Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

What Are Pinch Points? And How Can They Make Your Book Easier to Write?

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This post by K.M. Weiland originally appeared on her Helping Writers Become Authors site on 3/29/15.

You may have heard of these little darlings called “Pinch Points.” Of all the important structural moments in your story, they’re the most likely to be neglected. They get lost amidst all the excited chatter about their bigger, flashier brethren: the Plot Points. But Pinch Points–two of them, both occurring in the Second Act–are crucial to your story’s structure.

I realized I’ve never written a proper post on Pinch Points, so today I figure it’s time to remedy that. After all, there is a lot of confusion swirling around the subject.

What are Pinch Points?

How do they compare to Plot Points?

Where do they belong in the story?

What do they do?

And what happens when you neglect them?

Let’s find out!

 

Read the full post on Helping Writers Become Authors.

 

A Reply to Larry Correia [from George RR Martin]

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This post by George R.R. Martin originally appeared on his blog on 4/13/15.

I am just about blogged out on the whole Puppygate thing, having devoted half a dozen posts and thousands of words to it over the past few days. However, Larry Correia responded to some of those posts on his own blog, MONSTER HUNTER NATION, as several dozen of his followers immediately emailed me to point out, and I promised to reply in turn. So here it is.

My original posts were long, and Mr. Correia’s reply was long, and if quoted them all, and then piled more on top of it, all of Live Journal might sink beneath the weight. So I am going to cut out the stuff by me that Correia quotes, since the originals are all available upstream, and edit down his own reply to just the point I want to answer.

To make it clear who is speaking, I will set off Correia’s statements with brackets and try to italicize them… though for some reason the italics on LJ have not been working well of late. We’ll see if they work here.

Here goes.

[[CORREIA: When one of the most successful authors on the planet takes the time to talk about something you did, I figure that deserves an in depth response. I’ve got no direct line to Mr. Martin, but I am hoping that this will get back to him.]]

It did. Through several sources. I would have responded earlier, but as you can see, I have been busy posting about other aspects of this thing. But I do appreciate the response, andeven more so, the courtesy you have shown. It’s my hope and belief that people on different sides of an issue can disagree, even heatedly, without it turning into rancor and namecalling. We are, after all, fighting about a literary award.

[[CORREIA: When I started this the Hugo Awards were not portrayed as the awards that belonged to WorldCon. They were portrayed as the awards that represented the best of all of fandom. After my first experience seeing how the sausage was made, I publically said the same thing you said there, that the Hugo Awards don’t represent all of fandom, they represent one tiny part of fandom. I was called a liar.]]

 

Read the full post on George R.R. Martin’s blog.

 

7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts

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This post by Neil Patel originally appeared on Quicksprout on 4/13/15.

Over the last three years, I’ve ramped up the amount of content I create. Not only do I blog three times a week on Quick Sprout and a few times a week on my personal blog, but I also write guest posts all over the web.

In fact, currently I publish slightly more than 100 guest posts a year. As of today, I have officially published my 300th guest post.

My experience writing guest posts taught me a lot. And I can tell you that if you want to generate a positive ROI from guest-posting, you can actually do so as long as you learn from my mistakes.

Here’s what I learned from writing 300 guest posts:

Lesson #1: Go after a broad audience
Your blog already attracts a narrow audience. If it doesn’t, you should reconsider the type of content you are publishing. By going too broad on your blog, you’ll end up gaining visitors, but no conversions.

I learned this the hard way by attracting thousands of visitors to my corporate blog who wouldn’t convert into customers.

But going after too narrow an audience with your guest posts is a terrible idea. Why? There usually aren’t a ton of niche places you can go to guest-post. And if you find a handful of them, they probably won’t have the traffic volume you need.

 

Read the full post on Quicksprout.

 

My Haters, Myself: Mastering The Art Of The Haterbrag.

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This post by Amanda Hess originally appeared on Slate on 4/13/15.

Jennifer Weiner has sold millions of books, spent a combined five years on the New York Times best-seller list, and amassed 109,000 followers on Twitter. Last week, she descended into the basement of New York City’s Ace Hotel to share a handful of her self-promotional secrets. The talk, sponsored by the PEN American Center, was titled “How to Be Authentic on Social Media,” but its true subject was how to promote your book on the Internet without making everyone hate you. Weiner advised authors to tweet about the things they love (for Weiner, it’s the reality TV romance competition The Bachelor); to tweet about the authors they love (Roxane Gay and Gary Shteyngart are two of her favorites); and to tweet about their own projects “sparingly, carefully, modestly, thoughtfully, and absolutely as little as possible”—and let their now-loyal crew of social media followers spread the word. The talk was a handy primer, charmingly delivered. But it referred only obliquely to Weiner’s true social-media innovation: Co-opting her haters into her personal brand.

 

Read the full post on Slate.

 

Making the Leap Into Freelance Copy Editing

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This article by Jessica Eggert originally appeared on American Journalism Review on 4/9/15.

When Jim Thomsen found out he was going to lose his position as a copy editor at the Kitsap Sun, a daily newspaper in Bremerton, Washington, he said that it was the blackest period of his life. “I couldn’t figure out what else I could do,” he said. He spent about a year looking for another job in the newspaper industry. Nothing.

That’s when he decided to start freelance editing manuscripts. Thomsen had been editing manuscripts on the side but never considered it as self-sustaining. Now, he said he’s making more money than he ever did at a newspaper and doesn’t regret the transition at all.

“I had to get past my psychological dependence on my identity as a newspaper person,” he said. “I had to shed myself of my tribal identity and find out what is forward thinking and lucrative, and I found that.”

Thomsen is hardly alone. He’s one of many editors who have opted to become freelancers after leaving a full-time job in the newspaper industry.

 

Read the full post on American Journalism Review.

 

Sordid, Unprofitable, Unrewarding: On ‘New Grub Street’ and Cynical Literature

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This essay by Sam Allingham originally appeared on The Millions on 4/7/15.

In today’s publishing world, it pays to be a doomsayer. We have an inexhaustible appetite for reports of literature’s demise. Go ahead, dust off that article on how the novel is dead for the thousandth time — only make sure you add that the whole industry is dying with it. Are you a publisher, the sort of person who purports to sell books? Give interviews with leading periodicals in which you admit that publishing is “at a crossroads,” and that we have lost the necessary magic to accomplish the nearly 600-year-old trick of turning printed matter into gold. Bring on the articles by journalists that remind us how journalism as we know it is passing away! Algorithms write our articles, videos replace text as the primary medium of communication, and soon all media will consist of an endless feed of indistinguishable information, which our children will scroll through lazily while they suck a ground-up mixture of kale and insects through a straw.

There’s something flattering about all this hand-wringing. It provides us with a sense of self-importance, to imagine we live in unprecedented times. One nice part about the apocalypse is the way it soothes one’s existential crisis. People who write, publish, and criticize literature have never been a particularly self-confident bunch, and the current climate — in which more than 300,000 books are published in America every year, not counting self-published titles — can encourage feelings of irrelevancy. Why write yet another review of yet another novel, when you can proclaim the absolute end of literature? Better to be a prophet than a drudge. Even authors can take comfort in the idea of a post-literary age, where the fact that all the great novels have already been written relieves us of the responsibility of writing our own.

 

Read the full essay on The Millions.

 

How to Deal With Writing Distractions

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This post by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen originally appeared on The Adventurous Writer.

These tips for dealing with distractions as a writer are inspired by a parable about James Joyce, and will help you develop the productivity of a writer like Stephen King. Learning how to deal with writing distractions isn’t just about turning off the internet or writing in pomodoros.

In Writing Habit Mastery: How to Write 2,000 Words a Day and Forever Cure Writer’s Block, S.J. Scott describes how to establish a productive writing routine and environment and find time to write – even if you have a full-time job. You may not have the natural discipline it takes to write every day; you need to learn how to minimize distractions and interruptions, create a mental mindset that inspires you to write, and deal with lack of motivation that distracts you from writing.

The following tips on dealing with writing distractions are inspired by a story about James Joyce, told by Stephen King in his famous memoir On Writing. I featured his book in 7 Writing Tips From Stephen King – but I neglected to mention his parable about the late great James Joyce.

 

Read the full post on The Adventurous Writer.

 

5 Ways to Get Your Flaky Freelance Client to Pay Up

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This post by Carol Tice originally appeared on Make A Living Writing.

Has this happened to you? You slave away meeting a freelance client’s deadline, send in your invoice, and then…nothing.

Your client is smelling like a deadbeat.

What can you do about it? Plenty.

As it happens, I’ve had my share of clients who drag their heels on payment. Over the years, I’ve developed a system for making sure those checks arrive…more on that below.

First, here are my five best tips for rounding up those stray checks:

1. Friendly email reminder

I like to begin on the assumption that my lack of a payment is a simple oversight or mistake. The day after the payment was due, I send a friendly email:

“Hi, I’m just checking in because my final payment on this project was due yesterday. I know you got my final draft a couple weeks ago — are we all set? Please let me know if you need anything from me, and do let me know when I can expect payment. Let me know if you need another copy of the invoice.”

Sometimes, that’s all it takes. The invoice was mislaid, or the accountant was out sick a couple days, and your nudge will send the check your way.

 

Read the full post on Make A Living Writing.

 

How to Have a Successful Book Launch

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This post originally appeared on ChatEbooks on 4/7/15.

Finishing your book, from writing to editing, is not the end of your journey.  Holding a book launch is one great way to promote your book. Here are some tips on how to organize a successful book launch.

After spending countless hours writing, editing, and creating a book, it can be a rewarding experience for an author to celebrate their hard work, and can also be beneficial to have a book launch event to market and promote their book. As an author, this event gives you an opportunity to celebrate all the weeks, months, or even years that led to the publication of your book. If not organized and managed properly, however, book launch events can end up being extremely expensive and a waste of time. If done right, these events can provide crucial momentum. There are many tips for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book launch.

One tip for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book event is to research potential venues. It can be beneficial to actually visit these venues in person. Potential venues should be based on who you wish to invite to the event and what goals you desire to accomplish by hosting the event. It can be helpful to host a book event at a retail location. Bookstores and other retailers will be content if you can bring in a lot of people to their store, and they are also usually willing to handle the sales. Another beneficial strategy is to locate a retailer that has connections to the book. For instance, if your book is about outdoor activities, a local recreational equipment store is an excellent venue to host the event.

 

Read the full post on ChatEbooks.

 

How The 'Sad Puppies' Internet Campaign Gamed The Hugo Awards

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This post by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw originally appeared on The Daily Dot on 4/5/15.

Everyone loves to say that awards ceremonies are rigged, meaningless, or just blatant popularity contests. In the case of the most prestigious honor in the sci-fi/fantasy community, this kind of accusation now feels worryingly true.

Each year, the Hugo Awards are voted on by paid members of Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. Fans nominate their favorite books, movies, and commentators, and the most popular choices make it onto a shortlist of five nominees per category. People then vote for the eventual winners, which are revealed at Worldcon in August.

This year’s nominees were announced on Saturday, and most of them came directly from a Gamergate-affiliated campaign known as Sad Puppies. By bloc-voting for a specific slate of anti-progressive authors, editors, and fans, the Sad Puppies managed to game the selection process in every major category. And yes, they did choose that name for themselves.

 

Read the full post on The Daily Dot.

 

10 Characters to Put Out to Pasture

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This post originally appeared on Mysterious Matters on 3/10/09.

The challenge in genre fiction is always to balance the tried and true (including “stock figures”) with the new, interesting, or exciting. Too much tried and true = boring and formulaic; too much new, interesting, or exciting = nerve-wracking to publishers, who can’t easily classify it and/or don’t dare push the envelope too much for fear of unsold books sitting in the warehouse and getting remaindered or destroyed.

While I recognize that certain types of characters are a staple of our genre (sassy heroine, sexy-and-stoic noncommunicative cop), it seems that a lot of the manuscripts I’ve been reading lately — as well as published works — are using the same characters over and over again, and I’m getting a bit tired of them. So, herewith, the top 10 characters I’d like to see retired.

1. The pill-popping, alcoholic, cold society woman. Yes, it’s an easy stereotype because there are a lot of them in reality. (I see them not infrequently in life.) But aren’t there any society matrons who don’t drink a fifth of gin each day, who don’t treat their daughters cruelly, and don’t spread vicious gossip?

2. The overly garrulous neighbor. This character is the lazy novelist’s dream come true. He or she, by virtue of being a true busybody, gives the investigator a true information dump, making the sleuth’s job much, much easier. I like my P.I.’s to have to work a little harder for their information.

3. The bitchy teenage girl. Somehow our society seems to have fallen in love with the positively evil alpha high school girl who ruins the reputations of rivals and leads smear campaigns against those who look at her the wrong way. While my own daughter certainly had her moments of ill temper as a teenager, neither she nor her friends ever behaved remotely like a character in Mean Girls. I really think the proliferation of this type of character is doing young women a disservice.

 

Read the full post on Mysterious Matters.

 

Writing With A Day Job

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This post by Nathan Bransford originally appeared on his blog on 2/18/14.

On last week’s episode of Girls, Hannah got a temporary day job in GQ’s advertorial department, where she had a taste of success (as well as free snacks).

Her fellow co-workers were fellow aspiring writers, and during a slightly fraught break room chat, they revealed that all of their writing successes came before they had a day job. Hannah quits, not wanting to wake up in ten years having failed to pursue her real writing, but later decides to try to have it both ways and vows to write three hours every night.

I’m sure this episode rang true for many a writer. Barring some sort of independent wealth or a generous benefactor, there are really only two choices:

– Quit/scale back your day job to have more time to write, plunging yourself into financial uncertainty.

– Keep your day job and carve out time for writing in the margins, plunging yourself into creative uncertainty.

 

Read the full post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

 

Fifty Shades of Lit.

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This post by Andrew J McKiernan originally appeared as a guest post on Alan Baxter’s Warrior Scribe on 3/17/15.

It has been almost six months since Alan asked me to write him a guest blog post. He knows I’m fairly passionate and opinionated about the “Literary vs. Genre” debate, and that’s what he suggested I write about. That’ll be easy enough, I thought. So I agreed.

Turns out, it wasn’t so easy after all. So, instead of trying to create some kind of logical argument — as I was originally intending to do — I’m just going to wing it. Trust my instincts, follow my heart, and just lay it all on the table.

First, let me paste two comments I recently found accompanying articles re: the Literature vs Genre debate. They demonstrate why I get a bit angry when the topic comes up:

EXHIBIT A: User comment on article on whether Crime Fiction is real Literature [see Note 6 below]

“crime fiction has more in common with the crossword puzzle than with literature”

EXHIBIT B: User comment seen on Facebook:

“To me, literary fiction is just another genre, and today it means ‘realistic fiction written by professors, for professors.’”

[I can’t remember who said this, but I think the position is common enough amongst Genre readers and writers that the specifics aren’t important.]

Now, I’m not a professor and I ain’t had no fancy learnin’, but that sounds like crazy talk to me. Both comments based on a misguided and narrow view of what Literature and Genre might actually mean. And, though there’s been a lot of great work in breaking this ridiculously false barrier down, both sides still maintain a strong core of stubbornness and, to me, it seems a horrible prejudice.

 

Read the full post on Warrior Scribe.

 

Keys to Writing Books for Very Young Readers

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This post by Olivia Snaije originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 3/25/15.

PARIS: Within a program of events celebrating French publisher l’école des loisirs’ 50th birthday, the cherished children’s book author, Grégoire Solotareff, gave a talk on Monday about how to transform an idea for a book into reality. In the tradition of Maurice Sendak or Leo Lionni (both of whom are published in translation by l’école des loisirs), Solotareff’s 200+ books for children, which he has been writing and illustrating for 30 years, continue to dwell in a magical and quirky universe. For the past 20 years he has also been the editor of an imprint called Loulou & Cie for children ages 0-4 where he has overseen the production of 400 books. It was in his capacity as both author and editor that he gave the following talk, loosely translated and edited here:

In 1985 I started publishing my books. It was lots of work at the beginning. I wanted very quickly to be published by l’école des loisirs because of its reputation. I presented my books to [co-founder] Arthur Hubschmid, and since then there have been lots of books.

One shouldn’t create books just to make them. You need to be passionate about it. At first you are shy and afraid of rejection. You’re not always confident. But you do need to be convinced about your work, you need to like it and want to do it. This is the first quality you need when you present a book to a publisher and say “This is what I do and what do you think?”

 

Read the full post on Publishing Perspectives.

 

Can We All Just Behave?

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This post by Maryann Miller originally appeared on The Blood-Red Pencil on 3/25/15.

Last month here at The Blood-Red Pencil I wrote about moral and ethical lines that we writers need to consider before we cross them just to make a buck. We had a great discussion about what we are comfortable writing, as well as our responsibility to consider what we’re contributing to society with our work.

One of our regular BRP contributors, Diana Hurwitz, had this to say on the topic:

Stories have the power to shape the collective consciousness. You can write with brutal honesty about what has happened and what could happen without suggesting that it should happen. Your work has a slant – perhaps a subliminal one. As a writer, you should at least be aware of the message you send and make sure it is the one you intended.

How we use our words is indeed important, and it is also important to consider how we act as professional writers. Addressing that need to always put a professional foot forward, was an interesting article on Writer Unboxed, written by Katharine Grubb. She asked some ethical questions that focus  on how writers present themselves and handle business dealings, such as:

 

Read the full post on The Blood-Red Pencil.