Tag Archives: tips

Choosing A Title For Your Book (via @woodwardkaren, HT: @WritersCentreAU)

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Karen Woodward writes some tips on choosing titles, with explanation in each section. Have a look; if an editor is running through a list of 50 stories she might start by reading the five most interesting titles first:

  1. Easy to remember
  2. Interesting
  3. Indicates Genre
  4. Is Funny
  5. Tips For Brainstorming The Perfect Title

The last one is a summary of another writer’s blog post on the topic, and she rounds the article off with a list of great titles.

Bear in mind you don’t always get to choose your title in the traditional publishing industry. Commercial reality and poor timing (eg. a more famous author writing a similar titled book) can be a factor.

Link here: http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2013/05/4-things-to-keep-in-mind-when-choosing.html

How To Record, Produce And Distribute Audiobooks (via @thecreativepenn)

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Joanna Penn writes this back in March, but it’s a good look at audio books. She interviewed J. Daniel Sawyer about his experiences producing audio books:

Your book is not just a physical book or an ebook. There are plenty of other subsidiary rights that you can exploit and audiobooks are high on the list because of the rise in popularity of listening during commutes or workouts, and the increased penetration of smartphones. In today’s interview, we explore how you can get into this market.

My experience with audiobooks is very limited. I listened to all of ‘World War Z’ read out by various actors, and it was great; I listened to Carl Sagan reading from ‘The Demon Haunted World’ and it made me sad.

There’s a podcast of the interview, as well as a transcript, so if you’re interested in the process of producing audiobooks it’s a good place to start. Take, for example:

Essentially, you will always make mistakes while reading. A single read when you’re really good will take about 4: 1 editing time. So for every finished hour of audio, you need at least 3 or 4 hours of production. If you’re just starting out it can be more like 10 hours production to 1 of finished audio. This is why it can be expensive to produce good quality audiobooks.

Read it here: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/03/06/audiobook/

I’m a Self-Publishing Failure (via @salon)

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John Winters discusses the other, more common side of self-publishing:

An article in the New York Times claims that 81 percent of us believe we have a book in us. This sounds painful – both anatomically and for the readers of this potential deluge. In fact, extrapolated across the entire U.S., this 81 percent equates to 200 million books. Most of them no doubt about beloved dogs or written by celebrity chefs. I confess I was long among these wannabe authors. My cabinets and drawers are littered with more pages of fiction than the archives of the Nixon Library. However, recently I completed my first novel and subsequently set out after that dream of every writer: publication, followed by royalty checks of the six-figure variety.

I want to quote so much from this article, as John pushes his novel onto Amazon and gets bitten by the promotional bug after selling a few copies, pursues the dream of shooting a book trailer (“The Internet is full of tips on how to market your self-published book, and a trailer is high on the list.”) and generally continues along a path of increasingly expensive self-destruction.

There was one more avenue I’d yet to try in my pursuit of literary fame: give it away. That’s right; many self-published authors simply give the e-book version of their novel away in hopes of building word-of-mouth interest that will in turn result in sales. Roughly 800 people took advantage, and afterward there was even a sale or two.

John writes with a charming and dejected wit, so do yourself a favour and read the full article: http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/im_a_self_publishing_failure/

A Reminder that Publishing Is Luck (via me)

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Just a quick personal anecdote that might encourage some of you out there, particularly those who struggle with rejection (which as we have discussed, is just a fact of life for writers). It’s not just the quality of your writing that is a factor in publishing.

So, I wrote a story, which I quite liked. Normally whether or not you like a story doesn’t have much to do with its quality, but I’ve been around for a while, and I thought it was pretty good.

It was rejected a few times mostly for thematic fit, and then sat with an editor at a pretty prestigious magazine for about two months, who gushed about how great it was and moved it through the publishing process until it was ultimately rejected because they had several similar stories, or something like that. The detail isn’t important: what’s important is that it was one of the good rejections, one of those personal, ‘we love this, it’s great but unfortunately [phase of the moon/colour of the ink/ennui] etc.’

Them’s the breaks in writing, and personally a rejection like that feels like a win to me (aka validation).

Anyway, I sent the story elsewhere, to a less prestigious magazine, and it was rejected with a score this time (as this particular publication scored submissions, which I personally think is cool – any feedback is good feedback as far as I am concerned). The fun fact though, is that it scored significantly below the already low average for submissions.

Writers TearsNever to be upset by rejections (it’s a trained skill) I just thought I’d share how one story could both appeal to a Big Deal magazine and do several rounds of editorial reading with excellent feedback, yet score woefully at a different magazine.

Same manuscript! True story.

I hope this will make you sleep a little better. Also, I have this now, and I drink a shot every time I get a rejection. It’s great!

The Worst Feedback is Indifference (via @thisissethsblog)

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This is very short from Seth Godin, so I’ve reproduced the entirety of the article below:

The worst feedback is indifference

We armor ourselves against the cutting remark, the ad hominem attack, the person who just doesn’t like our stuff.

But all of this is the feedback we get when we touch a nerve and are doing work that matters enough to care about.

No, the worst sort of feedback is no feedback at all. That means we’ve created nothing but banality.

Original here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/03/the-worst-feedback-is-indifference.html

You Can’t Talk About Your Own Culture in Science Fiction (via @silviamg)

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Silvia Moreno-Garcia lets loose at some complaints about non-Western cultures in Science Fiction:

I was having a great morning, munching on a cookie, when someone sent me a link to a livejournal rant where the writer complains about the current award-nominated “science fiction” stories (their quote marks) saying that they resemble a “family from a non-white cultural background sitting around and talking about their traditions”.

[snip quote from the referred rant]

This pisses me off. This is exactly why I spent several years waffling about writing speculative fiction. I was afraid that if I didn’t use white, anglo-characters or, hey, maybe imaginary elves from the land of Myrhdjdi, it wouldn’t count as fantasy or sci-fi.

It’s not very long, but it does deconstruct the strange notion that it’s not ok to focus on cultural stuff unless that culture is of course invisible (ie. western culture). It’s something to think about if you’ve ever felt like Silvia.

Incidentally, I love the artwork in her post.

Read it here: http://silviamoreno-garcia.com/blog/2013/03/you-cant-talk-about-your-own-culture-in-science-fiction/

Should You Hire an Editor or Join a Critique Group? (via @Kevin_Hanrahan2)

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This is part 2 of a discussion Kevin Hanrahan had with Barbara Longley discussing the pros and cons of Editors and Critique Groups. Part 1 is here.

The format of the discussion is straightforward and it’s an entertaining read as well as a useful way to look at your options and decide how best your time/money is spent. Barbara puts forward a strong position, and Kevin argues against it. For example:

Editors are writer’s lap dogs. Editors do whatever the writer wants to please him/ her.

Critique groups provide valuable feedback and insight to one’s book.

Wow! Lap dogs huh, Barb. Editors will tell me whatever I want to hear because I am paying them? It is clear to me that you have never met my editor. The dude didn’t say a kind word to me for over five months.

I tend to be in the camp of ‘pay professionals’, but the key word there is ‘pay’. This stuff isn’t cheap, for good reason, and it’s easy to throw a significant amount of money into your writing (try paying for a decent cover, for example). If you are going to start sourcing your own professionals (covers, structural editors, copy editors, typesetters, etc), you really have to consider the return on your investment.

Read it all here: http://khanrahan.com/2012/10/01/should-you-hire-an-editor-or-join-a-critique-group-part-ii/

What goes through a literary magazine editor’s head when writers don’t follow guidelines? (via: @MsBessieBell)

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This is a little humorous, but vitally important to get into your thick writing heads: ignoring the submission guidelines is like turning up to a job interview in your underpants (ie. there are very few markets that will tolerate it).

Jessica Bell makes 15 points, some of which are sweary, and ends with:

Next time, just remember, you are emailing a person, not a robot, and guidelines are there for a reason. They’re there to ensure everything is done in a time-efficient manner. I want to spend time reading your wonderful work, not wasting time trying to make up for your laziness. If you were in my shoes, I think you would feel this way too.

Remember people: RtFG (Read the Friendly Guidelines). I can’t stress this enough (which is why this is like the third article I’ve posted touching on it). It speaks to professionalism, and it helps keep you in the reading pile, which is the best you can hope for.

Check it out here: http://thealliterativeallomorph.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/what-goes-through-literary-magazine.html

41 Flavors of Body Language (via @susanjmorris)

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I haven’t posted one of Susan Morris’s entertaining posts on writing tips. This one is about characterisation without dialogue:

Body language can transform a fight scene from mere hack-and-slash into a riveting clash of bodies and souls. It can make an otherwise yawn-inducing argument so intense you forget to breathe. And it can take the wooden performance of a cardboard character and bring it to vibrant, messy, glorious life.

She goes on to provide 41 emotions and examples of body language.

41 Emotions as Expressed through Body Language unique
This list, while exhausting, is soooo not exhaustive; it barely scratches the surface. And each entry could easily become cliché (if it isn’t already). But, it should be enough to get you started. Want more? Start watching people (not in a creepy way), and take notes of what they seem to do when expressing different emotions. Your repertoire of expression will double in no time. PS—do not use these for actual, real-life body language reading; you will fail. These are strictly novelistic.

It’s a great reference, so don’t miss it. Read it here: http://www.omnivoracious.com/2013/01/41-flavors-of-body-language-for-writers.html

The Jane Austin Word List (HT: @malki)

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This is a brilliant idea by Mary Robinette Kowal to avoid anachronistic language in her period fiction:

One of the things that’s tricky about writing historical fiction like Shades of Milk and Honey is getting the vocabulary right. There are a lot of words which are obviously anachronisms but there others which aren’t. Short of looking up every word in a novel, there’s no way to really know if a seemingly innocuous word like “hello” exists yet.

So here’s my plan for Glamour in Glass.

I’ve created a list of all the words that are in the collected works of Jane Austen to use for my spellcheck dictionary. It will flag any word that she didn’t use and I can then look those up to see if it was in use in 1815.  It also includes some of Miss Austen’s specific spellings like “shew” and “chuse.”

It won’t be perfect. For instance it won’t flag words whose meanings have changed, like “check” or “staid” but it will be an improvement.

This really is fantastic, and would avoid some of those tiny anacrhonisms that make you, the author, look like someone who hasn’t done their research when in reality you’ve done 10 hrs research, not the 10.5 hrs required to avoid that tiny mistake.

For the curious, there are 14,793 words on the list.

Read more about it here: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/the-jane-austen-word-list/