Let's Focus on Building Writing Careers

It Isn't About Book Sales: It's About Career Building  By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Adapted from the multi award-winning  flagship book in the HowToDoItFrugally Series of
books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter, Third Edition

In a writer's world sharing is sometimes as important as the creative aspect of building a book. The trouble is sharing—for many—translates into selling books. Of course, most of us want to do that, but we tend to lose sight of the fact that we will eventually sell a whole lot more books and, in doing so, share with a whole lot more people, if we concentrate on building our careers. Indeed, for some authors with nonfiction books based on their businesses and professions, the whole purpose of the book is to increase credibility and exposure for themselves and careers. For them, their book may be all about their careers, but in that journey they may neglect how important it is for that book to reflect their professionalism at all levels.

What many authors think of when they think of book sales is the kind of hardsell that most would rather eschew. When they decide to do it anyway because they know they should, they may skip learning something about marketing first and their efforts backfire on them. I have a motto: “Never say, ‘Buy my book.’” Keep reading for better ways to market your book and yourself.

Here's the surprise for most everyone but those who have already studied a bit about marketing. Marketing—marketing anything—isn't about selling. Marketing is about knowing your audience and doing stuff that will attract more of a similar demographic. Marketing a book is about finding the people who will benefit and appreciate what the author has to share and then letting those people know how they will benefit (or avoid problems) by reading it. Doing that requires a lot of writing along the way and that's what we do. There is real pleasure in seeing our marketing efforts succeed and seeing our careers build as we do more of it and learn more about it. Here are some ideas of giving-sharing kinds of marketing from the flagship book in my multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter. Each may be used as a part of a launch campaign or to nudge exposure for books that have been around a while.

§  Meet new readers by running a contest on your website, on Twitter, or in your newsletter. Use your books for prizes or get cross-promotion benefits by asking other authors to share their books; many will donate one to you in trade for the exposure. Watch the 99 Cent Stores for suitable favors to go with them.


Hint: Any promotion you do including a contest is more powerful when you call on your friends to tell their blog visitors or Facebook pals about it.

• Barter your books or your services for exposure on other authors’ websites. Other authors tend to understand your need to build your career and to sell your books. You'll make long lasting friends doing it.

• Offer classes in writing to your local high school, college, or library system. Students can become valued friends and fellow writers. Publicizing the classes is easy and free and helps build your author-name recognition. When appropriate, use your own book as suggested reading. Use your teaching experience in your media kit to show you have presentation skills.

• Send notes to your friends and readers asking them to recommend your book to others. Or offer them a perk like free shipping, gift wrap, or small gift if they purchase your book for a friend. That’s an ideal way to use those contact lists—the ones I show you how to build in The Frugal Book Promoter—and to let personal friends share in your exciting publishing adventure.

• Some of your reviews (both others’ reviews of your book and reviews you’ve written about others’ books) can be networking experiences. Read that word "networking" as "making friends who want to work with you." Check the submission guidelines for the free review service blog I started to help fellow authors extend the life of their favorite reviews. It's at TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. There are several review-related opportunities in the tabs at the top of the home page.

• Connect and reconnect. Subscribe to new blogs and newsletters to get new ideas, new opinions. Start reading the ones you once subscribed to again. Join a writers’ group or organization related to the subject of your book. Offer to help them with guest articles and blogs. Enter their contests. Communicate on their forums.

•When you ship signed copies of your book, include a coupon for the purchase of another copy for a friend—signed and dedicated—or for one of your other books. Some distributors insert fliers or coupons into your books when they ship them for a small fee.
   
•Adjust the idea above to a cross-promotional effort with a friend who writes in the same genre as you. She puts a coupon for your book in her shipments; you do the same for her in yours.
   
•Be sure your book’s Amazon buy page amplifies the effects of its logarithms and utilizes the benefits they offer through AuthorCentral (also called AuthorConnect).
   
•Explore the opportunities for speaking on cruise ships. Many have cut back on the number of speakers they use, but your area of expertise may be perfect for one of them. I tried it, but found ship politics a drawback. Still many authors like Allyn Evans who holds top honors in Toastmasters and Erica Miner have used these venues successfully. Do know, however, that you need a knockout platform including speaking credits.
  
• I call reviews forever-reviews because they hang around forever on the web. And because they are forever useful on their own or repurposed as endorsements—yep, even when a book is aging. In fact, I think they are so important to your career that I wrote an entire book on how to get them, how to manage them on places like Amazon, and how to utilize them…well, forever. It is, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson has been promoting her own books and helping clients promote theirs for more than a decade. Her marketing plan for the second book in the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success won the Next Generation Millennium Award for Marketing. The just-released third edition of The Frugal Book Promoter, published by Modern History Press, is New! Expanded! Updated! Her poetry, fiction and nonfiction books have been honored by the likes of Writer’s Digest, USA Book News Award, the Irwin award, Dan Poynter’s Global Ebook Awards and more. Learn more about Carolyn and her books of fiction and poetry. Each of them helped her learn more about maximizing marketing efforts for different writers, different titles. Learn more at www.howtodoitfrugally.com and http://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile.

5 Key Elements to Making a Fiction Story Work

 

Contributed by Karen Cioffi

Think about the last time you read a story that stayed with you. A story that made you feel. A story that took you on an adventure or had you sitting on the edge of your seat. A story that made you cry or laugh ... or think.

These types of stories have it. They have the key to making a story work.

So, how do you go about creating a stirring story?

Here are 5 top tips to writing a fiction story that works:

1. It’s got to have conflict.

All writers have heard this and the reason is because it’s true.

Your protagonist MUST be striving for something, and it should be something significant. She needs to have obstacles in her way that she has to overcome in order for the reader to be engaged enough to turn the page.

The reader has to be pulled into the story wondering if, and more so hoping that, the protagonist reaches her goal.

You wouldn’t have much of a story following a couple in an amusement park going from ride to ride, waiting on line for food, and so on. There’s nothing for the reader to get involved with. There’s no emotional element.

Or, what if a great writer puts two children in a story that takes place at the Bronx Zoo. The narrator describes in detail all the exhibits they visit and does it wonderfully. But, what does the reader have to sink her teeth into. Nothing.

One of my all-time favorite movies was Thelma and Louise. The conflict was never-ending. And, it was the conflict that keep you on the edge of your seat.

How would they get out of the mess they were in?!

That’s how you want your readers to feel. There needs to be conflict in order to make the reader feel. It doesn’t have to be ‘seat of your pants’ drama, but it needs to be significant. It can be external or internal, but it has to be something the reader can grab and hang on to. It has to make the reader get involved with the story and care about it.

2. The readers need to be invested in the story.

A good story brings the reader into the protagonist’s shoes. This is what will motivate the reader to like and root for the protagonist.

It’s all about making the reader ‘feel.’ The story has to evoke emotion on the reader’s part. The story has to have substance.

Going back to Thelma and Louise, one wrong decision spiraled out of control into what seemed to them as a live or die situation.

Circumstances and choices took them bounding out-of-control, as if caught up in a tornado. This kind of story creates investment.

It evoked emotion in just about everyone who saw the movie. Everyone was rooting for the protagonists.

In an article, “Make Readers Deeply Connect to Your Characters,” the author calls this key factor, “transportation.” You’re bringing the reader out of their reality and into your story world. You’re transporting them.

Like Alice when she steps into the rabbit hole. Down, down, down she went into another world.

3. The characters have to act ‘real’ and be likeable.

Your characters need to be multifaceted. They need to behave like real people. This means they’ll have good traits, but they’ll also have some bad traits or weaknesses. It may be they’re indecisive. Or, at the beginning of the story they may be frightened of everything.

Your characters should make great decisions, but they should also make poor ones.

Along with this, your protagonist needs to be likeable. He needs to have traits that the reader will admire and connect to. It’s important that the reader likes the protagonist.

Maybe your protagonist will be honest, heroic, responsible, generous, or loyal.

You get the idea. These are characteristics that most people admire in others. They’re characteristics that will draw the reader in.

I forgot what movie it was and I forgot the exact details, but basically the protagonist was sitting in a diner across from her date. Another woman, elegantly dressed, walked passed with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe. The toilet paper woman was heading to a table where a man was waiting for her.

The protagonist excused herself for a moment. She got up and removed the paper from the woman’s foot by walking behind her and stepping on the paper. Then she sat back down and returned to her conversation.

The woman that passed by never knew the kindness the protagonist showed her. And, the protagonist didn’t mention what she did to her date.

This one simple act of kindness spoke volumes about the character of the protagonist. She’s the type of person you’d admire and like to be friends with.

4. The protagonist needs to have some heroic qualities.

At some point in the story, the protagonist needs to step up. This can be in several small incidents that she overcomes throughout the story. Or, it can be in one climatic incident that wraps the story up.

In general, and especially in children’s stories, the protagonist needs to take action and reach her goal.

It may be after one or two or three failures, but ultimately, the protagonist must step up. Whether it’s physical or emotional, whether internal or external, she needs to fight through all obstacles that stand in her way.

Readers want a purposeful story. They want and even expect the protagonist to be victorious. Don’t let your readers down.

5. Tie-up all loose ends.

When you’re getting to the end of your story, make sure all loose ends are tied up. Any tidbits of information you put out there must be resolved.

You want the reader to go away satisfied. You don’t want her wondering why something was mentioned somewhere in the story and not resolved.

One example is mentioning that the protagonist’s close friend lost his dog. Then there’s no mention of it. Was the dog found?

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DOG?

Another example is in a middle-grade manuscript I read. The author had the friend of the protagonist saying he couldn’t go to the protagonist’s special event because he had something URGENT to do that day.

Afterward there was no mention of the urgent matter.

This is a NO-NO. What was so urgent? Why was it mentioned, if it wasn’t followed up with?

As I read the manuscript I knew that part would either have to be addressed (tied-up) or eliminated.

These loose-ends are things that will gnaw at the reader. They will finish the book feeling like something is missing. Again, this is a NO-NO.

So, there you have it.

While there is more involved in writing good fiction, these five are at the top of the ‘good fiction story’ list.

Sources:

https://janefriedman.com/connect-characters/
https://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/wonder/ch1.html (NO LONGER LIVE)

This article was originally published at: http://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com/2017/11/26/a-fiction-story-5-key-elements/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author. She runs a successful children’s ghostwriting, rewriting, and coaching business and welcomes working with new clients.

For tips on writing for children OR if you need help with your project, contact her at Writing for Children with Karen Cioffi.


And, check out Karen's The Adventures of Planetman picture book series and other books:
https://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com/karens-books/
 

 

MORE ON WRITING

A Story Revision Checklist

Characters or Story Which Comes First?

Making Your Book Into a Classic

 

"Show" in Your Stories, but Sometimes it's Okay to "Tell"

"Don't tell me the moon is shining;
show me the glint of light on the broken glass."
                                                  Anton Chekhov

Learning how to “show” and not “tell” our stories seems to be one of the more challenging aspects of writing for children. We are all storytellers after all, and it’s only natural for us to want to “tell” our stories in person or on paper. When it comes to writing for children, “showing” our stories makes our stories come alive. But contrary to the common concept of “show, don’t tell,” I’ve found that it is sometimes okay to “tell.”

What is the difference between “show” and “tell?” With “show,” readers become the character. A connection is created between the reader and the character. The reader has the freedom to interpret what the character is going through, and feels the character’s emotions—his joy, his pain, his sorrow—whatever he is feeling. A book that has helped me interpret my characters’ emotions into actions is The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

On the other hand, telling the story does not allow the reader to discover for themselves what the character is going through—she’s being told what is happening. Rather than the reader using her imagination and empathizing with the character, she is being told by the author what is happening to the character.

Examples of “show, don’t tell” from Jerry Jenkins’ blog:

• Telling: The temperature fell and the ice reflected the sun.
• Showing: Bill’s nose burned in the frigid air, and he squinted against the sun reflecting off the street.
• Telling: Suzie was blind.
• Showing: Suzie felt for the bench with white cane.

If you haven’t mastered “show, don’t tell,” don’t worry. Leona Brits writes, “Once you understand [show, don’t tell] and use it, there’s no going back: your writing will include it, intuitively.”

Get Rid of the Narrator 

In a fiction course I took when first learning how to write stories, my instructor would listen to one of my paragraphs and blast me with: Author Intrusion! You’re telling not showing! Get rid of the narrator!

At the time I asked myself, who is this narrator? I found out the narrator is that sneaky behind-the-scenes person who speaks up, thinking experiences the characters are having need to be “explained,” so that the reader will understand what the character is going through.

Here is what I would do. I would begin by “showing” what was happening with dialogue and action, and then in the next sentence, so that my reader would understand, I would explain what the characters were doing and saying. Needless to say, like most beginning writers, it took a while for me to rid myself of the need to “tell” my reader all about my story. I learned, though. From that uncomfortable moment with my instructor on I’ve snuffed out that sneaky narrator whenever I find her lurking in the background.

Problem solved? Not quite. I’ve written four books now, and during revision I still find “telling” sentences, though now that I've had more practice (and mind you, patience), I can spot "telling" sentences more easily.

Try Using a Pattern

Two mentor books that sit on my desk are Chris Eboch’s, You Can Write for Children, and Advanced Plotting. In the former book, Eboch suggests using a pattern that she quotes from Manuscript Makeover, by Elizabeth Lyon. Here is the pattern: Stimulus—reaction/emotion—thoughts—action. 

• Stimulus: Something happens to your main character.
• Reaction/emotion: Your character has an emotional reaction, which can be shown with dialogue, such as an exclamation or an expression; add to that a physical reaction, such as he clenches his fists or blushes. The Emotion Thesaurus is a good reference to help with giving your characters physical reactions to emotions they are experiencing.
• Thoughts: What your character thinks about the situation, and what he decides to do about it. Action: your character acts on the decision he has made. Eboch explains that this sequence can take one sentence or several pages, as long as the character’s emotional and intellectual reactions are shown, and they lead to a decision. Also, the pattern can be varied.

Get to Know your Characters

One of the books that brought home to me how to “show,” is Creating Characters Kids Will Love, by Elaine Marie Alphin. In a nutshell, Alphin suggests:

• Decide on a general idea of the plot.
• Decide who your character is, his background, experiences he’s had. What is his motivation? What’s at stake? What will happen if he doesn’t succeed?
• Decide what your character will be doing, the actions he will take in order to develop the plot.
• Then put yourself in your character’s shoes—get into his head—and perform his actions according to who he is: a skilled third grader or a third grader who is unsure of himself.
• Go through the series of actions he is taking, step-by-step, even trying these actions out yourself to see what they feel like.
• Develop your scenes to show something about your character.

Here is an example of how Benjy, Alphin's twelve-year-old main character, climbed down a precarious roof, from her book The Ghost Cadet:

Benjy’s actions: His sneakers were braced against the roof’s shingles. Slowly, Benjy took one hand off the sill and gripped a lower shingle instead. Then he took a deep breath, told himself very firmly not to be afraid, and let go of the sill with his other hand. There was a bad moment when his free hand couldn’t seem to find a shingle, but Benjy made himself stay calm, and finally his damp palm slid down one row of shingles and he hooked his fingers over the next one and held tight. After that, inching his way down row by row didn’t seem so terrible. Two more paragraphs continue Benji’s climb.

In the last paragraph, we delve into Benjy’s thoughts: Why couldn’t he have been a few inches taller? Benjy cursed his height silently. Even just a couple of inches would have meant his toes might have been able to feel the bench beneath him. But wishing wouldn’t make him grow. Benjy looked down one last time and asked himself whether this was really necessary. Flexing his arms, knees, and body, he ordered himself to relax, and took a deep breath, and let go.

While writing my first book, Secret in the Stars, this example from Alphin’s book helped me “show” my story.

A Case for “Telling, not Showing” 

“Telling” is acceptable at times, when you need to fill in brief mention of necessary information. Here’s an interesting example from the first paragraph of The Red Ghost, by Marion Dane Bauer; interesting because of Dane’s use of the word “was,” normally a no-no, especially at the beginning of a story:

The doll wore red velvet. Her dress was made of red velvet, and her bonnet was, too. Both were trimmed in white lace, but the white lace only made the velvet seem more red.

As in all of Dane’s books, there is a lilt to her first paragraph in The Red Ghost that is most pleasing, appealing, and enjoyable, despite her use of the word “was.” But for writers with less experience such as moi, using “was” might not be the best choice for a book opening unless it captivates the reader right away, as Dane’s first paragraph does.

And there is the case of “Good Telling:” that “telling” is sometimes better than “showing.” In Mary Kole’s article, “How to Write Fiction: When to Tell Instead of Show,” Kole discusses how she learned about J.K. Rowling’s use of “Good Telling,” as described in a speech given by Cheryl Klein, titled, “A Few Things Writers Can Learn from Harry Potter.”

Klein claims that in the Harry Potter books there is a pattern of topic sentences that explains how Harry is feeling, or heralds in a change about something that could happen, rather than "showing." In chapter two of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the topic sentence explains how excited Harry is that he’s going to go to the zoo: “Harry had the best morning he’d had in a long time.” The caveat is that the sentences that follow “show Harry keeping out of Dudley’s punching range and eating a dessert Dudley doesn’t want. This does a double job of showing: it makes Harry’s life seem pretty dismal, and it makes him seem like a nice kid. Without the Good Telling topic sentence, those neat details wouldn’t pack as much punch. As Klein puts it, “Sometimes readers need the plain straightforward direction of telling to elucidate the point of all that showing.”

To read Kole’s article, go to: https://kidlit.com/when-to-tell-instead-of-show/. It is well worth your time.

Then there are the children’s classics, such as The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter, and The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I could be wrong, but I think the term “storybook” has been lost, at least it was in my cursory search on Google, as I tried to find examples of books that are narrated, or “told” by the author. The closest I could come was a list of classic children’s books on the website Milwaukee with Kids.We all know that these stories are among the most beloved of children’s classics such as the books I mentioned, and serve as another example of when it’s okay to “tell” a story.

For now, as a new children’s author, I plan to stick to “showing” in my stories. And with the practice I’ve had, I find that when to “show” and when to “tell” comes intuitively, just as Leona Brits predicted.

The best part? Learning the ins-and-outs of this technique will give us as children’s authors more confidence than we ever thought possible, and will make writing our treasured stories more fun to write, and fun for children, to read.

Sources:

For six tips on implementing "Show, don’t Tell," go to “My Golden Rules to ‘Show Don’t Tell,’ by 

Clipart: https://all-free-download.com.

https://kidlit.com/when-to-tell-instead-of-show/Leona Brits.

https://writingcooperative.com/my-golden-rules-to-show-dont-tell-f4d030eca8c9. https://jerryjenkins.com/show-dont-tell/.

https://www.mkewithkids.com/post/top-25-classic-novels-your-kids-will-love.

Watch for Tall Boots, available
on Amazon in paperback, eBook, and
audiobook, coming soon!

Linda Wilson, a former elementary teacher, has published over 150 articles for children and adults, several short stories for children, and her first book, Secret in the Stars: An Abi Wunder Mystery, which is available on Amazon. Publishing credits include biosketches for the library journal, Biography Today, which include Troy Aikman, Stephen King, and William Shatner; Pockets; Hopscotch; and an article for Highlights for Children. Secret in the Mist, the second in the Abi Wunder series, is coming soon. A Packrat Holiday: Thistletoe’s Gift, and Tall Boots, Linda’s picture books, will be published soon. Follow Linda on https://www.lindawilsonauthor.com.