I watch you putting forth so much effort, weaving your creativity, shaping your ideas, but then you stress.
You wonder if you’re doing the right thing. You question each decision you make, then watch other people make headway while you feel stagnant. So you change things up, hoping it’ll make a difference — instead of giving your plans enough time to manifest enough results to measure.
You've been following people on In-Yer-Facebook and InstaGlam who make it seem like they have no issues and a perfect life. You’re clicking on ‘secrets’ spewed out on YouTube adverts by people showing paychecks I can outdo in three minutes with Photoshop and an iPhone.
Stop it.
Seriously, just stop all of it.
You’re in a better place than you think you are. That’s why we need to have this conversation. I’ve been where you are. I’ve done what you’re doing.
…and I’ve used the same potty-mouth words you did last time. I know, it frustrated you and you had to vent out loud.
It’s going to be okay, I promise.
…and it’s a promise I can keep.
Here’s The REAL Secret
There are no ‘secrets’.
You already know this, but something in you wants the lie to be true.
‘Secrets’ is just a marketing word used to get your attention. A tactic encouraging you to make irrational decisions. When you see this used in any form of writing, you don’t have to be fearful. Just know it is always, always, always, a hook. The person using the word is manipulating you. That’s the intent when using that specific word in an explanation or copy, plain and simple.
Since you already knew that, and I’ve slapped you with a reminder, let me slap you again for good measure.
There are no shortcuts.
Oh, there may be a better path, a more efficient way of doing things, but no shortcuts. Not if you want anything to last.
What about luck, you ask?
That can happen, sure. You don’t control it, you can’t guarantee it, and it also isn’t a shortcut, it’s…luck.
Now that we have those two aspects of reality out of the way, take a moment and shake the stress off. It’s time to take you on a mental ride you won’t soon forget.
Can You Guarantee Your Own Success?
Strange question to start our conversation?
Not really.
Oh, and the answer to that question is an unequivocal ‘yes’.
You can guarantee your own success, and you should be promising this to yourself every day of your creative life.
How can you do this? Simple.
Start with the end in mind.
When I was training to be a bodyguard, they trained me to approach every conflict with the end in mind. The absolute resolution that I was going to get home to my wife and children, no matter what. It forced me to see every confrontation from a new perspective.
Physical contact was no longer ‘self-defense,' it was damage control. Avoidance, negotiations, body language, and positioning became critical skills. My first line of defense became the actual self-defense. I also developed a complete disregard for personal property. If a life was at stake, anything but an innocent was fair game to be used, abused and destroyed if it helped me do my job.
I decided not to take that path in the end. Learning about myself and what I could do opened my eyes. My very existence changed in how I viewed the world and interacted with those in it. My personality transformed forever.
The same goes for writing.
When I started shaping the Wanted Hero story in 2004, I started with the focus. How I wanted readers to feel about my comic books. My ‘going home no matter what’ became my ‘what does the story have to be to make it into the mind and heart of a reader’?
Did it work?
Virtually everyone I talked to in 2004 said what I wanted to do, making a traditional comic into a ¢.97 downloadable PDF, wouldn’t work. I’d never sell any. People wouldn’t be interested. I wouldn’t make any money. Blah-blah-blah. That pessimism doubled when I said I’d learn HTML and build the site myself in a world where programmers held the world hostage.
One year later, I had readers in 60 countries. Over 750,000 visitors came to my website, and I had a message board with 15,000 active members. Years before the invention of the Kindle, I earned a full-time living by creating comics alone.
Now that I’m writing these stories as fantasy novels, I ask the same questions during that process:
How can I start with the ending in mind?
What do I want readers to feel when they read my stories?
What do I want readers to take away with them?
What makes readers talk about the stories they read?
What makes a reader share the books they read?
What makes readers come back to a series?
Answering those questions provides a roadmap to success. Then I apply that to the stories.
The View To Consider
The point of this article is to help you shift your views. To change the words you use, specifically about yourself, because words matter. Words have power.
When we use the wrong words, we train our minds and skew our perspectives to accept lies.
Lies about ourselves.
Lies abut our work, and the things we want to bring into this world.
When you start with the end in mind, you take something that may seem “impossible” and transform it into “probable”.
Your success goes from ‘if’…. to ‘when’.
…and that, my friend, if you will remain consistent and not give up, is a guarantee.
I have to go for now, but I want to continue this conversation soon. There are some specific details I’d like to propose to you and show you how you’re perfectly aligned to succeed as a writer.
Until then, keep writing.
If you want to find that success, it’s the best decision you’ve made this year.
I guarantee it.
What 'lies' have you been telling yourself that may be holding you back from success? I want to know!
About Jaime
Jaime Buckley is a cartoonist and best-selling author.
More importantly, he’s a loving husband and father of 13 children. Since 1986 he’s worked for famous authors and TV personalities, and illustrated for hundreds of new authors across the genre spectrum. If you can think of a creative project or marketing strategy, Jaime's likely done it… but always finds his greatest success by being himself. You can find Jaime writing fantasy for readers on LifeOfFiction.com and sharing his parenting antics through kidCLANS.com.
You’ve written your book, edited it, collected beta reader feedback, and now you want to shop it around to editors and publishers. First off, congratulations! You have finished a book. But now you will need to know how it fits in the world of book stores and online sales, and one step to categorize your book is by using comp books.
Comparison books, comp books for short, do the work of giving the agent, publisher, and ultimately your readers an idea about the content, style, and story promise of your book. Finding books that are similar to yours can be tough and confusing, since each story has its own unique imprint on the world. Choosing books that are closely aligned to your story in multiple ways can help you sell your books and connect to more readers who want your type of story. Read on to see key ways that your comp book choices should reflect the essence of your story.
Why do authors need to find comp books or stories that are like their own?
Helps with cover design
Helps align accurate metadata (categories, keywords, descriptions
Helps with marketing your target readers
Helps you identify your ideal audience for your book.
And it shows agents and publishers that you understand the market and which readers your book will appeal to.
What things does your work have in common with them?
Be specific when using a comp book to solicit a publisher or agent. How does your comp book reflect these aspects of your novel?
Similar protagonist
Same genre
Main conflicts align
Address the same theme
Have a similar style or tone
Choosing books that are truly representative of what you have written also shows that you understand your book’s connection to readers. Giving book comp information to an agent or publisher shows a close relationship to a book with a proven audience base--and that your book can appeal to those readers as well.
How can you decide on and refine your Genre?
Genre Classifications
You may first want to read this article by our own Jenny Hanson about ow important it is to choose your genre carefully. But there is a slight art to picking the labels for your story.
It's problematic since there isn’t a definitive list. There are also major players, publishing houses, agencies, etc that use slightly different definitions. There are many, many stories that overlap in genre forming hybrid stories, complicating the process even more.
Another good place to look for genres and subgenres is to find your comp books in the places where they are sold. A main one is Amazon.com and they have a very detailed collection of categories to choose from. There is more strategizing when it comes to which subgenres are best for your book, but looking at books similar to yours could help you germinate your ideas on which subgenres best describe your novel.
Genre Practice and a Game
Figuring out the genre of you writing can be tricky. Let’s look at some well-selling books and see how close you choose the main category and subgenres.
Ready to practice your genre identification skills? Here is a question-based game to get your genre juices flowing!
Each question slide will include a description of a novel that was popular and considered in the “Best of” genres according to Amazon during the last 7 years. There will be 3 main categories to choose from, worth 1 point for each correct answer. There are extra points if you can guess the title of the novel from the description too!
Instructions:
Grab something to keep track of your answers.
Start the slideshow or read the descriptions from the stills included in this post below.
For each question slide, read the description, and write down the genre you choose.
Write down any titles you can identify.
Check your scores and brag incessantly in the comments at the end of this post. 😊
Question 1- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of our protagonist, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Question 2
Question 2- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape.
The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Question 3
Question 3- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
A girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaks into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeps with rock stars, and dreams of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Also getting noticed is a band led by the brooding Billy. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. The two cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
Question 4
Question 4- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
A slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia is an outcast even among her fellow Africans. She is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when another slave who has recently arrived from Virginia urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him.
Question 5
Question 5- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Question 6
Question 6- What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
The alcoholic narrator catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens.
She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only she could be that happy. And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed.
Question 7
Question 7 - What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?7
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose.
Question 8
Question 8 - What Best of Genre is this popular book based on the description below?7
Best Science Fiction & Fantasy b. Best Literature & Fiction c. Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
Subgenres of these best sellers
In this game you saw book descriptions for novels that hit the Best of Genre categories according to Amazon. As you will see the Best Literature & Fiction category is very wide in definition. Colton Whitehead’s Underground Railroad is a completely different story than Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six. Here is how these descriptions topped the charts:
Take a look at your correct answers. At 1 point for each correct category and an additional point for any correct titles, how many points did you get? Check the scoring chart and see how you did!
Final Thoughts
Genre is a tricky, slippery beast, and lets take the example of Outlander for a moment. Although historical fiction seems appropriate, the story has time travel (which we said is a subgenre). It fits in other categories.
According to the almighty-Bing search engine (hee hee),
So, genre may just be in the eye of the beholder and a useful tool for marketing one's book to their targeted readers.
But one thing is certain, I should be handled with care as it connects your book to the readers who want your story.
Take a look at that list again and check out the Amazon subgenres listed. Are any surprising to you? Would you have expected something different? Share your thoughts below (and your scores if you really want to!)
You can find her horror stories and young adult writing on her website. Keep up with future projects and events by subscribing to her newsletter. And other writing work HERE, including author coaching and critiques.
A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors.
And occasionally, she takes hikes in the woods with her dog.
Where most beginning writers screw up (you should pardon the expression) is in thinking that sex scenes are about sex. A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids. That being so, it can encompass any emotion whatever, from rage or desolation to exultation, tenderness, or surprise.
Lust is not an emotion; it’s a one-dimensional hormonal response. Ergo, while you can mention lust in a sex-scene, describing it at any great length is like going on about the pattern of the wall-paper in the bedroom. Worth a quick glance, maybe, but essentially boring.
So how do you show the exchange of emotions? Dialogue, expression, or action—that’s about the limit of your choices, and of those, dialogue is by far the most flexible and powerful tool a writer has. What people say reveals the essence of their character.
Example:
“I know once is enough to make it legal, but…” He paused shyly.
“You want to do it again?”
“Would ye mind verra much?”
I didn’t laugh this time, either, but I felt my ribs creak under the strain.
“No,” I said gravely. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Now, you do, of course, want to make the scene vivid and three-dimensional. You have an important advantage when dealing with sex, insofar as you can reasonably expect that most of your audience knows how it’s done. Ergo, you can rely on this commonality of experience, and don’t need more than brief references to create a mental picture.
You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large, it’s better to use sensual details, rather than overtly sexual ones. (Just read any scene that involves a man licking a woman’s nipples and you’ll see what I mean. Either the writer goes into ghastly contortions to avoid using the word “nipples”—“tender pink crests” comes vividly to mind—or does it in blunt and hideous detail, so that you can all but hear the slurping. This is Distracting. Don’t Do That.)
So how do you make a scene vivid, but not revoltingly so? There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional. (Many people use only sight and sound. Include smell, taste, touch, and you’re in business.)
Example:
The road was narrow, and they jostled against one another now and then, blinded between the dark wood and the brilliance of the rising moon. He could hear Jamie’s breath, or thought he could—it seemed part of the soft wind that touched his face. He could smell Jamie, smell the musk of his body, the dried sweat and dust in his clothes, and felt suddenly wolf-like and feral, longing changed to outright hunger.
He wanted.
In essence, a good sex scene is usually a dialogue scene with physical details.
Example:
"I'll gie it to ye," he murmured, and his hand moved lightly. A touch. Another. "But ye'll take it from me tenderly, a nighean donn."
"I don't want tenderness, damn you!"
"I ken that well enough," he said, with a hint of grimness. "But it's what ye'll have, like it or not."
He laid me down on his kilt, and came back into me, strongly enough that I gave a small, high-pitched cry of relief.
"Ask me to your bed," he said. "I shall come to ye. For that matter—I shall come, whether ye ask it or no. But I am your man; I serve ye as I will."
And finally, you can use metaphor and lyricism to address the emotional atmosphere of an encounter directly. This is kind of advanced stuff, though.
Example:
He'd meant to be gentle. Very gentle. Had planned it with care, worrying each step of the long way home. She was broken; he must go canny, take his time. Be careful in gluing back her shattered bits.
And then he came to her and discovered that she wished no part of gentleness, of courting. She wished directness. Brevity and violence. If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
She raked his back; he felt the scrape of broken nails, and thought dimly that was good—she'd fought. That was the last of his thought; his own fury took him then, rage and a lust that came on him like black thunder on a mountain, a cloud that hid all from him and him from all, so that kind familiarity was lost and he was alone, strange in darkness.
Like that.
What has your experience been writing sex scenes?
About Diana
Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting ‘Scrooge McDuck’ comics.”
As of January 2022, Diana’s books are published in thirty-eight languages and sold in one hundred and fourteen countries.
