Putting Your Story in Temporal Motion
People are attracted to motion, particularly physical motion. But when describing a setting, some things are pretty resistant to moving. Houses, mountains, trees, and so on remain static. You can work around that problem. You can put things in motion around a house, for example, or you can describe the motionless object using metaphors or […]
Does Social Media Work?
Ten years ago, we used to talk about how to take your book viral through social media, but recently I was at a convention where authors got to talking about how Facebook is really becoming rather useless. You see, years ago when I started advertising on Facebook, it really worked! I would put up an […]
Balancing Productivity and Art
If you are producing anything—toy dolls, bread, vacuum cleaners, or novels—there are some variables that you have to work with. Ideally, a publisher would like you to bring them in 1) quickly, 2) beautifully written, 3) and at a low price. But buyers will almost always be willing to make trade-offs. Your goal is to […]
Getting Great “Word of Mouth” Advertising
There are certain books (and cars, and foods, and vacations) that somehow demand to be talked about. You know what I mean. Obviously, as authors, all of us want to get great word of mouth advertising. It is easily the least expensive form of advertising—since it costs you nothing—and the most productive form of advertising, […]
A Common Problem with Story Openings
I have a saying, “There are a ten thousand right ways to write any story, but there are a million wrong ways to do it.” I use this to point out that lots of things work, but new writers often don’t recognize that some things never work. So let’s get into a few of them. […]
Chapter Titles
There are a couple of good reasons to title your chapters. First of all, when you are writing a novel, you often want to “hook” your reader into reading the next chapter. A good chapter title can do that. You don’t have to work hard at it. Something as simple as “A Killer Unmasked” promises […]
What Does Your Reader Really Want?
I’m in the midst of judging a large short story writing contest, going through the first pass. Now, this is an anonymous contest, one where the judges shouldn’t know things like your name, hometown, sex, or age. I’m proud of the fact that the contest can judge authors on merit alone. And the rules on […]
Payoff
I’ve said before that every story should have an emotional payoff. Yet far too often, I read stories where the payoff is weaker than it should be, or it isn’t there at all. If you’re writing genre literature—romance, horror, wonder, comedy, thrillers, and so on—then your readers are paying you to arouse an emotional state, […]
Sagging Middles, Part 2
Recently, I discussed how to deal with a sagging middle in a novel. Here are a couple more tips that will help you strengthen that middle. Vary Your Story Sometimes a novel feels dull in the middle because your conflicts are not varied enough. In other words, as the reader is going along, he feels […]
Facing Burnout
Many authors don’t believe that there is such a thing as “Writer’s Block.” They will gleefully point out that plumbers don’t have plumber’s block, and doctors don’t have doctor’s block. But the truth is that they do have it, but simply call it by other names. They might call it a “midlife crisis,” “stress,” or […]