Where Normal Need Not Apply
My regular readers know that I’m a pantser, but I’m naturally a planner/plotter in the rest of my life. So when a reader asked me how to build a scene list from a beat sheet, I didn’t shudder and scream in horror. Instead for my plotter-loving friends and readers, I figured I’d put together a real answer.
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Back when I started thinking of self-publishing, one of the first things I researched was cover artists. In my usual over-thinking/over-analyzing way, I uber-researched the cover artist landscape to track down cover artists and design trends. And I figured some of what I learned might be helpful to others.
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Indie publishing isn’t made up of just one decision to put us on one path. Last month, we identified four options for the distribution of our books, and we started with a closer look at two of those distribution options. This month, we’re looking at the other two distribution options and when they might work best for us.
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A common suggestion for how to attract readers is “offer a freebie.” However, there are risks to that strategy that we should be aware of before we can make an informed decision.
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For many writers, the point of writing is to connect with others through our words. Because of that desire, it’s hard to ignore feedback, and during editing, we don’t want to ignore suggestions. But what about after we publish? Should we read reviews of our published work?
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How are villains, character likability, subtext, and point-of-view all related? In many stories, our antagonist is a non-POV character, and for non-POV characters, my previous tips about likability will be limited to subtext. So even though we might not be trying to make our villain likable, we might struggle to make them layered.
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In writing, it’s difficult to balance “not enough” and “too much.” Not enough flaws can make our characters flat, and too many flaws can make our characters unlikable. Some genres can get away with unlikable characters, but for those stories that can’t, here are 3 1/2 tips to fix the problem.
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Many writers write both fiction and non-fiction (even if the latter is just blog posts), but the two types of writing require different skills—from authors and from editors. The better we understand the differences, the better we can follow the right rules at the right time and the better we can judge whether an editor is skilled in the right areas to be a good editor for us.
Pin ItIndie publishing isn’t made up of just one decision to put us on one path. The choice to self-publish is just the first of dozens, maybe hundreds, of decisions we’re going to have to make as part of our indie career. One choice we have to face is how we want to sell our books. There’s no right or wrong answers—only what works best for us.
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Internal dialogue is rarely discussed but can be the key to a great story. The skillful use of internal dialogue reveals a story’s emotions, characterizations, motivations, and overall arc. Internal dialogue provides context for everything our characters experience, which helps our readers know what the story means to our characters.
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