12 Basic Writing Mistakes I’ve Made and How To Avoid Them

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 2 Comments

1. Trying to write two books at once

This pretty much never works. Very rarely you will hear about a professional author writing two books at once, but in my experience what they’re actually doing is writing one book while editing the other.

A big part of why this is a problem is that it seems to work, at least at first, especially if you’re good at story planning. However it always ends up going pear shaped because the human mind gets details wrong. Small bits of each book will creep into the other and it can become very hard to catch the problem until it’s irreversible.

It’s also just plain hard. Writing even one book is a task that can consume your life, and especially if you’re new, you need to be concentrating on making sure your first book sucks to the smallest degree possible.

You can very easily burn yourself out trying this, I certainly did and ended up not writing for two months. Learn from my stupid. Learn from it!

2. Trying to be totally original

This is a noble goal but the chances of you pulling it off without churning out an unreadable pile of dung is pretty much nil. There are reason certain story structures, tropes and characters recur in fiction; they work.

A second thing to bear in mind is that even the most out there ideas have been tried at one point or another, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn’t but if you really think that no one’s tried an unlikable protagonist before then I have bad news for you.

What you can do is take a new spin on an old story. Rather than writing something purely for the sake of making it different, write it because it fits the story and your own unique way of telling it. A good example is the Dresden Files novels by Jim Butcher. The Dresden books are almost an encyclopaedia of tropes, references and allusions. What makes them work is Butcher’s story telling and the original way he’s telling stories that have been around for years.

3. Trying to write to the market

Yeah I tried to write a sexy vampire story. This is not my bailiwick and it was awful. The reason it was so bad is not because sexy vampire stories inherently suck (there are some genuinely good ones) but because I tried to write it because it was popular and not because it was the story I wanted to tell.

I keep a copy to remind myself of how badly this can go wrong.

That’s not to say you can’t write something that’s currently super popular. If you want to write a sexy vampire novel then that’s what you should write. Where you run into difficulty is in forcing yourself to write something you have no emotional investment in.

As with everything, there are exceptions to this but they’re normally provided by professional writers with a faster time to market than beginners. Pro writers can take better advantage of the reading market’s passing fancies but even then no matter how callous they claim to be I suspect that these writers still enjoyed what they wrote even if it wasn’t their normal fare.

4. Not planning

I’m not saying you have to write an outline (hint: write an outline) but not planning your writing in some way, even if it’s just setting aside time to write, is a recipe for disaster.

You also need to plan how you’re going produce, distribute and market your work. You need to know how all of this works before you need to use it or it’s going to be a very steep learning curve when your book is done.

5. All planning and no writing

Yeah, this again. You can spend your life developing the perfect book marketing plan and never write a word of your novel.

If you don’t write your book it will never sell. If you don’t write, you aren’t a writer.

It’s harsh, but it’s true.

6. Not checking Writer Beware/Preditors and Editors

This is a mistake I only made once, and I managed to catch myself before anything really bad happened, but it was a close enough call that it’s ingrained this lesson into my brain.

If someone, anyone approaches with an offer or a request for your writing these two sites should be your first port of call. Most scams you will spot a mile away, but there are a few around that are extremely sophisticated and can easily suck you in if you don’t check on them.

The sites you need are: Writer Beware run by SFWA and Preditors and Editors. Check them if you have any doubts about anyone or anything you are dealing with in relation to your writing.

The law of the universe now states that I will fall victim to a writing scam that ends with me selling both my kidneys to a street vendor in Venezuela.

7. Getting into arguments online

Fortunately the fights I’ve had online have had nothing to do with writing, but in the end like all online arguments they were fruitless, pointless and just wasted time I should have been writing.

Just remember this XKCD comic every time you’re tempted.

8. Thinking I knew everything

This is just embarrassing but when I first started writing I thought I knew enough that I didn’t have anything more to learn and I could just go for it on any idea I came up with.

Yes, I was complete tool.

I may still be, but at least I’m open minded enough to know I know very little. Most of what I know has come from learning from my mistakes, and the rest of what I know has come from listening to people smarter than me.

Who you need to listen to is going to vary depending on who you are and what you write but I think you can’t go wrong with starting out listening to these three groups:

Mur Lafferty at I Should Be Writing. You should listen to Mur because she is smart, funny, an excellent writer and one of the few people prepared to tackle the emotional side of being a writer.

Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowhal and Howard Taylor at Writing Excuses. Four of the most entertaining writers in the world (for my money anyway) talk about everything from character development to world building to making sure you bathe before conventions. Always smart, always useful and always awesome.

Robin Sullivan of Ridan Publishing. There’s a reason Ridan gets a free ad on this site and will do for the foreseeable future and that reason is that over the course of two interviews* Robin taught me more about the way self publishing, indie publishing and traditional publishing works. Her blog is an absolute must for anyone getting into writing fiction.

Start with these three and it will be hard to go wrong. Not impossible, I’m living evidence that no advice is idiot proof, but I guarantee their advice is excellent.

9. Thinking I Could Do Everything Myself

Theoretically you can do almost everything yourself, but there is one glaring exception. You must, must get someone else to edit your work. I’m not talking about grammar and spelling (although it’s not a bad plan to get that checked too), I’m talking about getting someone who knows their onions to check over the story itself.

I recommend hiring a professional editor to do this, even though it costs, partly because they will be better at it than almost anyone who will do it for free and because they can tell you straight up if something’s not working without caring if your feelings are hurt.

Friends and beta readers will try but it’s very hard to tell someone that their story needs a total re write without hurting them.

10. Not Reading Out Loud When I’m Editing

Want to save yourself a ton of grief? Read your work out loud when you’re doing an edit. You will catch so, so much more in the way of odd phrasing and bad dialogue if you do it that way.

Scenes that seemed so perfect in your head will reveal their problems to you when your ears actually hear what you’ve written.

I think the reason this works is that it forces you to read what you have actually written instead of what you think you’ve written. We all read in chunks of words, and our brains have a bad habit of filling in gaps to make things sound better than they actually are.

11. Editing As I Go

I still do this; in fact I’m so bad at it that all I can say is “Go! Save yourselves!” and encourage you to leave me to die in a pile of premature edits.

Changing things as you go means it will be very hard for you to finish anything. Yes some people can do it, but I’m not one of them and I’m willing to bet you aren’t either. The people who can do it are full time authors who can afford to pull things to bits constantly and then rebuild as they write.

It’s very hard to know the shape of your story until it’s actually done. I know it’s a pain to know that a small change you’ll make at the start will necessitate changing things later in the book, but far better that than you never finish at all.

12. Leaping Into Things Too Quickly

A friend of mine asked me about my current book the other day and she asked if I was going to send it to a professional editor.

The answer was yes, but not yet.

The reason is that it’s just not that good yet. I could send it to the editor, pay several hundred dollars (that’s a minimum) and learn a great deal, but I’m not going to get the most out of my money and their time unless the book is as good as it can be first.

These days, especially with self publishing, it’s so easy to be impatient. To be afraid that if you’re not putting out a book a month you’re going to fall behind all the other authors who are churning out page turners seemingly every seventeen minutes.

As much as we all want to be successful right now so we can hurry up and order our Ferrari you will be far better served by waiting a little and putting out something of high quality.

More and more book reviewers are going to be the arbiters of quality when it comes to books both self published and traditionally published. It will pay for your book to stand head and shoulders above the rest when it comes time for the book bloggers to see your work.

* You can see them here and here.

12 Twitter Tips for Writers

Posted on | January 17, 2012 | 5 Comments

Twitter is one of those good idea/bad idea things. On the one hand it’s an amazingly powerful tool for setting up a platform and communicating with your readers. On the other it’s a time sink equal to any other on the internet and it’s quite possible to spend a day doing almost nothing but tweet.

Twitter has worked for me, moreso than anything else I’ve tried it’s allowed me to reach an audience far outside of what I normally would have been able to reach.

I can’t recommend Twitter enough, but if you’re new to twitter, there are some rules to keep it from becoming more of a liability than a boon.

1. Tweet. Interact.

Twitter isn’t much use if you just lurk around in the background, reading tweets as they fly by. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but for Twitter to positively impact your writing career you need to get involved. It’s also a lot more fun to actually be having conversations with the myriad of people you can find on Twitter.

It’s that personal interaction with people that is going to make twitter worthwhile. It doesn’t matter what the ineraction is as long as it’s friendly. Talk. Participate. I’s worh it, I promise.

2. Don’t just tweet about your products

It’s tempting to relentlessly pimp your stuff, I know. Believe me I know. Especially where there is a direct correlation between your fiction sales and your ability to eat that month.

But on Twitter you just can’t do it. There is no faster way to get ignored or even blocked than to do nothing but tweet “BUY MY CRAP” over and over again.

You actually need to make a connection with other people in order to get them to pay any attention to you when it comes to sale time. A number I’ve heard is that you can afford to make somewhere between and 1 and 3% of your Tweets self promotion. If you can, err to the lower end of that scale.

3. Positive balance man

A very easy mistake to make is to follow thousands of people in order to build up your Twitter following. This sort of works because most people and especially companies, will follow you back. You can build a twenty thousand person following in a week or two just by following everyone Twitter recommends to you.

And it will be both meaningless and next to useless.

Something everyone, consciously or not, look at when they are deciding to see if you are worth interacting with is your twitter balance. In short this means the balance between the number of people you follow vs the number of people who follow you.

If you look at my twitter account @ajackwriting you will see that I follow 561 people, and that roughly 731 people follow me. I’m in positive balance because the number of people following number is higher than the number of people I’m following.

This is so important, because being in negative balance will warn everyone that the only reason you’re on Twitter is to market your stuff and that you don’t really care about interacting with other Twitter users.

4. Fewer ham sandwiches

Blame my Uncle for the title. It was his way of referring to the very human habit of jumping on Twitter to tell the world about your latest ham sandwich.

I’m not saying you can’t say silly things on Twitter, hell that’s half of my day sometimes, but you do need to think of the way it looks to people who are following you. If the only thing followers ever see from you is tweets describing your boil in excruciating detail you might find yourself with far fewer followers than you’d hoped*.

You need to tweet about interesting things, share other peoples links and generally try to be as interesting as possible.

5. #hashtags

If you’re new to Twitter then you may be wondering what the strange people are doing putting what seem like random words at the end of their tweets with hashtags (#) at the start.

A hashtag is a way to get a tweet out into a kind of Twitter community group. These groups spring up all the time, and they’re a great way to get your work out there. If you are talking about writing, whether you want to brag about writing two thousand words in an hour or you’re posting a link to a great writing article you found online** it ensures anyone keeping an eye on that hashtag will see it.

Personally I’ve found the best hashtags to follow are #amwriting and #pubwrite. You can learn a lot just by clicking the links that come through.

6. Don’t forget you have a book to write

This advice is for me as much as it’s for anyone else. It’s so easy to just stay on Twitter, reading links and talking to other authors and feel like you’re writing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to build a plat form on Twitter but in the end, if you don’t write a book (or a story, or whatever sort of fiction or non fiction you write) you’re ultimately wasting time.

7. One liners

This hasgtag gets a special mention: #wiplines. For some reason once I started posting on liners from whatever I happened to working on my number of followers and their interaction with me skyrocketed.

If you’re going to put some of your one liners onto Twitter, bear in mind that they have to be one of three things (assuming you write genre fiction): sexy, funny or creepy.

Personally I get better responses from the funny lines than I do from anything else. Some people have success just posting what amounts to the most awesome/action packed/sexy one liners they can manage, but for me you can’t go past making people laugh.

Possibly they are laughing at me rather than with me.

Tempting as it is, try not to give away plot details in your one liners. Instead go for the feel of your novel and try to get across why it would be fun for people to read.

8. You are your brand

While some get away with being utterly impersonal on Twitter they tend to be those who are offering things other than themselves as a brand. When you’re an author, you are your own brand, which means that the people who interact with you want to know about who you are and what you think.

Yes you need to maintain an air of professionalism, and no matter how tempting it’s never a good plan to cut loose with abuse on someone else, however you also need to give your followers a sense of who you are and what you’re about.

If you love steampunk…talk about it. Post up pictures of awesome steampunk stuff you’ve come across online or in real life.

Try to stay away from political or religious arguments if you can, simply because you will never, ever convince anyone online that your point of view is correct and you can make enemies needlessly.

If you want to debate about sports…or really anything else then go for it, just make sure you remain polite and logical even in the face of John Gabriel’s GIF Theory (sort of NSFW).

9. Networking

I’ve had a bit of a rant in the past about networking. The short version of it is this: make friends rather than contacts. If you set out just to network for your own selfish reasons you will get exactly nowhere. There are just too many social media douchebags*** out there already doing the same thing.

Instead, do favours for people and have no expectation of being repaid. Help promote books that you love and writers you respect. Sometimes people will return the favour, sometimes they won’t, either way keep doing nice things for people and eventually people will do nice things for you.

10. Never respond to critiques on Twitter

If someone bashes your book on Twitter, just stay quiet. It doesn’t matter how awful he review, how monstrous the reviewer or how great the book you don’t get to respond.

By barking back on Twitter you will do yourself ten times the damage a bad review can. Not responding to bad reviews (or any review for that matter) is good advice for any platform, but it goes double for Twitter.

One stroppy tweet from you can blacken your name around the world faster than you can imagine.

If you find yourself about to attack a reviewer on twitter, contact someone you love and have them punch you until you no longer feel the urge.

11. Tweets never die

As above, things you say on Twitter theoretically last forever. A tweet expressing your hatred for pants you made two years ago can come back and haunt your current pro pants campaign.

Don’t feel like you have to sensor yourself too much, but bear in mind how you’d like to appear to the world and consider how the tweets you’re putting out there match up with the image you want to display.

Chuck Wendig of Terribleminds.com is a good example of this. Despite being a foul mouthed beardy lunatic, Chuck manages to come across as intelligent and professional despite managing to take curse words to all new places. It fits the brand he’s set up for himself and it matches his image.

12. Have fun

This is often the last piece of advice I have about anything to do with writing. People will be able to tell if you are simply enduring Twitter for the sake of sales, and those sales will be few and far between. There is a wealth of people on Twitter who know more than you do, plumb them for information.

There are also a huge number of potential friends on there too, be friendly.

Enjoy using Twitter as the unique tool it is, because if you have fun with it the marketing and promotion side of things will be a side benefit that will all but take care of itself.

What are your twitter tips? Have I missed anything?

* Or possibly more. People are sickos.

** I don’t necessarily mean mine of course. <cough>

*** I can’t find who coined this term, if anyone knows let me know and I’ll credit it

Writing Full Time: Ten Things to Think About Before You Go Pro

Posted on | January 16, 2012 | No Comments

Almost every writer I know wants to be a full timer, I certainly do. It’s a very understandable dream, who wouldn’t love to stay home and do what we love to make a living?

There are a few things you need to bear in mind as you work your way towards massive word counts and naked workdays. Since I’m very much a part timer this article is based on the things I’ve learned myself and on interviews with full time writers.

1. Overheads

You need to know how much you need to survive, and then you need to build a serious cushion into that number. It’s easy to forget little things that a normal job can get you when you’re sprinting towards your dream. Things like insurance, taxes and business costs not only cost chunks of your income when you’re out on your own, they also suck up a huge amount of time.

Time you should be writing.

The flip side of this is that if you can reduce you overheads significantly then making a full time income as a writer is far less daunting. It is much harder to make fifty grand a year than it is to make thirty and if you can be comfortable at thirty grand a year there’s no reason you can’t go full time.

2. Get an accountant

Get one before you have to deal with a full time income. Your tax department is going to start getting really interested in you as soon as you start pulling anything more than beer money and they are not a group of people you want to nark off.

An accountant can save you both time and money. My accountant has saved me so much that she’s more than paid for her services many times over.

They can also help you claim money back on your taxes for anything you spend on your writing business.

3. Realize this is going to be a job

Writing every day for a living sounds like a dream, and it is in a lot of ways, but when you’re your own boss it can be easy to cut yourself too much slack and before you know it you haven’t written anything in six months and your landlord isn’t interested in how high you have managed to level your Skyrim character.

As soon as you don’t have the safety net of a day job, you are literally going to have to be your own pedantic HR manager. You will have to plan your leave in advance, and you will have to have some mechanism in place for making sure you have your butt in the chair and your hands on the keyboard…AND you’re writing what you’re meant to be writing.

4. Realise what you’re giving up

It’s hard to know just how awesome a steady paycheque is if that’s all you’ve ever known. As soon as you start making money as a writer it’s going to seem like Christmas, but psychologically speaking while you’ve still got a steady job, you still have your safety net.

As soon as the net is gone you’re going to start sweating like there’s a polar bear in your kitchen.

The company you work for now will also be doing a lot of other things you may not think about much. As I said above they will be organising and paying your insurance, taxes and they may also be making contributions to your retirement fund.

You must take all of these things into account when you’re working on your business plan (also known as the “I don’t want to have to sell my body to science plan”).

5. Bear in mind what you’re gaining

You will get freedom…of a sort.

Freedom to walk around in your undies. Free to attend work without shaving, grooming or bathing* , free to take time off whenever you want, for whatever reason you want.

Freedom to starve.

It literally becomes all up to you at this point. No matter how badly you get screwed by publishers, readers or employers the final responsibility for your success or failure rests with you. People who don’t quit, keep improving and keep an open mind tend to carve out a space for themselves. It might not be a huge piece of the pie, but some pie is better than no pie at all.

6. Things will happen that are impossible to predict

At some point in your career as a writer, you can just about guarantee that something big and terrible will happen. There will be hugely expensive medical bill or if you’re traditionally published you may not get your contract renewed. If you self publish maybe it will be that you’ll sell well for six months and then suddenly not at all. Perhaps Amazon will reveal itself to be the digitized incarnation of Cthulhu and start eating people**.

On the flip side there will be odd pieces of luck too. You might get a great review from an influential reviewer, or hit the top one hundred books on Amazon (these days even being in the 1000 can do amazing things for your sales).

While these events can be influenced they are extremely hard to predict with any precision.

This isn’t quite black swan theory (which I have harped on about a lot – if you want to read up on here’s a link) but it’s close. The best thing you can do is try to prepare for these events ahead of time.

You need to be saving some of the money that comes in from your writing, having it socked away just in a case a rainy day turns into a biblical flood.

You also need to have some kind of a plan in place just in case you strike it lucky. We all know stories of people who have gone totally off the rails because they didn’t know how to handle success. Most writers are unlikely to fall into this trap, but you can make sure that you are in the best possible position to take advantage of your good fortune when it turns up.

Talk to that accountant I said you should get, see what they think you should be planning for. Speak to a business planner and see about making your own business plan.

7. You must have a plan

Owning your own business is a lot like writing a novel. You can do it with or without an extensive plan and your relatives will probably think you’re insane for attempting it.

The difference is that you can write a novel without a plan.

You can’t run a business that way.

If you are truly looking to go pro with your writing you have to plan for it. Ask yourself how you would go about running another business, maybe selling socks, and list the answers. Then formulate your plan from there.

I don’t have the space here to go into the specifics of writing a business plan, however it is well worth doing your own research or speaking to someone who knows how to write one up.

8. How does your family feel?

If you’re single then leaping feet first into being an unemployed nutcase fulltime writer is probably something you can recover from if it all goes dreadfully wrong. You may have to disappear of course, but single people can do that.

A family though, might find your shift to being a full time writer disconcerting. Regardless of whether you’ve given up a full time job to write, or you need to delegate more responsibility for the care of the children and the house so you can write, it’s a big change and one you need to talk over with everyone in your family old enough to speak.

9. Consider part time first

This is what I do. I write freelance and fiction, and I work part time at a day job. Until I’m earning more from the writing, this gives me the best of both worlds, and while I would love to write full time, it hasn’t been hard to get a lot done in the time I do have.

Of course this has its own disadvantages; the biggest being you still have to dedicate brain space to your day job. No matter if you’re flipping burgers or defusing bombs, you still have to think about transport, food and timing.

10. Get all the help you can

I don’t know why but writers seem to be allergic to asking for help. Maybe it’s pride, possibly it’s some kind of unknown immune deficiency created by overexposure to prose.

Either way, most of us ask for help only when we’re already on fire.

There are a lot of different kinds of help available. You can join writers groups, both online and off. You can apply for arts grants (this depends a lot on where you live and what genre you write in).

You can also pay for help in the form of professional editors, marketing ninjas and cover designers. If you are going pro you can’t afford to be without professional services to cover you for the things you don’t know how to do. At the bare minimum you need to run your work through an editor; however I highly recommend you use a professional cover designer unless you’ve been trained how to design book covers and you know Photoshop backwards.

If you haven’t already sign up to Twitter and talk to some of the writers on there. There’s a lot of good advice to be had for free.

Just don’t spend all your time there; you still have to write the books.

* Not that I’m recommending this. If you do decide to become a kind of remotely employed ambulatory pile of filth, try to stay away from open flames.

** This may affect your sales numbers.

A Quick Thought On Writing Temptation

Posted on | January 13, 2012 | No Comments

Temptation is a fantastic plot device, and it’s an easy way to unstick a plot that isn’t going anywhere.

The only real problem is that it’s very easy to get wrong, and the trap everyone seems to fall into is the temptation just isn’t very tempting. I’ve done, writing a scene where the main villain offered the hero a vast some of money to betray his friends.

The thing is that the vast majority of people (and thus readers) can’t imagine betraying their friends over money. Of course those same people might actually do it if presented with the opportunity, but almost no one can actually imagine betraying people they love for any amount of money.

What we can all imagine being tempted by is the impulse to save someone else. It’s easy to imagine a hero version of ourselves standing up the bad guys when they’re threatened…but if someone threatens a child to get the hero to back off, that’s a far harder decision and makes for a tense scene.

Consequently if the villain offers the protagonist the ability to save or protect more people than they would have been able topic they stayed on the straight and narrow, then the reader can more easily imagine it being a very tempting offer.

Jim Butcher does this well in his Dresden Files series, his protagonist Harry Dresden is often tempted by the many offers of corruption he’s offered because the bad guys actually seem to know what they’re doing with the temptation shtick. I won’t spoil the actual ins and outs of the books but they are well worthy read to see how Butcher handles this side of the story. That and Harry uses magic to blow a lot of things up.

My kind of books.

How would tempt your characters to the dark side? Let me know in the comments.

Writing Fighting: 12 Things Writers Need to Know

Posted on | January 12, 2012 | 11 Comments

Writing about fighting is a popular pastime*. In fiction straight out combat is the resolution for a lot of problems, and it crops up in most genre fiction in one way or another. Unfortunately because most writers aren’t the type to pick fights a lot of strange things end up being written about fights that don’t ring true to anyone with even a shred of experience.

I’ve been in a few fights. Mostly they were during my time as a doorman and I’ve been doing martial arts almost my entire life, but I’m hardly an expert, so this slews towards the things I know the most about. I’ve also spent a enormous amount of time researching and speaking to people in the know about life or death struggles.

So you want realism, but you don’t want your readers skipping your carefully crafted brawls. How do you do that?

1. Most real fights are over in seconds

I didn’t learn this until I did some door security work at a nightclub. Up until then the only fighting I’d done was in the ring and at training. When you’re matched up with someone of roughly equal skill and fitness, fights can last a long time, particularly if you’ve both agreed not to punch each other in the reproductive organs.

A street fight is very different. Even assuming it’s one on one and there are no weapons involved usually one person is going to have a clear advantage. Whether that advantage comes through size, training, experience or just because they screamed “look the Goodyear blimp!” and then struck when the other person wasn’t looking doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the longest fight I was ever involved in outside of the gym lasted less than a minute.

The one glaring exception is if both combatants are both physically weak and mentally uninvested in fighting. Then you get those weird slap fights, but generally those don’t make for exciting fight scenes.

This can be a problem in your writing, especially if you have a character who is abnormally skilled or strong. It can also be an opportunity, because nothing says badass like having your protagonist (or any other character) disable someone in seconds. If you are going to have them do that, play up the fact that the fight was over quickly and brutally.

2. Muggings aren’t fights

Muggers aren’t looking for someone who is going to fight back, they’re looking for victims. This means that someone who is looking to take your character out isn’t going to give them a fair chance. This goes double if your character has a reputation or looks like they can handle themselves.

Muggings where the bad guy leaps out from a dark corner do happen, but they’re quite uncommon, what’s far more common is the interview.

An interview in the context of a street mugging involves the mugger (or muggers) approaching their target and asking an innocuous question (got a light? What’s the time?). This is a test to see if the target scares easily, and also to see if they’ve picked the wrong kind of person. Even if they don’t consciously know what they’re doing, they are looking for body language that says their intended victim is frightened or clueless. Assuming they think they’ve got a viable target, they will either simply attack…or they’ll “woof” their target.

Woofing is sudden, extreme verbal aggression design to get the target to experience a huge dump of adrenaline that freezes them to the spot and makes it much harder for them to think. This is also usually when a weapon will be flashed to further scare their target. If they truly want to hurt their victim then this is the point where the violence happens.

How can this tie into your story? Well your superhuman, super confident hero is just plain unlikely to get mugged at all unless it’s by a gang. Even then it’s unlikely because your hero probably isn’t going to be projecting the signals that tell others they’re a good victim.

Now, if your hero is totally unaware of their own abilities, or doesn’t have them yet then they are far more likely to be targets.

If your MC is a monster of some kind then this can also be a great (if morally questionable) way for them to find food. Have them walk down a dark alley projecting fear and anxiety and then when the mugger appears…well I’m sure you can make something up from there.

3. Muggings aren’t assassinations

There is a very different kind of street assault, often involving weapons that couldn’t be more different from a typical mugging.

They are far more like assassinations or hits and they typically involve weapons. The biggest difference between this kind of attack and a mugging is intent. A mugger wants something from their target: money, fear, sex, something that they’re prepared to use violence to get. Violence isn’t their end goal, just a tool for them to get what they want.

However a street hit is far faster, meaner and has harm as its end goal. This means there will be little or no warning. Weapons will tend to be hidden until they are actually used. If there is any kind of an interview its sole purpose is to distract the victim.

I think this is a far more likely attack for characters to come across, especially if they’ve annoyed someone in the criminal world. If they spot the attack at all, they’ll only have a half a second to react at best. Far more likely the first anyone knows of this kind of assault is when they feel pain.

4. Combat is ridiculously confusing

When it actually comes down to fighting, it’s incredibly had to keep track of what’s going on around you. People with extensive training (military, police etc) and/or experience can do it, but even then it’s very hard to know what’s actually going on.

It’s very easy to mistake friend for foe in the middle of a brawl. In a gunfight, with the extra stress, noise and distances involved it can be even harder to form a coherent plan. Of course training helps, and so does experience, but even then it’s easy to see why the vast majority of gun fights end up with people panic firing at each other from close range and missing.

My only experience of this is in hand to hand. I was at an open party where a friend of mine was playing in the band, and I confronted a group of guys who were trashing the place. It all went to hell very quickly and I ended up spinning back and forth trying to keep an eye on everyone who was hitting me and it was actually very hard to tell.

In writing it’s important that you either impart this sense of fear and confusion that occurs when a fight is happening, especially if the person involved isn’t trained for it. It can be a great way to ramp up the tension of the fight if all the character is getting is impressions.

On the other hand if your character can keep their head, the readers need to know why. Have they had extensive training? Are they an ex-cop or a Marine? Are they just freakishly tough? Are they protecting a child or a loved one?

If there is no good reason for your character to keep their cool, especially if guns or other weapons are involved, then having them keep track of everything perfectly and having them stay totally calm will not ring true.

Of course in real life this does happen sometimes, ordinary with no training do sometimes just step up. Sadly, when you’re writing things have to make sense, whereas reality can be as bizarre as it likes and no one gets to complain.

5. Viciousness can overcome skill

We’ve all seen movies where the totally ice calm kung fu master beats the raging psycho without batting an eyelid. This can happen, someone who is sufficiently skilled and calm can get the upper hand over a raging maniac by staying focused…

But it’s really hard. Someone who knows how to fight angry, knows how to channel their viciousness can unleash a huge number of very hard blows very quickly and it’s impossible to block or avoid them all. Even Bruce Lee said that master martial artists are lucky if they can block 50% of blows being thrown by a motivated opponent.

In fiction there is a lot of scope for turning this to your advantage. Your hero may be able to beat a more skilled opponent just by being more motivated than they are. Or you could give a hero with delusions of grandeur about their fighting skills a nasty shock in a street fight.

Of course someone with a lot of skill who is also uncommonly ferocious is going to be an absolute nightmare.

6. Fitness

Fighting takes a lot of effort. For the fights that do last more than a minute fitness becomes a big factor in who wins.

Assuming you’re relatively fit, and don’t have any outstanding injuries, give this a try. Go and find a punching bag, put on some bag gloves and whale on the bag as fast and as hard as you can for as long as you can.

If you’ve never done it before, or in fact even if you have, it’s very hard to keep going at that rate for more than thirty seconds. Now add in the stress of a real fight, the fact that you’re taking shots as well as giving them and the possibility that you’re fighting more than one person and you can imagine how quickly combatants can get tired. Even in static gun fights the incredible stress placed on the body by adrenaline can leave people exhausted in minutes.

The general rule of thumb with hand to hand combat is that if two people of equal skill fight, then the fitter of the two is going to be the winner.

If there are multiple opponents, then it gets even worse, and unless your protagonist is unbelievably fit they are going to have to take out at least one of their opponents immediately to have any chance of walking away alive.

7. Most people don’t want to fight

In fiction, everyone it seems like everyone wants to scrap, to fight people who are clearly going to fight back. In the real world the opposite is true.

Very few people want to fight.

Sure there are plenty of people who’d be happy to punch you while you weren’t looking. Or to be the person who brought a gun to a fist fight, but very few people really want to put themselves in a situation where it’s likely they’re going to get smacked in the eye.

For the most part the people who do put themselves in harms way actually have another goal in mind. The police are a good example, for the most part they are all about protecting people and keeping the peace, but in order to do so they’ll happily put themselves in situations that could hurt or even kill them.

In fiction, you can use this to differentiate between antagonists who are prepared to murder your protagonist to achieve a goal (steal the macguffin, collect money for a hit etc) and the ones that love fighting and killing for its own sake.

You can also use this to draw a line between those that are prepared to fight face to face and on equal footing (rare) and those that will only fight if they think they’re going to win (depressingly common).

8. Knives are freaking terrifying

I’ve never had to take on a blade (I have been stabbed, but that was an accident) and I count myself very lucky.

Even in the hands of an unskilled opponent, a knife is something to be frightened of. In the hands of a skilled opponent there is almost nothing an unarmed person can do other than run like hell or reach for an improvised weapon.

Yes there are a very few freakishly skilled people who can take on a blade even in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing and come out on top but those people are the exceptions, not the rule.

Knives in fiction often seem to be written off as little more than a signal to say the person wielding the blade is a dirty cheater. The protagonist effortlessly disarms the scoundrel and everyone walks away with their blood inside their body.

Most of the time if there’s a knife involved in a fight, someone is going to bleed. This isn’t such a big deal if your main character is Wolverine, but assuming your protagonist doesn’t have some kind of super power that totally negates a knife’s advantages then they should be scared to face down anyone with a blade in their hand.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that at extremely close range a knife can trump a gun simply because a knife can cut or stab from almost any angle whereas a gun has to be aimed.

In your writing make sure your characters take a blade as a serious threat. If they are going to use a knife themselves make sure they know what the consequences of using that weapon is (or if they are unaware, have them dropped in the poo when someone unexpectedly dies).

9. Adrenaline runs rough shod over technique

Adrenaline can help you in a fight, but it can also kill you.

Because of the effects adrenaline has on your body, you lose a lot of your fine motor control when it comes to fight time.

This means even very well trained people who know hundreds of techniques tend to fall back on the basics when they’re under stress. This is partly because they’ve performed the techniques so many times their body and mind remember the moves over the top of their body’s impulse to just go feral on whatever is attacking them. It’s also because basic techniques (and this holds true in hand to hand, melee and firearm combat) tend to use big, easy movements that are based on the bodies natural reactions to stress (or at least they should do, there are some martial arts that seem to have forgotten this).

10. Dirty fighting wins fights…up to a point

Currently I train in MMA (mixed martial arts) at a school that emphasizes Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. These two arts are sport focused, which means they forbid certain moves that have been deemed too dangerous for the participants or too dirty to make for good entertainment.

Every few months someone shows up to a beginner’s class convinced that their wide array of dirty tricks makes them invincible and they try eye gouging or groin grabbing on one of the instructors.

This never ends well for them.

The reason it never seems to work out is that the MMA instructors and or fighters that they are, without warning, going nuclear on have their delivery systems down pat. This means that even though MMA doesn’t allow eye gouging or biting, it does teach people how to work themselves into an advantageous position and then unleash strikes or submissions (chokes, leglocks arm bars) without them having to risk a counter attack.

Think of it like this: Someone who knows only dirty tricks in their fighting, but doesn’t spend a lot of time sparring against live resisting opponents has a nuclear warhead attached to a skyrocket. They have the world ending payload, but no way to ensure it gets where it’s going.

MMA fighters, boxers and other athletes who regularly fight against other very fit, very strong people may not have the arsenal of dirty tricks, they have perhaps a high explosive warhead instead of a nuke, but they can get it to any target they chose and wreck havoc.**

What’s more, body positioning, footwork and timing take a long time to learn, but learning how to twist a pair of testicles or gouge an eye doesn’t take long at all.

However…

In a fight between two skilled opponents, or between two relatively unskilled opponents dirty tricks can make all the difference.

It can also be the deciding factor if someone physical.ly weak but skilled is facing a physically dominant but unskilled foe.

If you want to use this in fiction, make sure that you emphasize why the move works and how the character has set it up. A lot of dirty tricks use pain compliance, and if your opponent is sufficiently motivated (or crazy, or drugged up) pain compliance doesn’t work nearly as well as you’d think.

That in itself can be a plot point. Let’s say your protagonist, trying to fight off a guy that outweighs them by sixty pounds, kicks him squarely in the reproductive organs…and he doesn’t bat an eyelid. Why? How did he ignore the shot? Just plain vanilla mortals hopped up on adrenaline are capable of incredible things but in fiction we have to be able to explain them (or at least imply that we know).

That’s not to say a dirty trick can’t come out of nowhere and turn the tide of the fight. In my experience shots to the eyes and the throat are the dirty shots that have the most effect, but they have to be followed up immediately; either by running the hell away (always a good plan if you can) or dropping a finishing blow while your opponent struggles to regain their equilibrium.

 

11. Fighting multiple opponents is a really bad bet

One person is tough enough, even if they aren’t particularly fearsome. Two is far, far worse. Things come at you from unexpected angles, people grab at you and there is ample opportunity for someone to slip a blade between your ribs while you are otherwise distracted.

The few group fights I found myself in while bouncing where complete chaos, and if any one of the people I’d been trying to shuffle out into the street had been armed I would almost certainly be dead. Not because I can’t fight***, but because it’s very hard to focus on more than one opponent.

The only way to successfully fight groups is by rngaging in a kind of running battle where you constantly create space between them and you. Going for an all in melee is a great way to get punched in the back of the head.

If your character has some kind of power, then this might not be nearly such a big deal, but unless they’re superman someone stabbing them, shooting them or breaking a chair over their head while they’re occupied with someone else is still going to be a serious problem.

A gun can help, especially as an intimidation tool, however it’s hardly a cure all especially at very close range. A lot of a gun’s value against a mob is in the fear it creates, and if that fear isn’t present or if a large group is motivated enough to move past their fear a gun isn’t a guarantee of survival by any means.

Even if your protagonist does fight their way out of a group attack, make sure they end up taking blows or some kind of injury. No character should get of a fight with multiple opponents scott free unless that’s a specific point you want to make about how badass they are. Even then you will have to be very careful about how you justify their abilities.

12. All violence has consequences

Again this is something I’ve spoken about before but it’s my pet peeve with a lot of modern fiction, so bear with me here.

All violence comes with consequences attached. If you kill someone in self defense, no matter how justified you are, the police are going to ask you some pointed questions. If you fight your way clear of a gang trying to mug you and end up killing one of them, even by accident, congratulations you now have enemies for life.

Violence has other consequences. There are very, very few people who can kill without it having any kind of effect on the psyche. Soldiers and police get special training to allow them to pull the trigger on people who are trying to kill them and even then combat records show that most people are just plain reluctant to hurt other people.

This is a good thing.

However if your hero is constantly forced to fight to the death, it’s going to change them, unless they’re a sociopath and even then there will still be consequences.

Ask yourself how your character is going to deal with the guilt (and there will be guilt) and the vividness of the memories that violent conflict will ingrain in them. How will they deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which they almost certainly will get some form of if they don’t have counseling of some kind)? If they don’t get PTSD, why didn’t they?

These are things you have to answer, otherwise your character is going to become a monster without you even realizing. Even if they are only killing evil things, it can still wear away at them in unexpected ways.

A book well worth reading is On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It discusses the psychological and societal cost of killing and it explains this far better than I’ll ever be able to. It’s not a comfortable read, but it’s well worth it. I can also recommend pretty much anything written by Loren Christianson as well worth a read.

What else?

This has been very geared towards hand to hand combat because that’s what I have the most experience with. If you know about guns or knives, and you want to share your expertise please let me know in the comments the things you’d like other writers to know about your subject of interest.

Also, if you think I have something wrong, I’d love to know what it is and how you’d approach the subject.

* I write novels because poetry is clearly out of my reach

** Metaphor totally stolen from Matt Thornton of Straight Blast Gym

*** I’m hardly a great fighter either, just ask my gym-mates who beat me up on a semi regular basis

Five Things You Have To Think About Before You Self Publish

Posted on | January 10, 2012 | 3 Comments

 

 

 

So, hanging out on Twitter I spotted a post from the awesome Krista D Ball expressing some frustration at authors who are moaning about their lack of sales after three months in the self-publishing game.

It seems like a lot of authors are getting in on the self publishing thing because they’ve heard about Amanda Hocking, Michael J Sullivan and other indie success stories and thought to themselves: dang that sounds easier than getting a publisher.

So if you’re just getting into self-publishing, there are a lot of things you need to know about what you have in store for you if you decide that self publishing is for you. I’m basing this on my own experiences, my experiences helping others and writers/indie publishers I talk to on a regular basis. I may actually be semi qualified to talk about this, which is surely a sign of the apocalypse.

Hey, it is 2012, maybe the Mayans looked ahead and saw me sitting at my keyboard in my underwear, covered in crumbs and decided that the world just needed ending.

So, before it does, some things you need to think about:

 

 

 

1. Self-publishing is harder than traditional publishing

You heard me.

Going it solo, if you do it right, should be harder than getting a leg up from a major publishing house*.

Two seconds thought should tell you why. You’re forgoing everything a publisher can do for you in terms of editing, design, marketing and support. You are electing to do all of these things yourself and you are making an unconscious pledge to your readers that you are going to do it as well as possible.

Or you’ll pay someone to do it for you. Sometimes that’s a good idea.

No matter how you go about it though, the only thing that’s easy about self-publishing (assuming you actually give a shit about putting out something worthwhile) that’s easy (ish) is actually putting your work up online.

Yes traditional publishing is slow. Yes it’s super hard to break into and yes it’s an industry going through some serious turmoil but saying that it has nothing to offer is just delusional.

This is not to say I don’t think you should self publish, but you need to know that life in e-books is probably not going to involve you buying a Ferrari anytime soon.

 

2. With great power…

Despite the obvious and not so obvious difficulties involved in putting out your own work online, what you get in return is control. Control over the way your work gets out into the world, how it looks, reads and feels to a reader.

Control, like power, is a heady thing, and a lot of people can’t handle it.

Specifically in authors this manifests as a kind of entitlement complex, where a very few self-published authors seem to think that they have some kind of right to produce books that make every single writer on the face of the planner look a little bit dumber and they get very angry when they’re called on it.

You have control over your work…and this comes with responsibility, if only to yourself. Being self-published does not excuse you from editing. You can’t get away with an amateur cover. You can’t under any circumstances tell a critic to bog off because they don’t like your work. You are constrained  by all the same standards of professionalism that pro authors are.

And that professionalism extends to everything you do. You are your brand when you’re indie, even more than a traditionally published author and if you screw that up you can sink your career before it even starts.

You are going to make mistakes, but with control of everything you do, you also have to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

 

3. Publishing is still changing

The changes that have shaken publishing to its core over the last few years are just getting warmed up.

I wish I could put on my magic hat and tell you what the next big change will be, but technology and society are changing so fast at the moment I’d just be guessing. What I do know I that this isn’t over yet and if you are getting into publishing yourself, you may have to make MAJOR changes very quickly to keep up with the market.

We also can’t rely on the big six publishers staying out of the low priced books game any more. Expect them to start bringing out more and more low priced e-books to try and lever the market back in their favor. While I don’t think big publishing will ever wipe out independent authors or their place on Amazon, they can make thing tougher.

Think of it as a shark suddenly showing up in your swimming pool. You can still swim, but everyone who values their limbs is going to keep a very close eye on the shark.

 

4. Quality and quantity

You will have to write more than one book.

Probably.

There are going to be exceptions, there will still be black swan events where someone puts out one book and hits the big time.

But for everyone who can’t whistle up a thunderbolt, producing multiple books to help cross promote their work is going to be where the money is. Heck, look at the two examples I listed above of self –published authors living the dream. Amanda Hocking and Michael J Sullivan have both produced multiple books that not only sold well in their own right, but also boosted the sales of everything else they’d written.

You must bear this mind when you start planning your career (you have planed it right? Right?). Multiple books sell better than one. Series sell better than multiple disconnected books (most of the time anyway).

 

5. It’s still going to take time

No matter how you go about publishing your work it’s going to take time and an astonishing amount of work to be a full time writer.

Writing, marketing, design and editing are going to consume you whole and if you really want to do this you’re going to have to allow time to get all of those things right.

 

It might be years. It might be decades.

Can you handle that? If you’re still going ten years from now and you’re still only pulling in beer money are you going to be able to look at your writing and keep working to make it better?

 

Almost every really big name writer that’s lasted has had to work for years and years before they’ve been able to quit their day jobs. And once they quit their jobs they had to work even harder.

 

 

All of this can be hard to hear, and believe me it was hard to write. I wish writing was easy. I wish having a career doing what we love was a given but it just isn’t.

 

 

However…

If this is what you love, if you have read what I’ve just written and none of that dents your enthusiasm then I can also say that the opportunities for writers are just going to keep growing and the prizes are going to go to whoever is prepared to fight hardest for them.

 

 

* Which is very different from getting a leg over from a major publishing house. If I ever cut loose with a “writing advice after dark” blog, I’ll tell you about it.

 

10 New Year Resolutions For Writers (that might actually stick)

Posted on | January 9, 2012 | 3 Comments

So, it’s January, and the haze of food and drink is starting to clear. You might vaguely remember making some promises to yourself over the New Year, but we all know how the promises we make on January the 1^st usually turn out.

 

Maybe it’s time we made some resolutions that we can stick to.

 

Now, we’ve all made resolutions we haven’t kept; I will lose some weight, I will stop scaring my neighbour, I will stop talking to my invisible friends in public.*

 

 

I’ve put together a list of resolutions that I wish I’d taken up years ago, and tried to make them achievable goals that aren’t impossible to integrate into your life. If you’ve got an ideas you’d like to add tot hese I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

 

 

1. I will set time aside to write every day

 

The wording on this one is important. Telling yourself to write every day is a fine goal to have, but sometimes life gets in the way. What I would rather have you do is plan time to write every day (and of course do your absolute best to spend it writing), however if the kids are sick or possessed don’t beat yourself up for not writing anything that day.

 

Obviously it’s important to actually write when you can, but wording it this way avoids what I call resolution crash.

 

Imagine you want to lose some weight. You wouldn’t tell yourself that you’re going to work out six hours a day and eat perfectly from now until the day you die. That’s setting yourself up to fail, and if you fail once it becomes very easy just to give up your resolution as a bad idea.

 

2. I will make time to read

 

If you want to be a writer, you have to read. Not only that you have to read a lot and you have to read both in and out of your genre. At the very least you need to know what your contemporaries have already done so you don’t unconsciously produce a copy of something that’s already on the market.

 

For example if you’d like to write a novel about a teenage girl with no sense of self preservation and her largely sexless relationship with a disco ball vampire cradle snatcher…then I have bad news for you.

 

Reading also teaches you about writing. You will pick up tips and tricks almost by osmosis. If you read a particularly good book, you will be amazed how much of what he author did will stick with you when it comes time to write.

 

3. I will finish things

 

If you don’t finish things, you can’t edit them. You can’t send them to agents and you can’t publish them yourself. Almost all new writers have this problem because we aren’t experienced enough to know when something is good, and we end up lost in endless rewrites, restarts and recrimination.

 

This is my big thing for this year as I appear to be the king of unfinished writing projects (there’s a crown and everything; it’s made out of shame).

 

 

4. I will allow myself exactly three minutes sulking time about other people’s success. Per year.

 

Nothing wastes your life faster than jealousy, but it can be very hard not to feel it all.

So give yourself three minutes a year and then go back to writing so other people can be jealous of you.

 

 

5. I will take social media seriously…because my career depends on it

 

Social media is a dividing line. On one side of the line are authors who don’t/won’t/can’t deal with social media and on the other side of the line are the authors who have incorporated Twitter, Facebook and blogging (for example) into their career plan.

 

Only one of these groups of people, statistically speaking, has a chance of having a career as a writer.

 

 I say statistically speaking because there will be exceptions. If you write a Hunger Games or Harry Potter you can probably get away without a twitter account…but those kinds of phenomenon aren’t something that can be planned for**. Don’t get me wrong, if you are that person who manages to make a monster out of your writing, awesome.

For everyone else, we’re left with the task of building a career the hard way, and regardless of whether or no you self publish or traditionally publish the biggest arbiter of success is going to be your ability to get word out about your book.

Enter social media. If you can get the word out onto the internet in a major way, then you’re in with a shot. If you can’t, then your chances of success dwindle to almost nothing.

The publishing world is too big and changing too fast for you to cling to the old way of doing things. Even if you get in with a traditional publisher your career will be infinitely improved by you getting a presence online and starting to build an audience.

If you truly can’t bear to make your own online presence, then pay someone else to do it for you.

 

6. I will not spend all my time on social media….because my career depends on it. 

So, despite what I just said above, social media can just as easily kill your writing career as much as it can make it.

You still have to write a book in order to sell it, and more often than not you have to write more than one book.

Writing comes first, then promoting your work.

 

7. I will invest in my health, because if I die no one will write my books

This is a big problem for writers. We get so invested in our imaginary worlds that we neglect the one that we have to live in.

If you are unfit, or overweight, then you are almost certainly sick of hearing you need to do something about it. Chances are, you know, but getting the impetus to do something can be difficult, especially if you’re on the verge of a breakthrough in chapter 19.

And, if you’re young, you might just get away with it. Do you just want to be getting away with it though? Every writer I’ve spoken to who has taken better care of their physical health has reported that their writing has improved as well.

Of course this is just anecdotal evidence, but if there’s a chance to improve your writing and your health you owe it to yourself (and your future fans) to give it a try. As always talk to someone who knows what they’re doing before taking up a new exercise program.

 

When I talk about looking after ourselves I just don’t just mean our physical health. Writers seem to suffer a higher instance of depression than most people. It may just be that we’re more aware of what depression is, or it may just be quirk of creative personalities. In fact the why doesn’t really matter. What matters is that if we are unwell physically, emotionally or mentally we seek help.

If a problem is serious enough for you to worry about, it’s serious enough to talk to a professional about.

I’m not against alternative medicine as such, and I’m not saying that the medical establishment gets everything right…but most of the time the best first point of call for a physical or mental issue is your GP.

If that doesn’t help then try alternative options, but talk to your family doctor first to see what they think.

Emotional problems are harder to deal with, but the same principle applies; talk to someone who you trust to help you.

 

8. I will approach being a professional writer from more than one angle

Ask any writer what they want from their career and sooner or later most will express a desire to leave the office behind and make a living writing.

If that’s your goal it can seem like there’s only way to get there: get published, get famous and laugh at the world from on top of your enormous pile of royalty money.

Looking at your goal like that making a living as a write can seem impossible. Advances are small for most first writers, and the vast majority of first timers don’t earn out their advances. Despite what your hear not every self published author is on their way to indie riches, and most at least have a part time job.

So what can you do?

First take a look at your overheads. A modest income can suffice if you are able to change the way you’re spending money. Will you be happier making less but doing what you want to do?

Also investigate other forms of writing or work in publishing. I make some of my living helping authors who have no experience with social media or online self promotion get their books out there on the web. Could you do that? Or could you do some freelance non fiction writing for a website or other company?

I’ll do a whole post on this later in the month, but for now start thinking about alternate paths to your dream.

9. If I want to be a professional I will act like one

This will mean different things to different people. For me it means that I will plan my career the way I would with any major project, and I’ll invest in myself and my writing in anticipation of future returns.

For others it can mean taking a new attitude to negative reviews. If someone trashes your book the best thing is usually to take note of what they say just in case they’ve made a valid point, but to otherwise shrug it off. You can also thank the reviewer for taking the time to read the book…but that’s it. No moaning that they didn’t get it (even if they didn’t) and no attacking reviewers.

Think about your writing career purely in terms of a business. What do you need to do to present a professional image to your fans, agents, publishers and the world at large? Start by putting on pants.

Trust me.

 

10. I will remember that I started doing all this because it’s fun

 It’s so easy to forget that writing should be fun. We get bogged down in rejections, or bad reviews, or writers block and we forget that the whole reason we began writing is because we enjoyed it.

Of course not every day is going to be cupcakes and puppies, but if you find that you’ve managed to go a year without enjoying even one part of the writing process maybe it’s time to reassess why you got into writing in the first place.

 

So, what are your New Years resolutions?

 

 

* Your list may differ from mine.

 ** if you’d like to know more about one off events like Harry Potter and the Twilight series, check out a book called The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

2011: The Year In Review

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | No Comments

I can’t say I’m going to miss 2011, in a lot of ways (for me at least) it’s been an astonishingly crappy year. Between earthquakes, more earthquakes* and a wide variety of the normal stresses of normal life it hasn’t gone to plan at all…

 And yet I have to say that it could easily have been worse. No one I knew died or was badly hurt, and despite a close call involving a power board, an exploded fish tank and a very fortunate power cut I wasn’t hurt either.

 It did hammer home the idea that I need to be working towards my goals, no matter how slowly, and to cherish the time I have with the people I love. Everything can be taken away in the blink of an eye, so if you’re one of the lucky few people on the planet who can give your goals a shot, I say go for it.

 As far as writing goes, it’s been the year of the re writes for me, and one of my New Years resolutions is to limit myself to one major re write for anything I’m working on.

 I’ve gotten out two short stories onto Kindle, had two short stories published and cranked out about 400,000 words total.

 That seems like a lot now that I look back at it.

 Of course a huge number of those 400,000 words were unusable, more practice words than anything else, but I still feel like I’m that much closer to being a good writer for having written them.

 I’ve read like a demon (assuming demons read) and gotten through just under eighty novels. I can’t stress how important reading is to anyone who wants to write. Read outside your genre, inside your genre and non fiction. Read blogs, newspapers and articles. Just read.**

 I finished a film script. I can highly recommend writing a script to anyone who wants to write a novel, if only to appreciate just how different writing for film and television is.

 How was your 2011? Has it gone to plan?

 

* You know you’ve had enough earthquakes when you’re hiding under a desk clutching a cat in one arm and flipping off the lurching floor with the other hand.

 

Flipping off the ground wasn’t exactly productive but it made me feel better.

 

** Reading internet forums counts as anti reading. For every hour you spend on a forum, you have to read an extra book.

The Writer’s Twelve Days Of Christmas

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | No Comments

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me… two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me… three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me… seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the eight day of Christmas my true love gave to me… eight blogs a-pimping, seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me…nine Kindles humming, eight blogs a-pimping, seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… ten fingers typing, nine Kindles humming, eight blogs a-pimping, seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me… eleven writers sobbing, ten fingers typing, nine Kindles humming, eight blogs a-pimping, seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

 On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… twelve endless edits,  eleven writers sobbing, ten fingers typing, nine Kindles humming, eight blogs a-pimping, seven spines a-hurting, six plots a-brewing, five misspelled words, four angry birds, three fancy pens, two unfinished novels and a big bottle of whiskey.

Ten Marketing Strategies All Writers Need To Consider

Posted on | December 13, 2011 | No Comments

The key word here is “consider”. You don’t have to do any of these, although I certainly recommend you give some of them a try. I’ve geared these towards people who are self publishing, but there is no reason that a legacy published author couldn’t use most of these as long as their editor and their agent is OK with it.

 

Generally if something you’re doing helps them sell more books, they’re okay. Still ask though.

 

1. Write Lots of Books.

 

First up let me say that I wouldn’t even know about this one if it wasn’t for Robyn Sullivan. I interviewed her awhile back and she spilled the beans on what does and doesn’t work with marketing e-books. You can read the whole interview here, and another one here.

 

One of the many things that stuck with me that she’s said is that authors who write more books tend to sell more of each book than those with just one. This seems to be a cross referencing effect. I buy your first book, love it and then go looking for other things you’ve written.

 

Anecdotally this seems to work best for series, as opposed to multiple stand alone titles, however the effect is still present as long as you’ve written more than one book.

 

There is one trap to avoid though; fans of your comedy romance novels probably aren’t up for your gruelling horror opus and if you write YA or middle grade you might want to consider using a pseudonym for your paranormal sexy time novels.

 

Of course if you write urban fantasy then having a horror novel under the same name isn’t going to be nearly as big a deal.

 

 

2. Social Media

 

This could be a post all by itself, but I’ll cut it down to the bare basics for this one. Using Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can help you develop an audience even before your book comes out. It’s very easy to get it wrong though, and the majority do.

 

The easiest mistake to make is to do nothing but try to hock your books. If every second tweet is you begging me to buy your book, I’m quickly going to get sick of that and block/unfollow/unfriend you. You are far better of using social media the way you probably do now anyway. Post about yourself, your friends the cool stuff you find online. Once you’ve got followers and friends who are interested in you as a person, they won’t mind if you OCCASIONALLY send out a message about your books.

 

 

3. Competitions

 

Competitions are funny beasts. Every single one of them is held under different rules, with different prizes attached to them. For the most part the ones you can enter of your free will (as opposed to being nominated) are for short stories, although this isn’t a universal rule.

 

If you win a competition then it can be a big feather in your cap, and it can help both publicise and legitimize your work in the eyes of readers. It can also be a good thing to have in your query letter if you’re pitching an agent.

 

The golden rule with competitions is to read the rules, then read them again, then get someone else who likes you to read them for you. Some competitions charge you to enter, and if this is the case, make sure the potential prize is worth the cost of entry.

 

Also be very, very careful what happens to the rights to your story if you win (or even if you don’t). Are you prepared to give up the rights to your story so the people who run the competition can put it in an anthology? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all, in fact it can be hugely beneficial, however you need to be informed about what your work will be used for before you sign away an rights.

 

4. Rushing Amazon

 

If you’ve spent any time on social media you’ve probably noticed this phenomenon. An author, about to release an e-book, gathers their friends, family and fans together to all buy the ebook within a short amount of time.

 

The purpose of this is to try and get the book into the Amazon top 1000 (or Top 100) at least temporarily, because once you’re in the top 1000 Amazon starts promoting your book for you. It’s usually short lived, but it can be enough to get a small launch some much needed attention.

 

I think this is worth a try if you can muster enough people who are prepared to time their purchases exactly. I don’t have any concrete numbers as to how effective this is however anecdotally it can give your numbers a big boost and provide you with what is effectively free advertising.

 

5. Paid Advertising

 

There are umpteen different advertising systems online, and for the most part, I’d warn authors to stay away from all of them. There are exceptions, if you know how to design an advertisement (and by this, I mean you work in advertising or you can pay someone who does) AND you have a top notch website ready to sell your book for you it MIGHT be worthwhile.

 

I’m not an advertising expert, however I do know that the only way I’ve been able to make my writing make financial sense is to keep my overheads to a minimum. If you have allowed yourself a monster marketing budget then you could certainly give this a try, but I personally think if you have the money to do that you’d be better off using a dedicated book marketing service (see below).

 

6. Goodreads Giveaways

 

Goodreads (www.goodreads.com) is both an excellent resource for authors and a dire trap for new players. At its heart, Goodreads exists as a giant independent reviews site, allowing readers to recommend books to each other (or warn others away). It has a great many other features too, but it’s the review and recommend system that’s of the most use to an aspiring author.

 

The reason this can be a trap is that Goodreads is a service for readers, not writers. Comment on a readers review of your work and the Goodreads community will turn on you like an angry bear. Same goes for almost anything you can do to directly promote your work to readers within Goodreads…

 

Except for this: Goodreads is a fantastic place to do a book giveaway. Using the contact system in Goodreads it’s possible to announce competitions and giveaways of your work. This can help spread the word about your novel and garner you reviews that will help others on Goodreads find you.

 

7. Book Bloggers

 

Book bloggers are quickly becoming the gatekeepers for self published work. Whereas previously agents and publishers would act in this capacity, in the era of self publishing most potential readers will check out online reviews before buying your book.

 

So how to you get someone to review your work?

 

Well, all that practice writing to agents with query letters is going to come in handy. Bloggers and reviewers are inundated with requests from authors to review their work and as such most of them work on a pitch system not that different from the way agents do it.

 

So the same rules for book bloggers apply:

 

• ·         Always research who you’re writing to and email them accordingly, no one will thank you for a mass email.
• ·         Your pitch letter should be short, give the reviewer an idea of who you are and what your book is about. Try and include some of the flavour of your writing style in the pitch.
• ·         Again, research. Don’t send pitches for horror novels to people who only review historical romance novels.
• ·         Remember that reviewers are doing you a favour by reviewing your book. Even if they hate it and give you one star, ALWAYS be polite and professional when communicating with them.

 

I’ll do a full post on this soon as I think it needs a more in depth article.

 

8. Marketing Services

 

I only know of one that’s consistently gotten good reviews, which is Author Buzz run by MJ Rose. I haven’t used them personally, however MJ did give me some excellent advice when I queried her on behalf of another author, and I have heard nothing but good things about them.

 

9. Blog/Website

 

You need a blog. No excuses, no outs, you need one. If I can’t find you online, I won’t buy your book. There is just too much stuff out there for me to look at and as a reader if I want to know about you the first thing I’ll look for is a blog. It doesn’t have to updated every day, but it does have to have updates.

 

Same deal with a website, and you can combine the blog and website into one entity. If I go looking for your book I want to be able to find a central hub to look at both the book I’m looking for and anything else you’ve produced.            

 

 

10. Tagging

 

Tagging is Amazon’s system for finding books. Let’s say I produce (somehow) a vampire paranormal romance.

 

If you want to help me out, you might go to Amazon and, using their tagging system, add the words “vampire” “paranormal” and “romance” to my novels Amazon page so when potential readers go looking for new vampiric sexy time books Amazon can find mine.

 

This is extremely worthwhile. If you’d like a more in depth look at tagging and how to do it, I suggest taking a look at Tag My Book. While the collaborative tagging isn’t running any more, the site itself is a wealth of information about tagging and how it can help you promote your book.

 

 

Tell me, how do you pimp your book to the world? Do you have any tips for the rest of us? Let me know in the comments.

 

 

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