Are You Overthinking Your Story?

 


 By Karen Cioffi

As a children’s ghostwriter I work and have worked with a lot of clients.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that some authors can’t stop overthinking their story.

So, what does ‘overthinking’ a story mean?

Well, it means a number of things from not being able to see a manuscript ready for publication to overthinking a sentence or the storyline.

Working with over 300 clients, it’s interesting that only a handful had trouble realizing when the story was complete.

They’d want to add this or add that, not realizing less with young readers is more.

Overall, though, the majority of my clients overthink at the sentence level.

For example, I have one client who questions every duplicate word within a paragraph.

Now, it’s true that choosing the right words is essential for writing, especially writing for children. But there are some words that will need to be repeated whether for emphasis or because the word is simply needed – there may not be a suitable synonym for it.

If you look at the paragraph above, there are words that are repeated: that, words, writing, and for.

Conjunctions, determiners, and so on are also factors to consider.

A conjunction is a word that’s used to connect words, phrases, and clauses.

Such words include: and, but, for, if, when, and because.

Examples:
I’ll go to the store if it’s not raining out.
I’d go to the story, but it’s raining out.

Determiners are words that go before a noun to indicate quantity (e.g., two boys, a lot of dogs). These words are in two classes: an article (the, a/an) and a demonstrative (those, they, this, few, several, that).

An example (notice the determiner, that):
Can you pass me that book?

While often it is possible to rewrite your sentences to avoid repeating words, sometimes it just doesn’t work.

But I’m going astray.

Along with the sentences, clients also overthink the storyline and the characters.

The author may want to fit too much into a young children’s book. They may want to include two different topics within one story. Or they may have too many characters.

When writing for the four to eight-year-old group, simplicity and clarity rules.

The young reader needs one plot and one main character. There can be a couple of other characters, like friends, siblings, or cousins being involved, but you really don’t want more than that.

Again, for the young reader, it’s all about simplicity and clarity.

Trust your ghostwriter.

 Or if you’re writing the story yourself, read a lot of traditionally published books in the genre you’re writing.

This will give you a feel for what good writing is.

You might also actually write out or type out the stories of some of the books you read as practice. It helps train your brain to recognize good writing.

Another strategy you might use if you’re writing the story yourself is to read a number of books on writing skill, take a children’s writing course, or you can hire a children’s writing coach

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, and coach with clients worldwide. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move and an author online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

Karen’s children’s books include “Walking Through Walls” and “The Case of the Stranded Bear.” She also has a DIY book, “How to Write Children’s Fiction Books.” You can check them out at: https://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com/karens-books/. If you need help with your children’s story, visit: https://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com.  


MORE ON WRITING

Five Ways to Let Words Influence Your Writing Career

5 Revision Tips

The Foundation of Every Children's Story

 


 

 


Featured Productivity Tool: Getting Interviewed




Whether it’s for podcasts, live shows, or other media, getting interviewed is a productive way to share your work as a writer, as well as what you do and how you help in your business. 
 
I recently gathered tips on getting interviewed from Julie Fry, Your Guest Expert; Anastasia Lipske, Access Speakers; and Liz H Kelly, Goody PR, on #GoalChatLive. Julie, Liz, and Anastasia share the value of getting interviewed, tips for preparing and making a good impression, and their favorite interview questions. 

To prepare for an interview, Julie said, "Listen to the show, have an idea of what you are going to talk about, have sticky notes with talking points … and the host’s name … on your monitor, and be ready with a good call to action at the end of the interview." 

"Create a pre-interview checklist," suggested Anastasia. These are things you need to do before you go on the air. "If you need to, hang a sign on your door, so you are not disturbed." 

"Research the host to find common ground, " added Liz.
 
Watch our conversation: 


Goals for Getting Interviewed

  • Liz: Go on a walk and think about your wow story. What can you talk about that will help other people? Write down 3-5 talking points 
  • Anastasia: Develop a relationship on LinkedIn with a host you would like to interview you 
  • Anastasia’s bonus goal: Write a LinkedIn rec for the host and ask them to do the same for you 
  • Julie: Make a list of everyone you know who has a podcast. Then send them a short, clear email, saying that you are looking for guest opportunities, what you speak on, and what is your audience. Do they have any referrals or recommendations?

Final Thoughts 

Getting interviewed is a great way to increase your visibility, as well as your audience. Take the time to prep, and you'll be all set for a productive interview ... and the results that follow.


* * * 

For more inspiration and motivation, follow @TheDEBMethod on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin! 

* * *

What's your best interview tip? Please share in the comments. 

* * *
Debra Eckerling is the award-winning author of Your Goal Guide: A Roadmap for Setting, Planning and Achieving Your Goals and founder of the D*E*B METHOD, which is her system for goal-setting simplified. A goal-strategist, corporate consultant, and project catalyst, Debra offers personal and professional planning, event strategy, and team building for individuals, businesses, and teams. She is also the author of Write On Blogging and Purple Pencil Adventures; founder of Write On Online; host of the #GoalChat Twitter Chat, #GoalChatLive on Facebook and LinkedIn, and The DEB Show podcast. She speaks on the subjects of writing, networking, goal-setting, and social media.


How to Use Your Reviews and Excerpts in Your Media Kit

 

 October 5, 2022, #4 in Series

 

How to Use Your Reviews and Excerpts 
In Your Media Kit

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson



A continuation of Carolyn’s series of posts on the magic of reviews 
beginning on July 5, 2022, with excerpts from her 
How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: 
The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing caree
r


“Very simply put, reviews are the gift that keeps giving.” ~ CHJ

 

This is the fourth of my guest posts in my series on getting and using reviews, on making them into forever reviews to launch a book or to jumpstart a book the sales of a book that has been around for a while. It is always my pleasure to share excerpts from my multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers when I can reach (and help!) more authors with that information. Here is more on a few of the ways you can use your reviews and the endorsements you excerpt from How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career Do go back to July 5, 2022 to read or reread the earlier part of the series or read the entire book to get a more complete story on the magic of reviews and blurbs—all 300 pages of it. You won’t be sorry. Reviews can be forever. Reviews can be career builders.

Using reviews in your media kit is essential. Your kit will be used by all kinds of gatekeepers. Feature editors use reviews as guidelines for their staff writers and sometimes—when given permission—reprint them (credited, of course!). Busy radio hosts may use them instead of requesting a copy of your book to read. Media in general use them to judge the quality of your book and the suitability for their audience. As soon as you have a positive review, add it to your media kit using these guidelines:

* You know this rule: You need permission to reprint a full review.

* Mention that permission has been granted in the header of the review page in your kit where the review lives. Include a request that editors print the review using the reviewer’s byline and tagline.

* State where the review originally appeared.

*  Key in the reviewer’s byline so anyone who uses it doesn’t forget.

* When you have many reviews to choose from, select the one written by the most prestigious reviewer or the one that appeared in the most esteemed review journal. Very high praise for your book is good, but reviewer credibility is better. (You may use the very high praise part elsewhere as an excerpt or blurb. Learn to do that in an earlier post of this series or from the original source, https://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews.)

* If the original review does not include a headline, provide one that is true to the reviewer’s intent and highlights what you consider the most important aspect of the review.

If you have a review that isn’t as good as you’d like, resist the temptation to edit out the critical part. Media people know a review that is critical of one aspect of your book is more credible than one that praises a book excessively. Editors suspect that a pie-in-the-sky review was probably written by your mother. And, yes. It’s also about ethics.

If you have both a short review and a longer one that includes a synopsis of your book, increase your chances of getting some free ink by using them both in your kit. An editor may find one suits her style or space requirements better than the other. Label them “Sample Short Review” and “Sample Longer Review” on their separate pages in the kit.

Tip: If you don’t yet have a review, substitute a mini (about fifty to 100 words!) synopsis you wrote yourself until you have the real thing. Use active verbs and third person. Don’t give away the ending. It should entice even a jaded reviewer or editor to want to know more about your book. Don’t attribute it to anyone. Honesty is especially important in a business that abounds with scams.

Hint: If you want to extract little phrases that rave about your book from a review, they go on your media kit’s Praise Page where gleaning the best of the best from reviews and elsewhere is acceptable.

This is a lot to consider after you have mastered the considerable learning curve required to get reviews. It is my hope that the multitude of possibilities for using reviews will encourage you to go after them with a vengeance. After you once have a review, decide how many ways you can repurpose it. (Find a list of those ways in an earlier post in this series.) Eventually you will build a juggernaut footprint on search engines. That brings you new readers and nurtures your writing career.

This is the last in a four-part series for Karen Cioffi’s #WritersontheMove blog. Feel free to go back on the fifth of each month on July, August, and Sept where you can catch up on earlier posts on the topic of making reviews into marketing magic that pretty much lasts forever!

----

More on Guest Blogger and Regular WritersontheMove Contributor 



Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and founder and owner of a retail chain to the advice she gives in her multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. All her books for writers are multi award winners including both the first and second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter, now in its third edition from Modern History Press, and her multi award-winning The Frugal Editor won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. The third full book in the HowToDoItFrugally series for writers is How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.


Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.

The author loves to travel. She has visited ninety one countries before her travels were so rudely interrupted by Covid and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague. She admits to carrying a pen and journal wherever she goes. Her Web site is www.howtodoitfrugally.com.


###

 

Write for the Reader, Not for Yourself

 

By Karen Cioffi

Years ago, a client told me that I don’t write for the client; I don’t even write for myself; I write for the reader.

This was in regard to a picture book I wrote for the client and it’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.

This is how every author should write.

Two key points when writing for children are: Write for the reader and take professional advice.

At this point in my writing career, I’ve probably written around 350 stories, between ghostwriting and rewriting. Most of them are ghostwritten.

That’s a lot of clients. And even though I’ve had a number of series clients and return clients, all-in-all, I’ve dealt with at least 300 individual clients.

And I’m most likely underestimating this.

My point, though, is that most authors, especially new authors or wanna-be-authors, don’t realize the importance of writing for the reader.

So, what exactly does this mean?

A perfect example of this is a young adult story I’m currently working on. It’s over 100,000 words and is engrossing, but it’s also very complicated.

I’m working with the client for around nine months or so, and a running problem keeps coming up: he writes for himself.

-He knows what every character’s backstory is – every little detail.

-He knows the story’s backstory.

-He knows the history of the story topic intimately.

-He knows why Character Z is evil.

-He knows how the enemy is getting their information.

-He knows how the next two books in the trilogy will pan out.

The problem…

The reader doesn’t know. And, the client more than occasionally throws in something that the reader will get lost on.

The client can’t grasp that the reader can’t read his mind.

It’s easy to fall into this hole.

It’s super easy to get caught in this scenario, especially if it’s a long story and you’re writing independently.

Again, you know what you intend. You know what’s happening – you know the why to what’s happening. But this doesn’t mean the reader will unless you clue them in.

To give a more straightforward example, suppose a story has four brothers battling an enemy, but it’s mentioned somewhere that there are five brothers. The fifth brother is mentioned vaguely in a very brief scene, then just disappears.

The author knows who the fifth brother is, where he is, how he vanished, and why he vanished. The author thinks it’s important to mention the fifth brother because that brother will play a big part in another book. The problem, again, the reader doesn’t know any of this.

The reader will begin to wonder. Who’s the fifth brother? Why was he there and then vanished? What is his place in the story? She’ll possibly get annoyed that the author even mentioned the fifth brother.

You don’t want the reader to feel she’s left out of the loop or that the story is too complicated for her. Give the reader what she needs to be engaged in the story and on top of it.

LOL Writing this, I’m not even sure if I’m being clear enough. I know what I’m trying to say; I hope it translates over.

Readers are savvy and can read between the lines as long as the author provides enough clues or information.

Write with clarity. Don’t expect the reader to be a mind reader.

Finally, if you’re working with a professional editor, rewriter, or ghostwriter, take her advice, especially when it’s on something that just makes sense. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children’s author and children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, and coach with clients worldwide. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Writers on the Move and an author online platform instructor with WOW! Women on Writing.

Karen’s children’s books include “Walking Through Walls” and “The Case of the Stranded Bear.” She also has a DIY book, “How to Write Children’s Fiction Books.” You can check them out at: https://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com/karens-books/. If you need help with your children’s story, visit: https://karencioffiwritingforchildren.com.  

MORE ON WRITING AND BOOK MARKETING

Tips for Getting Known

Writing Inspiration - Get a Club

Theme - The Heart of Your Story

 



One Last Edit: Re-think before Submitting

Think of a story as a string of pearls. If you don't have a string,
you can't put the pearls around your neck.
                                Adapted from a quote by Marsha Norman

By Linda Wilson   @LinWilsonauthor

Can you read through your completed book without making any changes? I tried it after thinking I had finished up the basic editing and even the polishing. There couldn't possibly be anything more to "fix," thought me. Wrong. I found more changes, important changes, many changes. Throwing caution to the wind, I gave up all notions of completion and continued, alternating between rummaging through additional passes as the need occurred to me with my pinpoint-sharp #2 pencil, and then laying my book down to rest for short periods of time. My conclusion? The persistent question: When will I ever be done?  

What do I need to re-think?

While in the throes of this quest I decided, what the heck, what's one more pass? I came up with: What do I need to re-think? It turned out to be the most revealing edit of all. It resulted in a title change, removal of a subplot (that was tough--it was like losing an arm--but I had to do it), addition of a character (that was fun), rearranging some of the scenes and re-checking the arcs, making sure someone or something didn't disappear in large sections of the book. I once heard an editor liken follow-through in our works to a pearl necklace. The string of pearls need to stay intact. Each character arc, and each event had to have follow-through from beginning to end. If I hadn't done that particular check, pearls of the necklace I had begun to string would have fallen off before the clasp could have been attached. Nightmares could have resulted. I could have wound up with a school daze Incomplete, only this time from an editor and not my teacher!

Take one more look

Go back to the theme you prepared before or during the writing. Make sure the main theme shines through and ask yourself: Do the minor themes bolster the main theme?

Check the structure one more time. Is it solid?

Does each character have an arc? Each story part introduced have follow-through to the end? Follow each one all the way through to make sure.

Is your main character's flaw/need evident in the beginning and satisfied/solved from what she/he's learned by the end?

Have you done a scene check to make sure there isn't any section that might work better elsewhere?

Is there any character or scene that doesn't move the story forward? 

Is there anything to add to strengthen any part, or any weak part to delete which will strengthen the story?

Is description kept at a minimum (in a children's story)? Is the story told mostly through dialogue and action?

If it is a mystery, make a list of the clues, red herrings and reveal to make sure everything is covered.

If your book is written in close third person, have you added enough thoughts by your main character? Heightened the tension enough? Are the stakes high enough?

Advice from Jon Bard and Laura Backes from the website, Children’s Book Insider: try going back and forth from writing on paper to writing on computer. They say a different part of the brain is used each way.  

Do one last fact check.

If you grow weary of so many revisions, give your story a rest and come back to it later. One of my writing instructors once told me, you don't write a book, you re-write a book. When at first I thought I was done, I had to disengage from disappointment when finding so many glaring errors. This must be the armor people talk about that writers must grow and wear, and perhaps why people admire authors so much. For the fortitude and single-mindedness it takes to do the seat-time, on and on, until we are finally satisfied with the finished product, whatever it takes. Being sure of your work is a must if a writer wants to produce a sparkling, page-turning, humdinger of a book!

Introductory photo: Courtesy of wondoropolis.org.

My next picture book,
Cradle in the Wild,
will be out soon!


Linda Wilson writes stories for young children. Visit Linda at https://bit.ly/3AOM98L. Click the links for free coloring pages and a puppet show starring Thistletoe Q. Packrat. While you’re there, get all the latest news by signing up for Linda’s newsletter. 

Find Linda’s books at  Amazon Author Page.

Connect with Linda: FacebookTwitterPinterestInstagram  




The Benefits of Working with a Writing Coach

Suzanne Lieurance


It’s no secret that top athletes in any professional sport work with a personal coach at one time or another during their careers.

 

A good coach can help an athlete attain the peak performance needed to get to the top of his game.

 

In today’s highly competitive world of publishing, many writers are now turning to personal writing coaches to help them get to the top of their games, too.



So, what can you expect from a writing coach?


A lot, actually.


Here are some of the many benefits of working with a writing coach:

 

√ A good coach helps a writer stay motivated by providing constant feedback and encouragement. 

 

A writer not working alone, and accountable to the coach on a regular basis, finds it’s easier to keep going until a project is completed.

 

√ A good coach provides a system for success that the writer can stick with. 

 

It’s often difficult for a writer to break down a project into smaller activities and learn how to do this with any type of project. 

 

A good coach helps develop a system based on an individual’s particular writing and working style, while taking other, non-writing responsibilities and commitments into account.

 

√ A good coach helps the writer learn to set realistic goals and stay focused on them. 

 

This is perhaps one of the greatest benefits of a writing coach. 

 

Writers are creative people and may be easily distracted by other exciting opportunities and creative ideas that come their way. 

 

A writer can learn not to become distracted by other possibilities when having a tough time with a current project.

 

√ A good coach helps a writer get going again when stuck or off-track. 

 

A good coach will see that projects no longer end up as unfinished manuscripts tucked away in drawers or on computer files. 

 

They will be completed.

 

√ A good coach offers a writer professional advice. 

 

This is why it is so important to work with a coach who is also a professional writer, someone who knows the ropes.

 

√ A good coach helps a writer accurately evaluate progress. 

 

Writers can be impatient and dissatisfied with their progress because they think they should be farther along than they are. 

 

Publishing is a slow game and a good coach helps the client see realistically.

 

√ A good coach keeps the process enjoyable. 

 

Let’s face it. 

 

A writer who isn’t enjoying the writing and publishing process isn’t very likely to stick with it. 

 

A good writing coach knows this and provides ways to keep the process enjoyable so the writer will attain set goals. 






For more tips about working with a writing coach, get your free subscription to The Morning Nudge



Suzanne Lieurance is a freelance writer, writing coach, and the author of over 40 published books. 


Learn more about her coaching programs and other resources for writers at writebythesea.com.

10 Common Challenges Many New Novelists Face

by Suzanne Lieurance New novelists often encounter a range of challenges as they begin writing their book.  Here are 10 of the most common p...