a free trade system, yes, but these authors get together through social media and trade books with each other, so that they can all give each other 5 star reviews on book sites. The result is a poorly written, cliched, stagnant piece with 100 5 star reviews enticing readers to buy a book, and then readers purchase it to find the writer wasn’t able to string together five words, much less reveal a cogent plot, and so they feel shilled, and they give their 1 star review, but it doesn’t end there. That doesn’t solve the problem.
You see, these self published authors get together on social media and tell each other to support other self published authors because they write for a living and need to pay their bills, so they all congregate and talk about trading good reviews in order to boost their sales, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody out there trying to dissuade them from this practice, which fools unsuspecting readers into buying trash.
Now, not all self published authors are terrible writers. Some of them hire professional editors, others buy manuals to learn how to properly edit, some find beta-readers for feedback before a release, and some have degrees in literature or composition, but it’s so overly difficult to know which author has an inkling of editing when tons and tons and tons of e-books are flooding the market, and as I said, they all have hundreds of glowing reviews.
Another problem is the book reviewer industry. When a major press, or even a true, indie press, releases a book, they hire professional reviewers from companies like Kirkus to read and write a real, professional review on the book; these are paid professionals who take their careers very seriously, and they will describe in detail the good and bad points of the book. Furthermore, if the book is terrible, they will explain why and provide their rating for everyone to see. Self published authors don’t do this; they claim that paid reviews are biased, but it’s the paid reviewers that tell and post the truth!
Here’s the kicker, since these self published authors have been destroyed by real reviewers, they resort to each other for fake reviews, and they will even find blog sites and review sites to post reviews, but too often, these non-professional reviewers promise that they will NOT post a bad review. Instead, if they don’t like the book, rather than shaming the author, they opt out of posting the review, but reviews are not for authors, they are supposed to be for READERS.
So, why doesn’t America read anymore? Because every time an American tries to pick up a book and start reading, their eyes are assaulted by uninspired dialogue, unbelievable characters, convoluted, nonsensical plots, and feel so disgusted with the world of reading, that they become jaded, thinking that books are simply terrible.
What can be done?
No one is saying that people should stop writing; it’s great that so many Americans have decided to put their thoughts into words, but they should do their due diligence and make their work a professional masterpiece; it doesn’t matter if the concept within the story is any good, everybody has different tastes, what matters is the quality of the writing, and the only way to let readers know whether a book is worth reading is by posting a real review. If a book is bad, people need to say so. If a book is good, people need to say so, but what’s killing the reading industry is the masses of self published authors trading these fake reviews and these non-professional reviewers deciding NOT to post bad reviews; they must post bad reviews because reviews are for readers, not authors.
The Brian Griffins of the writing industry have been taking over. Someone needs to curtail this horrendous practice and restore reading and writing in America to its former glory.
Not only do readers deserve to know if a book is readable, but the authors deserve to hear why their book was bad, so that they can sit back and improve on their next novel. So many self-published authors write and release a book every month; there’s no way a book written that quickly is ready for release, and these clowns have no idea that they can’t write because they’re surrounded by their own ilk, raving about how amazing their book is, even though it lacks any kind of punctuation, all the characters talk the same, the plot makes no sense and wanders off like a drunken horse, and offers no lesson whatsoever.
Do you want America to start reading again? You can help to solve the problem. Before you buy a book, take a look at the reviews; look at the 5 star reviews, look at the 1 star reviews, and then, on Amazon, you can click “look inside” and actually check to see if the writer was able to keep an idea within a paragraph; there’s an art to writing; it isn’t just words on a page. Each word has to fill the sentence with life. Each paragraph has to drive the essence of the story forward. Each piece of dialogue has to sound like people conversing, and if an author fails in these concepts, readers will drop the book and walk away, enraged at the fact they just blew 2 dollars.
Please, America, read again; read reviews, good and bad, take a look inside the book, you have the opportunity, and on Smashwords, you can often download a free sample of the book.
And readers, you wonderful, American readers out there who still love finding a diamond in the rough, please review all the books you purchase; reader reviews are by far more important than professional or author reviews. If you want America to read again, give them a reason; talk about how good a book was; talk about how bad a book was; inform your fellow readers, so that all of you might band together on social media like the self published authors who are trying to trick you into buying a 50,000 word train wreck.
And be wary, be very, very wary; lots of self published authors will maliciously post negative reviews for writers if the other writer gave them an honest, bad review on their book. I’ve seen it; one author trades a book, he or she posts a review of the other author, and then, when they get their bad review in return, that author will remove their first review, and write a scathing indictment instead only to try and make themselves feel better, so it’s up to you, the American reader, to fix the book industry. If you love to read then you must review for better or worse, and you must tell your friends and family as well.
Help me make reading fun again. Please.
Well, it isn’t a simple answer. Certainly, there are still many out there perusing internet articles for current events or scanning various sites for information, but where are all the Americans who read for entertainment?
Anyone who does actually read will claim that there are large communities of readers on sites like Goodreads, that there are plenty of places to download e-books like Smaswhords, and that the big boom in books released through Amazon and to e-readers would prove that there plenty of readers in America, but in truth, it’s a very small fraction of the country that engages in the lost art of reading.
Here’s a quick quote from the L.A. Times
The study found that overall, 72% of American adults have read a book in the past year, while the percentage for millennials, ages 18 to 29, was higher: 80%. The percentage of overall book readers dropped from the previous year, when 76% of American adults reported having read a book, either all or part of one.
Do you see? These are people who have read a book in a year, and not even a whole book; lot’s of people try to read and then give up after a few pages, but why? Furthermore, the study doesn’t discuss what kind of book was read and why; some people glance at a non-fiction book for information, but does that count as reading?
The major presses are releasing tons of books for entertainment in America and other countries, but the presses are way out of touch with today’s audience; they don’t post book releases and reviews to social media outlets, they don’t really show any commercials for new releases on television, and unless someone is already a subscriber to Reader’s Digest, there isn’t anyone out there reading magazines containing book releases, but is marketing the problem?
No, it isn’t. The problem is that today, everyone and their grandmother can sit down at their computer, type out 50,000 words, buy a cover from some photoshop artist, and release it through Amazon, Smashwords, and Lulu. These people are often called indie authors, but that’s incorrect; indie authors are published through indie presses like Baen, actual presses with editors, marketers, and printers. The correct term is self published author, and these authors release their books through POD companies like Friesen Press; it’s a flurry of unedited mush, and, all too often, self published authors also release e-books, which flood the market, through Amazon and Smashwords.
But why is that a bad thing? Is it inappropriate to write a book and release it? Would not the readers and the market decide if the author and book are worth buying? In a free trade system, yes, but these authors get together through social media and trade books with each other, so that they can all give each other 5 star reviews on book sites. The result is a poorly written, cliched, stagnant piece with 100 5 star reviews enticing readers to buy a book, and then readers purchase it to find the writer wasn’t able to string together five words, much less reveal a cogent plot, and so they feel shilled, and they give their 1 star review, but it doesn’t end there. That doesn’t solve the problem.
You see, these self published authors get together on social media and tell each other to support other self published authors because they write for a living and need to pay their bills, so they all congregate and talk about trading good reviews in order to boost their sales, and there doesn’t seem to be anybody out there trying to dissuade them from this practice, which fools unsuspecting readers into buying trash.
Now, not all self published authors are terrible writers. Some of them hire professional editors, others buy manuals to learn how to properly edit, some find beta-readers for feedback before a release, and some have degrees in literature or composition, but it’s so overly difficult to know which author has an inkling of editing when tons and tons and tons of e-books are flooding the market, and as I said, they all have hundreds of glowing reviews.
Another problem is the book reviewer industry. When a major press, or even a true, indie press, releases a book, they hire professional reviewers from companies like Kirkus to read and write a real, professional review on the book; these are paid professionals who take their careers very seriously, and they will describe in detail the good and bad points of the book. Furthermore, if the book is terrible, they will explain why and provide their rating for everyone to see. Self published authors don’t do this; they claim that paid reviews are biased, but it’s the paid reviewers that tell and post the truth!
Here’s the kicker, since these self published authors have been destroyed by real reviewers, they resort to each other for fake reviews, and they will even find blog sites and review sites to post reviews, but too often, these non-professional reviewers promise that they will NOT post a bad review. Instead, if they don’t like the book, rather than shaming the author, they opt out of posting the review, but reviews are not for authors, they are supposed to be for READERS.
So, why doesn’t America read anymore? Because every time an American tries to pick up a book and start reading, their eyes are assaulted by uninspired dialogue, unbelievable characters, convoluted, nonsensical plots, and feel so disgusted with the world of reading, that they become jaded, thinking that books are simply terrible.
What can be done?
No one is saying that people should stop writing; it’s great that so many Americans have decided to put their thoughts into words, but they should do their due diligence and make their work a professional masterpiece; it doesn’t matter if the concept within the story is any good, everybody has different tastes, what matters is the quality of the writing, and the only way to let readers know whether a book is worth reading is by posting a real review. If a book is bad, people need to say so. If a book is good, people need to say so, but what’s killing the reading industry is the masses of self published authors trading these fake reviews and these non-professional reviewers deciding NOT to post bad reviews; they must post bad reviews because reviews are for readers, not authors.
The Brian Griffins of the writing industry have been taking over. Someone needs to curtail this horrendous practice and restore reading and writing in America to its former glory.
Not only do readers deserve to know if a book is readable, but the authors deserve to hear why their book was bad, so that they can sit back and improve on their next novel. So many self-published authors write and release a book every month; there’s no way a book written that quickly is ready for release, and these clowns have no idea that they can’t write because they’re surrounded by their own ilk, raving about how amazing their book is, even though it lacks any kind of punctuation, all the characters talk the same, the plot makes no sense and wanders off like a drunken horse, and offers no lesson whatsoever.
Do you want America to start reading again? You can help to solve the problem. Before you buy a book, take a look at the reviews; look at the 5 star reviews, look at the 1 star reviews, and then, on Amazon, you can click “look inside” and actually check to see if the writer was able to keep an idea within a paragraph; there’s an art to writing; it isn’t just words on a page. Each word has to fill the sentence with life. Each paragraph has to drive the essence of the story forward. Each piece of dialogue has to sound like people conversing, and if an author fails in these concepts, readers will drop the book and walk away, enraged at the fact they just blew 2 dollars.
Please, America, read again; read reviews, good and bad, take a look inside the book, you have the opportunity, and on Smashwords, you can often download a free sample of the book.
And readers, you wonderful, American readers out there who still love finding a diamond in the rough, please review all the books you purchase; reader reviews are by far more important than professional or author reviews. If you want America to read again, give them a reason; talk about how good a book was; talk about how bad a book was; inform your fellow readers, so that all of you might band together on social media like the self published authors who are trying to trick you into buying a 50,000 word train wreck.
And be wary, be very, very wary; lots of self published authors will maliciously post negative reviews for writers if the other writer gave them an honest, bad review on their book. I’ve seen it; one author trades a book, he or she posts a review of the other author, and then, when they get their bad review in return, that author will remove their first review, and write a scathing indictment instead only to try and make themselves feel better, so it’s up to you, the American reader, to fix the book industry. If you love to read then you must review for better or worse, and you must tell your friends and family as well.
Help me make reading fun again. Please.
woulda, shoulda, coulda
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? I wonder why it's her head and not my head. 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.
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? I wonder why it's her head and not my head. 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.
So you want to be a writer part 2
Happy New Year. Start the new year off right. Follow your passion!
There are so many of you out there trying to figure out what it takes to become a successful writer, so I want to provide you with a series of posts, which will help to outline the processes that can lead to your success.
These posts are in no way a perfect outline; however, if you follow them closely, you will eventually become successful. Why am I so sure? Because the only guaranteed method to achieving long term success is to continuously release quality content, and that’s what I want to help you accomplish.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if you write, edit, and release decent stories on a regular and continuous basis, you will eventually be the successful writer you’ve wanted to be.
Last time, we touched on how to come up with an idea for a story. I said that ideas are everywhere; you can look at pictures, watch movies, listen to music, read other stories, or just relax and day dream.
Then, all you have to do is jot down what it is that interests you.
If you don’t have an idea yet, that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged. The surest way to fail is to give up on your goal. In fact, that’s the only way you really fail, so if you want to be a writer, keep thinking, keep dreaming, and just keep living.
If you do have an idea, and you think you’re ready to start writing a novel, stop right there. DO NOT write your novel yet. There are numerous reasons I want to delay you, and we’ll touch on all of them as these posts progress, and by the end, if you follow the outline, you’ll save yourself years of torture. That’s a promise.
Once you have your idea, the best way to get a feel for writing is to write short stories. If it worked for King, Asimov, Stein, and Martin, then there’s probably something to it.
The great thing about short stories is that they don’t require the attention to detail, the complexity, the time, or the effort that a novel requires. You can just pick a facet of novel writing and apply it. Here’s what I mean:
A novel consists of a world, characters, a plot, foreshadowing, rising action, climax, resolution, dialogue, prose, actions, reactions, and interactions—people reacting to the world, plot, and each other. A novel is very complicated, but with a short story, you can just pick a single facet, say, world building.
Think of writing a novel as you do drawing a picture. First, you have an idea and a blank sheet. Then, you draw a portion of the picture. Perhaps, you want to start with the overall shape. Perhaps, you want to start with an aspect of the picture; the eyes of the person, the roof of the house, the full moon in the night sky over the prairie, and then you move on to the next section you wish to draw. Then, you add shading, a foreground, a background, other items, color, etc. Writing a novel is the same, and learning to write a novel is like learning to draw a picture; you have to practice with each individual section.
You can write an entire short story just about a world you have in mind, just the same as you can draw numerous pictures of hands before you begin to draw entire portraits of people. Practice describing the world, its history, how it came to be, what people do there; you can write an entire short story without having anything really happen: it’s your story, it isn’t etched in stone, and it is not a published title out for the public. Plus, if you really want to, you can write about the world in which your novel will take place.
This is like what comic book artists do. They draw their new super hero from every angle, performing many actions. Then, they draw pieces of scenery. Finally, down the road, when the entire story has come to fruition, they put everything together, and make a comic book.
For instance, I wrote a short story called Expedition, and a year later I started writing a novel called Cayneian, which is only loosely based on the short story, but it was there—I had it, I had the practice and reference.
You can write a short story about just a handful of characters. They can be at a café where nothing really happens, but they talk, and you can practice writing dialogue. You can write just an action scene and get a feel for it.
I cannot stress it enough, and I won’t stop stressing it; write many, many, many short stories before tackling your novel. If you want, if you must, do write down snippets you want to remember for later, but don’t sit down and begin writing your novel yet.
Here’s another reason why: once you have 5, 7, 10, a dozen short stories, you can go back and read them. You’ll find things you like, and things that make you cringe. Now, you can practice proofing your work, and once you’re done, you can also start building a network.
Here’s what you do: get yourself a wordpress or blogger site. Start a blog where all you do is post your work and talk about it. Invite others to comment. If you really want to, you can also talk about other things you like; movies, other books, video games; as long as you keep everything centered around writing, like the story line of the video game, or the dialogue in the movie, your fans will enjoy your posts because there will be a hidden consistency, and then, as you post more and more of your short stories, you’ll get more and more feed back, and you can learn to see the difference in what you like to write, and what your fans like to read.
Be wary. First, they will ignore you, and then, they will criticize you, but there will be some people with helpful tips. At this point I must stress the best advice I will ever give about anything: do not interact with negative people. Pretend they do not exist. Anyone can find a nice way to tell you they don’t like your work, but only a useless butt hole will try to make you feel bad about yourself for trying to follow your passion.
DO NOT INTERACT WITH NEGATIVE PEOPLE. LEARN IT NOW WHILE YOU’RE JUST WRITING SHORT STORIES.
Okay, but you see, you’re not only learning how to write, you’re learning how to be a successful writer before writing your novel. Being a successful writer is a lifestyle. As you continue to blog about your stories, and writing in general, you’ll learn what works for you, for your style, your genre, and your target audience. You can also invite other writers and editors to comment, and learn from them—take what you like, and discard the rest. Finally, listen to the readers; they will tell you what they like, and then it’s up to you as a writer to find a balance between writing what you like and providing them what they like.
All of these concepts are important before writing your first novel, so I urge you to write a ton of short stories first. Furthermore, you can also begin your social media presence, and we’ll touch on that in a future post, but it is imperative to have a loyal fan base of readers before you release your novel.
You see, now is the time to learn. Don’t do what I did, and start learning after releasing four, horrible books. Save yourself the misery, the irritation, the anger, the stress, the self-pity, and the humiliation. Learn now what it’s like to be a writer, a successful writer.
Next time, I’ll be touching on writing fanfiction and provide you with some great websites where you can showcase your work to readers and get valuable feed back.
Happy New Year. Thanks for reading. Enjoy your new year. Start your new year off right. Don’t forget to visit my editing services tab.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
There are so many of you out there trying to figure out what it takes to become a successful writer, so I want to provide you with a series of posts, which will help to outline the processes that can lead to your success.
These posts are in no way a perfect outline; however, if you follow them closely, you will eventually become successful. Why am I so sure? Because the only guaranteed method to achieving long term success is to continuously release quality content, and that’s what I want to help you accomplish.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if you write, edit, and release decent stories on a regular and continuous basis, you will eventually be the successful writer you’ve wanted to be.
Last time, we touched on how to come up with an idea for a story. I said that ideas are everywhere; you can look at pictures, watch movies, listen to music, read other stories, or just relax and day dream.
Then, all you have to do is jot down what it is that interests you.
If you don’t have an idea yet, that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged. The surest way to fail is to give up on your goal. In fact, that’s the only way you really fail, so if you want to be a writer, keep thinking, keep dreaming, and just keep living.
If you do have an idea, and you think you’re ready to start writing a novel, stop right there. DO NOT write your novel yet. There are numerous reasons I want to delay you, and we’ll touch on all of them as these posts progress, and by the end, if you follow the outline, you’ll save yourself years of torture. That’s a promise.
Once you have your idea, the best way to get a feel for writing is to write short stories. If it worked for King, Asimov, Stein, and Martin, then there’s probably something to it.
The great thing about short stories is that they don’t require the attention to detail, the complexity, the time, or the effort that a novel requires. You can just pick a facet of novel writing and apply it. Here’s what I mean:
A novel consists of a world, characters, a plot, foreshadowing, rising action, climax, resolution, dialogue, prose, actions, reactions, and interactions—people reacting to the world, plot, and each other. A novel is very complicated, but with a short story, you can just pick a single facet, say, world building.
Think of writing a novel as you do drawing a picture. First, you have an idea and a blank sheet. Then, you draw a portion of the picture. Perhaps, you want to start with the overall shape. Perhaps, you want to start with an aspect of the picture; the eyes of the person, the roof of the house, the full moon in the night sky over the prairie, and then you move on to the next section you wish to draw. Then, you add shading, a foreground, a background, other items, color, etc. Writing a novel is the same, and learning to write a novel is like learning to draw a picture; you have to practice with each individual section.
You can write an entire short story just about a world you have in mind, just the same as you can draw numerous pictures of hands before you begin to draw entire portraits of people. Practice describing the world, its history, how it came to be, what people do there; you can write an entire short story without having anything really happen: it’s your story, it isn’t etched in stone, and it is not a published title out for the public. Plus, if you really want to, you can write about the world in which your novel will take place.
This is like what comic book artists do. They draw their new super hero from every angle, performing many actions. Then, they draw pieces of scenery. Finally, down the road, when the entire story has come to fruition, they put everything together, and make a comic book.
For instance, I wrote a short story called Expedition, and a year later I started writing a novel called Cayneian, which is only loosely based on the short story, but it was there—I had it, I had the practice and reference.
You can write a short story about just a handful of characters. They can be at a café where nothing really happens, but they talk, and you can practice writing dialogue. You can write just an action scene and get a feel for it.
I cannot stress it enough, and I won’t stop stressing it; write many, many, many short stories before tackling your novel. If you want, if you must, do write down snippets you want to remember for later, but don’t sit down and begin writing your novel yet.
Here’s another reason why: once you have 5, 7, 10, a dozen short stories, you can go back and read them. You’ll find things you like, and things that make you cringe. Now, you can practice proofing your work, and once you’re done, you can also start building a network.
Here’s what you do: get yourself a wordpress or blogger site. Start a blog where all you do is post your work and talk about it. Invite others to comment. If you really want to, you can also talk about other things you like; movies, other books, video games; as long as you keep everything centered around writing, like the story line of the video game, or the dialogue in the movie, your fans will enjoy your posts because there will be a hidden consistency, and then, as you post more and more of your short stories, you’ll get more and more feed back, and you can learn to see the difference in what you like to write, and what your fans like to read.
Be wary. First, they will ignore you, and then, they will criticize you, but there will be some people with helpful tips. At this point I must stress the best advice I will ever give about anything: do not interact with negative people. Pretend they do not exist. Anyone can find a nice way to tell you they don’t like your work, but only a useless butt hole will try to make you feel bad about yourself for trying to follow your passion.
DO NOT INTERACT WITH NEGATIVE PEOPLE. LEARN IT NOW WHILE YOU’RE JUST WRITING SHORT STORIES.
Okay, but you see, you’re not only learning how to write, you’re learning how to be a successful writer before writing your novel. Being a successful writer is a lifestyle. As you continue to blog about your stories, and writing in general, you’ll learn what works for you, for your style, your genre, and your target audience. You can also invite other writers and editors to comment, and learn from them—take what you like, and discard the rest. Finally, listen to the readers; they will tell you what they like, and then it’s up to you as a writer to find a balance between writing what you like and providing them what they like.
All of these concepts are important before writing your first novel, so I urge you to write a ton of short stories first. Furthermore, you can also begin your social media presence, and we’ll touch on that in a future post, but it is imperative to have a loyal fan base of readers before you release your novel.
You see, now is the time to learn. Don’t do what I did, and start learning after releasing four, horrible books. Save yourself the misery, the irritation, the anger, the stress, the self-pity, and the humiliation. Learn now what it’s like to be a writer, a successful writer.
Next time, I’ll be touching on writing fanfiction and provide you with some great websites where you can showcase your work to readers and get valuable feed back.
Happy New Year. Thanks for reading. Enjoy your new year. Start your new year off right. Don’t forget to visit my editing services tab.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
So you want to be a writer part 5
Part 5 - The early social media presence
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.
The last post discussed building and selling your brand, something you do regardless of which publishing route you take. The question then becomes, how does one get people to notice a brand?
Remember, your brand is you; you are selling yourself, so go out and be yourself. The world today has opened the door for all of us to do just that. We can do live videos on FaceBook. We can upload YouTube videos. We can tweet, share content and comments on Google+ and LinkedIn, we can blog on our own sites, on Quora, Medium, write stories to Wattpad, Fanfcition, and Quotev. I mean, c’mon, the opportunities are endless, but as has been mentioned, it’s important to connect with readers. If all you’re doing is following, retweeting, and sharing with other writers, you are not connecting with readers.
This brings us to another big, big, mega, huge misconception. Just about every writer out there, who is not published by a mainstream publisher, thinks they can pool their resources with other writers. They think that they can give their fans to their fellow writers, and get fans from their fellow writers.
Wrong. Man, is that ever wrong.
Does Burger King share consumers with McDonald’s? No. They compete. Does Citgo share their consumers with Shell? No, they compete. Does George Martin hold a blog tour with J.K. Rowling? No! Not even their publishers set up such things. Why? It doesn’t work.
Don’t believe it? Go and follow the mainstream authors and publishers, and look at their tweets, posts, and updates. Go look at their websites. Regardless of whether or not you think their published content is any good, it is an undeniable fact that the mainstream publishers and writers sell, at least on average, better than indie or self published writers, which means that their business model works, and their business model does not involve banding together.
They compete, and they promote competition. Perhaps no quite so intensely as Nintendo and Sega did in the past, but Simon and Schuster is not trying to give fans to or get fans from Penguin Random House.
Here’s the deal; before you are published, you do want to work with other writers, not to try and share fans—thinking that if that writer sells books, you can get their fans to buy your books—you engage with other writers just to view writing from a different perspective. Look at their brand, read their voice, check out their book covers, blog formats, etc. There’s a ton of stuff you can get from other writers, but you are not trying to get their fans, or pool fans between one another. The consumer world just doesn’t work that way, and as a writer, you are also a businessman, and you have to understand business.
Another factor of business is social media. As was stated earlier, the world has opened itself up to social connections, but you have to be…wait for it…sociable.
Retweeting, and setting up auto tweets, and auto posts is the wrong approach. It is certainly a time saver, but you should not be spending the bulk of your time on social media, or even promoting your work, anyway; you should be spending the bulk of your time reading, writing, editing, and discussing topics—connecting with humans as a human.
Be sociable. Engage with other readers. Right now, before writing your novel, make an account on Goodreads, FaceBook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, Medium, and have your own blog. Go to where the people are discussing topics you like.
Maybe, you like The Elder Scrolls. I do. I went and conversed with people who enjoyed The Elder Scrolls, and I just talked about the video games. I did not immediately try to monopolize the posts by telling everyone to drop what they were doing and come read my Skyrim fanfiction. I acted like a human being, and I discussed whatever the particular topic was. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, I let people know that I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim so much, I went and wrote a fanfiction. I added that if anyone was interested, the link to the free book was available, and it worked; people came to read my story.
Maybe you like HarryPotter. Believe it; plenty of people are talking HarryPotter. Join groups dedicated to HarryPotter and discuss. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, you let people know you are also working on a HarryPotter fanfcition and would love some feedback.
This is how you benefit from social media. People think that they should use social media to send out an update from their blog, or send out a link to a buy page for a book. There are times to do that, but releasing those kinds of posts on a regular basis is not what sells books. It just doesn’t work that way.
Think about it. If a new, mainstream author emerged today, and you are on Twitter, and you see a retweet from someone you follow, which states: @JohnPWriter visit http://www.jpwriter.com for my new book: Mars Raiders, are you going to run out and buy the book? Why would you? Are you even going to click the link to see what the book is about?
Here’s the bigger question; what are the odds of you even seeing that tweet?
If you start your social media presence now, before writing your debut novel, you’re selling yourself, that’s all you’re trying to do. You are creating an online presence, and people will take you seriously because you are a real person who is interacting with other, likeminded people. Then, as you write your short stories or fanfiction, you can kindly, kindly, ask people to come look at your work, but only if the opportunity is there.
The great thing about a lot of social media sites is that you can ask the question. Something along the lines of the following makes for a great opener: I want to write a Harry Potter fanfiction, can someone provide me some feedback? Don’t expect everyone who likes HarryPotter to rush on over to your question and answer it, but don’t be surprised if people are interested either; everyone likes to talk about themselves and what they enjoy.
A great tweet might also read: @JohnPWriter I’m trying to finish my #HarryPotter #Fanfiction, all comments welcome visit http://www.jpwriter.com Thanks
Social media is extremely important, but 90% of writers are using it incorrectly. These posts, however, have not been designed to teach you the intricacies of using each social platform. There are numerous books written by numerous people, and everyone has their own take on how to optimize a Twitter presence, or a FaceBook author page, or a Google+ brand page. Feel free to buy those books, just be sure to check out the one and two star reviews, not only the five star reviews.
What needs to be considered is that, empirically speaking, if you send out a tweet, which has a shelf life of about six seconds, and that tweet states: http://www.jpwriter.com come check out my new #HarryPotter #fanfiction. No one is going to pay attention.
I can prove it.
Find your favorite, indie author who is claiming they’re earning a five figure income per month, and look at their tweets. Then, look at how many followers they have. They may have a million followers, but then look at the number of likes and retweets each tweet gets. For FaceBook and other platforms, look at how many likes, shares, and comments they have. In all likelihood, it’s very few.
On the rarest of occasion, you may come across the one person who is getting mass likes, retweets, shares, and comments, and if that’s the case, they have built their brand correctly, and in that case, you should scrutinize their tweets because the working formula is in there somewhere. Most people are trying to use social media to get people to view their book or website, when they should be using their book or website to get more followers. Most writers have it backwards.
I’ll be totally honest, I have few followers on Twitter, and I don’t use FaceBook; in the end, the numbers matter very little. Don’t believe that either? Go look at Penguin Random House’s Twitter account. Look at their tweets, and see how many likes and retweets they have. Look also at how many tweets they send out per day. Read their tweets carefully. You won’t see what you expect. They certainly sell books, though, don’t they? Social media numbers mean very little.
Here’s the math: if you send out a tweet with a shelf life of six seconds, very few people will see it unless it is consistently retweeted regardless of how many followers you have, but let’s assume that one million people see this magic tweet over the course of a day. Out of one million views, if no one retweets it—or even if it is the retweeting which garners this magic tweet one million views—out of those views, maybe 1% of people will be interested enough to click on the link. That means that only ten thousand people will view the linked page. If that page is a buy page on, say, Barnes and Noble, how many of those people, those ten thousand, will be readers, people looking to buy a book? How many will be people looking to buy a book of that genre, by you, a virtually unknown author?
How many people will be interested enough to look at the title, cover, and blurb? Maybe one percent? That means that of that ten thousand, one hundred people are likely to buy the book.
Hey, one hundred sales isn’t too bad, though, right?
Let me tell you; unless your tweet is magic, your tweet isn’t going to get a million views. Think about it. When you’re on Twitter, or which ever social media outlet you prefer, how many posts do you scrutinize? How many have links to pages? How many of those do you actually click? Where do you usually wind up? A website? A blog? How much scrutiny do you give then? Have you ever actually bought a book explicitly due to a Tweet? A mention on FaceBook? A post on LinkedIn?
Are you with me?
Social media is not used to sell books or even drive traffic to your site. Social media is used to engage, sociably, with likeminded people. King and Martin have a mess of followers on Twitter because people already know those guys exist. People—fans—will follow you after visiting your site, downloading your free, short story, reading your fanfiction, or purchasing your novel, not the other way around, so you have to understand what social media does; it gives people a chance to talk, to talk about what they enjoy, and if people enjoy reading the fantasy genre then talk to those people about the fantasy genre.
Yes, you do want to Tweet and post updates, which you have made to your blog or website, but if that’s all you do with social media, it won’t get you the results you’re expecting. Why would anyone want to retweet such a thing? What is there to entice someone to click on the link? Who cares that John P. Writer just released a new, blog post entitled: fat cash for fast cats?
Also, if other writers are consistently retweeting your tweets, won’t they be missing out on potential fans or sales? If you’re constantly retweeting other writers, won’t you be suffering the same? Well, yes and no; as was discussed, you aren’t getting sales from tweets anyway, but you’re definitely losing out on attention, so there will come a time to distance yourself from other writers, and we’ll dive into that a little bit more later on.
What is important to understand is that social media does not sell products, but it can certainly sell a brand. That brand is you, so be cute, be funny, be accessible, be present. You like cats? I love cats! Post cat memes, pictures, gifs, and videos to your social media accounts. Then, find a way to relate cats to your writing, book, blog, or site.
You can easily make a cat meme with your website on it. No, it won’t be a clickable hyperlink, but people will still see your website, or perhaps, the title of your book. Make a cat meme that says: Grumpy catwuvs Mars Raiders. Don’t you wuv grumpy cat?
Yes, it’s absolutely stupid, but it creates a mental link, a connection. People will associate something they know and love with something unfamiliar. After someone sees grumpy cat wuvving the title of your book or website a half a dozen times, they’re going to get curious.
Own a cat? Sweet! Snap a pic of your cat sleeping on your laptop, and make claims that Mrs. Whiskers if feeling left out because you’ve been writing so much.
Feel me?
This is business. This is marketing, and you can use social media to market your brand, but you cannot use social media to get new readers and sell books by simply auto tweeting: come check out my new #fantasy #adventure The Ring of Lords.
Yes, as with everything else, this is time consuming, and there are numerous variables, which you must calculate specifically for your title, audience, genre, etc. Social media is a powerful tool, but even the best Phillip’s head screwdriver is useless if all your screws are flatheads head, right? You have to use the proper tools properly, and I promise you, the number of followers you have on Twitter or any social media site does not equate to the number of visitors who will spend time on your site and subsequently buy your books.
So what sell books? Quality content and people. If people like you then they like your brand. If they like your brand they will discuss it with others through their social media accounts. This is why you haven’t written your novel yet. You are writing short stories and giving them away, so that you can learn what your audience likes. Then, you will write your fanfiction, and give that away, too. Then, when it’s time to write your novel, people will already be waiting for it. You will already have a better understanding on how to improve the quality of your writing, too.
It sounds like a great deal of effort. It is! It will pay off, though. Engage people who already enjoy what you enjoy. Build connections. Build your brand. Release quality content, and then people will sell your content for you.
You can’t possibly sell thousands of copies of your own books, but if you sell ten copies, and your fans talk about them, thus selling more copies, and then everyone is selling tens of copies of your books then suddenly everyone is buying your books. People, consumers, fans sell products, not social media.
Thanks, you guys have been great. I’m going to be releasing one more post in this series, so stay tuned. If you're interested in learning how to improve your content, read any of my "Editing" posts. Also visit the Editing Services tab.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
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.
The last post discussed building and selling your brand, something you do regardless of which publishing route you take. The question then becomes, how does one get people to notice a brand?
Remember, your brand is you; you are selling yourself, so go out and be yourself. The world today has opened the door for all of us to do just that. We can do live videos on FaceBook. We can upload YouTube videos. We can tweet, share content and comments on Google+ and LinkedIn, we can blog on our own sites, on Quora, Medium, write stories to Wattpad, Fanfcition, and Quotev. I mean, c’mon, the opportunities are endless, but as has been mentioned, it’s important to connect with readers. If all you’re doing is following, retweeting, and sharing with other writers, you are not connecting with readers.
This brings us to another big, big, mega, huge misconception. Just about every writer out there, who is not published by a mainstream publisher, thinks they can pool their resources with other writers. They think that they can give their fans to their fellow writers, and get fans from their fellow writers.
Wrong. Man, is that ever wrong.
Does Burger King share consumers with McDonald’s? No. They compete. Does Citgo share their consumers with Shell? No, they compete. Does George Martin hold a blog tour with J.K. Rowling? No! Not even their publishers set up such things. Why? It doesn’t work.
Don’t believe it? Go and follow the mainstream authors and publishers, and look at their tweets, posts, and updates. Go look at their websites. Regardless of whether or not you think their published content is any good, it is an undeniable fact that the mainstream publishers and writers sell, at least on average, better than indie or self published writers, which means that their business model works, and their business model does not involve banding together.
They compete, and they promote competition. Perhaps no quite so intensely as Nintendo and Sega did in the past, but Simon and Schuster is not trying to give fans to or get fans from Penguin Random House.
Here’s the deal; before you are published, you do want to work with other writers, not to try and share fans—thinking that if that writer sells books, you can get their fans to buy your books—you engage with other writers just to view writing from a different perspective. Look at their brand, read their voice, check out their book covers, blog formats, etc. There’s a ton of stuff you can get from other writers, but you are not trying to get their fans, or pool fans between one another. The consumer world just doesn’t work that way, and as a writer, you are also a businessman, and you have to understand business.
Another factor of business is social media. As was stated earlier, the world has opened itself up to social connections, but you have to be…wait for it…sociable.
Retweeting, and setting up auto tweets, and auto posts is the wrong approach. It is certainly a time saver, but you should not be spending the bulk of your time on social media, or even promoting your work, anyway; you should be spending the bulk of your time reading, writing, editing, and discussing topics—connecting with humans as a human.
Be sociable. Engage with other readers. Right now, before writing your novel, make an account on Goodreads, FaceBook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, Medium, and have your own blog. Go to where the people are discussing topics you like.
Maybe, you like The Elder Scrolls. I do. I went and conversed with people who enjoyed The Elder Scrolls, and I just talked about the video games. I did not immediately try to monopolize the posts by telling everyone to drop what they were doing and come read my Skyrim fanfiction. I acted like a human being, and I discussed whatever the particular topic was. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, I let people know that I enjoyed Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim so much, I went and wrote a fanfiction. I added that if anyone was interested, the link to the free book was available, and it worked; people came to read my story.
Maybe you like HarryPotter. Believe it; plenty of people are talking HarryPotter. Join groups dedicated to HarryPotter and discuss. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, you let people know you are also working on a HarryPotter fanfcition and would love some feedback.
This is how you benefit from social media. People think that they should use social media to send out an update from their blog, or send out a link to a buy page for a book. There are times to do that, but releasing those kinds of posts on a regular basis is not what sells books. It just doesn’t work that way.
Think about it. If a new, mainstream author emerged today, and you are on Twitter, and you see a retweet from someone you follow, which states: @JohnPWriter visit http://www.jpwriter.com for my new book: Mars Raiders, are you going to run out and buy the book? Why would you? Are you even going to click the link to see what the book is about?
Here’s the bigger question; what are the odds of you even seeing that tweet?
If you start your social media presence now, before writing your debut novel, you’re selling yourself, that’s all you’re trying to do. You are creating an online presence, and people will take you seriously because you are a real person who is interacting with other, likeminded people. Then, as you write your short stories or fanfiction, you can kindly, kindly, ask people to come look at your work, but only if the opportunity is there.
The great thing about a lot of social media sites is that you can ask the question. Something along the lines of the following makes for a great opener: I want to write a Harry Potter fanfiction, can someone provide me some feedback? Don’t expect everyone who likes HarryPotter to rush on over to your question and answer it, but don’t be surprised if people are interested either; everyone likes to talk about themselves and what they enjoy.
A great tweet might also read: @JohnPWriter I’m trying to finish my #HarryPotter #Fanfiction, all comments welcome visit http://www.jpwriter.com Thanks
Social media is extremely important, but 90% of writers are using it incorrectly. These posts, however, have not been designed to teach you the intricacies of using each social platform. There are numerous books written by numerous people, and everyone has their own take on how to optimize a Twitter presence, or a FaceBook author page, or a Google+ brand page. Feel free to buy those books, just be sure to check out the one and two star reviews, not only the five star reviews.
What needs to be considered is that, empirically speaking, if you send out a tweet, which has a shelf life of about six seconds, and that tweet states: http://www.jpwriter.com come check out my new #HarryPotter #fanfiction. No one is going to pay attention.
I can prove it.
Find your favorite, indie author who is claiming they’re earning a five figure income per month, and look at their tweets. Then, look at how many followers they have. They may have a million followers, but then look at the number of likes and retweets each tweet gets. For FaceBook and other platforms, look at how many likes, shares, and comments they have. In all likelihood, it’s very few.
On the rarest of occasion, you may come across the one person who is getting mass likes, retweets, shares, and comments, and if that’s the case, they have built their brand correctly, and in that case, you should scrutinize their tweets because the working formula is in there somewhere. Most people are trying to use social media to get people to view their book or website, when they should be using their book or website to get more followers. Most writers have it backwards.
I’ll be totally honest, I have few followers on Twitter, and I don’t use FaceBook; in the end, the numbers matter very little. Don’t believe that either? Go look at Penguin Random House’s Twitter account. Look at their tweets, and see how many likes and retweets they have. Look also at how many tweets they send out per day. Read their tweets carefully. You won’t see what you expect. They certainly sell books, though, don’t they? Social media numbers mean very little.
Here’s the math: if you send out a tweet with a shelf life of six seconds, very few people will see it unless it is consistently retweeted regardless of how many followers you have, but let’s assume that one million people see this magic tweet over the course of a day. Out of one million views, if no one retweets it—or even if it is the retweeting which garners this magic tweet one million views—out of those views, maybe 1% of people will be interested enough to click on the link. That means that only ten thousand people will view the linked page. If that page is a buy page on, say, Barnes and Noble, how many of those people, those ten thousand, will be readers, people looking to buy a book? How many will be people looking to buy a book of that genre, by you, a virtually unknown author?
How many people will be interested enough to look at the title, cover, and blurb? Maybe one percent? That means that of that ten thousand, one hundred people are likely to buy the book.
Hey, one hundred sales isn’t too bad, though, right?
Let me tell you; unless your tweet is magic, your tweet isn’t going to get a million views. Think about it. When you’re on Twitter, or which ever social media outlet you prefer, how many posts do you scrutinize? How many have links to pages? How many of those do you actually click? Where do you usually wind up? A website? A blog? How much scrutiny do you give then? Have you ever actually bought a book explicitly due to a Tweet? A mention on FaceBook? A post on LinkedIn?
Are you with me?
Social media is not used to sell books or even drive traffic to your site. Social media is used to engage, sociably, with likeminded people. King and Martin have a mess of followers on Twitter because people already know those guys exist. People—fans—will follow you after visiting your site, downloading your free, short story, reading your fanfiction, or purchasing your novel, not the other way around, so you have to understand what social media does; it gives people a chance to talk, to talk about what they enjoy, and if people enjoy reading the fantasy genre then talk to those people about the fantasy genre.
Yes, you do want to Tweet and post updates, which you have made to your blog or website, but if that’s all you do with social media, it won’t get you the results you’re expecting. Why would anyone want to retweet such a thing? What is there to entice someone to click on the link? Who cares that John P. Writer just released a new, blog post entitled: fat cash for fast cats?
Also, if other writers are consistently retweeting your tweets, won’t they be missing out on potential fans or sales? If you’re constantly retweeting other writers, won’t you be suffering the same? Well, yes and no; as was discussed, you aren’t getting sales from tweets anyway, but you’re definitely losing out on attention, so there will come a time to distance yourself from other writers, and we’ll dive into that a little bit more later on.
What is important to understand is that social media does not sell products, but it can certainly sell a brand. That brand is you, so be cute, be funny, be accessible, be present. You like cats? I love cats! Post cat memes, pictures, gifs, and videos to your social media accounts. Then, find a way to relate cats to your writing, book, blog, or site.
You can easily make a cat meme with your website on it. No, it won’t be a clickable hyperlink, but people will still see your website, or perhaps, the title of your book. Make a cat meme that says: Grumpy catwuvs Mars Raiders. Don’t you wuv grumpy cat?
Yes, it’s absolutely stupid, but it creates a mental link, a connection. People will associate something they know and love with something unfamiliar. After someone sees grumpy cat wuvving the title of your book or website a half a dozen times, they’re going to get curious.
Own a cat? Sweet! Snap a pic of your cat sleeping on your laptop, and make claims that Mrs. Whiskers if feeling left out because you’ve been writing so much.
Feel me?
This is business. This is marketing, and you can use social media to market your brand, but you cannot use social media to get new readers and sell books by simply auto tweeting: come check out my new #fantasy #adventure The Ring of Lords.
Yes, as with everything else, this is time consuming, and there are numerous variables, which you must calculate specifically for your title, audience, genre, etc. Social media is a powerful tool, but even the best Phillip’s head screwdriver is useless if all your screws are flatheads head, right? You have to use the proper tools properly, and I promise you, the number of followers you have on Twitter or any social media site does not equate to the number of visitors who will spend time on your site and subsequently buy your books.
So what sell books? Quality content and people. If people like you then they like your brand. If they like your brand they will discuss it with others through their social media accounts. This is why you haven’t written your novel yet. You are writing short stories and giving them away, so that you can learn what your audience likes. Then, you will write your fanfiction, and give that away, too. Then, when it’s time to write your novel, people will already be waiting for it. You will already have a better understanding on how to improve the quality of your writing, too.
It sounds like a great deal of effort. It is! It will pay off, though. Engage people who already enjoy what you enjoy. Build connections. Build your brand. Release quality content, and then people will sell your content for you.
You can’t possibly sell thousands of copies of your own books, but if you sell ten copies, and your fans talk about them, thus selling more copies, and then everyone is selling tens of copies of your books then suddenly everyone is buying your books. People, consumers, fans sell products, not social media.
Thanks, you guys have been great. I’m going to be releasing one more post in this series, so stay tuned. If you're interested in learning how to improve your content, read any of my "Editing" posts. Also visit the Editing Services tab.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
So you want to be a writer part 6
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.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
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.
http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...
Love to read? Earn money reading!
Hello to all my lovely and loyal readers. I have big news for readers. I know you love to read, and I know you’d like to make some money, and indirectly, there is a way for readers to make money by reading. I’m going to introduce you to affiliate marketing, but not the way you’ve seen it before.
You do want to make money, right? You like to read good stories? You can make money selling stories you’ve read. Well, you can make money even without reading stories, but what I want is for my readers to sell my stories because I know you guys have not only read my stories, you’ve loved them and want to share them with everyone, and I want to pay you to do it. It’s easy.
You’ve heard of affiliate marketing, right?
Well, here’s the deal; Smashwords allows their writers to set the amount of money affiliate marketers can earn.
Starting on 03/01/2017, I am offering everyone 25% of my sales. All you have to do is make a Smaswhords account, you should already have one anyway, and down at the bottom of my books’ pages is an affiliate link.
All you do is copy and paste that link on your site, or blog, or whatever, and whenever people buy my book through your site, with your link, you earn 25% of the sale. You’ll have to add your Paypal address to your Smashwords account to earn the money, but it’s super simple, and you earn money immediately.
Yeah, I’m taking a cut so that people the world over can earn money by selling my books, and it should be pretty easy because my books practically sell themselves.
Look at this title, cover, and blurb; wouldn’t you buy this book for $5.99?
The Dragon of Time Two, Dragon Slayer
By Aaron Dennis
Scar, the Dragon Slayer, was fashioned to purge the Dragons from Tiamhaal, yet such a thing is not so simple. Kings and queens yet war amongst one another. They, too, lie, connive, and coerce, and so, Scar and his friends must find a way to persuade men to stand together against the machinations of evil forces. Join Scar on an adventure, which will test his mettle as man and warrior.
Well, here’s the deal. If you sell this book, you’ll get to keep over a dollar of the sale.
It’s easy, right?
You should start today. Just keep in mind that extra income won’t be available until March. You can still sell my books for 11% of the profit starting today, which isn’t bad, but from March 2017 and on, I’ll make sure all you guys can earn 25%. You won’t find a better deal anywhere else by any other author.
Here’s the link to each book that actually has a price.
Apollo - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Cayneian - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Short Stories from the Mind of Aaron Dennis - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Gods and Dragons - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Dragon Slayer - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Kink Erotica – if you’re feelin’ nasty - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Otherside - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
The rest of my books are free, so there can’t be any profit earned.
If you have a Smashwords account then the bottom of the each book’s page will present a special referral link that you use to generate sales and earn income directly from selling my book.
If this opportunity sounds too good to pass up then don’t pass it up. Start a Smashwords affiliate marketing site today, and reap the rewards of selling my books. Then, when your Smashwords affiliate marketing site is up and running, leave a comment with your name and a link to your site. I’ll add your site to my Backlinks tab and promote your site on Twitter.
I told you it was easy, didn’t I?
Think about it. You already read. You already know my stories rock. You already know people buy my stories. Why shouldn’t you get a cut? You already tell everybody, your friends, family, coworkers, and your blog or website fans which books you enjoy reading, and then your friends, family, coworkers, and blog and website fans go out and buy those books. Why shouldn’t you get a cut?
You should! That’s why I’m giving you 25% of the sales from March of 2017 on out. You guys are great. Without my fans, I wouldn’t have anything, and I want you to have some extra cash in your pocket. You can certainly sell anyone’s books, but is anyone else giving you 25% from each sale? I don’t think so. The standard affiliate referral from Smashwords is only 11%, and other sites like Amazon make affiliate marketing a pain and a convoluted mess.
Save yourself the headache, and share with the world what you already love: my stories. Earn a cut of the pie while you’re at it.
Apart from the books listed above, three more books will be released this year, so now’s a great time to hop aboard this money train because with each new title I release, more and people are going to be buying my books, and you want to make sure to be among the first to earn a fat cut of my profits. Thank you for being loyal fans.
(Please leave comments on the original post http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?p=776)
You do want to make money, right? You like to read good stories? You can make money selling stories you’ve read. Well, you can make money even without reading stories, but what I want is for my readers to sell my stories because I know you guys have not only read my stories, you’ve loved them and want to share them with everyone, and I want to pay you to do it. It’s easy.
You’ve heard of affiliate marketing, right?
Well, here’s the deal; Smashwords allows their writers to set the amount of money affiliate marketers can earn.
Starting on 03/01/2017, I am offering everyone 25% of my sales. All you have to do is make a Smaswhords account, you should already have one anyway, and down at the bottom of my books’ pages is an affiliate link.
All you do is copy and paste that link on your site, or blog, or whatever, and whenever people buy my book through your site, with your link, you earn 25% of the sale. You’ll have to add your Paypal address to your Smashwords account to earn the money, but it’s super simple, and you earn money immediately.
Yeah, I’m taking a cut so that people the world over can earn money by selling my books, and it should be pretty easy because my books practically sell themselves.
Look at this title, cover, and blurb; wouldn’t you buy this book for $5.99?
The Dragon of Time Two, Dragon Slayer
By Aaron Dennis
Scar, the Dragon Slayer, was fashioned to purge the Dragons from Tiamhaal, yet such a thing is not so simple. Kings and queens yet war amongst one another. They, too, lie, connive, and coerce, and so, Scar and his friends must find a way to persuade men to stand together against the machinations of evil forces. Join Scar on an adventure, which will test his mettle as man and warrior.
Well, here’s the deal. If you sell this book, you’ll get to keep over a dollar of the sale.
It’s easy, right?
You should start today. Just keep in mind that extra income won’t be available until March. You can still sell my books for 11% of the profit starting today, which isn’t bad, but from March 2017 and on, I’ll make sure all you guys can earn 25%. You won’t find a better deal anywhere else by any other author.
Here’s the link to each book that actually has a price.
Apollo - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Cayneian - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Short Stories from the Mind of Aaron Dennis - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Gods and Dragons - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Dragon Slayer - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Kink Erotica – if you’re feelin’ nasty - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Otherside - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
The rest of my books are free, so there can’t be any profit earned.
If you have a Smashwords account then the bottom of the each book’s page will present a special referral link that you use to generate sales and earn income directly from selling my book.
If this opportunity sounds too good to pass up then don’t pass it up. Start a Smashwords affiliate marketing site today, and reap the rewards of selling my books. Then, when your Smashwords affiliate marketing site is up and running, leave a comment with your name and a link to your site. I’ll add your site to my Backlinks tab and promote your site on Twitter.
I told you it was easy, didn’t I?
Think about it. You already read. You already know my stories rock. You already know people buy my stories. Why shouldn’t you get a cut? You already tell everybody, your friends, family, coworkers, and your blog or website fans which books you enjoy reading, and then your friends, family, coworkers, and blog and website fans go out and buy those books. Why shouldn’t you get a cut?
You should! That’s why I’m giving you 25% of the sales from March of 2017 on out. You guys are great. Without my fans, I wouldn’t have anything, and I want you to have some extra cash in your pocket. You can certainly sell anyone’s books, but is anyone else giving you 25% from each sale? I don’t think so. The standard affiliate referral from Smashwords is only 11%, and other sites like Amazon make affiliate marketing a pain and a convoluted mess.
Save yourself the headache, and share with the world what you already love: my stories. Earn a cut of the pie while you’re at it.
Apart from the books listed above, three more books will be released this year, so now’s a great time to hop aboard this money train because with each new title I release, more and people are going to be buying my books, and you want to make sure to be among the first to earn a fat cut of my profits. Thank you for being loyal fans.
(Please leave comments on the original post http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?p=776)
