The “7 Rookie Mistakes” from Phoebe Quinn over at A Writer’s Path ring true. For example, I agree we tend to recycle clichéd characters from other things we’ve read or TV we’ve seen. It’s because we do this that literature in all its forms has such a profound effect on our values. We think “heroes” MUST behave like the hero in a popular book or that people who behave like the villain we just saw on Netflix are also villainous. It’s tough in writing to catch yourself scribbling in these “types.”
What do you think of Quinn’s fixes? I’m still a pantser, and I do pay the price—but I want to be surprised by my own writing, and outlines take that surprise away.
Tag Archives: creative writing
7 Rookie Writing Mistakes (and 7 Ways to Improve)
6 Basic Tech Skills for Writers
Here’s a post about some of those mysterious tech skills that can confound non-tekkie verbal people like us writers. Check it out—whether you need to communicate with editors or with beta readers or if you just want to format your own book for Amazon or Smashwords. I can attest that you DO need Styles, and I’ve found GIMP, a free program recommended by this post, to work wonderfully as a graphics editor. You’ll need this information to format your hard-copy editions as well. Let me know what you think!
Best Sites for Literary Readers and Writers!
From Jane Friedman, here is a tour of all the stops you might want to make if you’re interested in that elusive beast called “literary fiction.” Enjoy! See also Donald Maass’s definition of literary fiction. It worked for me!
Stop Paying People to Read your Book
This is an older post from alfageeek, but like all his posts, it’s full of hands-on, practical advice that actually soothes some of my guilt over my abysmal marketing efforts. While you’re checking out his site, also check out his latest report on his experience with Bookbub ads.
In marketing to consumers, there is a well-established “buying cycle.” There are a lot of different variations on this but they generally go:
- Awareness (finding out your product exists)
- Research (figuring out whether they want it)
- Purchase (woo hoo!)
- Repurchase (they liked it and want another)
I mention this because the business of marketing a book is really no different from the business of marketing anything else to consumers. What I find interesting is that the people marketing books these days are mostly authors, and judging from their behavior, I think many of them are really confused about that whole cycle. So I’m writing this post to help explain it to them, with they hope that they stop throwing their money away solving problems they do not have.
Let’s skip awareness for a second, and dispense with the rest of the cycle.
If you write a great book and get a…
View original post 1,712 more words
Rewriting: An Overview of the Process
Absolutely one of the best dicussions of story structure I’ve read. Resonates on so many levels for me! I just wrote to a writing group colleague that a story that’s working tells me what it’s about, and I think that sentiment jibes with this discussion. Let me know what you think!
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”
— C. J. Cherryh
The goal of the rewrite is simple, but not easy. You want your story to live. To accomplish this, it’s helpful to have a basic confidence in the arc of your heroine’s journey before getting more specific with character, dialogue, and the refinement of prose. You’re seeking to create a story that amuses and entertains, but also captures some complexity and truth about the human experience.
This is a daunting task because—be honest—there’s a bit of inflexibility in your relationship with your first draft. On the one hand, you fear that if it’s not told as precisely as you imagined it, it won’t work. On the other hand, it feels somewhat unsatisfying as written.
So the biggest challenge in the rewriting is being able to make a thousand little painful paper-cut changes while avoiding…
View original post 1,424 more words
Describers vs. Prescribers: Reaching a Linguistic Common Ground
Visit from the Grammar Police!
Reading this piece from Nicholas C. Rossis, I couldn’t help giving a mental high-five. Starting sentences with gerunds (and various other odd bits of language) is absolutely okay! I would caution that starting sentences with -ing forms of verbs can all too easily lead to “dangling modifiers,” for example, “Reading this, it was a really good discussion of an issue we all face.” If you’re not sure why that sentence DOES contain a sentence-structure error, look up “dangling modifiers.” Returning, however, to the question of prescriptive versus descriptive language mavens, I ask only—well, mainly—that the parts of sentences hook up logically so that I can tell what modifies what and who’s doing what.
I have a feeling this is sliding into a rant. Check my series on “How Much Grammar Do You Need,” and here and here, for my largely descriptivist views.
When I published The Power of Six, my first collection of short stories, a reviewer said that the book had grammatical errors, albeit small ones. This shocked me, as the book had been professionally edited and proof-read. So, I reached out and asked her for an example. “You start a sentence with a gerund,” she said. “So?” I asked. “So, that’s wrong.”
I was baffled by this. Surely, that’s a matter of style, right?
This seemingly innocent question actually led me into a minefield. As The Economist points out, for half a century, language experts have fallen into two camps. Most lexicographers and academic linguists stand on one side, and traditionalist writers and editors on the other. The question that defines the to camps is deceivingly simple: should language experts describe the state of the language accurately? (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, in 1961, shocked the world by including common…
View original post 485 more words
Writing a Press Release!
These clear instructions and multiple templates and examples for how to write a press release for your book are exactly what I’ve been looking for. Now to get busy and DO IT! Share your experiences writing and sending out releases for your books!
Stupid Writing Rules: 12 Dumb Things New Writers Tell Each Other
Fortunately for me, the members of both of the writing groups I belong to don’t traffic in most of these pointless prescriptions and proscriptions. I do, however, agree that too many people have a basic fear of the word “was.” As Allen points out, there’s a big difference between “I was reading when she came in” and “I read when she came in.” Also “had.” Sometimes the past perfect is just necessary. Do you have any “stupid rules” to add, or do you take exception to Allen’s judgment on these?
Filed under correct grammar for writers of fiction, ebooks publishing and selling, Editing your novel, grammar rules for writers, indie publishing, Learning to write, Myths and Truths for writers, Plot Development for writers, punctuation for writers of novels, self editing for fiction writers, Self-publishing, style for writers, What Not To Do in Writing Novels, Writers' groups, Writing, writing novels
What Happens In Your Brain When You Write?
This interesting infographic reinforces several things writing teachers know about writing. Writing is a powerful “mode of learning,” to borrow from 1970s writing researcher Janet Emig, because it does so many of the things shown here. One thing it does really well is to SLOW YOU DOWN so information has time to work its way into your synapses and new ideas to bubble up.
And as this infographic shows, writing involves your body and your senses, not just isolated parts of your brain.
And writing pushes you to be more precise in diction and sentence construction, since you can’t just toss a few disjointed words out but must connect them logically to each other.
So when you want to learn or remember something, write about it!
![Amazing Facts on Writing and How it Affects Our Brain [Infographic] - An Infographic from BestInfographics.co](http://www.bestinfographics.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/amazing-facts-about-writing-and-the-brain.jpg)
Filed under Writing, Writing and Learning
A Book Production Checklist for Indie Authors
A comprehensive list for producing your own book for ingram, CreateSpace, KDP, and others! Lots of links and resources. Thanks, Chris!
An extract by Carla King, on BookWorks Site:
Are you ready to upload your book for sale to the online retailers?
Got all your front and back matter, images, fonts, and ISBNs?
Use this checklist to make sure you’ve done everything you can to create a quality book that competes with books produced in the traditional publishing houses.
But first, here’s a quick overview of the entire book production process.
It begins with an unedited manuscript and ends with a check of the final proof before distribution.
Just Can't Help Writing 