Tag Archives: resources

News & Contests

Indie resources blog fest & other news!

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When you publish your own works, everything comes down to you. You have to find and hire the editors, proofreaders, cover designer, interior designer, e-book formatter . . . it can be daunting to line up all those other professionals to make your book come to life at last.

I read many great blogs on self-publishing, and I’m not looking to change the overall focus of my blog. However, I do really want to acknowledge the amazing support staff I’ve worked with in producing my books. So I’m putting together the . . . Indie Author Resources Blog Fest!

indie resources blog fest

On Monday, January 20, if you’re an indie author—or if you just happen to know of an editor, cover designer or other publishing professional who does quality work—post about them on your blog, and come back here to link up!

Spread the word

Tell your friends! Copy this and paste it in the HTML of a blog post or your sidebar:

<a href="http://jordanmccollum.com/indie-resources/" title="Indie author resources blog fest. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" alt="Indie author blog festbadge. Photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC" style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/indieresourcesblogfest.png" width="300" /></a>

Want it bigger or smaller? Change the number at width="300" to adjust the size.

How to participate

Indie author resources blog fest1. The theme is Indie author resources. It’s all about showing some love for all those people who helped make your book great. So who do you put in your post?

  • Editors—content, copy, line, and proof
  • Designers—cover, interior, e-book, and other promotional graphics
  • Formatters—e-book, print
  • Printers—print-on-demand, short run, long run, promotional materials
  • Any other professionals who helped make your book the best it could be!

Be sure to include links to their websites!

2. If you’re not (yet?) an indie author, but you know exactly who you’d hire, please join in!

3. If you wouldn’t recommend their work, don’t include the person in your post.

4. Post your resources on your blog January 20, 2014, and add it to the Mr. Linky here. Link your post back to the blogfest on here so your readers can read other entries, too. (The link will be http://JordanMcCollum.com/indie-resources/ )

5. Read, enjoy, and comment on other entries!

6. The index! After the blog fest, I’ll be compiling a list of the recommended professionals for ease of use. I’ll link back to all posts, of course!

So, in short: on January 20, write a blog post about an e-book professional, link back here in your post, and sign up on the linkie.

Sign up in advance!

Original Yellow Pages photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC

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Technique

Gearing up for Nano!

This entry is part 14 of 16 in the series NaNoWriMo success and inspiration

All right, it’s official: I’m doing Nano (aka National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo). Feel free to add me as a buddy on the Nano site. You might be able to find me under the enigmatic name of “JordanMcCollum.”

I’m a loose plotter, so I’m spending the month of October preparing. I’m getting my plot outlined, getting to know my characters, researching the facts and the settings, pondering plot points and villains and subplots and schedules (mine, not the characters’)!

As I’ve worked on all these things, I’ve had to review all my favorite plotting methods and character posts—on others’ blogs, and on my own. So if you’re getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I’ll be sharing tips, strategies and advice to help you get the most out of your Nano experience.

We’ll start with some writing resources on my site that I’ve been thinking about and studying, and I hope they might help you prepare, too.

The plot thickens, my series on plotting, highlights plot structures and methods including the three act structure, Larry Brooks’s story structure, the Snowflake method, the Hero’s Journey, and now Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat (also available as a PDF, but it hasn’t been updated to include the Save the Cat posts).

Creating sympathetic characters—while you can edit a great deal of sympathy into your characters, keeping these things in mind as you write can help you get it right the first time.

Character arcs—last year, this was the series I needed most, specifically this post on finding your character’s arc. (Is it awesome or sad when you find the most amazingly helpful resource was written by you two years ago?)

Backstory—figuring out your character’s lifestory, what to leave out, and where to start your story.

And, depending on how you write, you might be able to try out some new techniques with Deep POV or dialogue—or save those for editing.

Although my normal blog schedule is only 2-3 times a week, I’ll be blogging a little extra as we prep for Nano to try to share the resources and inspiration I’ve been saving up!

Are you NaNoing? What are you doing to prepare?

Reposted from Nano 2011

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Technique

Gearing up for NaNo!

5 Comments

All right, it’s official: I’m doing NaNo (aka National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo). And I’m spending the month of October preparing. I’ve got my plot outlined, I’m getting to know my characters, I’m researching the facts and the settings, pondering plot points and villains and subplots and schedules (Mine, not the characters’)!

As I’ve worked on all these things, I’ve had to review all my favorite plotting methods and character posts—on others’ blogs, and on my own. So if you’re getting ready for NaNoWriMo, here are some resources on my site that I’ve been thinking about and studying, and I hope they might help you prepare, too.

The plot thickens, my series on plotting, highlights plot structures and methods including the three act structure, Larry Brooks’s story structure, the Snowflake method and the Hero’s Journey (also available as a PDF).

Creating sympathetic characters—while you can edit a great deal of sympathy into your characters, keeping these things in mind as you write can help you get it right the first time.

Character arcs—this was the series I needed most, specifically this post on finding your character’s arc. (Is it awesome or sad when you find the most amazingly helpful resource was written by you two years ago?)

Backstory—figuring out your character’s lifestory, what to leave out, and where to start your story.

And, depending on how you write, you might be able to try out some new techniques with Deep POV or dialogue—or save those for editing.

Are you NaNoing?

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Technique

Backstory: more resources

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This entry is part 13 of 20 in the series Backstory

So, the bottom line on backstory: your characters need it, and your story might, too. But we have to be very careful to balance backstory with the present story, which should be more compelling and only enhanced by the backstory, never impeded. (Oh, is that all? 😉 )

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Just last week, literary agent Kristen Nelson singled out backstory and minutiae as the two biggest reasons why novels start in the wrong place (and we looked at how to start your story in the right place, too).
Here are some of the great articles and books I’ve studied and referenced as I worked on this series:

(Can you tell I’m a fan?)

What articles have you come across on backstory that have helped you understand more about this tool?

Photo by Sue Clark

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Technique

Getting resourceful

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This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Writing resources

While we like to hear stories about prodigies and untaught geniuses who magical write perfectly poetic prose (and always on the first draft!), the reality is that for pretty much everyone, writing takes a lot of practice, effort, time—and learning.

Writing resources are really important in that learning process. Everything from craft books to conferences can help us improve our writing craft (not to mention learning about the the business side of publishing). From the mechanics of writing to story-level technique, writing resources can help us every step of the way.

And yet sometimes, it’s still hard for us to take that help—for me, it’s often either the expense (of money and time—I’d rather be writing!), or debating whether I really need to work on that area (answer: probably). Can’t I figure this out on my own? Shouldn’t I?

Maybe, maybe not. No, a critique group or a class can’t teach you how to write—at least not if you’re not willing to listen and learn and try new things, and apply them in your writing. But finding those new things to try, identifying your weaknesses and finding ways to improve them all take a lot longer (and may not be as effective) if we don’t seek that outside help.

So this week, we’ll be looking at writing resources, and how they’ve helped us learn and grow as writers!

What writing resources have helped you in your writing journey? (If you’re interested in joining the series with a guest post, I still have openings!)

Photo by Fabrice Clerc

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Technique

Share your favorite plotting resources

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I’m getting ready to make our series on plotting into a free PDF. In one of my free writing guides, I included some “bonus features”—resources that weren’t posted on my blog in the original series, but that are pretty darn awesome.

I’ve been collecting bonus features again this time around, and I have a few. But I’d love to see your favorite resources and methods for plotting.

What do you use to plot? Share your favorite resources in the comments and I’ll include an attribution link for you in the free PDF version of the plotting series!

Photo credits: question—Svilen Mushkatov

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Technique

Sympathetic characters: more resources

This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series Creating sympathetic characters

This month, we’ve learned about creating sympathetic characters—giving them strength and struggles, balancing each of those elements, and specific techniques for making our readers identify with even unlovable characters.

If you want to read more on creating sympathetic characters, here are the absolute best, most useful resources I’ve found:

  • Sympathy without Saintliness, an online article by author/editor Alicia Rasley. Alicia takes us through some of the most beloved characters in literature capture our sympathies, as well as dispelling some common authorial misconceptions about how we can make our readers like our characters.
  • How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II by James N. Frey, specifically chapter one, which shows internal and external techniques to create deeper and deeper sympathy in your readers (which we’ve discussed here briefly).
  • The Unlovable Character, a blog post on Writing on the Wall Blog by Julie Wright with an exhaustive list of techniques and characteristics to make readers love even unlovable characters (which she graciously expanded with more examples for us here).

[Update: here’s a great quick overview on techniques that do and don’t work for character sympathy.]

By request, in July we’re going to celebrate summer by taking a plunge in the deep end of POV. (Don’t you just love the clichés?) This is a great way to follow up a series on characters, since we have to know our characters well to get into deep point-of-view, and since we’ve been working all June to help our readers lose themselves within our characters.

What resources have you found that helped you improve your characters? What would you like to read about in deep POV?

Image credit: Svilen Mushkatov

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Technique

Techniques for sympathetic characters

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This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Creating sympathetic characters

As I mentioned before, I’ve been using the term “sympathetic characters” as shorthand for “characters whom the reader can identify with.” Creating reader identification is the ultimate goal here, because, as James N. Frey says in How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II, a character the reader can identify with is the key to creating the fictive dream—to immersing the reader into the world of the story (not to mention the mind of the character). And in that book, Frey outlines specific techniques to create that reader identification.

Sympathy

Frey goes so far as to say that you have to make the reader feel sorry for the character. I don’t know that I’d say that—but I would say that you have to let the reader see your character struggling. That essentially what Frey conveys—let the reader see the character as lonely, disadvantaged, put upon, sad, confused, unpopular, unfulfilled, imperiled, etc. As Frey concludes:

Sympathy is the doorway through which the reader gains emotional access to a story. Without sympathy, the reader has no emotional involvement in the story. (9-10)

And sympathy is a stepping stone to the next technique:

Identification

The next step is getting the reader to support the character’s goals and aspirations. While a character doesn’t have to be admirable, Frey stresses, the easiest way to get readers to support a character’s goal is to make sure their goal is noble.

And as a side note, it’s good to make that goal clear. It doesn’t have to be the character’s ultimate goal of the story right off the bat, either—but getting that in there pretty soon seldom hurts.

Once you’ve got the reader on board with your character’s noble goals, draw them in deeper with:

Empathy

Now we want to get the reader feeling what the character’s feeling—we want to instill in the reader the same emotions and responses. And, Frey says:

You do it by using the power of suggestion. You use sensuous and emotion-provoking details that suggest to the reader what it is like to be [the character] and to suffer what he is suffering. In other words, you create the story world in such a way that the readers can put themselves in the character’s place. . . .

You can win empathy for a character by detailing the sensuous details in the environment: the sights, sounds, pains, smells, and so on that the character is feeling‐the feelings that trigger his emotions. (19)

This doesn’t mean that every sad sack character should be trudging through the pouring rain (to the courthouse to try to win his freedom from a wrongful conviction)—though it might help. It does mean, however, that it helps for the character to take notice of his environs, and for them to mirror (or, possibly, contrast or mock) his internal emotional state.

But wait! There’s more! And the last step to fully transporting the reader is one we’ve mentioned here before:

Inner conflict

It’s not enough to have the characters struggling against some external forces (to gain sympathy)—we must also see them battling internally. This is the last step here because we need the readers to fully support the character’s goals and feel what they’re feeling before an internal moral debate will matter to the reader.

But once we have the readers feeling what the characters are feeling, then we can use internal conflict to fully transport the reader into the character’s head and the world of the story.

Frey’s book How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II was the one of the best resources I found for detailing the actual techniques of fostering reader’s sympathy for characters (and if this all seems very abstract here, check out the book—it’s replete with examples to make his points clearer, as well as his full arguments, which are much better stated than my summaries).

As I mentioned before, “Sympathy without Saintliness” by Alicia Rasley is another great resource—an online article with a few exercises at the end to help you increase your character’s sympathetic factor. Also, Julie Write posted an “unlovable character checklist” of factors you can use to get your readers onboard with even the most unlovable characters over on Writing on the Wall.

What do you think? How have you striven to create characters your readers can understand and cheer for?

Photo credits: Name tag—Sanja Gjenero; “Rain” (waterfall)—Flávio Takemoto

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