Internet Road Kill: Dead Blogs

Nothing worse than a dead blog. But blogging/tweeting/posting status/bulletins/pages -- it all takes a lot of time and creative energy.

I've finally come up with a system -- and no, it's not some cheesy MLM auto-friender or something like that. It's simply the easiest way I've found to interconnect all my "stuff" -- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and listserves -- to reach the most people with the least effort. Took me a while to puzzle out all the interconnections and third party add ons, but I think I've got it now!

There's an ebook on it on http://bamwriters.com.

(And if I'd followed my own advice last week, my blogs wouldn't be out of date! Catching up tomorrow!)

Smashwords

Most of us know about Kindle and a few other ebook formats. But how many are there, really? And how to reach all those markets without spending hours reformatting for each particular reader?

Solution: http://smashwords.com Smashwords will translate your WORD document into multiple ebook formats and pays high royalties, non-exclusive sales agreement. Check it out. Brilliant stuff.

Smells and bells and the first person.

 Common problem: a writer decides to tell a story in first person and then fails to exploit the full capabilities of that POV.

 

How do you know if you're doing this?

 

Look for passages where you attribute sensory experiences, e.g. I smelled, I heard, I  saw. Lose the attributions and place your reader directly inside your character's head.

 

Wrong: I smelled gunpowder.

Right: The room stank of gunpowder.

 

Wrong: I heard the bells ringing.

Right: The bells rang.

 

Same thing with feelings. If you have sentences that start, "I felt...," rewrite them to place the reader directly in the character's head.

 

Wrong: I felt worried.

Right: It wasn't going to be all right. It would never be all right.

 

See? Stay in the character's head, not outside it.

---

Limited Time Offers: Save big on popular laptops at Dell

POV and Distance from Character

Everybody knows what POV is, right? Point of View. Or, if you're in the military, Privately Owned Vehicle. (This will explain a lot of my confusion early on.)

 

POV is fairly easily mastered. You stay in one head in one scene, right? No telling the story from a female protagonist's point of view and then having her boyfriend do a "he thought" attribution in the same scene. That's not rocket science.

 

The more subtle issue is distance from the character. Let me give you a few examples:

 

Jason was wondering what the funny green bird was called.

I wonder what that funny green bird is called, Jason thought.

I wonder what that funny green bird is?

What's that funny green bird?

 

Do you see how these progress from rather distant to close in?

 

Once you get close, you can't pull back. That's the general rule.

 

The reason is that you'll jar the reader. After all, you've gone to a lot of trouble to get your reader to identify with your characters and suspend disbelief and buy the entire world you're creating. You've got them inside this character's head, along for the ride, then BOOM! You pull back from the character. That jars the reader out of the story and undoes everything you've tried to achieve.

 

So don't do it.

 

Tomorrow: Smells and bells and the first person.

---

Limited Time Offers: Save big on popular laptops at Dell

Want a few tips on writing?

"I'd love to buy you lunch and pick your brain."

Can't tell you how often I hear that. It's normally the follow up to a few emails in which new writers ask me to take a look at their works and give them a few pointers.

Tips, they're usually called. You know what tips are. Those succinct little tidbits that will solve writers' career dilemmas: no one wants to publish their stuff.

Sorry. No royal road to it. You put in a few million words and then yeah, you'll be able to make use of a few pointers. You'll have reached the level of conscious incompetence.

What most folks mean by tips is this: teach me to write well. After all, it's just a bunch of words and we all started mastering that at around age 2 or so, right? How hard can it be?

If you'd like me to teach you to write, take one of the classes. Or hire me to do it. Because honestly, while I love lunch out with friends, there are a few problems with the whole lunch and brain picking scenario.

1. It's worth more than lunch
2. It takes longer than lunch.
3. Ruins the meal to talk about bad writing and teach at the same time.
   
4. Until you've put in the time in front of the keyboard, it won't help.

It's like law. Just because it's in English, don't assume you understand it.

---

Limited Time Offers: Save big on popular laptops at Dell

Lowering the barriers or letting in the idiots?

I ran across a new crop of idiots the other day on ehow.com. There was one guy in particular whose only publishing credit was through Publish America – can you join me in saying "Ewwww!" – was telling everyone else how to write a query letter or some such nonsense. It was bad advice and worse writing.

These days, anyone can "get published". I used that phrase sardonically and with malice aforethought because it doesn't mean what it used to mean. Back in the ancient days – like five years ago even – before rampant POD and ISBN by the pound, getting published meant something. It meant that someone besides your Mom (who proofed and told you how wonderful you were) and your bank (who paid the check you wrote to a printer and told you how wonderful you were) and a printer (who called itself a publisher and cashed your check and told you how wonderful you were) actually thought your writing was fairly decent. Or if not decent, fixable and salable.

Not so these days.

Now, this is not to say the book industry and big publishers aren't without issues. We all know the system of advances, returns and sell-through is cumbersome and not working. I'm GLAD that the barriers to getting a book out there are lower. There's some good stuff that needs to see the light of day or at least the light of the endcap.

But the downside is that the signal to noise ratio has dropped dramatically. One can no longer rely on the fact that a book is actually IN PRINT in assuming at least a modicum of worth. Getting printed has become synonymous with getting published, and folks – that's just not the case.

If you are "published" through PublishAmerica, Xlibris or AuthorHouse – it doesn't count. Seriously. It doesn't. Not to the real writers. Not to say it's a BAD thing (although you could do better through Createspace.com or lulu.com or booklocker.com) and that you might not sell some books – you will if you work at it. It's just that it doesn't count as having gone through the traditional system, no matter how loudly you proclaim your status as an amazon.com bestseller (Guess what? That doesn't count either.) or your amazing adventures as a published author.

You're in print. That's a good thing. But it's not being published. And if you think it is, talk to me again after you ink your first deal with Berkley and get your first real editorial letter.

What's that? Berkley won't publish you? Neither will St. Martins?

Yeah. Wonder why?

That's kinda my point.

---

Limited Time Offers: Save big on popular laptops at Dell