Three Ways to Raise Your Novels Ability to Entertain by Janelle Evans

Writing a book is hard. Writing a book someone else would actually enjoy reading is even harder. Trust me, my love of reading has led me to many a stinker. Some of those were supposed to be New York Best-Selling, so not even well-known authors are immune to bad story telling. In hopes to improve writers everywhere, here are three things that keep a reader captive.

1.      Don’t start your story with giving the readers a ton of backstory. It’s a mistake that will have readers closing a book faster than anything else. Yes, all characters have a backstory, but SO WHAT! People in real life have backstories, too. People don’t generally go around wanting to here another person’s history without spending some time with them first. So, give your reader a character in an opening scenario that grabs their interest.

2.      Keep your sentences tight. This goes way beyond the passive verbs “was” or “to be.” Crazy long sentences with flowery descriptions or lists drags the pace of any story. Stick to the point, and as I’ve said a thousand times, build the world around your character as you go. Not every inch of a place has to be described, only the parts pertinent to the story.

3.      Don’t make your reader wonder who is speaking. Snappy dialogue can go a long way in keeping a reader interested. But if they have to reread sections twice just to figure out who’s speaking, you will lose them.

Remember, your goal is to achieve a seamless effect, where your story is so easy to read and understand, it’s as if the words on the page disappear. Great writers aren’t searching for praise on their word choices and sentence structures. An author’s ability to write is self-evident by the enjoyment others get by reading their work. 

Promotional Memes by Janelle Evans

My latest novel, Stuffed Souls, released a month ago. While this is my fourth published novel, the anticipation for it to launch was just as nerve-racking as the first three. Every author wants their work to be well-received. A cover that strikes a desire in the hearts of millions to buy your book immediately wouldn’t be too bad either. But a successful promotion doesn’t end with the book release—nor is it really the beginning.

I spent hours preparing promotional memes before the release date. Now those memes have to be trickled into the many forms of Social Medias and other ad campaigns to get the word out there. Remember, there is a sea of new books being launched every day. As authors we need to do all we can to get ours noticed. You worked too hard to just let it sink to the bottom. The more you prepare and research your advertising options ahead of a launch can greatly affect how well your book will sale. So remember…

The Importance of Understanding Your Audience by Janelle Evans

As an author, understanding your audience is paramount, at least, if you want to sell books. That may seem callused and calculating to what really is a creative process, but you’re not spending all these hours clicking away on a computer for mere self-fulfillment. It’s for others to read and enjoy. So today I will be talking about three audience factors I always consider while writing novels.

First: the age group of my target audience. I write for young adults so I don’t fill my novels with uncommon word choices. Let me write that statement using different words to illustrate. I compose for young adults so I don’t dominate my narratives with infrequently used terms. The sentence means the same thing as the first statement but let’s face it, it’s harder to read, especially for my target age group of 12-18. If you write for an older audience go ahead and elevate the vernacular, but I like to caution all writers of fiction. If your audience has to keep pulling out a dictionary to understand you, they will stop reading. Your goal when writing fiction isn’t to show your audience how smart you are. Entertain them and I promise they will come back for more.

Second: the age of the protagonist in the story. It is best if the main hero/heroine of you story is close in age to your target audience. Other sub-characters can be older or younger as needed, but if the character is going to be a love interest, they should also be close in age. Yes, in society we see age gaps between couples, but it is not as common as it used to be. For example the Victorian age of Jane Austen’s novel Emma. In the story, Emma is sixteen and her eventual love interest is thirty-two-year-old Mr. Knightly. Yeah…that’s probably not going to work in today’s society. You don’t want an ew factor to happen with your audience and your character’s budding relationship.

Third: the all-important ending. Since I write for young adults my goal is to give them satisfying happy endings. It’s what this age group expects and likes the most. Now if you’re a writer that despises happy endings, young adult fiction probably isn’t for you, but again I would caution you in whatever you write. All endings should satisfy your audience. That doesn’t mean it has to end happy, but there should be clear resolve to the conflicts in the story. If it is a series, not all conflicts have to be resolved, but give your reader something uplifting to cling to before you make them wait for that next novel to be released.

Like and As by Richard Draude

Which of these sentences are correct?

1. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. (This is a famous ad jingle?)
2. He spends money like a drunken sailor.
3. He lied on the witness stand, like one would expect a guilty person to do.
4. My cousin looks like Greta Garbo.
5. Robert likes to run his company as though he were a dictator.

Only sentences 3, 4 and 5 correctly employ the word "like."

Remember these two rules when considering the use of "like":
Rule 1: "Like" can be either a verb or a preposition but not a conjunction. Thus, we should not use
it before a subject-verb combination (a clause).

In sentences 1, 2, and 3, we should use the conjunction "as" or "as if" in place of the word "like"
because in each case "like" is followed by a clause. In these corrected sentences, we have
bracketed the clauses and capitalized the subjects and verbs to highlight the grammatical
structure:

1. Winston tastes good [as a CIGARETTE SHOULD].
3. He lied on the witness stand, [as ONE WOULD EXPECT a guilty person to do].

Rule 2: We should use "like" either as a preposition to demonstrate a resemblance between two
things or as a verb to express a preference.

In sentence 2 the comparison of spending money. In Sentence 4, "like Greta Garbo" is a
prepositional phrase. In sentence 5, "like" is the verb in the main clause, and "as though" is the
conjunction launching the subordinate (dependent) clause.

Of course, in casual correspondence or in conversations we have more flexibility. In many
idiomatic expressions using "like" are perfectly acceptable even though they do not follow these
rules. Consider also the expression "It looks like rain," which employs a perfectly acceptable
idiom for the highly formal statement "It looks as though it is going to rain."

The bottom line: in formal contexts, we use "like" only as a verb or a preposition and never when
we mean "as," "as if," or "as though."

Do any of these sentences correctly use the word "like"?

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin.
2. It looks like Arthur could become the next unit director.
3. He acts like he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, like everyone should do on a rainy morning.

ANSWERS:

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin. [Correct because we
are making a comparison.]
2. It looks as though [or as if] Arthur will become the next unit director.
3. He acts as if [or as though] he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, as everyone should do on a rainy morning.

Blogging—Another Way to Promote by Denice Whitmore

Ah…blogging. We’re told as authors it’s a great way to stay connected to our fans, but it can still be overwhelming to many writers—adding one more thing to the endless promoting we’re supposed to do once we are published. I know. I’m right there with you. Here are some tips to help ease the blogger’s plight.

1.         As an author you should already know your audience. This is also key when blogging. If your novels aren’t written for the politically savvy, keep politics out of your posts. If you write for young adults, the adult-ish struggles of your life may not interest them. Yes, as the author of your blog, it’s going to be your opinion you are expressing. But—and this is a big but—be careful what you write. The written word is a powerful thing. It can draw people in or it can cause them to reject you completely, which gives me the perfect segue into my second tip.
2.        Do all you can to keep your posts positive. Negative words seldom ever bring positive results.Unless you are the author of some polarizing subject with many followers, leave the bashing of persons, places, or things out of your posts.
3.        Keep your posts short. It’s a blog not another novel. Simple and snappy posts are most effective. People are busy, be considerate of that and they’ll be more inclined to click again when your next post pops up. I try to keep mine to no more than 300 words.
4.        You don’t have to blog every day. I only blog once a week, but that post happens at the same time and same day every week. The number of times you blog in a month is up to you, but be consistent. It shows you care about your fans and take your work seriously.
5.      My final tip—have fun with blogging. This is a great opportunity for your audience to get to know you. Blogging about my hilarious screw-ups in life have been some of my most responded to posts. So let’s get out there and blog our way into recognition. 

Social Media by Janelle Evans

Social media is one of the ways we as writers can spread the word about our past and upcoming books. Ranging from free to a fairly inexpensive way to promote your work, every author should strive to be savvier in this area of promotion. 

One way to strengthen your social media presence is create memes with images of your work. Here are a couple of examples I have made to promote my own.

I use canva.com to create all my advertising artwork—from posters to memes. It’s user friendly with tons of layouts and text settings. Not everything is free at this site, but since they allow me to download my own images and create my own layouts, everything I do from this site is free for me. How is that possible?

• Tip #1: Use a google or Bing.comsearch to find pictures for your background. If they don’t have a watermark covering them, you don’t have to pay royalties to copy and download them to Canva. The rose picture you see I found by typing (winter, rose). The other picture I found by typing (rippling water). Yes, it’s time consuming to go through pictures. I set aside a few hours every Saturday just typing in random words and seeing what pictures pop up. Anything that jumps out at me I save to Canva, even if I don’t know what I’ll use it for at the moment.
• Tip #2: You want to look for wallpaper sized pictures. They don’t tend to pixelate, or get burry, when you try to enlarge them as often as other pictures do. I usually use the word wallpaper in my search also just to help weed out some of the thousands of free pictures out there.
• Tip #3: There is an option on canva.com to make the picture you create as a link to other webpages. Don’t use it. Social Media sites don’t support it. When you upload these memes, write those links in the subject bars instead. Then your customers will have a working link they can click on to buy your book after being amazed by your eye-catching artwork.

The last thing I would like to mention about promotion is that it is time consuming. So, I also use a web platform that helps me look like I spend more time on social media than I actually do. Hootsuite.com enables me to schedule posts and comments across all of my social media accounts. From this website I can view comments and drip in posts, up to 30 per month. If you want unlimited accesses for scheduling it will cost you a yearly fee, but so far I have found 30 schedule posts per month to be more than enough.

Why the Author by Jo A. Wilkins

Published by a commercial imprint or self-published, marketing your book falls on your shoulders. You can depend on the publishing house to secure venues to publicize your book, but, in all cases, the readers want to hear from and/or rub elbows with the author of their favorite genre.

Why is this you ask. Well, you as an author have built a world or situation that takes the reader away from their humdrum lives. You take them into a place where they can live out a situation or fantasy that they don’t have the ability or (in some cases) the courage to experience.

Take me for example. I am an introvert with many phobias. I’m claustrophobic, I have a fear of heights, and I am afraid of flying, etc. So, what do I write, I write science fiction that takes place in the future, on other planets and more than scary for me, out in space. And how do we get from one place to another? We FLY in metal ships that, in most cases, have cramped quarters and are speeding through the nothingness of space.

The scene I get the most comments on is one where a passenger on the protagonist’s ship lets his fear of flying influence a dream he has while flying to a newly colonized world. It accentuates his fear of being caught in the depths of space with nothing to support him -- no air, no rescue, and a tight, one-person escape pod to climb into.

Or, take the author of Seraphim Sword, Jeff Ketner, whose book we released on November 15th. He has lived confined to a wheelchair with MS all his life. He created a world in his book where he runs free to chase demons and witches. He writes his fantasy of freedom – to move about unfettered and fight the evils of the world he created.

These are the reasons why readers want to hear from the author, not the publisher. To see why and question how they came up with the story that sucked them into the author’s world. This is why James Patterson’s publisher never holds his books up on the commercials. The readers want to see Mr. Patterson and hear why he thinks his new book is right for them to read.

Authors who attend book signings or shows and sit back in a chair at the back of the booth (or as I watched on one occasion an author who knitted and ignored her prospective customers) are the ones who sell nothing. If you stand outside the booth or at the table and talk to prospective buyers as they pass, you have a chance to sell that book you slaved over. I know one author who does magic tricks to entice customers to his table. Myself, I tell my authors to keep a bowl of candy on the edge of their table and a poster of reviews behind them.

Just like publishers who receive thousands/millions of submissions each year are overwhelmed by who to choose, readers are inundated by the number of books produced each year. Why should they choose your book? What does it offer them? They will never know if you, the author, don’t let them in on the secret.

So, to sum it up, advertising a novel is more productive when done by the author. If authors care about their books and are proud to show them off, then the reader might be intrigued enough to take a chance purchasing a copy.