Aaron Dennis's Blog - Posts Tagged "write"

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.

What is an info dump anyway?

A story certainly contains a great deal of information. A writer must tell readers all about the world, the people, the technology, the magic, the murder, the mystery, the history, after all. More often than not, there is a need to set the stage, so to speak, and normally, writers provide a prologue with all accounts deemed pertinent to the story’s setting, pace, and advancement, so how can such a thing possibly be a problem?

Prologue or no, many books today start off in the exact same way- dumping a ton of information, hence info dump.

Let’s look at an example of a story starting with the dumping of information. This is an original example, as they all are here on out, I wrote specifically for this post:

Lieutenant Commander Albert Swain was a career Navy man. He was tall, at six feet and nine inches, towering over his crew, and he was also a very big and strong man, as strong as a bull with seventeen inch arms, but what do you expect of a special forces leader who weighs in at nearly three hundred pounds? Apart from numerous commendations, he had a breast full of ribbons opposite his bright and shiny name tag, which read only: Swain.

Everyone looked up to Swain, and not just because he was tall; Swain had earned the respect of his superiors as well. In the previous war against the Cojul, a race of aliens with scales, long, sharp teeth, three mouths, and two anuses—one on each side of their heads—they were extremely aggressive and had staked a claim to quadrant delta for the last fifty years, but Swain and his crew fought against them for nearly six months straight, and after he watched his crew get slaughtered, he single-handedly commandeered an enemy vessel and took back the quadrant.


Vapid info dump; any reader of any genre has already given up on this tale.

Another info dump right at the beginning of a tale can look like this:


Ilteriel was a magical land created by the Gods for all races to live harmoniously. There were elves, who had long, pointed ears, beautifully faint features, and silky hair. There were gnomes, who were short people with bushy beards and sharp minds. There were also orcs, big, scary, greenish people, who although lacked the brains of the other races, they were very hardy; they could work for days and days without rest, and they never got ill, and then there were humans, too, who were a bit average, but they had the strongest hearts of all the races created by the Gods.

For seven thousand years, all of the races lived amongst each other happily. They shared land, and food, and culture, and customs, but then a demon came. The demon was a brutish creature, and his name was Malath, and in his world, he was a general of darkness. Malath came and found a sad human named Gunther, and he promised to make Gunther rich, and powerful, and happy. Gunther accepted, and for the next three thousand years a war raged over the land of Ilteriel.


Drivel, yet I defy you; go look at just about any novel released within the past three years—mainstream or indie—and you’ll find most of them start off in a similar fashion, but the beginning of a story isn’t the only place you’ll find an info dump.


Quite as often, there will be an info dump right before a scene, during the scene, or just after.

The dump before the scene usually dives into a great, descriptive block of text, something like you find in a textbook, except it’s about the setting of the upcoming event, a historical piece of information preceding the event, or even the feelings of everyone present before the event.

Let’s look:

John had practiced law for nearly ten years. He had been fortunate enough to represent people who were actually innocent, but this time, his new client, Juan Ruiz, was certainly guilty. Mr. Ruiz was known to traffic drugs in from Caracas, Venezuela to the United States through Mexico. He had been arrested in Nogales, Arizona along with half his cadre.

While Mr. Ruiz ran chunky fingers through his thick, black, curly hair, he eyed John with a steely gaze. John felt uncomfortable, and he tugged at the collar of his white, collared blouse. Huge drops of perspiration dribbled down the side of his head as he tried to convince himself that everyone deserved a chance, especially since so much money was on the line. Besides, John’s wife, Celia, was pregnant with twins, and he needed to think about his family, but what about the families endangered by Ruiz’s activities, who was sticking up for them?


Terrible. That is one messy, convoluted, info dump. Readers want the meat, and they want action and dialogue, and dialogue is a great way to dump info without making it an info dump, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Another kind of info dump happens after an event. The writer makes an attempt at making sure that the reader understands every, single, little, tiny detail regarding whatever transpired.

Let’s look at the following:

Since Jessica had broken up with Tom, she called her mother. The wise woman explained that breaking off an engagement was better than a prospective divorce. Divorces had major ramifications, especially if children were involved.

Jessica knew her mother was right. That was why she had tested Tom by sending her friend to hit on him. She knew he was going to fail, but she had hoped blindly that somewhere, deep, down inside, he did love her. When Tom came home from work late, Jessica knew it was because he had been out with Sherrie, there was no lying about it, after all, she was the one who put Sherrie up to it.


Yes! We get it! Presumably, we just read the event. It doesn’t need to be recapped seven ways from Sunday.

So, now we know what an info dump is, and we have some insight as to why they’re bad; they either prevent a story from getting started, they provide information such as that of a textbook, which no reader wants to commit to memory as though studying for a quiz, or they provide a ridiculous recap of an event we all just experienced, when what we really want is the next portion of the story.

This begs the question, how do we fix them?

When it comes to the introductory, info dumping—if we’re dealing with novels and not short stories—I suggest using a prologue, but the prologue must be a mood setter; it must be a very brief account and should rightfully be a mini story in and of itself, and I’ll discuss prologues in further detail in my next post, but the prologue must not be a dry account of facts to be memorized. The facts, if germane, must be introduced throughout the story and only when they are absolutely required.

If we’re dealing with short stories or novellas, I don’t suggest using a prologue, but a simple paragraph or two—something clever or dark—can certainly set the scene and give just the scant, few, necessary details before jumping into the story.

If there’s no prologue whatsoever, and the novel just starts, that’s great, too, but it needs to start without a massive info dump.

But how?!

Let’s reexamine that first chunk of filth I wrote.

Lieutenant Commander Albert Swain was a career Navy man. He was tall, at six feet and nine inches, towering over his crew, and he was also a very big and strong man, as strong as a bull with seventeen inch arms, but what do you expect of a special forces leader who weighs in at nearly three hundred pounds? Apart from numerous commendations, he had a breast full of ribbons opposite his bright and shiny name tag, which read only: Swain.

Everyone looked up to Swain, and not just because he was tall; Swain had earned the respect of his superiors as well. In the previous war against the Cojul, a race of aliens with scales, long, sharp teeth, three mouths, and two anuses—one on each side of their heads—they were extremely aggressive and had staked a claim to quadrant delta for the last fifty years, but Swain and his crew fought against them for nearly six months straight, and after he watched his crew get slaughtered, he single-handedly commandeered an enemy vessel and took back the quadrant.

Okay, how about a little setting instead, huh?


Boots clanked over steel grating as Lieutenant Commander Albert Swain—a bear of a man—marched for crew quarters. The men and women aboard the USS Albatross nodded as he swished on by. He was so tall and broad they practically had to hug the corridors. Finally, the special forces leader reached the door. A sign next to it read: Captain Decker. Before knocking, the L.T. adjusted the ribbons proudly displayed over his pristine Navy uniform.

After knocking, Swain relaxed at parade rest. “Enter,” a gruff voice bled through the steel door. When the L.T. pushed his way inside, he gave the captain a salute. Decker returned it, saying, “It was a hell of a thing you did, commandeering that damned Cojul ship. Now, I know you’re still upset over the loss of those brave men and women, but, dammit, son, you single-handedly took back quadrant delta!”

“Thank you, Sir,” Swain grunted. “If I may, Sir?”

“Of course, of course,” the grizzled captain said before easing into his leather desk chair.

“I still see ‘em, the Cojul; teeth like sharks, their blue scales covered in Jones’s blood. The anuses, man, they got anuses on the sides of their heads. What kind of God allows such a thing?”

“It takes time, Swain….”

Now, which story do you want to read? Do you see the difference? Even without a prologue, the stage is set, and the actors are playing. Every detail can be provided in an entertaining manner, and that’s what stories are supposed to be; a medium for entertainment. Whatever accounts there are to be listed should be ensconced within the story, and not the other way around. The readers shouldn’t even realize they’re memorizing facts about the story; they shouldn’t even be aware that there are words on pages.

Next, let’s check out that fantasy world:

Ilteriel was a magical land created by the Gods for all races to live harmoniously. There were elves, who had long, pointed ears, beautifully faint features, and silky hair. There were gnomes, who were short people with bushy beards and sharp minds. There were also orcs, big, scary, greenish people, who although lacked the brains of the other races, they were very hardy; they could work for days and days without rest, and they never got ill, and then there were humans, too, who were a bit average, but they had the strongest hearts of all the races created by the Gods.

For seven thousand years, all of the races lived amongst each other happily. They shared land, and food, and culture, and customs, but then a demon came. The demon was a brutish creature, and his name was Malath, and in his world, he was a general of darkness. Malath came and found a sad human named Gunther, and he promised to make Gunther rich, and powerful, and happy. Gunther accepted, and for the next three thousand years a war raged over the land of Ilteriel.


It’s so trite. There’s some back story, sure, but no story, am I right?


The Gods created Ilteriel, a world for many races, and among the races deigned to grace Ilteriel in harmony and accord were the elves, the gnomes, the orcs, and the humans. It was said that each race, though equal, had both blessings and shortcomings; the elves were certainly beautiful and magically gifted, yet they were conceited. The short people, the gnomes with their bushy beards, were an ingenious race, always tinkering with their machines, yet they were obsessed. Orcs, the hardiest of the races, toiled without rest, not that they possessed the brains to notice such a thing. Then, there were the humans, an average people, but their hearts; their hearts were pure…until one day….

It was said that seven thousands years passed on Ilteriel without incident, but a dark day came when the demon general, Malath wormed his way into the world of the Gods. He skulked, and he crept, and he hid until he found fruit ripe for the picking. There was a sad human shedding tears beneath the shade of a tree. Malath approached, a crooked smile upon his black visage, and he asked of the human his tribulations.

The man called Gunther recounted his sorrows; his wife had been accidentally killed by a machine devised by the gnomes, and so Malath showed the human how he was wronged, and how to right such a wrong; he taught the human cunning, and he instructed Gunther on how to trick the orcs in to killing the gnomes. Thusly, Malath began his dark rule through Gunther; it was a reign of terror that lasted for three thousand years.

That is a story, yet it lays the groundwork for whatever is going to happen in the actual book. There’s no dumping of information, but everything has been provided, and in an entertaining fashion, no?

Before grumbling, I am aware that I left out that the elves had pointy ears, but since the reader has yet to meet an elf, such a thing needs not be revealed, but let’s move on.

Next, let’s take a look at the set up preceding an event, and reexamine the bit about the lawyer:


John had practiced law for nearly ten years. He had been fortunate enough to represent people who were actually innocent, but this time, his new client, Juan Ruiz, was certainly guilty. Mr. Ruiz was known to traffic drugs in from Caracas, Venezuela to the United States through Mexico. He had been arrested in Nogales, Arizona along with half his cadre.

While Mr. Ruiz ran chunky fingers through his thick, black, curly hair, he eyed John with a steely gaze. John felt uncomfortable, and he tugged at the collar of his white, collared blouse. Huge drops of perspiration dribbled down the side of his head as he tried to convince himself that everyone deserved a chance, especially since so much money was on the line. Besides, John’s wife, Celia, was pregnant with twins, and he needed to think about his family, but what about the families endangered by Ruiz’s activities, who was sticking up for them?


A writer or editor must first know what event they’re setting up. In this case, I just want to organize the meeting between John and Ruiz.


Ten years was a long time to practice law. John counted his blessings that, to date, his clients were actually innocent men and women, but that day, he sat across the shiny, mahogany table from Juan Ruiz, Caracas drug runner. With an exhale, John tugged the collar of his white blouse.

“Ahem, so…Mr. Ruiz, the report says Nogales P.D. picked you and your associates up at two thirty on the morning of December ninth. Is that correct?”

The swarthy, Latino wasn’t even paying attention. He sat there in his black suit, staring out the window, but then he licked his greasy lips, let out a chortle of derision, and turned his steely, dark eyes onto the lawyer. A shiver ran down John’s spine; before him there sat a man who had killed on more than one occasion.

“Yeah, das’ right, so?” Ruiz barked.

“Um,” John faltered. He thought about the money Ruiz offered. He thought about it long and hard, and the fact that he had already accepted; he and his wife were expecting twins. What about other families…what about their kids? Am I really doing the right thing, here? It’s like the lines are blurred. “We just need to get our facts straight, Mr. Ruiz….”

Much smoother than the info dumpy version, right? We add a little flair, we throw in a couple of lines of dialogue, a few inner thoughts, and bingo; all the same information is present, at least the salient points, the rest is story, which is what readers like.

Finally, let’s view the last example. We had a recap of previous events:


Since Jessica had broken up with Tom, she called her mother. The wise woman explained that breaking off an engagement was better than a prospective divorce. Divorces had major ramifications, especially if children were involved.

Jessica knew her mother was right. That was why she had tested Tom by sending her friend to hit on him. She knew he was going to fail, but she had hoped blindly that somewhere, deep, down inside, he did love her. When Tom came home from work late, Jessica knew it was because he had been out with Sherrie, there was no lying about it, after all, she was the one who put Sherrie up to it.


Well, here’s the deal, readers feel like writers assume that their fans are dumb when they see this kind of stuff. Readers have been reading the story, so it isn’t likely they need a verbose recapitulation of events. There are certainly times in thrillers and mysteries or later portions of a series when a recap is paramount, but one must be careful in the execution of the recap. Regardless, we’re dealing with the subject of info dumping more so than recapping, which I’ll discuss in a future post.

Let’s assume that this segment, this recap dump, takes place in the sequel, the second book of a story, wherein the would-be bride, Jessica, breaks off the engagement at the end of the first book. Recapping such a thing is a wonderful idea, but it certainly can be better executed.


Two months wasn’t a long time to be alone, not since Jessica broke off her engagement with Tom, a man to whom she was promised for over six months, and they had dated for a year prior. With a shaky hand, she pushed the contact labeled Mom.

“Jessie, honey, feeling any better?” the old gal sounded lively on the other end.

“Hey, Mom,” Jessica sighed, choking back newly forming tears. “Um, I just, I just think I need some advice.”

“Well…you remember what I told you; it’s better to break off an engagement than marry someone you don’t love.”

“I do love Tom,” Jessica interrupted. “I don’t trust him; that’s the issue.”

“Yeah,” her mom sighed. “It’s a shame he lied about parading around with Sherrie.”

Nodding and listening to the old woman’s wisdom, Jessica thought back to her plan. Neither she nor Sherrie thought Tom trustworthy, so they devised a way to find out once and for all; they agreed Sherrie was going to seduce him, and no sooner had they devised their ploy that he fell for it.

There was no denying it, when he came home late from work, Jessica already knew he had gone out with her friend.

It’s all about the story, the story, the art of providing an experience; writers and editors alike need to find ways to provide their story without dumping dry, sequential, accounts of events, and I can only hope I’m helping.

Why am I trying so hard to help, to advise? Because I enjoy writing, and I enjoy reading, and I love fans of literature, and I want them to buy books, which bestow a living essence unto their momentary escape from reality. I edit and try to advise on editing for the sake of readers, but in my next post, I’m going to discuss the prologue, and I will be showcasing some of my prologues, so you’ll all have an opportunity to judge and criticize me as a writer more so than an editor, but I will be discussing why and how I edited the prologues, so I look forwards to that discussion.

For now, thank you for reading, and as always, please comment; tell me if you agree or disagree. I’m all for the sharing of ideas and their subsequent discussion.

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_...

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

https://www.fanfiction.net/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Part 6 – Writing your novel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three, hire an editor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one wants to pay for a first draft.

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

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

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It’s important to consider the types of publishing platforms before releasing your novel. Rather than diving right into the different kinds, I’m going to tell you a story; the story of my writing career, or rather how it began.

I initially tried my hand at writing a novel many years ago. I was about 18, in college, and still playing Dungeons and Dragons on the weekends with a great group of guys. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to write a story based on some of our adventures.

I set about the task, and three pages in, I hit a wall. I wanted my story to be true to the game, and I didn’t have all the manuals, and I certainly didn’t own all the novels, and since I was 18, that meant that the year was 2001, which is before the internet really blew up; I mean, there were certainly millions of people on the internet even back then, but I don’t think Wikipedia (shouldn’t it be Wikipaedia?) existed at the time, and I have no clue if WoC or TSR or whoever ran DnD at the time had a website, but it didn’t matter; I didn’t even have a dial-up connection; there wasn’t a need for it (this was the golden age of e-mail subscriber lists, though).

I talked to my buddies about the idea, but the more we talked, the more it seemed it was a useless endeavor. I didn’t really care too much about it either; I just thought it was going to be cool to write a book, but the fact of the matter was that my passion didn’t outweigh the obstacles, so I just let it go.

Ten years later, I had such an idea for a story I decided I was just going to go ahead and write it, or try to. I sat down and simply described the series of events, which became my very first short story: Eudora.

At that time, I had no idea how to use punctuation. I knew grammar well enough, and I’ve always maintained an abundant repertoire of words, and have always been a decent raconteur, so in the end, all I tried to do was chronicle the events of the story, and it worked. I had no plans, though, but Hell, I knew that since I completed one story, I was certainly capable of completing another; publishing stories, however, was the farthest thing from my mind.

I wrote four stories over the course of two or three months just for fun, and then I showed some friends and family, but I claimed that I had found the stories online and just thought they were neat. No one really seemed to care, until I wrote one more story. I called it: Shadowman.

There was an older gentleman I knew by the name of Jarrett Slavin (sorry if I misspelled it, Coach), who upon learning of my newfound passion, he asked to read the stories, and he really enjoyed Eudora and Shadowman, and he suggested I find a way to get published. Had it not been for him, all of my other titles would not even exist…what might have been….

Nevertheless, I was then left the daunting task of achieving publication, so I got on the internets, Googled “publishing”, found the addresses of a few publishers, and sent out my stories, of course they were all short stories, and no publisher wants those, but I found other methods of publication. I found Xlibris, a print on demand (POD) company, and of course, no sooner had I e-mailed them that I received a call, and man, oh, man was I pumped. I really thought I had just made it big league. (Big league, not bigly.)

All POD companies want is your money. They’ll take anything, and you’re responsible for your content, for your quality, but they’ll certainly charge you for reviews, trailers, covers, promotional packages, you name it; they’ll charge you, and honestly, if you have the world’s greatest book, they may actually be helpful because they can certainly help you get your book in the right hands, but my book, my four, short stories called Shadowman, were far from good, far from quality writing.

Regardless, as I spent more and more money, and then ran out of money, I kept writing, and when I finished my first, full length novel, Lokians, I started my search for publication all over again, but I knew POD was not for me. I needed someone else to do all the legwork for me, but I didn’t think it was fair that I had to pay for the legwork. I just wanted to write, so I set about the task of mailing and e-mailing traditional publishers, and even smaller presses like Edge, and no one was interested, so I did more research on what was required to achieve publication, and learned about literary agents, but when I contacted them, they never replied.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your outlook on life, I found a press, which labeled itself an independent press, Eternal Press. For all intents and purposes, everything looked good. Their books were available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so I figured that it was a good start. By then, I knew that mainstream publishers were purposefully keeping writers out until those writers made a name for themselves, so I knew I just needed to work hard and make a name for myself through a small, independent press.

Well, initially, I submitted my manuscript, and the acquisitions editor was kind enough to tell me that while my story seemed interesting, there was a great deal of information dumped onto the reader right at the very beginning, so I went through a round of what I thought was editing, and figured out that rather than telling the reader everything I thought they should know before the story started, it might be better to allow the world to unfold throughout the story. Then, I resubmitted, and they accepted it, and man, oh, man did I think I had hit it big. An actual publisher with editors, and marketers, and everything was going to polish my book and sell it, and all I had to do was sit back and write.

Well, when the contracts came, everything seemed legit. All they had asked was that I also made an effort to market and sell the book, and I thought that was only fair; it was my book after all, and I certainly wanted to talk about it, so I made social media accounts and started telling no one (because I had not built a fan base) that my book was coming out.

Next, I had to write a blurb, and I didn’t know what that was, nor had I comprehended its importance, so I just wrote about what the story was. No one made an effort to correct me, so I thought I had nailed it. Then, I had to come up with a cover, and I am not really an artist; I’m not even a visual person, so I came up with some weird concept with a bunch of aliens and space ships, and they told me to try again because it was too flashy, too busy. Later, I realized the truth was that they didn’t actually employ artists, and I’ll get back to that later.

We settled on a cover, which I didn’t really like, but I was just so excited and so ready to start selling, I accepted. Then, we moved on to editing. The “editor” made very few comments, adjustments, and suggestions, and so again, I thought I had nailed it. I mean, if an editor doesn’t have much to say or change then the story must be near perfect, right? Well…not so much.

Finally, the release date came, and the book was finalized. I was invited to join some Yahoo groups and even participate in a live chat where I was to discuss my book with potential readers. It turned out that there were no readers, only other authors writing for the same press. That was a little disappointing, but I didn’t think anything of it because I knew the publisher was certainly going to sell my book. Selling books is their job, and if they don’t sell, they can’t stay in business, right?

Wrong again; they made their money by enticing their writers to purchase copies of their own books, just like a POD company, and then it became my job to go out and find places to set up and sell to people, but no one let me do such a thing. Barnes and Noble didn’t allow it. Books-a-Million didn’t allow it. There are no local bookstores where I live, so my best bet was a friend’s comic book store, which felt really awkward because his customers where there to buy comic books, and out of the hundred copies of my terribly written book, I sold three on my first attempt, and none on my second attempt.

In the meantime, my e-books were priced at nearly seven dollars. Who is going to spend seven dollars on an unheard of book by an unknown author when they can spend nine or ten dollars on Harry Potter? The answer? No one. In the three years that I was published through Eternal Press, and with the four books that I released through them, I may have earned as much as forty dollars. That meant that Eternal Press also earned about forty dollars off my sales, and about five hundred dollars off my purchasing my own, print copies. That meant that if every writer, and there were hundreds of us, each bought five hundred dollars worth of books each year, Eternal Press made some decent money, but the writers only ever spent money.

Consider that if I had sold all of my print copies at twenty dollars that’s only $2,000, and that sounds great, but then you have to subtract the $500 spent on purchasing the copies, and I think it was more than that, but we’ll keep the numbers round. That leaves a $1,500 profit, which is still nice, but then you have to factor in time, travel, gas, food, the posters I had made up, the business cards, and in the end, had I sold all of my copies, all one hundred in one day, I may have cleared $800. That’s still not terrible, but without the fan base to be able to move all hundred copies over the course of a day, a week, or even a month, that $800 not only dwindles from continuously traveling and setting up, but it starts looking worse and worse. Had I sold all hundred copies over the course of a year, which I didn’t, that’s still $800, and probably less, over the course of a year, hardly a success story, and as I stated, I didn’t sell more than three copies.

I kicked, I cried, I screamed, I complained, I begged; I wanted my prices lowered, so that the e-books would sell. I wanted to submit updated versions of my books, too, versions that didn’t have common errors and formatting errors; yeah, formatting errors. How retarded was Eternal Press? They weren’t even capable enough to format their books properly, and in the end, there was nothing to be done. The product was what the product was, and I had the option of peddling my crap and disappointing readers, or sitting idly by until the contracts expired; I mean, Eternal Press wasn’t selling anything.

During that time, I wrote a great deal more for two reasons. For one, I just really enjoyed it, and two, I felt a need to vindicate myself, or perhaps apologize to readers for having released dreck. Then, of course, I had to figure out what kind of publication I was going to try next; I certainly wasn’t going to go through Eternal Press again.

I spoke to a few, other, smaller presses, but I didn’t like what they had to say; they wanted money up front, they didn’t want to make the books available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, or anywhere apart from their site, or they wanted to keep too much off the top, so I went back through my old, short stories, cleaned ‘em up, and published free to Smashwords, entered those stories into their premium catalog, and bang! Those stories made it onto Barnes and Noble…and iBooks…and Kobo…and Nook, and you name it.

I also wrote fanfiction and published it to FanFiction.net, and with my newly released short stories, which were free, I started to build a fan base, but my titles with Eternal Press just rotted away, and I could not, in good faith, promote those titles because they were not the best of me. Finally, I hired a few editors for my new, full-length titles.

One editor, after paying for services, told me to re-write my book, and then resubmit, for another fee, of course. I did not hire them again. The second editor just re-wrote my whole book from start to finish in their own voice with their own views. I mean, it was a totally different book with different characters and different interactions at that point. I did not keep any of those changes. Then, I hired a real editor, Chuck Sambuchino, and he taught me how to edit my story for readers.

That book was released under the title The Dragon of Time, Gods and Dragons, and it has gone on to do quite well. Through CreateSpace, I made print copies available, and they are much cheaper to sell, and purchase for my own uses, than the print copies released by Eternal Press or Xlibris. I also e-published, for free, to Amazon, which I then pulled for reasons that are not yet pertinent, and since I had hired my own cover artist for five dollars through Fiverr.com, I had a banging cover, a cover that blew the covers made by Eternal Press to dust.

I also uploaded the book to Smashwords, which meant it made it to all, online retailers, and get this, I got to keep almost all of the money earned from sales, and other people can also sell my book via an affiliate link, so we all make money. I must admit, though, that I did try to use Gods and Dragons to land an agent and achieve major publication, and while numerous agents replied, and with admiration, no one felt it was “marketable”, but that isn’t accurate; the truth is that they didn’t think I had enough fans, which meant the mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch it because, remember, they want your fans, not the other way around.

This is precisely why I want you to build a fan base before writing your debut novel. Then, you can prove to the agent that you’re the real deal!

At any rate, Eternal Press wound up being purchased by another company and became Caliburn Press. No one told me for the longest time, but then an old friend from Eternal Press happened to ask me how I liked the new owners, so I went and found out that my books weren’t even available on Caliburn’s website, but they were still available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so I got in touch with Caliburn over the discrepancy to learn that my contracts had been “lost in transition”. After some arguing, I simply stated that if that was the case, and there were no copies of my contracts, then the rights were mine, and I demanded all my titles pulled.

At this stage, while writing this very post, I have gone back and recreated all four of those books. Three are part of the Lokians series, and the fourth book was Shadowman, which has been totally overhauled, and is now titled: Otherside. I mention this to show that it has been nothing short of a long and arduous journey, and I am discussing it because I am trying to show you all the possible pitfalls of publishing. The short of this: go big or go home.

What I mean is; either do not stop trying to achieve major publication, or just go the self published route. You might get lucky with an actual, independent press like Edge Publishing, Rocking Horse Publishing, or Baen, but you had better be careful. Do your research. Look at their books on their site, on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, on iBooks. Look at their prices, if there’s an option, look inside and read some of the titles. Don’t be shy; go and track down the authors, too, and ask them how they like being published through that press.

Now, the nitty-gritty:

If you have a fan base, if you have a bangin’ title, cover, and blurb, and if your book is expertly polished, self publishing is a fantastic way to go. Not only do you have complete control—Hell, even King self publishes some titles—but you get to keep almost all of your money, except the money Amazon will steal from you. I’m not even kidding, they will steal from you ten and twelve cents at a time, and they will often not pay you for Kindle pages read through KOLL, or KULL, or KENP, or whatever the Hell it is now. That’s why I pulled my e-titles from Amazon, but Smashwords has been a paragon of self publishing.

If your book isn’t up to snuff, though, self publishing can kill your career before it begins. Basically, the thing to note is that your book must be near perfect to land a literary agent or be taken seriously by a real, indie press, and if your book is that good and well written, you can use it to just make a name for yourself by self publishing, but self publishing requires so much friggin’ work because all of the responsibility falls on you, but then if you’ve built your fan base by following the advice from these posts, and your book is stellar, and you do self publish, and you do sell, you will be approached by agents or even publishers. Of course, if you’re already successful, for what do you need them?

That’s up to you. You may need them to help you get movie options, or you may just want them to sell for you. It’s your call, but you need to consider everything before writing your novel.

Stay away from POD companies like Friesen Press or Xlibris; everything they do, you can do, or you can hire someone to do it for you, and for a much lower price than they charge. Yes, you will have to spend some money and do some serious legwork, but even if you decide to self publish you can hire someone to turn your book into a movie, you can hire artists to turn your book into a graphic novel, you might even find some indie, game developers and sweet talk them into turning your book into a game; the possibilities are there.

Avoid hybrid presses. Some of them are obvious; they charge you upfront, or they’re really just a crowdfunding platform that charges you to use their services in the hopes that enough people will pay to publish your book; utter nonsense. While I’m against crowdfunding to publish a book, you can do it on your own without using a hybrid press. There’s also a ton of information out there on how to crowdfund successfully.

It’s just my personal opinion that charging people to publish your book is wrong since you can publish for free. You’ll only need money for a cover ($6 now on Fiverr, so it should be Sixerr) and to hire an editor, but if you shop for editors, you can probably get away with spending less than $1,000, so…crowdfund if you want to; no one is putting a gun to peoples’ head and forcing them to donate, so if you’re comfortable crowdfunding, asking people to give you money so you can produce content for which you charge…go for it.

Then, there are other, hybrid presses, like Eternal Press, Caliburn, or whatever they call themselves now. They are a bit more surreptitious in their behavior. They act like a small, independent press, but their staff is crap; their artists can’t make decent covers short of Photoshopping, they know nothing of blurbs, marketing, or selling books, they won’t help you get reviews, they want you to buy your books, so they can profit, and they won’t even edit your book properly.

I even had an argument with the previous owner about how to sell books, and she told me she had a business management degree and didn’t need my opinion. Well, I’m not stupid or uneducated. I know what a business management degree is, and it has nothing to do with economics, marketing, branding, or selling, and is obviously why she ended up selling the failing business.

So, if you stay away from hybrid presses and PODs, that only leaves major publication, really. It’s just as hard to get picked up by the real, independent presses as the major houses, so you’re better off trying to land an agent, which means learning how to query, how to write a synopsis, and knowing that you need to already be successful in order to be taken seriously by an agent…so, again, you might as well go self published for your debut novel, but don’t feel pressured to, either.

It’s up to you; go big or go home. Mainstream presses will certainly do their utmost to sell your book. There is no doubt about that, but that doesn’t mean that your book will sell. It doesn’t mean that your book will be expertly polished, either; I have written extensively about how terrible mainstream editors are nowadays, but hey, even crap sells, am I right? Not to mention that you can still hire a freelance editor —and will probably have to in order to be taken seriously by an agent.

The thing to consider when going mainstream is their modus operandi. Yes, if you get picked up, they may give you a small advance; debut advances are generally $2,000, but you will not earn a dime in royalties until said press earns back their $2,000, and you generally have only six months to achieve this, and if you don’t, they’ll release your contract, and not only are you back at step one, but you’ll need a new cover, a new editor (the press will still own the cover and their rewritten version of your book), and you’ll never get another shot at mainstream publication.

On the other hand, you may sell quite well, and then they will tell you to go ahead and buy 5,000 copies of your own book in order to fake your way onto the New York Time’s Best Seller list. Yup, not even kidding, so forget that $2,000 you earned; you’re about spend ten-plus grand, and then, they’ll want you to go out gallivanting from store to store across the country, and sell your books on your dime, and you may sell…you may not sell, so it really boils down to what kind of life you want.

Perhaps, you have always dreamed of traveling the country, visiting book stores, selling and signing copies, performing readings in front of adoring fans. There’s nothing wrong with that. If that’s your dream, follow it, do absolutely everything required to achieve mainstream publication. Avoid absolutely everything that doesn’t lead you to mainstream publication. Do understand that it may take years, and years, and years after completing your novel for you to find an agent and actually get published, so again, there’s no reason not to self publish your first title, prove you can sell, and then reach for mainstream publication with your second title.

Here’s why. Assume you finish your novel today, and it’s perfect, and edited, and whatever else. You contact an agent, and since you are not supposed to contact multiple agents at once, you wait, and you wait, and you wait, but you never get a reply, so after three months, you figure you can query another agent…but they don’t reply, so you wait another three month, query another agent, and a month later, they are kind enough to tell they are not interested. It’s a hassle, so you figure you’ll send your manuscript to Baen Books, but you are not supposed to query more than one publisher at a time, so you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and a whole year goes by, and they don’t reply, so you figure it’s safe to query Rocking Horse, and after eight months, they are kind enough to let you know that they are not interested…. It’s a lot of wasted time, right? You can certainly keep writing in the meantime, and should keep writing, but if you released your debut novel on your own, during your two or three year wait period, you could be making some sales, enjoying your life as a writer, and making a name for yourself. Of course this means self publishing the first book, and writing the second book with the goal of achieving mainstream publication.

Now, do you remember the first few posts where it was stated that success means something different to different people? Do you remember where it was stated that being a successful writer is a lifestyle? Some people don’t want to parade across the country, selling books; some people just want to sit at home and write, and self publishing is great for that, but really, there is no reason to avoid trying one or the other.

If you can achieve major publication, that’s a surefire way to build a fan base, and then you can release whatever you want on your own, and keep all the money, but beware, there are some instances in some contracts where this is not allowed, so it may better to start off self publishing, and then trying the mainstream route.

Whatever you do; learn to write, build a fan base, hire an editor, and then do your research. For more information visit my Quora blogs,

https://www.quora.com/profile/Aaron-D...

or check out my Editing Services Tab.

http://www.storiesbydennis.com/?page_...

You can also flip through numerous posts right here, which will help you outline a strategy for achieving long term success through the consistent release of quality content. Thanks, I’ve been great.

If you're a writer, you write. It sounds simple enough, but there are many kinds of writing; be they personal, like a journal; be they artistic, like a fiction novel; be they formal, like a medical article.

Different kinds of writing require different kinds of description, and various intensities of description.

While this is not something a writer need concern themselves with while writing their work, this is something to consider after proofing, and yes; there's a big difference between proofreading and editing; editing is the art of changing a sequential series of events into a story worth reading.

Read the full article at Vocal

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