Tags & Traits: Characterization And Building Empathy

Why Tags & Traits Are Important

Tags and traits are an important part of characterization, and characterization is important because it helps create a bond of empathy between your characters and your reader.

Empathy And Creating Believable Characters

Jim Butcher writes:

If you can manage to create a vivid character in a reader's mind, then establish him as someone believable, you have a real shot at the Holy Grail of character design. If you do your job, you will create a sense of empathy in your reader for your characters. This is what makes people burst out laughing while reading. It's what makes readers cry, or cheer, or run off to take a cold shower.

Like V-Factor, empathy takes time to build and it relies heavily upon the skilled use of sequels. But if you can get the reader to this point, as an author, then you WIN. Big time. This is the ENTIRE GOAL of all this character work, because the reader's emotional involvement is the single most important factor in how well your story is going to fly.

Or put another way, if you can make people love who you want them to love and hate who you want them to hate, you're going to have readers coming back to you over and over again. (Characters)

If a writer can establish a bond of empathy between a reader and their characters then the reader is done for, they're hooked. As that expression goes: You've got 'em by the short and curlies.

Isn't that how it feels sometimes? There's a furor over G.R.R. Martin's latest episode of the Game of Thrones: The Red Wedding. This episode was particularly gruesome and some important characters died in shockingly horrible ways.

But I'm betting most people don't stop watching, or stop reading. Why? Because we are involved emotionally with those characters. We empathize with them. We're tied to them.

Tags & Traits: What Are They?

Jim Butcher writes:

But forethought and preparation will play a role in this process, too. Here's another cool craft-tool for you guys to use: TAGS and TRAITS

TAGS are words you hang upon your character when you describe them. When you're putting things together, for each character, pick a word or two or three to use in describing them. Then, every so often, hit on one of those words in reference to them, and avoid using them elsewhere when possible. By doing this, you'll be creating a psychological link between those words and that strong entry image of your character.

For example; Thomas Raith's tag words are pale, beautiful, dark hair, grey eyes. I use them when I introduce him for the first time in each book, and then whenever he shows up on stage again, I remind the reader of who he is by using one or more of those words.

This is a really subtle psychological device, and it is far more powerful than it first seems. It's invaluable for both you as the writer, and for the construction of the virtual story for the reader.

TRAITS are like tags, except that instead of picking specific words, you pick a number of unique things ranging from a trademark prop to a specific mental attitude. Harry's traits include his black duster, his staff, his blasting rod and his pentacle amulet. These things are decorations hung onto the character for the reader's benefit, so that it's easy to imagine Harry when the story pace is really rolling.

Similarly, Bob the Skull's traits are the skull, its eyelights, his intelligence, his role as a lab assistant, his obsession with sex and his wiseass dialog. It works for the same reason.

Seriously. Before you introduce another character, write some tags and traits down. You'll be surprised how much easier it makes your job. (Characters)

John Yeoman And Choric Orchestration

I was reminded of tags and traits by John Yeoman's article: Guest Author John Yeoman: Three Great Tips From An Old Crime Writer.

Here John talks about the power of traits--behavioral traits--in characterization and story building.

John writes:

As soon as Lady Glanedale ‘elevates her eyebrows’ at the master detective Sage, without deigning to reply to him, we know she’s a wrong ‘un. Whenever Sage ‘mechanically’ fingers his fountain pen, or a paperweight, or the pages of a book, the reader can deduce that he has stumbled upon a Clue.

While he listens to witnesses, with no obvious interest, he compulsively doodles. ‘He drew a cottage upon his thumbnail.’ With each doodle, the reader expects him to sketch the face of the true culprit. Maddeningly, he never does.

The behavioral tics of Sage and his characters dance around the stories like a demented chorus, singing: ‘Pay attention! This bit is important.’ Remarkably, it works.

Good stuff!

Using tags other than "he said" and "she said"

John Yeoman also talks about how to use tags other than "he said" and "she said." For instance, he gives these examples:

‘She whispered softly’ --> ‘I strained to hear her’
‘He said, gruffly’ --> ‘His words sounded like gravel in a cement mixer.’
‘She lisped, delightfully’ --> ‘I heard the wings of an angel, flying low.’
‘He replied, angrily’ --> ‘His voice was broken glass.’
‘She said, in a beautiful voice’ --> ‘Her voice reminded me of summer nights in old Castilia.’

Using body actions to convey emotion:

‘She wept’ --> ‘Her body shook with silent sobs.’
‘I said, thoughtfully’ --> ‘I pulled meditatively upon my right ear lobe.’
‘She snorted, derisively’ --> ‘She elevated one elegant eyebrow.’
‘He gasped’ --> ‘He twirled his fingers with bewildering rapidity.’
‘He asked, bemused’ --> ‘He tugged the end of his beard as if he could tease from it some answer.’

 Using a mini-story to set the stage

John Yeoman writes:

This tactic is very useful. It lets you unfold a little story--ominous, amusing, or whatever you wish--behind the surface narrative, to add nuances to the main event. The elisions [...] indicate passages of intervening dialogue.

‘He counted upon his fingers’ ... ‘He ran out of fingers and flapped his hands’ ... ‘He closed his fist abruptly’

‘She toyed with a paper clip’ ... ‘She bent the paper clip into a little man’ ... ‘Her paper clip had now acquired two devilish horns’

‘I traced the outline of a hand upon a sheet of paper with a charcoal stick’ ... ‘I showed him the outline of my hand’ ... ‘I smudged the charcoal outline’ ... ‘“The picture is not the event,” I explained. “By itself, it tells us nothing.”’

Tags and traits, using body actions to convey emotion, using mini-stories to help dialogue flow, I've got a lot to practice tonight!

Happy writing.

Photo credit: "RD & KD BFF" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Dean Wesley Smith On What Makes Writing Fun

I love Dean Wesley Smith's posts--especially the mini series he did as he wrote a 70,000 word book in 10 days--but I have a feeling this one is going to be my all-time favorite: Success, Failure, and Caring: A Personal Note.

Ignore The Bad Reviews, The Rejections

In Success, Failure and Caring Dean talks about what makes writing fun for him and how he can ignore the bad reviews and the rejections. Dean writes:

So as a way of helping readers of this blog understand the type of person I am, why I can take the risks, ignore the bad reviews and rejections, and fight through the down times, I want to tell you a short, but personal story that few know. I think it is illustrative of how the ability to just not fear failure is part of my nature, a nature that has allowed me to keep taking chances with writing and publishing.

And how that ability, my very nature, colors everything I write here.

I've heard of students putting themselves through college by waitressing, or working at a supermarket--one student I knew paid for her tuition by being a mail carrier.

Dean, though, put himself through college by playing poker. That's right, by being a professional gambler!

This is what Dean says in one of the comments:

[M]y attitude from a very early age (and I have no idea where it came from) was that I could never see a reason to do any kind of job I didn’t like. Of course, I was broke many times over my life, and homeless a couple of times, but strangely enough, I never once put together a resume for a job. (I wouldn’t begin to know how to do that.) I just always had the attitude that if it wasn’t fun or worthwhile or educational, why bother.

Now, this attitude will cause friends and family no end of grief, especially early on when they think you are wasting your life and your (evil word) potential. And it drove a couple of wives nuts along the way as well. (grin) Kris now, after twenty-seven years, just laughs and says, “That’s just Dean.” The reason we are still together after 27 years I suspect. (grin)

Do I think other people in the real world should be like me. Oh, heavens, No! But do I think writers should learn how to let go of the fears with their own writing, focus on learning to be better writers, focus on having fun with their writing. Oh, heavens, Yes!

I've sort of jumped the gun by putting Dean's comment up there, before you hear his story, but it was too good to bury.

Dean's Story

Here's Dean's story:

So I ... caught a ride with three great guys heading for Lovelock, Nevada, in an old Volkswagon van.  When they dropped me in Lovelock, (south of Winnemucca) it was about two in the morning.  I went into the only open hotel and casino on the main street of town and asked how much a room was. I really, really wanted a shower and some sleep. But rooms cost $45.00 and I couldn’t talk the guy down into giving me one for $20 for just a few hours.

So I wondered over into the small casino, bought myself a candy bar and a soda with the change I had, leaving me with $22.00. Then I stood against a pole and watched the only blackjack table going. A single-deck game with a sloppy dealer who didn’t shuffle well and only one drunk customer playing dollar chips sitting in the last chair.

The pit boss came over and talked to me after a bit. Friendly guy, so we talked about me headed back to school and that I had gotten road weary and needed a break. (I never told him I was hitchhiking. I let him think I was driving.) I seem to remember he had a kid going to college in Reno. It was that kind of conversation and he didn’t seem to mind me standing there. He was facing a long, boring night, and I was a distraction.

All the while we were talking, I was watching the table and the cards. And when the deck turned in the player’s favor after a bad shuffle and the drunk taking some of the bad cards off the top of the new shuffle, I shrugged at the pit boss, said I might as well spend something, before heading back out onto the road. I got out my last twenty bucks and sat down.

At that point the deck had gone to a dreamed-of level where I had about a 60% advantage on the house, which meant, in reality, I would win 6 out of 10 hands under normal conditions, played over a million hands. The dealer changed my last twenty into chips and I put five bucks on the line.

I lost the first hand, put out another five. The deck was even better now. (That means it was filled to the brim with face cards and aces.)

I won the next five or six hands in a row, doubling up on some of my bets and all the time laughing with the pit boss and talking about his kid. He had no clue I was counting the deck. When I had exactly seventy bucks and the dealer went to shuffle again, I pulled my winnings. “Oh second thought, I’m too tired to go any farther. I think I’ll get a room and get a few hours sleep before heading on.”

The pit boss laughed and told me that was a good and smart idea, gave me a chit that cut ten bucks off my room. I tipped him five, paid for the room, slept until eight, had a great breakfast and hit the road again, making it to my mom’s house outside of Boise by dark. And with more money then when I had left Reno.

I could have just as easily have lost $15 of that twenty, spent a cold night on the street, bought a light breakfast with the remaining money. That was the risk I took. But I had a skill and I understood the chances and the risks and I was willing to take the chance and the risk for the reward of a hotel room and a shower.

Now that's a great story!

Don't Worry About Failure, Just Write What You Love

You might be wondering what it has to do with writing. Dean continues:

[O]nce I finally applied that same attitude to my writing in 1982, after really understanding Heinlein’s Rules, I have had little or no problems. Sure, my career has crashed a couple of times, but I’ve also had fantastic years, one year alone I published fourteen novels. Sure, I’ve had books tank and bad reviews, but I’ve also had wonderful reviews and have sold over eight million copies of my books to wonderful readers. Sure, I’ve been rejected more times than I care to think about or count, but I’ve sold more stuff than I can almost count as well. [Emphasis mine]

.  .  .  .

When you step back and look at everything, the risk with this writing business is little, the choices are many, and the fun is great. I will write some great stories and some stinkers, I’m sure, as time goes on. But what does that matter? The readers will let me know one way or another. For me, now, what is important is having fun with the writing.

.  .  .  .

And why do you think I remember that incident way back in the early 1970s? Because even though I was risking a cold night on the street, I was having fun with the risk.

Just as I have fun every time I type in a new title and start a new story that I have no idea where it is going or if it will work.

I always do the best I can and failure is always an option. The key is to train yourself with your writing to just not care.

Enjoy the hand, enjoy the play.

THAT's the attitude to have.

Life's not a stage, it's a poker game. (grin)

Dean's article is well worth the read.

Photo credit: "behold the mask" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

3 Things I've Learned From Blogging Every Day For A Year

Yes, it's been a year!

Last April I started blogging once a day and then, in the middle of May 2012, I started writing two blog posts a day, even on weekends! That was intense ... okay, crazy ... and I went down to one post on Saturdays and Sundays.

I've cut back the past couple of weeks, now I'm blogging five times a week, but I thought I'd write about what blogging every day for a year has taught me.

Great and wonderful things blogging has done for me:

1. Helped me get through writer's block

It sounds silly when I put it like this, but blogging every day has taught me that I can write every day.

Blogging every day helped me get over my fear of the empty page by helping me develop work-arounds.

For instance, I now know I have a much more difficult time writing a first draft on my computer than I do in a journal. If I write my draft long-hand I rarely get writer's block. If I write my draft using a keyboard ... well, that's a non-starter. I'm not sure why this is, but having discovered it out I go directly to my journal.

It takes longer to write all my articles, all my stories, out longhand and then transcribe them into my computer, but the work gets done and that's the important thing.

2.  Taught me I'm a horrible judge of what folks will like

I think I have a pretty good handle on what folks find moderately interesting, but I regularly fail miserably at guessing what people will think is tremendously interesting. Articles that I thought would be of interest only to myself and a couple of other cave dwellers have been my most popular, and articles I thought would be insanely popular turned out to be no more popular than average.

What is more interesting, though, is that every single time I felt I was writing uninteresting drek the article was at least as popular as average.

The lesson is that even if everything is screaming at me saying I'm writing drek I need to keep writing. Nine times out of ten the feeling passes and, even if it doesn't, even on my worst day, my writing turns out not to be as terrible as I had thought.

3. In order for me to write about something it has to interest me

It is difficult for me to write about something that doesn't, on some level, interest me.

This is one reason editing is such a chore. At some point in the editing process I begin not only to loath the story, but the very sight of the manuscript gives me hives! Okay, maybe not hives, but I do begin to find reasons, any reason, not to work on it.

My fix? Put the manuscript aside for a time and go on to something else.

How long? It depends. At some point I'll be sitting down, my mind will be wandering, I'll be thinking about future projects and I'll remember a story I put away. Its incompleteness will bother me, like an itch that needs to be scratched. Then I'll reach into my "down time" drawer, pull out the manuscript, and begin working on it again.

Coming back to the story with new eyes is like starting over. And chances are it'll be much easier for me to spot, and fix, its weaknesses.

I realize this--putting your manuscript away in a drawer and forgetting about it for a week or a month--isn't always possible for folks who have external deadlines, but I do think that taking some time away from the work can often help improve it.

The downside of blogging every day:

1. Takes time away from the kind of writing that pays my rent

That's it. That's the only downside, but it's a big one.


Periodically bloggers write about whether folks should blog, or how much folks should blog, but I think it's probably different for every person. Each of us must struggle to find that comfortable medium where we reap a benefit without taking too much time away from the work that puts food on the table.

And, next week, I do promise to write that post about book promotion! (grin)

Why do you blog? What has blogging taught you?

Photo credit: "It's all about love" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Anne Rice's Advice On Writing

This morning I sat down to write a post on book promotion and ended up with a post about Anne Rice's advice on writing. I love doing research on the internet!

As part of my post on book promotion I wanted to link to one of Hugh Howey's informative blog posts where he gives his advice on how best to sell one's work, but then I came across his link to Anne Rice's advice on writing.

Of course I stopped what I was doing and listened to it. I mean, come on, it's Anne Rice!

I'm glad I did.

The video is only 12 minutes long and you don't have to watch it, you can let it play in the background while you do housework or surf the web.

A Summary Of Anne Rice's Advice On Writing

The first half of the video is Anne Rice saying that there's no one way to write, just write! Starting at around 6:04 she gives a couple of tips:

1. Go where the pain is

I couldn't help it, immediately that scene from The Princess Bride flashed through my mind. You know the one.

Anyway. The idea is to go where it hurts. Find a memory that hurts so much you can't breathe. Write about it. Explore it.

Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire after her daughter passed away. I've often thought that the writing of Interview may have helped her deal with the pain of her loss.

2. Go where the pleasure is

What excites you? Where would you like to be? Where would you like to go?

Write that book. Write what's interesting to you. Write the story you most want to read.

What is the best advice about writing you ever received?

Here's a link to a great article by Hugh Howey: Making a Living as a Writer.

Photo credit: "Untitled" by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

7 Interesting Links For Writers

I've been busy with other things these last few days, and have gotten behind on my blog reading.

For months I've wanted to do a kind of 'dogs breakfast' post where I talk briefly about a bunch of articles that have wonderful information for writers. Since I have such an embarrassment of riches at the moment I thought, no time like the present! Here we go:

7 interesting links for writers:

1. Amazon's New Subcategories

Amazon has a few new subcategories--character categories and theme categories--for books. India Drummond over at The Writer's Guide to E-Publishing tells you how to get your books listed in these new categories. To read more about this see her article:  Amazon’s New SciFi, Fantasy, and Romance Subcategories. Thanks to Passive Guy for the link.

2. Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction Challenge: Psychic Powers

This week the theme is psychic powers: write a story of around 1,000 words where a character has one of the 20 psychic powers listed in this blog post: Flash Fiction Challenge: Must Contain Psychic Powers. I've found writing flash fiction has helped me enormously, it's a fabulous way to stretch one's writing muscles.

3. What It Means To Be A Writer

Amanda Palmer gave a talk entitled, Connecting The Dots. Good stuff. Again, thanks to Passive Guy for the link.

4. Dean Wesley Smith Does An Encore

I loved it when Dean Wesley Smith blogged about writing a 70,000 word novel in 10 days. Well, he's doing it again! This time Dean won't be writing a novel, instead he'll write 5 shorts stories and he's starting June 10th. Read more here: “Ghost Novel” Writing So You Can See.

5. Storytelling Techniques

My goal is to write stories other folks love to read. How one does that, time after time, is the 64,000 dollar question. Fortunately, this is the sort of craft question the folks over at The Write Practice love to write about.

Joe Bunting asks: Does your story promise to reveal a secret? A solution to a problem? Is it about the demise of a savior figure? Those aren't the only ways of adding interest to a story, but they are great ideas to have in your writer's toolkit.

6. Hugh Howey: Does Barnes & Noble Manipulate Its Rankings?

It looks like erotic stories aren't allowed to rank above 126 over at Barnes & Noble, no matter how well they sell. Read more here.

7. Short Is The New Long

Recently I've talked a bit about whether novellas or novels sell better. Here's an article encouraging writers to spend more time writing short stories: Short is the New Long: 10 Reasons Why Short Stories are Hot.

Have you come across a great article about writing? Tell us about it! 

Photo credit: "Oerlikon" by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Saying Goodbye To Larry

Larry (the white & gray cat) lying with his brother, SJ.

My cat died today.

His name was Larry and he was a great cat.

Larry, his mother and four other kittens came into my life almost eight years ago when I took his family in after they'd been surrendered to a local cat shelter.

The month-old kittens were infested with fleas, and one died at the shelter before I took the brood home. The vet said said that SJ, a small black kitten--the runt of the litter--might die, but I kept him with me each day as I wrote, and I made sure he ate, and he pulled through.

Larry and SJ were the two kittens I kept from the litter.

SJ and I had bonded and Larry ... Larry was Larry. That cat had a personality. He was the first kitten to climb to the top of their huge cat-tree, he was the first one to fall into their drinking fountain and he was the last one to make it over the barrier I put up over the door to their cat room, but that was only because he was a BIG kitty. Not fat, muscular.

When he was a little fluff-ball of a kitten, Larry's favorite game was crouching down and sneaking up on one of his siblings, pouncing on them, and then going on a raucous chase through the apartment. One day he pounced on his sister who was playing with a bit of string in my lap. I'm not sure why, but he looked up then, right into my eyes.

Larry was terrified! He arched his back, all his fur standing on end, and backed away slowly.

At the time I was astonished, but then I realized it was a perfectly rational reaction to looking into the eyes of a giant.

He was a very smart cat.

Larry and SJ got along well, though, of course, they fought occasionally. But they slept together, and they ate together. Neither minded giving up food to the other, they never fought about it, even if sardines--their favorite food--was involved.

Larry, though, did have one special love in his life: Luna.

Luna is a big, fluffy, long-haired cat that I had before I took in the kittens. In fact, I took in the kittens because I was wanted Luna to have some company. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. Luna disliked the kittens as much as they liked her. Larry especially.

Larry had never seen anything like Luna's furry tail and all he wanted to do was touch it with his paws and bury his nose in it. Luna, of course, wanted none of it.

One day while I was holding Larry he noticed Luna sitting at my feet. Before I could stop him, he sprang out of my hands and dove straight for her tail. He landed on his mark and for two whole seconds buried his face in her fur. He was in heaven! Luna was very displeased and boxed his ears but I don't think he ever regretted it.

In the beginning, Larry didn't have much use for humans, but he loved playing with cats, SJ especially. It took Larry about a year before he would lie beside me on the couch and another half year until he would lie on my lap.

I found out Larry was sick when he was about a year old. Hemolytic anemia. There were many veterinary visits over the years, his red blood cell count would plummet, sometimes for no reason, and his medication would need to be adjusted.

But, through it all, he was a great cat. He purred when I held him, he never scratched me, not once. He hated the cat carrier and purred like a motorboat when he got back home. He'd flop down on the carpet in my bedroom, all sprawled out, clearly overjoyed to be back.

Larry suffered a stroke yesterday and there wasn't anything I could do, expect the one thing I did.

I loved Larry. I'm so sad I'll never see him again, never pet him again, never hold him in my arms and hear his deep throaty purr.

Goodbye Larry, you were a great cat and you'll always have a place in my heart.

A Must Have App For Writers: Index Card (5 out of 5 stars)

Writers, I've found the killer app for the iPad: Index Card.

Chuck Wendig recommended Index Card in a recent blog post, 25 Ways To Plot, Plan and Prep Your Story. Since I'd gotten a lot of use out of his last app recommendation (SimpleMind for iOS), I gave it a try.

I've used Index Card every day since I've bought it! I even wrote the first draft of my last story using the app.

(I guess after this glowing recommendation I should say I have no connection to the folks who made this app and I'm not an affiliate. I just like to pass along information that's helped me.)

Chuck Wendig also recommended a page called 10 Hints For Index Cards which gives great advice on what to include on a card. For instance:

1. Keep it short. Maximum seven words per card.
2. A card represents a story point, be it a scene or a sequence. You don’t need a card for every little thing.
3. Keep cards general enough that they can be rearranged. (“Battle in swamp” rather than “Final showdown”)

I hear someone asking: What's so great about Index Card?

1. Index Card allows you to write as much per card as you want. 

This is a definite plus for me since I'm ALWAYS running out of room on physical index cards, but I don't want to buy huge cards because I want to be able to fit them all on my cork board. The app just shows the first couple of paragraphs of text in card view and allows you to title each card so you know what that scene/section/chapter is all about. Problem solved!

2. You can move the cards around

Yes, this is something we'd expect from a digital app, but it's a definite improvement over physically arranging bits of paper on a board made of cork.

3. You can change the color of the index cards

Again, this is a small thing, but it helps me keep track of cards that are just description (I use one card to describe each character). You can duplicate and rename the cards, or entire cork boards. 

4. You can create stacks of index cards

For instance, you could call one stack Act One, another stack Act Two, and so on.

5. If you don't like viewing the cards in rows there are other ways of viewing the cards.

You can view the cards in columns or as one long row.

6. You can diagram multiple stories at the same time. 

I like to work on three stories at the same time, but I don't have space to have three cork boards up on my walls. With the Index Card app, just start a new file. I can switch between projects with the tap of a finger.

7. You can quickly and easily export all your work to Dropbox, or email it to yourself, or export it to iTunes, or preview and print it. 

It can even make you coffee in the morning! Okay, maybe not, but I feel that it wants to.

Index Card is $4.99 but, for me, it was well worth it.

A couple of years ago Chuck Wendig wrote a post where he recommends a bunch of apps for the iPad, apps that help him as a writer; it's a great post, highly recommended (Chuck Wendig uses spicy language, so be warned): The iPad For Writers. His app recommendations are toward the end of the post.

What is your favorite writing app?

Photo credit: "form follows function" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords, Shares Survey Results: 5 Ways To Sell More eBooks

I predict that within three years, over 50% of the New York Times bestselling ebooks will be self-published ebooks. It's possible I'm being too conservative.
-- Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords

I've been meaning to discuss Mark Coker's analysis of the results from his latest eBook survey but other projects kept intruding.  Finally, I just dove in and did it.

What follows is my condensed version of Mark Coker's post, New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More eBooks.

5 Ways To Sell More eBooks

1. Longer eBooks Sell Better

I was surprised by this, but successful indie author Russell Blake would agree: novels sell better than novellas. MC writes:

The top 100 bestselling Smashwords books averaged 115,000 words.  When we examined the word counts of books in other sales rank bands, we found the lower the word count, the lower the sales.

2. Shorter book titles have a slight sales advantage

I chuckled when I read this because it's one of the points I included in my blog post about how to choose the perfect title. I have a bias toward books with shorter titles, but this could just be because shorter titles are easier to remember. Mark Coker writes:

The top 100 bestselling Smashwords books averaged 4.2 words in their book title.

For titles ranked #1,000-#2,000, the average word count was 5.7, or about 36% more words than the top 100.

Books ranked #100,000-#101,000 (not a sales rank any author wants!), the book title word count was 6.0 words.

3. Lower priced books sell more copies

That's not at all surprising. Mark Coker writes:

[B]ooks priced between $1.00 and $1.99 significantly underperform books priced at $2.99 and $3.99. 

It was surprising that books priced at $1.99 sell the most poorly. Mark Coker's advice: Whatever price you put on your book, don't sell it for $1.99.

Free books, of course, are downloaded most often. Basically for every 92 free books downloaded one is sold. Mark Coker writes:

FREE books, on average, earned 92 times more downloads than books at any price. If you've written several books, consider pricing at least one of the books at free. If you write series, consider pricing the series starter at FREE. Nothing attracts reader interest like FREE. But remember, it's one thing to get the reader to download your book. It's an entirely different challenge to get them to read it, finish it and love it.

4. $3.99 is the new sweet spot

Significantly more books were sold at $3.99 than for any other price. Mark Coker writes:

One surprising finding is that, on average, $3.99 books sold more units than $2.99 books, and more units than any other price except FREE.  I didn't expect this.  Although the general pattern holds that lower priced books tend to sell more units than higher priced books, $3.99 was the rule-breaker.  According to our Yield Graph, $3.99 earned authors total income that was 55% above the average compared to all price points.

The finding runs counter to the meme that ebook prices will only drop lower.  I think it offers encouraging news for authors and publishers alike. It also tells me that some authors who are pricing between $.99 and $2.99 might actually be underpricing. [Emphasis mine]

5. Go indie!

Mark Coker writes:

An indie ebook author earns about $2.00 from the sale of a $2.99 book. That book, on average, will sell four times as many units as a book priced over $10.00. In order for a traditionally published author to earn $2.00 on an ebook sale, the book must be priced at $11.42 (if the publisher has agency terms, as Smashwords does) or $16.00 (if it's a wholesale publisher).

. . . .

If a reader has the choice to purchase one of two books of equal quality, and one is priced at $2.99 and the other is priced at $12.99, which will they choose?

. . . .

I predict that within three years, over 50% of the New York Times bestselling ebooks will be self-published ebooks. It's possible I'm being too conservative.

Indie ebook authors can publish faster and less expensively, publish globally, enjoy greater creative freedom, earn higher royalties, and have greater flexibility and control. It's not as difficult to successfully self-publish as some people think. The bestselling traditionally published authors already know how to write a super-awesome book. That's the most difficult task of publishing because the best books market themselves on reader word-of-mouth.

I didn't talk about everything Mark Coker wrote, his article is well worth reading.

The upshot: This is a great time to be an indie author!

Photo credit: "hamburger hafengeburtstag (fisheye) wasserschutzpolizei" by fRedi under Creative Commmons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0.

Getting Organized

I was wondering what I could blog about today--for some reason when I only blog once a day it's twice as hard to come up with a topic! (Which goes to show that the more one writes the more one can write.)

So I would like to do something a little bit different and share one of the most useful tips I've been given as a writer: use Excel and Google Calendar to get organized.

If you're all ready organized, ignore this, and of course you don't have to use Excel, you can use any spreadsheet program, the same goes for Google Calendar. I like Google Calendar because it's easy to sync with my iPad calendar and it's simple to get alerts mailed to myself. Bottom line: use what works for you.

Using Excel And Google Calendar To Get Organized

I have Chuck Wendig to thank for this tip. He's the one who wrote about using Excel to get and stay organized in several of his blog posts.

I'm not talking about using Excel to help outline a novel (which it's great for; Chuck Wendig writes about that in this post and I talk about it more here and here), I'm talking about using Excel to help plan your days, weeks and months, to help set and keep your writing goals.

So, here's how I'm currently using Excel to stay (somewhat) organized:

1. Make a list of all the projects you want to complete in the next 12/24/36/48 etc months and give each one a tentative 'finish by' date. 

Some of these projects you're already working on, some of them, perhaps, are almost finished, some of them are just going to be ideas you want to work on, or maybe you just know you want to publish (say) two books every year for the next few years and that each book should be about 80,000 words in length.

For each project it helps if you have an approximate word count to shoot for. This can be adjusted later, but it helps to have something to work with, even if the figures are tentative.

2. Figure out how many books you'd have to sell at what price to meet your minimum financial goals.

I've written in detail how to do this elsewhere:

- How Many Books Would You Have To Write To Quit Your Job?
- Writing Goals Versus Writing Dreams: How To Get From One To The Other

What this hinges on is deciding how many books/novellas/short stories you want to write per year. That is, how many words you want to write per year. Let's say you want to write two 80,000 word novels per year, so you want to write 160,000 words per year.

Let's say that you think some of the words you write won't be used, so lets talk about this in terms of net and gross words. I use the rule of thumb that if I want to publish, say, 20,000 (net) words a month I should plan to write 40,000 (gross) words that month.

So, let's say you think that in order to publish 160,000 words per year (/two novels) you'll need to write 320,000 words that year.

((1) and (2) can be done in any order, but the two go together like a hand in a glove.)

3. Examine what you've written down for (1) and (2), above, and adjust your 'finish by' times accordingly.

The idea is to break things down so that you have a certain number of words to finish each year, each month, each week and each day. Your project start by, finish by, number of words, and so on, dates can be recorded in Excel but I find it handy to break writing objectives up.

So, for instance, if I want to write 320,000 gross words a year, that works out to about 6,200 words per week or about 900 words a day. Plug this into Google Calendar and send yourself a prompt every day, perhaps a couple of times a day, reminding you of your word count.

Don't be discouraged if you fall behind, just do the work you can and keep going.

Clear as mud? (grin)

A couple of weeks ago I started using this method and it's reduced my stress since now I can see at a glance what my goals are and where I am in meeting those goals.

How do you keep track of your writing goals? What programs have you used? What methods?

Photo credit: "This caught my eye" by Nina Matthews under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Getting Over Writer's Block: Listen To Your Characters

Yesterday I wrote about world building because I was stuck on my WIP. I thought world building was my problem but it wasn't. I wasn't listening to my characters.

I'm writing a murder mystery and the problem was that I couldn't get my sleuth to talk.

I'd written practically all the murderer's scenes up to the midpoint and had a good outline for where I would go after that, but I was nervous because I'd only written one scene with the sleuth and that scene was mediocre.

I loved my murderer with all his flaws, I felt I knew him. He was the hero of his own story, but he'd made some bad decisions. The sleuth, on the other hand, hid behind a veil. I couldn't reach him, couldn't understand him.

It was a problem, especially since I have a schedule and a daily word count and I just can't afford this thing called 'being blocked'.

Well ...

I woke up this morning, started reading, and BAM! it hit me: I needed to write the sleuth's scenes through another character's eyes. I needed a Watson. A Hastings. When I figured that out I could write. It was like a damn burst.

So, here's my take away from this experience:

Listen to your characters

When I'm blocked on a story I'm blocked for a reason.

In this instance, I hadn't taken the time to be still and listen to the sleuth. After I started writing again the sleuth told me things about himself that surprised me. I had completely missed one of his most important characteristics: his anger over a great loss he suffered. Not sadness, anger.

Then it made sense.

I've talked about listening to your characters. There are many, many, writing exercises you could do to help with this, but here's the one I did:

I added a POV character, the sleuth's sidekick, and then chose a scene. I chose one that involved something the sidekick had to do, and started to write. At some point I started to see her, her red hair, her white freckled skin, her long fingers as she slid them along the polished mahogany of the spiral staircase.

And then she was in a room with him, with my sleuth, and they were arguing. She was saying all those things to him she'd kept bottled up ... and it turned out to be a great scene that was fun to write. And I was surprised by a couple of things the characters said, things that made perfect sense once I'd written them down, but I had no thought of them before the exercise.

Writing is kinda magical. And cool. Very cool.

If you've had writers block in the past, what have you done to get over it and get back writing?

Photo credit: "g wie grashalme" by fRedi under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.

Tips For Building An Interesting World

Today I'm world building.

And, no, I'm not talking about my on-again, off-again, obsession with Minecraft.

Sometimes a world reveals itself in a rush of inspiration and all I have to do is write it down.

Other times, like today, I'll grab onto a great character who seems to come ready-made, reminding me of Stephen King's writers-as-anthropologists analogy, where all we're really doing is uncovering stories, not creating them. If that's the case, many of my villains, my "big bads," (also see the discussion of the Big Bad trope over at tvtropes.org) come from the ground fully-formed. All I have to do is brush off a bit of dirt, perhaps reattach an arm here, smooth down a bump or two there, and the character is complete; though of course riddled with flaws and strong, counter-productive, desires.

I've been doing some research for the hero of my story, trying to make him as vivid, as memorable--and, frankly, as likable--as my villain. (When one writes one learns about oneself, so I wonder what that says about me! Wait, don't answer that. ;)

In any case, today Janice Hardy published a wonderful article on world building that is (as always) oh-so-very helpful to writers in the trenches. Her advice helps if you're just starting the world-building process or if you're pulling your hair out because something isn't working with the world you've created/discovered.

Janice Hardy's Tips For Building An Interesting World

1. Color. Use it.

Janice writes: "[I]n my current WIP, color denotes status and is used as an identifier."

Interesting! That book is going on my To Be Read list. Janice writes that, in general, color can ...

Color can have a practical, aesthetic, or spiritual reason. Just like purple was used for royalty due to the rarity of the dye, another color might be scarce in your world and have particular uses and meanings behind those uses.

I admit, what color means isn't something I thought about when building the world of my WIP, but it's a great idea.

Practical

Are certain colors rare, perhaps only available to the very rich and powerful? If so, you have a great way to show a character's wealth or status.

Religious

Are certain colors forbidden?  Are they considered taboo or perhaps they are sacred to one or more gods?

2. What materials do your societies use?

Janice writes:

Different colored stones occur in different regions, or wood from the trees, or even metals mined from the ground. Coastal dwellers might use mud bricks but those who live in heavy forest areas build with wood. A desert culture probably isn't building with wood and stone, and anyone who does is likely to be wealthy or powerful enough to import them in. What materials the population has on hand goes a long way to how they create their cities and the things in those cities.

• What building materials are nearby?
• What's imported? Exported?
• What are common household items made from?
• What are luxury items made from?
• What are considered luxury items?

Janice also talks about how to use a societies views on art, as well as their decorations, to help build a world and make it interesting. I encourage you to read her entire article: World Building Tips Learned at the Louvre.

Do you have any tips/tricks for how to flesh out a world and make it interesting? If so, please share!

Other articles you might like:

- The Key To Being A Productive Writer: Prioritize
- Indie Writers Can Now Get Their Books Into Bookstores
- What Do Aaron Sorkin, Stealing, And Advice About Writing Have In Common?

Photo credit: "time flies" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Key To Being A Productive Writer: Prioritize

Writing 3,000 words a day is hard.

I can just imagine Dean Wesley Smith shaking his head saying, "You think writing three hours a day is hard work?!"

Well, no. Writing for three hours a day is, to a certain extent, the easy part. After all, I already wrote about 1,000 words of non-fiction and 1,000 words of fiction a day.

There's also--I'm not going to say 're-writing'--but there is editing. At least there is for me. That's another two hours a day. Then there's my blog--two posts a day takes about four hours. Sorting through and answering my email, reading other blogs, keeping up with Twitter, all that takes another two hours.

Lately I've put aside an hour a day to do nothing but read, but--necessary though it is--that is time I'm not writing.

These past few days I've become acutely aware that I spend most of my working day on things that, while good and productive in their own way, keep me from putting my butt in my chair and writing fiction.

But that has changed, which is why I didn't blog at all yesterday: I was busy writing.

I've decided I need to make some sacrifices. One of these is that I won't be blogging twice a day anymore. To be honest, I'm not completely sure how much I'll be blogging. I've been thinking about writing a post a day, or perhaps five posts a week like Chuck Wendig.

Speaking of Chuck Wendig, this is really his fault, him and Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch. Actually, Kris started it all by mentioning she wrote one million words in 2012.

One million!

The thought boggled me. I imagined Kris sitting at her computer typing away in a blue bodysuit with a red "W" on the front and a red cape falling gracefully from her shoulders. In my imagination I gave her the name: Superwriter.

Then recently Chuck Wendig revealed that he, too, is a member of the one million words a year club. That's 3,000 words a day, each and every day.

My first thought was that it would be hard never having a day off.

But then I did something Dean Wesley Smith is always encouraging writers to do (see here, here and here) and I ran the numbers.

Guess what I found? Assuming that one's books are moderately successful (and that's a BIG if), if one writes a million words a year, chances are good that, at the end of five years, a writer can make a reasonable living.

Now, I'm not saying that one has to write a million words a year for five years to make a reasonable living as a writer.

Not at all!

One or more of your books could be a bestseller, and if that book is part of a series then chances are you'll be well on your way to making a decent living.

But hoping that one's books will be bestsellers is a much bigger IF than hoping each of one's books does moderately well. Thus my goal of writing a million words a year for the next five years.

Yes, folks, that's the goal! Whether I'll end up doing that, I don't know, but I'm certainly going to try.

It's difficult re-aligning one's life, one's priorities, so that can happen. It takes time, and it has been difficult for me to decide what to let go. I'm not letting go of this blog, I find it too rewarding, on a personal level as well as a professional one. I've learnt so much. Both through my own research and from your many insightful comments.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that this will be a learning process for me and I hope you will forgive me if I don't post as much as I used to.

And, by all means, if you would like to see a post on a certain topic, please leave a comment or contact me here.

I'll be sure to keep you updated on how it's going.

Cheers!

Other articles you might like:

- Indie Writers Can Now Get Their Books Into Bookstores
- What Do Aaron Sorkin, Stealing, And Advice About Writing Have In Common?
- 4 Ways Outlining Can Give A Writer Confidence

Photo credit: "London Calling #5" by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.