Creating Your Villain, tips from Donald Maass

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This post, from Debby Atkinson, originally appeared on the Type M For Murder blog on 10/21/09.

It’s Debby this morning, just returned from Bouchercon, where Sisters in Crime sponsored a terrific seminar, titled SinC into Great Writing. The headline speaker was literary agent Donald Maas, who gave so many great tips on improving our WIP’s that I couldn’t write fast enough. Here are some of his suggestions about how to create a stronger antagonist.

Think through your novel and ask yourself who it is who most impedes your protagonist. Is it your villain? Maybe, but maybe not. Get to know your villain and/or antagonist. What does he do? What kind of job does she have? What kind of haircut? How does he dress? Fastidiously, or like an aging hippie? Is she married, does she cheat on her husband? How many kids? Any quirks? Beware of cliches, though.

Now put this person in a situation where he or she demonstrates the exact opposite of the portrait you’ve painted. If he cheats on his wife, have him shower her with love and respect in a certain situation. Have a fussy person show up unkempt and disheveled. Show insecurities, have her be hard working, let him examine his own limits.

Examine her world view. Is it correct in some ways? How? What people in your novel agree with him? Who in history has seen things the way your antagonist sees them? Has it been good or bad? Show some good qualities in the antagonist: respect for authority, working for what she believes in. What writing or philosophy justifies his thinking? What are her religious values and how does she demonstrate them? You can even use a bible passage, and Maass named a reference book called the Thompson Chain Reference Bible to help find appropriate ones. (I’d never heard of this. I guess it’s like Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations for the Bible.)
 

Read the rest of the post on Type M For Murder, and see these related posts on the same site.

Why Creating A New Habit Is So Hard

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This post, from Alex Schleber, originally appeared on his Business Mind Hacks blog on 9/30/09. It seems particularly apt with so many Publetarians trying to get into the habit of writing every day to complete their NaNoWriMo novels!

Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.com recently writes in his post The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior:

3. Do a 30-day Challenge. In my experience, it takes about 30 days to change a habit, if you’re focused and consistent. This is a round number and will vary from person to person and habit to habit.

Often you’ll read a magical “21 days” to change a habit, but this is a myth with no evidence. […] A more recent study shows that 66 days [may be] a better number […] But 30 days is a good number to get you started. Your challenge: stick with a habit every day for 30 days, and post your daily progress updates to a forum.

The reason why it takes at least around 30 days to form a new habit is a process in the brain called "myelination".

It’s the process of your mind forming a certain kind of sheathing around the neurons involved in a habitual thought or behavior, which acts in a way like electrical insulating tape: It makes the electrical impulses travel faster, thereby speeding up the functioning of the entire neural network involved.

Myelin is a whitish substance that actually gives the brain its typical color. Now before your eyes glaze over about this Brain Biology 101 stuff, think about why this is so important for all manner of changing old behaviors into new ones:

When a mental block of any kind is released, or on old way of doing things is unhinged, the new neural network connections that formed to make this happen are extremely tender at first. "Green shoots" are rock solid by comparison.

This is why a new behavior feels so difficult at first: It isn’t ingrained yet.

Due to the lack of the myelin the signals are traveling slowly and precariously. But if you keep at it and thereby keep tracing the new path, your mind will get the message and "grease the groove" of that neural network. Until the speeds are up to 200 times faster!

Only problem is, it takes at least 30 days to complete myelination to the extent that the new habit is really starting to become a habit. Anytime before then there is the danger of the new habit formation being abandoned. And of course, the myelination process may continue for quite some time after the first 30 days.

Read the rest of the post, which includes a link to a related article by Daniel Coyle, on Business Mind Hacks. And hang in there, NaNoWriMo’ers: by the end of November, you’ll have a completed novel and an ingrained writing habit!

Come With A Manuscript, Leave With The Knowledge And Confidence To Publish And Promote Effectively—And A Tan!

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The Stem-To-Stern Workshop Cruise will be taking place 10/10/10 – 10/17/10, and just $25 paid to AAA Travel holds your spot on the cruise roster until May 6, 2010. It’s a weeklong cruise vacation, and intensive writers’ workshop series, and private consulting sessions, all combined into a single, affordable trip for writers!

During the week of October 10, 2010, you can:

 

Learn  POD Publishing, Ebook Publishing, Podcasting For Authors, and Author Platform/Book Promotion from leading experts Kirk Biglione, April L. Hamilton, Seth Harwood, Kassia Krozser and Joshua Tallent in a setting where attendance is limited to 30.
 

Consult with the presenter of your choice about your specific book, project or questions in a 45-minute, one-on-one coaching session**.
**signups limited to 6 sessions per presenter; presenter choice granted on a first-come, first-served basis with top priority going to fully paid workshop registrants
 

Socialize with your fellow conference attendees and workshop presenters at 3 on-board social mixers. These get-togethers will be a great opportunity to get to know your fellow attendees and workshop presenters better, and talk to presenters about any questions or concerns that haven’t been addressed in workshop sessions.
 

Travel the Mexican Riveria, with stops in Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas! All workshops are scheduled for at-sea days, so attendees will be free to go ashore and take advantage of any optional shore excursions offered by Carnival Cruises.
 

Enjoy unlimited meals, snacks and onboard activities (fitness center, games, pools, jacuzzi, water slide, mini golf, movies on the jumbotron at poolside in the evenings, much more) all included in the price of the cruise!
 

It’s a weeklong vacation with intensive workshops and private consulting, room and board and all onboard meals included, with pricing as low as $1169 for the cruise and workshop fee combined! You could easily pay that much for a weeklong cruise vacation alone, or workshops and private consulting alone, but if you attend the Stem-To-Stern Workshop Cruise, you’ll get both! 

Don’t miss this terrific opportunity to get twice the bang for your vacation and writer workshop buck. Click here to view full details on important dates, workshops, pricing options, presenters, a full cruise itinerary and details of how to get your deposit in to reserve a spot on the cruise.

Why You Need To Fail

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This article, from Peter Bregman, originally appeared on The Harvard Business Publishing site on 7/6/09. While it was originally written with business executives in mind, the information presented here is equally helpful to authors who are struggling with setbacks—who are, after all, businesspeople too.

"Peter, I’d like you to stay for a minute after class." Calvin teaches my favorite body conditioning class at the gym.

"What’d I do?" I asked him.

"It’s what you didn’t do."

"What didn’t I do?"

"Fail."

"You kept me after class for not failing?"

"This," he began to mimic my casual weight lifting style, using weights that were obviously too light, "is not going to get you anywhere. A muscle only grows if you work it till it fails. You need to use more challenging weights. You need to fail."

Calvin’s onto something.

Every time I ask a room of executives to list the top five moments their career took a leap forward — not just a step, but a leap — failure is always on the list. For some it was the loss of a job. For others it was a project gone bad. And for others still it was the failure of a larger system, like an economic downturn, that required them to step up.

Yet most of us spend a tremendous effort trying to avoid even the possibility of failure.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University, we have a mindset problem. Dweck has done a tremendous amount of research to understand what makes someone give up in the face of adversity versus strive to overcome it.

It turns out the answer is deceptively simple. It’s all in your head.

If you believe that your talents are inborn or fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. People with a fixed mindset like to solve the same problems over and over again. It reinforces their sense of competence.

Children with fixed mindsets would rather redo an easy jigsaw puzzle than try a harder one. Students with fixed mindsets would rather not learn new languages. CEOs with fixed mindsets will surround themselves with people who agree with them. They feel smart when they get it right.

But if you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.
 

Read the rest of the article on The Harvard Business Publishing site.

What Is NaNoWriMo?

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This post, from Chris Baty, originally appeared on the NaNoWriMo site.

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

Read the rest of the post on NaNoWriMo, the official site of NaNoWriMo, which provides many useful NaNoWriMo tips and articles as well as a NaNoWriMo writer discussion forum. Publetariat Editor’s Note: NaNoWriMo fun fact: Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel, Water For Elephants (soon to be a major motion picture), began life as a NaNoWriMo novel. 

Hi folks

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My name is Brent Robison and this summer I published my short story collection, The Principle of Ultimate Indivisibility.  Looking forward to learning here!

My publishing company: http://blissplotpress.com

My blog: http://brentrobison.blogspot.com

 

Publishers’ Bad Habits, Now Glutting the iPhone

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This post, from Ryan Chapman, originally appeared on his Chapman/Chapman blog on 11/3/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Publishers are hungry for as much data as they can get on how the written word is consumed online and on mobile devices. (Or they better be.) Unfortunately, honey traps abound which lead to specious logic and flawed conclusions. Take the latest stats from the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. In October there were more new book apps than gaming apps, the previous top category. Gizmodo succinctly phrased this as “iPhone Ebooks: The New Fart Apps.”

O’Reilly’s Ben Lorica, possibly my favorite media statistician on the web, breaks this down even further, noting the quantity of book apps does nothing more than glut the app store. Games continue to outsell and outrank books on almost every metric. (See Lorica’s chart.)

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: you can click on the chart below to go to Lorica’s post (in a new window), which has a larger version of the chart.]

O'Reilly Radar

And let’s not forget that several of the top paid children’s book apps, like Duck Duck Moose’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider“, are listed in the games category. And why not? For picture books with light animation, the distinction between “book” and “game” disappears.

What we’re really seeing is a recreation of the industry’s bad habits in the App Store.

I subscribe to the belief that the print book industry is suffering from publishing too many books. The average reader is easily overwhelmed, and so relies on their friends and trusted sources to discern what’s worth reading. This would work if everyone’s friends weren’t increasingly interested in other, more exciting media, and if the notion of a trusted source remained static. We all know a front-page rave in the New York Times Book Review doesn’t mean what it used to. The most common reason cited by friends why they don’t read as many books as they used to? It’s impossible to know what’s good. Every week another 25 “amazing literary debuts” and “spellbinding journeys of the heart” and “adventures into the mysterious underworld of sexy vampires.”

…So before I go off on a rant, I’ll just say this: we’ve done the same thing to the app store that we’ve done to the book market. I counted over 600 book apps a few weeks ago. iTunes isn’t built for browsing or highlighting apps specific to your taste. If you’re not in the top ten in your category, you’re sunk. If you’re a publicist with a debut author, this should sound familiar.

Which is where marketing comes in, right? It’s not enough to create the app, you have to tell people about it. You have to put in the work and find that audience.

Well, yes and no. Of course marketing and publicity are important — you don’t think T-Pain and Smule made $3 million purely on word-of-mouth, do you? But publishers need to rethink the book apps the same way they need to rethink the print market. Don’t just wrap your ebook in a reader template and shove it off to customers. They’re used to playing games, watching video, checking the weather, and using Shazam, Skype, and Evernote on this device. It’s on us, the publishers, to rise to that new consumer expectation. (Nick Cave’s Death of Bunny Munro app is a step in the right direction, though 894MBs is a bit cumbersome.)

Writing Formulas As Guides

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This article, from Gloria T. Delmar, originally appeared on the Philadelphia Writers Conference site in 1998.

The idea of "writing to formula" turns off many writers. But the fact is, that most writing does indeed fall into certain broad "concepts" or "plans." It’s not counter- productive to understand these accepted schemes for making a piece of writing make sense for the intended reader (and first, the intended editor). Don’t let yourself get locked into seeing formulas or concepts as negative; the reason they’ve been defined is because they work–and that’s positive synthesis.

Mathematical Patterns Applied to Fiction

1+1=2
 This equation represents the "satisfying" or "happy-ending."
At least three-fourths of all modern, commercial short stories and a large percentage of longer stories, are written on this pattern.
1-1=0
 This equation represents the "unresolved" or "fitting punishment ending."
A much smaller percentage of "literary" stories follow this pattern.
"1" represents basic emotions:
 love, hate, fear, anger, courage, security, greed, piety, pride, honor, generosity, miserliness, honesty, good, evil, friendship, ambition, desire, patriotism, etc.
or conditioned emotions:
parental love, sacred love, profane love, etc. (ETC. for all basic emotions.)

To make a strong story, you need a strong conflict between two emotions. You can match two simple emotions, two conditioned emotions, or a simple emotion and a conditioned one. Though the + or – signs in the mathematical pattern might be read as "versus" the "plus" and "minus" concepts reflect the nature of the problems and conflict, and forecast the outcome.

Short Story:
Single viewpoint character: entire story takes place in a short period of time;
Single plot: focuses on a single theme.
Novel:
May be single or multiple viewpoint (but one viewpoint per scene); story may take place in a short period of time or range over years; may have main lot plus several sub- plots; may focus on a single theme overall, or include more than one.

Aristotle’s Rules of Tragedy

amagmorsis:
revelation of true identity of person previously unknown.
catharsis:
arousal of pity and fear to enlarge spectator’s outlook.
hamartia:
called "tragic flow" inherent defect in the hero.
periteteia:
shift of the tragic hero’s fortune from good to bad.
verisimilitude:
"resemblance of reality" in drama or non-drama.

Read the rest of the article, which includes The Who What When Where Why and How formula, The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, The Seven Deadly Sins and The Seven Deadly Sins of Writers, on the Philadelphia Writers Conference site.

Grisham Spills The Beans…

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I just got up after watching a short segment of the Today Show.  Usually there’s not much of interest for me anymore on NBC mornings, but this morning, Matt Lauer, interviewing John Grisham about his newest book, a collection of short stories, turned from the standard book tour interview to a hard question.  It dealt with a recent Court case involving writers who are fed up with the retail sales tactics of  a few giants and box stores.  In John Girsham’s case, his hard cover new book, with a list price of $24.00 is being sold at Walmart and Amazon, among others, for …$9.95.

Matt Lauer wanted to know what Grisham thought of the case, which uses the language "predatory sales tactics".  Grisham admitted that it wouldn’t affect him much in the short term, but when he considered the long-term effects, the interview got interesting.  Mr. Grisham, openly pronounced that for new or future writers, this practice will make it very hard to impossible for them to be published.  There is nothing made when a book that costs the publisher a certain amount to produce is sold for way less than what its cost.  To paraphrase, he indiacted that in his opinion, this kind of tactic will shake the industry to it’s knees, eventually. Even when the sales quantities are considerable, the margin has disappeared.  The margin is what fuels publishing’s ability to test new authors work.  It gives them the room to provide publishing homes for new voices, and without it, there will be little attention given to emerging writers. 

It turns out, according to Mr. Grisham’s comments, that the business of selling books has a great deal more impact on whether your book will be published than many of us believed. 

Massive discount tactics have already destroyed the once-great American Department Store Retail culture.  There are no more merchants out there at all, just perpetual motion operations that desperately must keep the goods moving or perish — similar to the old notion of how sharks swim forward all the time to stay alive.  It’s about time that a respected author turn some of his attention to some of the ills that are in the process of destroying publishing as we know it.  He also spoke of the pending collapse of many publishers and established book sellers who wil be unable to compete with the box stores and online merchants.  This is already happening in spades.

He closed, by saying, that his book, "is worth $24." 

Readers should be willing to pay someone for their creative work, and if it means paying the author directly, that day may well come.  That bodes well for Indie Authors who can produce a high-quality product at a reasonable price…and can hang in a bit longer, until the dust settles.

 

What The Hell Does "Well Written" Mean?

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This post originally appeared on the Mysterious Matters blog on 10/9/09; the author wishes to remain anonymous.

So, everyone says that for a book to get agented and published, it has to be "well written."  I’m not sure that is 100% true – we can all think of people who have made the best-seller lists whose books are competently, or borderline-competently written, but not WELL written.

However, I think it’s fairly safe to say that if you are an unknown (i.e., non-celebrity, non-politician, non-sportstype, non-CEO), your manuscript has to be well written.  This is one of those terms, I realize, that is bandied about without ever being quite defined.  I suppose we could say it’s like pornography – we know it when we see it – but I thought I’d try to come up with a more specific definition.

So, in my opinion, well written means the following:

1.  Properly spelled, grammatically correct, with punctuation in the right place.  This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for good writing.  I think a lot of us can put up with an occasional typo in a manuscript.  Everyone’s human, and God knows that after looking at the same manuscript every day for a year, a writer can be forgiven for a misspelling or a missing comma.  I do think most of us see beyond that.  But multiple errors in the first few pages signal a generally low level of competence and cause us to tune out.  (Case in point, so that I can get down off my high horse – in Meredith Phillips’ guest blog from last week, I had several typos in my introduction and conclusion that Meredith herself pointed out to me!  Slightly embarrassing, to say the least.)

2. Good variety in sentence and paragraph structure.  I sometimes see manuscripts that are 300 pages of simple declarative sentences.  That might be OK for children’s or YA adult books (though I doubt it), but it won’t fly in an adult novel.  Please give me some dependent clauses, some participial phrases, some gerunds or infinitive phrases.  Ask a rhetorical question or two.  Vary sentence style and paragraph length (especially paragraph length!  300 pages of 3-sentence paragraphs makes your book look like it suffers from ADD.  300 pages of multi-page paragraphs makes it look as though you’ve channeled James Joyce, most likely not on his best day.)

3. Simple, effective description.  I always feel that the best writers evoke a scene, a character, or a characteristic in a minimum of space.  I like a sentence or two of description–and then get on with it.  For more complicated locations or items that are intrinsic to plot, longer description is fine.  I like to see similes, etc., in descriptions–something other than telling me how big the thing is, and what color.  I also feel that, from a reader’s viewpoint, a simple sketch lets readers fill in the details and makes the book more absorbing.

Read the rest of the post, which includes points 4-8, on Mysterious Matters.

Roland Denning And, Quite Possibly, The Best Non-Book-Trailer Ever

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You may not have heard of Roland Denning yet, but his hilarious non-book-trailers (On Meeting An Agent, Parts 1-8) are rapidly becoming the stuff of retweet and link-sharing legend. I first learned of the video clips via a tweet from Debbie Ridpath Ohi. Debbie is the artist behind the Will Write For Chocolate and Inkygirl comics. If you use Twitter, I highly recommend following Debbie because she tweets boatloads of great links for writers and publishers. Now, getting back to Roland…

After viewing the clips, I knew I wanted to interview Roland. Not only are his videos entirely relatable for any writer who’s ever queried on a manuscript, they’re very, very funny. The films are book trailers in the sense that they were created in order to promote Roland’s book, The Beach Beneath The Pavement, and there is a brief mention of the book at the end of each film, but the films themselves don’t have anything to do with the content of the book.

Watch On Meeting An Agent yourself (broken up into parts 1-5 and 6-8 in the YouTube videos below), then read my interview with Roland afterward to learn more about the films and their creator.

Why did you decide to create the clips?
I started playing around with the software, then they just seemed to emerge into a series. Then I realised it could be a promotional tool for my book as well as an entertainment.

Did you hire someone to do the animations, or did you create them yourself?
I did it all myself. I am, as it happens, a professional filmmaker. But these were made with some incredibly easy free on-line software (xtranormal.com) which means I could make each one in about 3 to 4 hours from conception to going on line, except the final episode which integrates live action and took a couple of days. (Bugger, I shouldn’t have told you that. You’ll all be doing it now). The problem with the software, brilliant though it is, is that it is very limited. The animations all come out looking very similar. I think I’ve been lucky in that, as far as I know, I’m the first to use it in this context.

How true-to-life are the clips? Did you try to more or less repeat conversations you had with real people verbatim, or did you take some artistic license?
It’s fiction. I made it up! Perhaps it was a mistake to give the robot the same name as me. No, really, the phrases came from real life (‘I didn’t love your book enough’ etc) and real conversations, but I’m not really bitter. The agent I met was extremely nice. I was just a little disappointed. But ‘disappointed’ isn’t funny. ‘Violently bitter’ is. It does reflect some of things I’ve gone through, like you think your book is definitely finished, an agent has a few ‘issues’ with it, you find yourself re-writing the whole damned thing, then you tell yourself that’s what you were going to do anyway.

Don’t you think that’s one of the inevitable factors of being an author, oscillating between total self-belief and self-loathing? Or is that just me?
 
Did you release the clips primarily in order to drive more book sales, to attract mainstream publisher attention, or for some other reason?
Primarily I made them because I enjoyed them. After spending so long writing the book, they came as a light relief. It was only after I started making them I saw the marketing potential.

How did you go about raising awareness of the clips?
I just sent them to a few literary blogs, and sites such as yours and they began to take off.

Have you seen an increase in book sales since releasing the clips?
Too early to say. They’ve only been out a couple of weeks and it takes longer than that for the sales figures to get back to Lulu (who did the POD).

In the clips, there’s some joking about the avalanche of self-published books, and an implication that many of them are of poor quality. What led you to finally choose the indie path, given that you seem to have a somewhat skeptical view of self-publishing?
Well Lulu publishes 1000 new titles A DAY. Clearly, they are not all masterpieces. But the point I was really making was – how the hell can you get noticed when literally thousands of authors are clamouring for attention at the same time? The POD revolution is great, all the mechanisms of the web to promote stuff are great EXCEPT it’s getting exponentially harder for each book to get attention, let alone a sale. I think it’s easy to think that when your name is known around a few writers sites, when you get mentioned on literary blogs, the world knows all about you. But sometimes the internet can be a very small place – or, rather, you can be stuck up a tiny little cul-de-sac and not realise it.

To answer the second part of your question, I’m still sending my chapters out to agents (a revised version, without the problematic second chapter!) as well promoting my self-published version.

Roland Denning was born and lives in North London. He studied philosophy at university but has got over it now.
Most of his life has been spent working on the fringes of the film and television industries and in the arts.
The Beach Beneath The Pavement is his first novel.

Designing Books

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The title refers to two types of book designing:

  • Book Interiors
  • Book Covers

Book Interiors

The design and layout of a book is both art and practicality. It’s important that art is pleasing, but it should not get in the way of a designer’s mission. I’m sure most of us have seen books where the design became so complex or even jarring that it became distracting. Better that the art be plain but subtly supportive. If the book is a military thriller about snipers, it would be appropriate to use a small rifle scope’s crosshairs as a text break or as a small decorative by the page number. A fantasy based in Olde England might be well served with a celtic decorative capital letter for a drop cap. This is what I mean when I say supportive of the book’s theme.

The selection of fonts must balance and make sense, with none over-riding the others for attention. Most importantly is their practical importance of enhancing readability while subtlety supporting the book’s theme. Font selection also has direct impact on page count, and therefore, production affordability. When I work with a client, I see the decisions about all these elements and more parts of an iterative process. Design suggestions go back and forth with the client involved at every step for his education and acknowledgement that she is the boss who has to live with the resulting product. A designer should never attempt to force a design without giving good reasons.

Book Cover Design

First, let me acknowledge to the world I am no artist or illustrator. Instead, I am a book retailer , an author, a publisher, and a book reviewer. Last year, I was one of three judges of fiction book cover judges for the Ben Franklin Awards. In other years, I have also judged the writing in general fiction and mystery/thriller categories. What has been gratifying is that in every case and every category, the three judges all picked at least 2 of the top 3 choices in the blind with no knowledge of or communication among one another. What that says is, the cream will rise to the top. That is certainly the case for book cover designs.

Here is where I have to put on my retailer hat. The next time you’re in a bookstore, watch the shoppers. See what catches their eyes. Observe what draws them to pick out a book from the shelf (even those with only their spines showing). How far away were they? What didn’t they pick up? This is all about marketability. In an earlier blog I talked about getting seen above the grass. That is what takes place literally.

Color and graphics and treatment of fonts matter. This is definitely the realm of the artist; however, that person must be both excellent at her craft and understand how to portray the book’s theme visually. Recently, vampires are all the rage. That’s a very dark theme! Unfortunately, the covers end up being very dark, if not black, as well. The next time you’re in that bookstore, notice how much alike they all look. Is that being seen above the grass? Nope! What if on that black background there was a profusion of yellows and oranges (flames of hell perhaps)? What if the evil vampire has a purple cloak with gold ornaments and the threatened heroine is dressed in virginal white? Wouldn’t that be more eye catching and distinctive. Could someone see that from 10 feet away and find it more enticing to one’s curiosity apart from the other vampire books surrounding it?

Bright, varied colors work well, and so do light backgrounds with simple designs. Whatever the genre, your design needs to be somewhat different from other books that may physically surround it on the shelf.

Again, I am not a cover designer. I job that task out to illustrators to whom I have given the above lesson. That has worked well for us. I stand in awe of visually oriented talented people. I’m a writer and a musician, but I’m also a communicator. All these elements have to play together for successful book presentation, marketing, readability, and putting the readers in the right frame of mind. Help them escape into the magic of the book!

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear’s Book Trends blog.

Learning to Wait…

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This is a general, rambling comment covering some of the more touchy-feely components of setting up a marketing plan.  I prefer a more organic approach rather than the nice, crisp document with all the numbers in a row.  They have their place, but if you have an interest in developing your ability to perceive your market better, read on…

“Millions Sold!” Remember the little tag line that used to be seen between the Golden Arches under every McDonalds Hamburger Sign? Just knowing that …millions…of people had purchased and eaten these “bombes du gut” really made your mouth just water, didn’t it? It also made established two implications. First, that the burger was good. Second, that if you didn’t scarf one up, you were cutting yourself off from…millions of people. Millions.

I receive the Daily Email from Publisher’s Weekly. As an Indie Author, I find it about 50-50 with subjects of direct interest and entertainment. Today, (I’m getting a head-start by actually beginning on Friday for tomorrow’s article.) the banner ad running across the top of the email was for “NY Times Bestselling Series” Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead! Then, just below – and I realize the PW is a TRADE publication for those that sell books – ran the slogan, “Over 2 Million Books Sold!” 

Not to disregard the money to be made in the Vampire Genre, by booksellers hungry for every sale, but it really did remind me of McDonalds’ advertising. Brings P.T.Barnum to mind. I won’t be scarfing up any Vampire bestsellers right now, and I don’t care if I’m ostracized from millions of sold readers. I don’t write Vampire. After Stoker – good, tasty stuff – I won’t be reading Vampire either, no offense intended to Anne Rice, who launched this amazing fountain of gold, then exited holding a huge bag of cash.

 

So, if you write and enjoy Vampire Genre, my column may not give you any new marketing ideas.  You’ve been lucky enough to hit upon a trend.  Being light on your feet and enjoy lucky timing is a rare and can be a profitable blend of skills, but it might not be something you can learn.  It may not be sanguine enough, or sexy enough, or….you get the idea. Still, the idea of Millions Sold…Millions! Just the thought makes my mouth water for the griddle-fried goodness!

 

Most of us who write fiction in niche genres, creating prose with a unique voice know or rather, should know we won’t be selling millions. It’s not a bad thing, after all – it’s just such a distant prospect that we tend to dismiss the possibility. Along with appearing on Oprah every other month.  We have more realistic ideas — the ones we can actually help create, if we can be patient.

 

The Zen of Waiting…

 

It can be tough, waiting for recognition and the resulting book sales, but while we do wait, we should not be waiting idly. Waiting is an activity, after all. I remember when I was in College, investigating whole new worlds of thinking I found Zen Buddhism particularly interesting. One of the major pathways that Zen can use to lead you to enlightenment is to learn how to wait. It was also covered in great detail in Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, which in the day, was to my generation what Vampire Academy and it’s like, must be to the current crop.

 

There is an important lesson to training yourself to be occupied with the activity of waiting. Waiting allows you to quiet all the background noise and actually observe what is happening around you. If done with deliberate non-focus – deliberate non-attachment, it can lead to all kinds of new awareness. It works in meditation. It works in business. It works in the creative process.

 

While waiting, we can learn techniques which will sharpen our ability to sense opportunity. Now, I’ve let a lot of opportunities slip away, over the years – I’m not a master in any way. Yet. As an Indie Author, not everything remotely literary/publishing-oriented will relate to my personal path towards my goals. Some things will. Those are the ones I don’t want to miss. I know I’ll miss plenty – I just want to pare down the numbers to improve my chances.

 

Mientras Descansas Hace Adobes

 

This is an old, New Mexican “dicho” or saying, handed down through the years. It was meant to be a final comment made by a husband, to his wife as he left the family home for a day of work. It’s supposed to be a kind of joke. Sometimes, we’ve seen it inscribed on a tile or embroidered on a sampler, then hundg up near the door. Translated, it means “While you’re resting, make adobes!” Adobes being the 40 pound mud and straw bricks that are left to bake in the sun. Not exactly the kind of job done while “resting”, but the saying applies equally well to Indie Authors. While you’re resting….

 

One of the first things you need is a set of goals. Not one. Several. These should be visualized as a series of steps that lead to different places you want to reach. For example, good (insert number here) bookstore sales may be a goal that takes several different paths to reach. Another, better (insert cogent qualifier here) recognition, also may be achieved through different steps and tools. Let’s assume here, that you don’t have several hundred dollars burning a hole in your pocket to spend on a retained publicist. I can’t afford that expense, so it’s been up to me to find ways of getting the word out while I’m waiting. That, and making sure that what the word conveys, is what the reader wants to hear.

 

The first step…

 

Making sure you understand what your readers want to read is step one. In the same way we tried to visualize and quantify our readers and booksellers (if we seek to sell to book stores) when designing our book cover, we need to hold those ideas close when we wait to see what is working out there. Think: My Book’s Niche. How are our readers and potential customers (booksellers, who are also readers) different from those who won’t even consider reading our books. Try to answer those questions by observing – at a relaxed pace – what the media is dishing, what the niche-forums are spouting, what “people” (insert appropriate adjective that relates to your readers here) are talking about. What are their concerns? Why are they reading at all, assuming they are.

 

I have a group of bookmarks in a special folder on my browser named “Book Marketing” in it I put links to forums, book seller sites, publishers sites, other writers sites and anything else whose subject works towards the subjects or settings in my book that may attract potential readers. I visit these every couple of days – sometimes I post a comment, sometimes not, but I try to get a general idea of what’s cooking.

 

I pay special attention to anything which uses keywords also found in my books. If a forum offers a keyword search, I’ll use that, along with my trusty list of ten keywords that pertain to my work and I’ll limit the time frame to the last two or so days. If I find a lot of activity, I might go back into the threads, but I try not to get too ensnared. I actually do try to remain somewhat disconnected, so my own inner demons don’t trip me. Forums that specifically deal with subjects that create dissenting opinion may be entertaining, but the egos fly fast and furious, and the useable lessons may not be as easy to parse through. But, if you have a competitive nature, and like to see the fur fly, this may produce useable results for you, depending on what you write, and who your reader is.

 

I also like to visit libraries, and ask librarians what’s being checked out in similar genres of fiction. Have they noticed any sudden shifts? Do these shifts always follow the marketing pushes from publishers? Try to notice readers, while you’re in a library or bookstore. Are they quietly reading, or are they casting around for contact or experience? Do they look at posters or other marketing materials, or do they seem to be on a mission, heading directly to what they want, and then, leave just as fast, book in hand?

 

Bookstores also now provide coffee bars and cafe environments which can be very useful in catching interesting comments – even if just to see what’s being read. If you’re not shy, you might even engage readers – and find out many things you can use to train your ability to understand YOUR reader better. Most people, unless engaged in conversation, will react positively if you ask their opinion about something. That’s what Marketing Research Firms count on, and so should you. It makes the “subject” feel important. You may get more information than you need, but it may be useful later on – you never know.

 

Ask ’em Questions…

 

It’s a good idea to keep any interview conversations spontaneous and light-weight and on-target, so that it will be a simple matter to decide when your part of it is over, and you can move on – unless the entanglement is appealing to you. I am a better observer usually than I am an “interviewer”, but you may be better at conversation. Use what you are good at, and improve those areas that need improving, by doing. You should learn to observe and retain information until you are able to spot your reader by sight alone — probably not possible, but you get the idea.

 

Everyone has lots of characteristics that betray their inner selves – for example, if you write about driving on the Nascar circuit, your reader may indeed by wearing a specific team hat, or T-Shirt. I’m not sure specifically what your reader would do to betray their interest if you write Vampire Novels, but there would be signs. These signs are often referred to in Poker-playing circles as “tells”. Few players can eliminate all of them, thereby being “unreadable”. Outside of Poker, most folks like their “tells” displayed proudly. Good for them – good for you.

 

As you learn to wait effectively, you’ll begin to amass a great deal of data and understanding. The better you know your prospective reader – customer – the easier it will be to make the sale. As a producer of goods (Indie Author)you have the additional opportunity of massaging your product to appeal directly to any or all of the “tells” your customers display. Specific, salient selling points that will satisfy their needs in a good read. Now, unless you’re producing hamburgers, of course, you’ll still want to retain your own voice, and your own story ideas, but inserting an occasional piece of juicy fruit or candy into a cake never made the cake less tasty.

 

The Recipe…

 

Begin to think of the “ingredients” that your readers will be hoping to discover in your writing. List them. Train yourself to learn to see them in other contexts, in other writer’s work, in discussions. If you can do this, then you can gently guide your story’s appeal without making it seem false, or over-reaching. The chances are, you already have quite a few of them in your work, as it’s come from your imagination – full of the things that appeal to, or are frightening to, or are of interest to….you.

 

Enjoy the scenery.

 

You’ll learn to wait in different places. You’ll learn to wait while engaged in all kinds of other work. Multi-tasking is possible, if you don’t try to do too much at once –even for men. Now, in case you think I’m suggesting you become a spy – that’s not what we’re doing here. You’re an interacting human being, not a recording device. Besides, words are your favorite medium. Your interactions, past and present with other humans gives an honest voice to your writing. If you were doing market research for a particular tool, for example, you’d clearly want to know what users liked and disliked about the tools they use as well as the tool you have designed or are trying to sell. Sometimes you ask, other times, you listen. It’s a simple matter of quantifying the results to help refine the tool to be positioned properly for the market.

 

Writing is an interactive, yet singular activity. So is reading. Writers read. Readers ….well, some readers, write. You have a lot in common with your readers, mostly those things are the key to making your writing rewarding, both to you and to your readers. Rewarding writing is appealing to booksellers, even eBook sellers. If all the ingredients are in the mix, and the product satisfies the market, then all you need to do next, is let ’em know. No small task, but made easier by you’re having learned that waiting isn’t down-time. The ongoing task of selling your book, unless you have a publisher willing to do it for you (pretty small chances out there for that kind of commitment these days) will become easier the more you practice it. Like Zen. Learning to sit and …be.

 

Now go out and grab a nice, juicy cheeseburger. You’ve earned it! Oh, and make some adobes.

Next Week: We learn to narrow down the number of targets while waiting for success to improve our aim and our scoring.

 

 

#fridayflash: Pets

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“Honey, if you don’t feed it, it’ll die like the last one.”

“But Mom,” Garrett whined, as only an eight year old can, “every time I go near the cage it goes crazy and tries to escape. Or kill me.”

She finished rinsing the dishes, dried her hands and turned to face him. “You have to approach it slowly and speak to it in a soft, reassuring voice. If you’re nice to it, it’ll learn to trust you.”

Garrett sighed and looked doubtful. “It’s just mean, Mom.”

“No, it’s just frightened. Try to look at it from the other side. How would you feel if you saw your mom and dad die, then someone grabbed you, took you away from your home and put you in a cage in a strange place?”

“I didn’t mean to kill the mom and dad, it was an accident.”

“I know, and that’s why you’re trying to take care of…what name did you give it?”

“Freckles.”

“That’s why you’re trying to take care of Freckles, to do the right thing.”

Garrett laid his head on the table and began tracing invisible patterns on the wood with an index finger. “Freckles hates me. He hates me the same as all the other ones did.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” She took a seat next to Garrett and lifted his chin in her hand. “Nobody could hate you.”

He smiled, only a little.

She let go of his chin and straightened in her chair. “Now, how’s Freckles’ leg doing?”

“I dunno, I can’t get close enough to see.”

She stood and clasped Garrett’s hand, pulling him up. “Come on, let’s go check it out together.”

They left the warm kitchen and crossed the large, chilly expanse of overgrown field behind the house. When they reached the faded barn, she pulled a key from her pocket and fitted it to the lock. As the door swung open, Freckles let out a caterwaul.

“Freckles?” she asked, gently. Kindly.

Inside the cage, Freckles looked a mess. He was very dirty, and it was obvious his crushed leg was beyond repair. She stooped to kneel next to the cage and carefully reached in to stroke Freckles’ head. Freckles snatched her hand and bit her, hard enough to draw blood.

She withdrew with a yelp. “Freckles! Bad!" she yelled. "Bad boy!”

“See?” Garrett asked. “He’s mean, like I told you.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, shaking her head with regret and applying pressure to her bleeding hand. “And I don’t think that leg will ever heal.”

“Do we have to—”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “I think so, honey. I’m sorry, but it’s the humane thing to do.”

Garrett hung his head and began to cry softly as she crossed the barn, lifted the rifle from the wall and loaded it. Seemingly aware of what was going on, Freckles let out a low, keening wail.

She returned with the gun and pointed it at Freckles’ head. Garrett turned to leave as Freckles’ cries intensified, but she reached out a hand to stop him. “Garrett, if you’re going to keep catching things and bringing them home, you need to understand what it means to take care of them. Even if killing them is the best way to take care of them.”

Garrett turned back and stood next to her, facing the cage. She leveled the sight at Freckles’ temple and pulled the trigger.

In the millisecond between the trigger pull and the bullet’s entry into his small skull, Freckles yelled, “NOOOOO!!!!!” Then he slumped over onto the hay, lifeless, his mouth and eyes still wide with terror.

Garrett burst into tears and she clutched him close, rubbing his shoulder. “Aw, Garrett. I’m sorry.”

She knelt down, cleared the stray hairs away from his eyes and wiped his face with her sleeve. “This one just wasn’t meant to be.”

The next morning, Garrett’s dad came to his bedside at dawn to wake him. “Buddy?” he asked, gently shaking the boy awake.

Garrett roused enough to prop himself up on an elbow, rubbing his eyes. “What?”

“I’ve got a surprise for you, buddy. To help you forget about Freckles.”

Garrett swung his feet out to the floor and into his boots, suddenly awake and alert with excitement. As Garrett stood and shrugged into his coat, his dad continued.

“This one’s name is Julie, and she’s very nice.”
 

Theme, Literature and Money

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Today we conclude Mark Barrett’s series on theme, which originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. You can read the first entry in the series, ‘Axing Theme’, here, and second installment, Thinking Theme For Fun and Profit, here, and the third entry, Theme As Technique, here. 

Nathan Bransford put up a post today titled Themes Schmemes. Here’s the gist of it:

I think the drive to write Literature/art sometimes leads some very talented writers, especially young ones, to write books that as an agent I can’t sell because there’s too much attention paid to the themes and the subtext and the meaning and other English-class-type concerns, rather than the narrative and the plot and the craft and other sausagemaking-type concerns.

In talking about theme over the course of this past week, I tried to stay focused on the difference between theme as a useful literary technique and theme as a toxic analytical tool. I tried to stay away from the relative merit of theme as a technique or personal literary objective because I consider that an artistic choice. Saying that theme is bad when used by a particular author to create a given story would be like saying that reference photographs are bad for any artist’s painting. It’s not for me to decide.

Bransford’s post, however, changes the axis of analysis. Instead of the utility or merit of theme, he is focused — rightly, for an agent — on sales. And from that point of view I have no doubt that he’s right: theme and other literary tools are often completely unnecessary when crafting marketable fiction. The problem, of course, is that this is a slippery slope, and once you shove off you can’t stop the slide without exposing yourself to your own market-driven arguments.

I’m confident Bransford believes there’s a minimal level of storytelling skill necessary to write a bestseller. Still, if you found a trendy, charismatic writer who could riff on pornographic sex, gruesome, sadistic violence and pop-culture references, and you hyped the resulting title with a cutting-edge social-media marketing tour, you might end up with a bestseller on your hands. At which point that writer’s agent would point out that Bransford’s concerns about plotting and character and story are totally overrated, and the only thing that matters is whether you really can increase sales by taking a bus load of orphans hostage and refusing to free them until every American buys five copies of Risotto: A Love Story.

Which is why I tend not to make market-driven arguments about craft-driven processes. If what sells is what matters, then nothing else matters.

Mark Barrett has been a professional freelance writer and storyteller for over twenty years, and also works in the interactive entertainment industry.