Independent author
To figure out why you should hire a professional editor for your novel, perhaps we should first look at why you shouldn’t do so. That because, well, it’s not at all cut and dried. Not everybody needs to put forth the effort, legwork and cold, hard cash to hire an editor for their novel. There are good reasons not to, and you might fit that profile. [Read more…] about Why Shouldn’t I Hire an Editor for My Novel?
Recently, I was told that you can tell a lot about an author by the villains they write into their stories. Maybe it does say something about you if your villains are always certain archetypes. It might say something about your past, or what your fears are, or the way your twisted little mind works.
When I heard that, though, what I thought about was, as much as I like the bad guy to win, I don’t really like “bad guys” all that much in my stories. That is to say, “bad guys” and “villains” tend to bore me a bit. I prefer a bit more complexity. At the very least, I’d like my antagonist to have some sort of logical basis for what he’s doing. I’d like him or her to be a sympathetic figure in at least some way. I think I crave moral ambiguity in my stories; I like for it to be totally defensible to root for the antagonist to win. [Read more…] about Do Away with Pesky Villains
In the pieces I’ve been writing so far, I haven’t exactly been shying away from tough scenes, death, sex, whatever. I don’t think you can write well if you’re scared of what your mom, or some random person with delicate sensibilities will think, and I’ve made every effort not to hold back.
However, in the book I just started reading, there’s an early scene that made me think there may be limits to that. I’m not going to go too deeply into the scene (Let’s just say it involved the potential apocalypse, and some panties from a laundry basket), but I’ll say that I wondered how necessary it was. Now, it’s possible that it will have an important role in building the character that was involved, in which case I’ll just have to revisit my thoughts on this, won’t I? [Read more…] about When Your Story Goes Too Far
After finishing up the rough draft of my first story, “Killing the Immortals,” a few weeks ago, I needed to kill some time while I got a bit of space from it. If you can help it, you never want to edit something you just wrote. It’s hard to catch all your stupid mistakes when you’re that close to it.
But I didn’t want to just sit here watching Netflix while it collected a bit of dust. So I immediately dove into writing a shorter piece that I could put in my bank for doing something with later. The working title for it is “Tomorrow’s News Today,” and it’s about a journalist who accidentally discovers that anything he writes will happen exactly as he wrote it. If someone compared it to a Twilight Zone episode, I’d be pretty damn pleased. Hell, let’s be honest, I’ll be happy if anyone is just willing to read it, especially if they pay to do so. But I’d definitely love to have people see a little Rod Serling there.
What I’ll do with it, I’m not quite sure. There are a few options: 1) Release it as a stand-alone work, probably charging $1.99 or $2.99 as a regular list price; 2) Keep writing these shorter pieces and package 4-5 of them into a collection that I release as a novel-length book that sells for $4.99 or so; 3) Keep it in my back pocket for potential entry into a contest or submission to go into an anthology when a publisher is looking for stories; 4) Give it away for free on my site, potentially for people to sign up for an email list I’ll be building soon. And, keep in mind, these aren’t mutually exclusive. I could, over time, do all four if I choose.
In the meantime, here’s a little tease to the story. Below, you can read the first few paragraphs of the rough draft, so you can get a look at the beginning, and the mood of the story: [Read more…] about My Next Short(er) Story
I’ve been asked a few times since starting my first book, “Where did you get your idea from?” I wish there were some simple answer, like “I had this amazing epiphany one day!” or “I went out to the idea tree and picked one.” I can confirm we do not have an idea tree, though I’m considering planting one in a few months. I hear they’re a spring/summer plant.
The answer on that particular idea is that I’ve always been fascinated by questions of “What would happen if …?” And, seeing as it’s basically a stated goal of modern medicine to cure every disease and keep people alive for as long as possible, this is a great “What if?” That would be to say, “What if we actually reached a goal we have?” It’s compelling to me because it’s a goal we have as a society, but I think it might cause a lot more problems if we achieved it. And my story is just about one problem I came up with. I thought of plenty more — from massive overcrowding in cities to healthcare distribution to resource depletion to restrictive family planning to all sorts of other issues — and I talk about some of them in the book because they have an impact on the story, but this was the one I thought translated the best as the main focus of a novel. Of course, it’s quite possible I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. [Read more…] about Where do Ideas Come From?
As I get closer to the editing phase of my story and this whole book thing becomes more real, I’m starting to think about some of the stuff beyond writing that goes along with putting a book into the market that will hopefully maybe possibly start selling a few copies … beyond the 50 or so my mom will buy just out of sheer excitement.
Of course, the writing matters. The story matters. But I’m not sure it matters as much as many think. I doubt you’ll hear this a lot on writing blogs, but the quality of your story isn’t going to be that big of a factor when it comes to selling books. That’s partially because “quality of your story” is really objective; what I think is a great story, you might think is trite and boring. For example, my fiancee thinks “Pulp Fiction” is boring and “The Big Lebowski” is stupid. Let’s just say we don’t see quite eye to eye on those two. Are those “quality stories”? I think most people would say they very much are, but not to her. What does that mean? Not much, other than it’s all subjective.
It’s mostly, though, because, as long as there’s some redeeming quality in your work, there’s probably a potential market out there for it. Thousands of romance and cozy-mystery stories I’d find to be laughably bad sell massive numbers of books every week. There are millions of readers out there; not everybody wants to read Cormac McCarthy or Jonathan Franzen. Not everybody wants you to challenge them. Some just want a 125-page quick read they can knock out at the beach, or before bed.
So, if not quality writing, what are the three most important factors that will go into selling your book? [Read more…] about Three Most Important Factors for Selling Books