Writers in the Storm

by Steena Holmes

In my last post, I talked about Street Teams and using my newsletter to connect with my readers. It raised a few questions about newsletters to which I replied “but that’s another blog.” The ladies at WITS took me up on that. So today we’re going to talk about …

Newsletters.

Some authors groan at the thought while others smile. But when used correctly, a newsletter can be your new best best friend.

Why? Because it’s your number one method of communication with readers.

What can you use your newsletter for?

• Announce the release of your latest book
• Promote when you have a special deal on your book
• Get word out about a special contest
• Boast about a great review or that sparkly new award you won
• Tease your readers about your latest project

However – and this is a biggie – your newsletter isn’t just a way to promote you and your latest release. Your first task with a newsletter is to get people involved with you and your brand.

Getting them to sign up is the easy part. Keeping them signed up can be tricky unless you remember this one golden rule:

It’s not about you. It’s about them.

Every newsletter you send must be filled with things for your readers. Yes, you want to be sure to inform them about your latest sales, all of your exciting news – but that’s not all.

This is where the fun part comes in. Your newsletter should be branded similar to your website – so that you stay consistent with your brand (which is YOU not your book). The inside of your newsletter needs to stay within your brand as well.

I’ll use myself as an example to show you what I mean. I’ve branded myself as a chocoholic, writer, mother, chocoholic (yes, that is strategic placement on my part…as I am a chocoholic and I use that as part of my branding).

Every newsletter contains the following:

• Information about my books – whether a new release, a sale or new series.
• A special recipe that is not found on my website – preferably with chocolate in it.
• My TBR List where I share what I’m reading and a contest for that month.
• Information about my street team.

See what I mean? My newsletter is consistent with my brand.

There are quite a few options for developing and delivering your newsletter. I chose Mailchimp so that’s what I’ll use as my example.

Newsletter options you can choose:

• Set it the newsletter template to use one of Mailchimp's templates but with the colors of your website.
• Or you can create a newsletter to look very similar to your site by having a designer develop a template for you.

Either way, you should include a banner or graphics and colors that are consistent with your website and/or Facebook page.

There are a few things to be careful of when sending out your newsletter:

• Do not spam your readers.
• Don’t send out multiple copies of your newsletter because you saw an error. Proofread before you send or if you do have errors, use those errors as a contest on your website.
• Do not send a newsletter for every little update. That’s a surefire way of ensuring your unsubscribe rate climbs high.

When do you send out a newsletter?

Myself, I like to send out quarterly newsletters. I’ve signed up for a lot of author newsletters and I find that when I receive one every few weeks or even every month, I tend to unsubscribe unless it’s a favorite author and I don’t want to miss out on any of their news.

There’s no set standard though – send out a newsletter when you need to.

If you’re thinking to yourself – How do I get a newsletter started? – just remember: Everyone started with zero followers. Whether you have one book or multiple books out, there’s no better time than now to get a newsletter started.

What you can do to start:

• Sign up with Mailchimp (or another newsletter provider).
• Use the code they give you to place on your website.
• Be sure to have your newsletter sign up at the top of your website where everyone can see.
• Place the link in the back of your books.
• Have it on your author page on Facebook (you can set it up as a tab).

How do you get people to sign up?

If you’re anything like me, when you first start you’ll question your sanity. That’s okay – just eat some chocolate and you’ll be fine. There are several different ways you can get people to sign up:

• Hold a contest and have joining your newsletter part of the requirements.
• Ask people (but don’t spam with repeated pleas).
• Offer something special to all those who sign up: a special discount, a free book, a sneak peak preview of your next book…the options are endless.

The sky’s the limits when you begin your newsletter. Have fun with it, be smart with it, and watch it grow one subscriber at a time!

Have fun and good luck!

Do you have any newsletter tips to share? Any questions for Steena?

About Steena

Chocoholic. Reader. Wife. Chocoholic. Mother. Author. Chocoholic. Living a life full of passion is the only way to live – especially if you have coffee on hand. Author of Bestselling Finding Emma, Steena snagged a 3-book deal with Amazon Publishing after thousands of readers fell in love with a little girl and grandfather from her story. Emma’s Secret was released on June 25th!

Visit www.steenaholmes.com to find out more.

by Darynda Jones

Have you ever sat and listened to a panel of editors and agents go over their wish lists, the manuscripts they’d most like to see at that moment? And have you ever thought to yourself, “Hmmm, a space opera about a zombie captain who is commissioned to take an elemental princess across the universe to a peace conference where only she can stop a war that is destined to destroy an entire race of people while fighting evil star demons bent on killing said princess? I can do that.”

Yeah, me too.

I used to listen with bated breath to those editors and agents, my mind spinning a mile a minute on what I could write next. What would most appeal to an agent and editor? What would get their attention? And guess what. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.

I’m not saying follow trends. That endeavor is almost hopeless from the get-go. More often than not, by the time you finish your manuscript, the trend will have passed and the market will already be flooded with the latest and greatest concept since sliced bread.

What I’m talking about is writing to sell. And sell big.

Put yourself in an editor or agent’s shoes and look at writing from their perspective. Just like you, they want to make a living at what they do. They want to make money from the projects they take on. If they think they can’t turn a profit from your project, they will reject you. As hard as that is to swallow, it’s ridiculously understandable. Writing is a business. Sometimes we forget that. And just like all businesses, it needs to turn a profit or someone—possibly many someones—is out of a job.

When we think of writing in those terms, it is easier to step back and look at what we are writing from a marketing perspective. Every once in a while, I get flack for this. I hear everything from, “Writing is an art,” to “If you try to write for the market, you are selling out.”

Make no mistake, writing is my job. It is how I make money. It is how I pay my bills. So, yes, I look at it as a business, and luckily for me, it paid off. Romance writers are some of the savviest businesspeople I’ve ever met. They write for the love of writing, for the love of telling that great story that is burning within them, but they do it while being very conscious of the market, of what is out there, of what will sell and what probably won’t. That is good business. That is getting paid (emphasis on the word PAID) for what we love to do.

So, with all of that in mind, the trick to selling, to getting an editor or agent’s attention, involves the old standbys: Fresh, crisp writing; a solid concept; a tight story; etcetera, etcetera. But what you might not hear as often is ‘a fresh twist.’

Let’s face it. There are no new stories, but there are always, always, always fresh twists to old ones. It’s that fresh twist that will get you noticed, that will catapult your story out of the slush pile and into an editor’s eager hands.

This can also be thought of as high concept story writing.

Sadly, high concept has gotten a bad rep in recent years, and that’s too bad. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. In fact, if your story is not high concept, the odds of it selling are astronomically lower in comparison. In the simplest terms, high concept is merely an old story, one that is universally understood, but with a fresh, unexpected twist that evokes an instant emotional response. It is not, as many people believe, comparing two stories to create one. For example, it is not merely stating, “My story is Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Glee.” Though that is a rather intriguing concept.

Nathan Bransford says if high concept were a person it would be a teenager, because it's often totally misunderstood. If high concept were a tool it would be a sledgehammer.

And that about sums it up. High concept is often misunderstood and misused, but knowing exactly what it is and how it can help propel your manuscript out of the slush pile is crucial to success in the world of publishing.

Look at these examples and tell me what you think.

EXAMPLE #1

Option A: Terrorist gang takes hostages in an office high-rise after dark, seeking millions from the company’s vault.

Not bad, but what if we add a fresh (at the time) twist?

Option B: Terrorist gang takes hostages in an office high-rise after dark, seeking millions from the company’s vault. What the criminals don’t know is that one resourceful cop (whose estranged wife is one of the hostages) is in the building, aiming to stop them (and save his wife.)

Better, yes?

EXAMPLE #2

Option A: An orphan boy is raised by his resentful aunt and uncle.

Okay.

Option B: An orphan boy is raised by his resentful aunt and uncle only to find out he has magical powers and is the target of the evil wizard who killed his parents.

Much better!

Writing to Sell has three ultimate requirements:

1. Your premise should be original and unique.
2. Your story must have mass audience appeal.
3. Your story must evoke an instant emotional response.

Look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer: High school girl destined to fight vampires while trying to pass algebra. How much fun is that?

And that is exactly what I’m talking about. Write your vampire story, but give it a twist that other vampire stories don’t have. Same goes for your murder mystery or your small-town contemporary romance. Give an agent or editor something to sink her teeth into, something that will set her afire and give her the ammunition she needs to fight for you in a sales meeting.

So, this is what I was thinking when I came up with the idea for the Charley Davidson series. Basically, I wanted a snarky girl living in an urban area, just trying to get by on mocha lattes and sarcasm. Nothing new there. But what if I gave her world a paranormal underbelly? And what if she was supernatural herself? Still, I wanted something different. Something that hadn’t been done often, something fresh and untapped on a mass scale, so I made her the grim reaper.

Here is the first line of the pitch that garnered 8 offers of representations from some of the top agents in the biz in one week: (It was a stressful week.)

Female private investigator Charley Davidson was born with three things: a smoking hot ass, a healthy respect for the male anatomy, and the rather odd job title of grim reaper.

What is different about your story? What sets it apart? If you can answer that, you are halfway there. I hope this helps you on your way to career bliss!

Thank you for coming!

About Darynda

NYTimes and USA Today Bestselling Author Darynda Jones has won numerous awards for her work, including a prestigious Golden Heart®, a Rebecca, two Holt Medallions, a RITA ®, and a Daphne du Maurier, and she has received stellar reviews from dozens of publications including starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and the Library Journal.

As a born storyteller, Darynda grew up spinning tales of dashing damsels and heroes in distress for any unfortunate soul who happened by, annoying man and beast alike, and she is ever so grateful for the opportunity to carry on that tradition. She currently has two series with St. Martin’s Press: The Charley Davidson Series and the Darklight Trilogy. She lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico, with her husband of almost 30 years and two beautiful sons, the Mighty, Mighty Jones Boys. She can be found at www.daryndajones.com.

by Shannon Donnelly

Emotion. It’s what we read for in fiction. We want the thrill, the sorrow, the laughter, and the tears. Unfortunately, words are abstracts. Emotions are visceral—they’re in our bodies. That means the illusion to bring about emotion has to be studied and learned. And it’s the same challenge with every book—how to do you get more feeling. Here are some tips:

1 - Show the character’s emotions. This is where show don’t tell really does have power. He was angry, she was sad, he was upset, she wanted to laugh. All of these are telling the reader an emotion. You want to show emotion on the page.

To do this, you must know your characters. How does your character express anger? Does he get quiet, or hit something? Is he a yeller, or someone who bottles things up, or is he a bully who takes his anger out on the weak? What about sadness? Does it show up in her stomach, or her chest, or in a headache? Does she cry easily over anything or does she cover up her feelings with lame jokes? Put your character into actions that show that character expressing emotion—let the reader connect with the characters physically.

2 – Go past cliché. It’s too easy to have anger expressed as someone who yells. It’s too much the cliché to have tears appear at anything sad. It’s been done, so look for a fresh angle for your characters. Maybe anger shows up in a man’s shaking hand, or in a woman who actually cries when she gets furious. Look for fresh ways to layer together actions that better express someone’s feeling.

3 – Develop habits (for your characters). We all have mannerisms, physical habits that betray what we really feel. Your characters need these, too. Does your hero have a habit of smiling when he lies, or does your heroine fuss with her hair when she’s nervous? Gamblers know how to look for these “tells” that really show what someone is feeling.

4 – Let your characters lie. We all use white lies to get along better with others—and sometimes the lies aren’t so white. Let your characters talk about everything except what’s really going on—use subtext (talking about one thing while meaning something else). Have them change topics, not answer questions, and have them use their words to try to get what they want.

5 – Make sure every character wants something in every scene. This is great advice from Kurt Vonnegut—and this can be as simple as wanting a glass of water. That “want” will give you stronger conflict and is automatically an emotion to help improve the tension in the scene, particularly if you add in conflicting desires.

6 - Do remember to get the emotion onto the page. If you’ve got action, that’s great, but the reader still needs to know what the character feels about all that action. Is it fear, worry, anxiety, fury? When you edit, do an edit just to make certain you have your character reacting to things that happen. For example, maybe you’ve got an exciting moment where the heroine of the story has jumped out to save a small boy from being hit by a car. She jumps out, grabs the boy. Great stuff. But…what’s she feeling? Is she frightened? Amped up on adrenaline? Is she angry, furious because this is her son and she’s told him five times not to go into the street after his baseball? Is she shaking? Is she covering up her feelings by acting tough because she’s a cop and she thinks cops shouldn't show emotion?

7 – Let your character surprise you. Yes, you want your characters to make sense, but they can also act out of character. This needs strong motivation—we all have to be pushed out of our habits. But this is where you have a chance to show a new side of your characters—this is where the young timid girl can become a lioness if pushed too far (or if she has to protect someone she loves), or where the strong guy can shed more than a few tears if he’s lost the thing he values more than his own life.

Push your characters—and push yourself. And put emotion ahead of everything, even those pretty “writerly” phrases.

About Shannon

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written."

Riding in on a Burning Tire, the second book in the Mackenzie Solomon, Demon/Warders Urban Fantasy series is just out from Cool Gus Publishing. And her latest Regency romance, The Cardros Ruby, a RWA Golden Heart finalist, came out this May.