Quick Links: Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

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A strong story starts with a strong character who has a strong voice.  Or at least that is what I am told. Beth Lewis guest posting at The Writer’s Dig shares tips on how to give your characters clear personalities and voice.

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Tips for Creating Voice in Your Writing

By: Beth Lewis |

Full length portrait of a man with megaphone over white backgroundAsk any agent or editor what they look for in a manuscript and inevitably they’ll say they’re looking for voice. A strong voice. A unique voice. An original voice. A realistic voice. But how do you ensure you and your main character possess this? That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?

There is a lot of writing advice out there, some good, some not so good, and I’ll try not to repeat it. I’m only going to talk about what works for me, and I hope it can provide some guidance and help for you as you develop yours. So with that caveat in mind, let’s talk about Voice.

This guest post is by Beth Lewis. Lewis was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales, and great white sharks. She has been, at turns, a bank cashier, a fire performer, and a juggler, and she is currently a managing editor at Titan Books in London. The Wolf Road is her first novel. Visit her at bethlewis.co.uk or on Twitter @bethklewis.

There are a couple of definitions it’s useful to keep in mind as we go. There is Author Voice and Character Voice. I can’t tell you much about Author Voice. That’s all you and everyone is different. No two Author Voices are the same. It’s how you speak and think and then how you translate that to the page. All I can really say is trust yourself. Be yourself. Don’t try to write like someone else, it’ll sound fake.

Character Voice on the other hand, that I will talk about. A strong voice is what will make your character feel authentic to readers. Several friends who have read The Wolf Road have given me the same comment – I forgot you, my friend, wrote it. They don’t hear me or my voice in the book at all. Even my mother said the same. This is a good thing. It means the character voice was strong enough to overtake mine.

Here are a few things to consider if you’re looking to write a story with a strong voice.

First person vs Third person

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Quick Link – Falling Behind During NaNoWriMo? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

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How are all you NaNo’s doing out there? I switched things up a bit this year. Normally I write like crazy in the beginning to try and get ahead in case life interferes with my writing, which of course it does. But this year I am sticking close to my daily writing numbers and then moving on to some other work. I actually like this better and have so far been able to keep up. But if you are falling behind, have no fear  at All Indie Writers has some tips to get you back on track!

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Falling Behind During NaNoWriMo? 3 Tips to Get You Back on Track

by Jennifer Mattern | Nov 3, 2016

Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo has barely started, and I’m already behind this year. I changed my novel idea at the last minute (I believe around 10:00 p.m. the night before). I still haven’t finished the scene-by-scene outline, though I hope to by tomorrow morning. And it’s now November 3rd and I haven’t even begun drafting my novel yet.

That seems like a cause for concern, right? But I’m not worried. At least not yet.

Every year that I’ve done NaNoWriMo — the popular month-long novel writing challenge for those who might be unfamiliar with it — I’ve accounted for several days off.

That normally involves taking off Sundays and the four days around the Thanksgiving holiday. And in three years, I’ve never had a problem hitting the 50k word target. So things will be OK.

Still, the slow start means I have some time to make up for.

I know exactly how I’m going to do it — the same way I always get back on track when I feel like I’m getting behind during NaNoWriMo. And today I’m going to share some of those “tricks” with you.

3 Ways to Get Back on Track During NaNoWriMo

If your NaNoWriMo word count isn’t quite as high as you’d like it to be, these tips might help you catch up:

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Quick Links: Is Being a “Good” Girl Hurting Your Career? Why “Bad” Girls Become Best-Sellers

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This one is for all the ladies out there, especially you nasty women! Ok, it is for everyone who needs it, men or women, nasty or not. It is not about being nice or bad, but about being confident and taking chances. I feel this one. Thank you Kristen Lamb for another great post.

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Is Being a “Good” Girl Hurting Your Career? Why “Bad” Girls Become Best-Sellers

by Kristen Lamb

Smiling businesswoman standing in front her colleagues
It is really about standing up for yourself and having confidence, which is easier said than done

Today is a repost because of a death in the family last week. But you know what? Life moves on.  I chose this post because we all need a good kick in the ass now and again, even ME.

It was a FUN post and a good way to get my moxie back….because seriously my moxie got kicked in the face last week. I am sure NONE of you have been there. Feeling like a failure, like nothing you do matters?

Well, get over it. We are going to have a hell raising Monday!

Last fall I read Kate White’s I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know. There are bad books, okay books, good books and great books. But there is another kind of book and it’s the rarest.

The game-changer.

White has a witty, sassy style. She is seamlessly intelligent and down-to-earth in her fiction. And guess what? Her nonfiction delivers more of the same.

Back to our topic of being too damn nice for our own good.

Good Girls Don’t Become Best-Sellers

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Quick Links: How To Make Multiple Antagonists Shine In Your Story

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Want to really ramp up your story? Make your antagonists multidimensional.  Want to take it to the next level? Have more than one antagonist – check out ‘s post at Stand Out Books for all the details! 

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How To Make Multiple Antagonists Shine In Your Story

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In Kung Fu Hustle, the hero starts off with multiple antagonists
In Kung Fu Hustle, the hero starts off with multiple antagonists

Can multiple antagonists work in a story? The answer depends on the author, but that shouldn’t be surprising when the term is so loosely defined. There are people who’ll tell you that a truly great story shouldn’t have any antagonists at all, and some who’ll tell you that you need at least three to create a narrative worth reading.

What you’ll hear less often is how difficult it can be to write a story with multiple compellingantagonists. That’s a shame, because while it’s a difficult endeavor, it’s one worth pursuing for authors who want to create engaging, realistic conflict in their stories.

Happily, that’s exactly what this article is about – I’ll be touching on how appreciating the antagonist’s role in a story can help you incorporate more than one, how to ensure minor antagonists pack a punch, and how to use differences in ‘kind’ and ‘scale’ to craft multiple antagonists who pose unique threats to the protagonist. Before any of that, though, we have to start by defining a term.

What is an ‘antagonist’?

An antagonist is a character who opposes the protagonist. At first glance, it seems like a synonym for ‘villain’, but the differences between these terms are important. To start with, a villain is wrong or immoral, whereas an antagonist just opposes the protagonist. They’re someone who stands in the way of the protagonist achieving their goals, and that means that if the protagonist of your story is a villain, the antagonist might even be a hero.

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Quick Link: Three Ways to Build a Better Plot

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How are you NaNoWriMo‘s doing? Keeping up on your word count? Today’s offering is from Janice Harding’s Fiction University and might help.  Janice writes about three ways you can ramp up your plot. More & better plot = more words!

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Three Ways to Build a Better Plot

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Building blocksPlot is how writers illustrate a story to their readers—which is why it’s so vital to craft a compelling one. It’s the foundation on which a story is built, and the weaker that is, the less likely the story will stand, let alone entertain. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a poor story idea, so it’s no wonder so many writers have trouble with plotting.

I love plotting myself, but even I’m always on the lookout for ways to make the process easier and more effective. Here are three things that I find particularly helpful when working on a new novel:

1. Know the Ending First

Since the whole goal of a novel is to solve the core conflict problem, knowing A) what that problem is and B) how that problem is resolved, makes it easier to plot it. Let’s look at a common way a novel’s plot is described:

Jaws is the story of a sheriff with a fear of the water who finds out a killer shark is terrorizing his beach during a major holiday weekend (the premise).

Next, let’s look at that same story with the ending as part of the idea:

Jaws is a story of a sheriff with a fear of the water who faces that fear to kill a killer shark terrorizing his town during a major holiday weekend (the general problem and how he solves it).

The premise version only gives the setup for the story. It doesn’t provide enough information to know what the sheriff does after this discovery. A large percentage of novels start out with this type of “plot” summary (I’ve done it, too), and it’s no wonder an equally large percentage of first drafts hit a wall around page 100.

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Just For Fun – Generate your own random fantasy map

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Just for fun – because everyone deserves a break, especially today.

Want to escape into your own fantasy world? Need some inspiration for NaNoWriMo? Check out this cool fantasy map generator at Martin O’Leary‘s site!

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Generating fantasy maps

I made this in three minutes
I made this in three minutes

Inspiration

I wanted to make maps that look like something you’d find at the back of one of the cheap paperback fantasy novels of my youth. I always had a fascination with these imagined worlds, which were often much more interesting than whatever luke-warm sub-Tolkien tale they were attached to.

At the same time, I wanted to play with terrain generation with a physical basis. There are loads of articles on the internet which describe terrain generation, and they almost all use some variation on a fractal noise approach, either directly (by adding layers of noise functions), or indirectly (e.g. through midpoint displacement). These methods produce lots of fine detail, but the large-scale structure always looks a bit off. Features are attached in random ways, with no thought to the processes which form landscapes. I wanted to try something a little bit different.

 

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Quick Link: Four Major Stumbles by Newer Writers

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 at the Kill Zone site has some great insight into some common issues that new writers have. They are probably not what you think. Sure you have to be careful with grammar and sentence structure, but what really makes a good book is the story behind it. That is where it becomes complicated.  

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Four Major Stumbles by Newer Writers

Stuck in a bubblePosted on by

These four nasty little traps would still be weaknesses if they appeared in the novels of more experienced professional writers. But for the most part, those writers don’t commit these mistakes. Which defines the window of opportunity for newer writers – to understand what they’re doing and how they do it.

And how that differs from where your story is, at any given moment. Especially when you believe you are done.

It is important to remember that when you read a novel from a proven professional, you’re reading a polished, pounded upon, tested and fortified final draft. The story may have been riddled with problems in the early stages, draft after draft, so don’t assume these pitfalls are unique to the newer writer.

Established authors have agents and editors for this purpose, newer writers don’t. And they bring their 10,000 hours of apprenticeship to the task, which probably exceeds your resume by orders of magnitude.

A few workshops won’t get you there. Those 10,000 hours, along with the criteria-driven, modeled craft held up as the target, just might.

If I wanted to read fully realized, polished stories all day long, I’d be a book reviewer instead.

I do read a lot of work from folks who are terrific writers… if the composition of sentences and paragraphs is the benchmark for that description.

But the thing is, it isn’t.

Where writing novels is concerned, a terrific writer is judged by the story more than the prose. And because they are two different skill sets, one doesn’t necessarily beget the other.

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Quick Link: How to Get Book Reviews: 10 Tricks for Getting Your Book Reviewed by a Book Blogger

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Book reviews are really important for building trust for new readers. One often overlooked resource is book bloggers. Book bloggers will often post on Amazon and other sites as well. Barb Drozdowich has all the details, including a link to a list of book blogging sites.  All on Anne R Allen’s Blog.

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How to Get Book Reviews: 10 Tricks for Getting Your Book Reviewed by a Book Blogger

Good Better Best Keys Represent Ratings And ImprovementJuly 10, 2016
by Barb Drozdowich

Book review bloggers are friends, not foes–get to know them!

So…who are book bloggers anyways? I know that Anne periodically talks about book bloggers on this blog – but many authors that I talk to seem a bit fuzzy on the subject. I’m going to see if I can help you understand who book bloggers are and help you with some tricks to find some powerful ones to promote your books.

My name is Barb and I’m thoroughly immersed in the book blogger world. One of my sites – The Book Blogger List has well over 2000 book bloggers listed. I’ve also carried out 2 major surveys of book bloggers – the most recent one ended in January. Between the two surveys, I’ve asked questions of 717 bloggers.

I’m in fact a book blogger myself – my book blog is Sugarbeat’s Books – I started blogging in August 2010.

I’ve spent a lot of time in front of a class – college classes, corporate training classes and more lately, virtual classes – always teaching science or technology of some description.

Although I’ve published a lot of books, I tend to come at the publishing world with a different view than most authors.

But you can’t really take the teacher out of the classroom…this will be an active post. And of course you’ll have homework…

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Quick Link: Query Letters Part 1: The Pitch

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First of all, congratulations to the Chicago Cubs!  Sorry Indian fans, but wow what a game! I am sure you all heard my family yelling as we watched!

But now to talk about a different type of pitch, your query letter. This is really important and can make or break your chances of even getting an agent or editor to look at your work. At Writer UnBoxed,  talks about how you can write a great query letter.

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Query Letters Part 1: The Pitch

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Last time I did my best to convince you that the query letter is a skill worth mastering. The heart of the query, your pitch, is useful not just for querying agents but also for the back of your book, pitching to editors, plotting, problem-solving, and even brainstorming. Naturally, the next big question is, “Okay, how do I write one?”

Unfortunately, there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer to that question. Every query pitch is unique, as is every writer’s path to getting out a good one. Unless you have an extremely lucky knack for them, the answer will almost certainly involve lots of study, work, practice, repetition, practice, critique, and did I mention practice?

Nonetheless, there are certain nearly-universal guidelines you can use to get started. Today I’m going to give you my version of these in hopes that they help you with your own pitch writing, but keep in mind that reading and writing many pitches really is the best way to ingrain the pattern into your brain. Aside from going to bookstores and libraries to read the backs of lots of books (what works to make you want to keep reading? why? what doesn’t? why?), there are many wonderful resources for writers such as Query Shark, Agent Query Connect, and Writer’s Digest where you can read real query letters and commentary on them.

And here’s one more important thing to keep in mind with your query: a pitch is not a summary. The goal of a summary is to encapsulate everything that happens in your book. The goal of a pitch is to make someone want to read more of your book. This means intentionally picking and choosing which information to include and which to leave out. Intrigue is a great way to pique interest.

What Goes In Your Pitch

Quick Link: “Busting” Some Popular Copyright Myths

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Over at Writer’s In The Storm, Suzan Spann recognizes that we are not all lawyers and that there are some common misunderstandings about copyright that she hopes to clear up. Check it out. 

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“Busting” Some Popular Copyright Myths

Copyright

By Susan Spann

JULY 8TH, 2016

Copyright law can be confusing for authors, especially when it comes to issues like when (and whether) to register copyright in a manuscript, and what to do if you use a pseudonym. While authors need to understand the basics of copyright, myths and disinformation abound (especially on the Internet).

Today, let’s take a look at some popular myths (and truths) about copyright in novels and other creative works:

Myth #1: You have to register copyright as soon as you finish your manuscript.

False. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not a legal requirement for copyright ownership. Copyright attaches to “qualifying works*” automatically at the time of their creation.

Copyright registration is intended to protect “published works” – so authors should make sure that their works are registered with the copyright office within 3 months after initial publication.

(*Short stories, novellas, novels, anthologies, poetry, and similar fiction and non-fiction works all generally qualify for copyright protection.)

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Just For Fun: Ingenious Recycled Brooches of Classic Books

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Just for fun – because everyone deserves a break

What a clever idea these are! I shall have to ask the hubby for one for Christmas! Culture N Lifestyle

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bookpins

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Quick Link: Why I Self-Publish My Literary Fiction

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Author Jane Davis decided to switch to self-publishing because it gave her more freedom, and control over her own manuscript.  Over at Reedsy, you can find the reasons behind her choice. 

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Why I Self-Publish My Literary Fiction

You Can Do It Sign Shows Encouragement And InspirationJuly 7, 2016

Self-published books are still largely associated with genre novels, while authors tend to turn to traditional publishers for literary fiction. We were curious to hear from someone who has been challenging labels and going against industry wisdom to carve her own niche in the publishing world. Indie author Jane Davis used to be bullied into changing her work just to fit into an easily marketable category. She decided to take matters into her own hands and self-publish her daring, award-winning fiction. 

Eimear McBride used the platform provided by her various competition wins to urge publishers to back challenging fiction. McBride had spent 9 years submitting the manuscript for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing before it was taken up by Galley Press, a small publisher which puts story before profit. For many writers, 9 years would be too long.

Traditional Publishing houses ‘play it safe’

So much of what we read from traditional publishing houses feels safe or sanitised. In 2014 I collaborated with hybrid author Joni Rodgers on a multi-author box-set. She shared my frustrations: ‘As a voracious reader, I was overwhelmed with the over-editing and lack of creative risk that had come over so much of the fiction I was being fed by the marketing machine.’

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Quick Links: Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

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So you have finished your book, and even gotten it published. Don’t think you are done yet, you need to have a reader retention plan. Jami Gold has great suggestions for keeping your readers around for the next book at Fiction University.

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Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

WisdomIn this Indie Publishing Paths series, we first focused on how to decide which path will work best for us. Once we know our goals and priorities and are ready to put our book up for sale, we need to decide on:

The second phase of our indie publishing journey is to figure out how best to increase our chances for success along our chosen path. Whatever our goal, we’ll have a better chance of success if we can hold onto our readers from book to book.

So far, in the second part of this series, we’ve covered our options for…:

One of the options we discussed in Part One of this Reader Retention Plan phase was enticing our readers to stick around by offering extra content on our website. Let’s take a closer look at what information should be included on our author website and what information we could include as bonuses.

Read the full post on Fiction University

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In The News – The Best Fonts for Ebook Readers, According to Book and Typeface Designers

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In The News – Articles Of Interest For Authors

Did you know that you can customize the fonts in your eBook readers? It can really make a big difference in reducing eye fatigue and providing a more enjoyable reading experience. Lifehacker‘s Patrick Allan shares which are the best fonts to use.

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The Best Fonts for Ebook Readers, According to Book and Typeface Designers

Patrick Allan

Beautiful young woman with tablet in parkPicking the right font for your Kindle or Nook can enhance your reading experience. Some fonts are easy on the eyes, some have a ton of personality, and some tell stories of their own. Here are some fonts the experts suggest for your devices.

Mark Wilson at Fast Company asked several book and typeface designers what fonts give the most authentic book experience. Anna Thompson, a book designer at Penguin Random House, and Robert Slimbach, the principal type designer at Adobe Systems, both suggest Baskerville. It’s easy to read, fatigues the eyes less over long sessions, and it looks classy. Baskerville may not work well for some devices, however, like a smartphone. Because of that, type designer Tobias Frere-Jones suggests a lower contrast, thicker, serifed font like Georgia. It renders clearly on all screen sizes, but still has enough personality to make it feel like you’re reading an actual book.

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Quick Link: 8 Steps That Will Help You Start (And Finish) Your Book

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 has some great tips for starting and more importantly (at least for me!) finishing your books. Head on over to Stand Out Books for all the details. 

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8 Steps That Will Help You Start (And Finish) Your Book

From start to finish, child writing on white paperJULY 6, 2016 by ROBERT WOOD

Writing’s really hard. I don’t mean it’s hard to create something good, I mean it’s difficult to sit down and start writing. That may sound like lip-service, but the fact is that writing – especially writing a book – goes against every rule of self-motivation there is.

Generally, it’s not done to order, meaning that goals and deadlines are self-set and easy to break. It’s also rarely done in a focused, dedicated environment – even those lucky enough to have an office or dedicated writing space probably use it for other things, and utilize a device that’s also a primary source of leisure: imagine trying to do paperwork in your local pub or aquarium (we haven’t met, so I’m not sure what you like doing in your spare time). Finally, it’s ill-defined – ‘How long is a book?’ is the same question as ‘How long is a piece of string?’, but it applies to every quality of a finished work. How polished does your book have to be? How realistic should the dialogue feel? How many characters is too many, or enough?

These issues combine into a task that’s almost designed to not get done. Authors begin the writing process with no goals or parameters except ‘make a book’. What even is a book? Answers differ.

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