Twitter for Beginners (the Meta-Post)

Posted: 1st April 2011 by Scott in The Writing Life, Writing
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My post the other day about Twitter is still getting hits and generating questions. It even gave a couple of my friends the little push they needed to get started using it. It was intended to be more about the things I learned about how to effectively use Twitter as opposed to a beginner’s guide. So I thought I’d start over and try to hit all of the basics. Hope it helps.

Getting Started With Twitter

More and more people are flocking to the social networking site Twitter. Many are joining for fun and to connect with their friends, but more see an opportunity to market themselves, their company or their brand. I joined to find other writers and to help build an author platform for my writing. Regardless of how you choose to use this great tool, there are some basics you need to know to get started.

What are Followers and Following and How Do I Do It?

When you want to be able to see what a Twitter member says, you choose to Follow them. This allows you to read all of the things that they post throughout the day. Unlike Facebook, most people do not require that you be approved ahead of time to read their Tweets. Normally, if you choose to Follow them, you can see what they post immediately (there are exceptions). When you Follow someone, they do not automatically receive your posts in their Timeline (Timeline is the Twitter equivalent of the Facebook News Feed). They have to choose to Follow you as well. This means that you can see the posts of the people you Follow, but they won’t all choose to read what you post, so you will have two categories of people in your profile: your Followers (those who want to read what you post) and those you are Following (people whose posts you want to read). Most people Follow more people than have people Following them. However, the most popular people in the Twitterverse – celebrities, experts, etc. – usually have many more people Following them than people they Follow.

Check out my earlier post on Twitter that explains how I pick and choose who to Follow.

How Do I Find People to Follow?

Twitter offers a search engine that allows you to search by topic or for a specific person you are looking for. If you type in ‘dog breeding,’ for instance, you can find all posts that mention dog breeding. Then you can go through and look at the profiles of the people who are discussing dog breeding and decide if you’d like to Follow them and read more of their posts. Once you have chosen a handful of people to Follow, you will run into an endless stream of other people with the same interests for you to Follow.

What’s a Tweet and how do I send one?

A Tweet is an update that you post for your Followers to read. It is similar to a status update in Facebook. Like a text, it is limited to 140 characters. You can add links to pictures and videos in your Tweets if you can fit the link into 140 characters. Most people use a link shortener to help them accomplish this. There are several link shorteners out there. The most popular seems to be bit.ly. Also, most Twitter management programs, such as TweetDeck and HootSuite, shorten any URLs you post automatically. Also, TweetDeck uses a program called deck.ly that actually allows you to post messages that are longer than 140 characters, but I don’t want to get too sidetracked here.

How Can I Communicate With Specific People on Twitter?

If you include the @ symbol directly in front of a username, that person will be notified by Twitter that they have specifically been mentioned in a Tweet. For instance, if you Tweet, “@JohnSmith, check out today’s Huffington Post article on tsunami relief!” John Smith will notice you have mentioned him in your Tweet. When you use the @ symbol, your post is still public and can be read by all of your Followers. You can add more than one @ symbol and username in your Tweet.

If you want to privately communicate with John Smith, Twitter provides a Direct Message option so that you can send a message that only the recipient can read. Like a Tweet, this is limited to 140 characters.

What Are Hashtags and How Can I Use Them?

You will notice that most Tweets have words preceded by a hashtag ( # ). When you include a hashtag (the number or pound symbol) before a word, you make that word searchable by clicking on it. This is very valuable when you would like to see all Tweets on a particular subject. For instance, if you would like to see what people are writing about gas prices, you could click on #gasprices and see all Tweets that have #gasprices included in them. If you include #gasprices in your Tweet, it would be one of the posts everyone that is searching for #gasprices would see.

Another popular use for hashtags, is to carry on conversations with multiple people, much like a group chat. If you start a topic with people you follow, such as #ourncaabracket, everyone who wanted to participate in the conversation would include #ourncaabracket in their Tweets. When you clicked on #ourncaabrackets, you would be able to see what everyone is saying about the subject.

What is a Re-Tweet?

Often you will see a Tweet that you think is especially interesting, relevant, funny or important. Twitter gives you the option of passing the Tweet along to your Followers with a click of a button. You can identify a re-tweet by the abbreviation RT which will appear in the body of the Tweet.

Many times people will ask that their posts be re-tweeted if they are trying to get the word out about a subject or if they are trying to get an answer to a question or even to drive traffic to their blog or website. Re-tweeting is considered a way to help others and make the community better for the users.

There are many different ways to take advantage of Twitters networking opportunities for both your personal and business use. These are just the basics and should help you jump right in and get started. Then read my earlier post about Twitter for some other hints about picking whom to Follow and making lists to help keep everyone straight.

Top 10 hashtags for writers on Twitter (plus a translation guide) from The Ambitious Ambigue

Posted: 30th March 2011 by Scott in Writing
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Top 10 hashtags for writers on Twitter (plus a translation guide) « The Ambitious Ambigue.

This is a great follow-up to yesterday’s post about using Twitter effectively.

Six Things I’ve Learned About Using Twitter

Posted: 29th March 2011 by Scott in Writing
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It’s only been a few weeks since I started seriously using Twitter, but in that time I’ve seen the huge potential and some of the pitfalls it offers. I’ve got a lot to learn about using it to my best advantage, but I can offer some tips for beginners to help get you started.

Make Smart Decisions About Who You Follow

For many, it’s all a numbers game – following and being followed by as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. Heck, you can even buy followers from several marketing companies. I don’t have the experience or data to pass judgment on that strategy, but my gut tells me that’s not the way to go.

I’m looking at social media as a way build a brand by connecting with and bringing value to my target audience. It’s also a way to learn from and build relationships with others in my industry. With those goals in my mind, I tend to Follow not only the big guns in the industry (agents, publishers, favorite authors), but also the people who are at different stages in their writing journey – those who are just getting into it, those looking for an agent for their manuscripts, the agented but unpublished, the published but not with a lot of commercial success, the author who’s been able to put a couple books out and is ready to really take off, etc.

Normally, these folks have from 100-1,000 Followers. They bring a mix of helpful information and personal interaction in their Tweets, and they like to Follow back. I usually check out their past 50 Tweets or so and get a handle on the kinds of things they like to post. If they post nothing but repetitious pimping of their blog or product without bringing any helpful info or personal interaction, I’ll usually pass. The same if they use Twitter only for personal interaction – posting what they ate for breakfast and carrying on conversations with the same small group of Followers.

And while it’s exciting to see that you have new Followers, take a minute and look closely at them before you automatically Follow them back. Often new Followers are bots that are set up to look like real people, but their sole purpose is to bombard you with the same spam message over and over.

I also like to send a thank you to each new Follower, and try to personalize somehow so it doesn’t sound like it came from an auto-responder (yes, they are out there, yes many use them). This has led to several conversations and the sharing of some great information.

Finally, I like to spread my interests a little bit. My main focus is on writers and writing, but I also coach high school basketball, try to follow a primal diet and help my wife raise a son with Asperger’s Syndrome. I was surprised by how much overlap I found between all of those things when I marked them with a hashtag (more on that in a moment) and Followed a few people with similar interests.

It takes a while to build up this way, but instead of looking at it as gathering Followers, think of it as building a community that will last for years. A community that can be a huge resource to you professionally and personally, and one that you can give back to.

Using Hashtags ( # ) Effectively

If you’re new to Twitter you may be wondering why so many Tweets contain a hashtag (the number/pound symbol) before words. When a hashtag appears before a word it makes the word searchable. Therefore, if I insert a hashtag before the word “writing”, I can click on the word and see all of the Tweets in which someone tagged the word “writing.” Great way to find people who are interested in the subject that you might otherwise have never come across.

Every community has their own hashtagged words that they tend to use frequently to help them search certain subjects. For instance, in the writing community, the most popular hashtagged word is probably #amwriting (as in I am writing).

Another way hashtags are used is to carry on conversations between multiple people, much like a chat in other venues. For instance, if someone wants to start a chat about writing science fiction, they could post something like #scifichat, and anyone who wants to join in would simply add #scifichat at the end of their post. Anyone who wanted to simply follow the chat without joining in would click on #scifichat and the all posts tagged with that would pop up.

There are a lot of creative ways to use hashtags. One of the hot things now is to interview someone and tag all of those posts so others can follow and participate in the interview.

Twitter posts the hottest hashtagged subjects throughout the course of the day, so you can easily follow what is trending in conversation around the world. Expect things such as world events, like the Japanese tsunami, and pop culture, like Charlie Sheen.

What’s a Re-Tweet and Why Do I Care?

A re-tweet is a tweet you have made, that someone has picked up and passed along. Therefore, it’s not only available to all of your Followers, but also to all of theirs. Re-tweets are especially important if you have tweeted about a blog entry you recently posted or about any news you would like to reach many people – such as the release of your new book!

A popular Tweeter re-tweeted one of my first blog entries and there was a huge spike in my blog stats that day. Needless to say, I was grateful and let her know. I could have sent her a thank you privately via Direct Message or publicly. I chose to thank her publicly by using the @ symbol in front of her name. That way she was sure to see that particular message since her name was tagged in the post. I could have thanked her without the @ symbol, but she may or may not have seen the message considering the large volume of tweets that certainly pass through her feed every day.

Re-tweeting is a great way to help the members of your community out. Re-tweet things you think are truly interesting or bring some value. Don’t be a re-tweet whore, re-tweeting everything in sight, hoping you’ll get rewarded with re-tweets. Remember, you’re in for the long haul, building a brand and relationships. You’ll be known by what you’ve re-tweeted as well as what you tweet.

There is More Than One Way to Bring Value

When people talk about bringing value, the first thing that comes to mind is helpful information in some form, such as a blog post, tidbit, news item, encouragement, inspirational quote, interview, etc. And that is the most important thing. However, there needs to be a mix of helpful content and personal interaction. When you let people know who you are, why you’re a writer, what your life looks like and that you are honestly interested in their journey, then they value your content even more and your name and brand sticks with them.

Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and interact with others. Comment on other people’s tweets. Jump into a chat. Just remember to respect your community’s boundaries and don’t monopolize the conversation. Know when to bow out or when to make it private via Direct Message.

Get Organized

There will come a point when the amount of tweets you Follow gets too large to effectively keep track of. Twitter offers a List feature that allows you to categorize the people you Follow. You may have a list for Writers, or you may need to break it down into sub-genres. You can add a list for Family and Friends or Celebrities or News. This way to can check on the tweets from a single list at a time instead of trying to pan through a timeline feed of hundreds or thousands of tweets.

Also, there are several social media dashboards that can help you organize not only your Twitter feeds, but can also integrate your Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. accounts. I’m not going to go into a comparison of all of them, but I use TweetDeck (which I like, but can also drive me a little batty at times). I’ve also heard good things about HootSuite and MetroTwit. TweetDeck is also available for iPhone and Android devices.

With TweetDeck I can also schedule tweets for a future time and/or date. I don’t like to do this too often, as it takes away from the personal experience, but there are a lot of times I know I will be out of town or away from my desk and I have something I want to put out into twitterverse. Scheduled updates are perfect for that.

Twitter is a Tool. Use It. Don’t Let It Use You

Twitter is a great tool and it brings great value. It can also be a huge distraction. I like to schedule my Twitter times in advance. I log in, read what I want to read, make my posts, schedule any updates and then close it. Well, most of the time. Sometimes it tends to stay on and I get lost finding interesting people to Follow and reading conversations and chats about things that just happen to catch my fancy. And that’s alright as well. Just don’t let Twitter become the end and not the means.

How I Use FreeMind to Track Characters and Storylines

Posted: 25th March 2011 by Scott in Writing
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I’ve been using the free mind mapping software FreeMind for various projects for a while now. One of the ways I use it in my writing is to help me keep track of characters and storylines. I’m a visual person and having something in front of me that I can doodle with and manipulate is indispensable.

FreeMind has a gazillion, intuitive options that let you customize the way you organize your thoughts. It’s simple enough to dive right in and start making mind maps, and there are lots of great tutorials on YouTube to help you amp up your efforts.

Here’s a screenshot of an example showing how I keep track of characters and their roles and goals in the story.

And here’s a shot of an example of how I would start tracking a storyline, color-coded by POV.

There are several decent software programs for writers – I use and love Snowflake Pro, and I’m eagerly awaiting the Windows version of Scrivener (I hope to post a review of the Windows beta version soon), but sometimes I really need to see everything in laid out in front me in graphic format. I also use FreeMind for other projects such as goal setting, fundraisers for the basketball team, business plans and brainstorming.

What do you think of FreeMind? What other ways could it be used to help with your WIP? Are there other pieces of software you use for your writing that you can’t live without?

What Makes a Hero? Joe Abercrombie Breaks It Down

Posted: 23rd March 2011 by Scott in Writing
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Joe Abercrombie is one of the bright new stars in the fantasy genre. He joins the likes of the George R.R. Martin and Steven Erikson in bringing a gritty, often bloody, realism to mythical worlds. How does that affect heroes and villains?

He discusses that topic and more in an interview at Omnivoracious: Pitched Battle: Joe Abercrombie Gets Personal with “The Heroes”.

Amazon.com: How would you define a hero?

Joe Abercrombie: I suppose that’s really the central question of the book. Epic fantasy often serves up some truly villainous villains and some utterly heroic heroes, and leaves us in little doubt about which is which. You get folks with selfless motives, who perform brave actions, and achieve glorious outcomes. I started from the standpoint that in reality very few people, if any, are heroic in every way and in every situation, but that pretty much any of us can be brave, or self-sacrificing, or noble under the right circumstances and when looked at from the right point of view. In particular I took the view that people who are very well adapted to murdering other people with edged weapons aren’t necessarily going to be contributing members of society off the battlefield. For the central characters of The Heroes, therefore, I tried to present six people who are all capable of being heroic, who all have their admirable characteristics, but are all variously cowardly, treacherous, ambitious, vain, selfish, and downright sociopathic. Hopefully that makes them interesting to read about. I wanted to pull the idea of heroism apart, see if selfish motives producing brave actions producing awful outcomes still count as heroic, or good motives carried through with cowardly actions producing positive outcomes, for that matter…

Joe has been busy since the release of The Heroes – the fifth book set in the world of the First Law trilogy. He was interviewed by The Sword and Laser today. It’s definitely worth a listen if you’re a fan and/or a writer. He gives some great insights on his writing process as well as some commentary on the recent controversy stirred up by Leo Grin at BigHollywood.

Four Ways to Get Back Into Your Creative Flow

Posted: 21st March 2011 by Scott in The Writing Life, Writing
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It’s tough sometimes to take a story idea to a story concept. Often we think we have a great concept, but once we start writing, we realize the story is lacking in the oomph! department. Other times, there’s just nothing there at all. We sit and stare at the screen or write and re-write a beginning and it never goes anywhere.

Here are four things I do to help rejuvenate the flow.

Digital Serendipity

There is always some detail in your story that could use a little research. It could be a character’s belief system, a setting or an historic event. A fun thing to do is to look it up in Wikipedia, then open all of the article links in new tabs. Every time you skim a new article, open up new tabs for the links you find interesting. Rinse and repeat! Have a pad of paper and pen handy to jot down things you’d like to follow up on or ideas you’d like to develop. At the worst, you’ve deepened your understanding of your subject. Hopefully, you’ll have a page full of new ideas and new directions for your story. Digital serendipity!

As a side note, here’s a fun game for you and your writing nerd friends to play on Twitter: Tweet two random subjects. See who can get from one Wiki article to the other in the least amount of links.

Revisit Your Writer Roots

Who first encouraged you to be a writer? Who was your first mentor? Was there a book or an author that that inspired you to start writing?  Who was most helpful? Most supportive? Take a minute and try to remember everything you can about that person/moment/story/time in your life. Try to remember what you felt like at that moment. What you did next. What was it about that moment that was so powerful you are thinking about it right now?

Now write a letter to that person involved in that moment. For now, don’t worry about whether or not you will send the letter. Don’t hold back. Be as honest and profuse as you can possibly be. Tell them what they did and what it meant. Tell them what happened next and how you got to where you are now and how they affected that journey.

Now send the letter. Especially if it’s hard to do. If your finger is hovering over the Send button with your heart pounding, or you’re standing and staring at the mailbox, you need to send your letter. If the person you wrote to isn’t with us anymore, maybe you can send it to someone who loved them.

This can be a powerful way to stir up emotions and memory. Emotions fuel creativity.

Walk and Wonder

Get up and get out. Leave behind the computer and the internet and your phone. Shake things up a bit with a walk. It can help clear your mental canvas and give you some much-needed distance.

Now walk with a purpose. Not a destination, but a purpose. Maybe what you need to solve a particular story problem is some uninterrupted time alone in your head. That’s hard to do sitting at a desk with a word processor nagging you to be used, the phone ringing, email notifications begging for attention and a ton of bookmarked links just waiting to be devoured. Move away from all of that and get a fresh crack at it.

If it’s not a specific problem that’s holding you back, but rather a lack of ideas or creative energy, walk with a different purpose. Look around and wonder. Ask questions about all of the people and things and places that you see. Imagine your neighborhood 30, 50, 100 years ago. Picture it in your head. Imagine some event that might have shaped the culture. What about the old man that lives down the street? What historic events might he have been a part of? Wars? Love affairs? How did that stray dog get lost? Who is looking for him? Pick a few of the things you wondered about, link them together somehow and write a short story about it when you get back home. Words will flow.

The Adult Version of the What If Conversation

Remember hanging out with your friends when you were a kid and some hypothetical situation took on a life of its own and soon you were chasing tangent after tangent? “And what if, like, Luke Skywalker married the Bionic Woman? That would be frickin’ awesome!” “Yeah! And what if their kids were cyborgs that used the Force?”

Remember how fun that was? Kids and writers spend a lot of time doing that. Adult writers sometimes forget to do it. Or sometimes the years have built up so many restrictions in our minds, we don’t chase down some of the best tangents. You’ve got to shake out all of those artificial restrictions. How can you do that? Alcohol!

Okay, don’t get all worked up. I’m not talking about alcohol as your permanent muse a la Hemingway or some of the other brilliant, yet tortured authors. However, I suggest you get with your best writing friend. Someone you can share every detail of your story with and they don’t mind listening. Sit out on the porch (I’m a big proponent of outside, if you can’t tell), split a bottle of wine or have a couple of drinks. Talk all about your story. Talk about your ideas and what you were thinking when you decided to use them in your story. Talk about your characters and who they are and what they are struggling with. Get your friend involved. Have them ask a lot of What If questions. Don’t dismiss any ideas. Chase down those tangents to their ridiculous conclusions. Laugh when you get there, just like you did when you were 13 and were having a loopy 3 a.m. conversation during a sleepover. Maybe even make a couple of notes if you come up with anything great.

You may not come up with anything that you actually use. You may even come up with some ideas that seemed great in the middle of your third drink, but not so much the next morning. That’s okay. You let your mind break free and chase tangents. You laughed. You rejuvenated your creative spirit.

Also, make sure you take some Advil and drink plenty of water before you call it a night. ;)

These are a few of the things that have worked for me recently. Pick one and give it a shot and tell me what you think. What else have you found that helps you get back into a creative flow?

 

7 Habits the Pros Form – Tips for Treating Your Writing Like a Business

Posted: 16th March 2011 by Scott in The Writing Life, Writing
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Whether you’ve reached the point where you earn a full-time living through your writing, or if you are still working towards that goal, there are some fundamental habits you can develop to help you succeed. Here are 7 of them, taken from the business world, to apply to your writing business.

1. Wake Up Employed

If your goal is to make money from your writing skills, you are in business whether you recognize it or not. If it’s your full-time gig, wake up ready to go to work, just as if you were accountable to an employer. If it’s not, treat it like a part-time job. You wouldn’t flake and show up late to work would you? Mess around during work hours and waste your employer’s time surfing the ‘net posting on Twitter? Well, sometimes, maybe.

Be a good employee. Be accountable to your boss. And great news! You are the boss! Or maybe it’s your spouse, but either way.

2. Prepare for Each Day the Day Before

Does it take you an hour to figure out what you’re going to work on each morning? Have a goal for the day set the day before and the do the prep work for it before you call it quits. There are tons of great tools, apps and software available to help you get organized, such as GTD, Remember the Milk and Evernote. Actually, there are an overwhelming number of tools out there. I’ll devote an entire post in the near future to look at some favorites.

3. Use Your Tools. Don’t Let Your Tools Use You

Have you ever sat down to work on your marketing and social media and ended up wasting half your day? No? Liar. Twitter, Facebook and the like are both tools and parts of our social life. Don’t get the two parts confused. Set aside a few minutes each day to work on your platform and handle your marketing. Schedule some tweets ahead of time. Send out thank yous to new followers. Update your status on your fan page. Then turn everything off.

I’ve recently left a forum community that I’ve been part of for 8 years because it’s just too much of a distraction from what I really want to do and where I really want to go. Facebook has been much easier to get under control. I schedule a couple times of day to check in, then turn it off. I’ve found that it’s kind of like a soap opera – it doesn’t take long to get caught up and it’s usually the same old stuff.

4. Learn Something New Every Day

Learn something new about your business or your craft every day. I have an overwhelming number of bookmarks in multiple folders about being a writer. There are blogs on creating blog content. Blogs about SEO for your blog. YouTube channels devoted to WordPress tutorials. Websites and blogs devoted solely to each aspect of novel writing, blog writing and freelance article writing. Blogs about social media. Blogs about query letters, proposals and building a platform.

There is a danger of either trying to digest too much or just giving up on the whole thing. Try this: every Sunday pick a topic you want to learn more about. Find the five most intriguing articles on the subject and schedule a time to read one every day. See if you can apply something new that you learned in your writing or business.

5. It’s a Business. Run It Like You’re the CEO.

Because you are. A CEO provides vision for the business and outlines how it’s going to accomplish it. Do you know what you want from writing? “Yeah, I want to make a living with my writing!” How are you going to do that (at least until your WIP sells millions of copies and Hollywood makes movies based on your books ;) ). What jobs are you willing to do or not do? What steps do you need to take to get the assignments you want? How many calls, queries, proposals will it take to get those assignments? When are you going to do that?

Have you thought about marketing? Taxes? Bookkeeping? Do you use Quicken or financial software? Do you have an accountant who can answer your questions about deducting a home office (don’t assume you know this answer, btw)? Do you have a separate account for any money you make? What about setting aside money for quarterly taxes? Do you need to file quarterly?

Many writers don’t like to think about these things. It distracts from creativity and it can be difficult for a creative mind to focus on details. But learning to look at your writing like the business it is can make the difference between being a writer and being a writer who gets paid.

6. Help Someone Else

The writing community is populated by more people willing to help each other than any other industry I know. And it’s a good thing because it would be a thousand times harder to succeed in the business without the help of those who have gone before or are going through it now.

Re-tweet for someone. Share a link to a blog post. Comment on someone’s site. You never know when that little thing you did might make someone’s day. Maybe they were thinking about quitting until you noticed their work. Maybe you’ll set off an avalanche of traffic that helps them get to another level. Or maybe you’ll just build up some community karma. It will come back to you. And just when you need it most.

7. Don’t Forget Your Passion

Guess what? You’re a writer! Millions of people want to be writers, but not everyone has the courage to try it. You did. Enjoy it. Enjoy the writing and the community. Enjoy the sharing of your work and ideas. Enjoy being able to tell someone, “I’m a writer.”

And you are a writer even if you haven’t sold your first book yet. Even if you don’t have 1,000 hits a day on your blog. You’re a writer if you write because you love to write and nothing can keep you from writing.

Yes, it’s a business, but everyone has to be in business. You’re in the business you love! How awesome is that?

Larry Brooks wrote a great post titled Give Thanks…You Are A Writer. Check it out. Bookmark and read it when you’re discouraged or overwhelmed by the business side of writing.

Those are 7 tips I took from a long sales career and applied to writing. What else have learned about being a professional writer? What tools do you use to keep organized and what does your daily routine look like?

Five Essential Blogs Every n00b Writer Must Devour

Posted: 14th March 2011 by Scott in Writing Competencies
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Okay, there are actually thousands of great blogs out there geared to aspiring writers, but these five are particularly rich in realistic, helpful content. When I started searching for information on writing and getting published last year, these five blogs were the foundation of my education.

Bookmark them. Read the articles. Take what they say to heart. Apply it.

WARNING: Don’t confuse reading about writing with writing. It’s easy to get caught up in the volume of information out there and feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to live out your dream in your head and not live it in your life. It’s easy to get discouraged when you first learn what a tough road lies ahead of you. Keep writing! And check out my post on overcoming the barriers that keep us from writing.

Advanced Fiction Writing

The first site I visited was Advanced Fiction Writing. The site’s author, Randy Ingermanson, literally wrote the book on fiction writing – Writing Fiction for Dummies (this is Randy’s affiliate page, so when you decide to order this book, use this link to do so). I have a well-worn copy on my desk as well as the Kindle version.

Randy is most famous for his “Snowflake Method” of story crafting. Whether you write by the seat of your pants or are an outliner, you need to at least have an understanding of this method. Randy also has a killer software program that uses the Snowflake Method to help you write your book and generate a book proposal.

There is a ton of useful information on the site – blog archives, e-zine articles and his answers to readers’ questions.

Nathan Bransford

Nathan has a whole series titled Publishing Essentials which is chock-full of great info and advice. Start with How a Book Gets Published, then go through the rest of the articles. You’ll find links to all of the articles in the sidebar on the left of his blog.

Kiersten Writes

Kiersten White is a NYT bestselling author who shares her experiences before and after being published. She has a great article titled Kiersten’s Updated Guide to Getting Published along with other helpful posts.

Rants & Ramblings – On Life as a Literary Agent

Arguably the queen of this blog genre, Rachelle Gardner offers a library of helpful articles on the publishing process, agent queries, proposals, contracts, writing conferences, etc. Start with her article How to Get Published and then take your time working your way through her archives.

Storyfix.com

Storyfix isn’t for the faint of heart. Larry Brooks proudly refuses to pull any punches about publishing and storycraft. However, if you’re not afraid to hear the truth about your writing skills and your chances of getting published, this may be the most important site you will ever read. Start with his original post about what it takes to make it in the industry and then read every other article he ever posted. He will teach you how to craft a publishable story.

In fact, he wrote a book on it called Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing (this is his affiliate link). I ordered it hot off the press last week (and by that I mean I bought the Kindle version) and read it in two days. Now I’m going back through it and highlighting and making notes.

As I said, there are a ton of great sites and books out there, but these are among the best that I’ve found. Let me know if you find them helpful or if there are other great sites you want to share.

 

How Examining Your Story’s Themes Leads to Stronger Characters

Posted: 12th March 2011 by Scott in Writing Competencies
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“The unexamined life is not worth living.” ~ Socrates

My story is an urban fantasy about a man who can see and battle demonic spirits who seek to influence mankind. That opened up a lot of themes and questions to be explored and emphasized. The nature of evil. Personal responsibility. The differences between evil and good. Being alone. Where does God fit into all this?

I find myself conducting imaginary conversations between the characters discussing these things. And since the characters are essentially me, it forces me to take different positions on the topics and, more importantly, forces me to clarify my thoughts about the issues. It also helps create better, more realistic dialogue.

That’s vital for the story and how it’s expressed, but the clarity it brings to me personally is even more important. We are all made up of our beliefs about myriad things, but many of those beliefs are vague or unexamined. Taking the time to really figure out what you believe to the point that you can express it succinctly helps you discover who you are, how you fit into the world around you and how you will respond to it – which is basically your character in action.

From a writing standpoint, you are better able to express yourself the more you know yourself. Your characters are parts of you and can only know what you know. You can impart to them a sense of self that makes them come alive on the page the more attuned you are to how you feel about the issues they face.

What have you discovered about yourself or beliefs while writing a story? Has there been a time that writing a character has forced you to examine and maybe change a belief?

Here’s a comprehensive look at characterization by one of the internet’s top writing gurus, Larry Brooks. I purchased his new book last week and devoured it in a day (this is his Amazon link, by the way, not mine, so feel free to order right off of the link). Vital stuff for fiction writers.

Overcoming the Fear of Getting Started

Posted: 10th March 2011 by Scott in The Writing Life, Writing
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“Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.” – Bill Cosby

One of the reasons many people never fulfill their dreams of writing a novel is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being criticized. Fear of not actually being very good. Most of the time this is an undiagnosed or un-admitted reason. I’ve had lots of conversations with aspiring writers over the years and have heard lots of excuses as to why they haven’t pursued their writing, but underlying most of those excuses is fear. Not that there aren’t legitimate reasons why writing is hard. There’s no doubt that raising kids, working a day job and dealing with our lives and health and family are all real and important things that can get in the way. But in the end, I believe it is mostly fear that holds us back from pursuing our dreams.

Everyone has their own fears to face. I don’t believe that these fears are unique, but our fears are developed within us through our unique experiences. I had to have a brutally honest conversation with myself and root out all of the bullshit excuses in order to get to that underlying fear. One of the big ones for me was that I have always been known, since I was a 4th grader, of being “talented” at writing. Through high school and college and then when I went to work writing for the paper that little piece of my identity stuck with me. A lot of people assumed that one day I would be a “real” writer. I wasn’t. But if I never made a serious effort to be one, I could still keep the “talented” label. If I made the effort and failed, if it turned out that I wasn’t actually any good, then I wouldn’t even have that. Once I was willing to face that self-defeating bit of nonsense, its power faded and I could take the next step. As a side note, it always amazes me how, when we uncover and face these types of things in our life, they seem so silly and ridiculous that it’s hard to believe they ever held us back in the first place.

This morning I came across a blog post by Peter Saint-Clair titled So You Want To Be A Writer. He includes several links to articles directed at beginning writers. As I looked them over, I realized most of them were related to the psychology of getting started and following through. For example, there is a post by Judy Goldman titled What’s the Use where she talks about not intimidating yourself by comparing yourself to published authors. Good stuff. I bet that if you want to write and are having a hard time getting the ball rolling, a lot of the things you deal with are addressed in these articles.

When I first visited the post, I expected it to be links to learning story structure, getting published, writing queries, etc. I’ll link all of that stuff in future posts. This might be more important.

If you’ve always wanted to write, what’s holding you back? How did you overcame fears you had when you first started writing?

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