Think

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

A Writer’s Greatest Crime

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This post, by Shannon Donnelly, originally appeared on Writers In The Storm on 1/6/14.

There are a lot of crimes a writer can commit—the torture of sentences, the mangling of meaning, the wrecking of words through using the wrong one at the wrong time. However, the greatest of these is the crime of lack—to forget to put in the emotion.

Now, emotions come in lots of ways and there are lots of opportunities to layer them in, but you have to remember you’re not just putting down words. You are constructing a believable scene with what should be memorable characters (people in other words). And people come with emotions.

Let’s look at the ways to make sure you get the emotion into your scenes.

 

1. Add emotion through actions.

This goes back to the old ‘show, don’t tell’ advice. You want to show your characters in action so the reader sees who your characters are. Does a character slam a door when he’s angry, or talk softly? Does a character laugh when nervous? Or pick her nose?

Little bits of actions can say a lot about a person. The man who stops to polish his side mirror on his corvette and wipe the speck of dust from its apple-cherry paint job reveals his love of his car. The woman who is always twirling a strand of hair is a flirt. The boy who pops his gum whenever his mother is talking is showing how little he listens to her. Those actions all say something about that character—they show emotions at work.

 

2. Let emotion color descriptions.

 

Click here to read the rest of the article on Writers In The Storm.

 

Inside The Box: People Don't Actually Like Creativity

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This article, by Jessica Olien, originally appeared on Slate on 12/6/13.

In the United States we are raised to appreciate the accomplishments of inventors and thinkers—creative people whose ideas have transformed our world. We celebrate the famously imaginative, the greatest artists and innovators from Van Gogh to Steve Jobs. Viewing the world creatively is supposed to be an asset, even a virtue. Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.

It’s all a lie. This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.

“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.

Staw says most people are risk-averse. He refers to them as satisfiers. “As much as we celebrate independence in Western cultures, there is an awful lot of pressure to conform,” he says. Satisfiers avoid stirring things up, even if it means forsaking the truth or rejecting a good idea.

Even people who say they are looking for creativity react negatively to creative ideas, as demonstrated in a 2011 study from the University of Pennsylvania. Uncertainty is an inherent part of new ideas, and it’s also something that most people would do almost anything to avoid. People’s partiality toward certainty biases them against creative ideas and can interfere with their ability to even recognize creative ideas.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.

 

For Major Publishers, Will Print No Longer Be the Norm?

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This post, by Rachel Deahl with additional reporting from Jim Milliot, originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/25/13.

Format has been a long-simmering topic of debate in book publishing, and the question of when, and if, a title is published in hardcover, paperback, and/or digital has become even more pressing as bricks-and-mortar bookstores dwindle and e-book sales grow. The idea that any standard deal from a major publisher guarantees a print format release—which was previously a foregone conclusion—is something agents no longer take for granted, with some expressing concern that the big houses are starting to hedge on print editions in contracts.

While e-book-only agreements are nothing new—all large publishers have imprints that are exclusively dedicated to digital titles—a handful of agents, all of whom spoke to PW on the condition of anonymity, said they’re worried that contracts from print-first imprints will increasingly come with clauses indicating that the publisher makes no guarantee on format. The agents say this is a new twist to the standard way of doing business.

While sources acknowledged that contracts from print-first imprints (as opposed to e-only ones) featuring clauses that give the publisher the freedom to decide on format are not new, the feeling is that these clauses are the exception, not the rule. Recently, though, a handful of agents have expressed concerns about print imprints refusing to commit on this issue.

Most of the big five houses PW contacted declined to respond to inquiries on the matter, saying that they don’t comment on contract negotiations. While some agents said they fear that Random House (and, possibly, the larger merged entity of Penguin Random House) is preparing to add a clause to its boilerplate indicating that it doesn’t commit to a format, a spokesman for the publisher shot down this notion. Penguin Random House’s Stuart Applebaum told PW that no change has taken place: “The suggestion that Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Random House LLC are changing their standard boilerplate contracts so as to limit publishing formats is not correct. Each of our author contracts continue to be negotiated individually, and confidentially.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Publishers Weekly.

 

The 38 Most Haunting Abandoned Places On Earth

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This largely pictorial post from Jake Heppner on Distractify can provide some instant inspiration for authors of all kinds, not just horror or thriller writers. Included among the sometimes creepy, sometimes tragic, sometimes poignant photos:

Pripyat, a city of nearly 50,000, was totally abandoned after the nearby Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. Due to radiation, it has been left untouched ever since the incident and will be for many thousands of years into the future. Nature now rules the city in what resembles an apocalyptic movie.

[An] abandoned farmhouse in New York state also acts as a graveyard for many vintage cars which are now empty shells of their former selves.

The Ryugyong Hotel is a true display of North Korea’s madness. Work started on this 105 story hotel only a few years before a massive famine plagued the country. Abandoned for 16 years, work once again began in 2008, when it was coated in $150 million worth of glass. Foreign guests have reported that although the structure now looks complete on the outside, a lot of the interior is still abandoned and incomplete.

Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane was built in 1869 and closed in 1995. Housing 4000 patients at its peak, more than half of the 50,000 patients who called Willard Asylum their home died within its walls. This makes the asylums morgue (pictured above) one of the creepiest places we can imagine. By its closure, most patients were eventually integrated back into society, but in the early days “people didn’t leave unless it was in a box.”

 

Click here to view the full post on Distractify.

 

Author's Year-End Marketing Checklist

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This post, by Stephanie Barko, originally appeared on San Francisco Book Review on 11/14/13.

Do you think of your writing as a hobby or a business? If your books mean business to you, this is a great time of year to evaluate how your 2013 marketing fared. Beginning now, there’s just enough time before the end of the year to assess performance-to-goals and plan for taxes.

Here is a list of questions designed to either save you money [this year] or expose some issues to correct before [next year].

SALES

How many books did I sell this year?

Which formats sold best?

Do I want to put my 2013 title out in another format or publish my next book or both?

Did I sell branded merchandise this year? Do sales indicate that it was priced right?

Do I want to merchandise my brand next year?

 

EXPENSES

Do I have the right amount of expenses to offset sales?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on San Francisco Book Review.

 

62 of the Top Writing Articles from 2013 (That Can Help You in 2014)

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This post, by Brian Klems, originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 1/2/14.

Over the past year I posted articles on this blog that covered everything—from grammar to writing better characters to getting published and more. Here’s a cheat sheet linking to what I consider the 62 best articles that can help you reach your writing goals. I broke it down into categories, as you’ll see below. These articles can help you no matter what phase of the writing process you are in. My goal is to help you move your writing career forward, and, by making this easy-to-reference guide, you’ll have a chance to bookmark it and have a one-stop place to help you have a successful year of writing.

Here’s to your best year of writing yet! ~Brian

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest. It includes links to 62 WD articles on everything from craft to marketing.

 

6 Ways Micro-Publishing Strengthens Your Author Career

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This post, by Christina Katz, originally appeared on Jane Friedman’s site on 12/27/13.

For writers—especially nonfiction writers—a well-lit publishing-path through the murky wood of pundits, doomsdayers, and bestseller advice is micro-publishing.

Micro-publishing is not new, but when I use the term, I am referring to both the size of my publishing “house” and the length of my publications. In other words, micro-published books are short, tight, and swift. Experienced authors can deliver them in a steady flow, which can be less demanding and taxing than what it takes to create full-length books.

Micro-pubs vary widely in genre, format, and price point. (And fiction writers might consider serialization to be a better description of their micro-publishing landscape.) Micro-pubs with enough demand can become physical books eventually, usually when there is existing readership or demand for physical copies.

A meaningful discussion of micro-publishing has been pushed aside during the ongoing tug-of-war between traditional publishing and independent publishing (self-publishing). But we are well beyond “everyone is a writer” at this point. We have progressed into “everyone is a publisher,” if they wish to be—and we have been living in this realm for some time already.

Fortunately, micro-publishing benefits the industry as a whole by bringing some much-needed simplicity and directness into a publishing equation that is often weighted down by its own complexity and contracts. And it also benefits you, the writer. Here’s how.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

On Breaking Up With An Author: An Open Letter To Stephen King

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 12/30/13.

I originally posted this open letter to Stephen King on my Facebook page, but it generated such a lively and sometimes heated discussion that I’ve decided to share it here. Let me preface what you’re about to read by saying I’ve been a big fan of Stephen King going all the way back to Carrie. Granted, I was only 8 years old when that first book was published, but I started in on King at the age of 13 or so and happily devoured everything he had to offer well into my 20’s. Whenever I wanted a good, old-fashioned scare from the type of book I didn’t dare read alone at night, King was my go-to source.

In 1999 King was hit by a car and needed an extended period of convalescence. He even spoke publicly about the possibility of retiring. It didn’t last, he came back in 2006 with Cell, and he’s continued to release new novels, essays and other works since. And I haven’t liked a single one of the novels he’s written since his return. Book after book, year after year, he continues to disappoint me and make me regret having given him the benefit of the doubt (and my time and money) yet again.

With that said, here’s my open letter.

– – – – –

Dear Stephen King:

It was a lovely reader-author relationship while it lasted, but it’s been over for at least a decade and it’s time for me to move on. I think it’s really wonderful that you’ve found faith and feel that it, and sobriety, have turned your life around. I just don’t enjoy the fact that those two things have become the central themes of virtually every piece of fiction you’ve written since you discovered them.

I came to you looking for truly frightening, taut, dark and edgy supernatural horror that explored the limits of human strength and character in the face of pure, inexplicable evil. But you haven’t been writing that kind of material for a very, very long time and what you have been writing has been so self-indulgent, maudlin and overwrought that’s it’s difficult for me to believe you even have an editor anymore.

I held out hope that with Dr. Sleep, your long-awaited sequel to The Shining, you would return to form at last. I was wrong. It’s less a supernatural horror thriller than an overlong, overwritten examination of sad-sack, grown-up, recovering alcoholic Danny filling in as your usual Christ figure as he takes on your recently-typical cadre of banal baddies.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

More Open For Indies? What I’d Like 2014 to Bring

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This post, by Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his blog on 12/27/13.

Happy festivities. In this season of round-ups and forward-looks, when Janus stalks the blogosphere, writers everywhere are musing and reflecting. And whilst I am happy to grinch along with the best of them, it seems churlish not to join in the speculation.

But first the important bit. Here is a present. Click the image below to download an exclusive pdf of SKIN BOOK, beautifully illustrated with 8 pictures from Veronika von Volkova’s stunning Grime Angels series.

SKIN BOOK pic-page0001

It’s been a fascinating year for self-publishers. At the start of the year I had just begun work on the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Open Up to Indies guidebook. At time of writing, that guidebook’s release is imminent. But the backdrop against which it will see the light of day has changed – if not beyond all recognition then at least significantly. This autumn, Crimefest announced that it will be welcoming self-published authors next year. The Author Lounge at this year’s London Book Fair included self-publishing luminaries like Mel Sherratt. The Folio Prize, launched as the serious literary alternative to Booker, opened its doors to self-publishers, self-publishing conferences started talking about writing as well as marketing. And the Guardian has been running a self-publishing showcase giving blog time to indies for several months now. We’ve even seen a major serious writing award for the originally self-published A Naked Singularity.

The door feels ajar.

Whether or not it is, now that’s another matter. For me personally, it’s been a year of as much frustration as liberation. I still feel like the amusing pet as often as I feel like the welcome family member. It is getting easier to write about self-publishing. But as a literary writer and poet it remains as hard as ever to get the things I self-publish actually written about. I get to talk about self-publishing more than ever. But about my self-published writing as little as ever. There is still much work to be done to get people talking about self-published books rather than about self-publishing: the phenomenon.

These are the things I’d like to see for self-publishing in 2014.

 

1. Slow writing and the death of the algorithm

The best marketing for your book is other books. Write more. Be prolific. The tipping point to success comes when you’ve written x number of books. More books breed more discoverability. These have become more than mantras of self-publishing, givens that every writer has to take on board.

And these truisms are poison. Roz Morris wrote a brilliant post earlier this year about the slow novel, about the fact that some genres such as literary fiction spill their words more slowly than others. And yes, I absolutely accept that some genres are more sales friendly than others. But sales are not the be all and end all, and should not be the guide for whether or not a book receives coverage or acclaim.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Dan Holloway’s blog.

 

Reviewers Behaving Badly

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This post, by AJ, originally appeared on Apology To John Keats on 3/24/13.

I’ve become just as suspect as anyone about the legitimacy of reviews. With authors paying for reviews, begging for five stars and dressing up as consumers to write inflated reviews of their own books it’s hard to trust all five of those shiny stars. But what happens when those seeming “authors behaving badly” are actually reviewers doing it themselves? Can a gushy, happy, joy-joy 5-star review actually be more detrimental to an author than a 2-star one?

From some personal experience, some fellow author’s experiences and a little observation, here are some pitfalls authors may encounter even in honestly obtained reviews.

 

1. The Facebook Comment As Review

“Omg, my cousin totally wrote this book and it’s amazing! I don’t read at all, but I think everyone should buy this book because my cousin spent a lot of time and money on this and it’s so cool that I’m related an author! 5 stars for Brooke and her awesome accomplishment!”

Ok, fine, if you want to put something like this on your Facebook page, knock yourself out but for the love of literary kittens do not post it on a distributor like Amazon or B&N or a review site like goodreads. It makes the author look like they have been soliciting reviews. I have no doubt the author (poor made up Brooke in this case) did NOT ask for an overzealous cousin to post this, but sadly some excited friends and family members do. Unless you have read the book and have more of an opinion as to why it’s good besides knowing the author personally, keep things like this on Facebook, not on review sites.

 

2. The Skimmer Writes a Review

“This is a great time-travel piece. The characters find a magical creek and drink the water and are transported to the Civil War where they free slaves from an auction. I loved the narrator and her brother was so funny. 5 stars.”

Well, that’s great, but in the book, they go to the creek AFTER they get tossed back in time because it is the only natural landmark they have to go by. Then they find out they are in 1855 (the Pre-Civil War era) and a vigilante group of abolitionists plots to steal slaves from an auction. And the narrator doesn’t have a brother, that guy is just her friend, though the narrator does lie that he’s her brother so it doesn’t seem so improper they are traveling together for the time period.

See the difference? I’ve had authors mention people recounting events in their books that never happened or are so skewed they make the story seem, well, stupid. Especially in fantasy, horror, or sci-fi when oversimplification can make even great books sound lame, it is pretty darn important for reviewers to know what they read. I’ve seen many readers at the library claim to “love” books they’ve only skimmed. It happens. But don’t write an incomplete review. It makes the author look like they don’t know how to tell a story and consumers will think the 5-star rating is unjustified.

 

3. The Stalker

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Apology To John Keats.

 

Does Reading Actually Change The Brain?

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This article, by Carol Clark-Emory, originally appeared on Futurity.org on 12/23/13.

After reading a novel, actual changes linger in the brain, at least for a few days, report researchers.

Their findings, that reading a novel may cause changes in resting-state connectivity of the brain that persist, appear in the journal Brain Connectivity.

“Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” says neuroscientist Gregory Berns, lead author of the study and the director of Emory University’s Center for Neuropolicy. “We want to understand how stories get into your brain, and what they do to it.”

Neurobiological research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has begun to identify brain networks associated with reading stories. Most previous studies have focused on the cognitive processes involved in short stories, while subjects are actually reading them as they are in the fMRI scanner.

The study focused on the lingering neural effects of reading a narrative. Twenty-one Emory undergraduates participated in the experiment, which was conducted over 19 consecutive days.

All of the study subjects read the same novel, Pompeii, a 2003 thriller by Robert Harris that is based on the real-life eruption of Mount Vesuvius in ancient Italy.

“The story follows a protagonist, who is outside the city of Pompeii and notices steam and strange things happening around the volcano,” Berns says. “He tries to get back to Pompeii in time to save the woman he loves. Meanwhile, the volcano continues to bubble and nobody in the city recognizes the signs.”

The researchers chose the book due to its page-turning plot. “It depicts true events in a fictional and dramatic way,” Berns says. “It was important to us that the book had a strong narrative line.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the article on Futurity.org.

Click here to view the original Emory University study.

 

Never Let Anyone Or Anything Steal Your Dream

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This post, by Avril Sabine, originally appeared as a guest post on J.A. Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing blog on 12/21/13.

When I was a little kid, people loved to ask, “So what are you going to be when you grow up?” Some kids answered fireman, astronaut, ballerina or superman. I said writer. Now maybe they were trying to be helpful, but around 90% of people told me, “You’ll never make money from that.” “It’s not a real job.” “Don’t you know most writers are starving?”

This confused me. It’s not like I wanted to be superman. Why did the kids who said they wanted to be superman get a fond smile, a pat on the head, and “How nice.” It didn’t make sense. I knew he wasn’t real.

But writers obviously were. I’d read their books, visited their worlds, had my imagination filled with wondrous events and magical happenings. So how could that be impossible when no one ever said becoming superman was?

But I learned to play their game and say ‘teacher’ whenever anyone asked. And they’d nod and smile and the conversation would be over without the lecture. To me being a teacher was second choice. Nothing like being a writer. A writer’s who I am, not what I do. And I kept writing. And reading. And telling stories.

When my sister couldn’t sleep at night, she’d crawl into my bed and I’d make up stories for her until she fell sleep. In every spare moment I read and discovered how writers formed sentences, created worlds and drew the reader in so they couldn’t put the book down. I also read in the not so spare moments, learning to walk and read at the same time, to do my chores while I read.

And I wrote. During class. When I was supposed to being doing homework, and when I was supposed to be asleep. Mum wouldn’t let me keep my light on really late at night when everyone else was in bed, so I saved my pocket money and bought a torch. And under the blankets, late at night, I read and wrote rather than lay awake half the night creating worlds and characters in my mind.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

 

Faux Controversies and the Singular Plural

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This post, by Rich Adin, originally appeared on An American Editor on 12/23/13.

On another forum it was asked whether authors should “push the grammar envelope” and embrace the singular plural. I think the wrong question is being asked when you ask whether authors should push the grammar envelope for two reasons: First, because it ignores the purpose of grammar, which is to ensure that there is communication between author and reader. Second, because to push the grammar envelope assumes that there are firm rules to be pushed. The first reason far outweighs the second, but neither is ignorable.

Regarding the singular plural, it is neither pushing the envelope to use it nor a violation of a firm rule nor a distraction from communication (in most cases; there are cases in which it is clearly wrong because its use is confusing). In other words, I think that editors, writers, grammarians, usage gurus, etc., make the proverbial mountain out of the molehill when they oppose the singular plural.

Consider what makes a great editor. A great editor is someone who ensures that a reader understands the editor’s author; that is, ensures that the reader does not leave the book thinking the author is in favor of, for example, genocide, when the author intends the contrary. An average editor can cite chapter and verse of why x is not to be done, but cannot explain why doing x makes the author’s point unintelligible. The amateur editor either blindly accepts the singular plural or remembers having been taught that the singular plural is incorrect and thus blindly changes it.

However, if the singular plural is incorrect, it is incorrect because it makes the author’s point unintelligible, not because a group of self-appointed grammarians have written that it is wrong.

English is difficult enough without making it impossible. Editors constantly twist and turn to apply “rules” of grammar in the mistaken belief that there are rules of grammar. What are too often called rules are really current conventions.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on An American Editor.

 

How to Get your books into the right Categories and Sub-categories: Readers to Books/Books to Readers—Part Three

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This post, by M. Louisa Locke, originally appeared on her blog on 12/16/13.

Introduction:

Two years ago, I wrote a blog piece about the importance of using categories, keywords, and tags (which no longer exist) to make your books visible in the Kindle Store. A year later I wrote an update that expanded on this and discussed how having your book in the right categories could make free and discount promotions more effective. The basic argument I made hasn’t changed––that an author needs to understand how categories work in order to use them to improve the chance their books will be found by readers who are browsing in the Kindle store.

If you aren’t convinced of the importance of categories in improving discoverability—you might want to go back and skim through those two posts or just Google “discoverability and categories” to see the multiple posts on this topic. However, for most of you, it isn’t the importance of categories but how to get your books into the right categories that you are most interested in––and there have been a number of significant changes warranting a new update on this topic.

First, the number and kinds of categories and sub-categories in the Kindle Store have increased dramatically in the last year.

Second, the methods of getting a book into the correct categories and sub-categories have expanded, with keywords becoming particularly important.

Third, these changes have made the process even more confusing to authors.

Definitions:

Because these changes have resulted in a good deal of confusion in terminology—I am going to start here. While KDP has generally improved the experience for authors by introducing a whole plethora of help documents, the terminology used in these help documents and by KDP help staff is not always consistent. I will try and delineate some of these inconsistencies and provide some clarity below.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on M. Louisa Locke’s blog.

 

Considering A Collaboration

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This post, by L.J. Sellers, originally appeared on her site on 8/3/13.

Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, J.T. Ellison and Catherine Coulter, JA Konrath and each of his writer friends—everywhere you look, authors are teaming up.

The trend seems more prevalent than ever, and I suspect it’s because authors are operating more independently now and because they have to work so hard to reach new readers. Collaborating with another writer brings a whole new readership to each partner, at least for that story or series, and hopefully with spillover to other works.

I never thought I could work that closely with someone. I don’t even have a writing group because it feels too collaborative. Of course, I count on my beta readers (and editor) for feedback, but that’s after I’ve nailed down the main story.

But I was approached recently by a friend about doing a collaboration, and I surprised myself by being receptive to the idea. Now that I have an FBI agent with her own series, a collaboration that brings Agent Dallas together with another established protag seems like a productive idea.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on L.J. Sellers’ site.