Fiction Archives - Sacha Black

241 How to Write Serial Fiction with Stephanie Bond

Sacha Black — Wed, 08 May 2024 05:00:33 +0000

Hello Rebels, welcome to episode 241 of The Rebel Author Podcast. Today, I’m talking to Stephanie Bond all about writing serial fiction.

In this episode we cover:

What serial fiction is and how it differs from non-serialised fiction
Common mistakes new serial fiction writers make
Craft tips for writing serials
Techniques to create hooks
Business structure around serialised fiction

Find out more about Stephanie:

StephanieBond.com

Rebel of the Week is: Lauren

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com

2 new patrons this week, welcome and thank you to Nina J Fox and Jen. A big thank you to my existing patrons. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE

Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

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177 Ruby Roe on Secrets and Settings with JJ Arias

Sacha Black — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 05:00:13 +0000

Hello Rebels, welcome to episode 177 of The Rebel Author Podcast. Today, I’m talking to JJ Arias about secrets and settings with the launch of Ruby Roe’s newest book.

In this episode we cover:

First lines
Using secrets in fiction
Making settings a character
How Ruby wrote A Game of Hearts and Heists

This week’s question is: Tell me about a moment in your life you’ll never forget. Babies and marriages aside.

Recommendation of the week is: Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz

***this show uses affiliate links

Links I mentioned:

Order A Game of Hearts and Heists

Find out more about JJ:

Author Website

Socials @thejjarias

Rebel of the Week is: Dorian Tsukioka

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com

2 new patrons this week, welcome and thank you to Ryan and Katrina Marie. A big thank you to my existing patrons as well. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 177 Ruby Roe on Secrets and Settings with JJ Arias appeared first on Sacha Black.

037 How to Build Universes and Write Transgender Characters

Sacha Black — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 08:00:21 +0000

Hello Rebels, welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast episode 37. I’m talking to Malorie Cooper about how to build universes and write transgender characters. This week is a mixed topic, so I’ve put the timestamps for the start of each topic in the show notes.

Timestamps:

Transgender characters: 20.22
Universe and world building 49.40

Episode Show Notes

This week’s questions is:

Do you write series or standalone and why?

Book recommendation this week is The Necromancer’s Apprentice by Icy Sedgwick, purchase a copy here.

Find out more about our guest Mal Cooper on her website aeon14.com.

Find her on Facebook where she posts nearly daily cosplay/fashion pics.

Link to the YouTube video where she talks about what makes boys and girls.

Link to National Geographic article mentioned on gender.

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is now live, you can get it in ebook, paperback or hardback now.

Click the link here.

Order the Workbook here.

Listener Rebel of the Week is Aime Sund

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

Thank you to all patrons for the support. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

This episode was sponsored by Kobo Writing Life

Visit Kobo Writing Life here, read the Kobo Writing Life blog here, and listen to their podcast here.

The post 037 How to Build Universes and Write Transgender Characters appeared first on Sacha Black.

003 – How to Market Nonfiction Books With Boni Wagner-Stafford

Sacha Black — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 05:00:58 +0000

Hello and welcome back to the third Rebel Author Podcast episode. Today, I talk to Boni Wagner-Stafford about nonfiction and specifically how to market nonfiction books. Though if you’re a fiction author, I think you’ll still gain a huge amount of insight and ideas on strategic marketing.

In the intro today, I try and persuade you to join my facebook group. Every Monday (at some point on Monday because I’m notorious for doing it late at night. HEY WHAT? It’s still Monday somewhere), I post a thread asking members for their weekly goals. The following Monday, we review and post our new goals. Everyone joins in and is super supportive and we have hundreds and hundreds of comments each week. There’s loads of banter and members ask questions on all kinds of topics from craft to marketing and publishing. And I also do the occasional facebook live Q&A session.

I love the accountability of having to post and confess whether you reached your goals. Im currently trying to finish the third book in my YA fantasy series called Trey by the end of October so that I can write The Anatomy of Prose during Nano.

So, If you’d like to join you can by going to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/13STE/

Our listener rebel of the week was Christine, you can find out more about her here.

On to the show.

Boni Wagner-Stafford – How to Market Nonfiction Books

You can find more about Boni on her author services website here. Or her author website here.

Or follow her on Twitter here:

@bclearwriting

@ingeniumbooks

If you’d like to purchase a copy of One Million Books, you can do anywhere books are sold or at Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

SESSION TRANSCRIPT

Sacha Black Hello and welcome to the rebel author podcast. I’m Sacha Black and I am here today with Boni Wagner-Stafford. Boni is an author, author, coach, writer, ghost writer, editor, and co founder of Ingenium books. She’s a communications manager for the alliance of independent authors and award winning former journalist and has led public sector teams in media relations, issues management and strategic communications and planning corr, that’s a mouthful. Boni has been at the controls of a helicopter loves back country canoeing once jumped from an airplane sang on stage with Andr… ooh how do you say that?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Andrea Bocelli, there you go.

Sacha Black In a backup chorus, and grew up skiing in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, she lives in. She’s lived in more than 15 different cities in Canada, France and Mexico. And is found most on her 40…40 foot sailboat Ingenium in Mexico Sea of Cortez. Is that that is 40 foot isn’t it?

Boni Wagner-Stafford That is 40 feet? Yes.

Sacha Black Yeah. Okay. I know nothing about boat. So I was like is that 40 inches? Feet.

Welcome Boni, thank you so much for giving us some of your time this evening or or your afternoon, as I know that you are in Mexico, just for everybody listening, there is a bit of a time delay on… in the in the Wi Fi. So if there are any pauses That is why. So welcome, Boni.

Boni Wagner-Stafford Thank you very much, Sacha. Happy to be here and happy you’re launching your new rebel podcast.

Sacha Black Thank you. So tell me a bit about your journey into writing and why you write nonfiction particularly?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Well, that’s a great question. I’ve always been a writer, you know, like many authors and want to be authors, I’ve always been interested in writing, you know, starting with my grade, not even starting with but you know, back when I had a grade five writing assignment that we were to, to create a story and characters and I was right into the Nancy Drew series back then. And so I created this whole different Nancy Drew book, I made up the whole story, the whole mystery, the whole search, but I used the Nancy Drew characters. And so when I got to school to present this wonderful what I thought was a one, I was so proud of it, I had so much fun. Of course, I got a failing grade because I was off being so excited about thinking about Nancy Drew, I didn’t hear the second half of the assignment, which wasn’t everything has to be totally original. So that kind of burst my bubble. But anyway, I went on to be a journalist, reporter, and working in television and radio, mainly and dabbling in print. And, you know, storytelling has just always been part of my bones. And then the next phase of my career, I was in Government Communications. That’s that mouthful of media relations, issues, management, strategic communications, but so I was always while I was there, I was responsible for the editorial production and release of, you know, 300 page budget documents and white papers on, you know, tourism, industry restructuring, and all those kinds of things. But so everything I’ve always done, and maybe tracking back to that fateful grade five, assignment where I failed on fiction, that I just feel I love nonfiction. I love true stories. I think they make the world go around. And it’s just where I’m most comfortable. And I do have some fiction. historical fiction based on a true story. Of course, there always has to be that element of truth. But I do have some fiction in the works that, that I find very difficult. But so that that’s kind of how it all comes together.

Sacha Black So you started out your writing career writing fanfiction, I love that. I had no idea. I had no idea. I think that’s brilliant. And also, so did you how did you feel about the corporate comms? I say this only kind of for the rice while because I, you know, I as you know, I left corporate what I like to call my corporate Helmare instead of a nightmare. And, you know, because I just, you know, I wasn’t suited to the corporate lifestyle. So but how long did you did you kind of spend in the corporate world?

Boni Wagner-Stafford 11 years. And, you know, it’s interesting, I and it was government not, you know, similar to corporate but but government, so public sector very much about the public good, obviously, with the political bent, because what was in the public good, very, depending on which political party was in power. But my transition from being a reporter, where I reported on government, to then being inside, representing the government was was interesting, I realized once I was inside government, that all my preconceived notions about what government was all about, were not true. You know, I won’t get into all of those things. But you know, government is a big, fat, cushy, everybody’s lazy. I mean, the people that I worked with, in in the Ontario government in Canada, were some of the smartest, hardest working people that I have ever met. And I was very fortunate to be working on things that I just found fascinating, you know, securities regulation, reform, you know, municipal tax structures, taxing

Sacha Black Wow,

Boni Wagner-Stafford Tobacco tax, and related issues, like, Yeah, I know, I know, it’s horrible. But you know, and then industry reforms, and, you know, the debates that we would have around the board tables, deciding what to do to address a particular social, public or economic issue, we’re just fascinating. I mean, it was really some of my most fun work kind of, you know, I loved my journalistic work, but, but but the communications work in government really went much, much deeper. And, and I really, I did, I loved it. And, and that is, I loved it until I did love it anymore. And I was ready to do something else. So that’s kind of the same reason I left journalism, I loved it until I didn’t love it anymore. And then I went to do something else. And I loved communications till I didn’t love it. And and I went to do something else.

Sacha Black Well, so I mean, I say corporate What the I was actually in, in in government, as well, which is why I am kind of smiling back here. Nobody can see me grinning, but I’m kind of grinning. As much as you loved it, I hated it. But obviously, I’m very grateful that there are you know, because everybody that I worked with absolutely loved, you know, those kind of debates in, you know, for the societal good and stuff. I just wasn’t suited to it. Right. Okay, let’s get into…

Boni Wagner-Stafford It’s not for everybody, for sure.

Sacha Black And so we are here today to talk about one particular book that you’ve published. And I’m kind of one particular area. So you published a book recently called 1 million readers, which I read and loved, by the way. And so I wondered. So and just for everybody who hasn’t read it, one, go and read it, but two, it’s about marketing, nonfiction. Now, whilst it’s themed on marketing, not nonfiction, particularly, I took a lot of things from it, that I could apply to my fiction, but marketing and promotion. So yeah, don’t feel like you can’t read it just because I’m saying it’s about non fiction, nonfiction. Now, one of the things that I learned one of the very first things that I took from your book was about the difference between promotion and marketing. Now, I kind of up to that point, been rolling them into one. And, and seeing them as the same thing, but they’re not. So I wondered if you could tell listeners about the difference between marketing and promotion?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, great question. And, you know, this became crystal clear for me just in the last couple of years, because I did the same thing. And I think it’s a very common thing. But so I like to think of marketing as the umbrella promotion is one of the things you do under that marketing umbrella, but they are not interchangeable, and they’re not the same. And so marketing is… relates to everything that you do, to spread the word about you as an author, and about your book or books. promotion is a very specific activity that you undertake, when you want to sell a book. And they’re connected, of course, because the marketing is what happens when you’re fertilizing the ground, you’re making sure it’s, you know, you’re creating your the awareness, you’re wanting people to know that you exist, that work has to be done before the promotion is going to work. But the marketing piece isn’t all about selling. And this is, you know, frankly, this is where a lot of indie authors get tripped up. And you hear complaints about oh, my God, I you know, I just this author keeps just, you know, spamming me and saying buy my book by my book. Well, that is exactly what’s the problem is that that author has confused promotion, with marketing, nobody is going to buy a book from a promotion effort until you’ve done the marketing work to seed the ground with awareness about you and your book. Does that make sense Sacha?

Sacha Black Yeah, no, it does. Absolutely. And I think that say there’s a very famous phrase about seven touches, or seven times a person, a potential customer needs to see a message from you or, you know, come into contact with you. And that’s obviously the marketing side, to set up your promotion. So.

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, that’s right. Yep. Yeah. And so marketing is about establishing credibility, creating awareness, making sure that you’re providing a connection point, it’s all of that stuff. And all of your promotion activity will be for not, if you aren’t focusing on that marketing piece first. And that said, You can’t only do the marketing piece, either, at some point, you do have to say, hey, buy my book, so that they they go hand in hand, but the marketing piece really needs to be in place first, before you embark on any kind of promotion.

Sacha Black So So just a couple of so what would a couple of examples be then of marketing. So obviously, the promotion is stuff like Facebook advertising, or Amazon ads, or, you know, a social post that has a link to your book, but can you give me a couple of examples of what marketing would be without the promotion?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, and it’s, it’s interesting, it’s not black and white. So you can engage and launch a series of Facebook ads, that is about marketing, you can launch a series of, you know, any kind of ads can be about marketing, not necessarily the promotion, sometimes they can be combined. So it’s not quite so black and white. But so the marketing pieces that I’m talking about, and that 1 million readers talks about is is really a framework and a mindset, and to strategically pull all the pieces together so that you’re thinking about you, your book, the sales, your you know, whatever your definition of success is, in a holistic way. And that you take the time to think through and plan all of the activities that will be in your marketing bucket. So they’re coordinated, they make sense and so that your promotion can be successful. So marketing is everything from defining a clear objective, what is it I want to achieve? marketing, and this is my definition of marketing, you can talk to somebody else who’s going to have a totally different thing. This is just what works for me and, and how, how I like to think of this. And so marketing, you might have a marketing budget, which is also where it’s confusing, because your promotion activities are going to go into your marketing budget, if that’s if that’s the way you’re tracking your spend. But, you know, it’s how you write your website copy, it’s the colors you choose, for your website, it’s the you know, it’s the look and feel of your author photo, are you are your eyes closed? Are you in black and white, or your color, all of those things all come together into the marketing banner, they all have a message. And what your marketing strategy is going to do is bring all those things together. So you know why you’re choosing what color, you know why your eyes are open or closed? Or you don’t see your face at all? or whatever, whatever, whatever that is. If that makes, if that makes sense.

Sacha Black It does. Absolutely. And I think the why behind a lot of the marketing is for me, personally, the most important part. And, you know, and certainly around things like branding and color and building up. You know, your author personality, I suppose I think, you know, almost everything of mine is purple. You know, even my author photo is purple…. Yeah. Okay, great. So, my next question was around a concept that I’ve only ever heard once, before and outside of reading your book, and you went into quite a lot of detail, which is why I was so fascinated by it. But, and this is around the concept of selling a feeling to your readers and or customers, and I wondered, and it’s selling a feeling rather than selling a product. So I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what that is the concept what it means and, and and and what it means for authors in their planning and marketing?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, yeah, it’s a great question. And so not to discount the fact that at some point, we all as authors need to say somewhere, buy my book, and that it is a product, this is not to discount that we are selling a product. What this is talking about is what we need to engage and think through as authors, when we go through the motions, all of the many motions that we have to go through before we can be ready to sell that book. And before a reader will say buy. So this this notion of selling a feeling rather than a product is tied into the age old, you know, since millennia we human beings are attracted by story. Stories affect us, because they engage a feeling they engage our emotions, even the most intellectual, you know, dry stuff there is there is a, there is a feeling that that that we connect to. Now, I’m not talking about textbooks or anything like that, but I’ll just put that aside for the moment. But, and let me use an example not from the author world. And this we had a conversation about this earlier this week. I have lived on my sailboat, I’m not on the sailboat today, but I will be again shortly. But so in the boat world, there are particular kind of sailboats that are suited to different kinds of people. And so there is one particular kind of sailboat that really is, you know, it’s very luxurious the lines are clean the interior is, you know, the latest fashion and design. The type of person that would be interested in that kind of a sailboat is very different from the type of person who would be interested in a heavier, maybe a wooden type of sailboat that you know, is is more about the adventure of sailing rather than comfort on the water, and you are going to your sales job with each of those two products has to engage different feelings, and you need to connect to your potential buyers with different feelings based on what that product is. So and it and it and it’s not overt, the let’s say we’re trying to sell boat number one, we’re going to use words like because the person that’s interested in Book number one is more likely a woman than a man is more likely less interested in the actual above deck sailing process and more interested in the beautiful sunsets, you know, commonly sitting at anchor. And so the words we would use to try to promote and sell that boat would be luxury, comfort, safety, those are words that evoke a feeling in the reader, but only in the target reader. The second boat that I talked about that potential owner is not interested in comfort, luxury and safety. This boat number two potential owner is interested in how fast the boat goes, is there a plum bow to cut through rough seas, we would never use the word rough seas to talk about selling boat number one, even though both boats will equally experience rough seas. So you know, we want to talk about adventure plum bows how she you know cuts through the sea, how you know that sort of thing that taps into the emotion that each target reader is looking for. And so with our books, if you’re writing crime thrillers, you know that the reader is looking for a little bit of an escape they’re looking for they want to be entertained, they you know, they’re there. They love the notion of a mystery. So you don’t answer you don’t answer all their questions, you don’t solve the you don’t put the synopsis on the back of your book, for example, and you use words that will create the feeling that that reader is looking for. And even, you know, that’s a fiction example, in in a nonfiction example, even if it’s something like, you know, how to develop your personal brand, and become a better leader. The emotion that we’re looking for there is one of a sense of, okay, accomplishment. I know, you know, it’s a, there’s a clarifying feeling of, alright, I can do this, I know, this is going to tell me what I need to know. And you need to try to tap into the feeling that that we was looking for, which is the reason that they would pick up your book in the first place.

Sacha Black Yeah, and as you were talking, I was kind of, I couldn’t help but you know, relate this back to myself and thinking even about the podcast. So yes, you know, what is the feeling that I want to give to listeners? Well, swear every British, you know, obviously, in the writing world, a little bit cheeky, probably sarcastic, and you know, and rebellious, obviously. But then, you know, yes. Okay. It’s about writing and marketing and creativity or any kind of creativity and in this industry, but, you know, you could look at and for listeners, both Boni and I do freelance work for the alliance of independent authors, whereas if you go to their podcast, and it’s much more professional, and not that I’m not being professional, but you know, I’m going to drop a few f bombs or whatever it’s fine. But it’s about selling that different feeling.

Boni Wagner-Stafford You told me in advance.

Sacha Black Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, you can say fuck, it’s totally fine.

Boni Wagner-Stafford Oh right okay I’m so glad.

Sacha Black Yeah, sorry, I should have said yeah, no, these all have explicit on them, because I can’t be censoring myself. But But yeah, no, it’s, it’s, it’s a different feeling. And, and actually, this is really important, because I was thinking about how this, you know, being self aware, and knowing the feeling that you create, whether it be with your podcast, or with your books, helps you to find your tribe to find your people, your readers. And so just being self aware about that, I think is Yeah, that’s something I’m definitely gonna take away and chew over.

Boni Wagner-Stafford And yeah, and you know, that’s a good point to this, the self awareness piece, which is, many authors may not many people, whether it’s authors or people, many people may not be explicitly aware of what the feeling is that connects them to a particular book when they are readers. And so the self awareness piece is absolutely critical for this because until you can envision it in yourself. You know, when I want to go and pick up the latest Lee Child and read about Jack Reacher, I know exactly what feeling I’m, I’m after, I really I just want to shut my brain down, I want to be entertained, and I can’t sleep yet. But so I want to find out, you know, where’s, where’s the hitchhiking to now. But you know what, I’m going to choose a different book when I’m after a different feeling. But so as authors, we need to pay attention to what those feelings are in ourselves. And look at how we interact with the books that we buy, and that we read, in order to identify what some of those feelings are. And then we apply those to our target reader, and our books and kind of replicate, understand what it is that we’re trying to offer our readers what feeling we want to, we want to create for them.

Sacha Black And kind of looking at this little like a, a story, a book, because that’s, I guess, how I relate most things. It’s almost like a trope of marketing. It’s like, what are the tropes of your marketing? You know, when you think about the tropes of your book, that’s kind of the feelings for that genre that you’re trying to create. But actually, it’s kind of bringing those up in under the umbrella of marketing and thinking about the tropes that you want to market to your to your readers. So yeah, this is I’m my brain is going 10,000 miles per hour, and gonna move on. Otherwise, I know, I’m just gonna be talking about this for an hour, and everyone’s gonna be like, come on Sacha.

Boni Wagner-Stafford I come back and do another show about this.

Sacha Black Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And what’s a market scan?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Oh, this is one of my favorite. It’s actually so I’m from my corporate communications, Government Communications, I’m just going to call it corporate because you’re so right. It’s all corporate. But

Sacha Black Booo…

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, I know. Fuck, I’m glad I’m out of there. Yeah, I really am. Whenever when we were in corporate communications, whenever anything, before anything was ever going to go out to the public. Whether it was an announcement about the cost of auto insurance, or whether it was announcing a new event at a tourism industry thing, or whatever it was, whenever anything was going out to the public, we always did what we called an environmental scan. And I’ve taken this notion and applied it to book marketing, because I just found it so incredibly valuable. And so it is looking at work. For the book purposes, we’re talking about a market scan, I sometimes call it environmental scan, the two things are the same, but what it is, is a very purposeful look at the broader environment into which you are launching your book. And I consider everything being fair game, everything from socio economic considerations, like what’s happening with the economy, are people buying paperback books, are they buying ebooks? Are people buying my genre of books and and why? Is my genre, something considered a luxury or, you know, in economic downturns people are more concerned about the elements on the lower end of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, for example. So being able to connect the the broader socio economic environment is going to help you decide not just your messages, your marketing messages, but how you’re going going to pitch it, what that feeling is that you’re going to try to create. So if it’s a real economic downturn, for example, and you’re writing thrillers, and but people might not have money for thrillers, you really want to emphasize that they sure want to do a skit, they sure want to escape, they don’t want to be thinking about the bills that they can’t pay right now. So we want to emphasize those emotional and those feeling connections with what the benefits are that they’re going to get out of the book, for example. So that’s one part of the market scan. The other part of the market scan is I always like to know what’s going on in the publishing industry, things are changing very fast, I want to make sure that I know, you know, what kind of books are selling what’s happening with, you know, its platform is working better which format is you know, right now, audio books are selling a lot. So that you know, and that’s pretty standard, but won’t change month to month. But if you’re writing a book every year or two, then before I go to launch a book, I make sure that I am touching those kinds of scenarios, and make sure that I know what’s happening. And then it gets to be more specific. If you have a book about you know, how doctors can heal from burnout on the job, then we’re talking about the market scan is, you know, what’s the accepted level of wisdom right now about doctors and burnout? And you kind of look for where’s the you know, what, who’s doing the studies? Who’s who’s talking about it? What are resources, besides my book, or you know, that, that that that people can go to to try to get help from this and make sure you know, who else is talking about it, and who you might want to connect with who you might be competing with? where there might be opportunity, you’d look for conferences and events? You know, if you have a book that is set in a particular geographic area, what is the latest thing, what’s the latest thing that’s happening in that area, you know, is your book set in France, and all of a sudden, the last, you know, 12 months have been occupied by the yellow jacket protests and your book doesn’t mention them at all. And it’s apparently set last year, then you have you and you have a have a problem. That’s not to do with marketing necessarily. But these are the kinds of things that a market scan and an environmental scan can help you do, they will also identify. As I mentioned, with the other resources, they’ll identify gaps and potential places where you could where you might want to take some marketing actions, and they can identify allies. So in addition to competitors, sometimes our competitors can actually be allies. So if I’ve written a book, let’s use the same example about something to help doctors heal from burnout. And I just discovered through my market scan, but that there’s this really cool physician that’s on the speaker circuit. And, and he’s talking about it in a new and different way. Well, I can connect with that person and say, Hey, I think you might be interested in my book, and I think maybe there’s some opportunities for us to do to work together, would you like a copy of my book, I’m going to be in your area, or I see you’re coming in my area, can we sit and have a coffee, and then you never know how that might turn out. But maybe that guy, then he goes on his speaker circuit to the next speaker. And he holds up your book and says, I met this great author of this great book, and I want it you know, so the, the market scan is where you identify all those opportunities, if you’re not doing your market scan, you’re not looking for those kinds of things.

Sacha Black Yeah, and I think that stands certainly for fiction and nonfiction, I don’t think that is something that only non fiction listeners should be doing. I think it’s useful for Fiction too, because, you know, it’s that contextual marketing, you can create local opportunities, even in your area from your book, or, you know, national ones, or, you know, whatever. But there, there it is looking for those extra opportunities. And so many authors don’t do that. And, you know, it’s an easy way to sell more books really, frankly.

Boni Wagner-Stafford And it is another piece of the market scam that I mentioned, that is really, really important. And I do it every single time. And I have with the authors that I work with as my clients as well. And that is a rigorous competitor scan. So I, I consider that under the bucket of a market scan. But you know, when I first start working with with a new author, and before we’re even very far into the editorial side of the book, we’re we’re looking at, you know, 20 to 30, similar books similar in the space, the subject matter, and we’re looking at every thing we’re looking at how old they are, how well they sell, what does the description look like? What does the cover look like? What’s the price of the paperback? And the ebook? How many reviews? Do they have? What you know, what’s the average star rating? What are the reviews, saying who has provided the editorial review for that book, and it’s this, you know, it’s all part of that competitor scan on its own, doesn’t do anything, if you’re not prepared to to take it into account and act on it and acting on it means you’re are considering how the reader expects to see and find your book in this sea of all these similar places. So it should affect the choices you make for your cover, it’ll affect your title, it will certainly affect your pricing. And again, you might find both adversaries and allies in that search. Oh, so and so is written a book, but it was five years ago, but they’re having some success. So perhaps I’m going to connect them, you know, maybe we and they’ve got lots of reviews. And so maybe I can get that person to review my book and promote my book. So it’s, it’s, it’s all about connecting the dots. Really, it’s making sure that you’re not launching your book into a vacuum, that you are very, very clear. And were on what is happening in the world around you that the environment that you’re launching your book into.

Sacha Black Yeah, I completely agree, I think. And also, just to say there is so much more about this in Boni’s book and, and loads and loads of kind of really tactical tips and tricks that I have written copious amounts of notes on that I need to go and process. So yeah, cheers for that so many pages of notes, I’m like argh all the things I want to do. Okay, talk to the new author, what one or two things? Would you tell them all lessons have you learned perhaps through the through your own marketing? What would you tell them to do when when preparing their their marketing for their, their nonfiction book? Or fiction? You know?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, you know, it’s really tough because a while it’s, I’m going back to my own first six, but it’s tough because we the hardest part of the book, we think, is the writing. And then all of a sudden, we finished writing. And we realized that Oh, my god, there’s, it’s not the hardest part at all. So I view, my advice to new authors is to recognize that in all the benefits to there are so many of being an independent author and being in you know, creative and commercial control with your own prod product. product, which is your book and your projects is that marketing is a process, it is not a single event, it is a process. And it will be part of what you do for the lifetime of your book. As long as you want to be getting attention for your book and selling some books, then you need to be engaged in marketing. And so that’s the first piece of advice. And the second piece of advice is that I would take the time to do the strategy work. I don’t know very many authors. I don’t know very many authors, I work with lots of authors. But it’s not that I don’t have a big circle of friends that are authors. So the people I’m working with, you know it ALLi, but I’m not aware of very many authors that actually do this, the level of detailed planning and coming up with the marketing strategy that I’m advocating in 1 million readers. And that’s what I would say is take the time, go through the book, or other people’s it doesn’t have to be my book. There’s lots of resources out there, but take the time to pull together your own version of a marketing strategy. Because once you’ve done that work, you’ll have things to do to keep your book alive and in front of your potential readers for potentially years to come. If you don’t do this work at the beginning, you are going to go Oh, well, I launched a Facebook ad and I have some review readers, why is my book not selling? I don’t know what I should be doing today. If you do the work on the strategy of the front, you will never say you will never have to say what should I be doing to market my book today, you will always know and it will carry you through, you know, a year two years of marketing your book.

Sacha Black Yeah. And I think that’s a really important point, because I actually upon you know, and I did actually take genuinely copious amounts of notes, but then I got very overwhelmed by it. But I think that’s a really key point that you just made, because actually, I don’t have to do all of those things immediately. I’m terrible for that. I just want to do them all. Now. I highly impatient, but actually, it’s it No, that’s such a good point. Because the benefit of being an indie author is that we have control over the marketing, whereas most traditional publishers focus on that launch period. And sort of the few weeks around it, actually, you know, I’m still marketing a book that I published two years ago. And if I had, you know, a intensive, detailed marketing plan, then I wouldn’t have to be making this shit up every single day, I would go to my plan. And so I so I have a book that I’m while I’m got about 22 k of notes at the moment. So I after I finished my next fiction book, that’s what I’m focusing on, but it is nonfiction. And I did download your workbook, and I am going to go through it because I think it will give my book the best opportunity to reach as many readers as possible. And I’m just going to keep that point in mind that actually, yes, I am going to come out with a metric fuckload of tasks. But I don’t have to do them immediately. And therefore that should I hope to take away the overwhelm of having such a big marketing plan. And yeah, I think that’s a great takeaway. I wanted to ask you about PR, because that is one thing that I was I had my kind of skeptical eyebrow raised when I was reading it. But and I think this is perhaps just because I am ignorant about PR, but PR seems like one of these things that traditional publishers do when they throw loads of money at it, and nobody can really quantify it. But I think I know of indies who are starting to look at PR managers for themselves. So I wondered if you could just talk about what actually is PR, and how that differs, perhaps from the marketing that indies might be doing? And and how indie authors specifically could capitalize on it.

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, this is a really, this is a really tough area, too. And so first of all, what is it, I talked about PR as earned media, as opposed to paid media, if I’m paying Facebook to promote my ad to people of a specific demographic group, that’s a paid media, if I am doing an interview for this podcast, for example, this would be an example PR, where where I’m being spoken to by somebody who is on their own getting the word out to other readers that I wouldn’t normally connect with. So So this, you know, talking to you is an example of PR, it’s not in the traditional sense, but really what’s traditional anymore. Yeah. But so, yeah, and the the challenges, and I think it’s another gray area, where, first of all, you know, it includes everything from the interview in the New York Times. And wouldn’t we all love that. But it’s everything from that right down to maybe your neighborhood free weekly newspaper? Or, you know, is there a podcast somewhere or a, you know, that sort of thing. But the danger with PR is that people think, Oh, I can just put out in a news release. And I can pay this, you know, PR web or PR, new wire whoever it is, you know, a couple hundred bucks or 1500 bucks depending on the length and whether you include images and expect that that’s going to bring me all kinds of media attention? Well, it doesn’t. And there are you know, there are there are books that makes sense to to spend time and effort on getting PR and books that it doesn’t make sense. Or there are elements of your book. So let’s take a let’s take a thriller, you know, a fiction thriller set in a particular community. And so, you know, the story revolves, I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go, The story revolves around a murder in the library, I don’t know. And so you have to be aware of what elements you have in your book that are right for PR, the fact that you’ve written a book is not a good enough hook for trying to go out and seek media attention, the fact that you’ve published your I mean, it’s a wonderful accomplishment, don’t get me wrong.

Sacha Black That’s it Boni crush everyone’s dreams.

Boni Wagner-Stafford But yeah, it’s just there has to be some real hook, that you can hang your PR outreach attempts on. Something that is going to be of interest to people beyond well beyond the fact that you’ve written a book, unless the fact that unless the book that you’ve written is so new and avant garde that we’ve you know, bicycles for cats or something, you know, if they’ve written a book about bicycles for cats, then, you know, please don’t ride your bike enough to get you some traction. Don’t

Sacha Black Don’t don’t ride a bike about cats and bicycles.

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yes, funny. But so, and trying to get PR, it’s a whole machine in and of itself. And I think the sad part of it is that that, you know, it’s easy for us to get duped into thinking that oh, you know, I’ll just, I’ll do this media release. And all I’ll pay for the distribution, because look, they’re telling me that they’re going to distribute my media release to 275 media outlets around the country, and I’m going to be seen on 12,740 websites, what’s the load of crap, that’s doesn’t mean you’re it only means they’re pushing it across the desks, it doesn’t mean that a reporter is actually going to pick it up and write anything about you. So I think that’s one thing to be really careful of, and combining that with understanding, you know, what it is about your book, or what it is in your book that might be newsworthy, or that you can turn into a newsworthy hook. And then leverage that. Did that answer the question you asked me, or did I prattle on and get completely carried away? as I usually do?

Sacha Black I think so. Let me see if I’ve understood. So for example, if somebody you said that you were writing a historical novel had some kind of true, was it true, true crime in it? Or, but let’s say somebody’s Yeah. Okay. So let’s say somebody writes about a crime that happened in their local village, for example, their local town or city, and they publish that would that then be kind of a hooky a news item that somebody could kind of pull out? to, to go to the local papers to say, look, you know, where I’ve written this story, it’s about this true crime, it’s set here. Is that an example? Or?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yes, yes, that that that would be an example. And what you’d want to do in that case is, you know, how are you? First of all, how are you portraying that location? Yeah, so depending on, depending on how you portray the location, but let’s say that it, you know, it’s, it doesn’t do anything negative to to the location, and, you know, whether it’s the library or a corner or park or whatever, but so is there a historical society? You know, is this set in the past? I don’t know. But is there a historical society? Is there a, is there a local tour operator? Is there you know, do you go and do it a reading at the location where in the book, your murder occurred, so making something happen, that you’re creating the hook around, that is connected to your book is not a bad idea. So okay, my murder happens at the quarter corner of fourth and Vine. And so I, you know, set up an event where I’m going to be at fourth and Vine, and I’m going to do a reading and I’m going to, you know, maybe you dress up with the get some people to play a couple of roles as characters, and then you, you, you pitch that to local media, that becomes a local event. And that gets people talking about your book and your you know, so that that would be an idea.

Sacha Black So give me a couple of really tangible tips, how would an indie author without their own PR manager, actually get PR?

Boni Wagner-Stafford Well, um, it’s everything that we’ve been talking about here. So the first thing is that not, don’t assume that you can just get it from the, the fact that you have written a book, and it depends on your book. And it depends on what’s in your book. And so, you know, it almost really does require some, some feedback from somebody who has done this before. So the first thing if you do want to, if you have that hook, so I’m getting caught up on whether you have that hook or not. So let’s move past the hook. I think this is what you’re asking me. So then it is, you want to craft your story, you want to use that feeling the story that is going to be in your media release, for example, and whether or not you issue the media release, in my view, you must write that media release, because it is your story. So even if you’re even if you’re going to pitch one on one, and you’re not actually issuing a media release, I always advise write it anyway. Because you want to get it right, you want to have that lead, catchy, grabby paragraph right off the top. And then you kind of dig into it from there. So the whole structure of how you, you know, write a media release, and, and then you decide who is the best candidate for me to send this to be realistic. There’s, you know, there are local and Community Media outlets that are perfectly relevant PR opportunities for many people. And there are national and international media outlets that are going to be relevant for very few people. So be realistic, when you’re setting your target of where you actually want to get. Get your attention and traction, and you build your contact list. You know, it’s just grunt work, finding out how you reach these people and recognize that newsrooms and media outlets are extremely busy places they receive hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls and emails. And so you need to be a) respectful b), you need to be very clear on what the benefit is to that reporter or producer or whoever it is that you’re pitching, why they should be interested, respect their time. And, and, and, and follow through. So those would be kind of the mechanical steps to go through.

Sacha Black Yeah, and and that that was kind of what I was getting at as, as well. And I guess one of the other things, I suppose is for you to have things prepared in advance. So they might ask for a call type sheet of your books. Oh, you know that that kind of? Yeah, yeah.

Boni Wagner-Stafford The your your media kit.

Sacha Black Yeah,

Boni Wagner-Stafford Yeah, I want to have your release written, you want to have your one page description of what the book is who you are, as an author, you want to have print ready and web friendly images, your book cover your author photo, you want to have your contact info, you want to have you know, some people are creating business cards, you know, designed that looks similar to their books, business cards, or postcards, or bookmarks, or whatever it is. So it might there might be a product associated with that, or it can be all electronic, but so assembling, making sure that you have all your ducks in a row, you have everything you need together, that the worst thing is to make the effort to outreach and oh my god, big surprise, you get a bite and then you’re not ready. So yeah, you need to be ready with your your, your your kit.

Sacha Black Amazing. Thank you. And so this is the last question. This is always the last question. This is the rebel author podcast. So tell me about a time in your life where you were a rebel where your inner rebel came out to play

Boni Wagner-Stafford Oh my God, I’ve always been playing with my inner rebel that is so funny. Well, I you know, I don’t want to shock people so I’m not going to go back to my teenage years

Sacha Black You can shock everyone!

Boni Wagner-Stafford I’m not any of that I’ll do I’ll do something a little more a little safer till the next time we talk well, I you know, I had my my very good very well paying a management job in in Government Communications and I didn’t no longer wanted the life It gave me and so I stopped I you know, people were aghast I quit and I embarked out on my own to do my own thing took a huge risk took took huge financial hit. And people thought I was crazy. And and I was crazy. But but it was also the perfect thing for me to do at the time, I would not have the things in my life that I have now had I stayed, I would be financially better, better off but I would not be as alive and enriched and in touch with myself and the things that I want out of my life.

Sacha Black

Absolutely. I always think it’s worth taking the risk because the benefits you I always I’m trying not to get all philosophical, philosophical, but you know, when you when you take those big leaps of faith, good things always always appear on the other side of your fear. Yeah, amen to that. Right where can where can listeners find out more about you?

Boni Wagner-Stafford www.ingeniumbooks.com ingenium is INGENIUMBOOKS.

Sacha Black Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Bonnie for your time. I really appreciate it. And thank you to everybody listening and also thank you to everybody supporting on Patreon. If you would like to support the show and get early access to all of the episodes, then you can visit me on www.patreon.com/SachaBlack that is SACHA I’m Sacha Black, you’re listening to Boni Wagner Stafford and this was the rebel author podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like these posts and episodes:

Full-Time Writing: 3 Months in

001 – The Indie Author Mindset with Adam Croft

The post 003 – How to Market Nonfiction Books With Boni Wagner-Stafford appeared first on Sacha Black.

The Writer’s Craft Summit is Here!

Sacha Black — Thu, 16 May 2019 09:00:43 +0000

I am super excited to tell you about a conference my good friend Kevin T. Johns is running: The Writer’s Craft Summit. And I’m going to be a part of it.

The summit has just opened up for registration, so if you’d like to participate and watch my (and all the other) sessions, hit the sign up button below.

Sign me up to The Writer’s Craft Summit

Let me tell you a little bit about Kevin:

Kevin is an author, writing coach, and the host of The Writing Coach podcast.

At the summit, Kevin will be hosting video sessions with over 20 top fiction writing experts… including me! Which, when you see the line up, you’ll understand why I can’t believe I’m part of it.

There are going to be authors, editors, and writing coaching all sharing their very best strategies, tactics, and techniques for mastering the craft of writing fiction.

At The Writer’s Craft Virtual Summit, you’ll learn:

The difference between a mini-plot, arch-plot, and anti-plot
How to shut down your inner critic and banish imposter syndrome forever
Three types of conflict you can work into every scene you write
A simple method for fleshing out your story spine
An incredible trick for making supporting characters memorable even if they are only in a couple of scenes
A method for getting an objective perspective on your own work
An exercise Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and Hunter S. Thompson all used to become better writers

And much more.

The best part?

The Writer’s Craft Summit is totally FREE to attend live:

Sign me up to The Writer’s Craft Summit

One of the things I love most about this conference is that it’s PURELY about improving your writing craft. No advertising, no marketing, just hard craft and fiction development.

The Writer’s Craft Summit is focused exclusively on the fundamentals of fiction writing.

This summit is about making YOU a better writer, period.

You don’t need to know (or care) about AMS ads or Book Bub promotions to enjoy this event.

All you need is a pen, some paper, and a passion for storytelling.

He’s managed to bring together an amazing lineup of experts to show you how to write fictions novels readers will love. If you want to learn from people who have ‘been there, done that’ and can show you what to do (and what not to do) to achieve fiction writing success, then…

Check out “The Writer’s Craft Summit” (FREE for a limited time):

Sign me up to The Writer’s Craft Summit

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Do you want to master dialogue? @LiteraryLiving can help #amwriting

Sacha Black — Wed, 12 Dec 2018 17:00:12 +0000

Dialogue is one of the harder elements of writing. Too often it sounds stilted, dull or ridiculous. Yet it forms such a vital part of your character’s make up. It’s the only time we hear from them directly.

The worst mistake you can make is writing fictional dialogue in the style of a normal conversation.

We litter our prose with ums and ahhhs and loop backs and repetition. If you wrote dialogue like that in your novels you’d bore your readers to tears.

Mastering dialogue is one of THE quickest ways to improve your manuscripts. It creates pace and tension and can even get you noticed by literary agents and publishers.

So the question is… how should you write dialogue? If only there was a nifty resource that could teach you how to master it…

Well, I know just such a thing…

Joan Dempsey is an award-winning author, writing teacher and friend of mine. I don’t recall exactly how I met Joan, but I do remember the first time I used her teaching services. I paid for a critique of my first novel, Keepers. Her insightful comments and explanations made my writing jump a gazillion notches. But more than that, she gave me a confidence I was lacking and that was enough to spur me on to complete Keepers.

I rarely promote anything unless I truly believe in the value of it, but believe me when I tell you, Joan’s courses are serious value for money.

I want to learn more about Joan’s course

Joan’s dialogue course has seven modules, looks at the five functions of dialogue and even has personalised feedback on every assignment you complete. There’s videos, group forums and everything you could possibly want.

For more information on the course, including the full course model outline, just click here.*

Like with all good things, it must come to an end. Joan’s highly sought after course is only open for another 8 days, she can’t give personalised feedback to everyone, after all.

If you’re serious about developing your writing, if you want to hook a publisher in the next year, or if you’re just after objective feedback from one of the nicest authors I know, then go check out Joan’s course.

That link one more time…

I’m ready to check out Joan’s course

*please note, this is an affiliate link, so if you sign up to the course, I will earn a small commission. However, any readers of this blog know it’s rare I promote anything and that I only promote services I truly believe in.

The post Do you want to master dialogue? @LiteraryLiving can help #amwriting appeared first on Sacha Black.

4 Things That Develop As You Write More Books

Sacha Black — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 08:00:27 +0000

I finished my second book (kinda). Yay, go me. By kinda, I mean it’s all but on it’s way to beta readers, which means it’s had a big edit and a proof from me and Mr Grammarly, the cover is done (cover reveal coming soon) and the blurb is looming like a nasty plague eyeing my self-doubt hungrily in the corner.

I thought, given it’s my second book, and it feels like a milestone, I’d do some reflection. I’ve done a couple of these posts, one when I finished my first book (9 Secrets Successfully Completing That First Draft), and another after all the editing and completing the second draft (13 Things I learnt From Completing Draft Two)

This post is entirely selfish and just my observations about the development of my writing process, maybe you’ll find it useful, or maybe you can have a good chuckle at my incompetence.

The book I finished is 13 Steps to Evil, my non-fiction writing craft book that will teach you how to craft Superbad villains.

THING ONE – PACE DOES INCREASE

Completion of my first book was like watching paint dry or the slow mummification of my hope. It took a fucking age, and I swore I could not do it again. I HAD to speed up.

I’m not sure if it was the fact it was my second book, therefore, I had a modicum of a clue about how to write one. Or the fact it was non-fiction. Whatever the reason, writing it was faster, a shit load faster. Like Roadrunner tripping on acid faster.

The first book (Keepers, YA fantasy) two years to draft and edit to the point I could send it to beta readers. The first draft was 87k the second 78k.

13 Steps to Evil is only 49k, but still, instead of two years, I went from a title to handing it to beta readers in 11 weeks. ELEVEN.

That is ridiculous. Now I look back it all feels like a blur and is it really a surprise at that speed. I must’ve spent my days in some kind of catatonic trance saving my energy so that I could regurgitate word vomit at Mach5 every evening.

All it’s done is make me extraordinarily hungry. And not the sausage and chips in your gob hungry, the – my insides are on fire, my head full of character screams, I gotta finish these fucking books before my ears bleed and my face melts into a gooey marsh pile of unfinished manuscripts – type hungry.

THING TWO- THE PROCESS KEEPS CHANGING

Me trying to wade through the confusion of figuring out my process! Image from Gratisography

It wasn’t just a speed that changed with this draft either. My process did too. I’d heard a lot of good things about Dragon Dictation and the ability to write at supersonic light speed and who doesn’t want that in their life? Light speed is good; Lightspeed is wise. Lightspeed means pumping out a tontillion books a year and I’ll gladly take that, thank you very much.

I googled, I read, and I spent, a fuck bucket of money on getting tools and gadgety toys of word-speed joy and I started to use dictation. At first, I was sceptical, I mean 5000 words an hour? Pssht please, don’t give me that, nobody can write 5000 words hour. Except they can, and before long, I will too.

I’m going to write an extensive blog post about dictation and why I think you ought to use it, so I won’t go into too much detail today. Suffice to say, the dictation gods, even using a crappy online app allowed me to triple my output, and now I have the glorious, sparkly, word churning machine that is Dragon dictation. And boy, does it give me literary O’s.

I used to get maybe 1000 to 1500 words per day, on a good day (for non-fiction). But I went to 2000 on the first dictation attempt and on the last attempt before I finished my book, I wrote 4500 words in one evening. ONE FREAKING EVENING PEOPLE.

Crazy shit is going to happen this year. Be scared. Seriously scared.

THING THREE – TAKING MY PANTS OFF AND SAYING GOODBYE

NB. Picture from Pixabay, these are not, in fact, my pants! Mine are black, obvs.

There is a second part to this process nonsense. I swing worse than a ‘keys in a bowl as you enter party’ my process is continually evolving. I’m not arrogant enough to think I found the right/my way to write a book yet, but I did think after a royal fuck up (involving the total rewrite of my first book) that I’d at least found some semblance of a process.

But no, I have not.

Sigh.

My first book I pantsed entirely through NaNoWriMo and let’s just say it was a pile of turdsickles. You know balls of scrunched up white paper smothered in blackish brown lines of drivel that you once thought were the equivalent of modern-day Shakespearean prose, only when you re-read it you realised it was less Shakespearean and more utter Shitsparian; a wonderful hybrid of utter shit and total despair.

But I soldiered on, and this time I didn’t need a rewrite.

What I did discover, though, is that my 100% pantsing days are over. One of my goals for 2017 is to write better quality first drafts as well as faster first drafts. Unfortunately for me, the more structure and outline and planning I do, the better my first draft.

But plotting induces a face pulling, eye gouging out, anvil to the head feeling. I’m hoping that feeling will get back in its box because I’m not giving up, once I set a goal, the outcome is mine, or I’ll die trying. If that means I need to implement a bit more rigour to my planning in order to write faster and produce better first drafts, then so be it. My inner whiny little bitch pantser is going to have to suck it up.

THING FOUR – NON-FICTION IS THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Image from Pixabay

I don’t know what I expected when I started writing non-fiction. I mean, I’m a fiction writer, a Young Adult fantasy writer no less, what the fluckins was I thinking embarking on writing non-fiction? Except I write non-fiction every week. Everything I’ve ever learnt about writing, I’ve written up and slapped in a blog post.

That was a realisation in itself. Of course, I knew that my non-fiction voice was radically different to my fiction voice. But I didn’t know, know.

It was both significantly easier, and much harder to write 13 Steps To Evil. I’d been inadvertently practising my non-fiction voice for several years on here, so without meaning to, I’d developed it into a seasoned wrinkly granny with years of experience, that made it easier to write fast. Oddly for me, I feel my non-fiction voice is more developed than my fiction one.

The lesson here is, any kind of writing will develop your voice, not just book writing.

The major difference was that the structure of the book for non-fiction is vital. You don’t have characters to make your story flow in a non-fiction book, the chapters and flow of content have to do that for you. That means more planning, (there’s that little plotter bitch again) more understanding of the content and lessons are trying to teach people and all before you start writing. You can’t just pants your way through a non-fiction book unless you want it to read like puke flavoured moth balls. The structure is essential. I won’t talk about the five full restructures I had to do, because even the thought is making my eye twitch!

WHAT’S CHANGED ABOUT YOUR WRITING PROCESS OVER TIME? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS

If you liked this post, why not get even more awesome writing tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains. Click this link and just tap the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page. You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Read Keepers, the first book in my Young Adult fantasy series now. Or to hear more about the release of the sequels as well as get regular CogMail updates you can do so here.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

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Authors – Find Your Book’s Inner Truth & Hook Readers For Life

Sacha Black — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 08:00:13 +0000

Once in awhile, you read a book that changes everything.

For me, it’s usually the ones that make me grip the kitchen counter because I need a minute to get a grip of the quivering and bug-eyed daze I’m in. In those seconds, I have a literary, emotional or philosophical ‘O’. A synchronizing of minds with my Muse, its heart beat, pumping in time with mine, pouring inspiration, epiphanies, and unadulterated universal clarity into my consciousness.

Sometimes I just smile, because the epiphany I had, is a small emotional win. Like the fact that when you can’t heal from something in your past, it’s because you haven’t let it go. If you want a scab to heal, you have to stop picking it.

Other times, the revelation is much more significant. I physically pause for thought because the story has just reiterated how inconsequentially small my life is in relation to the infinite enormity of the universe.

I like to think of these moments of pause as reaffirming moments of philosophy and truth. When it happens, that book stays with me forever. That author has single-handedly changed a part of me. Forget meditative yoga retreats and six-week long vows of silence. All you need is a bloody good book, with a bloody good book truth buried inside it and that’s enough to open someone’s mind, shove a whisk in it and jingle jangle their brain cells into a new alignment.

I want my books to have a book truth because I want to give somebody else that moment of clarity and change the way they view the world. If everybody could change just one person, maybe the world would be a better place. What I do know is, whenever an author has done that to me, I’ve read everything they’ve ever written. Isn’t that every author’s dream? So here’s a few lessons I’ve learned about book truths.

What is a book truth?

There is something buried at the core of every book. Like the seed in an apple, it’s something that creates the essence of your book.

And I don’t mean your books theme. Your book’s theme can usually be summed up in one word. Some kind of fundamental thing or concept. For example in the Hunger Games, the theme is sacrifice. Like any theme, it’s conveyed throughout the book, but that doesn’t make it a book truth.

A book truth is a lesson. And the beauty of learning is that everyone interprets lessons differently. Which is why the book truth I discover might be different to the book truth someone else discovers.

I call it a lesson, because the magic of learning is that once you do learn something you can’t unlearn it. And that means you have to do something about that knowledge.

Non-Fiction Book Truths

Image from Amazon.com

Last week, read Stephen Pressfield’s Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit (AmazonUK, AmazonUSA.

The main lesson I took from it was that Non-fiction should be written using a fiction story structure. I slept on that thought and when I woke up and slurped on my morning coffee, I had a sudden gutwrenching realization. I was royally fucked. I needed to completely restructure my non-fiction book on creating better villains called: 13 Steps to Evil.

I’d learned a lesson and I couldn’t unlearn it. That meant I had to do something about it.

There was no going back. Like that moment you walking into your parents bedroom and they’re having sex. You can’t un-see that shit, and I couldn’t unlearn the lesson. I had to restructure.

FudgeBunkingCrackSacks.

Now, Non-fiction’s book truths are different to fiction ones, but the principle remains the same. It’s a lesson.

Image from Amazon. Buy from AmazonUK, AmazonUSA

Fiction & Film Book Truths

Disney and Pixar are super amazetastic when it comes to book truths. They seem to pop them out like an M&Ms or jellybeans binge at the cinema.

I pick on Disney because they make their truths so obvious. And why not, it’s for kids sometimes they need shit wafted in their face.

Finding Nemo, if you haven’t seen it (shame on you), is about two fish; a father and son. The dad (Marlin) lost all his babies and his wife in one go. The only baby he had left, was Nemo a little fishy with a damaged fin, who Marlin then mollycoddles. Nemo, in a bout of rebellion, gets lost in the ocean and taken thousands of miles away. Marlin in his search for his son he realises when he finds it that all along Nemo was fine. Marlin searches the ocean for him and when he finds him, he’s fine and managed perfectly okay. This makes Marlin realise that he has to let Nemo go. We all have to let our kids go and fly the nest and let them live and breathe and make their own mistakes.

Image from Amazon. Buy from AmazonUK or AmazonUSA

Planes is another film that my son likes to make me watch regularly, and by regularly I mean, EVERY FREAKING DAY.

The protagonist is a crop duster called Dusty. He’s has had enough of spraying crops and wants to do see the world by being a racer plane. Everyone around him mocks him and tries to make him stay as he is. But he refuses, fights on, and manages to secure a place in the world’s biggest race. The film’s truth comes from a little car that can transform into a plane. He says:

“…thanks from all of us that want to do more than what we were just built for.” Franz, Planes.

What he’s saying, and what Dusty proves, is that you don’t have to accept what anyone else ‘thinks’ you should do, and you don’t have to do what you were built for. This stories truth is that you can be anybody you want if you try hard enough.

Last two quick, well known examples. I mentioned the Hunger Games earlier, and its theme was sacrifice. Well, Suzanne Collins has linked her theme to the truth. In the first Hunger Games, the truth is that you can and will win if you’re willing to sacrifice everything.

And in Harry Potter, it’s truth is that love can save you.

What was the book truth in the last book you read? Let me know in the comments below.

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The post Authors – Find Your Book’s Inner Truth & Hook Readers For Life appeared first on Sacha Black.

Sacha’s Books is LIVE!

Sacha Black — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 15:21:58 +0000

Hey, folks, just a little note to say my new website is now live and you can totally stalk me over there if you fancy it.

WOOO HOO.

The site, if you forgot, (shame on you) is:

www.sachablackbooks.com

The content will include:

Book reviews (primarily YA, science fiction, fantasy and dystopian, but don’t be surprised if you find a raft of other books).

The previous weekly wonders style conspiracy and book inspiration posts that were posted on this site.

Updates on my fiction book launches

The inspiration I find for my books that if you’re a writer, you might also find useful.

A bit of ranting and journalling thrown in for good measure

***

That’s it. If you’re interested in my upcoming non-fiction book launch: 13 Steps To Evil – How To Craft Superbad Villains, then you can sign up for news here.

The post Sacha’s Books is LIVE! appeared first on Sacha Black.

7 Description Tactics – The Art of Writing – Deconstructing Lauren Oliver

Sacha Black — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 08:00:13 +0000

~~I’ve been Indulging in a binge festival of guilty pleasure reading.~~ Tactical reading. That’s what I’ve been doing.

When I finished my novel and handed it over to beta readers. I knew there was still ~~a lot~~ a fucking legion of stuff I needed to work on. Including the need to develop some skills that much to my annoyance STILL weren’t honed properly. Like my powers of description. Give me non-fiction or blog posts and I can whip out my bad word baps, and filth-filled metaphors with the best of them. But put a fuckitbucket in a YA book and you’re going to regret it. So I started bingeing on popular YA books hoping I’d absorb some of their skills.

Right now, I’m reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Her description is borderline excessive (in my humblest crumbliest opinion), but I quickly dropped into the rhythm of her sentences and now I kinda think it’s beautiful. So I thought I’d spend this post deconstructing her sentences to see what I could learn about description.

Here’s 7 tactics for creating the perfect story descriptions.

All quotes are from Delirium by Lauren Oliver, chapters and page numbers noted after quotes.

ONE – Buildings

“…like all the government offices, are lumped together along the wharves: a string of bright white buildings, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.” Ch3P1.2

Direct comparison is like the oldest of old school writing tactics. It’s like the bearded wizard. It’s Dumbledore in a sentence. Want to describe something without stating the obvious, then compare it to something else.

TWO – First Moment Seeing The Love Interest

“As soon as I look up, his eyes click onto my face. The breath whooshes out of my body and everything freezes for a second as thought I’m looking at him through my camera lens, zoomed in all the way, the world pausing for that tiny span of time between the opening and closing of the shutter.” Ch4. P.34

You can buy Delirium here.

I mean the thing is, I knew this was the show stopping love interest just from the description, and that’s kind of the point is it not? To tell the reader something the character doesn’t know. How did she do it? Well, the sensations Lena feels for one – the air whooshing, time stopping.

But frankly I think the camera lens is a fucking genius metaphor. It drills straight into our subconscious. Lena is in the middle of chaos, and yet has a moment of pause where she focuses on this boy. The metaphor description of that pause is not only describing the moment but it’s also an instruction to the reader… YOU THERE, READERLY PERSON…FOCUS ON THIS BOY CHARACTER, HE’S IMPORTANT, #thatisall. She tells us to ‘zoom in’ her words, G.E.N.I.U.S.

Excuse me while I have a moment myself and bow at Oliver’s feet worshipping her in an outrageous display of teenage fangirlage.

THREE – Physical

“‘I’ve never heard that name before.’ I hesitate. Shaking hands makes me feel awkward, like I’m playing dress-up in an adult’s too-big clothing. Besides, I’ve never actually touched skin-to-skin with a stranger. But he’s just standing there with his hand out, so after a second I reach out and shake. The moment we touch, a tiny electrical shock buzzes through me, and I pull away quickly.” Ch.5 P.55

Here for me, it’s less about the electric shock – everyone gets those, it’s like your standard fish and chip Friday for a Brit. Standard description for touching someone you fancy. No, for me, it’s about the description of her emotive state – awkward. I love that comparison of a kid in parents clothes. The vulnerability of it, the desire to be more grown up than you are. Those feelings are what lead her to shaking and electric shocks – so she sets up the physical with a clever little metaphor.

FOUR – Scenery

“As we come up to the top of the hill – all three of us panting a little from the climb – the bay unfolds to our right like a gigantic map, a sparkling, shimmering world of blues and greens. Hana gasps a little. It really is a beautiful view unobstructed and perfect. The sky is full of pouty white clouds that make me think of feather pillows, and seagulls turn lazy arcs over the water, patters of birds forming and dissolving in the sky.” Ch5. P.61

In this little paragraph she nails a scenic description, capturing sight, sound and in a sense touch too. Adding more than one sense into description, is like pouring reader-fuel onto your descriptions. It explodes them into a firework of readerly delights and means you show instead of tell and everyone knows that’s the holy grail of writing.

Oliver gives a direct comparison of the bay to a map and then draws in colours to enhance the image in our minds.

She captures sound description by using words like ‘gasp’ and ‘patters’, words that make sounds!

FIVE – Graduation – Or events

“I watch the girls circulating in their orange gowns like flames. Everything seems to zoom back, recede away at once. All the voices intermingle and become indistinguishable from one another – like the constant white noise of the ocean running underneath the rhythm of the Portland streets, so constant you hardly notice it. Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink – parent’s smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glistening, dark glossy hair and deep-blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light – everything so clear an perfect I’m sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.” Ch.7 P.87

This paragraph in itself felt a smidge much for me, but it was basically the only description of the graduation so in that sense for such a momentous occasion it didn’t go overboard at all.

This description mimics the technique she used in number two. She uses the overarching concept of a camera snapshot (something that takes a moment in life and stores it) to pause the scene and give the protagonist, Lena, a chance to reflect and soak up the event.

She also uses a formula for her descriptions, (see the blue sentence in the quote above) triple adjectives followed by a metaphor or simile, I’m not suggesting we all do this. In fact, it bucks the trend for a lot of YA authors who err on the side of clean fiction. Whereas this is more like an ice cream Sunday on steroids, just saying!

SIX – Describing Other Characters

“All of a sudden it hits me: she reminds me of the animals we saw once on a class trip to the slaughterhouse. All the cows were lined up, packed in their stalls, staring at us mutely as we walked by, with that same look in their eyes, fear and resignation and something else. Desperation. I’m really scared, then, truly terrified for her.” Ch.8 P.97

Oliver uses a memory comparison here to describe another character. Neat. But what I like most about this is why she does it. It’s not because she’s describing the physical appearance of the character to a cow. No. She’s describing the emotional state, and that’s sooooooo much more powerful. Especially given the comparison – fear, resignation and desperation, a dangerous cocktail.

The point isn’t really about using memories as comparative descriptors – although that is a handy little trick for your writer bag. It’s that describing the emotional state of another character, and the subsequent impact has more of an impact than describing their clothes. (although you do need to do that at some point too!)

SEVEN – Atmosphere

“But were not safe yet – far from it. The darkness is mobile, twisting, alive with paths of light. Flashlights cut through the woods to our right and left, and in their glare I see fleeing figures, lit up like ghosts, frozen for a moment in the beams. The screams continue, some only few feet away, some sodistana and forlorn you could mistake them for something else, for owls, maybe, boosting peacefully in their trees.” Ch.14 P.197

I love this because it uses the comparison (ghosts this time) to create the atmosphere. Up to this point you know they’re running through woods. But the image of fleeing, screaming ghostlike teens gives the atmosphere a sharper sense of fear. The technique she’s using is to draw on a concept we (society) already think of as scary, ghosts, and then attach it to a scary scene.

Amazon Blurb for Delirium

“They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them. Until now.

There was a time when love was the most important thing in the world. People would go to the end of the earth to find it. They would tell lies for it. Even kill for it.

But now love has been declared a dangerous disease.

Everyone who turns eighteen must be immunised with a procedure called the Cure. Lena Haloway is looking forward to being able to live the safe, predictable life the government claims the cure will bring. But meeting Alex, an enigmatic boy from the Wilds, might just make her question everything she’s been raised to believe.”

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The post 7 Description Tactics – The Art of Writing – Deconstructing Lauren Oliver appeared first on Sacha Black.