Heart of Story: Part III Setting

Setting is the end result of world building.  Your setting is the portion of your world that can be viewed through the characters’ eyes.

Many writers get hung up on setting.  It needs to be interesting but characters and conflicts are the focus of any real story.  The setting is just the backdrop.  There are rare times when the setting can be a supporting character and can often be a source of conflict but it will never stand alone.

Imagine your fiction as if it were a painting.  The setting is the canvas.  Character is the brush through which you translate what is in your head to the canvas.  Conflict is the paint that adds color, texture and life to the painting.

World building is fun, it’s interesting and it’s very gratifying for a lot of writers.  You need to world build until the world is a real place in your mind.  The reader is only going to glimpse a small portion of that world, but you know so much about the rest of it, that any portion you show will be real to the reader as well.

The trap many writers fall into is the dreaded world builder’s disease.  This happens when you spend so much time creating the world that you never really write anything in your novel.  There are people who do this for a few months and get bored only to move on to another project, while others will world build for years, decades even.  Think J.R.R. Tolkien without ever making it to print. 

I think this happens for a number of reasons.  World building is fun but I think it is a way to cope with the fear of failure for many writers.  If you are producing material, usually in the form of a chaotic encyclopedia, then you can say “Yup, still writing that novel. Been workin’ on it for ten years.”  This is a good cover as to why the writer never finishes anything because non-writers don’t realize that a book can be cranked out in a few months rather easily with the time and effort to dedicate to it.

If you find yourself developing world builder’s disease I would suggest that you stop and take a step back from it for a few weeks.  Then look at what you’ve created, even if it’s all just in your head, and ask three very important questions:

1. Whose story is this?
2. What conflicts must this character (or characters) overcome?
3. What will make this story interesting to anyone other than myself?

How’s that for a miracle cure?  Bing, bang, boom, you’re cured. 

If you can’t answer these three questions, then you need to read fiction in your genre and anything else that might interest you.  You need to study the craft of writing and storytelling.  You might have to accept that you’re world, though it was fun and all consuming for you, might not be interesting to others.  Maybe just walk away from it for a while and work on something fresh and new.  You might walk away from it forever and that might not be a bad thing.

I realize that I’ve largely downplayed the importance of setting.  Setting is only less important than character and conflict.  It is one of the four elements of the Heart of Story and there’s a very good reason for this.  Aside from being simply where the story happens, setting plays several major roles in your writing.

Setting directly influences and defines character and conflict.  A boxer from America is going to act, think, talk, move and fight differently than a boxer from Brazil or Thailand.  It effects how characters interact with the local population, the types of natural dangers (man vs. nature), the use of language and an almost endless variety of other factors. 

Setting is the mood, sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of your story.  It doesn’t end there.  Setting can take many forms.
• Society
• Government
• Economy
• Religion
• Climate
• Time period
• War
• Environment
• Disaster
• Culture
• Fads and trends
• Generation

Again, all these don’t need exploration here, but in your mind.  Any one of these topics can lead me to a story.  There are countless other examples as well.

Setting can play as much or as little a role in your story as you like as long as the character and conflict stand out and draw in the reader emotionally.  If they are emotionally invested they will stop to enjoy the scenery.  Here’s another list of things setting can do
• Create conflicts (man vs. man, man vs. society, man vs. technology)
• Decide how much or how little exposition you need or can get away with
• Offer endless sources for rich description to help make your story more real

If all of that was too heavy, here’s the short and sweet version. 

Think of setting as the car your characters are driving around in while talking.  Is the car a Corvette, a Cadillac, a Cavalier or Chevett?  How much will any of these options dictate about the story, characters and conflicts?  If it’s a Corvette, at least one of them is rich or a car thief unless the ‘vette is a junker.  If it’s a Chevett, they’re dirt poor, afraid of change or just about anyone in the mid-80’s to early 90’s.

Setting doesn’t just dictate character and conflict but it can and should create tone and mood.  Think of any of the Dark Knight movies and Gotham is practically a character on it’s own.  It’s dark, gritty, mean and corrupt.  Only Gotham could have created Batman, like an antibody to its own disease ravaged body.

I start with setting to find my characters and conflicts.  In fantasy and sci-fi I like the setting to have its own arc, just like a character.  It has its own conflict and the setting must be changed by the hero or be destroyed by its conflict.  This is a great source for meta-plots in serial storytelling.

Next post in the Heart of Story: Resolution!

Listeing to: Weezer- Say It Ain’t So  This is one of those bands I never think of but whenever they come on the radio I crank it and sing like a crazy foo.  Yeah, I can sing too ;0)

Heart of Story: part II Conflict

Conflict  
  
Conflict is sometimes another word for plot.  Some writers and industry professionals see them as different things but I don’t.  When someone asks me what the plot is I go into my 30 second elevator pitch for my novel.  If someone asks me what the conflicts are I can breathe a sigh of relief and explain my story in simpler terms.  Conflict exists in 5 basic categories.  According to Michael A. Stackpole they are as follows:

•    Man vs. Nature
•    Man vs. Self
•    Man vs. Man
•    Man vs. Society (or Government)
•    Man vs. Technology (or Supernatural)

Man vs. Nature-  This is simple enough.  It could be climate: a man struggles for life while stranded in the desert.  It could be biological: a scientist fights for the life of her husband who is dying of a strange virus transferred from a rare African plant.  It could be animals: pick any B movie on USA Network about bats, piranha or snakes plus or minus the T&A and you’ve got it. 

Man vs. Self-  Insanity, addiction, weakness, phobia, inner turmoil, guilt, rage, amnesia.  I could go on and on.

Man vs. Man-  This is the heart of most action stories, comic books, sports stories, war, any sort of competition.  You’ll find this sort of conflict in horror and suspense novels as well as fantasy.  Anything with a “bad guy” has a man vs. man conflict.

Man vs. Society-  This could be political, moral dilemmas, ethics, religious differences.  This sort of conflict can often lead to man vs. man and man vs. self because it is usually based on ideological factors.  A top general in the Army coming out of the closet could be a man vs. society conflict.  Court dramas could fall into this category as well. 

Man vs. Technology-  Think Terminator, The Matrix, just about any sci-fi story.  This could also be something more mundane.  The carburetor industry collapsed overnight after the advent of the fuel injector.  People being displaced from jobs could be man vs. technology and man vs. society.

We can also apply this to man vs. supernatural which you could list as a 6th type of conflict but it works about the same as technology.  Anything with the supernatural gets this label usually.  This also covers magic, which is common in fantasy.  It could be ghosts, vampires, zombies, werewolves, even any type of telepathic powers.

Conflict is the motivator for your characters.  It’s what makes whatever happens in the story happen.  Conflict forces the characters to change in some way which is also known as a character arc.  It doesn’t really matter how you use the five types of conflict as long as your story works.  Understanding them, like types of characters, will help you communicate within the writing universe.  Defining them can help if you get stuck as well.  You might realize that you have three conflicts that are all man vs. man and adding man vs. nature or man vs. self might add the layers your story needs to bring it to life.

Conflict helps bring out the best (or sometimes worst) in your characters.  It builds tension and creates obstacles for your characters to overcome.  If you have a character that most people typically wouldn’t like and put them through the ringer, you will end up either loving or hating the character based on how they deal with the situations.  Teddy Rosevelt said “Some men are born to greatness.  Others have it thrust upon them.”

Without conflict, nothing happens in the story.  Seinfeld was supposed to be the show about nothing.  That would have been true if the highly flawed characters weren’t given conflict, which was usually self inflicted, that brought out their worst qualities and made them funny.

I believe in torturing my characters.  If everything goes right for them then the story gets boring.  They have to be challenged.  They have to have something to rise above, to make them more than a normal life would have them be.  Without the characters struggling, facing their own mortality, proving their courage in the face of certain death and finally winning, the reader has nothing to help them escape their boring reality.  The reader struggles with them, faces their fear, they are bolstered by the courage of their fictitious friend, they mourn her losses, her defeats and they exult in her victories.

Conflict dies without characters and so we begin to see how the elements build the Heart of Story.

Listening to: A Perfect Circle- Blue   Wow a morbid video.  Love the song though.

The Heart of Story: Part I - Character

Character

This is usually characterS, plural, but we’re dealing with concepts not specifics.  Though I usually come up with my characters last, I agree with the idea that this is the most important part of story.

Characters have many different classifications and I’m sure someone will disagree with the way this is laid out, but it serves as the best illustration I can give.  They also may not affect your writing much as most of them are interchangeable but they are good to know so that you can talk about writing with other writers and writing professionals.  If you’re not one of those people that believes in categorizing everything then please just skim over them so you have an idea what they are.

•    Main Character  -This is primary point of view character through which the story is experienced or the narrator of the story in 1st person.
•    Protagonist  - This is the character with a story arc or, the character who changes because of the conflict.
•    Hero  -This is the character who does something heroic or has heroic qualities.  This character often moves the story along.
•    Anti-hero  -This is typically a character who isn’t innately good and could even be considered evil or lacking redeemable qualities but becomes the focus of the story and usually does something heroic.  He/she could easily be the villain in any other story.
•    Side Character  -This is like a non-player character.  They usually help tell the story, typically don’t get their own point of view and act as a foil to the main character.  I call them collateral damage usually.
•    Villain  -The character whose goal is diametrically opposed to the other characters.  He/she should be well equipped to cause them the most grief, be understandable (as in motivations) and, above all, believe he is the hero of his own story.  There are stories where villains are evil for the sake of evil but by and large they feel that what they are doing it the right thing or can justify their actions.  Most often it is the villain that is the greatest source of conflict and either directly or indirectly causes the protagonist to change.

These are all subjective terms and usually the roles of main character, protagonist and hero (or anti-hero) are all played by the same character.  Think of the movie Pitch Black, if you’ve seen it (spoiler).  The main character was the female pilot who is also an anti-hero because she tried to dump the crew to save her own butt before the ship crashed.  Riddick is a villain who becomes an anti-hero as the female pilot redeems herself and becomes the hero.  The story is told mainly through her perspective so she is the main character and, since she redeems herself, she is the protagonist as well. 

Confused yet?  Good! 

From here on out I’ll just be using the term “main character” to cover all the above (except side character, whom you’ll recognize them by the bloodstains they leave behind, and villain).

As a concept, character is the brush by which the story is painted.  We only see what they see.  The world you’ve built can be amazing but we can’t see it without characters.  No one will want to read a story that doesn’t have interesting characters that make them want to read.

So what makes interesting characters?   

Likability vs Relatability

Some writers will say that your main character has to be likable.  While I do believe you that you have to make the reader care what happens to the maid character, they don’t necessarily have to be someone you would like in real life. 

My theory is, if you make your characters--good, bad, likeable or unlikable--as human as you can then they will be relatable.  It’s not likability that matters but relatability.  I think that you can relate to anyone with feelings and flaws and insecurities and quirks.  Emotional reactions create a clear sense of personality.  If you understand someone’s motivations for their actions, beliefs and behaviors then you understand the person.  You create a connection be placing yourself in that person’s shoes.
   
You don’t have to like my characters on a personal level to be interested in what happens to them.  The anti-hero is great proof of this.  Riddick isn’t a likable kind of guy.  He’s cold blooded killer who is only out for himself.  When he is forced to put his superior sense, strength and skills to work to help the others and himself, you’re suddenly interested in him.  You find yourself wanting him to become one of the good guys.  This happens anytime a super villain teams up with a superhero to fight a greater evil.  You find yourself hoping the life long bad guy redeems himself.
   
Look at the series Dexter, cable or the books.  (Nother spoiler!)  Dexter is a sociopath and formidable serial killer.  He is obsessed with blood and keeps blood slides of each victim so that he can look at them under his microscope whenever he chooses to relieve the thrill of the kill.  He is the main character and I wouldn’t even call him an anti-hero, but I find myself rooting for him, hoping that he makes the kill, that he can satisfy his “dark passenger” because he only kills others multiple murderers.  He also happens to be my kind of smart ass and its funny to watch his pretend to be a normal human.  I love this guy!  This sick, sadistic, evil evil killer.  What’s wrong with !?  Well I’m not alone.

Flaws

Another common statement about characters is that they have to have flaws to be interesting.  Maybe they don’t have to but it all goes towards the relatable human thing.  Unless you have a Nietzsche-esk superman who is a symbol of perfection, your characters should have flaws of some sort. 

I always liked Wolverine better than Superman simply because Superman was boring while Wolverine wasn’t earth shatteringly powerful, had problems and bad hygiene.  Now, put Clark Kent in high school without full control of his powers, teenage insecurities, girl problems and issues with this parents--such as we find him early on in the series Smallville--and you’ve got my attention.  Superman just became human.  A flawed Superman is relatable.  A flawed Superman is interesting.

The Character Must Change

It is also widely accepted that your main character must change by the end of the story. This is where conflict and character collide to make it all happen.  For a long time I didn’t understand this concept and wasn’t sure if I was utilizing it.  Like many storytelling basics, I was using it through emulation without understanding what IT was. 

Here is the best explanation I’ve found.  Conflict is what forces your character to change.  He must change in order to resolve the conflict or be destroyed by it.  There are so many forms that this can come in that I don’t think it worth going into description of every way a character can change.  You’re the writer.  They are your characters and conflicts.  You’re the only one qualified to explore this.

The Power of Character

Readers will always remember characters first.  Characters make the biggest impression and are a guide to your world.  No one will travel your world because you asked them to but they will travel it with a companion, a friend, a brother or sister at arms.  That companion is your character.  Is George Lucas remembered because he thought of a space station the size of a moon called the Death Star or is he remembered for Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Yoda?  Even the droids are practically household names. 

There are two kinds of writers who sell books.  Character writers and plot writers.  Plot writers might sell a few books, or even several but Character writers are the writers who sell the most, who make the most bank and will always have a career, even if they never truly master plot.  Plot writers have to learn characterization or be doomed to short careers.

Stay tuned for part II Conflict!

Listening to: Nonpoint- In the Air Tonight

The Heart of Story- new blog series

Heart of Story: Introduction 

I'm going to be posting a series that I call, The Heart of Story, which examines the four elements that create a good story.  This is something I've been working on and actually planned on posting before the "Show, Don't Tell" thing but I think I was jumping ahead of the game. 

I'll expand on each, but the 4 elements that make up the Heart of Story are:

-Character
-Conflict
-Setting
-Resolution

These things all work together to create a story that keeps the reader's attention, makes the book as hard as possible to put down and always leaves them wanting more. 

This is all just a compilation of what I've learned in my studies of writing.  I've become quite the writing geek as I enjoy the topic of writing as much as the subjects that I write about.

This series will be very much open to discussion and debate.

The Heart of Story part I

No two people write the same, but there are some things about writing and storytelling that are universal.  Maybe you already understand all these things and just never really broke them down to their most basic parts before.  Maybe this is new to you.  I don’t think you can tell a good story without the elements we’re about to discuss.  Maybe you didn’t think of them in these terms but they are found in any good story.  If your story seems flat, maybe it’s because it’s lacking one of these key components.

There are four things that I consider the heart of story.  They are basic and easy to understand.

CHARACTER
CONFLICT
SETTING
RESOLUTION

Take interesting and flawed characters, torture them with agonizing conflicts that create tension and force them to change and do it in a believable but fascinating setting.  Tie everything together with a satisfying resolution and you have a great story.
   
Most writers will tell you that character and conflict (also called plot) are the most important aspects of storytelling.  I agree.  My process for story creation is somewhat backward from that belief.
   
I start with the setting/world in which the story takes place.  I get a feel for the atmosphere of this place, then I start to explore it in my mind.  I almost always do this while listening to music.  As I explore this world (world building), I discover who and/or what lives there.  What makes it special, unique, interesting?  Who are the people indigenous to this world?
   
Invariably, I’ll find one type of conflict here among races, classes, sexes, cultures, etc…  The people, conflicts and world all work together to define each other in my mind until this place becomes real to me.  When, or if, all of this develops enough to really excite me then I start to figure out whose story this is.  Who has the biggest or best story to tell?  Who is most affected by the conflicts or has the most to lose?  Who stands out in this world?
   
By the time I’ve answered all these questions and explored the world and its peoples, I usually have a pretty well defined story, or at least a place to start.  Sometimes I know 90% of the story at this point, including how it ends.  Other times I pick my starting point and let my characters tell me their story as I write it.  This is basically the outline vs. discovery argument and every writer is different.  I tend to blend both or switch back and forth.
     
Without fail, I always define the first three elements of the Heart of Story before I even start.  The fourth, Resolution, usually comes later but all the rest falls flat without it.  Look at all the greatest stories ever told and you will see these elements at work.  There are other things that make stories great, such as tension, mystery, romance, humor, etc… but they cannot carry a story without its heart.
   
The Iliad: two great nations at war, legendary heroes, great kings, the most beautiful woman to ever live, influence of the gods, major plot twist, tragedy…  This great story has so much to offer:

• Character 
• Achilles
• Hector
• Paris
• Menelaus
• Agamemnon
• Helen
• Odysseus. 
• Conflicts  
• man vs man
• Man vs. Time (nature)
• Man vs. Himself
• Man vs. Society
• Man vs. Supernatural
• Setting
• 
  The beautiful shores of the Aegean
  
• Troy and her insurmountable walls.
• The battle field 
• Resolution
• The death of Hector—greatest warrior unaided by the gods,
• The Trojan horse--the use of cunning and ingenuity to bring about the fall of a nation,
• The death of Achilles—the flaw in his invulnerability which gave rise to the saying “Achilles heel”.  
  
  

You will find the Heart in every story worth hearing.
 

Next post, I focus on Character.

Listening to:  My Chemical Romance- Welcome to the Black Parade  Love this band. The lyrics of this song and the video are very powerful.  My dad once laid it on me to be a hero to the weak and to be a better man than he, and it's quite a thing to ask of a boy.  But then again, his dad once asked him to kill him so, guess I'm doing okay.

Self Publishing and You- Part 6 Reviews and Descriptions

#6 Reviews and Book Description  I'm not to this stage yet but I can see why it's important.  If you networked with like minded people for your promotions, hopefully you've found some people that are not just willing to review your work, but hopefully WANT to read your stuff.  I think of it as offering an exclusive view of an uncut edition of a blockbuster movie.  Who wouldn't want to be included in that?

Reviews are signposts to your work.  We humans don't like to gamble with our time AND we tend to follow trails blazed by others.  If Mike at work says that this new TV series is funny I'm more willing to check it out than if I just saw that it was on opposite something I mildly enjoyed and there was four other things I could watch with only a couple promos to base the decision on.  (Yes I ended that sentence with a preposition.  It's a brave new world and Merriam-Webster's "Ask the Editor" segment told me it was okay!) Good reviews on Amazon also help with your ranking, which cannot be a bad thing.  

Another topic I intended to speak to was your book description.  This would be the equivalent of the blurb on the back cover on a physical book.  After the cover, the next thing, I think we all look at, is the description.  What is this book about?  Is this something that will interest me?  

So ask yourself, what is it about a good description that makes you buy a book?  I’m willing to bet that there’s something there that peaks your interest and makes you want to know more.  At the same time, just enough info is given to leave you wanting to know more.

Without having read the description on any of the books for many years, here is an example of the description I would write for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Ten year old Harry Potter is a small neglected and abused boy of ten and he’ll never amount to anything more.  That is what his aunt and uncle would have him believe as he resigns himself to a life as their slave and son’s punching bag.  All that changes the day an owl arrives at Number 10 Privet Drive with an invitation for Harry to begin classes at the mysterious Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy.  Escaping from the oppressive clutches of his dreaded uncle, Harry discovers that he is not only a wizard but one of the most famous in the world, having destroyed the wizarding world’s most feared dark wizard as an infant.  Can Harry learn to become a part of this amazing world of magic and survive the servants of the dark Lord Voldemort who seek to revenge for their master’s fate?

Okay maybe that’s a tad long (144 words) but I just pulled that out of the air.   And yes Harry Potter is a copyrighted product of JK Rowling, blah blah blah.

Had you never read Harry Potter, that description would give you a little peak at the world J.K. Rowling has created as well as allude to its darker side without giving away the details of the plot or its twist.  You feel some of the desperation that shapes Harry’s life as well as know that there is something very special about this boy if he could defeat a great wizard as an infant.

I decided to go to Amazon and see what the actual description for the Sorcerer’s Stone was.  

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That's because he's being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he's really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.

It’s just over 103 words and they chose to leave out the Lord Voldemort stuff, but I think I was pretty close.
So, to practice, pick your favorite novel and write a description for it then go to Amazon or the book jacket if you have it at home, and see how close you were.  If you want to post both in the comments here, it could be fun.  

The point of all this is, you can’t expect people to read your book to see what it’s about.  You have to tell them enough so that they are interested and leave them wanting to know the details of it and how it ends.  The description is asking the reader on a date, which is to actually read it.  If the date goes well, they will likely go out with you again.

Listening to Sex Bob-Omb: Threshold

Self Publishing and You- Part 5: Multiple Products

#5 Have more than one thing to bring to market, also called a backlist or backlisting.  So all that time, effort, work, rework, polishing, rework, scrapping it because sucks, resurrecting it because it didn't suck so bad you couldn't fix it after some deep contemplation, reflection and self abuse, all to get one freaking book and I'm saying do it a few more times?  Yes.  Simply put, my research has led me to accept that, a lot of the truly successful indie authors were successful because they had multiple products to offer.

Amanda Hocking brought several books to Amazon when she first started.  If you don’t know who that is, better research that too and pray for 10% of her success.

I think this is how it works.  I'm a reader looking for YA Romance and I find your third book.  Something about the cover caught my eye.  The description was intriguing so I purchased it and I loved it.  So I then go looking for other books you wrote.  Well you have three more books and the first two are YA paranormal romance.  Well paranormal isn't really my thing but I read the descriptions anyway and they seem interesting.  I just bought three of your books because I liked one and was willing to take a chance on something else because you paid off on the first go.  I’m impatient and forgetful.  If you didn’t have other books available right then, well, that would be it.  I’ll find someone else to read and may or may not remember you.

Now, let me say that, if you’ve already got one or even two titles on Amazon or Smashwords or wherever, that’s not a bad thing.  Nor will I say, don’t put out anything until you’ve got multiple books to offer, though that is part of my plan.  It’s just something to keep in mind.

So how can you expand your backlist quickly if you’ve only ever writing one novel?

Write shorter works.  Short stories and novellas are a great way to put out a lot of high quality material quickly.  Short stories can be offered for free or for the same $.99 that people are buying 400 page novels for, because it’s a buck that they would have fed into the pop machine at work anyway.  Pricing is another issue that I’m still researching.

Here’s my plan for my YA Military sci-fi series that I talked about in the Promotion post.  First, and I just said this but want to reiterate, it’s a series.  How do you get someone to buy your next book?  Hook them before they even pick it up with the end of the one they just read.  So this 12 novella series is laid out like a season of a television series with a meta-plot, a few individual character arcs, all set in one world that is also growing and developing.  It took me 4 years to finish a 100k word novel, because I was learning to do it and I took time off, but I know I can turn out 25,000 words for a 100 page novel pretty quickly.  What’s taking time is the plotting of 12 books at the same time. WEEeeee…

Of those 12 books, I plan to finish 6 before I bring any to market and I’ll bring 4 at the same time, offering the first one for free.  That gives me time to hype 5 and 6 while also writing 7-12.  Now the heat will be on to finish those last 6 and wrap up the series in a satisfactory way which I hope will help keep me focused and driven.  I could try to write them all first then strategically release them one at a time, in groups or some other strategy that may occur to me between now and then.

But, until I get those first 6 done I’m building my social, professional and distribution network so that I’ll have a community to help me launch the first 4 books in a powerful way.  It’s better to hit the Amazon listings with great numbers and try to keep it up there than to start at the bottom with no way to move it.  Again, see Promotion if you’ve not read it.

Other ways you could do this is to write companion short stories for your novel.  Think of it as a side adventure.  Maybe one of the supporting characters has an interesting story to tell of their own.  Maybe somewhere in this amazing world you’ve built is another story to be told that cannot be told in your novel.  Got a great piece of history that is barely mentioned as backstory but want to tell the whole thing? Do it!
Of course, the old fashioned way to do this is to write.  Just keep writing.  Build your catalog of books one at a time and the success will come if what you offer is excellent.  If it’s not then you need to rework your story, figure out what’s wrong with it and how to fix it (see Editing).  No one ever said you can’t pull a book off Amazon, rework it and slap it back out there.  Why not!?  You’re the editor.  You’re the art director and the marketing director.

As a side note, something I’ve wrestled with in my writing career is impatience.  I wanted to write a great novel and get it published and quit my job and write full time.  I bet we all want that.  Just accept that it doesn’t have to happen overnight.  I put so much stress and pressure on myself to hit these crazy word counts and put out 3 novels a year (NOT!) and, when I hit a wall, I hit it so hard that I quit writing for a long time.  You have your whole life to do something with this talent you’ve been given and, as long as you are doing something, I call that successful because you’re doing so much more than your neighbor or brother in law or most politicians.  Just being willing to dream sets you above almost everyone you know in your personal life and so many of them will hate that and try to pull you back down to their level.  Just write!  Just keep writing and have a plan and work that plan.

The next post is on Reviews, and it will be the last in this series.  I realized that I neglected to talk about your book description and will probably have to address that.  There are plenty more things to talk about with self publishing though and I intend to out line the actual How To’s  from formatting to specifics on options with Amazon and others.  Might need help with this one from some of our friends who have already gone through this process.

Listeing to: Dishwalla- Give  Yeah I used this one before but I love it. J.R. Richards is one of the most overlooked and amazing vocalists of the 90s and he still sounds great.

Self Publishing and You- Part 4: Get a Good Cover

#4 Get a good cover.  This is another slam on indie authors and it has merit.  Even as an artist with a graphic design background, I still pick novels based on the cover.  Sometimes just the spine will do it for me.  We all do this.  The cover tells me, as a reader, a lot of things about the book and the author instantly that I'm not even consciously aware of at the time, whether it’s really true of the story or its creator.  It’s all about first impressions.

If the art grabs my attention and takes me on a journey, you've teased my interest enough to want to know more.  Clicking on a book jacket thumbnail on Amazon is the equivalent of picking up a book in a physical, brick and mortar store.  Just like a test drive, I'm already associating ownership with the book, all because of the picture.  This picture also tells me how deep the author is.  The tones set the mood of the book, be they dark or light.  Colors evoke emotions: passion, fear, excitement.

I got all that out of a book jacket.  The problem is the same true if I don't like the picture.  The worst thing that can happen to you is for me to not click on it.  That's it.  Your jacket didn't even catch my eye.  I didn't even see it.  I would say that your book is dead to me, but that would imply that I ever knew it existed.

What could be worse than that?  Well, I could look at your picture and think that it looks amateurish which, to my subconscious mind,  means you're an amateur and not worth my time because there are so many other books that do catch my attention, that do look professional and interesting.  And if I think your cover is lame, weak, poorly thought out, overly simplistic, unprofessional, I also think the very same about your story.  Your story could be excellent.  If I even went so far as to read your description, it was from a perspective of skepticism.

When I was in college, the art director was my professor for a color theory class.  He told us a story about going to a nice restaurant out of town.  He went in the place was dead on a Friday night in a large city.  The place was clean and well maintained.  The service was excellent and friendly and the food was top notch.  It was so dead, in fact that the owner came out to see how the meal was.  Tom, my professor, asked his if business was always so slow and he confirmed that it had been.  They had recently bought the place and renovated, had a big opening night to rave reviews from the customers only for none of them to return.

At this point Tom had taken in the atmosphere pretty well and what he’d already noticed was that it color scheme was a pale, somber blue with yellow trim and lighting.  Tom pointed this out and said that blue was a very calming color but, just like its other meaning, it could bring people down.  When they thought of his restaurant they weren’t thinking about the great food and service, they were remembering something of the atmosphere of the place and decided to eat somewhere livelier that make them feel happy.  This was likely a subconscious decision.  

A few months later, Tom returned to town and decided to stop back into the restaurant.  This time was during the week and the place was packed.  It also had an entirely new color scheme with a lot of greens, bright yellows and oranges.

What makes for a great cover?   

It’s going to vary depending on your genre, subject matter and tone.   Study your genre.

What makes for a bad cover?  

 This one is easier to answer.  

·        Grainy or blurry pictures (and not blurry in an artistic way) say you did it yourself without the right tools or know how. 

·        Font type, color and place are off.  Any of these can kill it but often I find all three to be in question.  

o       You want your title to leap off the page. 

o       Dark background light font, which white has been done to death because IT WORKS! 

o       Light background, dark and bold fonts. 

o       The title needs to be placed top center usually. If you can pull off putting it bottom center, that’s fine.  What you find a lot of times, amateurs push the title and author to the corners so that they don’t cover up their pretty image.  You title needs to be bold and dramatic like your art.  It’s all part of your graphic design message and it’s important that images and text work together to create a visually appealing product.

·        Too much going on at once.  You can do a lot with Photoshop to blend one image element into another but it confuses the message you’re trying to send about what this book is about.  

So how do you get a good cover or, better, a GREAT cover?

If you're artistically inclined and have the skill set to make your own cover, you probably can save yourself some time and money.  I would study jackets first.  Go to your personal library of books and look at the cover art of those books you’ve bought.  Look at the New York Times Best Seller list and then look up the covers for those books and see what has already proven to work.  Then just browse books in your genre on Amazon.  Immediately you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.  There will be plenty of standouts, so go in with the intention of finding the bad ones.  It won’t take you long.  Now, the trick is to get that polished look and feel without ripped anything off.

If you’re not a visual artist with digital art skills, maybe you have a friend or family member that is.  If you've built a good network, hopefully you included artists in it.  Like I said before, you may be able to get a free or cheap cover of high quality simply by promoting the artist in your network.  Just like you, artists want to get their name out there.  Promote the hell outta them.  Anytime someone says, “Hey I love your cover,” say thanks I was done by Jill Schmill, who is an excellent artist, even if she has an unfortunate name.”

We are sensory creatures.  We see people we’re attracted to and it evokes emotions and a physical reaction.  The same can be said of a nice car.  The Challenger makes me wet, which is an odd reaction for a guy.  We are attracted to the things we want in an aesthetic way and you want your cover art to be one of the things that people are attracted to, not repelled by.  And it’s your baby.  Don’t accept second rate work.  If the artist returns something that you don’t like, stand your ground and get it or take your business somewhere else.

Next post in the series: Bring Multiple Products to the Market.

Listening to Metric: Gold Guns Girls

Self Publishing and You- Part 3: Promotion

#3 Promotion-  Whether you're traditionally published or indie, you’re planning to go nowhere without a marketing plan.  This is a business after all.  Not everyone is business minded.  In fact, many creatives are very intimidated by the idea of mixing business with art, especially when it comes to promoting themselves.  If you could take the intimidation factor out and simplify things a bit, how would that affect your outlook on the business aspects of what we do?

When you’re promoting your work you need to ask, are you like the paper boy you see in 1940’s movies and cartoons screaming out the day’s headlines to passersby, or are you building relationships and connecting with people who will be more likely to care about what you have to say?  What do you think you’re doing?  How do you feel when every post and tweet is telling you to go do this or that without ever having any kind of connection to the writer, artist, salesman, whatever?
So let’s try to simplify things.

First, start with a target in mind. For my YA military sci-fi series, my end goal is animation.  I want to see my story become an animated series.  So I work backward and now ask, what do I need to do to get there?  Well I feel that I have to have success with my books first, then use that success to springboard into graphic novels which will allow me to reach a totally different audience.  I'm thinking mainly of COMICON at this point.  Then, leverage that success into the animation arena which my graphic novel fans and a portion of my book fans will want to see but will open up an even wider audience depending on the distribution of the animated product.

So I have my target.  How do I get there?

Now I have to decide where I need to place myself in order to achieve these staged goals.  I'm still discovering how to do this but I'm using the social networks to put my feelers out there and to meet like minded people.  The idea being to develop relationships and share knowledge, then eventually share networks and audiences.  Also, you can get reviews from this source as well as network with artists who might be willing to trade cover design work for free promotion.

How hard is it to reach out to people that like the same things you do?  If you’re genuinely interested in the work of your peers, they will be willing to listen to you talk about your products.  

Believe it or not, I used to be shy. VERY shy.  I changed a lot as a young adult after reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie.  This is an old but great book.  Carnegie says that most people want to talk about themselves.  If you want new people you meet to like you, ask them to talk about themselves.  If you show a real interest in what they do, where they’re from, what they like and dislike, you’ve made a friend.  Connect with people.  Don’t just throw your advertisements at them.   They won’t care otherwise.

What you’re doing is creating a marketing network even if you aren’t actively marketing your work.  You’re creating a brand for yourself as a writer and, possibly even as a personality.  

When do you start networking?  I'm building my social and promotional network before I even have a finished product.  I'm working ahead while writing because I don't want to put my novel on Amazon and THEN start promoting it.  I want to have a community and a fan base to hype the launch of my book to.  I'll set a date and start a buzz, build a ground swell, create value in the work by offering teasers and excerpts to a network of people who, hopefully know a little about me and like me.  Anyone that has spent any time around me online knows I’m a freakin’ nut.  I use humor, usually rude, juvenile, bathroom humor, to break down walls and it works, for me.

I’ve already had people begging for my work with a social network of just under 1000 people online.  I hope to top 10,000 before I’ve got something substantial to bring to the market.  To keep those people happy and hopefully build on that anticipation, I offer excerpts, teasers and even free short stories.  I’m proving to my handful of readers that I can in fact write and that I have something to say.

One final thought on word of mouth.  If you’ve studied marketing at all (and we all really should), you’ve heard of word of mouth advertising and should know that it is considered the most powerful form of advertising.  It can start with a handful of people, say 10 who talk to 10 other people and act as a sounding board for the merits or flaws of your work.  Yes, flaws.  If you suck enough to piss someone off, its word of mouth that will be the nail in your coffin which is why editing is so important (see last post Producing a Flawless Product).

But lets says it all good.  You’re great.  Your work is great and you’ve got 10 people talking to 10 people about you and so on.  This is how a phenomena starts.  But lets change that number.  Instead of starting with 10, lets start with 10,000.  Okay that’s huge so lets be less cheeky and say out of a network of 10,000, 10% are that impressed with you.  So 1000 x 10.  Now its 10,000 again.  Number are fun.  Next week its 100,000, then a 1,000,000.  You’ve not gone viral.  Math geeks will call that exponential growth.  I call it freakin’ smurf!

Any marketing plan will need to be constantly reviewed, tweaked and reworked.  I think of it as Research by Doing.  Trial and error.  Expected results vs Actual results.

So is all of this gonna work?  I don’t know.  Is any of it gonna work?  I still can’t say that I know because I’m smack in the middle of this, but its my plan and I’m gonna work it.  I do have a plan though.  It’s going to happen different ways for all of us.  Do you have a plan?

Stay Tuned for Part 4 Covers!

Listening to- Alice in Chains - Shame In You

Self Publishing and You Part 2: Editing

#2 Produce a Flawless Product  I can't stress this one enough!  The greatest complaint I hear about self published authors is the quality of the editing.  Just because this work will not pass through the hands of an editor, that does not let us off the hook for proof reading.  

Just some tips on editing.  

• If it's a short story, leave it for a week or two before editing.  When it's too fresh your mind fills in the blanks and corrects your mistakes because you remember what it should have said.   

• If you have to reread something more than once to understand what you were trying to say, consider revising it.  Readers don’t want to get tripped up on your prose.  They want it to flow seamlessly so that they can forget that they're reading.  Keep in mind that anything that kicks the reader out of the flow of the story, pisses them off, if only subconsciously.  Take care of your readers and they'll take care of you by buying your next book.

• If you can afford it, hire an editor.  There’s tons of them out there (not all good).  But enough research will lead you where you need to go.  

• If you can’t find a decent editor find other writers.  While building your promotional network, try to rub elbows with other writers.  Most likely, you’ll find a couple that you really click with who may be willing to be a beta reader.  Tell these writers what you want them to look for.  If you’re smart, you’ll ask them to point out spelling and grammar, but anything that is unclear, unbelievable or somehow flawed.  If they’re really good, they will be able to help you with plotting and general storytelling.  If you’re story is broken you may need help to fix it.

• If you can’t get this kind of help, because not every has access to a writer, I suggest trying to get five people to read your book and give feedback.  Why five? 
• You need at least two who are capable of editing to some degree.  You know someone like this.  They may or may not be a writer but they innately seem to have spelling down to a science, and they understand grammar better than most.  I find those who tend to correct the spoken grammar of others, insufferable bastards but they are good for this. Yes, they actually have a good use!
• The other three should be readers.  Real, die-hard readers of your genre, who can tell you what they think of the story.  For me, I have a cadre of sci-fi and fantasy geeks for my mainstream work and I'm developing contacts through my social network to read my erotica stuff.  Gotta keep em separated!  Geeks are brutal when it comes to their wheelhouse.  They flay bare the bones of some of the great stories and I want someone who's not afraid to tell me when I'm being stupid or subconsciously ripping something off (it happens).

•  Receive edits with a thankful frame of mind.  No matter what, every red mark you see,  every "I just didn't get it" you hear, every less then positive bit of body language you read, these people are helping you refine your product.  BUT, don't just say okay, and leave it at that.  Talk to them about why they didn't like this or felt that way about that.  Ask them how you could have done it better.  Some of it will be completely off base and you'll know you're right.  Stick to your guns on things that you feel passionately about but still be positive in your reception.

• Grow a thicker skin.  It's not personal.  It's business.  Accept the criticism and ignore the haters.  Per Tom of Toonami.  Haters are the ones that heap negativity on whatever you do.  Just ignore them because they just want to drag you down.  What hurts most is that these can often be the people closest to you.  

On a personal note, I hate writing about editing because it makes me hypersensitive to the possibility of my own typos.  I’m sure they are here and I’m sure you found them!

Next time Promotion!

Listening to The Offspring-Come Out and Play (Keep em Separated!)

Self Publishing and You- Part 1

So, before I get too deep in my own poo here, know that I'm neither published nor self published.  I'm a writer with multiple irons in the fire who has been researching the publishing industry for my own business plan.  While sharing what I've found here, I've caught the attention of some other writers.  Whatever I present here is just meant to chronicle my own story but I hope to help others in their own journeys.
I intend to break this up into a few posts because there’s a ton to cover.  This isn’t an all inclusive list either.  
That being said, on with the show. 

What do you need to do before self publishing?  Below is a list of what are some of the most important things I’ve found.  I’ll cover each in different posts, most likely.

1.      Research

2.      Produce a Flawless Product

3.      Promote

4.      Great Cover

5.      Have a Catalog of Titles

6.      Reviews

#1 Research  I suggest you seek the ins and outs of both legacy and indie publishing for yourself.  You need to know what legacy publishers may still offer.  Know what it is that they look for in your genre because they have pretty much trained the reading public as to what should be found in a good book and, writing with some of these guidelines in mind will help you to produce a product that any writer, indie or traditionally published, can respect.

Another good thing to look at is the New York Times Best Seller list.  This now includes ebooks and, even though it says it does not include self published writers in it’s listing.  I’ve found several romance and erotica indie authors in the top 30 in recent months. 

Also, as you build your promotional network, follow closely the successes and failures of your fellow/fella indie writers who are further along their publishing path then you are.  The industry changes constantly so you may see a trend or paradigm shift that will greatly affect your future plans.

Read, read, read, read.  This should be something you enjoy.  You’re a writer for fuck sake.  It’s also research.  You’ll find a lot of dos and don’ts from your contemporaries.  Learn from their failings and successes.  It’s also good to know what stories have been told because it is shocking to find out how often writers duplicate each other without ever having known the one another nor that their work existed.  I’ve had several story ideas make it to Hollywood.  I should be rich but they made it there before I was even finished writing them or, sometimes, before I ever started.  John Carpenters “Vampires” mirrored so many aspects of a story I was outlining at the time.  And my protagonist’s last name was Crow.  If you’ve seen it, you might remember Jack Crow.  I was pissed!  This happens.  Just be aware of what’s going on in your genre.

Tune in next time for #2 Producing a Flawless product. Editing is the stigma attached to self publishing.

Listening to: The Cranberries- Linger

We are living in an institutional world and I am an institutional girl.. or boy

There was a time when a person could be considered educated based on their knowledge.  You could ask a man a question and, based upon his answer, you’d simply know he was a “learned man”.  Let’s forget about the class struggles of such a time, or perhaps revisit that point later because this post really isn’t about being educated.  It’s about what the “civilized world” has done to take away our very basic ability to achieve greatness on our own terms.

Now you’re asking, “What the hell is he on about?” but with an oddly Scottish accent.  I’ve been doing those a lot in my mind today.

So here’s my gripe, with an eventual silverish lining.  Nowadays, I have to pay a university tens of thousands to certify that I am educated.  Forget that I’ve read thousands of articles, books, and essays on more topics than most people will ever know or even care to know about.  This snobbish elite gets to decide what bullet points quantify my knowledge as educated or uneducated. 

The same thing has been happening in the publishing world for decades.  There are those that get to decide what people will buy, and when I say people I mean buyers for big block book stores.  It comes down to marketing and what can be simply put on a book jacket.  Yeah it’s business and businesses have rules.  Businesses need to make money but we’re in the information age when the businesses that thrive are those that don’t stick to a formula created in the 50s and 60s.  The businesses that thrive have new ideas and do something with them. Apple.  Facebook.  Amazon. 

The most disheartening thing I ever learned about the publishing industry was just how very little a publisher will do to promote a new writer.  “Here’s your complimentary copies of YOUR book and our best wishes.  Don’t worry.  When you make it big we’ll spend some real money on you, probably.  Until then, promote yourself and we’ll keep the vast majority of your profits for the right to day you’re a published author.”  Sounds like a degree, doesn’t it?

And so this stale and stagnant business model is limping.  The buzzards are circling and the Indie Writer Revolution has come.  This movement was created by the convergence of anexplosive technological wave, started by Amazon’s Kindle, and perpetuated by the iPhone, iPad and subsequent Android devices, slamming headlong into the institutional walls of the “big 6” publishers.

After the bodies are cleared, or picked clean by the carrion eaters, what we have are new avenues opened for anyone to reach for that publishing dream.  Who cares what anyone else thinks.  You have options now.  You can self publish and be successful.  It won’t be easy.  In fact, unless you are among the extremely lucky, it will be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done but, it will be worth it.  Even if you fail, what is Bob, the nosey butt plug of a neighbor across the street, doing with his life?  I’ll tell you what.  That piece of shit’s drawing disability and staring at my front door ALL FREAKIN' DAY while I worked my ass off in three careers! 

Oh, sorry.  Don’t like Bob.  I’m doing more with my life than he ever thought of doing.  I don’t need a college degree to say I know what I know.  I don’t need an editor who’s never written or published a novel of their own, telling me I don’t have what it takes.  All I need is for everyone to get the hell outta my way and watch my smoke.

Success is the best revenge.  Try not to choke on it.

Listening to: Silverchair- Madman