Writers Websites Wednesday - Author Tech Tips

Okay writers - today I pass along a site with hints for the techno-challenged author. Author Tech Tips. Helps the author wrestle with techie questions and get some good ideas to  help.

Want to Develop Some Character?

A lot of us writers, when faced with a new story, or a sagging middle think I know, I'll enter a new character.  I'll give him a tatoo or a scar, or a lisp.  Or I'll have her twist her hair, purse her lips like a blow-fish or dress in dominatrix garb. Oh, Oh, I know, it'll be some short phrase the character utters at moments of extreme tension that is always the same!

Well, actually, all that is what character is not. Oh, you can give your character any of those traits and more, that's not the problem.  If that's ALL you give them, that IS the problem.

Let's consider here.  What is character really?  Think about yourself. The character you create for a book is basically the same as you. It's what's inside. What you're like when there's nobody around. "Character" isn't what happens when life is all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, it's more about what happens when things go wrong, when life throws unexpected bombs our way. So the same thing applies to your characters in your story.

How would your character react when confronted with real temptation, money, sex, whatever?  How would he or she deal with hardship? When challenged or attacked or hunted, how would that character move forward? What is your character willing to do to get what he or she wants? Those are elements of character and your fictional people need to possess them as much as do you.

Depend on your own experiences in life. Everyone has had moments of challenge.  Everyone has had times of temptation, managed to resist, or fell victim to it.  As a result we've felt bad or we've felt good about ourselves. The characters you create should have those moments as well. Present them with moments when that character may have been strong or weak, stalwartly honest or somewhat sleezy. A time when he or she did the right thing in spite of risk, cost or pain or did the wrong thing and felt regret or rejoiced in it.

And remember, it's not just the good guys who have these moments, these feelings, you need to give them to your bad guys as well. Obviously your bad guys have made more of the wrong choices and that's what makes up their character. The 'bad' guy pretty much acts more out of self interest than the 'good' guys.

So how do you get inside your characters' heads and dig deep to find out what their 'character' is all about?

One great way is to ask your character a lot of questions.  What does he need?  The basics, food, water, rest, safety from pain and more.  Think about it.  Work your way through and higher.  Once basics are met what else does he need/want? You might check out Maslow's Hierarchy of Need  for some ideas on how us humans operate and what we all need.  Beginning from the bottom up it's an interesting angle when working with character.

And keep it firmly in mind - if you want to create fleshed-out characters for your story, don't make any of them perfect.  Perfect can be terribly boring.





 

New Writer Discovery

This isn't a how to on writing. 

I just had to write about a new writer I've discovered, Ben Jones. At least new to me though he's been writing a while!

Benjamin Jones was born in Greeneville, TN but currently resides in Little Elm, TX with his wife, two daughters, two dogs, and one cat. Ben's been writing for close to 15 years while working various 9-5 jobs but, all the while, finding time to keep the writing the main priority and always  honing his craft.  A writer of many genres, his H.U.B. series of books, Volume 1 and 2 on sale now at www.whatishub.net with Volume 3 coming out fall 2011, takes place in a world where vampires and humans co-exist though a rogue faction is pushing both sides to the brink of war. Benjamin also has a romance novel coming out early 2011 called Head Above Water and is also working on a collaborative effort with Tiffanie Minnis, author of ~D.I.V.A.~ - Domestically Involved in Violent Affairs.

 

Ben's a busy writer and like many writers juggles writing with a 'day job' and turns out really great stuff.  Visit his site, check out his H.U.B. series, download as a PDF and enjoy the read.

Writers Websites Wednesday - The Big Bad Book Blog

The Big Bad Book Blog offers something to every writer.  From the beginner who's trying to get published for the first time to the pro who wants to do more promotion. There are posts and blogs on almost every subject and additional resources as well. 

Need Some Help Editing?

I've been doing some editing lately, breaking one of my own rules (which you'll note later in the article), but of course 'rules are made to be broken,", right? Well yes and no, but that's another subject for another blog post altogether.

Anyway, I decided since I'm doing it I might toss out a few simple tips to help in the process of editing. Now editing your work is a big job and these few tips certainly aren't everything you need to do/know, but they'll give you a push in the right direction.

Editing your own writing is difficult. No maybe, might be about it. There's a lot to pay attention to and there is frequently the 'flavor of the week' in regard to the continually evolving dos and don'ts and 'forbidden words'. Most of the time I tell folks not to go crazy every time a new trend or a new word to be avoided is announced. However, I've created below a list of a few things you can keep an eye out for. Things that just might smooth your writing, make it flow a bit better and help to draw your reader in. At the same time take heart. Don’t worry if there are a lot of the so-called forbidden words scattered throughout your work. After all there are plenty of the classics and lots of current best sellers that are peppered with them. Consider theses helps, not commands and write from your gut and your heart. After all, nothing is perfect and we probably wouldn’t like it if it was!

One well over-used word is “Very”. There are times it’s necessary, but those are ‘very’ rare indeed. Just leave it out or reword. If you said, “The detective, a very tall man, stood close to the accused” how about “The detective loomed over the accused.” Or search your thesaurus and find another descriptive term that fits your style better. And that's just that one word. Examine your work for others like it. Believe me, you'll find them.

Shed clichés like a ‘duck sheds water’. Unless your character is one who spouts them (and even then, please don't over do), or there is another compelling reason for you to use one, remember, they’re just boring and worn. Their time is past. Come up with something new and fresh of your own. Start your own cliche!

The words ‘up’ and ‘down’ seem to be greatly overused and can be generally eliminated. “Elizabeth put her book down on the bedside table.”  It's just redundant unless Elizabeth put her book somewhere someone normally wouldn't put it. Try "Elizabeth set her book on the bedside table with gentle respect.” Or, here's another: “The drought dried up the earth to the point of cracking.” Eliminate ‘up’ and we might have instead: “The drought dried the earth into deep, dusty fissures.” A bit more life in the passage, don't you think? 

Consider eliminating phrases like “John could hear,” or “John could feel.” This is where showing your reader something is much stronger than telling. Instead of “John could hear the train in the distance.” Try making it more direct. Bring in the reader's senses and put your reader right there. How about: “John heard the distant rumble of the train.” Or, “The sound of the approaching train reverberated in John’s head.” Or: "The train's approach caused the walls to tremble and the knicknacks to dance on the shelves." Another example: Instead of: “Jane could see the vultures circling in search of their next meal.” Try “The vultures floated in widening circles in search of their next meal.- Jane seemed a good candidate.”

Verbs ending in –ing can get to be a bit trying. That’s not to say you need to eliminate them altogether, you can sprinkle them in occasionally, in fact I doubt you could eliminate them altogether. But watch out for excess. Things like, “Joe was watching the parade while tapping his feet to the rhythm of the band.” Better would be: “Joe watched the parade while tapping his feet to the rhythm of the band.” Or “Joe tapped his feet to the rhythm of the band as the parade moved on.” Experiment, turn things around a bit and try to stifle the –ing urge just a little.

Don’t repeat words with great frequency. Scan your page. Does any one word jump out at you? Does it pepper the page or reappear frequently throughout a chapter? Grab your thesaurus and have at it or visit www.thesaurus.com.

Now here's the rule I mentioned above that I am currently breaking. Edit after you've completed your piece. Don't try to edit as you go along. There are the occasional times when I have to go back and edit something when I'm in the middle of a story, but mostly I try to write quickly and save the editing until I'm done with the project. It just seems to work better, separating the two tasks - right brain, left brain.

Oh, and much as I love to save paper, many times the only way to really see what needs to be tweaked is to print your work and read from hard copy. People are different. Some can edit onscreen perfectly well, but others need to have that white paper with black print in front of them to do a great job. Decide which kind you are and do it the way that works best. Reading it out loud is a great help as well.  And use both sides of your paper in draft form and don't forget to recycle!

Writers Websites Wednesday - National Novel Writing Month

It's on, it's happening, it's already under way. NANOWRIMO But you can still join, it's only three days in. If you want to write a novel by the seat of your pants join up and have at it.

Anticipating Writer's Money Realities - Working Toward Writer's Security

Break out the champagne, start the celebration, whoo-hoo, you've sold a book, your first novel! Wow, well-done. Now you think you’re going to quit your day job and live on the advance and launch into literary stardom. Well, maybe, but don’t count on it just yet. Much as we'd all like to think of that as the writer's reality, it just isn't and forewarned is forearmed, right? Hmm, well, maybe a bit of a downer, reality can bite, but if you want your eyes open read on. If you'd rather be surprised, than stick your head in the sand and stop here.

Okay, you're still with me.  So, your book is being published by a large New York publishing house. This means you get a lot of money, right? Ah, probably not. Advances are small, when they happen at all, unless you're a big name in which case you wouldn't be reading this.  Writers with several books in print can usually support themselves with a lot of planning, but frankly even they are rare. Only the really big names get away with that stuff.

For starters, for all fiction, in all genres (and we’re talking large and small publishing houses here), the average advance for a new author with a first book is about $5,000. And that, remember, is average, many get less than that for statistics to reach that average.

But that looks pretty good for a first one out of the gate.  However out of that you may well have an agent to pay and if so that is a 15% commission right off the top. Then, the way things are these days, you’ll need a website. If you’re technically inclined you can save some serious bucks, but if you’re not it could cost you about $500 - $1,000 (or a whole lot more) to get that website created and put up. And to this point we haven’t spoken about the cost of self-promotion (yes you have to promote yourself), possibly attending a conference of one kind or another or other promotional items.

At this point you don’t have a lot left over – oh, and be sure to save receipts and track expenses closely because I won’t even touch the subject of taxes for the self-employed. Just let's say as a guesstimate you need to allow around 35% or so off the gross because yes you have to pay income tax and you also get to pay more on your social security as you are your own employer - you might think about incorporation at some point, but I'm not you financial advisor.

But, you say, after the book finally is published, then you’ll see some serious bucks, right?

Maybe. Hope so, but again, don't count on it. Remember the publisher pays itself back the “advance” you received before you see any more cash. So, if you’ve sold your book to a house that puts it out in paperback format and sells it for $7.99 which seems to be a very common price point these days with an 8% royalty rate (also common in contracts), they you’d get about $0.64 per book. To pay back that advance you received you need to sell over 7,800 books before you earn more cash from your new baby.

Okay, before you panic, most print runs from large New York houses are at least 10,000 copies (last time I checked - and these things change) so plainly they’re expecting to sell that many, which is more than the base needed to pay back the advance and then some. If that’s the case you’d earn about another $1,400 minimum and hopefully more. We won't discuss 'remainders' here.  That's mostly for hardcover and newbies don't usually start out with hardcover - though it can happen, in fact did happen for me (for better or worse).

But here’s something else to consider. Publishers pay author royalties twice a year. Usually for the periods of January through June, then July through December – and they don’t cut that check until about three months AFTER the cut off of the pay period. So plan ahead for some waiting for any additional monies.

Now, is this depressing? Well, yes, a little. But if you keep things in perspective and plan ahead you can build a nice career. And you can write in other areas as well to keep those writing checks coming in. spread your wings. Explore other venues. Write articles, reports, shorts for the magazines that have such. In general look into any other writing that appeals to you to help supplement.

And remember there are many variables. The rare first time author is very fortunate to receive a large advance. It can happen. There are multibook deals, maybe you’ll get one of those. A series can be a profitable avenue (look at Harry Potter or Orson Scott Card's 'Ender' series). Then there are other possibilities out there like sale of movie rights or audio rights, or foreign reprints. And, down the road, as you build your ‘library’, don’t forget to look into reversion rights after a book goes out of print so you have the possibility of placing it again.

So keep writing and producing those books. Oh, and don’t forget to keep up with publishing trends so you can work contracts to your best advantage and avoid the idea that writers always have to be broke. Forewarned is forarmed (had to toss in the cliché yet again - sorry).