Tag: writing help

What fiction genre sells the best?

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book store display

Image by Kriss

You’re going to be smart. Strategic. You’re going to look at the books readers are going crazy over right now and write one just like them – but better – and copies will sell like hotcakes because you’re giving the people what they want.

As you’ve probably figured out, it doesn’t work like that. You can look at the market now and see that Twilight* is popular and decide to write a novel about the forbidden romance between a vampire/werewolf hybrid and a dog lover who runs a blood bank. It’s going to be huge! The problem? It’s going to take you a few years to write and edit the book, another couple of years to find a literary agent to represent you, another couple of years for your agent to find a publisher willing to take a chance on you, and another year before it sees print. Next thing you know, a decade has gone by and paranormal romance is so blasé now. Steampunk zombies are the new hot topic.

Don’t write for the market; write for yourself. This sounds narcissistic at first, but when you really think about it, it’s quite the opposite. If you are writing for the market, what’s your motivation? You want to sell a million copies, become rich and famous, and be interviewed on Regis and Kelly. But if you write for yourself it’s because there’s a story you need to tell. You want to write the kind of book you’d enjoy reading, and you want to share a bit of your soul with the rest of the world.

Now this soul bit you create may or may not be a huge commercial bestseller. It may or may not sell at all. But it will be honest, and it will be a good story, and because of that, it will be more likely to succeed than any produced-for-the-market book would ever be. When you like your own story, you put more tender loving care into it. You take the time to get it right, and your readers can tell.

With that being said, you must also be conscious of your responsibility to your audience. Writing talent is a privilege, having your work read by others is an honor, and in exchange for these things you owe honesty, quality and completeness. So write from the gut, rewrite like a critic, and be sure to tie up all your loose ends.

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*If you’re curious, I’m team TARDIS.

book store window

Should you be writing a different genre?

Inspiration Monday VI

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Monday again, yippee! I hope it was a good weekend for all. Last week produced some particularly powerful pieces from all the participants, as if the inadvertant theme was “how to change people’s minds using words.” Go ye and checketh them out!

Mike and Mike’s flash fiction

Indigo Spider

Find an Outlet

Char

I feel like I’m missing someone. Am I missing anyone? Shoot me a comment!

*EDIT*: I was! I believe Jinx was the first to post: Jinx

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The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

Whispers from the casket

The papercut that changed the world

The last man on earth

You can hear the stars speaking to each other

future-proof

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post (it’s easier for me if you also comment below with a link); I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at: stephanie (at) balcomagency (d0t) com.

Happy writing!

7 surefire writing tips for April

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I thought I’d kick off the month with a quick list of writing tips that are sure to create a bestseller.

1. Don’t write every day. Writing is like lifting weights. Your mental muscles need to rest every other day, or you might strain something and damage it permanently.

2. Don’t read other people’s work. When you create something, it needs to come from you alone. You can’t write something pure and honestly yours if you have other people’s words swimming around in your head.

3. The more words, the better. A short novel is the sign of an amateur writer. Anything less than 100,000 words is a disgrace.

4. The first chapter should be mostly backstory. Your readers need to get to know your characters before they can get into the real action. Flashbacks are really useful for this, and you can use as many as you want.

5. Don’t nitpick. 99% of the time, the first version you write will be the best version. Don’t second-guess yourself. Anyone who criticizes your grammar or sentence structure just obviously doesn’t understand art.

6. Use a cool font. Times New Roman is kind of boring. Comic Sans is much more fun looking, and it will add whimsy to your writing.

7. Take up smoking. That way your hands will have something to do when you’re not typing.

BONUS TIP: Once you get published, make sure that on the front cover, your name is bigger than the title of the book. Branding yourself as an author is way more important than promoting the story itself.

Inspiration Monday V

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The brilliance continued last week, as for the first time every prompt was used! Seriously, check them out!

Mike and Mike again

Sonia M.

Jinx

Indigo Spider

Rebekah

Find an Outlet

Rashmi Kamath

Char submits by email

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The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before 6 pm CST on the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

Don’t believe everything you think*
All my life, I’ve wanted to go to Earth*
The dark is afraid of me**
I’ve never seen the sky that way before
I don’t believe it was suicide

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. If you don’t have a blog, leave your piece in the comments or email me at: stephanie (at) balcomagency (dot) com

Happy writing!

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*Today’s first and second prompts brought to you by a bumper sticker and Robert A. Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, respectively.

**EDIT: I neglected to mention that our third prompt also comes from a bumper sticker.

Writer’s block

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I started writing a post about writer’s block, but it wasn’t working. I know that sounds like a gag opening, but I’m serious.

It was going to list the types of writer’s block and some tips for conquering it. I wrote the whole post but all I was saying was “keep working” or “take a break.” So instead I’m just going to talk about my personal experience with writer’s block, and how I deal with it.

Since most of my writing occurs in a work environment, so does most of my writer’s block, usually when I’m trying to write a headline for an ad or billboard. I call this “hitting my head against the keyboard.” I feel guilty, because I’m being paid – by the hour, from the client’s perspective – to come up with something clever, and here I’ve spent two, three, four hours staring at a blank screen with nothing good to show for it. I begin to panic, thinking I’ll have to stay at work until seven or eight, so I can still put in eight hours without counting the three I wasted. But how far have I gotten? I open an email to my boss and paste in my work from the last few hours. For some reason, it’s easier to think away from the Word doc I’ve been working on. I weed out the worst lines first. There might be two or three half-decent lines left, which I scrunch together and stare at. If I had just a couple more good lines, that would be a decent list of options. I take a few more minutes to think about it. I type whatever comes into my head. Then, most of the time, something good comes to me. It may be the best line of the lot – or not. Either way, I now have a decent list to send to my boss to pick favorites, tweak, or make suggestions.

It’s like playing the kid’s hiding game, Hot and Cold; to find out where the thing is, you have to move. You can’t be afraid of moving in the wrong direction, because even going from chilly to freezing helps you figure out where it is.

You have to write something to know what you are not writing to know what you are writing.

First, you just dump something out. Read it – no, that’s not it. Dump again. You kind of like that part. But the rest is rubbish. Dump again, building around the good part. No, never mind; you were really aiming for something else. Dump again. Eventually, you’ll eke out something decent. You’ll spend the next week editing, and a few months later, you will completely rewrite it again and that will be The One. With a few minor tweaks, of course.

It’s all part of the process.