News & Contests, Technique, Publishing

February Thinky Links!

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Over the month of January, I collected the stories I found on Twitter and in my feeds that were just too good to miss and put them together for you! Welcome to “Thinky Links“!

Author Janice Hardy offers some good advice on how to cut a scene without hurting your story

Kristen Lamb gives a really good example of how to start in medias res.

The Editors’ Blog looks at the use of coincidence in fiction, why it’s bad—and how to fix it.

I’ve been working hard on revising my Nano novel, so I’m really far behind on my feeds, but I did happen to see two good posts on EditTorrent recently, the kind that make me want to run around telling people “I’ve been vindicated” in an imaginary battle I was having with no one. The first covers showing versus telling in an interesting way (i.e. not writing 101), including that was is not always bad and is not the same thing as passive voice, and the role of telling in exposition.

The second is how to avoid that obnoxious “As you know, Bob” (or Alphonse) dialogue by slipping in backstory, characterization and other information through subtle cues. I LOVE working on this, and Alicia gives great examples!

Although I’m now with a traditional, regional publisher, I still find self-publishing very interesting. So for two different perspectives on that this month, Daniel J. Friedman takes a hard look at the numbers behind self publishing: what they make, what they’re worth, and what they’re selling. On the other hand, Joanna Penn interviewed Adam Croft on How To Sell 130,000 Books Without A Publisher. And for some perspective on both sides, Future Book looks at Why Amanda Hocking Switched, with some interesting notes on how her publishers are working for her.

And to close, here are a few of my favorite posts on this blog from Januaries past:

What’s the best writing/marketing/publishing advice you‘ve read lately?

Photo by Karola Riegler

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Marketing

Marketing 101: I don’t know what the heck I’m doing!

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This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series Marketing 101

AKA Strategy Before Tactics

Believe me, most authors feel the same way the first time they have to market a book. Maybe you have a few ideas about contests you could do or blogs you could visit, but on the whole, your marketing “plan” feels like a disorganized mess. Good news: using strategies helps you to organize your efforts and focus on the tactics that work for you.

Huh? (The difference between strategy and tactics)
We mentioned this in passing the first week of this series, but as a reminder:

The first things we think of when we think of marketing—search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, email, blog tours, giveaways—are also tactics.

Tactics are the individual things we can do to promote our book, all those online tactics listed above as well as offline tactics like in-store marketing, radio/TV/billboards, etc. Strategies are composed of our goals and plans for using those tactics.

So many people make the mistake of jumping into tactics without considering strategy—but not us!

So, This Strategy Stuff . . . ?
I’ll admit: I focused mostly on the tactics myself when I thought about my (far-off) marketing, up until last year at the LDStorymakers Conference when I attended a fantastic class by Robison Wells on marketing strategy. (Strategery? No.) Rob was so kind as to put his writers’ marketing strategy presentation online (motion sickness warning. I’m not kidding).

Hold on just a minute. I know, I know, we’re talking about marketing and we’re into it, but let me just tell you who this Robison Wells guy is first. 1.) Pertinent to this conversation: he’s an MBA. 2.) Also quite pertinent: he’s a writer. He made his national debut last fall with a YA dystopian novel, Variant (aff). This book. Is. Excellent. And you don’t have to take my word for it—Publishers’ Weekly named it one of the Best Books of 2011.

And back to marketing.

“Without strategy,” Rob says, “those tactics are just a shot in the dark.” Our strategy helps us to determine which tactics to use to suit our books, our audiences, our personalities, and our lives. A strategy also helps us to make sure the messages we send to our consumers, from our books to our blogs to our websites to our tweets, is the one we want to send.

Who Are You
(Why, yes, I do like The Who.)

To figure out this strategy, we first need to understand ourselves, our books, and where we fit in the market. We do need to understand where we fit in a genre and what that audience expects, of course, but we also need to know how our book stands out from and adds to other works in the genre.

Rob offers an example positioning statement to help us find our book’s Unique Selling Proposition, the thing that sets our book apart from others in the market—AKA the reason people will want to read it:

For the reader who wants _______, my book is (genre) that offers _______. Unlike other books in my genre, my book provides ______________.

Be specific and push yourself hard when filling in those blanks! Don’t just go for the first generic thing that pops into your head, and don’t use backhanded compliments or digs at the present state of the market as a way to set yourself apart because you’re “better” than them.

Also, don’t worry about how long this ends up: you’re not giving it as an elevator pitch. You’re using this to help remind yourself the things that are important when you’re creating your strategy and using those tactics to communicate with your audience.

Who’s Your Audience?
To state the obvious, your audience is the people who might be interested in your book. We’re going to ignore the people who are ignoring you, okay? It’s just a recipe for pain otherwise.

We’ve said before that the goal of marketing is to get your product in front of people who would be interested in buying it, i.e. your audience. These are people who read in your genre, read about the types of characters you’re writing, read your style of writing.

It’s vital to understand your own Unique Selling Proposition because it helps you narrow down your audience. I’m sorry, but your audience isn’t “everyone who is young at heart,” or “people aged 6 to 1,836.” In fact, your audience probably isn’t all mystery or romance or sci-fi readers. If you’re writing a cozy mystery, people who read exclusively hardboiled detective novels aren’t your audience.

So let’s say you are writing a cozy mystery. You know you need to target people who read cozy mysteries, right? Now you need to tell them why they should read your book instead of all the other cozy mysteries out there. How is it different from other cozies they’ve read, and how does that appeal to them? What shiny, new, novel novel concept (hehe) are you bringing to the table?

Yeah, this is where all that “market research” comes in. (Oh, come on, you’re reading this stuff for fun, right? If not, maybe you’re in the wrong genre.) You know how your detective is different from Jessica Fletcher, Miss Marple and Jim Qwilleran. You know which quirks and settings and storylines are “taken.” You know how your writing style stands out. Most of all, you know what types of things cozy readers like, and you’re giving them something new that is exactly what they want to see. These are the things that belong in a USP—and your strategy.

So, Where Do I Fit In?
Yes, about you. You play a huge role in your strategy, aside from knowing your book and what’s unique about it better than anyone else. Your role in your own strategy is the key player, the mover and shaker—and yes, the marketer.

What does that mean for your strategy? It means that you’re going to have to stick to things you know how to do or are willing to learn. It means that you need to focus on tactics and campaigns you enjoy, do well, can reach your audience through, and, yes, have the time for.

I really wish I could tell you how to figure that out, but I do know that you can look at your past Internet habits as a clue to what kind of Internet marketing tactics might work well for you. If you think Facebook is the root of all evil, perhaps set up a page there (so someone else doesn’t!) and don’t do much more. If the thought of blogging gives you thrills & chills—or night sweats—you know what to do.

A lot of people out there will tell you that you should should should do X, Y, and Q7. But worrying about what someone who doesn’t know you or your audience thinks you “should” do—and forcing yourself to use tactics that crush your soul—is seldom a recipe for long term success.

What do you think? What else belongs in a marketing strategy? How do you figure out what tactics are right for you?

Photo credits: War Games screencap via Dan Brickley; strategy graphic by Sean MacEntee; bookshelf by Josh; social media strategy by Matthieu Dejardins

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Technique, Works

Misadventures in character names

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We’ve all met people with funny names. I have a friend whose mother-in-law’s name is Lynn Lynne. I played a prank on a friend once, claiming I was going to marry someone with the last name Gordon (and my first name is Jordan, remember?). And of course, my father shares a name with a very famous early US statesman.

In real life, these humorous names often happen by accident (especially if you’re a woman). My dad’s mother, for example, had already picked out Dad’s name before she met my grandfather and thus learned what last name her children would have. (It was the name of her favorite mule…)

In fictional worlds, we get to pick all our characters’ names—so hopefully, we get to avoid these embarrassing “nom” pas . . . but only if we’re really thinking.

Sometimes we choose funny or odd names on purpose. I chose the last name of Saint for one of my characters because it set up a number of jokes. I named another character Molly Malone for the same reason. (Poor characters…) Of course, for Molly, I had to explain how she came to have that unfortunate name. Same went for the tongue-twistery Cora Warren.

And sometimes . . . well, we’re just not smart enough to realize what we’ve done at first. For example, I once had a character with the first name Kent. I needed a nice strong surname for the guy, so in the next scene, he became Mr. Clark. It was a little while before I put the names together.

Kent . . . Clark.


Uh. Yeah. (His last name became Thornton soon thereafter. Borrowed from someone I knew IRL.)

And my most recent character naming accidents came in my Nano novel. Just before another book was accepted, by coincidence I wrote one of my villains sharing a surname with my editor. (It was not a coincidence that another villain shared the same editor’s first name. I changed that.) But the biggie was the hero—and you know how hard it is to change the hero’s name!

Most of the time, it wasn’t a problem. He went by Jack, a nickname from his last name, Jackson. (Which set up some jokes, too, of course. This trend is becoming disturbing.) It was a great name for him.

And I thought his first name was perfect, too. Kerr. (It was a drug store and a lake where I grew up, and my dad had a friend named Kerr when he was a kid. Not that I ever knew him, but I knew it could be a given name.)

If you haven’t seen the problem yet, let me tell you: when his real first name came up, this character often had specify either the spelling or the pronunciation. Let me treat you to a now-defunct conversation from the novel: in this scene, their car has been reported stolen and is about to be towed.

They hurried across the street, Jack trying to compose his thoughts so he could pull this off. The stunned disbelief and confusion wouldn’t be too tough, but the innocence would be a stretch. [They have something stolen in the trunk. Which, sadly, will also end up on the cutting room floor.]

“Whoa whoa whoa,” he said, jogging up to the officer. “Is there a problem here?”

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

“Yeah. Did I park illegally? The sign says no parking Monday to Friday.” Jack pointed to the sign. [It’s Sunday.]

“No, sir. This car has been reported as stolen.”

“No, no—no. This is my car. It has been for seven years.” Unless his brother had changed the registration into his name when Jack left home—but still, it should all check out.

The cop raised an eyebrow and read something off the clipboard in front of him. “License plate 267 VAP?”

He nodded. “All me.”

“Registered to Kerr Halsey Jackson.”

“It’s pronounced ‘car.’ As in, ‘This is my car.’”

The cop folded his arms. “I’m going to need to see some ID.”

So what’s the problem?

His name is Kerr Jackson. Pronounced Car Jackson. Let me try that again: pronounced CAR JACKson.

I realized this two days before I finished the novel. He got a new first name—but I’m definitely going to reuse Kerr. Maybe with the last name . . . Hop?

All right, top my stories: what are the craziest, funniest or silliest things you’ve named characters, on purpose or by accident? Did you change them?

Photo credits: Superman by Greenog; car jack by Cameron Flanders

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Technique

Naming names: how to give characters names

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An earlier version of this post ran in September 2009.

What’s in a name? Well, as it turns out, it can be quite a bit. I recently read a couple contemporary works where the heroine, aged 20-30, was named Madison. Madison is an adorable name—in fact, a little too adorable. It was the 538th most popular first name for girls in the 1980s. It climbed to the top 100 in the 1990s and has since soared to #8 for girls in 2010, the most recent data available now.

So what, you ask? Well, those statistics mean that the average girl named Madison is less than five years old right now. When I read these, I couldn’t help but thinking of the curly-haired toddler down the street. Although a strong, androgynous girls’ name is awesome and Madison hits all the right notes with parents and authors alike today, that’s exactly what makes it all wrong when naming a character who’s supposed to be an adult today.

Personally, I love naming characters. I’ve spent considerable time searching for just the right name for each character, making sure their names fit their ages, backgrounds, and characteristics. Here are a few of my favorite resources for finding the perfect name. (Note: some of these resources are US-centric, but I’m sure that you can find similar data for other countries.)

Character Naming Books

The links to books are affiliate links

The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. I picked this up while pregnant with my oldest, even though my husband and I had the names of our first four children already picked out (three down, one to go).

Why I like this: It give little profiles outlining why and when each name was popular, as well as assigning names to groups according to style and popularity, and lists similar names. (That’s especially good when you have a name you really like but it happens to be your brother-in-law’s name.)

The New Baby Name Survey Book by Bruce Lansky and Barry Sinrod. The authors of this book surveyed >100,000 parents about 1400 popular names to see what perceptions and connotations the names carried. I picked this up (again, while pregnant) at a thrift store for $2, and I was a little hesitant at first to spend that much (no, seriously), but it’s definitely paid off. In fact, it’s paid off so much that several years later when I found the above-listed new edition, I sprang for it.

Why I like this: Seriously, where else will you find someone to tell you that a female Jerry calls to mind “a friendly, fun-loving brunette who enjoys being the life of the party” while some see the male Jerry as “likely to wear flashy gold chains and may come on a bit too strong.” Those are from the previous edition, which brings me to the drawback: The 1992 Baby Name Personality Survey, with Barry Sinrod, is a little out of date (I mean, seriously, were you naming your character Jerry?). And it’s a penny for the 1992 OR the 2007 version (used on Amazon)—so why not?

Character Naming Websites

BabyNames.com. I use this to look up name origins and meanings. Why I like this: I like to be able to search by meaning and/or culture of origin. Um, duh.

US baby name popularity from 1880 from Social Security records. You can look at the popularity of a name over time, or popular name lists by birth year. Why I like this: This is the best way to find age-appropriate (American) names for characters.

Nymbler from The Baby Name Wizard website. Like the book, this helps to find similar names. Why I like this: It makes it easy to find names by “style,” including origins, popular time period and the more subjective “feel.” I do still prefer the book version, but the website is also fun to play with.

The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager, which generates graphs of name popularity over time. The data is based on the SSA. Why I like this: It’s a visual representation of popular names over time, which is a little more accessible than just the lists from the SSA. (The blog also talks about naming trends.)

The US Census Surname Distribution to find last names, and to check if the sometimes crazy last names I want to use are really last names. (Real names include Police, Outlaw, Saint, Notice, Justice and Riddle. Only one of which I’ve actually used.) Why I like this: when I’m stumped on a last name, reading through the list or using a random number generator can help me finish my character’s name.

Real life, of course!

I seldom name characters after people I know—it’s kinda weird for me—but the people around us every day are a great source for character names. In fact, one of my writing friends actually keeps a name data bank—whenever she meets someone with an interesting name, she makes a note of it and puts it in her data banks on her computer. She also collects names from newspaper articles, especially foreign names—and she stores those by nationality (and surname/given name). When this friend uses names from her list, she marks them with different colors for passing mentions, minor characters (both recyclable) and major characters (one-time use).

And of course, there’s the old standby: the phone book! (Whatever will we do when they stop printing them?)

And always double check

I always Google a character’s name before I settle on using it, just to make sure there isn’t a famous person I’ve forgotten/have no reason to know about with the same last name. On the other hand, if there are a lot of (moderately) famous people with that name, I figure it’s fine to use it again, right?

Of course, Google isn’t a foolproof measure against choosing a bad name. If you’ve ever given your characters a supremely bad name—and despite all the resources I have, let me assure you you’re not alone—be sure to come back Friday! (And save yours for then, too, so we can all have our catharsis at once 😉 )

How do you find your characters’ names? What are your favorite or least favorite character names? Would you comment on a character’s name in critique?

Photo credits: Name tag—Henk L; Jim—Deon Staffelbach

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Marketing

Marketing 101: How to market fiction

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This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series Marketing 101

AKA Not Features, Benefits

If marketing is getting your product into the minds of your audience, the people who are looking for your solution (or persuading people to look for your solution), how does that help with marketing fiction books?

When marketing nonfiction, it’s easy to figure out what problem you’re solving: it’s what you’re book is about. But when you’re marketing, you don’t focus JUST on what your book is about (the features). You focus on what your book can do for your readers: THE BENEFITS.

What are the benefits? Rob Eagar explains at Wildfire Marketing’s “Marketing Made Simple“:

Book readers, consumers, and donors don’t care about your topic, genre, mission, or product features. Their primary concern is how you can make their life better. Therefore, they want to know the RESULTS that you can create for them. Even people who donate to non-profits need to feel like they’re getting something in return for their donation.

 

To avoid confusion, I define a result as any positive outcome, life change, or tangible improvement that you create for someone who reads your book, buys your product, or donates to your cause. In addition, the description of a result must be specific enough to generate emotional interest.

That’s great for nonfiction. If your book is about blogging, you focus on how it will make your readers into . . . well, independent thousand-aires. If your book is about parenting, you focus on the result: your child will behave or you will be happy. If your book is about writing, you focus on the benefits: your writing will be better/more vivid/more engaging/actually sell.

So how does that help in selling fiction? What’s the benefit in a book that doesn’t have an easy solution to use? Last week, we established that our audience is our genre and the problem that we solve varies a little bit by genre, but underlying all of them is that we give readers an experience they want: excitement, fun, connection, contemplation, novelty, etc. That “emotional interest” that nonfiction creates is built in for fiction: it’s emotion itself.

Or as author/blogger/marketer Kristin Lamb wrote also last week:

Why do readers buy fiction?

One of the reasons readers are so loyal to authors is because of how that author’s stories made them feel. James Rollins makes me feel like I’ve had an exciting adventure. Sandra Brown makes me feel love is worth fighting for. Amy Tan makes me feel hope and power. J.K. Rowling’s stories make me feel heroic.

Fiction authors are brokers of passionate emotion.

Fiction creates emotions, and those emotions are the reason people buy and read fiction. And not just the emotions characters feel in scenes (though writing characters’ emotion isn’t easy, it’s very much worth it), but the emotions the scenes and the plot and the theme overall create in readers.

I also liked the way Vince Mooney put it, writing a few years ago on Prairie Chicks Write Romance (via):

Fans are Buying a “Basket of Feelings”

I like to think that a romance fan is really buying a ‘basket of feelings’. Fans know that some themes, like the ‘hidden baby’ theme, will provide a predictable set of feelings. When these feelings are in ‘deficit’, fans can actually develop a craving for a given romance theme.

He was addressing romance writers, but this is true in all genres. (He also has a great list of the types of “rewards [AKA benefits] per page” readers look for.)

So how do you market the feelings? You do NOT flat out say, “My book will make you feel strong/heroic/happy/victorious.” As with everything in writing, you show, don’t tell in marketing copy. Yep, despite starting off by saying “Don’t talk about what your book is about,” the fact is, in fiction, the unique value your book adds to the market, the reason why people want to buy it, is found in what your book is about, starting from the genre on down.

This is why it’s so important to make your genre clear through context in something as short as an elevator pitch. Compare these very differently focuses for the same story:

Struggling artist Margaux Williams must overcome her insecurities and face down her fears to prove to herself she deserves a successful career.

Struggling artist Margaux Williams must sacrifice her future to stop the killer who shares her home.

Struggling artist Margaux Williams has one shot at a successful career, until she falls for the one man who could ruin it all.

All those things can happen in the same story (to some degree)—but all those loglines promise very different emotional experiences. We need to be clear on what emotional experiences our audience looks for, and how our book fulfills that search.

The longer our selling opportunity, the more important it is to show readers the kind of experience we offer. Queries and back cover copy, both a couple of paragraphs, give us more time to develop the character and make the reader care about them (a prerequisite for the reader feeling those emotions in most cases), and more time to show the conflict and stakes—all opportunities to show that emotion.

And of course, the pièce de résistance of showing that emotion should be our books themselves. They don’t have to be trite retelling of the same old cliché storyline that sells in your genre, but you should know where your book fits within its genre, who your audience is, and most of all, what experiences they expect—and whether you deliver.

What do you think? What benefits (emotions) do readers look for in your genre? Do you deliver?

Photos by Maëka Alexis (the many faces), Sara (basketcase), and Malik M. L. Williams (book)

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Technique

Finding the “Right” Word

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Confession time!

I totally use a thesaurus. Even while drafting. If I’m repeating a word too much and I just know there’s an easy synonym (it’s that tip-of-the-tongue syndrome!), words that are so quick and easy that they’re in the standard word processor thesaurus, I look them up. And if you’ve got a good thesaurus, it’s fun to gambol in the Word Nerd-ery sometimes.

But I’ve also seen thesaurus use gone bad, and I’ve learned the hard way that the thesaurus isn’t always your friend. (Seriously, scarred for life. I was like 11 and it’s so embarrassing, I still can’t share it.)

Thesauruses: the good, the bad and the ugly

With my affection for thesauruses, I was excited to read Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite [affiliate link] chapter reveling in thesauruses. He gives some excellent tips on using thesauruses wisely:

  • Understand Roget’s’ possibilities. Use a thesaurus to
    • discover more fitting or more forceful words;
    • find those good words you can’t quite recall [hello!];
    • avoid repetition of words [oh yeah];
    • escape clichés and worn modifiers;
    • help describe the so-called indescribable;
    • refine your intended meanings (via related concepts); and
    • simply luxuriate in the plenitude of language.
  • But understand Roget’s‘ limits
  • Before embracing an unfamiliar word, look up its definition and usage in a good dictionary.
  • Don’t fish in the categories, swim in them.
  • Don’t grab all the words that fit.
  • Search your brain as well. [He recommends flipping to a section that has nothing to do with the subject at hand, like describing light using words from the “Violence” section: savage, brutal, etc.]
  • Use new and/or older editions.
  • Take chances.

(77-78)

What’s my favorite thesaurus? I happened to find an Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus [affiliate link] at a local thrift store (I agonized over the $3, but it’s so worth it!). It’s got fun little asides by famous authors for some of the words, fantastic breadth—I love this thing.

Of course, we all know the difference between the right word and the wrong word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug—and thesauruses alone can’t tell us if a word is truly the right one. But relying on Plotnik’s tips is one good way to make sure we get a good start from thesauruses.

The Naming of Things
Plotnik also recommends another way to find the perfect word: finding the right name for things. Visual dictionaries and word lists are the best tools for these things, with terminology for very specific things arranged by subject. If you need to set a scene or use industry-specific terms, check out one of these resources that Plotnik recommends:

The “Right” Word
But as with thesauruses, just knowing the “right” word doesn’t necessary make it the right word (tautology FTW!). When we look up an obscure term for our research in our setting, it might be right in the sense that it describes it accurately—but even if it’s right in that sense, if your audience doesn’t know the term, it won’t help them visualize it. Then is it “right”?

In a day of instant information, readers really do put down books to look stuff up. I even documented a time I did that here on the blog: a novel I was reading named an obscure medical device, as if that would be enough for us to picture it being used as a weapon. It was not, I opined, the right word because I couldn’t visualize the pivotal weapon throughout the scene and, frustrated, put the book down to hop on the Internet. (And being me, it was some time before I got back to it, most likely.)

As a writer, I went through this with the word “inveigle” in one manuscript (okay, since we’re confessing: I’ve been through it a lot in pretty much every manuscript, but this is one of my stories). I found it in a thesaurus and the definition looked right.

I decided to ignore the fact that pretty much everyone I had read it—intelligent, college-educated people who really like me—tripped over that word and pointed it out. It was Capital-R-Right and nobody was going to convince me otherwise. After all, isn’t reading how we grow our vocabularies? Didn’t I see, like, one blog comment once where someone said they liked a book to teach them some new words??

If the logic sounds tenuous, it was. Finally, after yet another friend mentioned that word, I went on a hunt for that word in the wild. This is something you should always do with new words. (Google, how I love you.)

And what did I find? It seemed to have a connotation I definitely didn’t want there. It hurt, but I cut that word—because it wasn’t as right as I thought. And since then, I’ve cut a few more words that might send readers running for their dictionaries—because I don’t want to pull them out of the story, but mostly because they weren’t in the characters’ voices anyway.

I’m getting better about this: in my current WIP, the characters use a tombolo to get to the final confrontation spot. Oddly enough, tombolo is one of the examples of obscure, precise terms that Plotnik uses in the visual dictionary chapter of Spunk & Bite (page 210). I felt pretty chuffed to know the term already (and was even able to list an example!).

And that’s one of the dangers of using these kinds of terms. If you know this secret, fancy argot, you get to sound smart and feel self-satisfied. Otherwise, you’re probably thinking: A whatsiwhato? Plotnik defines the term in his book, but most novelists don’t send their characters running for a dictionary or factual lesson/as-you-know-Bob in mid-story. (And aren’t you glad?)

And you’re probably still not sure what a tombolo is, huh? If you’ve gotten annoyed enough to go look it up—well, thanks for coming back. That’s more than most readers would probably do, especially on the Internet.

A tombolo is a sandbar that connects a former island to the mainland. Yes, it’s one word that can elegantly replace a somewhat awkward, 9-word explanation. But when that one word doesn’t illustrate, only obfuscates, your meaning, is it “right”?

(I should note that I’m definitely not fully cured: I’m looking forward to bringing out a high-falutin’ voice in a 19th century character in my current WIP. 😀 )

Naturally, you can go too far with this. My best friend was critiqued in a college class and one member of the class took issue with a word he didn’t know in her manuscript. This critiquer was convinced she should take it out because that word took him out of the story and frustrated him as he read. The word? Betrothed.

Not exactly an astrophysics term. Similarly, I’ve had readers have a problem with “C.I.” (confidential informant, used in a police procedural mystery), “frosted” referring to highlighted hair, and the adjectival drawn. I think they’re fairly transparent. We don’t have to write for the lowest common denominator—as long as we don’t write over the average readers’ heads. (As for determining who’s average in your audience . . . sorry, that’s up to you!)

To sum up, the right word:

  • has the right definition (denotation)
  • is as vivid, powerful and succinct as the context needs
  • carries the right connotation
  • is right for the character’s voice
  • is right for the general reader

You can get away with breaking maaaybe one of those axioms with a word, and even then, you shouldn’t do that too frequently—so choose carefully. And remember that every time your reader has to set your book down to look up an obscure term to try to picture what you’re writing, there’s a better and better chance that he won’t pick it up again, frustrated that you keep talking over his head and make it impossible for him to visualize your story.

What do you think? What does it take to make the “right” word Right?

Photos by Harry, noricum, and Greeblie, respectively

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Marketing

Marketing 101: What is marketing?

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This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Marketing 101

An Overview, or, It might not be quite as obvious as you think

Now, most people understand what marketing is—or at least we think we do. But sometimes even marketing professionals can’t see the forest for the trees when it comes to the practice of marketing.

We all know that TV commercials and banner ads are a form of marketing, but they’re both different types of advertising, which is just one marketing tactic. The first things we think of when we think of marketing—search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, email, blog tours, giveaways—are also tactics.

Then what’s marketing? In my mind, marketing is getting your product into the minds of your audience, the people who are looking for your solution. Marketing can also help to persuade people to look for your solution, but a large part of marketing is connecting to a pre-existing audience, people who are either already interested in the type of product you’re selling or who have the problem your product solves.

Sometimes it seems like fiction authors are at a disadvantage here. Nonfiction authors frequently do have products designed to solve problems and benefit readers. Where do fiction authors fit in?

Just like with my characters’ goals in fiction, I was overthinking this one a lot. (It’s like a hobby.) I was so focused on trying to figure out what problem we solve for our customers. But really, we have it pretty easy! Your audience is built in: it’s your genre.

After all, you’re probably not going to want to put your product in front of people who won’t like it. (Sorry, there’s no such thing as “universal appeal.”)

And the problem that we solve? It varies a little bit by genre, but underlying all of them is that we give them an experience they want: excitement, fun, connection, contemplation, novelty.

Once you figure out those things, all you have to do is get your product (book) in front of that audience through tactics like those we mentioned before—but for the best effectiveness (not to mention your personal sanity), it’s best to pursue a unified strategy in your marketing tactics.

What’s your audience/genre? What experiences are your readers looking for?

Coming up: Features vs. benefits — and — Tactics vs. strategy — and — When should I start marketing?

Image, battle of Waterloo, by Ipankonin

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News & Contests

Top 11 of 2011

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Yes, I know, I’m ready for the new year, too. But I was curious: which writing series got the most visits here on my blog last year?

A quick dig through my analytics gave me the answer, and I wanted to share what I found with you! (Did you know I had more than ten series here? Yep, despite the fact that I haven’t made them into PDFs in forever and the Writing Guides page doesn’t have most of them.)

11. Dialogue
An overview of the mechanics and technique of writing good fictional dialogue.

10. Clues in non-mysteries
A new series in 2011, here we looked at how to balance foreshadowing—making sure it’s enough but not too much.

9. Character arcs
By request, we looked at character arcs in fiction, showing growth and change in our characters. I’ve actually used this series while I was preparing for Nano, and I have some new thoughts to bring to this series this year.

8. Bad advice
I have had (and currently have) some great critique partners—but I’ve also received my share of off-the-wall awful advice. Here’s how to tell the difference and take the bad in stride (more or less 😉 ).

7. Aspiring Author Websites
Setting up a website as an aspiring author: is it worth it? I think so! This series talks about how to do it, and what to put on your site. We’ll be seeing more of this with our new Marketing Mondays.

6. Emotion: it’s tough
Even when reading escapist fluff (which is okay!), people read to make emotional connections with characters. Fiction without emotion is flat—but emotion can be hard to write. Here are some ideas and tips in one of two series on this list from 2011. (They might be the only two series I wrote last year…)

5. Backstory
Another one I think about a lot still, and have some more posts in store this year. Backstory is vital, but it’s most interesting and useful to the author. In this series, I discuss why that is—and how to slip the backstory into the real story at the right place and in the right way.

4. Creating Sympathetic Characters
One of our first series, we looked at how to get readers to identify with your characters—even when they’re unlikeable.

3. Deep POV (x3)
Deep POV is the most popular narration mode today. Here’s how to get into your characters’ heads and write through their eyes.

To find ten unique series listed in here, I had to sift through more than ten lines of data. Deep POV was so popular that it had three pages in the top 20 or so series pages!

2. Tension, Suspense and Surprise (x3!)
Tension is vital in fiction. I’ve learned this the hard way and now I look for ways to get it in every scene, in every page. Here are some of the best ways I’ve found to do this.

1. Plot Thickens (x5!!)
A look at several methods of creating and structuring plots—the top series on this site for three years in a row!

I think this year I’ll try to work to get more of these top series compiled into PDFs.

What’s your favorite series? What subjects would you like covered, or re-covered this year?