HearWriteNow

Exclusive Interview - Blogging for Writers

Aug 242010

I was recently lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Lynette Chandler of Blog Energizer as part of a contest she’s running to promote her site. Blog Energizer scours the Internet for ideas for bloggers to write about, but Lynette is also involved in the technical side of blogging with plugins and membership site integration.

Please pop over to Lynette’s blog and vote for me! Thanks. (Link opens in a new window.)

Elle: What is your best advice for fiction writers who are thinking of using a blog to build a platform, particularly if they don’t yet have a tangible book to promote?

Lynette: Now’s a good time to start. A blog can be used to generate interest, stir up curiosity and anticipation for the upcoming book. If you can talk about the book, it’s a good place to give people an idea what it’s about, who you are, where the book is at this point in time. It can help you gather a following and pre-sell to them before hand so when the book is published, you don’t have to work so hard or scramble because you already have a base of eager and interested buyers. Just take a look at movie trailers or movie sites. Many of the bigger movies have sites that are launched way ahead of its release to get people excited.

Also, it can be a sort of accountability partner. If you put it out there, you build people’s interest up, there’s no turning back. You must deliver and finish that book.

Elle: What is the easiest way for a writer who is not tech-savvy to promote her/himself online?

Lynette: I think before you actively promote you should at least have a site. You can get people to build one based on blogging system like WordPress that way you can manage everything and add a blog super easy. It’s probably better to save up and have someone do the initial setup to eliminate the more technical part but once that is done and the site is ready then you can start promoting.

Write a guest article/post for someone else’s site or blog. Try to target it too where the people who read your article/post are the ones you really want to get in front of. These are the people who are likely to buy your book or writing services.

Accept interviews – no technical knowledge involved. Be a guest on podcasts, Internet Radio Shows, Internet Video Shows and blogs.

If possible, give chapter samples or create a PDF of the first couple of chapters of the book that people can freely pass on without strings attached.

Joint venture with a blogger or a group of bloggers (hint: like BlogEnergizer) where you offer digital versions of the book for free download for say 24 hours. The more exclusive it is the better. In other words, pick a group or one blog and work with them. People are more likely to promote on your behalf it is exclusive.

Elle: What do you think of the idea of publishing fiction on a blog?

Lynette: I personally love it and have seen a lot of writers do it. It is always intriguing to me especially when chapters are released one by one on a schedule I’d definitely return to the blog to read and it keeps me hooked, in deep anticipation for the next chapter. Also, the ability to comment and discuss the chapters and perhaps shape the book if it is still in progress is very appealing.

Elle: What other platforms, media, outlets, or concepts do you think are underutilized by writers?

Lynette: It is unfortunate for me I don’t get to mingle too much with fiction writers. As a result, I may not necessarily be as clear on what authors are or aren’t doing as well as someone like you does. However, I can tell you at BlogEnergizer what we are always looking out for but don’t seem to get much of.

That is for authors to create joint promotions like what was mentioned before and make themselves available for interviews to bloggers. Big traditional media I am sure is the big prize for many authors but new media can work just as well. And so often the traditional media gets their contacts from new media as well.

It also doesn’t have to be a big time suck or something that you have to work your schedule around. Especially when you do written interviews like this, or a recorded Internet radio show.

Elle: What is the biggest mistake you’ve seen an author make online – and how do we avoid it?

Lynette: Again, since we have limited interaction with authors themselves and not knowing how the traditional publishing industry works. It is hard for me to say. One thing though, and this probably stems from my ignorance of the traditional publishing industry. I’m always seeking authors who would like to work with us BlogEnergizer to create a promotion for our members, work with our members individually or both. But to contact an author is like trying to enter the Forbidden City, the information flowing through the publisher first. I’d really like to work as directly as possible.

If you are self published then surely none of that applies so do seek us out or seek out bloggers who have a good readership base and demographic that would match the readers of your work. Brainstorm some exclusive promotional ideas and work with them.

Elle: Thank you Lynette. I really appreciate the time you’ve spent on this interview.

Remember the contest I mentioned? If you enjoyed this interview please vote for me at Lynette’s Blog. Voting opens on 25 August 2010. Thanks!

Reading While You Write

.My Fictional Life Blog 3 Responses »

Aug 132010

Selma is conducting a poll of writers: Do you read? How often and how much? What are you reading right now? Do you read while you’re writing?

Selma says: I had a conversation with a friend of mine who teaches a creative writing course at the local university about writers and reading. She says that most of her students don’t read. They are adults who are paying fifteen thousand dollars to do a degree and they don’t read. They are too busy learning how to be writers. They are too busy writing, to read.

Something is definitely wrong with that scenario. The way I look at it is, how can you become a writer – a good writer – if you don’t read?

Here’s my response:

I used to read about 100 books a year, almost entirely fiction. The year I concentrated on writing my first real novel (i.e., second novel if you count the “training novel”) I decided that I would not read while I was writing after I found myself taking on Dickens’s style of writing while re-reading Oliver Twist. It was a very obvious example otherwise I might not have noticed. I decided that I needed to develop my own voice first before I could again combine my two joys of writing and reading. I lasted almost a year without reading fiction and it was really hard. It took a lot of discipline to not reach for a book, and I’m afraid I really don’t understand people who can exist without needing to read. And I don’t think you can be a good writer if you don’t need to read; if you’re not addicted to stories. Nowadays I can read and write at the same time without it affecting my style, but I have become lazy I think. Or perhaps just demotivated. It feels easier to pick up a book and read than it does to write these days.

Right now I’m re-reading Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. This is the first book in a trilogy that itself is part of an eleven-book series. Now that I’ve read all eleven I wanted to start again to pick up the foreshadowing and nuances that a first time read precludes. My husband thinks I’m nuts. What about you?

Does Compute... Sometimes

Tools of the Trade

House Works

.My Fictional Life Blog, Characterisation 6 Responses »

May 202010

I’ve been fascinated by the character Gregory House (from the TV show House, M.D.) for a while now. Can he be called an “anti-hero”? Perhaps the term should be “anti-protagonist”? Or perhaps it is heroic, story-wise, to wrap one’s brain through medical mysteries and save the patient in the nick of time, even if it is not the patient’s life one cares about but his illness.

Whatever you want to call him, House is supposed to be anything but likeable. And yet he is a compelling and brilliant character. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the character is portrayed by a superb actor in Hugh Laurie.)

What is it that keeps us coming back for more of this curmudgeonly arrogant bully?

The Mystery is Elementary, Dear Wilson

While the mystery to be solved in each episode falls under the domain of the plot, it is essential that the great detection and explanation is made by House, the detective-protagonist. Audiences and readers can forgive a lot in a good detective, as long as he delivers the goods: the juicy mystery solved in the most theatrical way possible.

Is He Serious?

House says things that are meant to shock. They are unexpected coming from a medical professional who is supposed to pay lip service to a vaguely acceptable bedside manner. House always catches new patients and their families off guard; they give him the benefit of the doubt, waiting for the punchline. He disorientates them long enough to get away with his remarks before hitting them with a flash of genius.

Inspiration Strikes

On the other hand, House’s colleagues and the audience know him well enough not to be distracted by his outrageous comments, but expect, instead, the now-familiar pause in the middle of a monologue that precedes his declaration that he has solved the mystery by linking it to something bizarre and seemingly unrelated. We are dragged along in fascination as we wait for the explanation as to the connection.

Relationships

Most importantly, though, in all fiction is the relationship between characters. Readers cannot identify with a character in a relational vacuum; readers need context. The element that saves House episode after episode is the grudging respect the other characters have for him. Wilson places such a high value on House’s friendship that he is willing to accept the worst possible treatment from him; he’s had his life, his relationship, his home, and his privacy turned upside down by House. He’s tried to end the friendship numerous times yet House is the person he needs to have with him when he is at his most vulnerable. Cameron and Cuddy both went so far as to fall in love with House and tried to rescue him from himself. Cuddy lied under oath for him. Foreman, Chase, Thirteen, and Taub cannot stand to work for House, but they do anyway; they stay, they leave, they return: something draws them to him.

And then there are the “minor” characters who play a major role in showing the audience who Greg House really is and why he is worth our time. Remember “Scooter”, the med school admin officer who masqueraded as a doctor to join House’s team? Scooter mirrored House’s thought processes but with a calm, dignified demeanour: House as he might have been without the arrogance, bitterness, and addictions. Would Scooter have turned into a House had he been given authority and power like House instead of being an employee for 30 years?

Tritter, the cop out to get House, pushes House to breaking point. For the first time the audience has the chance to feel sorry for House while experiencing shock that, this time, House is not going to get away with what he usually would.

Which takes House into the hands of rehabilitation psychiatrist Dr Nolan. Nolan is more than up to the task of House-keeping. He is another character with patience and dignity who seems to know exactly what House is thinking and how to handle him. But the switch in the relationship is what makes it so compelling: it is a game as long as both are trying to out-think and out-manoeuvre the other. It’s less of a game when House begins to need Nolan. And the game is over when Nolan needs House.

Every relationship needs both participants to alternate support and vulnerability; being the “strong one” and the dependent one; the give and take. And every character needs a relationship. It is the most vital element of a good story.

It’s easy to write unlikeable characters who bore or offend your readers. It takes far more skill to write a character your readers are drawn to despite his flaws.

More on the importance of character relationships

House : Seasons 1-5
House : Season 6

Show Me Who You Are

.My Fictional Life Blog, Writing Craft 6 Responses »

May 052010

***The following contains spoilers for the Australian television movie Little Oberon.***

Here is an example from a movie (Little Oberon) of showing the audience key elements of the story instead of telling them. (“Show, don’t tell. Show, don’t tell”: something my writing teachers always drummed into my head.) It’s much easier to show in a visual medium such as film, but you can still use these concepts in a book.

In the movie, a teenager was trying to find out who her real father was. She doesn’t find out herself during the course of the movie, but the audience does if they are paying attention, because the audience is let into the secret by a few brief scenes that need to be interpreted.

In one scene quite early in the movie, the teenager orders a cup of tea at a café. She quickly spoons three heaped sugars into the cup and stirs it quite lightly, tapping the spoon on the rim of the cup. She’s not really paying attention to what she’s doing, but the scene stands out because she’s being watched by a boy who’s interested in her.

Later, near the end of the movie, a man is offered a mug of tea together with a bowl of sugar. He heaps three sugars into the mug, stirs lightly, and taps the mug with the spoon. It is so similar to the manner in which the teenager took her tea that the audience is bound to be left with an “Aha” moment. This man is her real father.

It is now that the audience realise that there were other clues – also shown – to confirm this theory. We hear this man speak with an Irish accent. When another character tells the teenager a well-known Irish saying, she is entranced. It is clearly the first time she has heard the saying, but she takes it to heart, and repeats it at the end of the film – after the duplicate tea-stirring scene.

But none of the characters in the film notice this similarity – at least not yet. The film ends leaving open the possibility that the characters might still run into each other and notice these similarities. Of course, there’s also the possibility that some audience members would not have picked this clue up – but that doesn’t matter since it’s only part of the story. It’s more important that the audience who did notice it have enjoyed the little secret twist that only they are allowed to discover by themselves. There is no audience hand-holding by having the character turn round and tell the audience what just happened: “Wait a minute. You take three sugars in your tea, just like me. Are you my father?”

It’s important to trust your readers to discover and interpret the clues you leave when you show part of your story. When you decide over and over that you must confirm the clues by telling the reader what is going on, you really show the reader that you don’t trust her to be intelligent enough to pick up what you mean. And you also show the reader that you don’t have enough faith in your own ability as a writer. Let go of some of the control of your story.

Romance for the Aged

.My Fictional Life Blog, Characterisation 2 Responses »

May 012010

I can handle small doses of horror in book form (not movies), but what I really can’t stomach is romance. Take that as a disclaimer. I avoid romance and romance blend genres, including Fantasy-Romance, as much as possible, so I haven’t read the books that contain the concept that I feel like griping about today. And I may need to insert some Sci-Fi-slash-Urban Fantasy Technobabble just to get through this post.

Here’s my Logic:Fail. Character A (let’s say this character is male*) is immortal and has lived a comparatively long time (say a few hundred years (although nobody beats Methos from Highlander at 5000 years)). Character B (female, love interest) is fifteen or sixteen. Not fifty. Not fifteen hundred. Fifteen. A teenager. Yes, like the ones hanging around at the mall. I get that the 200-year-old man is still hunky and feels like he’s young still and all that, but, seriously? I have tried to imagine the most mature, intelligent, capable, driven, and inspirational young teenage women I have known or read about in such a situation (even thinking of someone like Anne Frank or Mary Shelley); I have pondered how desperately and embarrassingly my girlfriends and I, as teenagers, tried to get the attention of boys just a little bit older than us, let alone the crushes we had on some of our much older male teachers and other role models.

Just what could a 200-year-old man possibly fall in love with in a fifteen year old girl? A being who has two centuries’ worth of experience of the world/galaxy/multiverse; of lives that have come and gone; of technologies and world-powers and wars and treaties and opinions and philosophies changing and changing. (Of mitochondria, midochloria, and FTL hyperdrive, of dilithium, gravimetric field displacement, and warp core reactors.) I’m just too cynical to see any innocence in such a “romance”. But I do understand exactly why the story is lapped up by teenagers who daydream about running away with their gorgeous English teacher. But, kids, when you get a little older and wiser and start really thinking about this concept: cue the ew.

(* There seem to be remarkably few 500-year-old women seeking romantic liaisons with a willing Adonis these days, but that’s almost another post.)

Revise Your Novel in One Week

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Apr 152010

There is now a “lite” version of the “How to Revise Your Novel” Workshop available for only $5. This is a complete revision programme; not a teaser. It was created by an author who was offered an opportunity to submit her novel to fit an unexpected open slot in a publisher’s line-up… with the catch that the deadline for the completed manuscript was the following week. She did it: revised an entire novel in a week. She’s put together everything she learnt about revising the hard way, with the good news that you can take as much time as you need to do your own revision. If you don’t know where to start revising here is a handy guide to getting through the process.

How to Revise Your Novel Lite, 50 pages, PDF

(Note that the sign up site will push you twice to consider the full How to Revise Your Novel workshop. If you only want the $5 Lite course, just click “No thanks” each time and it will redirect you. You can always upgrade later if you want to.)

Exposition Exposed

.My Fictional Life Blog, Narrative 3 Responses »

Apr 112010

I’ve just finished reading the first book in Robin Hobb’s latest addition to her Elderling Realm universe: Dragon Keeper*. Hobb uses a lot of exposition in this book (which possibly explains the complaints by readers reviewing on Amazon that this book is “slow moving”). The pace didn’t bother me, though, and I was quite interested in studying Hobb’s technique here.

Flashbacks and Bridging Gaps

The story unfolds, unevenly, over quite some time. To bridge gaps of time when little of importance occurs Hobb jumps the story forward, and then summarises the interleading period through a musing by the viewpoint character. But, interestingly, she also uses this technique to cover important plot events by jumping ahead to when the event is over and allowing the character to mull over the day in question. I’m ambivalent about this constant retrospectivity. It requires a lot of pluperfect tense (“had had”) and, as mentioned, I think this is the cause of the slowness that many readers are battling with. But I also think it lends the story a lot of depth due to the characters’ introspection. The characters have much more time in the quiet following an event to decide how they feel about what occured and to analyse their own and others’ behaviour. Since so many of the subplots are character driven, this is important to the story.

Repetition

I was also interested to compare this book to the book I finished earlier (Inkspell*). Robin Hobb’s books always feel very intense to me and I wanted to try and figure out how she achieves this. In comparason, Funke’s books feel very light and breezy, even when the subject matter is quite dark and sad. Is it just the difference between adult and children’s authors, or is there some additional technique being put to use here? J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter* series achieved a middle ground in intensity, I think, so it doesn’t seem a quality that must be denied in children’s books.

A technique I did notice in Dragon Keeper that seemed to add intensity was layers and layers of repetition, particularly of the characters’ feelings and torments. Hobb doesn’t rely on just one example to show the reader that Alise was an emotionally abused wife or that Thymara felt unloved by her mother; she layers these themes over and over the way an artist would apply a glaze. Again, this techique is tricky; too much feels too repetitive, but hitting the right formula adds a heaviness to the character’s soul that feels like depth to the reader.

Multiple Viewpoints

Sorry to bring this up again. But one of my reasons for reading this book after Inkspell was to contrast these authors’ use of multiple points of view. Hobb keeps to one viewpoint per scene, but allows a number of these scene changes per chapter. I know it’s nit-picking, but I really prefer that the characters have a whole chapter to themselves even if the chapters are shorter. What difference does it make whether the switch comes at a double paragraph break or a chapter end? I don’t know; only that a chapter break feels more complete to me.

Hobb employs a viewpoint technique of showing a scene from one character’s viewpoint and then turning the camera around, as it were, and filming the response from the opposing character’s viewpoint. I’m not fond of this, or at least not a lot of it; it feels a bit contrived to me. Also, the danger here is that viewpoint characters don’t need to become suspicious of one another, or notice any clues in order to pass these on to the reader, because the reader is dished the dirt directly by the character doing the deed. This was another complaint logged by Amazon reader-reviewers: one of the main characters, in particular, is infuriatingly blinkered to two pieces of knowledge that she should, these readers felt, have picked up by now. I wonder how the story revelation might have been affected if the point of view (Sedric’s) that reveals these secrets were removed and only hinted at through subtle clues observed, but not understood (yet), by Alise.

This is an interesting element to ponder, and again I’m relating it back to my own WIP: Do I really need three viewpoint characters? Or would the story pack more punch if the character with the dark, dirty secret is only observed by another character, and not free to spill the beans directly to the reader?

Further reading on exposition and point of view:
Avoiding Exposition Pitfalls
Point of View

More on Robin Hobb’s books:
The Farseer Trilogy
The Liveship Traders Trilogy

*Book Depository has free world-wide shipping, making it a better option for non-US book buyers.

More on Point of View

.My Fictional Life Blog, Narrative, Point of View 2 Responses »

Mar 232010

I’m still reading Inkspell* (don’t laugh! I’m also reading Life of Pi* and Playful Parenting* and I only get a few minutes a day to gulp down a page or so), but I’m finding this a very interesting example of a multiple viewpoint book. It is addressing a lot of issues I was exploring in my planning.

The need (or not) for symmetry: trying to arrange equal “airtime” for all the viewpoint characters. This is what a planner’s heart wants to aim for, but organically it flows better if symmetry is not forced.
Using a different point of view at each chapter change (or not). In Inkspell some chapters continue with the same viewpoint character for three or four chapters, which I like as it allows a little more time to get to know some of the characters.
How long can a character be left in limbo before the reader starts to wonder what happened, or, gasp, forgets about that particular character? One character in Inkspell is badly wounded and we don’t return to this story strand for 43 pages. I found the gap a bit long; I thought one of the later check-in chapters could’ve been brought in earlier without affecting the timeline.
Character dominance. Where several characters are viewpoint characters in their respective chapters, who takes precedence for point of view when these characters meet in a chapter? A few times in Inkspell the dominance is chosen for one chapter with the following chapter told from the point of view of the other character. There is no omniscience or mixing of viewpoints.
The viewpoint character is quite clearly established within the first line or two of each chapter in most cases.

I think with just three viewpoint characters I will have a much easier time getting a little bit of that symmetry I’m after while retaining the sense of flow.

*Book Depository is a better option for non-US book buyers.

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The Mystery is Elementary, Dear Wilson

Is He Serious?

Inspiration Strikes

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