14 Tips On How To Create Your Own Urban Legend

This would have been a great thing to do for Halloween! Oh well, better late than never. Today I want to talk about something that has fascinated me for ... well, for as long as I remember: urban legends.

As I’m sure you know, an urban legend “is a form of modern folklore consisting of fictional stories, often with macabre elements deeply rooted in local popular culture. (Wikipedia)”

Generally, urban legends spring up on their own, but there’s nothing to say that we can’t create our own! Why would we want to create one? Well, to scare the pants off our readers! And because it’s kind of fun. :-)

The Ingredients of an Urban Legend:

Antagonist: A proper villain.

Protagonist: An ordinary, more-or-less innocent person. Everyman/woman.

1. Fear of strangers. The bad guy is a foreigner, an outsider, a stranger.

This is a primal fear. The thing that waits in the darkness outside the ring of firelight. Closely related is the idea that one of the people huddled around the fire isn’t what they seem. They are a monster wearing a human face.

2. Importance of ritual and rule-following.

This is generally part of the moral: Follow the rules and you’ll be okay, break them and the monsters will get you. Or, which is more-or-less the same, behave morally, resist temptation and the boogyman will pass you by. Give in and you’ll be monster food.

3. The author is anonymous.

The event itself is said to have happened to a friend or a friend of a friend, but the author herself doesn’t give a name or any way to trace her down.

4. Vague. No specific examples are given, nothing that can be definitely traced.

Sometimes it’s said that the information came from “an advisor close to the president” or perhaps even a prominent person is named, but in such a way that it’s difficult to pin down anything concrete. Public officials say many things, do many things, and it’s not always easy to trace them.

5. Electronics don’t work.

It seems that whenever the supernatural is involved—and most urban myths I’ve read include some sort of supernatural element—anything electronic dies a spectacular death.

6. The protagonist is alone.

This is classic storytelling. When the protagonist confronts the Big Bad they are (almost) always alone. Let’s face it, if the protagonist had help the stakes wouldn’t be as high, it wouldn’t be as interesting.

7. It is said to be a true story.

We all know urban legends aren’t true, but they’re interesting precisely because a small part of us thinks, or wants to think, that it COULD be. That’s what happens when a story aggressively puts itself forward as being true, as being just another story about something that happened to a friend.

8. Event is said to have happened locally.

I think this point is connected to the fact that we tend to prefer the stories of our friends. What happens locally has the potential to affect us.

9. Event is said to have happened recently.

Events that happened a few years ago or last decade, even sensational ones, aren’t as interesting to us as those that happened earlier today, or yesterday, or a few weeks ago.

10. The event happened to someone the teller knows. Or a friend of a friend.

I think that, rightly or wrongly, we tend to put more weight in the stories our friends tell us, even friends of friends.

11. The event is macabre, horrific, sensational.

In your own life, what scared you the most? We’ve all been scared. When I was a kid I ate pizza too fast and started choking. Lucky for me my dad knew the Heimlich maneuver and I was okay. For a few weeks after that, though, I was terrified of choking.

In itself fear of choking is a bit tame, but I suppose it depends on WHAT the person chokes on.

12. Give it a moral.

I think this is implied by some of the above, but it’s so important it deserves its own point. Urban legends have a moral. For example, take the urban legend “The Hook.” From Wikipedia:

“The basic premise involves a young couple parking at a lovers' lane. The radio plays while they make out. Suddenly, a news bulletin reports that a serial killer has just escaped from a nearby institution. The killer has a hook for one of his hands. For varying reasons, they decide to leave quickly. In the end, the killer's hook is found hanging from the door handle.”

Here, since the couple left lovers’ lane, they get to live. If they hadn’t stopped their ‘activities’ and left, though, things would have turned out bloody.

13. I say this tongue-in-cheek: It helps if a blurry photograph is involved!

Self-check: Would your urban legend disturb you personally IF it were real?

Something to try if you’re looking for inspiration: Make your own urban legend by taking the beginning of one and melding it with the ending of another. Here’s a list of urban legends.

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Many writers have sung the praises of this book: Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between, by James Scott Bell. Personally, I start from the ending, but to each their own. Bell’s approach has been something of a revelation.

From the blurb: “What if, amazing as it may seem, the place to begin writing your novel is in the very middle of the story? According to #1 bestselling writing teacher James Scott Bell, that's exactly where you'll find your story's heart and heat. Bell's "Mirror Moment" is the secret, and its power is available to any writer, at any stage of the writing process. Bringing together years of craft study and personal discovery, Bell presents a truly unique approach to writing a novel, one that will stand the test of time and serve you all your writing life.”

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That’s it! I’d love to read your urban legend. Share it in the comments ... if you dare (cue scary music). Or post it on your webspace and leave a link. Whatever you do, good writing! I’ll talk to you again on Friday.

Cheers!

8 Ways A Thriller differs from a Mystery

I’ve discussed the structure of a CYOA story, the structure of a mystery, the structure of a short story, even the structure of a great story, but never the structure of a thriller. I think it’s high time to remedy that!

But how to write a thriller is a rather large subject, so in what follows I only look at 8 ways a thriller differs from other kinds of stories.

Thriller: Mystery, Crime, Suspense and Horror

Thrillers have a bit of everything: mystery, suspense, crime and horror. Perhaps that’s the secret of their popularity, there’s something for everyone.

“Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.” (Wikipedia)

In a word, thrillers are supposed to be thrilling!

8 Ways in which a thriller differs from other books:

1. Pacing: A thriller is relentless.

I’ve found that certain genres—cozy’s for instance—don’t require a huge amount of dramatic tension or, as I like to call it, narrative drive. Speaking for myself, I read cozy mysteries for the sense of community, to see the characters’ quirks and how they complicate things. To see a) WHO did it, b) HOW they did it and c) WHY they did it. Thrillers, though, I read primarily because I want to lose myself in a fast paced story that fires up the imagination.

2. There is no obvious set of suspects.

One of the things that distinguishes a thriller from a cozy is that a thriller doesn’t have a clear list of suspects.

Recall that in a cozy mystery the suspects are drawn from what W.H. Auden calls a “closed society” so we have our pool of suspects right from the beginning. The reader’s task is to work out which of them committed the dastardly deed. For example, a freak snow storm traps 9 people in a remote hunting lodge. Logically, the killer has to be one of the surviving 8 people.

In a thriller, though, the killer can be someone completely unconnected to the detective and her allies. For example in Thomas Harris’ novel Silence of the Lambs Jame Gumb, the serial killer and Big Bad, was never directly connected to the investigation. (Dr. Hannibal Lecter WAS, but Lector wasn’t the antagonist.)

That said, many times the murderer has some sort of connection to the detective. For example, it might turn out that the killer is someone inside the detective’s inner circle, or perhaps one of the apparently minor characters involved in the case—the detective’s mail carrier, the barista that serves the detective coffee each day, his sister’s new boyfriend, and so on. For example, in James Patterson’s thriller, Along Came a Spider, one of the killers was part of the hero’s own team.

3. High stakes.

In a cozy the stakes are usually modest. If the detective doesn’t solve the case then the murderer will go unpunished and the imbalance the murder created in society will not be addressed. As a result, people will be more suspicious of each other, each thinking that the other could be a murderer. Also, the sleuth’s reputation would take a considerable hit.

In a thriller, on the other hand, if the murderer isn’t caught it could mean the end of the world.

4. Protagonist is a hero.

Not all protagonists are heroes. A hero is someone—male or female—who has noble qualities. For instance, they are courageous and think of the well-being of others before their own. They will do what many would consider irrational things to defeat the Big Bad and save the day.

Generally, whatever organization the hero is with he is cut off from. He is the rebel police officer, the journalist who skates too close to the edge, the soldier who would do anything, sacrifice anything, to save the day.

5. Antagonist is a proper villain.

Another difference between a thriller and a cozy is that in a thriller the murderer is more likely to be a vicious, brilliant, psychotic, serial killer than he is a weaselly nephew who murders his cousin for their money.

Or, if we’re talking about a political thriller, the villain is much more likely to be a terrorist out to destroy the free world than someone who kills in a moment of passion or because he wants to stop his most intimate secret from being revealed.

6. A lot of scenes, not many sequels. What sequels exit are short.

I mentioned that thrillers were part action story and here is one reason why: sequences of scenes are strung together with only very short sequels between them. I know I use this example quite a bit—perhaps too much!—but Raiders of the Lost Ark is a terrific example of scene vs sequel length.

There are sequels in Raiders, but they are very short. One sequel was about 5 seconds long, just long enough for Indiana Jones to say something like, “We’ve got to get the ark,” and then he and Marion are off to fight another battle.

Let’s face it, folks don’t read thrillers because they want something to help them fall asleep! They read them for, as the name suggests, a thrill.

For more on scenes and sequels see the article Scenes, Sequels, Sequences and Acts.

7. The setting of a thriller is often exotic. 

Exotic locations are unfamiliar, extreme, locations.

Unfamiliar. For someone from the Pacific Northwest, a tropical beach would be an exotic location, but if you lived in Hawaii then not so much!

Extreme. The world's largest particle collider would be an exotic location. As could a spacecraft orbiting Earth ... or Mars!

A Carnival is often used as an exotic location, especially if the thriller has supernatural overtones.

This is another point of departure from the cozy mystery which is often—and quite intentionally—placed within a familiar, comfortable, cozy setting.

8. An exciting, surprising, climax.

Every reader of a cozy knows what the climax is going to be: the detective is going to go over every clue and separate the true clues from the distractors and red herrings. (Distractors are those clues that have to do with wrongdoing, but wrongdoing that has nothing to do with the murder.)

While the climax of a thriller needs to reveal the identity of the murderer (the who, the why and the how) there also needs to be a twist. For instance, a classic twist comes at the end of the movie Seven when the penultimate victim is revealed to be the detective’s wife. This leads to the further twist of the Big Bad himself being the ultimate victim, killed by the detective himself.

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I’m going to recommend something a bit different: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home 13.0. I’ve tried it out and I have to say I’m VERY impressed. The program seems to understand 98% of what I say perfectly. Unfortunately, the 2% that Dragon misunderstands can be frustrating! bottom line: If you’re a slow typist or you hate typing, and you don’t mind fixing the odd mistake, this program is for you. (Here’s a review of the program: PC World.)

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again on Wednesday. Until then, good writing! :-)

The Structure of a Supernatural Episode

I've rewatched Supernatural a few times. For giggles I've drawn up what I'll call a plot outline. This isn't intended to be an outline for each episode, or for any particular episode. The following has been drawn from a number of different episodes and pieced together. Please keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress! 

Note: Transcripts of most of the episodes can be found on the Supernatural Wiki. 

By the way, if you would like to read more about story structure, try my article: Story Structure.

The Structure of an Episode of Supernatural

Trailer

Inciting Incident: Someone dies a gruesome death.

Act One

Banter: The theme of the episode is introduced as the brothers talk to each other. What they talk about is tied into the story arc for that season. As they talk, the brothers learn of the bizarre death that occurred in the trailer. They’re not 100% sure if the death is the work of a monster, but it seems like their kind of thing.

Body. The brothers stand beside the body of the person killed in the trailer. Generally, they are inside a morgue and a medical examiner is with them. They question the medical examiner and make observations of their own.

Interview: Round one. The brothers question those close to the victim as well as anyone who was with the victim near the time of their death. One of the people the brothers talk to suspects Dean and Sam aren’t what they say. The confrontation is more-or-less friendly. The brothers give this person their phone number.

Crime Scene. The brothers go to the crime scene and look around. Perhaps they’ve picked up a clue or three from their questioning so they’re not only looking for clues as to what kind of thing did this, they’re also trying to rule out theories they’ve already come up with.

Interview: Round two. The brothers go back to some of the people they’ve already questioned (they might also speak to someone new). They need to clarify a point, or they require more information, or perhaps they now know a person lied to them. 

Twist: In a scene that usually involves the brothers, the central mystery for this episode is revealed. For example, let’s say Charlie is acting all dark-side and the boys aren’t sure why. This is the point at which we find out there are two Charlies, one all brightness and light, the other pain and black clothing.[Supernatural Season 10, Episode 11]

Act Two

More banter. The banter ties the theme of the episode to the story arc for that season and does so more strongly than before. Something has changed, the stakes have been raised or perhaps the danger has become more immediate. 

The brothers’ discussion has to do with something personal, something about the conflict they’re going through that season. It is possible that the conflict raised by the story arc for the season will prove to be crucial for the climax of the episode in the sense that if Sam can’t resolve his conflict at the climax of the episode there is no chance he will be able to resolve the much greater conflict at the end of the season.

The brothers find another clue. Because of this clue, they go back and re-question some of the people they’ve already interviewed.

Midpoint. This is generally an information dump or a confrontation leading to a revelation. The brothers emerge with a hypothesis of why what is happening is happening. Research reveals the answers.

The brothers investigate something based on the new information they’ve uncovered.

The boys visit a person who turns out to be a mentor figure (or some kind of archetypal figure). Perhaps this is someone who has investigated the case before them or an expert on local lore. Before the mentor figure gives the boys any information he gives them a test, often a test of knowledge. 

The stakes are raised. The boys find the monster (or, what is more likely, the monster finds them), but they aren’t prepared. Either the monster has abilities they aren't prepared for and it gets the upper hand, or what the brothers thought was the Big Bad turns out to be the Big Bad’s helper. In any case, the brothers' situation isn’t just bad, it’s dire. 

Act Three

We see the monster attacking one of the people the brothers have interviewed. This will generally be someone sympathetic.

At this point the brothers have figured out the kind of beastie they’re looking for, have figured out its weaknesses, and now all that’s left is to hunt it down. The question: will they arrive in time?

Escalation of stakes: In order to destroy the monster an artifact must be destroyed, something it gets its power from. But, first, they must find it. Or perhaps one of the brothers puts himself in danger to lure the monster out so it can be utterly destroyed.

Theme tie in. One of the brothers warns the other that if he’s going to do this he has to resolve the personal conflict that was discussed at the beginning of acts one and two. Perhaps that conflict is that he has to forgive himself. 

The brothers track down the cursed artifact. They summon the monster and prepare for battle.

Act Four

Something distracts one of the brothers from protecting the other. Perhaps the police have responded to a complaint, perhaps it’s another monster, but something requires that one of the others be elsewhere.

The remaining brother is vulnerable to the monster in the same way the other victims were because he hasn’t resolved his personal conflict.

The other brother comes to the rescue in the nick of time and destroys the artifact. For a moment it seems like the monster is gone but a second later we see that the monster is still there. Something is wrong. All hope is lost.

One of the brothers uses something in an unexpected and creative way and the monster dies. For example, Dean holds a mirror up to the ghost conjured by a foolish person chanting “bloody Mary.” The ghost is affected by her own magic and dies, killed by her own curse.

Epilogue

Show that the endangered human is safe. If Sam’s challenge is to forgive himself then have him give this advice to the girl/guy the brothers saved. Have a short discussion between Sam and Dean which ties the events of the episode in with the story arc for that season.

* Blast classic rock music as Dean's 1967 Chevrolet Impala drives off into the sunset. *

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

One of my favorite reference books, a golden oldie, is The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. 

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That's it! I hope you got something out of this post. Have you ever tried to do something similar with your favorite TV series? If so, please share! 

Have a terrific weekend, I'll talk to you again on Monday. :-)

How to Use Your Life Experiences to Ground Universal Themes and Make Your Story Unique

All stories need to draw from universal themes. For example:

• One person LOVES another but the love is not reciprocated. 
• One person HATES another because he killed someone she loved. 
• One person is dying but there is one slim HOPE they’ll get a reprieve.
• The thing you FEAR the most happens.

The problem: for a story to be interesting it must be unique. After all, if you know exactly what’s going to happen at every turn it’s not fun.

The secret: Infuse your story with your experience. This is what binds the universal to the particular and lends it verisimilitude.

Life experience marries the universal with the unique.

It seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? If something is universal then—by definition—it can’t be unique!

That’s the beauty of using one’s own life experiences. Like you, I’ve experienced heartbreak and elation. I’ve gone through initiations (of sorts), won and lost friends. Someone I was close to died. My experience of each of these things is PARTICULAR. It’s embedded in a particular place and time, a particular culture, a particular set of desires, of strengths and weaknesses.

Of course we can’t just write out our life experiences and plop them into novels, but we CAN (in a sense) channel that experience as we write particular characters, particular scenes.

If I use my own experiences, do I need to base my characters on real people?

Including your friends and neighbors in your fiction can end relationships! My advice would be to go ahead and use your own experience, mine your memories, but change the characters enough that no one but you knows who they’re based on.

Even if you’re not concerned about your loved ones lynching you, basing a character too closely on a real person can be confining.

After all, you don’t want to be constrained by what the living, breathing, infinitely-complex-person would or wouldn’t do in a certain situation. For example, if your character decides to have an affair then it’s best if she doesn’t closely resemble anyone you know!

An Example

Let’s say there’s a person in real life, one of your ex's, that you want to put in your book. Let’s say he was a doctor who owned his own clinic, that he was evangelistically vegan and that you walked in on him and your neighbor getting to know each other in the biblical sense.

Let’s also say you don’t want it to be obvious that you’ve based one of your characters on your ex. Here are some questions you could ask yourself:

- What profession could my character have that would keep intact those characteristics I care about and let everything else go? In my example, I’d want to keep him out and at work for the same amount of time and I would want the character to have some sort of dietary restriction. For instance, he could be a stock trader and allergic to gluten.
- What one characteristic of his drove you nuts?
- What one characteristic of his did you love?
- What did he want most in the world?
- What was his biggest flaw?
- What was his greatest strength and greatest weakness?
- Did you trust him? How’d that work out?
- What role did your respective friends and families play in the relationship?

These are the sort of things, the sort of ingredients, you can put in a story.

Another Example

In one of my stories I modeled my antagonist after my mother! Also, in that same story, I put bits and parts of myself into the protagonist.

I loved my mother, but we had our battles. I gave the antagonist my mother’s eyes and the same way of moving her hands when she spoke as well as the same vocal rhythm. (At least, in my head. I’m not sure that was communicated to the page.) But, physically, that was all I used. As it turned out, that was all I needed to immerse myself in the scene and write with passion.

In any case, my point is that since my relationship with my mother was unique and I saw her in a way no one else did, I felt safe transferring these traits to my character without fear of them being recognized.

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I'm recommending: Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark. This book sits on my reference shelf and it has made writing easier.

From the blurb: “Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost thirty years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of fifty short essays on different aspects of writing.”

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That’s it! If you have tips and tricks for using your personal experiences in writing, please share.

I’ll talk to you again on Friday. Till then, good writing!

7 Ways To Get More Out Of Pinterest

I’ve heard one of the best ways to attract visitors to one’s website is Pinterest! I’m not sure if Pinterest is the best way—I've had a lot of success with Twitter—but today I talk about 7 steps anyone can take to get more traffic from Pinterest.com.

1. Get Analytics

Anyone can get a business page—and it’s free!

If you’re not a new user, you can convert your current page to a business page (that’s what I did).

If you haven’t converted already, don’t wait! The number of times a particular pin is viewed, repinned, and so on, is only recorded AFTER you convert the page so you’re not going to have any data to start off with. Which means it will take a couple of months before you see anything interesting, anything that can really help you. So the sooner you set up your business account, the sooner you’ll be able to see which of your pins are the most popular.

The Key: Once you find out what Pinterest content is the most popular you can give visitors more of what they like!

2. Make it easy for visitors to save your pins by enabling “save” buttons to appear when the cursor hovers over an image.

The title says it all. To read more about the gory details go here: Build a Save button for your site.

3. Pinterest Rich Pins

Rich Pins are pins that include extra information; there are five different kinds: Article, Product, Recipe, Movie and Place. Here's Beth Cooper’s description:

Article pins include the headline, author, story description and link.
Product pins include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy.
Recipe pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving info.
Movie pins include ratings, cast members and reviews.
Place pins include an address, phone number and map.[1]

Note: You need to apply to Pinterest to use rich pins. You can read more about it here: Getting Started. You’ll need to run your pins through the Rich Pins Validator before they can be pinned.

4. Structure your pinterest groups.

What is your blog about? Picture someone visiting your blog for the first time. After a year of reading your blog how have they changed? What problems have they been able to solve because of the information you gave them?

For instance, if you blog about dogs you might imagine that folks coming to your blog for the first time are new dog owners who live in the city. They’re stressed out and short of time. Their immediate need is to know more about dogs—how many times a day they should be walked, what kind of food is best, does their breed of dog need to be groomed every day, and so on. Let’s say this person, after they’ve been reading your blog for a year, is a more confident, relaxed dog owner. Why? Since they know more about dogs and how to care for them they have a better relationship with their animals.

Now think about keywords (or key phrases) that would describe the problem your writing solves. In the above example it might be: General information about how to care for dogs. Now think of supporting categories (for example, pet nutrition, the benefits of exercise, remedies for common health problems, and so on). Try to come up with at least 4 or 5 key words or phrases.

You want to turn these categories into boards over on Pinterest.

5. Interact with like-minded pinners.

Find folks who are active in your categories and then repin, like and comment on their pins. Briallyn Smith writes:

“Pinterest also allows you to directly draw other users’ attention to a specific pin by tagging them @Username in a comment or pin description. This can be an excellent way to initiate conversations and discussions!”[2]

6. Pin your articles

I’ve seen more and more writers choose not to set up a website or blog and, instead, opt to use social media. I encourage you not to be one of them! Set up a website. If money and ease of use is an issue, try Blogger or Wordpress.org. I think it's important to have one place where potential readers can go to find everything: your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blog posts, books, etc.

If you decide you really don’t want a website you could try posting on Google+ and places like Medium, though these sites don’t make it easy to share links to all your creative output. But at least they give you the ability to post your writing with an image optimized for Pinterest.

7. Use eye-catching graphics.

Let’s talk about images. I’m going to recommend two programs: Canva.com and an app I use all the time, Snapseed. Both are free and easy to use.

Size. According to How To Optimize Images And Graphics For Pinterest the ideal size for a blog photo is 600 pixels wide and 900 pixels high. But don’t make it more than 900 pixels in height or your image will get cut off!

Brand. Find some way to brand your image. I just put my domain name at the bottom, but if you have a logo put it on the image.

I’m sure there are many more ways to improve your Pinterest account (I didn’t have time to say anything about how to choose effective keywords). If you have a tip that I haven’t talked about, please share it in the comments!

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I’m recommending an older book (2002) but it’s excellent, Writing the Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. Donald Maass is the author of over 16 novels and is a well known literary agent.

From the blurb: “Maybe you're a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you've already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel - one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.”

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again on Wednesday. In the meantime, good writing!

Notes:

1. 17 Tips, Tools and Tricks to Improve your Pinterest Marketing Strategy, by Belle Beth Cooper.

2. How to Use Pinterest Effectively, by Briallyn Smith

The Structure of a Great Story: How to Write a Suspenseful Tale!

I did it!! Finally! I just finished the book I’ve wanted to write for YEARS: The Structure of a Great Story: How to Write a Suspenseful Tale!

If you’ve read my blog for awhile you know my personal story. Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to know what makes one story unputdownable and another a cure for insomnia. I’m sure this could be several things—including the author’s writing style! But often the difference is that one story has the right meter, the right patterns, a natural rise and fall of action and inaction, of taking chances and facing consequences, while the other doesn’t.

That said, I’ve read books and watched movies where what should have been a gripping tale left me cold. Also, stories that made NO sense in terms of how they were structured ended up being highly entertaining. I want to stress that there is no guarantee any particular story one writes will be interesting to any other particular person. Just like I can chat with two different people at a party and they each come away with wildly different opinions of me, so a story can make wildly different impressions on any one reader. Given this it’s obvious there’s no such thing as ONE structure, or set of structures, that is guaranteed to make a story enjoyable for everyone.

But even so, even admitting this, there are certain rules of thumb that can make any story more suspenseful and easier to read. That’s the sort of thing I’ve been interested in learning, in documenting.

It’s time for me to stop rambling on about the book and present you with an excerpt!

Although there's no secret formula that will generate a best selling story, I believe that often repeated saying: knowledge is power. In this case, knowledge of the craft of writing. This knowledge gives us the power to change, the power to improve. But knowledge only goes so far; it has to be paired with practice.


The stories I focus on in the following pages are often called genre stories. They're stories filled with suspense, the kind that keep decent hardworking folk up till indecent hours, unable to put their book down until they discover what happened, whether the hero found the treasure and saved the day or lost everything in a fiery inferno of regret.


I don't claim to know everything about writing and this slim volume does not contain the sum total of writing wisdom, far from it. I started blogging about writing in 2010 because I believed that, as Seneca wrote, "by teaching we are learning." This book grew from that quest.
 I believe the key to writing good genre fiction is to create complex, compelling, characters, put them in an interesting yet hostile setting, introduce believable opposition with clear stakes, and wrap it all up in a well thought-out plot.


In other words, the key to writing great genre fiction is to write a great story.

If you would like a free copy of my book in return for your opinion of it please contact me at karen@karenwoodward.org. Thanks!

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I'm recommending Creating Unforgettable Characters, by Linda Seger. Dr. Linda Seger has worked on over 2,000 scripts! She even worked with Ray Bradbury. Yes, this book focuses on screenplays as opposed to novels, but it contains a lot of good information.

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That's it! I'll talk to you again on Monday, I hope you have a great weekend. In the meantime, good writing!

4 Ways to Choose a Blog Topic Your Readers Will Love

One of the most difficult things about blogging is deciding exactly what to blog about. To be honest, I think picking a topic is something of a dark art. For years, it was a source of agony but then I developed a few strategies.

I’ll confess that I was stumped about what to write about today (it was difficult to rip myself away from working on my book!), but instead of going through this process myself—which I do on a regular basis—I thought I’d share the process itself.

I find that, often, creativity needs a nudge. Like an oyster needs a spec of sand around which to form a beautiful pearl, so writers often need inspiration to get their ideas flowing.

In any case, if I don’t have a topic in mind to write about, then here’s how I choose one. But, before I get to that, let me show you what I affectionately think of as, ‘The Test.’

The Test

In order for a topic to get the green light it has to pass two checks:

A. Would my readers be passionate about this topic?

B. Am I passionate about this topic?

You are wildly interested in a topic but your readers? Not so much. 

Let’s face it, if your readers aren’t interested in a particular topic then, even if you’ve written the most erudite article, why torment them? Do write the article, but publish in another venue!

You think your readers would love to read about a certain topic but you’re not passionate about the topic.

I’ve had this happen. A few years ago I received several requests from readers to write about how to record an audiobook, and I thought that was a great idea for a blog, or even a series of blog posts.

But, for whatever reason, when I sat down to write the darn article it felt like I was trying to eat sawdust! I had to force myself to pick up and move the pen and the time stretched on and on and on and ... well, you get the idea. (I did eventually write the post, and I enjoyed doing it! Often our muses just need time to figure out how to make a topic our own.)

Sometimes a topic will sound great—perfect!—but you are so profoundly uninspired by it that it would take you ages to write it. That’s not making efficient use of your time. There are many topics that will inspire both you and your readers. Write about those and be happy! ;)

1. Podcasts.

Here’s what I do: As I’ve mentioned before (see: 6 Inspirational and Informative Writing Podcasts), I love listening to podcasts! And quite a few of my favorites are about writing.

One thing I do when I’m looking for topics my readers might love is to go to the podcast’s home on iTunes and sort the episodes by popularity so that the most popular podcast episodes are at the top. I then read the top 5 or 10 podcast titles and run them through The Test (see above).

2. Buzzsumo.com

What Buzzsumo does is show you a site’s most shared blog posts. Plug in a domain name and up will pop that particular site’s most shared blog posts. I use the free version and so can only see the 5 most popular posts, but that’s enough!

Select your five favorite sites and run their domain names through Buzzsumo. Look at the titles produced and Test them to see if any would be a good topic for you.

3. Your most popular Tweets.

One of the many nice things about Twitter is that it tells you which of your tweets and retweets were the most popular. This is a terrific way to see what topics your readers like to share!

4. Your most popular posts.

Practically any blogging platform will give you statistics; at the very least, it will tell you how many times a certain blog post has been viewed. If you’ve linked your blog to Google Analytics you’ll also be able to see, for example, how long visitors stay on the page. This will give you a more accurate idea about what viewers prefer, but if you don’t have Google Analytics, use whatever you have.

In what follows I’m going to talk about several ways you can get blog ideas from your own most popular posts.

a. Write a part two.

Many times I’ll come to the end of a blog post knowing there’s much more I could have written. When I go back and take a look at the most popular posts I ask myself, could I write a part two? You don’t have to call it part two, just blog about it and link back to the older post.

b. Give a detailed example.

You could give a detailed example that deals with a topic you wrote about in one of your more popular posts. For example, let’s say you wrote about how to write a Create Your Own Adventure story. You could create an outline and write the beginning of a small adventure then, for the blog post, share the materials and step through what you did to create them.

c. Write about the X most popular Y.

Let’s say your 3 most popular blog posts have to do with the same topic, say, “How to select a vacation spot snorkelers will enjoy.” Since you’ve got 3 posts about this as it is, maybe you don’t want to write a 4th! That’s okay, vary the kind of blog post. For example, “4 Snorkeling Paradises For Your Bucket List.”

d. Curate posts: your 5 favorite blog posts that week.

If you’re a blogger, chances are you read a number blogs. If a few posts stand out as being well written, then include them in a “best of the web” post.

For each article you use, give the title, the authors name and be sure to link back to the article itself (that’s important!)—in other words, attribute the article. This is also a good way of meeting other bloggers, I’ve had a number of folks whose material I’ve reviewed leave comments thanking me!

Those are my ideas, I’d love to hear yours! How do you choose a blog post?

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Every post I pick something I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I’m recommending a TV show: Lucifer. 

Lucifer is filled with lighthearted irreverence, I find it a wonderful way to unwind. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a critical rating of 75% and an audience score of 89%. It's is based on the DC comic of the same name.

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you on Wednesday. Till then, good writing!

The Tropes of Supernatural

I have a confession: I’m a super-fan of Supernatural. I’ve rewatched the entire series—twice! Each time something new would pop; I’d get a fresh insight into the rhythm, the patterns, the complex web of conflicting character desires.

For those who’ve never seen Supernatural, it’s ...

“an American fantasy horror television series created by Eric Kripke. It was first broadcast on September 13, 2005, on The WB .... Starring Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester and Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, the series follows the two brothers as they hunt demons, ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural beings. (Supernatural, Wikipedia)”

I’ve watched Supernatural from the very first episode way back in 2005. So, in honor of supernatural's upcoming 13th season, I thought I'd take a look at the tropes used in the show.

About tropes: The way I see it, just because a show uses tropes doesn’t mean it’s bad. It all depends on how the tropes are written.

Knowledge Broker

A Knowledge Broker “is the person who always seems to have the dirt on everybody. The person who runs an information-gathering system, with a network of informers.” The Knowledge Broker may seem “nearly omniscient. He/she always seems to have just the right tidbit of information for whoever is willing to pay their price. For the most part, he remains impartial despite his vast influence, and most people know to stay on his good (or at least indifferent) side.” (TVTropes, Knowledge Broker)

Examples:

- Ice Pick from Magnum, P.I.
- Sam Axe in Burn Notice.
- Mycroft on Sherlock.

Related tropes:

- The Barnum
- Freudian Excuse
- Default to Good

Monster of the Week

A Monster of the Week story is one in which “characters fight a villain and the whole story is wrapped up at the end, never to be dealt with again.”

Cool fact: Did you know that the phrase, “Monster of the Week” comes from the writing staff of the Outer Limits (1963)?

Examples:

- The Twilight Zone
- The Outer Limits
- Marvel’s Agents of  S.H.I.E.L.D.

Related tropes:

- One-Shot Character
- Mystery of the Week
- Monster Munch

Walking the Earth

This is one of my favorite tropes! From TVTropes:

“Footloose and fancy-free, we set off among the Adventure Towns, seeking the next place, rather than our fortunes. / ... The character has no home (or he/she/it in progress of finding one), no job, no money, no identification, no friends, and no visible means of support, yet is always healthy, well-fed, clean, and welcome wherever he goes.”

“When one is forced to walk the earth against one's will, this trope becomes the much darker Flying Dutchman. / If a character walking the earth has a strict code of honor and spreads justice in his wake, he's a Knight Errant. Same code of honor (and wanderlust) usually results in passing the ‘Leave Your Quest’ Test.”

Examples:

- Doctor Who 
- The Fugitive
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

Related tropes:

- Adventure Towns
- In Harm's Way
- The Drifter

Myth Arc

A Myth Arc is basically a story arc—often a very LONG one. In the case of Supernatural the Myth Arc encompasses a soon-to-be 13 seasons of the show!

Cool fact: “Myth Arc” and “mythology episode” originated with the writers on the X-Files!

Examples:

- Babylon 5
- X-Files
- Heroes

Related tropes:

- Continuity Lock-Out
- Story Arc
- Chris Carter Effect

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I’m recommending Writing a Novel with Scrivener, by David Hewson. I use Scrivener to write everything, including these posts!

From the blurb: Bestselling “author David Hewson, creator of the successful Nic Costa series, offers a personal, highly-focussed guide to using this powerful application to create a novel. .... Hewson, a Scrivener user for years who's written five of his popular novels in the app, takes users through the basic processes of structuring a full-length novel, writing and developing the story, then delivering it either as a manuscript for an agent or publisher or as an ebook direct to Kindle or iBook.”

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And that barely scratches the surface! If you want to look at more tropey goodness:

- Character profiles from the Tabletop Game: Monster of the Week. Here’s another list. Lots of great character ideas!

That’s it! I’ll talk to you again on Monday. Till then, good writing.

Cheers!

Story Structure and The Hollywood Formula

Okay! I had planned to write about the structure of an episode of Supernatural just for fun, because I’m a huge fan. I’ve rewatched the series from the start and noticed many things I completely missed the first time around.

And I still want to do that! But in the process of researching that post I discovered a slightly different way of looking at story structure that I hadn’t known existed! Yes, I’m a happy story nerd. :-)

So, instead of talking to you about the structure of an episode of Supernatural, I’m going to quickly introduce The Hollywood Formula, tell you a little bit about it and sketch out how it differs from other ways of looking at story structure.

Update: My next book

I’ll come back to The Hollywood Formula in a moment, I just want to give you all a quick update on the book I blogged during NaNoWriMo. At the moment I’m spending all my time finishing it and am glad to report it’s almost done! If I keep up my current pace everyone subscribed to my newsletter will receive an announcement in about a week (around January 25th). My plan is to make the book available to my newsletter subscribers for free as a thank you for reading my blog. :-)

I’m not sure how I’ll make the book available. Perhaps I’ll make a .mobi file available offline and you folks can go download it. It would be a limited time offer, but I’d make the book available for three or so days so everyone who wants to should have ample time to download it.

Another way I could get the book to my newsletter subscribers would be to run a promotion through Amazon and offer the book for free. It might be easier if you downloaded the book from Amazon since that way you’ll have access to it forever, even if you delete it from your electronic device! Also, if I update the book, you’ll be able to download the updated file for free regardless of what it's currently selling for.

What do you think? Any particular preference?

Okay, enough of that! Now let’s take a quick look at The Hollywood Formula.

Where The Hollywood Formula is From

The Hollywood Formula, this particular permutation of it, was created by Dan Decker and outlined in his (wonderful!) book Anatomy of a Screenplay. I first learned about it through TVTropes.org. That website helpfully pointed me to one of the episodes (season 6, episode 18) of a podcast I love, Writing Excuses. This one was helpfully entitled The Hollywood Formula. It is excellent, I highly recommend you download it and give it a listen.

The Hollywood Formula: A Summary

In what follows I do my best to answer two questions. First, just what is The Hollywood Formula? Second, how does it differ from other structures, structures such as the Monomyth?

1. Nuts and Bolts

The Hollywood Formula has to do with screenplays, but can readily be adapted to a novel. Here, though, I’ll present it as I heard it.

Keep in mind that this formula is based on a two hour film where one page of screenplay takes one minute. This comes out to 120 pages.

Act One: Pages -> 1 to 30
Act Two: Pages -> 31 to 90
Act Three: Pages -> 91 to 120

Pages 1 to 10: Introduce the three main characters. 

When the characters are introduced show what they want.

Characters to be introduced: 

The protagonist: 

- The protagonist has a concrete goal/objective. The objective could be a person (e.g., the man/woman the protagonist wants to marry), it could be an object (the grail, a championship, etc.). Two things need to be the case: (a) The objective must be easily understood. (b) The objective must be visual.

- The first person to make a decision in the story. Note that this decision isn’t perfect but it does characterize the protagonist. It will be a ‘yes or no’ decision. Also, the decision should result in the character doing something that goes against what readers know about the nature of the protagonist. For example, a shy girl stands up to a bully to save the boy she likes. The idea is to (a) show what the protagonist wants as well as (b) how badly she wants it.

- The protagonist’s motivation is either (a) redemption or (b) growth.

The antagonist: 

- The antagonist places obstacles in the protagonist’s way. If the antagonist achieves his goal then the protagonist cannot and vice versa.

- “In order to identify the Opponent in a movie, you must first identify the Main Character, and the Main’s Objective. Only then can you ask why the Main Character can’t get his or her Objective. The answer to that question is: the Opposition.” (Dan Decker, Anatomy of a Screenplay)

The relationship character

- The relationship character accompanies the protagonist on her journey.

- The relationship character has wisdom to communicate to the protagonist. She’s been there, done that. This character generally has experience the protagonist lacks.

- The relationship character is the person TO WHOM or FROM WHOM the theme of the film is articulated. Either the relationship character will state it themselves or a secondary character will state it in conversation with the relationship character.

Pages 11 to 13: Fateful Decision

The protagonist must make a choice. This is where the protagonist receives the Call to Adventure.

Pages 1 to 60: Protagonist Asks Questions

At page 60 (the Midpoint Crisis) the protagonist stops asking questions and starts answering them.

Pages 60 to 90: Protagonist Answers Questions

Page 90: Protagonist’s Lowest Point

The protagonist has gone as far from her goal it is possible for her to be.

Pages 90 to 120: The journey from the low point to the end.

This more-or-less maps onto the Race to the Finish.

END OF STORY

At or around the Climax three things must happen:

• The protagonist achieves his goal.
• The protagonist defeats the antagonist.
• The protagonist reconciles with the relationship character.

Note: The closer these three events are to each other the more emotional impact the story will have.

2. How does The Hollywood Formula differ from other structures?

I’ll have more to say about this when I have more time and I’ve done more research, but from what I’ve seen so far, THF is much more character centered. Most story structures tend to group the protagonist and antagonist together, something which makes all the other characters feel secondary. With The Hollywood Formula, in contrast, we have three main characters. My first impression is that this makes a lot of sense because the relationship character (e.g., Donkey in Shrek) is clearly an essential character for telling the story.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I’m recommending Dan Decker’s excellent book, Anatomy of a Screenplay. Here’s a quotation: “A mainstream American screenplay tells a story, about a character, in search of an objective, in the face of opposition, with an underlying theme, in a clearly defined genre, and has an emotionally satisfying resolution.”

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That’s it for today! I’ll talk to you again on Friday. Till then, good writing!

Write a Book in 15 Days: Part 3 of 3

This is the third and final post in a series on how to write a book in 15 days. In the first and second posts I talked about picking a topic for your book, creating an outline and the importance of finding the right subcategory for your book. Here are the links:

1. Write a Book in 15 Days
2. How to Pick Categories for Your Amazon Book

Now that we’ve picked a topic and created an outline it’s time to decide on a title.

Craft the title.

You might be wondering why I’m advising you to choose a title now rather than after you’ve finished writing. It’s because I find knowing my title helps keep me on track because it contains the promise of my book.

For example, “20 Idyllic Scuba Diving Locations That Won’t Bankrupt You” or “20 Christmas Cookies Your Mother-In-Law Will Love.”

These titles make a promise to the reader. For example, “20 Idyllic Scuba Diving Locations That Won’t Bankrupt You” promises that if you go to one of these spots to scuba dive, you’ll have a wonderful time but spend less than if you went anywhere else.

Do Market Research

The single most important thing you can do to help sell your book is to look at bestselling books in the categories you’ve chosen.

I won’t go into market research in any depth here, the topic is too big, but here’s the gist:

a. Find your target categories.

I went through an example of this on Friday. Here are the categories I came up with:

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Entrepreneurship & Small Business > Small Business

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Entrepreneurship & Small Business > Home-Based

Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home Based

b. Use the top 5 books in each category as examples.

Buy and read the top five books in each category. Look at how these books are structured, what topics are covered, what tone the authors adopt (comedic, impassioned, detached, and so on).

The idea is to get a feel for what books do well in your chosen categories as well as why they do well. (If you can, buy and read one or two books in each of these categories that aren’t doing well. Ask yourself, Why is this book not doing well? What is the difference between the two)

c. Look at the covers.

As far as I can tell the single biggest determiner of a book’s success is its cover. It may sound odd to put it like this, but the actual content of the book doesn’t sell the book, it sells the next book.

Look at the covers of the bestselling books in each category and break them down into their component elements. Does the cover contain text only, or is there an image? Is the image a cartoon or a photograph? Is there a focal image? That is, does one image clearly dominate the cover? If the cover primarily contains text, is the text bold or italic? Which font was used? (If you don’t know which font it is, try sites like identifont or fontsquirrel.) And so on.

For example, if you look at the "Thrillers & Suspense" category most of the top ten books prominently feature photographs. On the other hand, many self-help books contain only text.

I want to stress that the idea is not to copy the cover. We just want to understand what characteristics are common to the covers of the books that sell the best in your categories. Of course you want a unique and distinctive cover, but the idea is for it to be easily recognizable as the cover of a certain kind of book.

Write the book.

If you write 2,000 words a day for 15 days you’ll have 30,000 words. If writing 2,000 words a day seems daunting, keep a couple of things in mind.

First, you don’t have to write 2,000 words a day! If the most you’ve ever written is 200 words a day, 2,000 might seem impossible. In that case shoot for 200 a day and after you feel comfortable, try increasing it to 300, and so on. Even if you only write 500 words a day it will only take two months to write a book!

Or perhaps you can write a considerable number of words in a day but can, say, only write one day a week. In that case, one would need to write 3,500 words in one sitting once a week. At 1,000 words per hour, that would only take 3.5 hours!

Second, write a Zero Draft. A Zero Draft is what I like to call a vomit draft. The idea of a Zero Draft is to get your unfiltered thoughts down on paper as fast as you can. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. Research is a must, but put off as much of this as you can until the next draft. For example, if you’re not sure about something like the spelling of a name or a date, just put in a placeholder and, if it survives into the next draft, do the research.

Why? If you’re anything like me then as much as 25% of the words you write for the Zero Draft won’t find their way into the next draft. If you pause to do detailed research on this 25% then that is time wasted.

Write an introduction.

After you’ve finished writing the book, write the introduction. Since the introduction is all about what you’ve written, even if you do write it first, chances are you’ll have to completely rewrite it. Why? Because the only way to know exactly what you’re going to write is to write it!

In the first part of the introduction tell your readers why yours is a book they need to read. People have ‘pain points,’ areas that prevent them from fulfilling their goals, from accomplishing what they want. What are your readers’ pain points? Do they want to plan the perfect vacation but are feeling overwhelmed by all the information, all the possibilities? Or do they want to learn ways to unleash their inner vagabond while not completely blowing their budget?

Tell readers how your book is going to help eliminate these pain points.

For example, let’s think about someone who shops on Amazon and who is interested in German dessert recipes. Perhaps she’s not German herself, but her significant other is and that means going home with him for the holidays. Which means that you have to cook something to present as a gift. The question: what to make? Well, cookies made with German culinary traditions could help remove that particular pain point!

Hire the best editor you can afford.

It’s 15 days later and you’ve written 30,000 words. You have an introduction and you have 10 or so chapters.

What you need to do now is send your book-baby off to the best line editor you can afford.

Before you do this, though, put your manuscript in a drawer and leave it for a week. If you can’t stand to leave it for a week, then put it in a drawer for a couple of days.

When it’s time for your manuscript to come out of the drawer, read the manuscript through. You can also have your computer read the file to you—this functionality is build into both the Mac and PC. Try to make the manuscript free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Then, and only then, send it off to a line editor or proofreader—someone who will make sure that you’re using the appropriate words in the appropriate places, someone who will double-check your spelling and grammar, and so on.

I kid you not, every time I send a manuscript off to an editor I’m sure I’ve caught everything and every time they have pointed out mistakes I made that would have been embarrassing.

Should you use a pen name?

There are many reasons to use a pen name.

Discovery. If you write in several genres, or if some of your books are fiction and others are non-fiction, then using a different pen name for each genre can help keep readers from being confused. For instance, if a person likes reading sci-fi, they know what name to search for.

Privacy. Also, using a pen name gives you privacy. Readers have been known to use an author’s name to track them down in real life. Even though most of these people are harmless it can be disconcerting for an author to open their door to a stranger who seems to know all about them. Even if you’re not worried about being stalked, if you write in sensitive genres such as erotica, you might want to keep that information from your family or your boss.

But there are also reasons to use your real name. If you use a different pen name for each genre you write it makes it more difficult for readers to discover all your books (sometimes folks want to read, or at least look at, whatever you’ve written). Granted, this deficit can be largely overcome by listing all your books on your author website, but these days some authors are electing not to have one. Instead, they share everything through their various social media accounts.

If you would like to read further about this, I’ve written an article on the subject: Should You Use A Pen Name?

Create an eye-catching cover

You have a manuscript but it’s off with the editor so you’re left twiddling your thumbs. Now’s the time to work on your book’s cover. You have the title, you’ve decided what name you’re going to publish under, you know what you want your cover to look like, so what are you waiting for?

Note: Look on pinterest.com. Google the subcategories you’re interested in and see what sort of images folks have pinned.

Should you create the book cover yourself or have an artist create one for you?

If money's no object, definitely get an artist to do one for you. If you can’t spend a huge amount of money but can manage $200 or so, think about using 99designs.com.

If money is tight and this is your first book and you’re just testing the water, then I would suggest you try to create the cover yourself and see how it goes. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image processing program that’s quite powerful.

Here’s a link to an article I wrote about where to find free, public domain images: Bloggers: 10 Sites With Public Domain, High Resolution, Images.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I am wholeheartedly recommending a book by one of my favorite writers, Chuck Wendig: 500 Ways To Be A Better Writer. Chuck Wendig’s blog, Terribleminds.com, is one of my favorite writing blogs but be warned! It is NSFW due to his creative use of the English language.

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That’s it! The next step is formatting your manuscript and uploading it to Amazon. If anyone wants me to continue this series by talking about how to do that please let me know! If enough folks would be interested in me continuing this series, I will!

UPDATE: For your convenience, here are links to the other articles in this series:

Part 1 of 1: How to Write a Book in 15 Days
Part 2 of 3: How to Pick Categories for Your Amazon Book
Part 3 of 3: How to Choose a Title, Create the Artwork and Write the Darn Book!

How to Pick Categories for Your Amazon Book

This blog post is a continuation of a series I began on Wednesday (Write a Book in 15 Days). Today I talk about a topic entire books have been written about—how to select subcategories for your book—so I can't go into anything in depth but hopefully I’ve been able to communicate something helpful.

In what follows I only talk about Amazon. That said, I’d wager what I say, below, is true of any online retailer.

One more thing before we get started. There’s an invaluable (free!) resource I’ve found on the web called the Amazon Sales Rank Calculator. It will do exactly what the name says. If you give it the Amazon Sales Rank of a book it will tell you approximately how many copies of the book are sold per day.

The importance of categories and keywords.

The single most important thing you can do for your book is choose effective categories and keywords. You could write the best book in the world but if folks can’t discover your book, they’re won’t be able to buy it!

Genre and categories.

By this time you should have an idea for a book. Your idea will no doubt be refined over time, but you should have some notion what general topic you want to write about. For example, let’s say you want to write about how to start a website.

1. Think up search terms.

We want to find books about how to start a website. That is, books that are similar to the book you want to write. Why? Because we want to (a) see what keywords these sort of books use, (b) what categories they’re in and (c) how well they’re doing.

Bootstrapping: To start off, we need to think of a few possible search terms. Let’s try “website.” If that doesn’t work we can use “website create” or “website launch.”

2. In the categories “Books” and “Kindle eBooks” search for the keyword.

In our case this keyword is “website.” So head over to Amazon and search for “website” in the category “Books.” If you just want to click a link, here it is.

2a. On the left-hand side of the page you’ll see “Show results for.” Just below this is “Any Category” and under that is “Books.” Under this you’ll see categories listed. For example:

Computers & Technology
Web Development & Design
Blogging & Blogs

And so on. Now pick a category—something you think might be a good fit for your book—and drill down (by which I mean, click on the category to expose its subcategories). What sort of books are coming up? Are they similar to the one you want to write? If so, you’re on the right track, keep drilling. If not, try another category.

2b. Now do the same thing we did in 2a only change the parent category to “Kindle Store.” Here’s the link.

As before, take a look at the categories returned. Which ones stand out to you as being the best fit for your book?

After playing around a bit, looking at various categories, I chose these two:

Subcategory One: Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home

Subcategory Two: Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Entrepreneurship & Small Business > Small Business

3. Find example books: For each subcategory you chose, search on your keyword, sorting by RELEVANCE.

The keyword I’ve been using for my example has been “website.” If you’re not sure what I’m talking about just click the links, above, and you’ll see what I mean.

Now look at the books that came up. Note: These won’t be ordered by how well the books are selling. Don’t worry about this right now. We’re looking for books like the one you want to write because we’re interested in what categories they’re in.

For example, for “Subcategory Two” the first book listed (this will change over time so the first book might be different when you try it) is “Websites: How To Generate Online Income While You Sleep.” We’ll look at this book in more detail in (4), below.

4. For each example book look at (a) its Amazon Best Sellers Rank and (b) the categories it’s doing well in.

For instance, “Websites” has a Best Sellers Rank of 276,667 and is doing relatively well in the following subcategories:

• Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Entrepreneurship & Small Business > Small Business
• Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Entrepreneurship & Small Business > Home-Based
• Books > Business & Money > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home Based

You’ll want to do this for AT LEAST 10 books. For each of these 10 books write down their title, their Best Sellers Rank and the subcategories they’re doing well in.

5. For each subcategory, find out which has the most popular books.

How do you do this? Well, frankly, it’s a bit tedious. That said, this is the most important step.

Go to each subcategory. On the first page, the books will be numbered from 1 to 20. The number 1 book will be the best selling book in that category while the number 20 book will be the book that sells worse than number 19 but better than number 21. The thing is, the number one book for a subcategory can have a really bad Best Sellers Rank. It can be, say, 200,000! If that’s the case, this isn’t a category you want to write for because even if your book lands at number 1, chances are you’re not going to sell a whole lot of copies!

On the other hand, if the number 1 book has a Best Sellers Rank of, say, 200 then that means that books in this category might be popular. Now you want to look at the Best Sellers Rank of the number 20 book. What is it? If it’s 200,000 then it looks like only one or two books are going to be lucrative which makes this subcategory not very attractive.

But imagine that the number 1 book has a Best Sellers Rank of 200 and that the number 20 book has a Best Sellers RAnk of 8,000. That’s good! Keep going. What’s the Best Sellers Rank of the 40th book? If it's under 50,000 then it looks as though this category is popular with readers.

In general, for each subcategory, compare the Best Sellers Rank of the 1st book to the Best Sellers Rank of the 20th book. If the 20th book has a sales rank of LESS THAN 50,000, then look at the Best Sellers Rank of the 40th book. If that book has a sales rank of less than 50,000, then look at the Best Sellers Rank of the 60th book. And so on.

But, we're not done!

6. For each subcategory, find out how many books it includes.

If a popular subcategory has oodles of books then that subcategory becomes less attractive because the competition is fierce. On the other hand, if a popular subcategory has the same amount of books (or fewer books!) as a less popular subcategory then that’s an opportunity. These books are popular and, relatively speaking, there’s not much competition. I’m not sure how long that state of affairs would last, but it’s something to notice.

How you can tell if a book is selling well.

The lower a book’s Amazon Best Sellers Rank the better. A Best Sellers Rank of 1 is the best selling book on Amazon. A rule of thumb is that if a book has a Best Sellers Rank of 100,000 then it sells about one copy a day.

Let’s say that after you’ve done all this research you determine that the categories your book fits with the best aren’t that lucrative. Even the best selling book sells only about one copy every three days. Here are your choices:

a. You could write and publish your book. 

The topic you’ve chosen could be one you’re passionate about and you don’t care how many copies it sells. If this is the case, go for it! Or it could  be that you have a popular website and feel confident that you can drive traffic to your book. Again, if this is the case, go for it! That said, one thing you might consider is that if the overwhelming number of sales are going to be driven from your website, why not sell the book from your website? That way you don’t have to pay Amazon a royalty!

b. You could go back to the drawing board.

You could go back to your essential concept and tweak it until you find a more lucrative category.

There’s no wrong choice, it's completely up to you and what your goals are.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post.

Today I want to recommend, How To Podcast 2016: Four Simple Steps To Broadcast Your Message To The Entire Connected Planet ... Even If You Don't Know Where To Start, by Paul Colligan. I’ve wanted to start a podcast for a while now, but I've found the prospect daunting.

Although I appreciated Paul’s tips the thing I liked most about his book was its encouraging tone. If you’ve never created a podcast the prospect can be intimidating so I loved that Paul constantly stresses how simple it can be. From the blurb: “You don't need expensive equipment and an audio engineer to make a podcast that people will love and listen to. People want to know ... what you have to say and it is easier than ever before to let them.”

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Looks like I won’t be able to finish this post today! I’ll wrap the series up on Monday when I’ll discuss how to choose a title, how to actually write the book. I’ll also talk about the pros and cons of using a pen name as well as how to create an eye-catching cover.

Stay tuned and good writing!

UPDATE: For your convenience, here are links to the other articles in this series:

Part 1 of 1: How to Write a Book in 15 Days
Part 2 of 3: How to Pick Categories for Your Amazon Book
Part 3 of 3: How to Choose a Title, Create the Artwork and Write the Darn Book!