Time to Write

Quite write! Self-publishing

I kind of miss the Sunday funnies, so I thought I'd do one of my own...

The amazing, distressing, ultimately triumphant story of a book's journey to film

When your unpublished manuscript is about to be made into a movie, surely publishers will snap it up, right?

 

Not necessarily. On the Huffington Post, Rex Pickett, author of Sideways, tells the entertaining if, for him, harrowing, story of the progress of his novel. It starts:

 

“In my last blog I left you with the following: my Sideways novel had been turned down by the publishing industry through my indefatigable Curtis Brown, LTD agent, on a second round of submissions -- even, shockingly, after Alexander Payne had optioned it and it was major entertainment daily news that Artisan Ent. had greenlit it as a $10 million film.”

I can’t resist quoting one of the first rejection letters Pickett got from a senior editor at a major publishing house: “Sideways is nothing more than a glorified screenplay, and if it was made into a film it would stink to high heaven with the rot of Pickett's writing.”

Unfortunately for Pickett, Payne then decided to do another film, About Schmidt, first. After that, Payne and his writing partner adapted the book and Pickett’s new agent submitted the novel again, to 20 top publishers (bringing the submission total to 100). Instead of the hoped-for bidding war, they got 20 rejections.

The agent persisted and they got an offer: $5000 from St. Martin’s Press…who immediately told Pickett he should hire a line editor to go over the manuscript…

I won’t continue, you really should read Pickett’s fuller version of his adventure, but if there ever as evidence that William Goldman’s line, “Nobody knows anything,” applies to book publishing as much as it does to film production, this is it!

As Pickett points out, the novel was faithfully adapted into a film and won every single screenwriting award that a writer could win, including the Oscar, and is now enshrined in the WGA Theater as one of the 101 Greatest Scripts of All Time.” 

You can read the full story starting here. It continues here.

(Interested in writing screenplays? See my other blog, www.ScreenwritingSuccess.com)

A fact some writers don't like (and how to test your book for the E factor)

Whether you’re writing a book about how to be a better presenter, a mystery, a book on raising Dobermans, a literary novel about a man’s mid-life crisis, or any other topic, it has to entertain.

This thought is prompted by a chat with a person who said he plans to write a book but he’s interested in “challenging people, not entertaining them.”

Well, good luck with that.

I didn’t waste energy on arguing with him. For one thing, I’ve found that people who “plan on writing a book someday” seldom actually get around to it. For another, trying to convince people that they’re wrong seldom works, either.

I’ve adopted a strategy I’ve seen attributed to both Alexander Woollcott (top right) and  H. L. Menken (bottom right): whenever anybody disputed anything he’d written, he wrote back, “Dear Sir/Madam: You may be right.”

But the man I was chatting with was wrong. Of course it’s fine to set out to challenge or educate as well as entertain but if it doesn’t do the latter nobody will read very far.

That’s why I often suggest that writers subject their first page to a simple but telling test: if this was the first page of a book somebody gave you, and you had no idea of what was going to happen later in the story, would you go on to read the second page? 

If the answer is no, don’t despair—that’s the first step to making changes that will also change the answer.

 (For advice on writing from the very best writers—Twain, Chekhov, Austen, Stevenson, and more—see my newest book, “Your Creative Writing Masterclass,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

How to keep a book series interesting

In an article at the Huffington Post, author Lev Raphael writes:

“Years ago, when I first met Walter Mosley, we talked about ways to keep a series from becoming routine for the author. He said his strategy was to take the series through historical changes, and see how they affected Easy Rawlins.”

Raphael adapted that strategy for his own mystery series, which features a male couple as “the gay Nick and Nora Charles.”

He says, “In the Nick Hoffman series, Nick ages and is definitely changed by the deaths he encounters. His relationship with Stefan develops, too. Depicting a loving gay couple over time, and under stress, has been one of the joys of this series, whose books are now appearing as eBooks for a new audience.”

If you’re contemplating writing a fiction series, it could also be useful to plant some elements in the first book that will pay off later. For example, you might hint that a character is getting a bit too fond of drinking, which could turn into a full-blown issue one or two volumes later.

Another strategy series writers employ is to let minor  characters in one volume become major characters in another.

Publishers like novel series and they have a big advantage for self-published authors, too: once readers like one, they’re likely to want more.

 (For help writing your novel see “Your Creative Writing Masterclass,” published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

 

 

Why your book cover, your title, your story, and your book trailer must match

Note: Just to be clear,  this post is about marketing, not the merits of the book I use as an example. 

Here is the cover of a new book called Black Cow:

 

What kind of book do you think it might be?

My guess was a children's book. The title seeemed pretty consistent with that but of course it's mainly the illustration that gives that impression.

That's why I was surprised when I saw the book trailer. The text of the trailer is the same as the book's description at Amazon.com:

"Freya and James Archer live the high life in a luxury home in Sydney's poshest suburb, with money, matching Jags, two beautiful teenage kids ... and they couldn't be more despondent. James wakes weeping each morning, dreading the pressures of a long and grueling work day ahead, and Freya is struggling with her foundering real estate career. Global recession is biting in Australia, and the Archers are afraid. In a desperate bid for happiness and security they shed the fragile trappings of success and cruise over into the slow lane to take an unmapped turn-off on a country road and live off the land in a remote old farmhouse on the peaceful southern island of Tasmania. But is this an end to their old misery or the beginning of an even greater one?"

OK, that's not a bad summary, although more of a hint about what happens to the Archers after they move might have provoked my curiosity a bit more. So now let's watch and listen to the trailer version of this description:

 

Is it only me, or is that a voice more likely to help you doze off than to rush to your online or offline bookstore? You don't need to use somebody who has that voice of doom ("in a land where..."), but too laid-back isn't good, either. 

Again, I don't mean any offense to the author or to make any judgements about the quality of the book, my point is that if your book cover, your title, your story, and your trailer (both in content and in style) are not consistent it leads to confusion on the part of the reader. And it's too easy for browsers to move on to the next book for you to want to take that chance.

(Marketing your book is one of the subjects of "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

60 rejection letters later...

Here's the scenario: a young man working in commercial real estate is tired of enduring the dyslexia that has plauged him since childhood.

He discovers that he loves reading espionage novels.

He decides to try writing one himself and calls it Term Limits. 

He sends it to 60 publishers. 

They all reject it. 

He publishes it himself. This was about 20 years ago, when there was a certain stigma to self-publishing because most people assumed you'd only do it if no publisher was willing to take your book. Which, of course, was true in this case. 

The book didn't sell and he gave up and went back into real estate--oh wait, no, I've got that wrong. Actually it became successful almost immediately and an agent took him on and got him a deal with Pocket Books. Now his fans include Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 

If you're a fan of spy fiction you probably figured out that I'm talking about Vince Flynn. He's now 45 and has just released his 13th novel, Kill Shot. The plots of his novels have been so correct that they're read by the Secret Service to make sure that in reality they don't have lapses in the security they provide.

He's been battlng cancer lately and seems to be on the road to recovery. You can read more in a story in USA Today. 

By the way, did you catch the number of rejections?

Sixty.

Did you notice that he didn't give up after those sixty?

Hmm.

(Want a writing coach in a book? Get a copy of "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey. Want some of the best writers of all time to be your writing coaches? Read the writing advice given by Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Anton Chekov and 100 more, in "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." Same publisher. Both are available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Advice to a young (or middle-aged, or old) writer

David Ogilvy said it:

"Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well."

This may seem too obvious to even consider it a topic of discussion. However, I had an email the other day from a young writer who said she enjoyed writing and dreamed of making it a career but that she gets only Bs and Cs on the stories she writes in her English class--did I think that means she doesn't have the talent to be a professional writer?

I wrote back:

"Dear Margaret (not her real name)

It means no such thing. 

If you are getting low grades (not that a B is low, by the way) because your spelling and punctuation are not what they should be, take heart. You can learn those.

If you are getting low grades because the teacher doesn't like the content of your story, remember that intelligent people can differ in their opinions about a story, an essay, a book, a film. I mean no disrespect to your teacher, but I don't take it as a given that he or she is a great judge of material. 

To quote David Ogilvy, who was a masterful ad man and a pretty good writer (in my opinion), "Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well."

That's not to say that talent doesn't play a role. But if you are passionate about writing I suspect you do have talent as well. It may not be fully developed. In fact, I hope it isn't, because one of the great motivators in life is the desire to keep improving.

One of the joys of writing is reading the work of wonderful authors and being able to say you're doing it as part of your work. You will learn a lot from this, and without necessarily copying their style. Be sure you're making the time to read, and read widely. Once in a while read a book you don't like and figure out why you don't like it. Then reward yourself by reading one you do like and figure out why you do like it. There's a lot to be learned about writing outside of English class. 

Believing that you can have the career of your dreams is just as easy as doubting it and is more likely to have a positive outcome. Believe in yourself and keep writing."

I think that advice is just as applicable to older writers as to younger ones. I have to remind myself of it from time to time, too.

(For my new book I collected the writing advice of great writers and then added material on how we can adapt it to what we are writing. The book is called 'Your Creative Writing Masterclass," it's published by Nicholas Brealey, and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

How much should an ebook cost?

An article by Declan Burke in the Irish Times has an interesting discussion of the price of ebooks. Should they be cheaper than traditional books? Certainly, due to the reduced costs to publishers. But how low should they go? The article says:

“I’ve noticed people tagging the US Kindle edition of Stolen Souls with ‘$9.99 boycott’ and similar at Amazon.com,” says Stuart Neville, the bestselling author of The Twelve, about reader-led demands for lower prices. “I’m amazed that people are that cheap. Do they think a year of my life is worth less than $9.99? Do they really believe that 10 to 12 hours of entertainment isn’t worth the equivalent cost of two or three coffees, or less than two beers? “I think it’s the sense of entitlement that bothers me,” he adds. “It’s particularly common with those who believe they have some sort of right to download music and movies for free.”

“I think they are entitled to expect a lower price,” says Eoin Purcell, commissioning editor with New Island. “For one thing there’s no printing cost, no delivery cost and, in some cases, a much lower retailer discount. On the other hand, design costs still exist, and marketing costs may be higher. In Europe, VAT is an issue and the authors demand a higher royalty. If a publisher is to retain the same margin they have come to expect, then a modest discount is to be expected. Something in the region of 30 to 40 per cent discount on print seems reasonable.”

Many authors think the way to build a following is the offer their first book for something like 99 cents, in hopes that readers who like it will then be willing to pay more for the authors' other books. That worked well when there were not too many titles competing for the readers' attention but not everybody agrees on how effective it is these days. 

Publisher John Mooney of Maverick Press told the Irish Times, “Ebooks written by authors who are not so popular or well known can be discounted to boost sales, but it’s my experience that such discounting doesn’t generate a spike in sales.”

He added, “Maverick House does offer some ebooks at low prices if we feel the author needs support, but this does not guarantee sales. We have digitised our backlist, and the books that sell in large quantities on Kindle and in other digital formats are those offered at full price. People will not purchase books which they do not wish to read just because they are cheap."

Alan Guthrie, co-owner of ebook-only publishing company Blasted Heath, is more sanguine: “The outcry against cheap books has been around for a long time. Ebooks are just the latest to be targeted. If you look back to the 1950s, for instance, the advent of the mass market paperback original caused panic and outrage in the rest of the publishing world. They believed it wasn’t possible to make any money from cheap paperback originals as the profit margins were too slim. And yet, somehow, here we all are.”

There's no clear answer and, as usual, the marketplace will decide. But if you are contemplating writing an ebook my advice is to consider from the start what is going to make it stand out in a crowded marketplace in which many of your competitors will be pricing their offering low.

F. Scott Fitzgerald on why we read...and why we write.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wonder what F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose quote this is, would make of the ever-increasing level of connectivity we have these days. 

When you ask writers, especially those over 35 or so, why they write, often they trace it back to the joy they got from reading when they were children. For many, including me, it was an escape from some difficult family circumstances.

Often it was, as Fitzgerald pointed out, a book that made you suddenly realize that whatever your problems, somebody somewhere else had them, too. And if it was an especially tough day, taking up residence in a fictional world for a few hours was a gift. Having valued the shelter of books, we want to extend it to others. 

Increasingly, though, kids are turning to different ways to feel connected. A Pew Research Center survey in the US in April-May 2011 found that 83% of Americans own a cell phone, and the average user makes 12 calls a day and sends 41.5 texts--but that's for people 18 or older.

A similar study in 2010 focused on teens and found that 75% of them have phones and one in three sends more than 100 text messages a day. 

They also are avid users of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These can be used to bully kids who are different as well as to provide solace or connections but I'm certain they help more than they hurt.  

Can a writer still serve this function? Of course--kids are still reading. But if we revisit this topic in ten or even five years, I wonder whether Fitzgerald's quote will seem more quaint than relevant.

(If you'd like to learn to write from the best, get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It features writing advice from more than 100 classic and modern writers, plus my guidance on how to apply that advice to you want to write. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Quickie: the most common mistake newer fiction writers make

this little program--fun, might be especially good 

for a how to write series for kids. Click on the play arrow 

and wait a moment--it take a few seconds to start.

 

Writing prompt: a fuzzy vision of a dog, judged

Do you want to keep your writing brain active, even if you’re not working on a project at the moment? Once a week I’ll give you writing prompts in three different forms: a person, object or place; a starting point, and an image.

 I suggest you use one, two, or all three of these together as prompts for a micro-story (250 words or fewer). On the go? Write it on your smartphone or in a little notebook.

If you are working on a longer project, notice whether any of these gives you a new idea about some aspect of that. 

Don’t worry about making it perfect or whether it’ll get published-–although if you like it, why not publish it on your blog or send it to a friend?

The person, object or place: a little figurine of a dog

The starting point: Your protagonist loses a contact lens

The image:  

 

(Want to learn how to write from the best--Dickens, Austen, Chekhov and also top modern writers? Get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Why the secret of lying well is also the secret of writing well

Why do people lie? There are many reasons, but certainly one of the most common ones is to make yourself or your life seem more interesting. I've encountered three people along the way who were really good liars.

LIAR 1: THE ELVIS FAN

The first one pretended that he was high up in a movie production company. He always had the latest inside news before anybody else--what he told me would appear in Daily Variety the next day.

He also said he'd been friends with Elvis and he showed me a bunch of memorabilia, inscribed to him by name by Elvis, to prove it.

It took me a while to catch on, but eventually I found out that actually he worked in the mail room of that production company and he got a lot of his inside information from a few other low-level studio workers around town. I suspect he bought the Elvis stuff and autographed it to himself.

Years later I heard that he was being sued by someone he'd conned into giving him money to finance a movie that he had claimed was almost fully funded and just needed that extra ten thousand dollars.

LIAR 2: IT'S GOOD TO THE KING 

The second was a man who pretended to be part of the aristocracy in the UK. Of course he'd met Lady Diana. He kept catalogues from Christies scattered around the place. He loved to drink champagne and to treat others to it as well.

Eventually he was arrested for defrauding his employer, which is how he'd afforded the champagne. I also found out that many of the rich Brits he used to hang around with knew he was a fake, but didn't say anything (they were much more tuned in to the nuances of accent and deportment that give away one's origins than I, as an American, was). 

LIAR 3: THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR...

The third was someone who always had stories about his remarkable life and they were sort of plausible--until one time he told me a story about an event that had happened to him...that I had actually told him and that actually had happened to me! As far as I know, this one hasn't ever been in trouble with the law, but I hear that his life is in disarray.

All three of them at times seemed to have convinced themselves that their concocted stories were true. I guess that's the sign of a really good liar (or maybe a psychopath)--when you lie so well that you believe it yourself. 

THE 4 SECRETS OF THE GOOD LIAR AND WRITER 

What does this have to do with writing? Well, as someone said, fiction consists of lies you tell in order to reveal the truth. We do make things up, and we need to make them convincing. What made the liars' stories convincing? I think it was four things:

* inside information - that's something people love to get in books as well, a look into worlds not usually open to them, whether that's high finance, espionage, or the third world garbage piles that are 'mined' by children'

* details. If I say to you that yesterday it rained frogs, you probably would doubt me. If I said yesterday 16 frogs fell from the sky into my garden, hearing that specific number might give you pause. 

* consistency. This usually is the liars' downfall. They trade in details, but they can't keep track of them. In the case of the Elvis fan, it was a shift in versions of the same story that first made me think he might be lying. Once I was looking and listening for this, small inconsistencies that I might not have noticed before stood out.

As writers we have to be consistent on two levels. One is about details. I make notes as I go along--if on page 23 I say that Lisa has brown-green eyes, I jot it down so that when her fiance looks into her eyes on page 156 he won't remark how wonderfully blue they are. The other is consistency of the behavior of the characters we create. In real life we are not terribly consistent, but readers expect it from our characters. 

* not relying on coincidence to explain how they got out of trouble. We will happily believe it if someone tells us a series of misfortunes stemming from coincidence, but it they keep telling us that they were able to get out of trouble because each time something helpful happened by coincidence, we won't. The same goes for your plots--getting your character out of a scrape through coincidence feels lazy and like cheating. 

There you have it--four tools you can use to lie well or to write well (I recommend the latter!).

(Some of the greatest liars, er, writers, reveal their secrets in my newest book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It offers writing advice from Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, Jane Austen and more than a hundred other talented and successful writers of today and yesteryear. You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Do what you love and the money will (fill in the blank)

Once in a while someone asks me whether I think they should quit their job and devote full time to writing. Usually I ask them for a few details:

* Do you have a family or others to support?

* Have you had any kind of success with your writing, even just an encouraging rejection?

* How long could you hold out without earning any money from writing?

* What's your position on eating cheap food?

If they answer those questions truthfully, they can pretty much figure it out themselves. However, sometimes I encounter someone who believes that if you do what you love, the money will follow.

I don't know if that's true, but I do know that sometimes it follows at a great distance. (Van Gogh, anyone?)

The idea that being passionate about your work will guarantee financial success is just wishful thinking. Sure, sometimes it's true but there are also a lot of people who pursue their passion and are good at what they do, but never have financial success with it. 

This is a variation of "if you build it, they will come." In the movies, yes. In real life sometimes they come, sometimes they stay away, and sometimes they come to jeer and tear it down. 

This doesn't mean you shouldn't take the risk. Years ago I quit my job and it took more than two years before I started having some success as a script writer. Two years isn't very long, but of course at the end of year one you don't know whether it will take another year or another ten or will never happen. I'd saved money and I lived in a studio apartment next to a hooker and I ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and dinner. Breakfast was corn flakes--actually, sometimes dinner was corn flakes, too. I was single so nobody else was forced onto the corn flakes and peanut butter diet because of my dream. That made a difference.

I like and admire people who take risks in the course of going for their dreams, and I admire them even more if they're doing it with their eyes open. 

 

 

Warning: Before you spend money on a self-publishing course, read this!

Ebooks are hot, which means it didn't take long for people to come out of the woodwork to extract money from writers who want to self-publish but aren't sure how. Of course it's perfectly legitimate for someone to charge for a course on that and there are lgood ones around. What bothers me is the way some of them are being marketed.

Several marketers whose pitches I've heard or read are telling people it's easy to make a lot of money publishing your own ebook. As examples they mention John Locke and Amanda Hocking, both of whom have sold more than a million copies of their ebooks.

One marketer said that Hocking had this result "without lifting a finger." If you've read Hocking's account, you'll know that she worked exceedingly hard to get people to read her books. John Locke also admits that his true talent isn't writing, it's marketing. 

To imply that these two are typical is equivalent to telling somebody he should take tennis lessons because, afte all, that Nadal and Federer make a fortune.

Can you make a profit from ebooks? Of course.

Will there be others who sell more than a million? Yes, naturally.

But is it easy? Can you just format your book and get it on the Amazon Kindle site and wait for the money to roll in without lifting a finger? No way. 

I do think self-publishing is a great opportunity for writers and I would never dissuade anybody from doing it. Nor is it a bad idea to take a course or buy a program to learn how to do it. In fact, I'm working (slolwy) on a course that will help you establish your "author's platform," which is essential whether you are published traditionally or self-publish.

But if the people who are hoping to sell you a course or a book tell you it's simple and riches are practically guaranteed, hold on to your wallet or purse and run a mile in the other direction.

Quite Write!

A different approach to procrastination

 

In their book on willpower, John Tierney and Roy Baumeister suggest that one way to overcome procrastination is to commit to doing nothing if you're not doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. Nothing, as in no reading, no watching TV, no listening to the radio, certainly no surfing the web. Just nothing. 

 

Their premise is that you will soon get so bored you'll decide it would be better to do the thing you were avoiding.

Actually, sometimes displacement is quite useful; I think it was Robert Benchley who wrote that he got the most things done when he was supposed to be doing something else. 

However, if you're doing too much of that, you could try their 'do nothing' approach. I'm not convinced it would work for me. I'd still be thinking and that might be enough, although I'm sure I'd find it frustrating not to be allowed to jot down ideas as they came up. 

If that might apply to you, too, I've come up with an alternative:

Think of two other things that need doing that you would find even less appealing than the thing you're supposed to be doing. For instance, maybe cleaning the toilet or sorting out your tax receipts. 

Then commit to doing one of those three things. You can  allow yourself to switch as soon as one got too unpleasant; maybe you'd get 1/3 of all of them done the first day, the second third the next day, and finish them all the third day. 

As with every other challenge, the key is to keep trying things until you find the one that works. 

(For lots of useful, practical tips on how to make better use of your time, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." You won't find thes same advice in it that is featured in most time management books, these are right-brain approaches for creative people. You can get it now at Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

 

Is your writing near the edge? Here's Vonnegut's take on that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tricky advice there from Kurt Vonnegut, author of "Slaughterhouse 5" and many other books. They did get edgier and stranger as he went on but he never went over. Some writers have, of course, both with their writing and in their lives. 

If you've never read "Slaughterhouse 5" you may not know that's its the story of a young American soldier, Billy Pilgrim. He's taken prisoner by the Germans in World War II and housed, along with his fellow prisoners, in a disused slaughterhouse in Dresden.

When the Allied forces destory the city with massive numbers of bombs, the resulting firestorm wipes out most of the city's population. Billy and the other captives come up to the surface to see a scene of unbelievable devastation.

All that happened to Kurt Vonnegut.

He pushed the novel version of it farther, having Billy randomly re-live parts of his life and also his death. He introduces The Tralfamadorians, aliens who kidnap Billy and put him on show in their zoo, as well as Howard W. Campbell Jr., a real-life American Nazi, and even himself when he starts the book by writing about his own experiences and why he wrote it.

In 1958, when Vonnegut was 36, his brother-in-law was killed in a rail crash two days before his wife, Vonnegut's sister, died of cancer. Vonnegut adopted three of their children.

Perhaps when you have seen, as Vonnegut described it, "carnage unfathonable," and been sorely tested even afterward, you find yourself stranded on the edge.

At any rate, it's where some of the most interesting writing comes from.

I've generally tried to avoid it but found that when you do that, it comes to you. Better to embrace it and turn it into something useful. 

Where is your edge?

Are you close enough to it?

Too close?

Or, I hope, just right?

(If you'd like to learn to write from the best, get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It features writing advice from more than 100 classic and modern writers, plus my guidance on how to apply that advice to you want to write. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

 

 

A reminder about a great source of story ideas

It has been a while since I wrote anything about StoryCorps, so I thought it might be a good time to remind you of this wonderful, often touching resource that is also a fantastic source of story ideas. 

StoryCorps is a non-profit organzation that, in conjunction with public radio, tapes people's life stories, or stories of important moments in their lives, and broadcasts those tales and also makes them available online. 

In honor of Valentine's Day, at the moment they are focusing on love stories and are releasing a book called All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps (published by Penguin). 

Some of the stories you'll find at www.storycorps.org are heart-breaking, some are funny, some give you pause to reflect. For instance, one of them consists of two sisters interviewing their father, who has Alzheimer's. Another one features a teacher asking a student who dropped out about what could have kept him in school. And one of the love stories is about how a long-distance romance blossomed.

Naturally I'm not suggesting that you use any of these stories outright as the basis of your book or screenplay , but rather that you use them for inspiration, as a way to listen to how people speak, to catch subtext, and to notice what kinds of stories have the greatest impact on you. 

The site also has animated versions of some of the stories. I love animation, but I'm not 100% convinced that they add much here to just listening to the voices in the case of the dramatic stories, but they do serve the funnier ones. Below is an example, "Miss Divine," in which two cousins remember their stern Sunday School teacher. And if you know anybody who is hooked on (so-called) reality shows, introduce them to StoryCorps where they will find true reality--and without commercials.

 

 

 

Writing prompt: A stamp a dent, a nag

Do you want to keep your writing brain active, even if you’re not working on a project at the moment? Once a week I’ll give you writing prompts in three different forms: a person, object or place; a starting point, and an image.

I suggest you use one, two, or all three of these together as prompts for a micro-story (250 words or fewer). On the go? Write it on your smartphone or in a little notebook.

If you are working on a longer project, notice whether any of these gives you a new idea about some aspect of that. 

Don’t worry about making it perfect or whether it’ll get published-–although if you like it, why not publish it on your blog or send it to a friend?

The person, object or place: A post office

The starting point: A secondary character dents your protagonist's car

The image:  

 

(Want to learn how to write from the best--Dickens, Austen, Chekhov and also top modern writers? Get a copy of my new book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass" from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Writing a powerful query letter: learning by example what (not) to do

Authorbuzz is a service that promotes books for a fee (I don't have any personal knowledge of their service or how well it works). On their site they give their authors a chance to pitch their books directly to readers who sign up to the site. I thought it might be useful to you to read two pitches and compare them, to discover what works and what doesn't.

 

First up: HELPLESS, by Daniel Palmer. Here's what he wrote about his book:

 

"Nine years after he left Shilo, New Hampshire, former Navy Seal Tom Hawkins has returned to raise his teenage daughter, Jill, following the murder of his ex-wife, Kelly. Despite Tom’s efforts to stay close to Jill by coaching her high school soccer team, Kelly’s bitterness fractured their relationship. But life in Shilo is gradually shaping up into something approaching normal. Normal doesn’t last long. Shilo’s police sergeant makes it clear that Tom is his chief suspect in Kelly’s death. Then an anonymous blog post alleges that Coach Hawkins is sleeping with one of his players. Internet rumors escalate, and incriminating evidence surfaces on Tom’s own computer and cell phone. To prove his innocence, Tom must unravel a tangle of lies about his past. For deep amid the secrets he’s been keeping—from a troubled tour of duty to the reason for his ex-wife’s death—is the truth that someone will gladly kill to protect."

In my opinion that's a pretty good pitch. It sets up the relationships nicely--the father-daughter conflict suggests that this story isn't just a by-the-numbers crime thriller. It doesn't give away the ending, but the last sentence adds another element of conflict and danger, and suggests that the secrets might have several levels.

 

Let's look at the next one, BLUE MOON BAY, by Lisa Wingate. This is how she described her book:

 

"When Seattle architect, Heather Hampton returns to Moses Lake, Texas, family secrets and a small-town mystery blow her plans completely off course. Heather wants to sell the family farmland to giant Proxica Foods, so she can design Proxica's new flagship facility. But when local banker, Blaine Underhill, and Heather's crazy family get involved, all bets are off. Suddenly, Heather's quick trip to Texas leads to Valentine's Week in the family funeral home, and a revelation that could change Heather's life forever.

What do you think?

 To be fair, it's quite a bit shorter, which works against it, but I think there are other problems.

It refers to Heather Hampton's plans being blown off course. When, in the next sentence, I hear what those plans are (to sell the family farmland to a big food company), I don't care about that one way or another--there's not the kind of emotional appeal that you get from the store of a father trying to protect his daughter.

If Heather had an urgent need for the money, for something we can identify with, we might care.

And when the pitch mentions the deal, I think, Oh no, not another tale of the ordinary folks vs. the big bad company that wants to build on land and do terrible things, like provide jobs for the local young people.

Furthermore, phrases like "Heather's crazy family" remind me of sitcoms with stereotypical characters.  Phrases like "all bets are off" are so general that, again, I don't get a connection with the story.

Sorry, Lisa Wingate, for all I know the book is far better than the pitch. 

Writing this kind of blurb, whether in a query letter to an agent or publisher or for the back of tbe book, is very difficult. Looking at how others have done it, whether really well or not so well, is a great way to get better yourself. 

(Marketing what you write is an important section of the new edition of Your Writing Coach, just out from NIcholas Brealey Publishing and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)