Comments on: About SN

By: HomuHomu

HomuHomu — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:45:19 +0000

Have you considered making a “read this before posting” link on the front page? It seems people forget that a review forum is for reviewing and not a codeword for ass-kissing. A few things to list out would be:
-What you post is pretty much open to public viewing and response.
-Those sensitive to critique should probably refrain from posting or otherwise not get their hopes too high about response.
-Not to get personally offended when someone points out areas of weakness (?)* offers suggestions of improvement.
-And those things I mentioned in NC’s forum

*I wanted to say areas of major suck, but that might not sit well with people

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:40:08 +0000

Thank you sir. B.Mckenzie.

Oh and just for that I’ll definitely check out your review forum once it’s made RoLando… You’re story sounds cool too, simple but interesting as well and in my book; all a story really needs is to be interesting and enjoyable.

By: B. McKenzie

B. McKenzie — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:08:20 +0000

I've set it up here, ArtKing.

By: RoLando

RoLando — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:15:21 +0000

I’m working on a story as well. It about a superhero who is preparing to retire for a few reasons. However, when he is standing at the podium preparing to announce it to the world his wife is gunned down by a sniper. Needless to say, his retirement will have to wait.

It’s not fleshed out as well as yours Artking, but I think its going to be interesting as I develop it more. I don’t have a forum yet, but I hope to soon!

By: RoLando

RoLando — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:11:02 +0000

Artking I will be looking out for your forum…it sounds fresh and original. I love it! Lol

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:41:26 +0000

So… Could I get that forum up any time soon.

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:39:10 +0000

Thank you, and I’m anxious to get it published one day.

By: MGH

MGH — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:27:20 +0000

It sounds like a cool story! I’m anxious to read it.

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:11:33 +0000

Wildfire
by ~Awale-king

One hundred years ago on the planet Sidus something amazing happened… In a single day four new races of Humanity were created.

The Oras: Humans whose souls were fused with the souls of the mystical creatures who once roamed the land millions of years ago; earning them the same powers.

The Amplees: Humans who could become giants or ant sized people.

The Trives: People who grew from the land like plants and had unique powers pertaining to nature, they looked like what they controlled. For example being made of wood if that’s what their power was based on.

The Anims: Beings whose genetic make up was mixed with one or more animals, one Anim could be a combination of a snake and lion and display enhanced senses, poisionous venom spit, long fangs and super strength along with enhanced agility.

The most powerful people of these new races quickly began to fight for power and formed organizations called Caudlrons, their leaders aiming to rule the world. The planet of Sidus is now a battlefield mostly owned by Seven powerful Cauldrons each led by powerful people from each of the four races and a new one that surfaced over the years; one that utilizes nano-technology to create beings called Nanborgs who are far superior to Humans and are machine like Human beings.

The leaders of the seven top cauldrons are called THE SEVEN ROYALS!

This story is about Adam Stone a young Human who awakens Ora powers later in life and seeks to become a great Cauldron leader and form a Cauldron that doesn’t seek to rule the world but seeks to free it from the wars that have wrought it due to the actions of the other cauldrons. His group is called WILDFIRE and he gathers a small group of highly skilled and incredible people who band together with him; united under one goal; freeing the world and restoring peace!

I don’t know if it’s good to be honest but I certainly enjoyed coming up with it… I’m only 16 though.

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:22:18 +0000

*start

By: ArtKing

ArtKing — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:21:49 +0000

I’d like a review forum to star presenting my various stories please. Call it ArtKing’s review forum.

By: B. McKenzie

B. McKenzie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:35:05 +0000

“So that’s why no matter what I typed in about writing comics/anything related to superheroes I was directed to this site!” SN does very well (pretty much #1 across the board) on searches that include a form of the word “superhero” and a form of the word “writing.” That’s caused more by a lack of competition that anything else. I am pretty sure that Marvel and DC aren’t losing any sleep over (AT MOST) a low six-figure sliver of a superhero story market that’s worth billions of dollars.

Another possibility is that the larger publishers are not taking SEO seriously even in the portions of the industry that ARE worth money. Marvel doesn’t place in the top 10 Google results on superhero comics. Neither WB/DC nor Disney/Marvel places in the top 10 on superhero movies. Neither Marvel nor DC places in the top 10 on buy superhero comics. That’s very strange. If Visa or Discover dropped out of the top 10 on credit cards or ESPN dropped out of the top 10 on U.S. searches for sports news for an extended period, I have to imagine that marketing heads would roll.

One possible reason for this, in Marvel’s case: since the Disney-Marvel merger, Marvel’s marketing department got merged into Disney’s film studio. I imagine that the marketers for the movie studio have bigger fish to fry than worrying about a relatively small $400 million comic book industry.

By: Indigo

Indigo — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:34:59 +0000

So that’s why no matter what I typed in about writing comics/anything related to superheroes I was directed to this site! I am so glad too! I can’t even tell you guys how extremely helpful and entertaining this website has been. And it’s also helping me to become a better writer, so thanks for creating this site B. Mac!

By: B. McKenzie

B. McKenzie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:55:00 +0000

I find that it usually takes a few years of doing something to get good at it. Fortunately, if you’re already a good writer, that’s 90% of it. In terms of technical skills, it will probably be helpful to brush up on basic HTML and basic search engine optimization if you’re not already familiar with them. Fortunately, they’re pretty beginner-friendly. If you’d like some basic tips to SEO, I’ll include some below.

1) You’ve already got a niche, which is key. It’s so hard to stand out from the crowd with just a “writing website,” so it’s really helpful that you have a genre/subgenre (medical romance) and your scientific background will probably serve you well there.

2) As regularly as possible, provide people content that they want to read. This is challenging for a fiction-writer (although you can release fiction on a regular basis–it’s just a hell of a lot of work). I personally had a lot more success writing advice based on the books I had read and eventually the manuscripts I had reviewed. (Identifying elements of strong writing and weak writing and giving practical advice about how you can implement/practice one and avoid/minimize the other).

2.1. Identify content that would be useful to people in your field. For example, I’m not a medical writer at all, but a lot of authors (myself included) have doctors (superpowered or otherwise) in their writing, so a few articles on how to make doctors sound believable would be really useful. For example, if a character gets shot, how do I write what the doctor does? On the romance side, I’ve found that there a lot of people that are interested in writing romances that are (take your pick) more interesting, more believable, more memorable, more timeless, more gripping, more original, etc.

2.2. In terms of marketing your writing, one avenue is finding websites that host writers and offer to do some content in exchange for a link. I’d be really interested in hosting some articles on medical writing, particularly as it pertains to action. Even something as basic as “What happens in an emergency room?” could be really helpful to writers without medical training (i.e. pretty much all of us).

3) Once you’ve identified what information people are interested in, think about how they will search on Google/Bing/Yahoo for it. For example, here’s how this process would work for me:

Step 1) I’ve noticed a lot of people asking for superpower suggestions.
Step 2) I thought about how they would search for it. According to Google Analytics, a few will try something like “creative superpowers,” but vastly more try “list of superpowers” or “superpower list.”

Once you know what the most important terms are, I would recommend incorporating them into the title, bolded text and body text as smoothly as possible. For example, pretty much every article on SN has 5+ topic sentences that are bolded, which gives me a lot of opportunities to put critical search terms into bold text. Google loves to see the search term in the title of the article (page), the name of the website, the URL of the website (e.g. superheronation.com) and likes to see it in bolded text and in the regular text.

Some other notes:
–You will have a VAST advantage on search terms if the term is in your title and URL. Right now, I’m beating Marvel and DC on “superhero stories” and “how to write superhero stories” and it’s not because I have more superhero stories than they do. I would recommend picking 1-2 of the most important search terms and making sure that they are in your URL and title. For example, if your blog is just about writing medical romances, something like writingmedicalromances.com covers at least two critical terms and is pretty easy to remember. Many more prospective readers are doing searches that include the word medical and/or writing and/or romance(s) than Wendy and/or Leslie, I’m suspecting. (And you won’t have any trouble reaching the people searching for you by name).

–Another possibility is adding a colon phrase to the end of your title. For example, the full title of the SN website is Superhero Nation: how to write superhero novels, comic books and graphic novels. The phrase helps indicate to prospective readers what I offer and helps me rank on the searches that are most important to my site (like how to write superhero stories and how to write superhero novels).

–I would recommend setting up Google Analytics if you have not already done so. After a few weeks, it’ll give you useful information about how people are reaching your site, what they are looking for, etc. It has been a treasure-trove for me in terms of suggesting new articles. (“Wait, someone searched for something that I don’t already have on my website. I should write an article for that!” I wouldn’t recommend paying too much attention to how many readers you have, though, because traffic naturally goes up and down (but will usually trend up if the content is informative and/or entertaining and well-written). For example, I panicked early on when my traffic cratered, but it turns out that almost every type of website suffers during the summer (when people have more recreational opportunities than just staying in-doors).

–Write for readers/viewers more than search engines. If I ever have to pick between readers/viewers and search engines, I vote for people every time and the SEs eventually come around. For example, I could just randomly bold words because Google likes bolded words, but it is a bit of an eyesore to humans. I like bolding the topic sentences of list items because it’s a more natural way to organize articles. I bold topic sentences not just because they’re more important to search engines, but mainly because they’re more important to readers.

By: wendyleslie

wendyleslie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:00:16 +0000

As a new writer with a new blog, I am constantly overwhelmed by established writers’ sites – the extent of information but more importantly the content.

Yours is a delight to scroll through and the clear explanation of instructional pieces, priceless. Even though my genre, medical romance is at first glance far removed from superheroes (maybe not), I would like to add a link if I may.

Thank you, Wendy