Skip to content

Sharing the Burden

By Joshua Unruh on Thursday, March 14, 2013

Every now and then, I decide I want to be stylish. I’m able to dress myself reasonably well; it isn’t all superhero emblem t-shirts and blue jeans. I Josh-1have some nice dress shirts and good-looking sweaters. I’ve been known to rock the fedora and the newsboy cap. I own more than one pair of Chuck Taylors and in multiple colors. But now and then, I decide to get serious.

I don’t usually stick with it. I don’t really have the budget to do it right nor do I have the patience to do it on a budget. But the last time I did this, I realized that fashion had, in one sense at the very least, left me behind. It had become fashionable for men to wear print shirts with print ties.

Ah hell naw.

Solid shirt with pattern tie or vice versa. Even if a couple of the colors match or are complementary, anything else looks to me like you dressed in the dark. And honestly, I’m not sure this is a prejudice I’ll ever get over no matter how long the fashion persists.

Purple TieShirt and Tying This Together

The three key elements on a book cover (or its virtual equivalent) are the Title, Graphic Design, and Promotional Copy. If you get lucky or famous, the Author’s Name may join these elements as equally or even of greater importance. It’s also worth noting that there are sub-divisions of information under each of these (see Rachel’s wonderful posts for more on the design), and that the Title and Graphic (and, after luck or success, Author Name) are often tied together intimately.

But even with these caveats  I’d still say these are the bare minimum elements of a cover. And as we discussed, a cover’s job is to sell the book. They don’t have to read it (again, it’s very nice if they do), but the customer does have to get intrigued enough to pull the trigger on a purchase. And they all have to complement one another.

In the same way that I shouldn’t wear striped pants with a checked sport coat over a plaid shirt and paisley tie, these elements cannot be in competition with each other. If I saw someone dressed like that, it could honestly hurt my eyes. I’d certainly stop looking at them as soon as humanly possible. In the same way, if you give me a cover with what looks like an oil painting of a hairy-chested love god combined with a title like Jelly Donuts and promo copy that reads like Civil War era historical fiction, I’m going to stop looking at it before it causes me permanent, mental damage.

The elements aren’t working together to create a cohesive idea of what the book is about. This will cause a thing psychologists call “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is used in all kinds of ways in marketing, but not typically when you only have a split second to sell something.

Avoiding the DissonanceCan't Hear

You can read the entire Wikipedia article on cognitive dissonance (and you should, it’s fascinating). But the most important bits for this discussion are these:

  • A key assumption is that people want their expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of equilibrium.
  • Likewise, another assumption is that a person will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance.

If your cover becomes a situation where it’s impossible for a potential buyer to create an expectation that might meet reality (say, with my insane cover example above), they’re going to get psychologically uncomfortable. They will then proceed to ignore it as quickly as possible. That is very different than taking the plunge on a purchase.

These key elements of a book cover have to share the burden of explaining, very nearly at a glance, what the book is about and why potential buyers should care. If they don’t work together or, worse, work at odds with one another, then the marketing of your cover will fail. What’s more, it will force whatever other marketing initiatives you put in place to work that much harder just to overcome the mistakes of the cover.

Please, people, don’t dress  your book in the dark.

Filed in Sales | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Sharing the Burden

Re: Write – Francesca’s Excerpt

By Thomas Beard on Wednesday, March 13, 2013

What follows is a short excerpt from a story. The author, “Francesca,” generously donated her work to be edited before a live audience (you). At my request, she made no edits to it. She simply typed the words that came into her head and let them be once they were down. I then edited her work in the same manner that I would edit any other book.

The way Francesca opens this scene invites us in to a mystery. Who is this strange boy? Who is the dark man, friend or foe? What’s so special about this house? However, the suspense fizzles a little because of a few awkward phrases. Polishing the phrasing allows it to be more transparent. The last thing we want is for the reader to notice the writing. If he’s reading the writing, he’s not reading the story.

—

Francesca,

You’ve done an excellent job on this first draft. You’ve left me wanting to know more, which is exactly what an introduction needs to do. You can use the rewriting process to change your phrasing and make the scene even more impactful. I’ve left notes in the text about the first line, which seems to detract from the tone of the scene, and about some other odd descriptions. Fixing these will go a long way toward invigorating the suspense.

Struck-through text is a recommended deletion. Italicized text is marked for rephrasing. My direct additions to the text are in blue font, and my notes are in [bold with brackets].

—

Though the well-dressed anchorman on the television had predicted that it would be a dark and stormy night, there had only been a few clouds spilled lazily across the canvas of the autumn sky. [The intentional reference to the quintessential introduction is flippant. If you were writing a flippant story, I would be okay with leaving it. But because you’re trying to evoke suspense, I recommend it be removed.] The boy called Abra crouched in the low boughs of a tree, watching the quiet nighttime street in front of him. He would have preferred to a storm. It would have provided better cover.

His Abra’s hands were pressed flat against the branch’s rough bark. Abra He flexed the muscles of his fingers. A breath of wind caressed Abra’s his face and ruffled his dark, shaggy hair. Abra He wondered if this wind had a name; he could remember a time when the winds had names, and voices, and songs. The boy sighed.

The dark man would be here soon.

Abra pulled his bronzy gaze [His eyes are bronzy, not his gaze.] from the street and glanced at the townhouse closest to his tree. It was the type of building that real estate agents would call cozy. There were several windows to make up for the lack of space. The two big windows in front had flower boxes beneath them and were filled with blooming marigolds. Abra liked this house. He liked the family that lived there, a young single mother and her little girl. Abra He had wanted very much to leave his tree and play with the child, a feeling he hadn’t experienced in many, many years.

The air shifted, and Abra’s body tensed. He whipped his head around and stared into the street. There was something, maybe… His eyes seemed to slip over whatever had appeared there. [This is odd. Hard for me to get the right sense of. Try describing the shadowy something rather than his eyes.] He squinted against the darkness. Finally his vision caught up with the rest of his senses, and Abra saw the dark man standing just a few feet from the little townhouse. The man was looking directly at Abra.

The boy was so surprised that he nearly fell from his branch. People never saw him, not unless he wanted them to, and Abra hadn’t wanted that in a very long time.

The dark man turned from the townhouse and took a step toward the tree. “Who are you?”

Abra sucked in air through his teeth. The man was not normal; perhaps he was something like Abra himself, something else, something special. Something had drawn Abra to this place, to this tree, watching the dark man appear each night and disappear hours later.

“Who are you, boy?” the man said again. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not a boy,” Abra scoffed. [Scoffed isn’t a good dialog tag. You can put it before the quote as an action tag, as in, Abra scoffed. “I’m not a boy. I’m a tree.”]“I’m a tree. Can’t you tell?” He slid backward, gripping the branch, and was hanging hung above the concrete of the sidewalk. “Or I’m a squirrel that transforms in the moonlight. Or I’m like you, a dark thing that watches little girls sleep.” Abra dropped to the ground. He crossed his small arms across his chest. “Are you some kind of pervert?”

The man watched Abra coldly. Then he smirked, which was by far more intimidating. “So you’re some magic creature or another. A tiny sorcerer? A werewolf pup? A bastard kid of Oberon’s?”

“I’m Abra,” said the boy. “And you’re an angel.”

Filed in Editorial Review, Rewriting | | Comments (1)

Everything’s Written. What Now?

By Rachel Giles on Tuesday, March 12, 2013

You’ve written your book, taken it through the editing process, and you feel its finally time to send your hard work off into the world. Now you’re presented with a completely different task on the road to publishing your book–taking a snapshot of the world you’ve created and putting it on the front and center for people to look at. So what in the world do you actually put on your book cover? Do you keep it simple and clean, or splurge for an epic illustration? Lots of books do that fancy type stuff; should you do that too?

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be focusing on the specific question you should ask and some of the options to answer. This hopefully will get your mind going when confronted with the “What now?” that immediately follows the exhilaration of having your book ready for publishing.

So what type of cover do you want?

Photographic Book Cover

Photo based book covers are predominantly found in history books (the general and biographical kind), young adult, and romance. Although, honestly, any genre can use the right photo to great effect.

Often the photo will be manipulated with certain textures, filters, or brushes to match the tone and type of the book within and to add a style. Think how many Western books employ sepia filters to their covers to give it a daguerreotype feel.

With photos, readers often will know exactly what setting they’re getting themselves into. After all, as the saying goes, “a photo is worth a thousand words.” I could spend a paragraph talking about a picture of a teenage boy and girl wearing modern clothing gazing into each others’ eyes and a cover with a photo more detailed than my description will tell a reader in a second that they’re looking at summer romance novel. The flipside to this is that photos can be too literal sometimes; restricting the reader’s imagination as to your novel’s setting or what your character looks like. Also, if you chose poor quality or an obvious stock image, then the overall cover will suffer and look less professional (and subconsciously less worthy of your reader’s time).

If you decide that this type of cover will be the best face of your book for your potential readers, then the choices get even more diverse. You’ll want to tailor your search for a photo or photographer who handles a specific type of photography like Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Vernacular (just to name a few).

photobooks

Look at the wide variety of photo types to choose!

 

Typographic-Based Book Covers

Typographic books are primarily popular among non-fiction, poetry, and literary fiction. They are the type of cover that can be the hardest to pull off or the quickest, depending on your strategy. It risks being illegible from a distance and if you don’t know what to look out for, then it can look unprofessional. In fact, there’s an entire different language of terms used to describe different rules of typography such as kerning and leading. That being said, it can be an extremely creative and eye-catching outlet for your cover.

typographybooks

 So many pretty words!

 

Illustrative Book Covers

In some ways, the illustrative covers are similar to the photographic cover in that your cover is conveyed in a single visual image that can stand alone as a work of art. The picture is the star, not the title or the author. Illustrative book covers are most often found in fantasy, literary fiction, graphic novels, middle school and children’s books.

As with photographic, you can show the reader what to expect in your cover with an illustrative, with even more creative freedom to portray creatures that can’t be traditionally photographed, like Bigfoot.  You’ll need to marry the right illustrative style to your work, since many readers expect certain styles for different genres. Also, if you don’t hire someone on the top of their game, you could end up with a muddled mess.

There are so many different styles of illustration, that listing them could be a blog post in itself. In the meantime, here’s some different styles to get your brain working on what you might need:

illustrationbooks

 And this is only a fraction of illustrative styles

All of the above types of covers can easily overlap with one another, with one taking a backseat to another. For example, you can have a typography that’s so fanciful that it borders on illustration. No one type of book cover is superior to another type. It’s simply a matter of which is the most suitable for your book. Which type of book cover will bring out the words within? Decide that, and you’re on your way to a published book.

Filed in Cover Design | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Everything’s Written. What Now?

Your Prewriting Recipe for Mock Turtle Soup

By Courtney Cantrell on Monday, March 11, 2013

frenchheadshot2Okay, Alice. You’ve been doing your homework like a good kiddo: Your previously nameless Story has a working title, you’ve puzzled out a satisfying story question, and your sparkling new short synopsis awaits occasional perusal as you write. All of this fresh-baked goodness must mean that you’re ready to sink your teeth into:

The Mock Turtle Soup Table of Contents

The Mock Table of Contents is a chapter list with titles attached to it. Like the short synopsis, it gives you a clarifying overview of your story. It’s a reference point you can use time after time as you write your first draft — and even as you work through 2nd, 4th, or 5th drafts.

Unlike the short synopsis, the Mock ToC distills individual chapters down to their simplest essence. The most basic ingredients look like this:

Chapter 1. Big Event

  • the unusual happening that catapults your character into the story

Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4. First Plot Point

  • an event that increases tension, gets your character farther into the action, sends the story in a new direction

Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7. Midpoint
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10. Second Plot Point
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14. Climax

  • the most exciting part of your story; the whole story points toward this

Chapter 15. Denouement

  • resolution (how it all turns out)

mockturtleNow, this is an arbitrary number of chapters. Your story might require fewer chapters or more. If you’re writing children’s fiction, maybe you’ll only need ten chapters. If you’re writing epic fantasy, you might need thirty. On the other hand, you might write an epic with chapters that are 10,000 words long, in which case maybe *you* will be the writer who requires but ten chapters. But I wouldn’t recommend it. ; )

So far, my published novels have fit into the 15-25 chapters category. There are no categories, really; I just made that up. But say I do 17 chapters with roughly 5,000 words each. That’s 85,000 words, a comfortably-sized novel. Some writers prefer their chapters be approximately the same length. Me, I like to mix it up a little — 4,500 words here, 7,000 words there. Some readers like same-length chapters; others prefer the variety. Personal preference rules here.

But we’re not going into detail about chapter lengths today. That was just a little side dish for you.

Chapter Titles

Part of the main course are the Mock ToC’s chapter titles. In brief, each chapter title describes what that chapter is about. You can use the chapter title as a summary, or you can just mention the main event(s) of the chapter. One of the first times I ever wrote a Mock ToC, my chapter titles looked like this:

Mock ToC for Tapped Out (working title) by Courtney Cantrell

CHAPTER 1 — In the Secluded Nook
CHAPTER 2 — The Royal Family
CHAPTER 3 — Dilemmas of a Princess
CHAPTER 4 — Wizard’s Pets
CHAPTER 5 — Preparations
CHAPTER 6 — Wedding Bells
CHAPTER 7 — Unexpected Companions
CHAPTER 8 — Of Travels and Taverns
CHAPTER 9 — Bonding
CHAPTER 10 — Thief/Pursuit
CHAPTER 11 — Sacrifices at the Dock
CHAPTER 12 — Dungeons of the Heart
CHAPTER 13 — Changing Minds
CHAPTER 14 — Reunion

You don’t need to know the story to see that I’ve boiled these chapter titles down to a single concept per chapter. Sometimes this concept is a location (“In the Secluded Nook”), sometimes it relates to characters (“Dilemmas of a Princess”), sometimes it’s a particular event (“Bonding”). In each case, the chapter title is just enough to focus me on the central theme of that chapter. That central theme keeps me on track as I write, so that I don’t stray into the terrible realms of Distraction and Writer’s Block.

By the way, I’m considering taking the “Mock” out of this ToC and actually using most of these titles in the finished story. I’ve never written a novel with real chapter titles before, and I think this one would lend itself well to that. So, you see, it’s possible to repurpose the Mock ToC for your final manuscript. As the indomitable Bob Ross so often said, “There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.” This applies to Mock ToCs as well as oil paintings.

But Tapped Out (working title) is a simple, lighthearted fantasy with a simple, straightforward plot. For a meatier story, I need some meatier chapter titles. Here’s a good example:

Mock ToC for Stains of Grace (Demons of Saltmarch, #3) (first draft; paranormal fantasy) by Courtney Cantrell

1. Anne Makes A Phone Call (Driving)
2. For We Are Many in Des Moines (Do Not Disturb; Nora Shows Up)
3. 1000 Miles Or One Step (Diner Diversion)
4. Showdown In A Rhode Island Driveway (Nora Shows Up, Redux; Owin’s Relief)
5. The Baneguild (Anne Talks; Thomas Repeats Himself)
6. In The Gazebo (Peter’s Dreams, Owin & Anne, Daniel & Peter & Thomas)
7. Rebekah Makes A Phone Call, Peter Reads the Colors, Gina Casts A Grayscale
8. Down The Rabbit Hole (Wounded Gadrell Helps)
9. The Zombie Apocalypse (Saltmarch Is Really Screwed Up)
10. Of Dismembered Zombies and Unexpected Temptations
11. Of Flight and Finding Lodgings
12. You Shall Know The Truth (Thomas’s Confession, Redux; Pol Pays A Visit)
13. Colors And Deception (Peter Seeks Reading Material; Degeneration; Your Mom Goes to College)
14. Save The Clocktower! (Seirim & Dante; Down the Rabbit-Hole, Redux)
15. Return To Innocence

Even in its first draft, Stains of Grace was a more complex story, so I needed more complex titles for clearer reference points as I worked. Again, I used concepts, events, and characters to anchor me.

But this time, I put extra reminders in parentheses. The published Stains contains no chapter titles, but some of these could well have made the final cut: “The Baneguild,” “Rebekah Makes a Phone Call,” “Down the Rabbit Hole,” “Colors and Deception,” “Return to Innocence.” But of course I wouldn’t have included the parenthetical remarks. “Your Mom Goes to College,” while amusing to me, wouldn’t really fit the tone of the story.

To Sum Up

Consider a useful number of chapters. Phrase your chapter titles around each chapter’s central theme/event or main character action. If you want to take the “mock” out, craft each title for final manuscript purposes. Make the Mock ToC work for you.

So, there’s your recipe for mock turtle soup. Eat, write, and be merry!

Filed in Prewriting/Story-Telling | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Your Prewriting Recipe for Mock Turtle Soup

The State of Modern Publishing (Part 2)

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, March 9, 2013

Last week I established the terms of our discourse and came out strongly in favor of indie publishing. But choosing indie publishing is only the first step in doing it, and the rest of the steps can be twisty and uneven.

In the interest of saving you from some sprained ankles along the way (even as some of mine are still recovering), I’d like to help you figure just what to expect.

Write Well a Lot!

Everyone with a blog and a book out will give you the same initial piece of advice for succeeding in indie publishing: write a great book. That’s the foundation everything else is built on.

It’s also boringly obvious and distressingly subjective. If there were any objective definition of “a great book,” Manhattan publishing would have mapped out every last edge of it decades ago, and they’d all be busy drinking champagne on their gold yachts instead of frantically trying to figure out what to do about “the e-book problem.”

So! As apt as the advice “write well” may be, it’s pretty much useless. My recommendation, then, is to write a lot. Iterate! Learn by doing.

And the lovely perk of this approach is that when one of your books finally does make it big, you’ll discover all of a sudden that you have a whole catalog of other books for your new fans to pick up next.

Be Discoverable

There’s another perk that may be less obvious, but it’s just as important in indie publishing: discoverability. We’ll come back to that term often, but when you’re an indie publisher, your biggest challenge is getting discovered.

The more books (or short stories or serials or anthologies or manifestoes) you have available, the easier it becomes for a reader to discover your writing. Your first priority is always writing, but when it comes to the publishing part of your career, always keep discoverability in the front of your mind.

In addition to sheer volume, discoverability is accomplished through branding and categorization. I’m sure “branding” will be a recurring topic in Rachel’s column on cover design, but it’s more than just creating a consistent look across your book covers. It’s establishing yourself as a type of author, as a reliable source of a product specific buyers will consistently like.

Brand Yourself

You can do that with your author blog. You can do it with your Facebook page or the sorts of things you talk about on Twitter. Are you a friendly author closely engaged with her readers? It worked for Amanda Hocking. Are you a snide author of dime-store novels willing to speak truth to power, consequences be damned? It worked for J. A. Konrath.

That doesn’t mean you should pick a successful type and become it. You should develop your own type and portray it consistently and effectively. Express yourself. That’s what being an artist is all about. Authors are just accustomed to doing from the privacy of some dark room, and via six (very slow, very obnoxious) layers of intermediaries. But those guys are all going out of business now, so it’s time for us to step out into the light.

Branding yourself makes it easy for people to find you again (and that’s important), but you still need some way to get their attention in the first place. The easiest way to do this is by targeting a category.

Take Aim

We’re going to talk about targeting categories a lot around here. In fact, we’ll be dedicating a whole week to the topic later this month. But the basic concept is simple: Readers are used to discovering new favorite books by looking around in the same places they found their old favorite books.

Traditionally, that has meant sections of a bookstore. Mystery readers would head straight to the mystery section, sci-fi readers would head straight to the sci-fi section, and so on. But even within those section (or categories), there were sub-categories. Romance readers might like sweet romances or historical romances or naughty chick lit.

A good publisher is aware is of all these factors and has a whole bag of tricks to make sure a given book finds the right reader. That’s partly done through category selection (placing it in the right part of the bookstore), but it’s also done by choices in title, cover art, and product description. A book’s promotional material can (and should) state clearly and compellingly what category, what sub-category, what mood and tone a reader can expect from the story contained inside.

That should be the goal of your marketing campaign–not convince people who might like your book to give it a try, but to make sure the people who will like your book can tell that from the most casual glance all the way through a careful inspection.

Publish Your Book

Once you’ve figured all that out, actually publishing the book is the easy part. In April we’ll talk about an excellent new e-book formatting and multi-vendor distribution service called Draft2Digital that makes the whole process a breeze (and puts some extraordinary power into your hands), but even using a retailer’s direct-publishing platform like Kindle Direct Publishing is relatively painless.

All you have to do is upload your book’s content and cover, provide a title and product description, and choose your sales categories. See? The very things we’ve been discussing. And those are the things we’ll keep discussing. Stick around and we’ll make you a master of all of them.

Aaron Pogue is the head publisher at Consortium Books, author of the bestselling Dragonprince trilogy, and serves as the User Experience consultant at Draft2Digital.com. Every Saturday he shares an article about publishing and the new book marketplace.

Find out more about Aaron Pogue at his author website.

Filed in Publishing | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The State of Modern Publishing (Part 2)

How to Find an Editor

By Laurie Laliberte on Friday, March 8, 2013

Finding a freelance editor these days is pretty easy. We’re pretty much everywhere. Finding an editor who fits your needs, who is right for you, is the hard part.

Yes, editors are everywhere, but let’s assume you’re not one of them. Let’s assume you’re a first time author publishing independently. Where should you begin? The quick and easy answer: wherever you feel most comfortable.

Chances are you’re regularly active on some form of social media. You’re on Twitter or Facebook, or Google+ or even Kindleboards. You’re already where you need to be. Chances are you’re in touch with at least one writer online, whether you’re aware of it or not. Even if that writer has never worked with an editor, they may know one or more. They can probably put you in touch with other writers who can put you in touch with other editors.

We don’t call the Internet a “web” for nothing. Pull the right strings and you can find anything, or anyone, you need. So begin by letting your Internet friends know you’re in the market for an editor. Put out a tweet, a Facebook post, or a Google+ convo and see where it gets you.

Don’t be discouraged when an online buddy says, “I don’t think they’re taking new clients, but….” Contact them anyway. The worst that can happen is that the editor in question will refer you to a colleague. And make sure while you’re searching that you find more than one. Why? Because sometimes things just don’t work out. You want to find the right editor for you. I’ll dig a bit deeper into that one in another post.

When you do make contact, there are a few things that you must have ready, because you will likely be asked for them:

First, make sure your manuscript is ready to be seen by an editor. It needs to be complete and polished to the best of your ability. I, for one, do not read queries. If you send me a synopsis of your story and say, “What do you think?” I’m going to ask, “What do you think?” It’s not my job to write or rewrite your book. It’s yours. If you send me a first draft and you honestly expect me to essentially ghost write it or rewrite it for you so that it goes from your first draft to my novel, I will turn you away so fast you won’t know what hit you. Make sure your work is done.

Second, you want to have a rough idea of when you intend to publish or whether you are willing to work on your editor’s timeframe. If you come to me in the middle of February and tell me you’d like to have your manuscript finished and ready for Amazon by the middle of March, I need to know. Honestly, my schedule right now is such that I can’t promise that, and I will let you know. I’d rather lose a client by being honest than have one dissatisfied by being so late that I mess up their plans. I’ve heard horror stories from clients who waited months to get work back from their editors. If an editor is that busy, they should let you know up front.

Third, you want to know how flexible you are willing to be with your work and what you expect of your editor. Along the same line, you need to have a thick skin. I am not a kind and gentle, hand-holding type. I will give you an honest opinion, and you are not necessarily going to like it. Most editors care enough about their clients to shred a manuscript that is not working and tell the writer to go back to the drawing board. They will be brutally honest, because their ultimate goal is the same as yours–to turn out a quality piece of work that will sell, that is worth reading, that is worth paying for.

Finally, know how much you are willing to spend. Editing is not cheap. You are hiring an employee who expects to earn a living wage from their work with you. You can expect to be charged anywhere from $8 to $15, or even more, for every thousand words. I determine my fee based on word count and the condition of the initial sample I receive. Those two things give me an idea of how many hours, it will take me to finish the job.

If and when you approach me, I am going to ask you to send me:

  • Your word count–this is the biggest factor in determining my fee and giving you an estimate, but it’s not the only one.
  • A sample of your manuscript–about ten pages, or one chapter, from the ‘script we’ll be working on.
  • Your game plan–timeframe for publication, your goals for the piece (will it be going to publishers, or are you publishing independently, or entering in a contest of some sort).

It really is that simple, but simple doesn’t always mean easy. In my next post, I will give you some more information about actually choosing the editor who is right for you as well as reasons why they may or may not take you on as a client.

 

Laurie Laliberte is a freelance editor who specializes in working with writers who publish independently. She has published several books of her own in addition to editing numerous books for other authors. You are welcome to visit her website, Tales and Yarns, to learn more about her editorial process. Find Laurie’s books on Amazon.

Filed in Editorial, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on How to Find an Editor

Weaponized Plot

By Joshua Unruh on Thursday, March 7, 2013

Josh-1In a couple of posts, I threw around the phrase “weaponized plot.” This is a phrase that I invented (as far as I know). It’s a phrase used often by me and by the staff at Consortium Books. But it occurred to me it might not be immediately obvious to everyone what it means. So, for the benefit of anybody I confused and for people who just like saying it and want to make sure they’re using it correctly, please allow me to elucidate.

The Worst Possible Start

Beginning any kind of formal speech or essay with “the dictionary defines X as…” is the worst possible way to start anything. But I’m a rebel, and it’ll be quite useful for our purposes here, so I’m doing it anyway.

Merriam-Webster defines weaponize as “to adapt for use as a weapon of war.” Often, especially in chemical or biological warfare, this word also brings along the connotation of “rendering down to its most potent form.” Keep those two things in mind for a minute.

The same dictionary has two definitions for weapon. First, there’s the obvious one, but I want to zero in on the secondary definition. “A means of contending against one another.”

May God Have Mercy upon My Enemies, Because I Won’tTank 1

The war I’m in when I write promotional copy is the war to get someone, preferably many someones, interested enough in my book to buy it. Reading it is also nice, but buying it is most important. My enemies are every other book ever written including the other ones with my name on them. War, as they say, is Hell.

My first weapon, or method of contending against every other book in the universe, is my cover. Assuming its successful in getting Mr. Potential Reader to flip the book, my second salvo is promo copy.

In order to win those hearts and minds, I now have to tell them what the book is about. I have a very limited amount of space and attention span. I have to tell them something about the themes and tone of the story as well. If I sell a historical romance as though its a superhero adventure, that likely won’t be a satisfied customer.

The way I do that is by weaponizing (or rendering down to its most potent form) my plot. I tell them what the book is about but I distill it all down to the most interesting bits that also communicate the feel the reader should prepare themselves for. If my story is tongue-in-cheek, I need to make a couple jokes. If it’s traditional adventure, I can say things like “thrilling” or “senses-shattering.” If it’s romance, I might emphasize “burning passion” or “ethereal beauty.”

GrenadeA Few Quick Examples

Okay, you get it in theory, but what about in practice? Here are a couple of examples based on fiction you might be aware of.

Star Wars

Luke Skywalker dreams of adventure even while stranded at the edge of the galaxy as far away from anything exciting as his uncle can keep him. But when fate takes a hand and drops the plans for a super-weapon capable of shattering entire planets in one shot, Luke must take his first steps into a larger world. Evil Empires, scruffy smugglers, beautiful princesses, and mystical warrior monks all propel Luke toward a destiny he never dreamed of: Hero.

 Lost

A plane crashes on an apparently deserted island. The survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, each one with their own lies, loves, and hatreds, must band together to survive. But while lack of food and water may kill them, secrets, both their own and that of the seemingly malevolent Island, may destroy them. Mysteries, lies, alliances, adversaries, and even monsters are only some of the dangers. Will the Island bring redemption for people with broken lives, or will it shatter them beyond repair?

Romeo & Juliet

A family feud threatens to turn Verona into a war zone. The swordsmen of two warring houses, the Montagues and Capulets, battle in the streets. Usually, these brawls are mere words, but far too often, these words are followed with the clash of steel. But when the only son of the Montagues and the only daughter of the Capulets meet as star-crossed lovers, the simmering violence erupts into blood on the streets. Can the lovers survive the lies and betrayals, the ancient hatreds and new loves, the poetry and violence?

Twilight

High school is hell where even the cutest boys are monsters. One young girl’s life hangs upon her ability to survive vampire fangs and monster claws. But even when she’s strong enough to fight monsters, she can’t protect her broken heart.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

High school is hell where even the cutest boys are monsters. One young girl’s life hangs upon her ability to survive vampire fangs and monster claws. But even when she’s strong enough to fight monsters, she can’t protect her broken heart.

Okay, okay, I might be having a bit of fun with you there at the end. But I’m also demonstrating the dangers of weaponized plot. But I hope the other examples showed you how you can peel off all the extra detritus and tell your readers exactly what they’re in for in as few words as possible. And even my joking examples show off the dangers of stripping away too much of what makes your story interesting and unique.

Please feel free to use the comments here as a place to try your hand at weaponizing your plot. Critique one another, but remember to stay respectful and friendly! I may even chime in now and then myself, hopefully to applaud good examples. I look forward to the conversation, so thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!

Joshua Unruh is the Marketing Czar for the Consortium and author of the grim fantasy Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall. Every Thursday he shares an article about marketing, sales, and product promotion in the new book market.

Find out more about Joshua Unruh at his author website, and check out his newest book, Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall, in stores now!

Filed in Sales | Tagged | Comments Off on Weaponized Plot

A Matter of Perspective

By Thomas Beard on Wednesday, March 6, 2013

We need to have the talk.

It’s time for us to define the relationship between your readers and your characters. I’m talking about point of view. Who gets point of view in your story, and how, is an important decision that you shouldn’t take lightly.

For the purposes of time, I have to assume that you know at least a little about point of view. If you don’t, there are a lot of great books out there that can teach you about this crucial tool in the writer’s toolbox. Character and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, part of the Elements of Fiction Writing series, is a great start.

As I was saying, writing is a romance between your characters and your readers. Your readers will form relationships with your point-of-view (POV) characters. And, just like any relationship, you have to think about who gets that privilege.

Believe me, this is a hard discussion after you’ve already written your book. I know full well what it feels like to look at a story and realize that you’ve handled point of view all wrong. One character was boring but necessary; another was interesting but ultimately unnecessary. I had to grit my teeth and rewrite, first relegating the unnecessary POV character to the status of supporting cast, then giving the boring character more incentive to be active. It was a terrible decision, but it was vital to the book.

Whichever characters are most active or have the most interesting perspectives should make your POV short list. But how do you narrow it down from there? Should you focus on only one person’s thoughts throughout your book? Should you move among two or three people? Or should you have a crowd whose thoughts you dip into, first in one place, then in another? Whichever option you choose will have definite consequences for your book.

If you only have one POV character, your reader is essentially monogamous while she reads your book. She gets to know one character extremely well and comes to see who he really is. On the other hand, she will always wonder what it would be like to be that close with the other people in your novel. She will wonder what really drives them.

If the development of a single character is the most important thing in your book, or if your focus is on the events surrounding a single person, then make that person alone the POV character. Don’t bother with having other points of view if their motivations don’t warrant that attention.

On the other hand, your book may have two or three or four POV characters. Your reader has a more open relationship with them. She gets to move from one to the other and back again, exploring each and coming to see who they are. Your reader will never be as intimate with any of them as she would be if she spent the entire book with only one, but she gets to experience the thoughts and motivations of very different people.

If the developments of a few different characters are equally important in your book, or if your book is about a society or idea that is complex and requires a few different perspectives to truly understand, then you should have a few different POV characters to show what you need to show.

There is no good reason to have more than four points of view. Even four is pushing it, but I recognize that sometimes it can be necessary provided that you have the confidence and ability to do it well. The more points of view you have in your story, the harder it is to write, and the less attached your reader becomes to any of your characters. Your reader becomes a lady of the evening, accepting freely any character who offers himself to her. That’s nasty and degrading. Don’t make your readers go through it. They might put down your book just from the shame.

After you decide who gets the privilege of point of view, you next have to decide how. You may remember from your high school or college English courses that there are two basic types of point of view. First person is the most intensive. Your story is written as though your main character were actually writing it.

First-person point of view is frankly more common than it needs to be. It’s hard to do very well. To succeed with a first-person story, you need to be as good an actor as you are a writer. You have to have a nuanced understanding of how the events in this person’s life have influenced everything he does, says, thinks, believes, or thinks he believes.

I’m tempted to forbid anyone from ever writing in first person unless they have at least 30 hours of psychology coursework from an accredited university. And yet everybody and their gerbil has attempted it at least once. If you want an example of first person done well, I recommend the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz. Koontz does an excellent job of making you really believe that someone else wrote his books.

And if you’re going to throw caution to the wind and try it, let me tell you this: Never—you need to look me in the eye when I’m talking to you—ever write a first-person book with multiple point-of-view characters. If your book is in first-person, you get one point of view. That’s it.

Most books are written in third-person point of view. This is where you as the storyteller are a step removed from your characters. Instead of I and me, it’s he and she.

Third person is what most authors use almost exclusively, and it’s the one I recommend, especially if this is your first or second book. While you’re not as involved in the character’s thoughts as you might be with first person, it doesn’t limit you very much, and it allows you to explore other points of view.

And really, all the best books are written in third person.

Now take a look at your story and make the decision that lasts a lifetime. If you haven’t started writing it yet, all the better. If you’ve already written your book, or you’re in the process of writing it, that choice is much harder. It’s hard to confront this kind of mistake in your writing—good grief, it’s bereavement. It’s divorce.

But it’s better to rewrite your story than to publish it now from the wrong perspective. It can make or break your book. Even if you’re confident you’ve chosen the right point-of-view character(s), I recommend a thorough reread just to see if there’s anything else you can do with them. You can shape their points of view to emphasize things they would emphasize or to hide things that they wouldn’t notice. You can introduce misunderstandings between them and create irony in the story. There are a lot of fun things you can do with point of view that allow you to comment on how different people can perceive the same events or even the same dialogue.

Give your work your full attention. You’ll reap the rewards of a happy relationship later on.

This article took six read-throughs.

Thomas Beard is a writer and editor with the Consortium. Every Wednesday he shares an article about revision, rewriting, and story structure.

Watch for his debut epic fantasy, The Orphan Queen.

Filed in Rewriting | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A Matter of Perspective

The Cover Uncovered: Quiet

By Rachel Giles on Tuesday, March 5, 2013

“The Cover Uncovered” will be a monthly post where I dissect the cover of a relatively recent book and take a look at what works, what doesn’t, and what you can learn from it.

Non-fiction book covers can be tricky beasts. Most times there aren’t characters or scenery to show off, and it can be hard finding an emotional draw if you’ve written a more practical book. This probably explains the following tendency I’ve observed in non-fiction: slap on a photo related to your topic, add a title and author, then call it a day. And sometimes that’s not a bad practice.  If you’ve written an extremely specialized book that people in your field are actively searching for, then that will work.

However, if you’re aiming your non-fiction at wider audiences, you should play with the cover and stretch your mind creatively to draw in audiences. Just because it’s non-fiction doesn’t mean it needs a photo. For example, as I write this blog post, there’s a fun little book that’s been on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller the past few weeks. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. As the title suggests, the book seeks to show how the world undervalues introverts and how introverts can thrive in an extrovert-oriented world. So how does the cover convey this? And without the obvious answer of a photo of an introvert reading a book while being harassed by extroverts?

Quiet

 Ta Da!

Color & Background:

This should a simple one to analyze, right? The background is a dull, grungy gray, which allows the red text to stand out against it. Or does it?

Let me pull you back to relive what was hopefully a fun time in your life: art class. One of the principles of art as well as of design is something called value. Value is essentially (wait while I pull out dusty school material from a folder) “the lightness or darkness of a color.” Since my school material is a little lacking in explanation, I guess I’ll need to fill in the blanks.

Every visual element in your book cover has some percentage of black in it.   Two colors may appear completely opposite, but if the values of two colors are close in percentage, the shapes won’t contrast well and will seem to flatten. Conversely, if the percentages of the value are far apart, the two colors really stand out against each other (think of a light blue bird on a dark green background). So what does this have to do with Quiet? Sometimes, designs look amazing in color, but when pulled into grayscale, lose their impact.

Case in point:

quiet-final-jacketgrayscale

See? The value of the red in Quiet is so similar to the value of the gray background that the title blends into the background. In most cases, I would suspect, given the size and prominence of the Q in “Quiet”, that the designer wanted the title to stand out, and therefore made a mistake in choosing this particular value of red. However, since the subject matter of the book does involve introverts living in a world made for extroverts, this could actually be a clever extra by the designer that would make the word retreat into the background a little and in fact reference the content of the book. Who knows? Maybe I’m reading too much into a color. This should, however, prove to you that attention to even the smallest of details can help convey something about your book.

Typography

Instead of picking a bold sans serif typeface, the designer opted for a simple serif typeface that also helps underscore the quiet nature of people inside in the book. An effective choice of typography and one that serves the book cover well.

Composition and Graphical Elements

Not too much to say here. Sans typography, there are no real graphical elements in this cover. The composition is minimal, simple and clean which allows the title, author’s name, and description to stand out. I’d like to note that just because I don’t have much to say on this doesn’t mean it’s bad. Often a simple design can say it best and anything extra would be clutter.

All in all, I wouldn’t say Quiet definitively shows off the content in its cover. If you were to remove the subtitle, I’m not sure if you’d be able to guess what the book was about. Quiet does demonstrate, however, that you don’t have to feel limited to sticking with stock photos if you have a non-fiction book. Just a quick glance at the Goodreads Best Choice for 2012 Non-Fiction or the Christian Science Monitor’s best Non-Fiction 2012 shows there’s often a lot of creativity in typography in the non-fiction covers, even the ones that predominately feature photographs. Using all your design elements from typography to color to photography in the best way possible helps improve your cover.

Rachel Giles is a professional graphic designer who graciously donates her time to the Consortium. Every Tuesday she shares an article about quality cover design.

Filed in Cover Design, Cover Review | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Cover Uncovered: Quiet

The Short Synopsis (Or: Don’t Fritz Your Circuits)

By Courtney Cantrell on Monday, March 4, 2013

frenchheadshot2Welcome back, dearest readers, to a brand new week of writerly fun!

I hope that our posts thus far have got you excited about working on your story and working on your publishing. We here at Unstressed Syllables love to take the stress out of your “syllables” –whether you’re reading dialogue aloud to yourself or muttering under your breath about finding the perfect image for cover art. Don’t forget that you can ask us questions! We’re here to help.

Today for prewriting, we’re going to talk about your short synopsis. Your story has a working title, and you’ve clarified your story question. Now we’re going to tackle your short synopsis.

Why A Short Synopsis?

Ever clearer writing. This is one of the things that should be happening as though by magic (but actually by a lot of sweat and tears and maybe even blood) as you grow and improve. The more and the longer you write, the more precise your word choices should become. Your phrasing turns ever more elegant and eloquent. (Please note that this is not synonymous with “flowery.”) You refine your style. Your dialogue sounds more and more realistic, and your characters possess ever more distinct voices.

You learn to say more with fewer words.

When you write a short synopsis, you’re practicing all of these skills. (Except for dialogue. Your short synopsis really shouldn’t contain any dialogue.) You’re exercising precision in word choice. You’re focusing on just the most vital elements of your story. You’re gaining clarity in how you view your story, and you’re gaining clarity in how you communicate that vision to other people.

That last point, by the way, is a pretty important one. Eventually you’re going to be writing back cover copy for your story. Your short synopsis can function as a great skeleton for the tantalizing flesh of back cover copy.
shortsynopsis

Writing the Short Synopsis

In 300 words or fewer, the synopsis should summarize the story you want to tell about your characters. You’ll need to describe:

  • your protagonist
  • your antagonist
  • their conflict
  • who wins and how.

If you can do more than that in 300 words, go ahead. But you don’t need to. The purpose of the synopsis is to let you boil down your story to its barest essentials.

Main Character is [ short character descrip ]. She encounters [ problem ], which catapults her into [ action ]. Antagonist hinders her by [ opposition ]. MC gets help from Supporting Cast. [ MC ] (or, heaven forfend, [ Antagonist ]) triumphs in the end by [ solution to problem ].

Sample Short Synopsis

To illustrate, here is the short synopsis of Jessie‘s work-in-progress, Lost Causes:

New vampire Jude is taken under the wing of a priest. He trains Jude to kill serial killers and other menaces to society. He then orders Jude to target The Girl. While pursuing her, Jude begins to question the Priest’s motives. Jude and The Girl find an ancient vampire who reveals the truth about the Priest’s evil nature. Jude and The Girl go and kill the Priest.

That’s a whole novel in 67 words. BAM.

So, you see, 300 words actually leaves you with quite a bit of stretching room. Jessie has enough wordcount left over to include a few extra details if she so desires: the Priest’s “reason” for targeting The Girl, what Jude and The Girl do to find the ancient vampire, how the ancient vampire knows the Priest, what final obstacle Jude must overcome in order to kill the Priest. All of those details would probably take up more than 240 words, so Jessie would need to choose just one or two “extras.”

But, as I said, the extras are optional. The bare bones of the story are there, and that’s all we really need. As Jessie works through the rest of her prewriting, she can:

  • refer back to this synopsis for her major plot points
  • add a few of those “extras” as clarifying reminders to herself
  • and use this synopsis as the framework for her long synopsis (yes, there’s one of those, too).

And as an added bonus, this short synopsis can be the start of her back cover copy.

Pondering the Short Synopsis

Don’t stress about this. It’s only as complicated as you make it, and I recommend you keep it simple. Writing, though wonderfully rewarding and all that rot, is a brain-frying activity to begin with, and there’s no need of fritzing your circuits over a short synopsis.

The good news–no, the cramazingly bangerang news–is that this exercise, like all of the other prewriting exercises we talk about, is a fluid thing. You can go back and change it. You can write it first, before you do any other prewriting. You can write it last, after all the other prewriting is finished. This is your map, remember. It must needs be useful to you.

So play around with it, figure out what works best for your writing needs, and then run with it. Out the door and after those dwarves. You’re embarking on a grand adventure–don’t forget that!

Courtney Cantrell is Head of the School of Writing for the Consortium and author of the epic fantasy Rethana’s Surrender. Every Monday she shares an article about storytelling technique.

Find out more about Courtney Cantrell at her author website.

Filed in Prewriting/Story-Telling | Tagged | Comments (1)