If you’re looking for a low-stakes way to get a short story (up to 6000 words) published, This Mutant Life might be worth looking into.  You can see its submission guidelines here.  ”Stories which deal with the everyday lives of people with unusual abilities or physical characteristics are ideal, and there will be a definite preference given to stories which present interesting and well defined characters and situations.”  The pay is extremely low, though.

One of the more frustrating things I see is when an author tries to give a character a guilty backstory but one he is utterly not responsible for.  For example, the character’s powers might manifest by killing the town and/or pretty much everybody she knows.  (Please see the TV Tropes Power Incontinence page for more examples).

If you want this character to feel guilty about her backstory, why not make her actually responsible for the accident?  For example, instead of having uncontrollable poison-massacre powers*, which is merely awful luck, maybe the character has powers that he uses in a reckless or ill-conceived way.  For example, maybe a flame-controller accidentally blows up a neighborhood by lighting up a gas line.  It’s still unintentional, but at least this gives him a choice to regret and atone for. Overcoming that will be more dramatic than “Gee, I’m sorry I was born to be a town-killer.” If the goal of the story is to have the character atone for his sins, it probably won’t be too dramatic if he’s not actually responsible for the sins in question. Or, if the character’s powers are completely uncontrollable, perhaps the character played some role in acquiring them, like participating in some poorly thought-out scientific experiment.

*Which are a losing Superpower Lottery ticket if ever there were one.   Pretty much everybody else in Heroes has something cool like superstrength or flight or time-travel.  Poor Maya.  Even the psychopathic serial killer has more control over his face-ripping telekinesis than she does.  (Also, he spent  a lot less time moping about his body count than she did).

If you’d like to suggest any, I’d appreciate that. Here are some of the questions we’ve previously answered.

• How long should I wait to introduce my main character?
• How can I do accents well?
  
• What are some common day-jobs for superheroes?
• How can I write a good opening?
• How can I do fight scenes?
  

Please see the comments below.  Thanks!

Quill’s Story  is a traditional coming of age story, set in a recognizable fantasy world-but with an Asian flair.

The story begins with a young boy meeting his first love, who happens to be an elf. Drawn to her by the outsider character that defines their lives, he has his first meaningful positive emotional experience when he stumbles upon the girl in the deep forest. Later in the story (as you might expect) things get quite a bit rougher for the boy, and he must learn martial and magical secrets to not only fight evil, but merely to survive.

1. What are you trying to write?

*A short story, with an eye to sequels/spinoffs. Fantasy/action genre with martial arts mostly replacing the “sword” in “Sword and Sorcery” as the centerpiece.

2. Do you have a target audience in mind?

*Fans of traditional (Tolkien-style) fantasy, D&D’ers, Martial Arts fans. Generally late teens and older, as I expect to get a little too graphic with the violence for the little ones.

3. How thick is your skin?
* Like a rhino filled with custard. Seriously, though-be as critical as you like, so long as it’s useful in some way.

Please see the comments below.  Thanks!

Two things jump out at me here.  First, the author’s royalty is proportionally much larger with e-books than hardcovers (20-25% compared to 15%, and even lower for paperbacks).  Second, since distributing an e-book is cheaper, the cost to consumers should drop considerably.

Picture taken from the New York Times.  Full article here.  This statistic caught my eye: “The industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.”

Superhero funerals are so common that they have their own page on ComicVine and usually so bland that they tend to run together.  Given a transcript for three pages from a superhero funeral, can you name the series? If the writing were actually distinct, that wouldn’t be difficult.

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Kris Simon is an editor at Shadowline Comics, an imprint of Image.  You can see her list of submission tips here.

1.  Follow the posted submission guidelines. When editors make these lists, this rule is almost always listed first.  YES, THE GUIDELINES APPLY TO YOU.   Not following them can only hurt your chances of getting published.

2. Don’t overthink things. At Shadowline, you only need to worry about five sample pages (inked, lettered and preferably colored), a paragraph-long synopsis and a cover. Kris doesn’t want more than that because you may need to scrap a lot more work than necessary. Notably, Shadowline doesn’t want the script and doesn’t want a page-long synopsis.

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This story, Under the Raven’s Banner, is about an office lady/bridge bunny-type with electric powers who seeks to secure herself professionally (and physically!), even if it means going into combat.

Expect at least a post a week. I will try my best not to abandon this.

Whether you’re writing a thriller or a romance, an unbroken chain of victories for the hero is probably not very interesting. Come on.  Even Batman makes mistakes.  Unlike most good decisions, poor decisions and ineptly-executed plans create consequences that the character has to overcome, which lets you raise the stakes for the heroes and make the journey more difficult.

Here are some further suggestions about bad decisions.

1.  Please connect the poor decision to an aspect of the character, like a personality flaw or a fear or a defining attribute. For example, if a superhero is exceedingly self-confident, it makes sense that he’d rush into battle without figuring out whether he’s gonna get beat around the block.  In contrast, if a generally well-prepared protagonist acts uncharacteristically hasty without a good reason, you’ve inadvertently given him an idiot ball.  That’s a problem because it isn’t true to the characterization you’ve given him thus far.

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Rather optimistically, I will put this in the “Getting Published” category. I’ll let you know how that goes. If you’re interested, you can read the cover letter I sent below.

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Prospective authors, myself included, sometimes worry about looking like idiots.

The good news is that agents and editors are very understanding of amateurishness.  After all, everybody starts out as an amateur and it’s not like it’s a personal failing.  Please rest assured that you’re safe as long as you’re remotely friendly and professional.  If your submission is poorly formatted, the agent or editor may even direct you to a submission guide and ask you to resubmit.

If you’re a prospective author, follow these two steps and you won’t look like an idiot.

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I usually reject manuscripts where the heroes are defeated but the villain lets them walk away.

If the characters can lose without anything bad happening to them, nothing’s at stake. Give your villain some chance of beating the hero once and for all, or there’s no point reading the story. If the closest your villain can come to victory is releasing the heroes with a stern warning, that’s just pathetic. That’s like taking any drama your story had and curb-stomping it.

If you are absolutely sure that you want to release the heroes, please at least give the villain an adequate reason not to kill them or take them prisoner/hostage.  Here are some reasons that are NOT adequate.

• “Next time I won’t go so easy on you!”  Awful.  Don’t bother having a fight unless something’s at stake.  Also, you and I both know that the heroes will beat the villain next time, so this is empty bluster. When the heroes lose, make sure that there are consequences. For example, in Star Wars, Luke lost a hand, Han got taken prisoner and Obi-Wan died after losing various fights.
• “You better join me next time, or else!”  Not too bright.  If the villain just defeated the heroes in combat, how useful could they possibly be to him?  Also, wouldn’t you rather have lieutenants that don’t have a history of trying to kill you?  Finally, if you really want to do this, please have the villain be more proactive than just letting the heroes walk away and think his offer over.  For example, have him poison a hero or take one hostage so that he can blackmail the others.
• The villain’s only goal was to show off or make a statement. “Now you know my true power!”  Ick.  Again, make sure there is actually something at stake.   If the loss has no consequences, readers won’t care.
• The villain is too nice and/or stupid to kill (or capture) the foes he has beaten in combat.   If so, he’s probably not much of an obstacle. Unless you’re writing a comedy of errors, please make your villain competent.  Beating a wuss isn’t very impressive!

Here are some reasons that might be sufficient.

• The villain advances a major goal by releasing the hero/heroes. For example, if the villain’s goal is to start an epidemic, infecting and releasing a hero makes sense. Or maybe the defeated hero is some other kind of Trojan horse.  A villain could bug a beaten sidekick with a tracking device in the hopes of hunting down the superhero.
• The hero is saved by a plan he sets in motion. It’d probably be undramatic if the hero were saved by backup bursting through the wall at just the right moment.  (Guardian angels!)  But you could give the hero some role in getting saved. For example, perhaps the hero knows he’s losing and has to survive until help can arrive.  Perhaps the act of calling for help is difficult and the hero has to figure out where he is before the cavalry can save him.  Don’t just make him a passive damsel in distress waiting around for a rescue.
• The villain has a compelling reason to take the character(s) prisoner/hostage instead of killing them. Even though imprisoning heroes (particularly superheroes) has rarely accomplished anything, it makes more sense than just letting them go.  At the very least, this gives the villain a bargaining chip to deal with any remaining heroes.

Did this article help? If so, please submit it to Stumble!

Here’s an experiment to help you get into the time-strapped mindset of the publisher’s assistant or assistant editor evaluating your manuscript or comic book submission.  You’re an art editor that needs to select six works for the next stage of review.  But you only have one minute to decide. To make things easier on you (and my bandwidth), your boss has given you only an eye from each artist’s portfolio.  Pick your six favorites candidates and reject the rest.

Okay, do you have your six favorites ready?

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Check it out here!

If you’re looking for a job with a novel publisher or nonfiction publisher, I’d highly recommend checking out BookJobs.  Right now, ~200 jobs and internships are available across the US, including a few telecommuting positions.

Unfortunately, it’s not that useful for jobs with comics publishers.  I’ll have more thoughts about how to get comic book jobs in the weeks to come, but until then I would recommend checking the job pages for Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and DC regularly.  Also, if you’re interested in unpaid internships in New York City, Marvel has more than a few of them.

I named both my products (the writing advice website and the comic book series) Superhero Nation.  I’d like readers to be able to Google one and not get confused with the other, so I’ll rename one.  Probably the comic, because changing this website’s URL would break of all of our incoming links.  Ick.

So now I’m just trying to come up with a placeholder title for a wacky office comedy about an accountant-turned-secret agent and his mutant alligator partner.  At this late hour, these seemed remotely acceptable. What do you think?

• THE TAXMAN MUST DIE

[alternate word: accountant]

• GARY MUST DIE

(Normally, I think “Gary” is far too bland a name to be used in a title, but I like the contrast between the normal name and the extraordinary phrase).

• CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK
• SANITY A PLUS, MARKSMANSHIP ESSENTIAL
• DEATH COMES FOR THE TAXMAN
• DEATH AND TAXES
• DEATH AND TAXES (BUT NOT IN THAT ORDER)

If you’d like to suggest something else, I’d love to hear it.

I’m writing a comic book script with a slightly different slant on the super-hero genre. If I could put it into a pop culture reference I would say it’s Invincible meets Tim Riggins from the TV version of Friday Night Lights. I feel hesitant to describe characters, scenes etc, instead I’ll just post the first 8 pages or so. Let me know what’s working, what isn’t, etc. Thanks everyone. The title of the book is “Sweet Primitive.”

[B. Mac notes: The language here is heavily profane. You've been warned!]

If John is your point-of-view character, you usually don’t need to say something like “John saw Randy drop-kick his sister” or “John heard Randy mock his sister.” Usually it’s sufficient to say “Randy drop-kicked his sister” because we can infer that the POV saw it.  I would only recommend getting into the details of who sensed what if those details are interesting and/or hard to infer. For example, if a superhero is using a superpower to sense something happening, then it makes sense to point that out because the observation is not routine.

I don’t know what is geekiest: that someone did a comic about how to use semicolons, that I linked to it, or that I have a punctuation category.

Opening with the characters in combat can be tricky because the characters can’t speak as naturally.  For one thing, if your superheroes have secret identities, they’d be bloody stupid to blab about their day jobs when they’re surrounded by enemies (more on that later).

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Characters

–The protagonist(s) don’t have significant flaws.  (For more help on flaws, please see this and this).

–The names are goofy and/or wildly hard to pronounce. I’m looking at you, Anamamana’Qupy.  For more help, please see this.

–Characters act the way the author needs them to, not because they have a compelling motivation or logic. “Let’s split up to cover more ground!”  Please see #3 here.

–The main character(s) don’t make mistakes or face no consequences for them.  Guardian angels are a red flag here.

–The main characters don’t have setbacks. If the villain can’t beat the heroes once in a while, he will probably be pretty disappointing.  Also, if the villain defeats the heroes in combat, don’t just let them go.

–The main characters don’t have distinguishing traits.  If that’s a problem, please see this.

–The characters don’t have urgent goals.  Please see #3 here.

–The protagonist is hated by an antagonist for no discernible reason. Common offenders include teachers, bullies and adopted parents. If you go down this path, at least make them stylish. Thanks.

–The author focuses on visual details rather than establishing anything interesting about the character. In particular, eye color and hair color don’t say all that much about a character–I’d recommend focusing on these details instead.

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“I called my agent for lunch.  I went to Panera.  I tried to find him there but he was late.”  Hopefully your writing doesn’t sound like this– it’s such a bland list of facts. As a writer, it’s your job to make the story as interesting as possible by bringing in details that shake up the narrative.  I’ll focus on opinions here.

In the above passage about my (sadly fictional) agent, the narrator doesn’t have any interesting opinions or any other thoughts about what’s going on around him.   Now I’ll rewrite the section to focus a bit less on what is actually going on and more about what the protagonist thinks.

“My agent was late to lunch.  Probably getting seduced by some cold-eyed harpy with a Twilight-meets-Eragon manuscript.  Sparkly dragon superhero vampires.  He fell for bestsellers every time.”

Notice that the narrator/author hasn’t said anything about himself, but he has shown much more about his personality and why he’s an interesting character.  We also learn more about what about the missing agent, even though it’s all just opinion.

PS:  If you can remove unnecessary details, like where they were meeting for lunch, please do so.

If you’d like to get on the mailing list, I’d really appreciate that! It’s free to sign up and I’ll send you an e-mail reminder to buy the book whenever it comes out.

Also, there’s a prize! One lucky person on the list will receive a free signed copy.

Thanks for your help. Signing up will help me get published because it indicates that I have enough waiting customers to turn a profit.

The shortest, most cheesy answer is “however long it takes to tell the story.”  Unfortunately, if it takes you hundreds of thousands of words to tell the story, getting it published it will be practically impossible.

According to Chuck Sambuchino, the most publisher-friendly length for an adult novel manuscript is between 80,000-100,000 words.  Science fiction and fantasy authors usually need a bit more space for worldbuilding, so he says the ideal range for them is between 100,000-115,000 words.  However, Chuck is sort of in league with the Devil, so I’d feel bad if Lucifer’s agent were my only source for this post.

Colleen Lindsay, a literary agent at FinePrint, has similar guidelines: around 100K for epic fantasy or sci-fi, 80-90K for thrillers and 80-100K for crime fiction. Also, she’s not in league with the Devil.

Both Chuck and Colleen emphasize that there are exceptions, like first-time novelists publishing 200,000 word behemoths.  But such exceptions are extremely rare. If you try going well above or below the usual range, your writing will be held to extraordinarily exacting standards. I would not recommend doing so unless you are absolutely sure that your story cannot work at a more conventional range.

READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

Courtesy of Miss Snark.

Please read the comments below. Thanks!

What I’m writing: Flyover City! is a novel told in blog-form. The main character is a 28 year old slacker-type from Denver that would be a bit of a comic book geek in real life.  In the world of the story, however, superheroes are real– so Newsweek and Time Magazine feed his fix just fine.

Best references: Pop novels like “Microserfs” and “High Fidelity” are as much of an influence as “Hitchhiker’s Guide” and “Soon I Will Be Invincible”. I SWEAR I had the idea before comics like Astro City, Love Fights, and Marvels came out — but those are good comparisons.

Note: please keep in mind, as far as the writing style is concerned, that it IS written as a blog (and I’d love to have you check out my blog). The entry I’m attaching will hopefully give the readers here a good idea of how the “superhero stuff” plays out against the “regular guy” POV…

I haven’t come across too many comic book writers that work with literary agents. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find a literary agent for your comic book.

For example, Bob Mecoy wrote me that he’s sold several projects to DC Comics as well as many more to book publishers and their affiliates (such as FirstSecond, Three Rivers, Lerner, Aladdin, and Abrams ComicArts).

So, if you’re absolutely dead-set on selling to Marvel or DC, pursuing literary representation may be a strong option.  Marvel and DC do not accept unsolicited submissions. However, if you have an experienced agent, he may be able to use his own credibility to convince them that your comic book is worth considering.

Here are some other pieces of advice from Bob.

B. MAC: What are some of the most common reasons you pass on graphic novel and/or comic book submissions?
BOB:  Poor storytelling, telling a story that I’ve seen a hundred times before, telling a story “unlike anything you’ve ever seen” which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen because of a series of arbitrary choices, lack of understanding of the market, slavish service to the perceived market, lack of originality, lack of understanding of my taste.

B. MAC: How long does it take you to reject a typical script?
BOB: It takes as long as it takes. If there seems to be something here, I research the category, the writer and/or artist and the comparables or competition before making my final decision.

1. Diligence.  A novel manuscript usually has 70,000+ words, most of which will be rewritten many, many times.  We’re talking about thousands of hours of work to complete a first manuscript that rarely earns more than $5000.   (The good news is that the pay tends to improve as you accumulate readers).

2. The ability to learn and improve. Look at something you wrote 2-3 years ago. You’re much better now, right? If you’ve plateaued even before getting published, you’re probably dead in the water.

3. Voice and authorial confidence. “John shot George. George fell down. John had won.” Ick.  Don’t just tell us what happened–tell us with style.

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A query is a page-long business letter introducing your novel or comic book proposal to an editor or agent. Here is some advice about queries that will make your life easier.

1.  What goes with the query? A novel’s query is usually accompanied by a partial manuscript (~50 pages) and/or a 2-5 page synopsis.  If you’re writing a comic book, you’ll probably send in a cover letter– a page accompanied by some combination of the synopsis, the full script of the first issue and art samples. (Follow the submissions guidelines, obviously).  Cover letters are very similar to queries, so I’ll refer to both as queries for simplicity’s sake.

2. Your main goal is to show that your story is strong and interesting. Do NOT give them opinions like “my book is interesting!” or “everybody I know loves it!” Give them the evidence so that they will conclude the book is interesting. “I’m writing an interesting novel about a detective solving a murder case” is weak. “I’m writing about a poisoned detective that has two days to solve his own murder” is much more gripping. Likewise, if you’re writing a comedy, you need to prove yourself by making them laugh. According to literary agent Janet Reid, “if you tell me your book is a comedy, and the query letter isn’t funny or amusing, you have a big problem.”

3. Most queries include the following: an introductory paragraph/hook, a body paragraph summarizing the work in a clear and interesting way, 1-3 sentences about your writing qualifications, and contact information. Don’t worry too much about your writing qualifications. It’d be nice if you had them, but it’s not a deal-breaker for fiction writers.

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A query is a page-long letter used by a novelist or comic book author to interest an editor and convince him that the writing is promising enough that he should spend the time to look at the sample chapters (for a novel) or script (for a comic book). What do you think about this query letter?

Dear [EDITOR NAME],

It’s been a normal day for IRS Agent Gary Smith, besides the car-bomb.  And the US Marshals threatening to send him on a one-way trip to Alaska.  And the revelation that everybody he knows has a pretty good motive to murder him (even besides the fact that he’s an IRS agent).  His only chance of surviving with his sanity intact rests on joining a top-secret spy agency and partnering with a mutant alligator whose powers of deduction make Scooby Doo look like Batman.

Superhero Nation is a wacky mix of an office comedy and national security thriller.  I’ve enclosed the script for the first issue, five colored and lettered sample pages, and the synopsis for the five issue arc.

My main writing qualifications are that I’m a communications contractor for [AGENCY NAME] and the webmaster for a superhero writing advice website with hundreds of thousands of readers.

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I can be reached at [PHONE] or [EMAIL].

Yours,

[NAME]

If you’re a Firefox or Chrome user that likes to read deep through blogs, I think you’ll like FastestFox. Rather than making you hit “Previous Articles” again and again, it’ll automatically add the next set of articles below the last article. I’m doing some heavy editing work on all of the articles I wrote in 2007, and I enjoy not having to hit “Previous Articles” 25 times.

Please see the comments below. Thanks!

1.  Because the editors and publisher’s assistants that pick manuscripts do. When you submit a novel manuscript or comic book script to a publisher, the person evaluating your submission has probably read hundreds of novels or comic books in your genre and rejected thousands more.  Being familiar with many works by a variety of authors makes it somewhat less likely that your writing will be unacceptably cliche.

2.  The more sources you have, the less likely your book will feel like a ripoff. If you’re writing a fantasy book and half of the fantasy authors you’ve read are named Tolkien or Rowling, it will show. Everybody’s familiar with famous authors, so it’s easy to detect their influence on a work. In contrast, if you’re familiar with a wide variety of obscurer authors, your subconscious will steer you away from easily-identifiable knockoffs.

3. You’ll be more familiar with trends in the field. If you were a superhero author that had only read a few superhero stories, your protagonist would probably have some notable similarities to Superman (such as being rarely morally conflicted, having a list of superpowers as long as your arm, etc). But Superman and similar heroes don’t sell notably well today. Being familiar with current trends in your field makes it less likely for an editor to say something like “I would have loved to work with this forty years ago, but the market isn’t there today.”

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This is the second article in a series. Please see part one here.

9.  Getting published is really, really hard. Publisher’s assistants at major publishers go through hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts a week. Out of every thousand or so manuscripts, they’ll probably send on around five to an editor for further consideration. That means PAs reject about 99.5% of manuscripts. Of the five surviving manuscripts, usually one or two will eventually be offered contracts.

10. Publisher’s assistants do not have the time to pore through each manuscript. They are not on your side. They have to get through hundreds of manuscripts each week and the only way to do that is to throw out manuscripts as fast as possible. Most manuscripts do not survive to page two. If something does not make sense on page one, they will throw away the manuscript long before you’ve explained what is going on. The story absolutely needs to be clear and engaging from page one.

11. SPELLING, PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.  They are the difference between conveying that “I am a polished writer that will be easy to publish” and “I am not familiar with basic writing craft.” If your writing has more than a few typos, you are dead on arrival. Even one typo per page would raise eyebrows. Remember, around 99.9% of unsolicited manuscripts get rejected. Don’t give the publisher any reason to drop the guillotine.

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1. Marvel and DC Comics don’t consider unsolicited submissions. Fortunately, Optimum Wound has a useful list of publishers that do. If you’re deadset on working with Marvel or DC, I’d recommend taking a job with them in some other capacity (such as editing, sales or marketing) and then moving laterally into writing.

2. Most publishers won’t evaluate a comic book submission unless it has ~5 illustrated sample pages. This means that a writer will usually need a professional-grade artist friend willing to work for speculative pay, a paid freelancer or the skill to illustrate his own work.  If you don’t know any artists and don’t have $500-750 for a freelancer, I’d recommend submitting to Dark Horse or another publisher that doesn’t require art samples.  However, if you can pull off a competent art sample, that’s a major plus for your submission.

3. Pretty much no one considers proposals for licensed works. Do you have an awesome idea for a Star Wars or Buffy comic?  Unfortunately, with licensed works, the publisher will almost always contact the writer it wants to work with rather than vice versa.  Additionally, when they need a writer for a major series (licensed or not), they will hire someone experienced and proven rather than an unpublished author.  Sorry. If you want to write for Spiderman or Batman, you need to establish yourself first.

4. Comic book companies usually buy the rights to the series and characters. In contrast, novel series are almost always creator-owned.  If the idea of the company owning the rights to your character makes you uneasy, I’d recommend looking at Image Comics. Almost all of their series are creator-owned.

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1. You will get paid much, much less than you can imagine. A 75,000 word manuscript takes 2000+ hours and sells for a bit above $5000. That’s not even close to minimum wage, particularly when you consider the work put in after the book is published. If you plan on eating food more expensive than Kibbles and Bits, get a day job.

2. Most novelists don’t get their first novels published. According to a Tobias Buckell survey, only 35% of authors got their first novel published. This shouldn’t be too surprising– look at what you were writing 2-3 years ago. You’ve gotten a lot better, right? Well, you’ll probably feel the same way about what you’re writing now in 2-3 years. As you practice, you’ll get better.

3. Novel publishing is freakishly competitive, particularly compared to English classes. In an English class, at least half of the papers will get A’s and the teacher will usually explain to everybody else what they need to fix so that they will get A’s. In contrast, publishers reject over 99% of submissions and won’t bother asking you to revise-and-resubmit unless you’re close. If you’re in the bottom ~99% of submissions, you will probably get a form rejection letter explaining nothing about what you need to change.

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My nonfiction manuscript for a book about how to write superhero stories won his yearly award. Thanks, voters!

Please see the comments below. Thanks!

When you’re laying out your book for agents, publishers and prospective readers, you need to keep in mind what the “default” story in your field is. If you say you’re writing a superhero story, people will assume it is a default superhero story unless you specify otherwise.  Be careful! Default stories will probably be rejected.

• Audience: 13-25 year old males.
• Genre: action.
• Main character: a Peter Parker (student-turned-superhero) or Clark Kent (mostly unconflicted adult)
• Character voice: none.
• Interesting events: none.
• Mood: none.
• Authorial style: none.

Hopefully you’re thinking to yourself something like the following: “wait, that’s not fair! My story’s not like that!” (If not, I’d REALLY recommend fleshing out your characters and plot events and practicing your writing as much as possible).

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Please see the comment below. Thanks!

Building Your Audience

• Promoting Your Book, Part One and Two–some innovative and mostly free ways to promote your writing.
• Search Engine Optimization Tips for New Bloggers– this will help you write Google-friendly content, which is helpful if you’re the sort of writer that enjoys having readers.
• Author’s Guide to Podcasting–this will help you market your writing with online video and audio.
• Should You Advertise on Facebook?–Therese Walsh talks about her experiences advertising her writing on Facebook. If you’re thinking about ads, I’d recommend checking this out. Personally, I’m a bit skeptical (you only make about $1 in royalties every time you sell a novel, so your advertisements would have to bring in near-guaranteed sales to justify the expense).

Beating Writer’s Block

• How to Finish Hard Scenes–excellent for anybody that’s ever struggled for days with a particularly tricky scene.
• How to Turn Off The Internet While Writing on Your Computer–some tips to increase your writing productivity by removing online distractions.
• Six Ways to Make Your Writing More Productive–here’s a seventh one for free: stop reading SN and start writing! SN will be here when you get back.

Miscellaneous Advice on Writing Better

• Writing Plausible Villains–because villains are far too important to suck.
• How to Write Strong Cross-Genre Fiction–some tips in case you’re sitting on a killer idea about a goblin detective… in space!
• Kim Blank’s Wordiness List–a vast list of wordy phrases that can be pared down shortened or eliminated.

Miscellaneous Advice on Getting Published

• How to Find an Agent–if you have a manuscript completed and need an agent, I’d highly recommend checking this out.
• Completing Your Author’s Bio–whether you’re completing an “About the Author” section of your website or preparing a manuscript submission, you’ll probably provide a bio to your readers. Here are some tips.

Advice for First-Time Authors that Want to Self-Publish

• Don’t. Seriously, that’s probably the best advice you’ll get all day.

Advice for Authors that Want to Self-Publish Anyway

• Digital Book Formatting for Dummies–you’re not a dummy, but you might benefit from this guide anyway.
• Designing Your Book–one of the biggest opportunities (or challenges, depending on how you look at it) of self-publishing is that you make your own design choices. Don’t suck.

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A lot of authors (especially me) sit down to type out a story but get distracted by websites a few minutes later.  The conventional solution is  writing with paper-and-pen.  But what if your writing could genuinely benefit from computer access (because of saved drafts, online references and such)?  Try RescueTime, a free program that you can use to block access to distracting websites for a certain amount of time.  For example, if you’ve decided to commit yourself to an hour of writing, do you really need Facebook or email or ESPN or LolCats during that time?  Probably not.  In addition, RescueTime allows you to make the block undoable.  If you decide to check out some LolCats during your hour of writing, too bad!  You’re already locked in for the hour.  Clearly they made this program with me in mind. 

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The Rejectionist talks some more about reviewing the slush pile, a vast collection of unsolicited query letters explaining why the company should publish the author’s novel.

“After years as a slush reader in various aspects of the industry, I am quick to recognize and dispatch; I can often tell within the first sentence if a query will be any good, and I am now so ruthlessly efficient that I can blow through an inbox of 50 e-mails in half an hour, sometimes rejecting submissions within moments of their arrival…

…

Rendered in a labyrinthine and frequently unintelligible grammar, the truly awful query is often notable for its length, its torrid verbosity, and the mechanical specificity of its sex scenes, which tend to read like appliance-repair manuals in their exhaustive and emotionless depictions of moving parts. The bad query’s sentence sometimes resembles a battlefield wherein subjects hack it out desperately with adjectives, perennially besieged by legions of unwieldy adverbs. Apostrophes go on suicide missions and commas appear at random. Formatting tends to be interpretive; it is not uncommon to find e-mails that are 50 pages long, are bright pink, contain pictures of the author on vacation, or are written in Papyrus.”

I think that every prospective author should know about the process through which his work will be evaluated, whether he’s writing about superheroes or space slugs.  However, please don’t let exotic failure stories and the generally unforgiving nature of the business scare you away.  Here are a few brief rules of thumb to keep your query letter on track.

1. You are writing a business letter to a skeptical, time-strapped professional.  For more thoughts about communicating with them, see this.

2. Your goal is to convince him or her that your book is awesome enough to sell thousands of copies.

3. They’ve heard every possible variation of “I’ve just written an awesome book” and rejected at least 99% of them. Telling them your book is awesome is not good enough.  You need THEM to decide the book sounds awesome.  Show, don’t tell.  Lay out your plot in a way that they want to keep reading.  “John Lee is a detective investigating a murder” sounds cliche and boring. “John Lee is a poisoned detective that has two days to solve his own murder” sounds a lot more interesting.  Give enough information to intrigue them.

4. Different publishers have different tastes.  Make sure you submit to publishers that are well-suited to your manuscript.

A query is a page-long letter to an editor or agent asking them to publish or represent your novel (or, rarely, your comic book– Dynamite Entertainment asks for an  ”inquiry letter” before you send the script).

The main aspect of the query letter is a paragraph or two laying out your story and why they should want to read it.  I highly recommend talking about your story rather than making claims like “this is the next Harry Potter” or “this is like work X meets work Y.”

1.  The main thing a comparison to another work says about YOUR work is that it’s derivative and/or a ripoff. That’s not the message you want to send.  Talk about your work and maybe the editor will think “okay, I could maybe see this selling to Harry Potter fans” or whatever.

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