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Marketing

Get set phase website and blog review: EileenAstels.com

6 Comments

Another website review today! I feel like I’ve known Eileen for a while, since I’ve seen her around the comments of other blogs (like Kaye Dacus‘s and Nathan Bransford‘s) for over a year, but we haven’t really “talked” until she came to this blog (woot!). Now she thinks I’m a Superior Scribbler (why, thank you!), and she volunteered for the next website review with her site, EileenAstels.com. Katie and I both also looked over her blog, EileenAstels.blogspot.com, too.


Eileen’s website

Jordan’s comments

I see from your blog that you’re just entering the “get set” phase— you’re submitting to editors and agents now. Congratulations (and good luck)! It’s important that visitors can figure out what your site is about and what they’re supposed to do once there there. Your site looks pretty ready—it’s professional, easy to navigate, and the left navigation makes it easy for your visitors to find the important stuff on your site.

However, your genre and even the fact that you’re a writer almost seemed “buried” below the header. (It was several minutes before I saw it there.) You should use that line of text or something similar right under your name at the top as a tagline to make your purpose, niche and genre apparent when someone stumbles across your site.

Individual pages

In this phase, your contact page is more important than ever. So woot on already having a contact page! If you want, you might also use the form that GoDaddy can install on a contact page. (If you’ll recall, this page is the #1 thing an aspiring author’s website must have.)

You might consider relabeling “Eileen’s Hopefuls.” I guessed what you meant, but it almost sounds a little sad 😉 . Plus, it could be clearer—I knew what I was looking for when I came to your site. Not everyone will. On the plus side, I like your organization here—presenting your books as a planned collection or series. It looks like some of your books’ statuses need to be updated (books 3, 4 and 5).

I’d also recommend that you expand the book descriptions here into full “pitches” like you’d present in a query letter, especially for the later books (because the agents/editors will have already seen the pitch for the first book). It’s totally up to you, but you could think about putting a short excerpt—maybe five pages—on your site, too.

I might reword or delete the first sentence of the last paragraph on the Hopefuls page—it almost sounds like you’re planning on just using the series as a warmup exercise.

Your about page is personable and professional.

Search engine presence

Your search engine presence is good. Your site is #1 in Google and Bing and #2 on Yahoo for [Eileen Astels]. Your blog is #1 on Yahoo, #2 on Google and #6 on Bing for [Eileen Astels]. Other sites in the top ten for your name are the widget for your blog, Facebook, Afictionado, and Amazon.ca. While those are fine, it couldn’t hurt to seek out opportunities to get your name out there more—like you’re doing through coblogging, comments and guest blogging. (Be sure to get the most out of guest blogging if you do it.)

A few other tricks you could do to help:

  • Change the <title> element on your home page to “Eileen Astels Official Website” or “Eileen Astels – Inspirational Romance Author” or something like that. Right now, if I were to bookmark your home page or minimize my browser while viewing it, it would be described as “Home Page.” I’d lose that in my bookmarks. Plus, it’s helpful to have a descriptive title for search engines to understand what your homepage is about. (I don’t use GoDaddy for building sites, but I believe this is under “Page title.”)
    • However, if changing this changes the title of the page on the left-hand side, see if “Eileen Astels Home” or just “Eileen Astels” will fit.
  • Use headers to organize and emphasize your text, rather than just using size/styles. If you look at the source code here, you’ll see that “Jordan McCollum” is in a <h1> tag—a header (top level) tag. That indicates to search engines what the page is about. Use header tags (h1, h2, h3) to organize your text hierarchically. Test this to see what they look like, but in most designs the header tags are large and bold. (Technically, this technique seems to be losing a little power, but it can still help.)
  • Use meta descriptions to control the “snippet” in search engines. Right now, search engines are showing “The Eileen Astels Official Website. Your Subtitle text … Welcome to the web desk of Eileen Astels, an Inspirational Christian Romance Writer. …” But if you have a meta description that matches a query, they’ll show that instead (i.e. without “Your Subtitle text”). You might have to insert them in HTML, like I told Livia).

Social media & your blog

For whatever reason (I’d guess browser incompatibility, but I’m not sure), I don’t see the widget showing up on your homepage. I see you’re on Facebook (on your blog) and Twitter; you could consider having widgets for those on your website, too, in the sidebar, on the main page or on the contact page.

Your blog looks to be a good mix of appealing to and networking with fellow writers, sharing your love of literature and sharing your life in an appropriate way. It looks like your content is fun, interesting and useful, and with 50+ followers and twenty-something comments on most posts you’ve clearly built a community around your blog.

My only advice here would be to set up your blog to be hosted at http://blog.eileenastels.com. You can do this through Blogger and GoDaddy, your domain registrar, without changing anything else, really. Setting up Blogger Custom Domain is a little bit technical, but not very hard.

Why do you want to do this? Because every link to your blog is a “vote” for your site in search engines’ eyes. The more votes you have, the more authority search engines think your site has. But if these links point to http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com, it’s BlogSpot getting all that authority. If you move your blog to blog.eileenastels.com, the votes now all go toward your domain (which many professionals believe will give your site an overall lift—and since Blogger will redirect your links, it can’t hurt!).

This might seem like a lot, but really, you have a good site set up so far and a few tweaks could take it to the next level.

Katie’s comments

Dear Eileen,

Nice to meet another Christian romance writer! 🙂

Your site uses a common layout, but it’s still tasteful, in relaxing colors, and is easy to navigate. Those may seem like simple compliments, but they’re extremely important. (And many people get them wrong.) So congratulations! It is also a perfectly-functioning site, as it is. So these thoughts are just things to consider the next time you feel like doing a re-design.

What would I recommend on your site? Well, to me, there are three main issues.

Web-safe fonts

The font that you’ve chosen for the green bar (that says, “Welcome to the web desk of . . .”) and the scripture verse is very hard to read. At least, it is on my computer. (This is the only thing that might NOT be perfectly-functioning on other computers. Read on to understand why.)

Here’s the thing about using fonts other than Arial, Courier, Georgia, Times, and Verdana . . . you have absolutely no guarantee that your visitors have the same font installed on their computer that you do. What does the browser do if you’ve told it to render “Viner ITC” and the visitor (like me) doesn’t have it? The browser picks one at random and renders the text in it. So the visitor is totally stuck if the browser picks “Webdings” or some illustrative font that renders a picture for each letter. (I have no idea what Viner ITC looks like, so I don’t know what font YOU see on your computer. I also don’t know which, of my 100+ fonts, the browser picked . . . I just know it’s not easy to read.)

The only way to avoid this is to stick to the very, very short list of fonts that are pre-installed on all versions of all operating systems. (Google them, if you’d like.) If you want to do something in a font other than that, you have to use a graphics program to make an image of your text in that font [That’s what I did for my header when I fell in love with that font—Jordan]. (And then make sure you use an alt tag for that image, so that blind Internet users’ text-reading programs can still tell them what the text says [And also search engines!—Jordan].)

While I’m on fonts . . . I’d recommend un-italicizing the rest of your text as well. It’s harder on the eyes, and therefore makes it more likely that your readers will click away without reading it. (You’d be surprised how little a website visitor needs to click away! And most of it is subconscious, too, so you can’t argue with it.)

Conveying your genre in the design

Your header image portrays writing . . . but not inspirational romance. I’d see if you can find something a little more romance-y. Adjust your background colors, if needed, to match . . . but keep them tasteful and relaxing! Also, your header image stretches farther down the page than your navigation menu. That looks a little . . . “off” to me. Maybe see if you can add a few other little items of interest in that bar on the left. Do you have a twitter feed? How about a favorite scripture? Or an image that coordinates what your header? Maybe you can install a widget that will automatically post the titles to your last five blog posts?

Blog/site transition

Finally, your blog’s overall feel doesn’t reflect your site’s at all. It makes the reader do a double-take and think, “Wait! Did I click on that right? Is this really the same person? It can’t be! No . . . wait, (checking back and forth) that’s the same name, so it must be. Okay. . . .”

You don’t want that interruption. If someone visits one, and then later visits the other, you want them to think, “Hey, this looks familiar! I must have been on this woman’s site before or something.” And actually, your blog reflects Inspirational Romance much more than your site does. Where did you get the background image? Do you have permission to use it on your site as well? I can think of several ways to use it, if you’re interested.

Finally, two other tiny things:
4) Your header bar, with your name in it, looks too long . . . almost like you’ve got a blank line under the text. I’d scoot it up against the top of the browser window (so the brown background doesn’t show) and shorten that up so it’s about half the height it currently is.

5) On your tips, hopefuls, and contact pages, you’ve got a light green background behind the text, that’s covering your gradient image. (It’s not . . . and it looks better . . . on your home and about pages.)

I hope this is helpful to you!

-Katie, KatieDid Design

What do you think? What other feedback would you give Eileen on her site?

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Reading

The Believer by Stephanie Black – review

4 Comments

Don’t forget! This week is the RSS contest—so be sure to subscribe to JordanMcCollum.com via RSS or email for your chance to win, and keep your eye on the footer of your email or posts in your feed reader!

I believe I’ve mentioned before that I’d like to be Stephanie Black, right? Well, I finally got ahold of her first book, The Believer. Although plot-wise, it’s completely different from Fool Me Twice (my review), I saw some definite parallels in the complexity of the mystery plots.

The Believer deals with a future dystopia where religion is outlawed. The main character, a history professor, has slowly wandered down the path of “treason,” reading unapproved and even (gasp!) religious literature—a crime punishable by life in prison.

As Dr Roshek (which is an anagram of kosher! Am I not clever?) tries to do the right thing, his world begins to fall apart the day that he is arrested for defending a student accused of treason—a stranger—from a brutal attack.

Like Fool Me Twice, the plot is very complex. I was happy that I couldn’t guess the ending of the book—by the black moment, it definitely looked like there was no way any of the main characters would make it out alive. However, the plot wasn’t so complex that I felt lost or overwhelmed—just like with Stephanie’s other book, as the book neared the climax, I could see some things coming (though there were a few surprises!), but only about 20 pages in advance. She did a good job of planting clues, too—in such a way that you could remember them if you’d paid attention.

In a way, this reminded me of All’s Fair by Julie Coulter Bellon—with terrorists insurgents trying to overthrow the government, but mostly because I was all ready to pull out my American Heritage principles to teach just why insurgencies don’t work. Really, as a history professor, Stephanie’s protagonist could have even lectured on these principles himself.

As always, I have to point out anything that detracted from the story for me. Lt. Alisa Kent, a policewoman torn between duty to her country and her conscience, is supposed to be severe, from her coloring and clothing to her mannerisms and speech. But sometimes she came off as more wooden than severe to me.

I’m eagerly awaiting Stephanie’s latest book, Methods of Madness, which is due out this month!

What do you think? Would you (or your writing) benefit from learning about why insurgencies fail? Do you like books to be complex enough to be unpredictable?

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Marketing

Get-ready phase blog review: LiviaBlackburne.blogspot.com

8 Comments

After we looked at four goals of an author’s website (before publication), now we’re ready to start our website reviews. Just as a reminder, my day job is in Internet and search engine marketing. Kathleen MacIver, my co-reviewer, runs KatieDid website design. Our first victim review is of LiviaBlackburne.blogspot.com. Thanks for being the first to step up to the plate for the website reviews, Livia!


Livia’s site

Jordan’s comments

Hi, Livia! If I had to guess, I’d say you’re in the get ready phase—you’re in the process of writing, but you’re not submitting to agents or editors yet.

In the get ready phase, your goal is to build a community around your blog. You can network with other writers (and maybe agents and editors), you can appeal to readers of your chosen genre, you can tout your platform or skills.

So right now, I’d focus on using your blog in one or more of those ways. As far as usability goes, right now, you’re probably okay, but you’ll want to make some changes before you use your blog as a marketing tool or mention it in a query letter.

Your blog can actually perform the functions of a full website if you add a menu bar. On the menu bar, you’d want to link to your about page, contact page and works page, at a minimum. (Your blog would probably benefit from at least the first two right now.) Additionally, you can buy the domain LiviaBlackburne.com and put your blog on it. (If you want to develop a separate website later, no problem—put your blog on blog.liviablackburne.com and you can add your main website at liviablackburne.com later.)

If you do anything now, I would add a way for someone to contact you directly. Yes, we can tweet you, but if we’re not on Twitter, the only other way we have to contact you is through a blog comment—not very private.

Posts and their content

A huge strength of your blog already is your focus on a topic and a niche—a [neuro]scientific approach to writing. In terms of quality, your posts look great! You have really good, helpful content. Generally, however, when you post more frequently, your blog will grow more. Posts are what blogs are for, after all 😉 . Once a week is probably the minimum, and it’s important to be consistent.

If you have trouble coming up with things to write about, you could break some of your future posts into series of shorter posts (you could get four posts out of a post like yours on the power of prologues, for example). Series also helps to build a sense of anticipation among your blog readers—they’re looking forward to your next post.

You can also add more bulleted lists to help make your reading more scanable, if suited to your posts. Pictures, even stock photos, also help to break up big blocks of text and draw in readers (I use sxc.hu and Flickr Creative Commons search to find mine). See the screencap at right to see how photos break up what otherwise looks like a long block of text. (Also, there’s a bulleted list in there; they stand out more when you do them “for real” instead of just throwing a graphic together like that.) The screencap also includes the recommendations I have made/will make about your sidebar.

For a blog that’s pretty young, you’re already getting multiple comments on your posts—woot! You can always try to appeal more directly to encourage blog comments, such as asking discussion questions at the end of the post.

Similarly, you can appeal directly to your readers to become Followers and subscribers.

Search engine presence

Your search engine presence is decent. I think you’re very smart to start using your married name now (and congrats and good luck on the big day!)—changing later would’ve caused a few problems. You have little competition for your name. This blog is #1 on Yahoo and #6 on Google for your name. (#1 on Google is your Twitter page; #1 on Bing is your other blog.)

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find this blog on Bing. To help improve your rank on Google and get indexed by Bing, look for opportunities for links with your name as the anchor text, like guest blogging, your friends’ blog rolls, etc.

Also, you can sometimes have more control over the “snippet” that appears in search engine results (the description below the blue link) by using the meta description element. The format is:

<meta name="description" content="[description of your site, such as what you have below your blog name]" />

The description you put there will show up as the snippet in search results (if there isn’t a better match for the search terms elsewhere on the page).

Here are some more specific instructions on how to insert header codes in Blogger.

Social media

You’ve done a great job of integrating Twitter with your blog with the Twitter widget in the sidebar and TweetMeme on each post. This goes both ways, since you actively use Twitter and promote your blog posts there (good!). You also promote your subscription options well, though I might recommend moving them above the topics menu (that way we can see the subscribe buttons “above the fold”—in the area of the page you can see without having to scroll down).

I might also move the Twitter widget above the Google ads, but that’s fairly subjective.

In all, you’re off to a good start. A little work on the static pages and posting consistency will get your blog to the next level.

Katie’s comments

Hello Livia!

First, I’d like to say that I find your little catch phrase quite intriguing! What IS a brain scientist’s take on creative writing?

However, this is a website review, so I’ll have to focus my comments on your blog design . . . and frankly, I’m not sure what to say. There’s not really anything to critique, since it appears to be a basic template. A website made from a basic, generic template (99% of the time) is like finding a hardcover book that’s missing its dust jacket (the old kind that had nothing more than a solid color and gold lettering on the edge). There’s nothing to turn you off to the book/site, but you really had to have a compelling reason from somewhere else in the universe to open up that book and start reading, because the book cover itself is offering you nothing.

You do have that little paragraph that explains a little. Now you need to find a design that is the visual interpretation of your concept. A header image/text would help . . . my initial thoughts would be your name long, spaced out (and not too large) and centered, then immediately under it, in a strong technical-looking font, your words, “A brain Scientist’s take on” on the left, leading to “Creative Writing” on the right, but done in a fun “creative” font. This would give a partial “translation” of the text and help show the contrast between “brain scientist” and “creative writing.” (Note: this text would have to be turned into an image . . . check back for the next review for the reason why.)

Then, a background and/or other image here or there that carried that contrasting theme would be fantastic. You’d want something that melds technical/scientific/detailed, with art. (I’d sure have fun designing that one!)

Your layout is fine . . . basic layouts for blogs are often best, since people are there to read content (once they know they’re interested, of course).

So all-in-all . . . you don’t have anything wrong here, but you haven’t really taken any steps toward the two main goals of a website’s design, which are:

  1. Instantly portray what your website is about, and what the visitor will receive if they hang around. (In your case, interesting information that they’re not likely to find anywhere else on the Internet, since the number of brain scientists blogging about writing has got to be extremely small)
  2. Make the site stick in their mind, thereby upping their chances of wanting to come back, coming back, and remembering why they bookmarked it when they do come back.

Feel free to drop me a line if you’ve got any more questions!

-Katie, KatieDid Design

What do you think? Can Livia’s site do more? What advice would you give her?

Photo of book by Marcos Ojeda

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Marketing

Four things an aspiring author’s website must do

9 Comments
This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Aspiring author websites

Guest blogging for literary agent Nathan Bransford a few weeks ago, I wrote about the seven things an aspiring author’s website must have. But in addition to having convenient features and good appearance, an aspiring author’s website must do certain things to fulfill its purpose, depending on what phase your career is in.

(Side note: I have a blog where I talk a lot about blogging, I reference some posts on my other blog here.)

The get ready phase: networking with other writers

When you’re in the “get ready” phase, you’re actively writing and seeking out other writers, but at present you’re not ready to submit to agents or editors. Since your career is just starting out, your website may just be starting out, too, though it won’t hurt if you already have a fairly well-developed site.

Before you’re ready for publication, your website can help you find critique partners, talk with other writers about writing, explore your genre with other writers, and make the connections that help smooth the path for your career—or at least make a solitary profession a lot less lonely. This is your time to start building a community of writers.

How can I do this? The easiest way to make your website into a networking tool is to make sure there are plenty of ways other writers can connect with you—and often the easiest way to do that is through engaging blog content and comments.

The get ready phase: find your niche

While you’re preparing for publication, it’s also a good time to get your web presence ready—especially to find the niche where you’ll fit in the blogging and publishing (and publogging?) worlds.

How do I do this? To find your blog/site niche, ask yourself why you’re blogging and what you’ll be blogging about. It needs to be more than just blogging about your book and your career—and at some point, it will probably need to transition to be more than just appealing to other writers, too.

This is almost like a market analysis—using a search engine, look for other sites of authors with similar books/niches. See what they’re blogging about (if anything). See what angle you can add to the discussion, especially if it relates to your books. If you can use your website to show how you and your books will fit on a bookshelf, your site is ready for the next phase.

The get set phase: show you’re professional and marketable

In the “get set” phase, you’re in the process of searching for an agent or editor. (You may also fall in the “get set” phase if you have an agent who’s currently shopping your manuscript.) In this phase, one of your big goals will be to show your target audience (agents and editors) that you’re serious about your writing and your career.

How can I do this? Professional appearance—which we’ll get to hear a lot about in our website critique series this month, with professional website designer Kathleen MacIver of KatieDid Design giving feedback on our volunteers’ sites.

Also important in professional appearance is the “demeanor” on your website. It’s fine to use casual, laid back text and images—but a website for your career might not be the best place to air out your dirty socks (or any of the rest of your dirty laundry!). Also, be sure to read over (and have others read over) your site for typos, misused words, broken links and images, or anything else that would detract from your appearance.

In this phase, you can still rely heavily on a blog, but it’s a good idea to at least set up a few pages (about, contact, works) with links in the sidebar or create a menu bar to help visitors learn more about you and your writing, and navigate your site.

The get set phase: show off your storytelling

Also in the “get set” phase, and more important in the long run, your website is a place to show off your storytelling abilities. In the end, that’s what’s going to get you an agent, get you sold to a publishing company, and get you sold on the bookshelves.

How can I do this? Showing off your storytelling doesn’t mean that every page and every blog post has to be written as if it were flash fiction. (Unless you want to . . . but that’d probably be weird.) It does mean making sure that you have at least an excerpt of your writing on your site—especially if you’re submitting to agents that don’t ask for or allow sample pages with their queries.

However, do not use your website as the only medium an agent can see your query or sample pages, especially not if they ask for any writing from you. An agent or editor will expect you to email them words (either in the body of the email or as an attachment)—not a link to their website. Never make an agent do more work for your writing when they’re interested. Odds are good that they won’t follow links.

(Side note: if you’re sitting there thinking, “But it’s just one click. Why can’t they do that?”, stop. It’s not just one click. It’s one click per person per item submitted. It’s dozens of clicks per day, minimum, if agents/editors are even interested enough to click on the link anyway. Also some email programs also strip out links.)

This week we’ll start with two website reviews—and our deep POV series will be available in a new format! Next week: four five more things your website must do.

What do you think? What must an aspiring author’s website do? What does your website do—and what do you want it to do?

Photo credits: bookshelf by Josh; handshake by ThinkPanama; Click by Jordan McCollum

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Reading

Your dream review

6 Comments

This week I glanced at the book my husband was reading and the back cover had some glowing remarks from reviewers. I wondered if reviews for my book would say that—and then I wondered if I wanted them to.

What do you think? Take the poll in this post or discuss in the comments!

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News & Contests

Guest blogging today at Six LDS Writers and a Frog

2 Comments

Today I’m guest blogging for the wonderful Stephanie Black (remember how I want to be her?) on Six LDS Writers and a Frog. Check out my post “Splatting Your Writing against the Wall“ on the submission process. And fear.

And if you’re visiting from the Frog Blog, welcome! We’re finishing up a series on deep POV this week with a guest post from the brilliant Alicia Rasley. Next week we’ll start on aspiring author website/blog reviews from me (I’m an Internet marketer in my “day” job. You know, the other day job I have aside from being a mom and writing.) and Kathleen MacIver of KatieDid Design. Feel free to jump into the discussion any- and everywhere!

Be sure to subscribe to this blog’s updates via RSS or email so you don’t miss it—and for the chance to win fabulous prizes in the RSS contest!

Photo by Melissa McCloud

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Technique

Deep POV questions and answers

10 Comments
This entry is part 9 of 14 in the series Deep POV

I should preface this by saying that I’m not an expert—we’ll have the expert on POV, Alicia Rasley, with a guest post on Thursday. But I’m happy to give my opinion on your questions, and I’d love to get your opinions. (Plus, I have a question, too—check it out at the end.)

Deep POV and World building

Iapetus999 says:

I guess my issue is that I have a bunch of world-building to do (SF genre) so how do I do that in deep POV? If I can’t be a narrator explaining the physics of tethered space stations, then how do I get my characters to do it? My characters already know how their world works. They wind up doing things that makes sense to them (and to me) but my readers don’t get it. So something’s missing. Ideas?

That’s a tough one—truly, a real conundrum. I have this problem all the time with characters who either a.) would never, ever sit around describing their everyday world or b.) think and speak in slang or obscure terms that not every reader is going to understand, but everyone else in the scene would.

The classic deep POV solution is to bring in an outsider who will require some sort of explanation, or who’ll draw attention to the things that other native characters don’t even see anymore. That doesn’t always work, of course. Another approach might be to give one of your characters some sort of emotional reaction to the setting—she’s against something about the station for scientific, moral or political reasons, etc. They’re more likely to notice it (and, thus, describe it) when they care.

Of course, I don’t know of many people with emotional reactions to physics principles. Another option might be to add brief scenes early on to help establish not only the characters but their physical world—conducting scientific tests, maintenance, observations, or even scenes where the characters themselves are showing of the physics principles in their movement.

And when the information is really obscure, sometimes you can get away with one or two unobtrusive sentences conveying information that the POV character might already know, as it relates to the context of the scene and doesn’t duplicate information in dialogue, etc.

Of course, it’s always possible to pull out of deep POV for something like this. But at the same time, a prologue from the author on the physics of tethered space stations is probably going to be one of those parts readers skip. On the other hand, if you can weave the description (or scientific principles) into a scene and make it matter, it’s more likely to stick with your reader at least long enough to understand the story.

Any other suggestions?

Inner thoughts, narration and deep POV

Trisha Puddle says:

Hi, Jordan. First of all I want to tell you that this is my favourite blog. I’m learning so much from your posts and they have improved my writing so much. Thanks for that.

Thank you! And you’re welcome 😀 .

. . . I’m . . . now aware that characters can’t see things through the back of their heads and they don’t notice the colour of their own eyes, but I sometimes struggle with their inner thoughts and end up with narration instead of deep POV. I have to make sure that I think and feel like an eight year old, which isn’t hard for me, but I end up slipping out of deep POV sometimes.

May I be so bold as to give this sample for your advice? Is it in deep POV yet?

“You’re still grounded, Molly.” Her mother headed toward the kitchen.

Molly shuffled behind her. She grabbed the knives and forks out of the drawer and placed them on the table. If only she hadn’t lost her temper and wiped rotten duck eggs on Angela. And why did she have to go and make gobbling sounds at the headmistress? She hadn’t meant it to be so loud. Now she’d miss out on precious time with Furble.

Kate came back to the kitchen and handed Molly a disc. “Here, I’ve copied the photos of Furble for you.”

Molly gave Kate a sad little smile. “Thanks. I won’t get to see Furble anymore. I’m grounded for a week.” Tears clouded her eyes and she ran upstairs to her bedroom. After slamming the door, she threw herself on her bed and punched her pillow. She growled like a grizzly bear, “Grrr.” She wasn’t hungry now.

I’m not an expert on MG and this obviously isn’t a critique, but the POV here looks pretty good to me. The second paragraph seems especially good in that respect (though I’m not familiar enough with MG to know whether we need the review of the things she’s done wrong, and obviously you may or may not have just spent the first part of this scene discussing them).

In the last paragraph, obviously we’re in Molly’s POV, so the “sad little smile” she gives Kate at the end may or may not work—I see and probably use something like that a lot, but does she know her smile is little and sad, or does she make a conscious effort to make them that way?

I’d also like a little more insight into exactly what she’s feeling there. She goes from a sad smile and tears in her eyes to door slamming, punching and growling. In these paragraphs, we see a good view of her penitence and regret, but the rest of the emotional progression could be a little clearer, since we’re in her head with her. (It’s kinda crowded, I know, but it’s where lots of readers like to be.)

Any other suggestions on the POV depth here?

When not to use deep POV

Eileen Astels Watson says:

The deeper POV and more consistent you are, the better for me. I’ve been writing with two POV’s per book, so when I want distance from one character I switch to the other’s POV, but I can see where writers would vary the depth if writing in one POV to help keep some unknowns afloat.

I agree, though you have to be very careful with this. Generally speaking, it’s not okay to keep secrets from the reader when the POV character knows those facts and they’re pertinent to the story. If the whole book is in deep POV except for sections where the deep POV character would be thinking about those facts that would make or break the mystery, for example, the reader will probably feel cheated. While you can mislead the reader, you can’t flat out lie to them—if the POV character knows something, your reader should, too.

However, there are certain types of scenes where deep POV doesn’t work so well. My favorite example is a scene showing a deep emotion. We need some of the character’s thoughts to understand what they’re feeling, but sometimes reading their thoughts directly isn’t the most powerful way to get our readers to feel those same emotions. Alicia Rasley talks about effectively portraying deep, emotional scenes in her articles “Emotion without Sentiment” and “Emotion is Physical.”

Alicia herself will be with us Thursday with a guest post on when not to write in deep POV.

My question: family titles and deep POV

I’m divided on this issue in my WIP, so I’d like to hear your opinions. When reading something in fairly deep POV, is it more natural to refer to the POV character’s family members as “his dad” or just “Dad”? Both have their advantages and disadvantages in my opinion, and I’ve seen both in first-person as well. I’m still pretty torn, so I’m turning it over to you. (Update: I’ve found my final answer.)

So what do you think on all of these issues?

Photo credits: globe—Sanja Gjenero; frustrate—John De Boer; question—Svilen Mushkatov

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Works

July Writing Challenge Results

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Last month (is it August already?!), I participated in a writing challenge hosted by Tristi Pinkston. Well, actually, I did almost no writing, unless you count rewriting, but then again I did have two family reunions, a road trip, moving my sister and a long visit from my family in July, so I tried to take it easy on myself.

Yeah, apparently I don’t know what that phrase means.

So I had to lighten my own load with revised goals the first week of the month—and I’m glad I did.

  1. Edit 350 pages of my MS. Woot! I mentioned this before, but not only did I finish the two rounds of editing, I added a bunch of words (side note: once I had a writing client inform me that you cannot use “not only” without the accompanying “but also.” Riiiight.). I’m still working on cutting. Well, not really. I’m working on getting chapters to critique partners, still. My mom read it and liked it, though 😀 .
  2. Read my library books:
  3. Read at least one book off my Summer Reading Thing list.: Lockdown, reviewed last week! Hm. . . . two challenges this summer. Have I ever met a challenge I didn’t like? (Oh yeah.)
  4. Continue to mull over the exact plot, premise and motifs for my next WIP. (If I’m feeling really ambitious—or, y’know, stuck on a long road trip—even outline one book or the full story arc.) Mulled like cider, baby. (Um, wow . . . let’s just move on.) I have most of the book outlined, though I still need to clarify a few things and work on the conclusion. Still doing a lot of research in this area, and I definitely want to brush up in the genre before I nail down the characters and events, but I’ve already written a little of the opening. It was tough going, though, and I don’t like fighting with my writing from the beginning, so we’ll see.
  5. Stay current on critique partners’ edits. Thankfully, there wasn’t much demand in this area.

Even if you weren’t part of the challenge, how did your writing (or your vacation 😉 ) go for July?

Photo credit: Richard Dudley

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