Check Your Writing For Adverbs And Other Problem Words: MS Word Macros

Today I'm going to do something a bit different. I'm going to talk about how you can augment MS Word's ability to check grammar. Yes there are professional editing programs that do all this, and more, but sometimes you don't want to copy and paste your story into an online editor, especially if it's a 100,000 word novel!

Before I bought my new computer I had a macro for MS Word that highlighted "ly" adverbs, as well as other problem words, that clutter up your writing. For instance, "very", "that", "much".

I love the quotation, attributed to Mark Twain, "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

Unfortunately, when I transfered my data over to my new computer I forgot my macros so they all went to the great macro heaven in the sky. Now keep them in Dropbox, lesson learnt.

This post has two parts. First, I'll show you the macros I use and then I'll go through how to use them in MS Word.

Let's get started!

The Macro: Finding "ly" Adverbs

The following macro will highlight all the "ly" words in your manuscript. I wanted to make it highlight the entire word, but at the moment it only highlights the "ly" part of it. Oh well, it works! The original macro, written by Subcortical over at Stackoverflow, can be found here: Microsoft Word Macro for highlighting multiple words.

Sub highlight_ly()
   Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.Highlight = True
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "ly"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchSuffix = True
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

Here's another macro that finds, and highlights, words that often serve only to clutter text. The original macro was written by Subcortical and can be found in the same article I linked to, above.

Sub highlight_targets()
  Dim range As range
  Dim i As Long
  Dim TargetList

  TargetList = Array("very", "that") ' put list of terms to find here

  For i = 0 To UBound(TargetList)

    Set range = ActiveDocument.range

    With range.Find
    .Text = TargetList(i)
    .Format = True
    .MatchCase = True
    .MatchWholeWord = True
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False

    Do While .Execute(Forward:=True) = True
    range.HighlightColorIndex = wdTurquoise
    Loop
    End With
  Next
End Sub

Using the macros

I have MS Word 2007, so keep that in mind if you're using a different version.

1) Go into MS Word and click "View" on the ribbon.

2) On the far right of the ribbon you'll see MACROS. Click it.

3) A Macro dialog box pops up. Type in the macro name "highlight_ly" and click CREATE. This will bring you into the Microsoft Visual Basic editor.

4) Copy this text:

   Options.DefaultHighlightColorIndex = wdYellow
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.Highlight = True
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = "ly"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchSuffix = True
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll

Now paste it between "Sub highlight_ly" and "End Sub".

5) Save the file (Crtl + S) and exit the Microsoft Visual Basic editor.

6) In MS Word repeat steps (1) and (2). This time instead of typing in a name and pressing the create button, select "highlight_ly" and press RUN. All the words ending in "ly" should be highlighted in yellow.

If you would like to also highlight words such as "this" and "that" repeat steps (1) through (6) only this time for the macro "highlight_targets". Note that the "highlight_targets" macro can be modified to include whatever words you'd like to highlight. All you have to do is include the words in the TargetList array.

I hope that's clear! (I can hear folks grumbling, "Yea, clear as mud!") If you have questions, do ask, and if there are any macros you'd like to share, please do!

Other articles you might like:
- Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding
- How To Design A Great Looking Book Cover
- The Best Way To Build A Writer's Platform Is To Write
- Aftermath Of The Department of Justice Lawsuit: Amazon Customers Getting Refunds

Links:
- Here's a great article on the passive voice from The University of North Carolina.

Photo credit: Catherinette Rings Steampunk.

How To Design A Great Looking Book Cover

Just the other day I wished someone would hand me a simple set of rules for designing great looking book covers.

I am in awe of some of the gorgeous covers on Amanda Hocking's books. There is no way in a million years I'd be able to do something like that. That said, I do believe there's no reason the average person (and I am exceedingly average when it comes to graphic design) can't do a decent book cover. We just need guidance.

Enter J.M. Ney-Grimm and her Cover Design Primer. If you're doing your own book covers--or even just thinking of it--this post is a must read. I'm making it sound like a book, but it's not. It's a medium-length post that gives more practical information on how to design a book cover than I've come across anywhere else, books included!

Here's an example of what I mean.

Let's talk fonts. J.M. tells us there are 6 main categories: Old Style, Modern, Slab Serif, Sans Serif, Script and Decorative. Each category contains certain representative fonts.

Old Style: Goudy, Baskerville, Garamond, and Palatino.
Modern: Braggadocio and Engravers MT.
Slab Serif: Blackoak, Cooper Black, Rockwell Extra Bold, and Wide Latin.
Sans Serif: Helvetica, Charcoal, Skia, and Impact.
Script: Apple Chancery, Brush Script, Gabriola, and Lucida Handwriting.
Decorative: Zapfino, Desdemona, Herculanum, and Lucida Blackletter.

Here's the tip:

Three rules for choosing fonts for a book cover: (I didn't include J.M.'s images, you can see them here.)

1) Never use more than one font from each category
That is, Braggadocio (modern) and Helvetica (sans serif) might work well together, but Skia and Charcoal (both sans serif) will not.

Why?

Because the human eye likes patterns to be either exactly alike or clearly different. Similar, but not the same, makes the human eye struggle.

2) Do use two different fonts
One font – say all Palatino – is overly calm, sedate, even boring.

Two fonts is interesting, but doesn’t overwhelm the eye.

Three fonts (each from a different category, of course) starts to be cluttered and busy.

3) Use contrast to draw the eye
Contrasting sizes, contrasting colors, contrasting fonts. You do want to catch the attention of potential readers, right? Compare the examples below [see J.M.'s article].

Can you break these rules? Certainly. The instant I learned them I thought of exceptions that work beautifully. But the vast majority of covers that appeal to readers follow them.

Is there more to typography? Of course. But these foundation concepts are enough to produce surprisingly good design results when choosing fonts.

J.M's discussion of fonts is just the beginning. She goes on to talk about the overall composition of a cover. As I say, great article. Again, here's the link: Cover Design Primer.

Thanks to Passive Guy for mentioning J.M.'s article.

Other articles you might like:
- How To Become A Full Time Indie Author
- How Do Writers Get Their Ideas? Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin & Stephen King
- How To Build A Platform: Why Every Writer Needs A Website

Photo credit: Unknown

The Best Way To Build A Writer's Platform Is To Write

Dean Wesley Smith holds that writers should write. Period. Sure "promotion can help book sales when done right and for the right reasons" but Dean advises authors:

Don't bother. Keep writing and selling. (The New World of Publishing: Promotion)

Don't promote, just write

That advice flies in the face of much of what independent writers have been told (for instance the advice John Locke gives in his book, How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks in 5 Months) so if you're skeptical I don't blame you. That said, best-selling author Erin Kern is a great example of what Dean's talking about.  First, though, here's what Dean says in his own words:

Put your story out on the market either to editors or readers and forget it and focus forward on learning and writing more stories. It can’t hurt you to have them out. No one will read them if they are a stinking pile of crap. So no big deal.

And if you happened to have gotten close to a story that works, then readers will pay you money for it without you doing a thing to push them. And you will then know and can take credit for writing a good story.

And when that happens, take the credit. You will deserve it.

Keep writing and learning and writing and learning and writing and learning.

There will be enough time down the road for promotion of the right book.

And keep having fun. (The New World of Publishing: Maybe You Wrote a Good Book)

In short, the best thing you can do as a writer to help sell your work is to write. Rather than spending time and money to market your last book, write a new one.

Dean Wesley Smith knows what he's talking about. He has written hundreds of books (I'm including his ghostwritten stories) and worked successfully in a high-risk, turbulent industry, for at least 30 years.

As part of my series on building a writer's platform I want to examine what Dean says about marketing and how it applies to platform building, but here's the short version. (And please keep in mind this is just my opinion.)

I think constantly writing stories, constantly putting new work out on the market (whether you submit work to editors or publish it yourself) is a smart way of building a platform! I don't think writing and platform building are separate; rather, they are two sides of the same coin.

For instance, if you write a horror story and it sells well you're branding yourself--or at least that pen name--as a horror writer. This happened to Stephen King. His first big book was Carrie and that went a long way to brand him, not only as a writer of horror, but of a certain kind of horror. The creepy, oh-my-gosh-I-can't-look-away white-knuckle kind.

Skeptical? Let's take a look at Erin Kern's fabulous success story.

Erin Kern

When Erin Kern published her first book, Looking For Trouble, she sold one copy in two weeks, and that was to her husband! She writes:

The first month Looking for Trouble was published (October 2010) I sold about 10 copies. The next month I sold 12.

And that was with lots of marketing. And when I say lots, I mean some reviews from romance websites, and the occasional feature.

Erin published Looking For Trouble in October 2010. Six months later the book started to take off and Erin saw the book's Amazon ranking steadily improve. What changed? Erin writes:

But my sales did eventually take off. In April 2011 I started seeing a steady uphill climb in ranking. By then I’d all but quit marketing and was basically working on my next book. In fact, the only change I’d made was the price of the book.

I lowered it from $2.99 to $.99.

The point? What sold the book was the book and finding the right price point. Erin writes:

To make a long story short, Looking for Trouble was on the Amazon top 100 for 4 months. Sometime in June, the book peaked at #6 in the paid Kindle store, and #1 on three different lists. In that month alone, I sold 38,000 copies. What was I doing to sell all these books?

Nothing.

The higher ranked your book is, the more exposure you get. Readers brows the bestseller lists all the time to see who they should read next.

Erin speculates that the self published book is the new query letter because it can get you noticed by agents, editors and publishers.

So, what's the truth about making it as a writer in this new age of digital publishing? Erin sums it up nicely:

You just have to write a great book (actually more than one would be helpful). My second book, Here Comes Trouble, was in the Amazon top 100 2 weeks after I published it.

Great advice! To write a great book, you have to write a lot and write regularly. It's a simple recipe for success but far from easy to follow.

I heartily recommend Erin Kern's article, Are Self-Published Books the New Query Letter?

Other articles you might like:
- Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding
- Building A Platform That Meets Your Needs
- Jim Butcher Begins Another Series, The Cinder Spires: It's Steampunk!

Articles referenced:
- Are Self-Published Books the New Query Letter?, by Erin Kern
- The New World of Publishing: Promotion, by Dean Wesley Smith
- The New World of Publishing: Maybe You Wrote a Good Book, by Dean Wesley Smith

Photo credit: Pascal Maramis

Aftermath Of The Department of Justice Lawsuit: Amazon Customers Getting Refunds

Some folks have received emails from Amazon informing them they'll be getting money because of the settlement reached between "several major e-book publishers and the Attorneys General of most U.S. states and territories". Specifically:

While we will not know the amount of your credit until the Court approves the settlements, the Attorneys General estimate that it will range from $0.30 to $1.32 for every eligible Kindle book that you purchased between April 2010 and May 2012. (past e-book purchases)

There are conditions of course. To read all about it click here: Customer FAQ for Attorneys General E-book Settlements.

Other articles you might like:
- Amazon's KDP Select Program: The Power Of Free
- Amazon's KDP Select Program: Is Exclusivity Worth The Perks?

Photo credit: 401(K) 2012

Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding

It's raining.

I love rain and the gentle patter it makes on window panes. I don't love bundling up and sitting, damp, in my favorite coffee shop sipping overpriced espresso. So this Saturday morning I stayed home, curled up with my iPad, and caught up on reading Penelope Trunk's blog.

Penelope can make anything interesting! One of her posts was about bedbugs and I was fascinated.

I've posted about Penelope's blog before, but today I noticed she has a page devoted to the topic: How to blog. Why hadn't I seen it before? Anyway, as you'd expect, she gives great advice, and I'd encourage you to read it, but what I want to talk about is something Penelope said about branding.

Penelope didn't call it branding, she talked about picking a topic for your blog, but what she said made me think. She writes:

Pick a topic — you can change it when you know what you’re doing.
This is like dating. Pick something that seems good, and if it isn’t, try again. Don’t get hung up on topic. As in dating, you’ll know when you’ve found one that’s the right fit. There are some obvious things, like pick a topic you have a lot to say about, pick something that interests you, pick something that will help your career. This is great advice, but you already know that if you look for a perfect match you’ll never actually go on a date. (The easiest instructions for how to start a blog)

I think this advice applies not just to picking a topic for a blog--making a blog a cooking blog, or a book blog, or a personal finance blog--but also to picking a public face, for building a platform, for branding.

It turns out Penelope has written a post about this: Tips for building your personal brand. If you're in the process of building a community it's worth a read even though it wasn't written specifically for writers.

Other articles you might like:
- 12 Writing Tips: How To Be A Writer
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- 7 Tips On How To Get Your Guest Post Accepted

Photo credit: Amanda Slater

Jeff Bezos: Amazon Makes No Money On Sales Of Kindle Ereaders Or Tablets

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, recently confirmed what I'd always assumed, that Amazon doesn't make any money on its ereaders or tablets. Bezos said:

"We want to make money when people use our devices, not when people buy our devices."

This differs markedly from Apple's strategy. My question: Can it work? I've always wondered how much more, on average, a consumer buys through Amazon after purchasing an ereader or tablet.

Well, now I know! Bezos remarked that "users' appetite for media appeared to grow once they owned one of his devices." (Is it just me, or does that sound ominous? Makes me think of alien mind-altering technology. You will buy more. No? Just me? Okay ...)

"What we find is that when people buy a Kindle they read four times as much as they did before they bought the Kindle.

"But they don't stop buying paper books. Kindle owners read four times as much, but they continue to buy both types of books."

People read four times as much! Wow.

Read the entire BBC article here: Kindle Fire HD and Paperwhite sales make Amazon no profit.

Thanks to PG for mentioning it.

Other articles you might like:
- Kristen Lamb: Don't Let Trolls Make You Crazy
- How To Format A Word Document For Amazon's KDP Publishing Program
- Penelope Trunk Discusses Time Management

Photo credit: James Duncan Davidson from Portland, USA

Building A Platform That Meets Your Needs

A while ago I wrote an article entitled: How To Build A Platform: Why Every Writer Needs A Website, in which I argued that just having a blog wasn't good enough, you need a website too.

These days, I'm not so sure. I think having a blog, even a blog on Blogger.com, might be good enough. Here's the thing: What you need depends on what your goals are.

What is the main thing folks are going to come to your website/blog for? And who are these folks going to be? You might be staring at these words shaking your head, thinking, "And how the heck would I know who's going to come and visit my site?"

That's a fair question. Often in the beginning we don't know who these folks, our visitors and, ultimately, our readers, are going to be.

Come one, come all

Whether you decide to go with a static site, a blog or a full-blown website (I talk more about this later) you'll need to keep at it. The key phrase here is: be consistent.

Naturally if all you're going to be putting up is a static site--a webpage with information about who you are, where you can be reached (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)--then being consistent is fairly easy. You just need to update the page every six months or so, or when something changes (you put out a new book, become active in new forms of social media, and so on). Otherwise, there isn't much to do!

If you don't know who your visitors are going to be you can still design a website. I'll go into more detail later, but there are roughly three broad kinds of sites you can put up. I call them the starter package, the starter package plus blog and the full-featured site.

As the name implies, the most basic of these is "the starter package". This is a static website that simply tells visitors how to reach you, where you are on the web (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), what you've written and how to contact you. If this is all you want, blogger.com or wordpress.com would likely meet your needs. Make sure, though, that the service you choose allows you to use your own domain name (blogger.com does and wordpress.com does but you need to pay a fee). That's a must. Why? If you ever decide to move your site from, say, wordpress.com, to another hosting site, your readers will be able to find you at you new home through your domain name.

By the way, I know it might seem like a contradiction in terms to recommend blogging sites for a static site! As it happens, you can set blogger.com up as a static site (I should probably write a blog post about how to do that) and I imagine the same is true for wordpress.com as well. The great thing about starting off with a site like blogger.com is that it does all the search engine optimization (SEO) for you and can list your site with all the major search engines.

If you want to be slightly more ambitious, you could go with a "starter package plus blog" and blog regularly (keep in mind that if you blog once a month you're blogging regularly!). You can blog even if you don't know what sort of audience you're reaching out to, just talk about whatever interests you. Over time you'll see themes emerge. Also, after looking at your viewer statistics, you'll notice your readers are more interested in certain articles, certain themes, than others. After a few months you'll get a feel for what you like to blog about and also what your readers are interested in.

If, in the beginning, you don't have an idea who your audience will be then I wouldn't advise you starting off with what I'm calling a full-featured site. The way I think of it, a full-featured website one that is dynamic and easily customizable, you likely would have a blog and could even have forums or open an online store! (For example, stephenking.com)

But with a full-featured site you'll also have additional concerns. This kind of site can do a lot but, as with everything, there are tradeoffs. For instance, the more cool features you add (e.g., link tracking), the slower the site will run. A few bells and whistles may not make a difference but at some point you'll wonder why your pages are loading slowly. Also, this sort of site is complex and complex things tend to break. If you can fix it yourself, great! Otherwise maintenance can be expensive. Either way, maintaining this kind of a site is time consuming.

You have an idea who your visitors will be

We've just discussed how to go about building a site if you don't know who your target audience is. Now let's talk about how to build a site when you have some idea what kind of a community you want to build.

Shared interest
How do you build community? You reach out to those who share an interest of yours. It could be anything. What are you interested in? Steampunk? Scifi movies of the 80s? Doctor Who? Skiboarding? Cooking? Hiking? Whatever it is, there are people, lots of people, just as passionate about it as you are. The trick is letting them know your site exists.

By the way, when I said you could build your site around any theme/idea that was a bit of an exaggeration. What you write about has to have some connection to the shared interest you've built your community around. For instance, if you write science fiction, by all means, talk about scifi movies, conventions, trivia. Talk about collectibles. Even talk about other scifi writers! Eventually, if you keep at it, a community will form.

Cookbooks are popular. They sell well. Why? The tie-in between a writer's community and how to reach that community is obvious. You write books about food and it is very easy to blog about food, post pictures of food, conventions, good places to eat in your local community and across the country, and so on.

I mean, who doesn't like beautiful close-up pictures of desserts? Especially chocolate ones. (Oh my gosh, if I wrote cookbooks I would gain SO much weight. Anyway, moving on.)

Making the connection between your area of interest and your community
How do you make the connection between what you are interested in--for instance, mystery stories with sleuths who cook--and building a community? 

Interaction

 
If I could I would have that word, "interaction", blink red and blue and have big yellow dancing arrows pointing to it. But that's not a surprise, is it? That's how me make friends. Interaction forms the basis for any social endeavor. And that really is the other key word: social. I'm talking about building a community, not a list. For that to happen, for a community to form, there has to be interaction.

And that means you need to find a way to interact with the people who you would like in your community.

I think I'm going to leave it there for today. I covered more material than I thought I would. In the next segment I'll talk about interaction and social media but I want to say here that I don't think social media is necessary for you to form and interact with a community.

Good writing!

Other articles in this series:
- What Is A Writer's Platform?
- Does Every Writer Need A Platform?

Other articles you might like:
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- On The Art Of Creating Believable Characters: No Mr. Nice Guy
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity

Photo credit: "KIUKO"

Jim Butcher Begins Another Series, The Cinder Spires: It's Steampunk!

Jim Butcher is starting a new series, and it's steampunk!

On August 16, 2012 Jim Butcher wrote:

Once the revision of COLD DAYS is done, I will be writing the first book of my Steampunk series, which is called The Cinder Spires at the moment. The first book, (working title of 'The Aeronaut's Windlass') should be around the length of the first Alera book, and I'm planning to get it done by year's end, AT WHICH POINT I will then begin the next Dresden novel. :)

For one heart-rending moment I thought writing The Cinder Spires might mean he was discontinuing work on the Dresden Files. Whew! It will be a sad day when that happens.

I'm looking forward to reading the new series! :)

Thanks to Bastard Books for posting about The Cinder Spires.

Other articles you might like:
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- What Is Writing? Telepathy, Of Course!
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- How To Write Every Day: Jerry Seinfeld And The Chain Method

Photo credit: Siriuswerks

What Is Writing? Telepathy, Of Course!

What is writing?
To answer this question we need to examine what we're doing when we write, when we tell stories. In other words, what is the essence of story telling?

Here's what Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files, has to say:

Writing, in its most essential sense, is an artificial means for getting thoughts and images which reside in YOUR brain over to the guy holding your book in the most effective and accurate fashion possible, so that the reader will successfully translate your thoughts into HIS brain. The written word uses symbols to describe sights, sounds, and situations, in order to let the reader create the story inside his own imagination as he reads.

Writing is the original virtual reality. (Jim Butcher, Story Craft)

(I find it hugely interesting that in my all-time-favorite book, On Writing, Stephen king describes writing as telepathy. Same idea, different expression.)

To make sure the transmission of thoughts, images and feelings goes well we work on the art and craft of writing. Jim Butcher calls it Story Craft. He writes:

Story craft, writing technique, story structure. They're all different names that mean the same thing [...]. They describe the practice of methodically approaching the writing of any given story with a definite, specific goal, and a plan for making that narrative engaging and entertaining as possible. (Jim Butcher, Story Craft)

In other words:

Simply put, story craft is nothing more and nothing less than manipulating the emotions of your reader. [emphasis mine] (Jim Butcher, Story Craft)

To write well, we must evoke emotions in our readers. There are two key things here: emotions and readers. Currently I'm writing a series on how build and use a writer's platform to attract readers. Next week I'll talk more about how to make our characters likable.

Good writing. Cheers!

Other articles you might like:
- On The Art Of Creating Believable Characters: No Mr. Nice Guy
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity
- What Is A Writer's Platform?
- Does Every Writer Need A Platform?

Photo credit: Mario Pleitez

Organize Your Novel With Hiveword

I love the Writer's Knowledge Base. Every week mystery writer Elizabeth S. Craig posts writing related links she has tweeted that week and enters them into the knowledge base.

At the moment the knowledge base contains just under 2,000 links!

But that's not what I want to talk to you about. I'm excited about Hiveword, the online fiction organizer. When you sign up (it's free!) you get a sample story to play with, Harry Porter and the Guitar of Fire, that will help you figure out how it all works.

Dashboard - Click to enlarge

Click on the story title and your story is displayed in the editor:

Editor - Click to enlarge

Scenes (and sequels!) are the building blocks of stories. So lets add a scene, I've called it: Harry learns to fly.

A new scene - Click to enlarge

Having created a new scene we add characters, which POV the scene is from, as well as the setting and the plotline(s) that are going to be furthered.

Need to create a new character? That's not a problem. A new character sheet will be generated. You can specify what your character looks like, where they work, their likes and dislikes, and so on. This is a (gloriously) long form so I don't have a screenshot for you.

Hiveword is a free online editor that's definitely worth a look. I think I'll use it to write my next short story.

Don't forget to take a look back at the Writer's Knowledge Base every once in a while if you need inspiration or feel like brushing up on a few skills. :-)

What do you use to write with? MS Word? Wordperfect? Scrivener? Please share! :)

Other links you might like:
- What Is A Writer's Platform?
- Want Help With Editing? Try Free Editing Programs
- Why Writers Need Editors

Photo credit: Scrap Pile

Does Every Writer Need A Platform?

In the first blog post of this series (What Is A Writer's Platform?) I discussed what a writer's platform is (a way, a vehicle, for reaching out to, and building, community). It is a way to reach out to your community, your audience, to those who want to read your work and will pay for the privilege.

Today I want to talk about who needs to build a platform.

Does every writer need a platform?
A writer can produce the most riveting prose imaginable but if you don't have readers you're not going to be able to pay the rent. And paying rent is important. I have no desire to end up under a bridge trying to wrestle the good cardboard box from Big Martha. Of course, one doesn't have to make a living through writing, but if you want to then you'll need readers to buy your work. It doesn't get more basic than that.

How does a writer get readers? By building a platform.

Simple, right? Yes, but don't let that make you too comfortable. Building a platform is one of those things that's simple but not easy. For instance, losing weight is simple: eat less; it's sure not easy though.

It's simple to build up a large Twitter following (I'll have more to say on this later), it's simple to blog regularly. You're a writer after all, producing a regular blog post is something you can do. But it's not easy. It's not easy to find the time to blog, it's not easy to think of topics to blog about. You have a busy life and other responsibilities gobble up your time like a teenager at an eating contest. But, in the end, either you're working your way toward becoming a professional writer or your not, and professional writers write.

Are you sure every writer needs a platform? 
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. You might be thinking: No one had a Twitter account until six years ago or a Facebook account until eight years ago. This social media thing could be a fad. And as for writing blog posts, wouldn't it ultimately be more productive if I spent my time writing my next book? And, when I'm published, if my readers want to know what I've written I don't need to give them a website, they can go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, or any one of the gazillion other online bookstores that are popping up like mushrooms after a rain, and do a search on my name.

You're right.

It is possible for a previously unpublished writer, one with no platform, to become famous overnight. This happened to Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus. Of course she wrote for years and made sacrifices and toiled over her manuscript. AND she believed in it enough to submit it, to have it rejected, and to submit it again. Still, Erin's success was a bit like winning millions of dollars in a lottery. In fact, I think there are more big lottery winners than there are writers who have had this kind of luck!

So, do you need to go through the time-consuming task of building a platform? Honestly, I can't say. You could be the next Erin Morgenstern!

What I believe is this: The more people who know about you, who you are, what you write, the more people who read your work and recommend it to their friends, the more likely it is you'll be able to make enough money (and possibly more!) to do this writing thing full time.

How much time should I spend building a platform?
The devil's advocate is right about something: building a platform can gobble up your precious writing time. You certainly don't want to spend more time building your platform than you do writing! That said, even if you only have a half hour a day to write you might be able to find a way to engage in social media for short bursts during the day (while you're waiting in line for coffee, walking to the corner store, etc.).

If you don't have any time to spend on social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) it takes only a few minutes to put up a static page on the web. It's important to have an online 'home', something that tells people who you are, what you write and how they can reach you. After all, even if you don't want to hear from the general public, it would be a good idea to give agents, editors and publishers a way of contacting you.

In the next section I'm going to discuss the nuts and bolts of how to go about building a platform, starting with your online home: your website.

Other articles you might like:
- Building A Platform, Part One: What Is A Writer's Platform?
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity

Photo credit: BIGDOG3c

On The Art Of Creating Believable Characters: No Mr. Nice Guy

I love my characters. This is what you'd expect. After all, I've created them, they have (in some way I don't begin to understand) been formed from the very stuff of who I am.

So perhaps it's not surprising I find it agonizingly difficult to put my protagonist in harms way, to tempt her, to see her stumble and fall all in the service of creating conflict. I'm not talking about physical, external, obstacles/conflict like the kind Jason Bourne or Indiana Jones might encounter--blocked lanes, men with guns, exploding cars. These type of obstacles are important--they batter the character, test their courage, their mettle--but the real grist of character development occurs when internal obstacles, internal conflicts, enter the mix.

You don't--I don't--want my lead character (who, since I write in the first person I can't help but think of, at least a little bit, as me) to betray what they believe, to make a wrong choice, to fail or do something she'll regret. And yet these are the events which create tension and drive a story forward.

Internal conflicts set up an impossible choice for our characters. These aren't win-win situations. Just the opposite.

Janice Hardy has written an excellent article on ways to force your characters to do things neither of you want them to do ("Forcing the Issue: Adding Conflict to Your Scenes"). Here are five questions you can ask yourself as an author that will help you grow horns (and perhaps a tail) so you can introduce internal conflict into your story and give your saintly protagonist a few regrets.

1) "How can I force them to go against their morals/belief system?"
Janice writes:

This plays off the inner conflicts. If they need to steal a car to save the girl, how can I make stealing that car involve a choice that would eat at them?

For instance, the car could belong to someone in the mob and "borrowing" it would mean your character would owe them a favor--if they decided not to kill her first!

2) "How can I force them to make a choice they really don't want to make?"
For instance, a triage situation. You have two people, a friend a your client. Your friend has stood by you during difficult times, you've known this person their whole life. They've become more than a friend, they've become your family. You also have aclient, someone you have pledged to protect and take care of. They are both mortally wounded but you only have enough supplies to save one of them. Which one will you choose?

Either way your protagonist chooses they will lose something of great importance.

3) "How can I force them to make a bad choice?"
Janice writes,

Mistakes are great fodder for plot. Protagonists can act, and that action causes more trouble than they were trying to prevent in the first place. This works even better if they make the wrong choice because they're try avoid violating one of their belief systems.

Let's say your character believes strongly that meat is murder. She is a hot-shot bodyguard and has taken on a job to pose as her client's date at a black tie affair. Her professional reputation is on the line: she must keep him safe no matter what. Your client has received a tip that an assassin tasked with killing him is attending the banquet.

At the gathering their obnoxious host announces, long and loudly, that the only good animal is a dead one--and preferably slow roasted with a touch of pepper. Your character is presented with a choice: eat meat and stay at the party so she can guard her client or be true to what she believes and refuse to eat meat. This, though, will get her kicked out of the party and put her client in danger.

Your protagonist remains true to her beliefs/ethics and refuses to eat meat. While standing up for what one believes is admirable it forces her to abandon her professional obligations. This leaves her client vulnerable and he is killed.

4) "How can I force them to fail?"
Your character, if you want them to be interesting, can't win all the time. They have to fail as well. But they can't just fail. The trick is to get them to fail because of an inner conflict.

I just finished reading A Discovery of Witches. In it the protagonist, Diana Bishop, fails to extract the secrets from an enchanted grimoire because she has sworn not to use her magic.

Her inner conflict is that she has a desire, a need, to be normal, to make her way in the world without her magic because she feels it was magic that was responsible for her parents' death. This failure--which may in the end turn out to have been a good thing--is the event that launches the protagonist on her journey. This is the event the story grows from and revolves around. No failure, no story.

5) "How can I force them to do something they'll regret?"
For instance, take the situation in (2), the triage example. Let's say that, at her friend's urging, the protagonist let her friend die and saved the client.

But perhaps the friend wasn't just a friend, perhaps he was her business partner. Perhaps he had a wife and children.

Now your protagonist is faced with running the business all by herself. On top of that her partner's widow hates her. Still, she doesn't shirk her obligations and takes on the financial responsibility of of helping support her late friend's widow and children.

You can see how the protagonist could regret the choice she had made for the rest of the novel.

Conclusion
Janice concludes:

It's easy to throw more "stuff" in the way of your protagonist, but also look at your scenes and see what mental obstacles you can toss into their path. Not only can that help deepen your plot, but deepen your characterization and themes as well.

Agreed! I would encourage you all to read Janice's article in its entirety: Forcing the Issue: Adding Conflict to Your Scenes.

Do you suffer from NWS (Nice Writer Syndrome)? Take Janice Hardy's test: Do You Suffer From NWS?: Living With Nice Writer Syndrome.

How do you produce inner conflict in your characters? Do you have any hints or tips you'd like to share? :)

Other articles you might enjoy:
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- What Is A Writer's Platform?
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity

Photo credit: Rafael Peñaloza