Writers in the Storm

 

I chose this entry to crit this month because, at its core, it sounds like an interesting story, and it could be a compelling beginning. But it's buried in adjectives, adverbs and asides. I can tell this author slaved over this. But believe it or not, we can try too hard. 

Black = original

Red = my thoughts/comments

Purple = text I added/altered

Sickly  Sunbeams muscled through the grime-streaked window, nudging nine-year-old Georgie from a precarious sleep slumber. She peeked through the holes of her soiled pink and white blanket. and reached up to scramble the dust motes dancing within the muted shafts. All was quiet—not often always a good sign.

We are well anchored — we're getting hints of what Georgie's life is like. Well done. But I've cut the clutter — things we don't need. The reader wants to move along, especially in the beginning, so they can settle into your world and find out what the story is about. Playing with the dust motes is unnecessary. Be sure every word in your beginning is essential. Also, 'slumber' isn't a word a young girl would think.

 

            Georgie never knew who or what awaited her on the flip side of sleep—a landlord banging on the door forcing her to grab her backpack and skedaddle out the window, or worse, one of her mother’s smelly dates, staring at her like she inherently knew they shouldn’t be. 

See how 'inherently knew' is the author's voice, not a 9-year-old's? You want the reader to relate to Georgie — so put us in her skin by showing us how this makes her feel — in a little kid's voice, like, '...or worse, one of her mother's smelly dates staring at her like she was breakfast,' or something like that.

            If she couldn’t sneak away while her mother was doing 'entertaining' otherwise occupied, she’d jam the ragged easy chair into a corner, hide behind it and curl up like a basement bug. It blocked the sights—unfortunately, but not the sounds.

'Otherwise occupied' is the author's voice — and I know 'doing entertaining' isn't grammatically correct, but it's how I think a young girl would use the word she heard from her mother. LOVE 'basement bug'!  I think pulling the adverb from the last sentence and making it simpler makes it more stark — more brutal.

            Georgie pulled her blanket over her head for a few beats, trying to will herself back to sleep so she could fly across the night sky with Peter Pan to Neverland where the Lost Boys welcomed her—after all, she was a lost girl. 

Love the 'lost girl' (should it be capped? Not sure). But the reader will get it before you think they will, so I don't think you need the last part. Once a reader understands, anything after that, they'll skim. And skimming is the beginning of a reader putting a book down.             

            She peeked from behind the chair—no boyfriends leered back at her. Her mother lay sprawled completely naked half-on and half-off the tattered couch. Georgie crept toward her. A fart ollowed byf and a couple of snorts let her know mom that Carol was indeed alive. She plucked the bright pink kimono from the floor and covered her mom before dashing out to face another day.  

Wait — she's not in bed — she's behind the chair? I didn't get that from the earlier paragraph. Thought that was something she did some nights, not last night. Easy fix: go up to that paragraph and edit to — 'Last night, she couldn't....' then make the rest of the sentence past tense: 'She'd jammed,' 'hid behind it and curled up.' See what I mean?

Okay, this paragraph. She wouldn't think 'Carol' — she'd think 'mom'. A subtle author intrusion — trying to slip in a detail you think the reader needs to know. At the end, give us a few details. I assumed she was in pj's, but apparently she slept in her clothes — that's a detail you may want to put earlier. Even if she did, I doubt she'd sleep in her shoes, right? Also, you mentioned her backpack earlier, and I assume it's for school —  wouldn't she grab that?

 

            Georgie had made friends up and down the streets of the South Bronx. Besides Mr. Ahman, the owner of the local bodega, there was the hawk-faced lady who stood on a box reading from the bible. Mrs. Toradelli ran the corner newspaper stand and Officer Ken and Officer Lee were two of the beat cops who patrolled her neighborhood during the day.

This is good — it anchors us as to where we are, and gives us a picture of what the neighborhood is like. You say, 'officer,' and 'patrolled,' so we know they're cops. 

Tom Robbins says, “Challenge every single sentence for lucidity, accuracy, originality, and cadence. If it doesn’t meet the challenge, work on it until it does.”

This is never more true than in your first pages.

What do you think? Anything I missed? Does this make you want to check your first pages for adjectives and asides?

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Laura’s next book is available for preorder! (You know how much preorders help authors, right?) Just click on the photo to be taken to retailers.

This cowboy’s got one last chance to prove himself

Carly Beauchamp has loved cowboy Austin Davis since first grade. Ask anyone in their dusty, backwater New Mexico town of Unforgiven, and they’ll say “Carly and Austin” the way some say “big trucks and country boys.” But after years of waiting for a wedding ring, Carly’s done with being a rodeo widow . . .

Austin never meant to put his career on the circuit before Carly. She’s always been his future, his one and only. But now that she’s moved on, he’s beginning to see where he went wrong, and he’ll do anything to win her back. The only thing is, Carly’s suddenly acting differently, and she’s definitely hiding a secret—one that will test the depth of their love and open up a whole new world of possibilities.

Over the last few months, I've shared "Top 10" lists from J.K. Rowling and Stephen King on the topics of writing and success. This month I chose Neil Gaiman, because he has so much compassion and practical wisdom to share about writing.

The amazing thing to me in compiling these lists is that all three writers offer different advice. The same way three creatives will take a single photograph and create three different worlds, these writers define words like "perseverance" in different ways. It fascinates me.

Here is Gaiman's "Top Ten" list for writing success:

1. Make good art.

The world needs us to do what we do. They need us to create stories that resonate, that take them outside of themselves. If you have the ability to create, take the time to do it well. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the magic of creativity in Big Magic.

While the fate of the world does not rest upon art, art can reflect the state of the world and it's fate. It's a mirror into society's soul and a great use of your time. Never doubt it.

As Gaiman says, "Do what only you can do, and do your best: Make. Good. Art."

2. Do what you care about.

We spend months and years writing our books. That's a lot of time to spend with characters and ideas. If you don't care about your story, what is the point? If you don't care about your characters, why should your reader?

3. Do new things.

Study after study says the key to creativity is play. If you've ever watched children play with each other's toys, you will see that they love learning how to use their tried and true whatever-toy-it-is in a new way, based on the improvisation of their friends. They have rules and they trust in them. We need trust, both to play and be creative. Exploration, building and thinking with your hands, and role-play where acting it out lets you really get inside it.

Nurture this on the page, and in your critique groups. Look at your old story in a new way. Take a writing class. I just took a Donald Maass class through the Women's Fiction Writers Association that knocked my socks off - just taking the class made me look at my work in a different way.

4. Ignore the rules.

Gaiman isn't talking about ignoring a rule "just because." We're not tweens, we're creatives. If a rule kills your writing mojo, it's okay to ignore it to bring your art into being. His argument: If you know the rules of what is possible, that is what you will do. Often that is ALL you will do. If you don't know the rules, you will have no idea that you can't do something. That soul-killing word shouldn't won't rear it's ugly head. You will try. And often you will fly.

Entertainment tip: Anne R. Allen wrote a great post on "secret writing rules" and why we can ignore them.

5. You are unique.

Your favorite authors have let their inner writing freaks fly free. You can hear their distinctive voices in every book they write. Have you every picked up a Darynda Jones book? Ditto with Christopher Moore and Janet Evanovich? 

My friend Natalie Hartford's first tagline was, "Be yourself...everyone else is taken." That is never more true than when you are writing. No one else will tell a story like you, and the people who love your voice will follow you through just about any story you write.

When you allow your uniqueness to shine, your writing will too.

6. Just do it!

I've talked about daring to suck before. We all suck when we start. Just do it anyway. You learn to write by writing.

Gaiman: "The most important thing you can do when you are starting out is 'write the next one.' Assume you have a million words inside you that are absolute rubbish and you need to get them out before you get to the good ones." 

7. Walk toward the mountain.

Gaiman: "If you feel like you were put on this earth to do something, then go do that thing. Which is much harder than it sounds." He puts it like this:

Imagine where you want to be with your life. Imagine it is a distant mountain. When you are doing that something with your life, take a moment to stop and see whether it is taking you toward the mountain or away from the mountain.  If it is taking you away, don't do that thing. Only do things that move you closer to the mountain.

8. Persevere.

Much to my lament (and Neil's), the heavens will not open with notes of glory and publishing contracts every time you send something out. When you first get started, they might not open at all. Laura Drake has a quote she loves, which I think every writer should post on their mirror/workstation/refrigerator:

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

9. Try more.

Gaiman urges you to think of your writing like dandelion seeds. Dozens will go out into the world, but for every five failures that float on the wind, perhaps one will finds some success. The more you send out, the more success you will have. The more types of things you try, the greater the chance of finding that success.

10. Enjoy the ride.

Gaiman credits Stephen King with the best piece of advice he was ever given, which he regrets not taking: "Enjoy the ride." Instead of enjoying his success, he worried about it - the next deadline, the next idea. He wished he'd let go and enjoyed the ride. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KXf1QT9GC0

Bonus Gaiman tip that I love:

A freelance life of art is like putting a message in a bottle and hoping that someone will open your bottle and read it, and send one back to you..Don’t chase money. Just do your ideas when they come. If you do work that you’re proud of, even if you don’t get the money, you still have the work.

Gaiman is very practical in his advice, and he focuses on the work. What fuels your work?  Which of these ten bits of wisdom do you struggle with the most?

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or here at Writers In The Storm.

June Stevens Westerfield

I had hoped to avoid the particular topic I’m about to broach completely; however, as I always talk to you guys about branding, I would be remiss if I ignored the current publishing climate and didn’t take the time to discuss book branding as it relates to your cover and title.

As you likely know, the publishing industry is currently in an uproar over an author who has reportedly trademarked a certain word and is now attempting to prevent all other authors (not just indie-authors) from using said word in book and series titles. I will not be speaking directly to this situation as the legalities are murky, I do not know all of the specifics of the case, and I am not a lawyer or an expert in copyright or trademark law. However, I am a veteran of the publishing industry and a branding specialist, and what I can do is try to give some of you a little perspective on how things generally work in the publishing world and in the plainest terms possible.

Authors are, understandably, upset. Even those unaffected by the current trademark debacle are in a panic. I’ve seen questions all over the place, on Facebook, in forums, with authors scared this could happen to them and wondering if they should start trademarking their own titles.

The quick and dirty answers (in my professional, but non-legal, opinion) are: A. Yes, it could happen to you, especially if everyone panics and starts registering trademarks willy-nilly. B. No, you should not start filing trademarks on your titles. Not yet, and possibly not ever. (SIDE NOTE: There is a difference between copyright and trademark. If you aren’t sure of the difference or whether you are violating one or the other, consult a lawyer. Always.)

In my personal opinion, as someone who has been in and around the indie and small press publishing industry for 14+ years, trademarking a specific word or combo of words in order to prevent them from being used in a book title and/or series is both in bad form and shows a deep misunderstanding of the concepts of copyright infringement and writing to market as well as a lack of understanding of the book publishing world in general.

First off, let’s start out by saying something every creative should know: There are no original ideas. There aren’t. If you think you are unique and special because all of your ideas are one of a kind, you are deluding yourself. This is not meant to be cruel; it’s just fact. There are only so many basic plot lines in the history of spoken and written language and storytelling, and there is no way there is an idea out there that has never been thought of and used. What IS unique is your spin on it—your voice and how you tell the story. Now I’m not going to go into plagiarism or copyright infringement as it pertains to book content. Those are deep and murky waters. For now, let’s focus on titles and covers.

In the terms of cover art and book titles, the ability for 100% uniqueness narrows considerably. Why? Well, in the case of titles, there are only so many words in the English language and only so many coherent combinations of those words. There are going to be books with same or similar titles as yours. There is a very good chance that, despite any due diligence on your part, there was, at some point, a book with your title published previously. It happens. It’s not copyright infringement, and it does not mean that an author is copying you or that they are trying to deliberately deceive YOUR readers. Regardless of the legalities of the action, trademarking or attempting to trademark a specific word to prohibit others from using it in order to prevent books having similar titles as yours is, at best, an over-reaction and, at worst, a really nasty thing to do to your fellow authors.

And then, when we move into the realm of cover art, the world narrows even more. This is perhaps the hardest concept for people to understand, especially readers who have no idea how the industry works. The overwhelming majority of book covers are made from stock photos. Even some of the large traditional publishers go this route. There are only so many stock photo outlets in the world, even with more and more photographers popping up and creating stock sites specific to the romance genre (and its many sub-genres). Unless you pay huge sums of money for a personalized photo shoot, there is a huge likelihood that someone else will use the same photo in their cover. Even if you do have that kind of money (very rare for indie-authors), you would also have to find completely unknown models who will never participate in another photoshoot. This is highly unlikely.

A cover designer will do their best to take the chosen photos and create a cover that is unique to your book using design elements, font, and often other images. There are specific licenses attached to stock photos. Each license type has its own “dos and don’ts” spelled out. As long as the cover designer adheres to the requirements of the license type purchased, then there are no copyright infringements being made. Yes, a cover may be similar to yours, but as long as the cover is not an exact replica (meaning it uses all of these elements: same images, same design techniques, same font, same title words), then the cover itself is probably not a violation of your copyright. (If you are unsure, consult a lawyer immediately.)

Now, let’s discuss marketing and writing (or designing) to market. But first, I would like you to open another tab and go over to Amazon.com. When you get there, I want you to pull up the best seller lists of any fiction genre you choose in the Kindle Store. Then browse through the top 100 of both paid and free and look at the covers. Then go to another genre and do the same thing. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Now, let’s talk about what you saw there. I don’t know what categories you chose, but regardless of what you chose I can pretty much guess what you saw. You saw a bunch of covers that, while each was unique, were also similar in ways. You saw a bunch of similar colors, fonts, and you may have seen the same basic image in a couple of covers if you looked through the whole top 100. And you probably saw titles that had similar wording. And when you changed genres you likely saw more of the same, though depending on the genre the similarities of these covers and titles were probably different from the previous genre you were looking at.

The main goal of book publishers (traditional, small press, or indie-authors) is to sell books. This is done through marketing.

If you’ve ever had a branding consultation (from me or another consultant) you’ve been told to go look at the brands and websites of big-name authors who are selling well in your particular genre. This isn’t to copy their brand, but to see what works. If you’ve ever talked to an agent or a publishing consultant, you might have heard the term “write to market.” This basically means, choose a best-selling genre and write within that genre. Write what readers are reading. If readers are clamoring for three-headed vampire werewolf teenagers, then you write about a three-headed vampire-werewolf teenager who falls in love with three different guys (one for each head, of course).

To effectively create titles and cover art that sell, you must follow the same concepts: see what else is out there and design/create to market. If you write vampire-werewolf teen romance and all of the best-selling covers in the genre have bats and wolves on them, you might want to put a bat or a wolf on your cover. You may also want to choose a title that speaks to the genre as well as the content of the book. In that particular genre you might see a lot of titles with variations of the words vamp, bite, bitten, hairy, howl, cold-hearted…the list could go on.

So, yes, this is really silly, but you see my point, right?

While it may suck that your gorgeous cover model is on other books, that is just how it works. The thing is, readers don’t know this. And yes, you might get some emails from readers who think other authors are copying you. First, you investigate. Then, if all is kosher (and there is not actually someone selling YOUR book as their own), then it’s your job as an author (and a decent member of the publishing community) to just gently let those readers know that it is okay for other authors to use similar images and there isn’t anything wrong going on.

The same goes with similar titles, though you are unlikely to get many reports of this. To assume your readers can’t tell one book with the word Vamp in it from another book with the word Vamp in it is actually an insult to your readers. On a personal note, I use the word Moon in a particular series and in every book in that series. I have utter confidence that my readers will be able to tell my books from others with similar (or even the same) titles, if for no other reason than the fact that they can easily read the author name on the book.

When choosing titles, it is always a good bet to do a search on the title. If there is a very popular series that uses that exact title you may want to rethink it. And avoid a word combo — for instance, “Shadow Hunters” or “Twilight Saga” or “Hunger Games,” etc. — which could lead a reader to reasonably assume meant your book was a part of that series. And again, if you have ANY doubt, contact a lawyer before proceeding.

I hope I’ve given you a little better understanding of a very confusing topic. I know everything is kind of blown up and scary right now but try to stay calm and just carry on as normal. If you are really unsure about something you are doing, contact a lawyer that specializes in copyright or trademark law. Certainly, do so before doing anything drastic.

And please, try to be a good member of the publishing community. Protect yourself; but try not to do so in a way that hurts others.

How have you branded your series in a way that achieves uniqueness and marketability at the same time? What questions do you have about series branding?

About June

June Stevens Westerfield writes romantic fiction with strong, confident heroines. Her non-fiction work includes collections of real life stories that help give other women a voice. In addition to writing, she runs two small businesses designing greeting cards and websites. When not working she can be found reading, making jewelry, or snuggling on the sofa with her husband and six furbabies binge watching Netflix.

About ABE

Author Branding Essentials is dedicated to offering comprehensive author centric branding and design services at competitive prices. As an Author, your name is your brand. Building your Author Brand is key to success. Many agents encourage authors to begin building that brand long before they are published. At Author Branding Essentials we understand the unique criteria it takes to build an author brand, versus another type of business. We can help you decide on the best options for your author brand and help you implement them.