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).  I’d have trouble seeing how you could get away with paying less than $.10 per click, so you’d have to sell at least one copy per 10 prospects just to break even.  (Normally, I think 1-2% is typical). I suspect that advertising would probably make more sense for experienced authors with many books to sell.  It increases the potential profit per customer.

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.

If you’ve found SN’s advice helpful, please Stumble us!  That will help introduce new readers to SN.  Thanks–I really appreciate your assistance.

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.

Optimum Wound has a very useful list of comic book publishers that are accepting unsolicited submissions.  Marvel and DC do not accept unsolicited scripts.  (If you’re dead-set on starting out with them anyway, I’d recommend getting a job with them in some other capacity, like editing or sales, and then moving laterally).

Janet Reid tallied up a day’s worth of queries.  (A query is a letter asking an agent to represent your novel). 

I’m getting impatient with writers who can’t seem to tell me what their book is about. I get lists of characters, descriptions of setting and events, but nothing about choices/conflict/decisions. 

I started at 10 pm with 68 queries. 

• Query letter missing too much plot: 21
• Not enticing: 12
• Nothing fresh or original: 8
• Not right for me but someone else will snag happily: 6
• Writer clearly uninformed about genre or category s/he intends to write in: 3.  (B. Mac adds: a common mistake here is using the phrase “fiction novel.”  Novels are ALWAYS fiction, so “fiction novel” makes the author sound uninformed). 
• No platform (non-fiction queries only): 2.  (A platform is a tool used to market a book or author.  For example, this website.  They’re only required for nonfiction authors). 
• Just plain old bad writing: 4
• I don’t think I can sell books in this category: 4
• Overwritten (probably should be included in bad writing): 1
• Unable to suspend disbelief (also bad writing): 1
• Writer is a crackpot: 2.  (Dammit!  I wish I had known that this was a disqualifier before I started writing). 
• Topics I really loathe: 2
• Queries set aside to read more closely: 2

A parting thought for you:  decisions and conflicts are the intersection of character and plot.  Don’t neglect them!

1.  Please take my comic book survey! Thanks.  It’ll take about five minutes and will help me get my comic book published. 

2.  Registered SN users can use HTML coding in comments and access our comment search-engine by going down to the link that says Site Admin at the bottom.  (Nonregistered users can only see the 15 most recent comments).  If you haven’t registered, why not? It’s free!

This Thanksgiving, I am very grateful for Seth Godin’s advice for authors and Mark Hurst’s secrets of publishing.  These aren’t designed with comic book writers in mind, but a lot of the information is useful for them as well.  (If you’re interested in writing comic books, please read my comment below— I picked out a few details that I think are particularly useful for the comic book industry). 

(Also, outside of the realm of publishing, I’m also very grateful for Air Force Materiel Command in particular, because logistics is never as sexy as dropping the bombs but at least as important).

Novelists, make sure that your synopsis covers the material in your sample chapters.  That might sound unnecessary– if they can read the chapters, why do they need the summary?  Because you don’t know that the editors will read the chapters first.  If the editor picks up the synopsis and it starts at chapter 4, you’ll force him out of his comfort zone.  Not a good plan. 

Comic book writers, some publishers (like Image) ask that you include sample pages illustrated when you submit your proposal.  If you include sample pages, make sure the script includes those pages even though the editor can SEE those pages. First, this keeps the editor from getting totally confused if he misplaces the sample pages. Second, it allows the editor figure out what you’re trying to accomplish with the sample pages.  For example, let’s say the backgrounds and side-characters look very boring in a particular sample.  If the editor didn’t have the script in front of him, he’d probably conclude that the colorist wasn’t very good.  But if the script says something like “Make sure that his office and coworkers look as drab as possible so that we’ll cheer for him to get a new job,” then it makes sense that the sample pages would have some drabness. If the editor knows that the drabness is intentional, then it’s a sign of the colorist’s ability to set the mood, NOT incompetence. If the editor knows what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s easier to tell whether you’ve succeeded.

Short answer: usually some combination of…

1. Script of the first issue.
2. Synopsis of the larger work (either the first issue, arc or series as a whole).
3. Sample pages inked, colored and lettered.

For a more detailed look at these three items, I’ll focus on Dark Horse specifically because I think DH is pretty standard.  But always check the publisher’s submissions page.  For example, Dark Horse’s submissions page is here and Image’s is here.

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When you’re ready to submit your novel or comic book to an agent or publisher, these tips will help you make the sell.

1.  The only goal of your submission is to convince a publishing professional that your novel or comic book is likely to sell thousands of copies. Nothing else matters.

2.  Follow the instructions on their website. Most agents and publishers will have submissions pages that lay out what they want to see.  In most cases, it’s best to provide just what’s on the list and nothing else.  (Exception: if you’re submitting a comic book script, consider submitting some inked or colored pages even if they aren’t required– these pages will help the editor decide very quickly whether your proposal is serious).

3.  Check your spelling, punctuation and grammar. Trying to impress a publishing professional without clean writing is like trying to run a filthy restaurant.  It really doesn’t matter how good the cooking is–customers will run out screaming anyway.  Proofread or perish.  Not many publishing professionals would bet tens of thousands of dollars on an unpolished writer.

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• “Does this develop an important character or advance the plot in a meaningful way?”  If not, it’s a strong candidate for deletion.  (To make scenery meaningful, draw it into the story– let characters interact with it or use atmospherics to develop the mood, etc). 
• “Is there a better, faster way to show this?”  For example, rather than go through a scene establishing a minor character’s incompetence, perhaps you can just mention some of his spectacular failings in passing. 
• “Is this redundant?”  I’d only recommend hammering the same point repeatedly if it’s really important. 
• “Am I focusing on what is most important?”  Don’t waste our time on the small stuff.  Spending 25 pages searching for a minor artifact is probably unacceptable but spending hundreds of pages getting Ulysses from Troy to Ithaca obviously works. 
• “Is this coherent?”  If it’s just a minor tangent that goes nowhere, get rid of it.  Additionally, try to tie together plot points as much as possible.   For example, if the superhero has a day job, ideally his work contributes to the plot in some way.  Maybe he uses his skills as a journalist to investigate Lex Luthor.  Maybe his struggles to hold down a pizza-delivery job show how much he’s sacrificing to be a superhero.   

1.  READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. The instructions take precedence over everything else. If you fail to meet the guidelines provided by the comic book publisher on its submissions page, you are dead on arrival.  For example, you can see Dark Horse’s submissions guidelines here and Image’s here.  (By the way, Marvel and DC don’t accept unsolicited submissions– either they call you because they’re impressed by what you have already published, or you start working for them in some other capacity and move laterally)

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Your readers have probably read about heroes with any given positive trait, particularly if the trait is commonly associated with a protagonist in your type of book.  (For example, a detective is almost always more cunning than a barbarian).  However, this is not inherently problematic.  If you’re writing a detective story, your protagonist is probably (at least somewhat) cunning because it wouldn’t be much of a detective story if he just bumbled through it Magoo-style.  It’s not a problem that he’s cunning as long as you do something else to make sure that he feels fresh. 

1.  One way to make a character with a conventional trait (like a cunning detective) and take the trait so far it almost becomes a flaw.  For example, Captain Kirk is so brave he’s reckless, Charlie becomes so smart he’s alienated, many lawyers are so slick they’re oily, etc. 

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Hilariously awkward?  An informative exercise in voice?  See for yourself. 

• You are as effective as a linear geometry based upon the Maginot Line.
• In your absence I will find other forms of praise. 
• I do sense that your basement is made of skin and never lacks for nurses. 
• You have been blessed with the egregious qualities of a duffle-bag in His Majesty’s Royal Navy.
• As the bile slowly rises in my incandescent eluxulator, your mere presence has a calming effect upon my rabies.

• Literary agent Janet Reid provides an awesome checklist for query letters. 
• The Rejectionist recounts some wildly bad query letters.  Keep your chin up– no matter how bad your story is, it’s not about an air traffic controller doing battle with a spaceship using his skills as an ex-quarterback.  (And, if it is, please go into some other line of work). 
• Managing Editor Kelli Collins at Redlines and Deadlines takes on adjectives and how to use them well.
• Flogging the Quill lays out a very useful formula for structuring your story. 
• The Rejectionist explains a common misunderstanding among the authors of children’s and young adult fiction.   Namely, “Children and teenagers are YOUNG. Being YOUNG is not the same thing as being a MORON.” 
• Anne Mini explains what should go into a novel submission package in excruciating detail.  Helpful if you’re writing a novel but (unlike the above) absolutely irrelevant for comic book writers. 
• Redlines and Deadlines tackles how to do a novel synopsis— this is aimed at romance authors but I think any novelist would benefit from it.

If you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month, here are some tips you might find helpful.

1.  Don’t ever tell yourself “that isn’t good enough.” You’re only writing a draft.  It doesn’t need to be perfect, or even readable– it’s just a draft!  Forget “that isn’t good enough.”  Let “save it for rewrite” be your mantra.

2.  Don’t get hung up on research.  In fact, I’d recommend against doing any research during the first draft of most fiction.  (If you’re writing historical fiction for publication, that’s definitely an exception).

3.  Remove any distractions from your writing space.  If you find that the computer itself is a distraction, try writing by hand.

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1.  Foreshadow the supernatural.  Introducing magic or vampires or over-the-top superpowers into a story that previously had seemed constrained to reality will probably disorient readers unless you have taken steps to prepare them.  In some cases, your title, backcover blurb and/or cover will do so.  Otherwise, you should probably suggest that something is not quite normal in this world you are showing us.  For example, before the protagonist discovers that there’s a dragon or a vampire in the basement, perhaps he could find  strange claw marks or woodsland animals that have been de-blooded. 

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One recurring problem I’ve noticed with first-person narrators written by first-timers is that they tend to narrate their life as though it were a movie script with perhaps a few corny thought lines thrown in. 

I did X.  I was angry.  I punched Y.  Adrenaline pumped through my veins.  Man, that was rough. 

That’s awful.  Switching to third-person wouldn’t address all of the problems with this passage, but I feel it’s generally better at accommodating a movie-like novel with a relatively subdued narrator.   The only thing the first-person perspective does in this case is accentuate how totally bland and unstylish the character sounds.

First-person narration hinges on three critical factors.

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1. Use a ticking clock. That helps remind us what’s at stake for the characters.  Perhaps a bad event is timed to go off at a particular moment, like a bomb set to blow up in eight minutes or fairy magic that ends at midnight.  However, a specific time is not required; for example, the protagonist in DOA has been poisoned and has only about two days to solve his own murder.  Ticking clocks are also interesting because they often force characters to move more quickly, cut corners, etc.  Desperation is dramatic.

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I find Editorial Ass to be very informative. She’s a “recovering publishing assistant.”  Heh. 

• EA’s Guide to Getting Published
• EA’s Guide to Marketing Novels
• What Makes a Dream Author
• Sales Expectations for Literary Fiction
• Saving a Book With a Small Print Run
• Make Your Delivery Date… or Else!

For Part 1, please go here.

1. Don’t stop to rewrite chapters until you’ve finished a rough draft of every chapter. Your first draft won’t be great—it definitely won’t be publishable—and that’s okay. At the time you’re first writing a particular chapter, it’s virtually impossible to make it publishably good because you won’t know the endpoint you’re building towards until you’ve gotten there. While an outline can help solve this problem by providing a map, outlines generally change quite a bit as the author actually writes the chapters—characters develop in unforeseen directions, plots are added or removed, characters may be added or removed, etc. It’s much easier to go back and make chapter 5 excellent after you’ve finished the first draft of the entire manuscript.

2. The most important thing is to keep writing. It’s okay if it’s not coherent or stylish—you can always fix that by rewriting later. Don’t worry about whether it’s good or publishable. Before you’ve finished the first draft, it almost assuredly won’t be.

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1. Only three sets of people have opinions that matter—publishers, large groups of readers and you. If a reviewer brings up issues that matter only to him rather than large groups of readers, feel free to disregard those issues.

2. In particular, I’d recommend discounting any review based on scientific accuracy or a highly specialized knowledge-set. If you need a college degree in the field to see the mistake, it probably doesn’t matter to most readers.

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• Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.  In particular, I recommend its Information Center and blog. 
• Once Upon a Geek— “A place for all things geek, focusing primarily on superheroes & science fiction.”  Obviously geeky, but any site with a  Calvin and Hobbes category deserves a lot of lovin’.
• ArtPatient— Delos does a lot of solid comic book reviews usually focusing on what a writer can learn from each series.  In addition, his weekly updates about what’s going on in the world of comic books are also very informative.
• Tommy Ingram’s Blog–he posts some original fiction but I most enjoy his writer’s take on movies and books.  He loved District 9 and blew a gasket over Wolverine: Origins.  So he obviously has good taste.  😉
• 101 First Pages.  Cool concept– he posts the first page of a variety of stories.  It’s only been up for a week or so and it has just one page, but I think it has potential.

Redlines and Deadlines describes what happens when an unpublished novelist sign the dotted line.  The work is just beginning… but, then again, so is the pay!

“On a scale of 1-10, could you tell me how good…”  Sorry, no.

1.  The results would probably depress you.  Fewer than 1% of scripts and manuscripts get published.  Maybe 5% of submissions are even in the running.  So most authors asking for a numerical grade would sink pretty deep into “not yet publishable” territory.

2. In most cases, a grade would make the review sound a lot more obnoxious and accusatory. Getting published is usually a long-term process that takes a lot of practice and revision, and I think something like “this is a 3!” is likely to make a prospective author feel bad for trying.  On the other hand, dishonestly saying it’s a 6 or a 7 when it actually strikes me as a 2 or 3 would mislead the author into thinking that there’s less work ahead than there actually will be.

3.  If I like a work, I will readily volunteer that. Asking me to grade your work is basically asking me how much I didn’t like it, which could be terribly depressing. “This is a 2 out of 10” is almost assuredly less helpful and encouraging than “Have you thought about tweaking [a list of things]?”

4.  Every time I have graded manuscripts with numbers, I have gotten complaints. For example, “But my friends/family/neighbors/teachers liked it more!” People that know you in real life tend to be unreliable reviewers. (They usually don’t know the industry, they’re unwilling to risk hurting your feelings, etc).

5. Instead of grading with numbers, I would be amenable to ranking problems in order of priority. I think that might help authors focus their efforts on the most serious problems. For example, “I think that the characterization could use the most work right now, followed by dialogue” would give you some ideas of what to work on without making you feel bad.  In contrast, “I would rate your characterization a 2 and your dialogue a 4” is almost assuredly a kick in the teeth.

6.  If you’re really looking for a number… I would venture to say that most of my fiction ranks around a 5 on a scale of 1-10: good enough that the editor will read a few pages, but not good enough to earn a personalized rejection letter.  So, if you think my work is better than yours, both of us probably have quite a ways to go before getting published.

7.  If you knew what my scale looked like, you probably wouldn’t want to be judged by it. Here’s my personal scale of publishability:

• 10: Destined for a publishers’ auction and good enough that I would want to offer the author a publishing contract right now, or at least refer the author to a publisher that works with this material.  Extraordinarily rare.
• 9: Good enough to get published somewhere.  Most major publishers reject more than 99.9% of their submissions, so this is still extremely rare.
• 7-8: Not good enough to publish yet, but promising enough to earn personalized rejection letters.  Publishers get so many unsolicited submissions that assistant editors have the time to personally reject perhaps 1-2% of submissions.
• 1-6: “Thank you for your submission but it’s not what we’re looking for right now.”

The writing website LegendFire has a plotting guide that I found very useful.

This CNN interview with two Colombian hitmen is pretty illuminating. If you’re writing about any hardened criminals (or supervillains), I’d recommend checking it out.

Hello, this is Marissa with today’s lesson in practicality.

Today, you’ll be looking at a work like an editor would. This will help you get inside their head, which will in turn help you shape your story into something a publisher just might consider.

1. Take your favorite book off the shelf. If you don’t have your favorite book, it’d probably be easiest to pick the favorite one you own. That way, you’ll have it on hand. If you have your heart set on a different book, though, go ahead and use that one.

2. Reply to this entry with the title and author of the favorite book, then one (or a few) things you–the editor, remember–would have changed. This can be in the form of plot points you disliked (using Soon I Will Be Invincible as an example: I would have told the story that ended before the book begins, rather than spending the entire book backtracking on the past), characters that were flat and needed dimension (cough, Bella?), or even a page-long edit like B. Mac did for Twilight. This last option will only really be effective if you can scan the page in question, or link to where they might be read. Please, for the sake of length, don’t paste the whole page in the comment.

This lesson in practicality very much relies on the old adage, ‘Kill your darlings.’  If you can learn to criticize elements of your favorite books, you’re one step closer to looking realistically at your own.

Randomly generate three pairs of verbs and adverbs at Creativity For You. Write a story about a character who embodies the three sets of ideas. There’s no word goal or page target, but if I assigned this in class, I’d be happy if each student finished two pages in an hour.