Here’s Joseph Finder, a NY Times best-selling author, talking about how he studied his craft, why he uses outlines, and what he decided about four-letter words and why.
I had the same reaction when my daughter came to me wanting to read my stuff. I’ve never heard of Joseph Finder–there are soooo many authors these days. But I can tell you I’m going to pick up one of his books to see what he’s all about.
One of the best articles on responding to stories and listening to responses that I have ever read. Ever. “The Business Rusch: Perfection” by Kristine Rusch.
For those of you that have seen my presentation on The Hunger Games, you’ll recognize the idea immediately. O, but Kristine says it with so much more insight and grace.
No, I’m not going to comment. Just go read that essay.
Here’s the third episode I recorded with the Writing Excuses guys.
In the first podcast we talked about putting and not putting ourselves in our writing and making characters who don’t all sound like the author. In the second, we talked about how to not repeat yourself as an author. In this one, I shared some basics about generating emotion in readers and dealing with negative emotions writers face when they encounter rejection, compare their career with others, hit writer’s block, or hear someone didn’t like their story.
As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: Emotion in Fiction.
Bible’s full of great stuff. Look at this.
(Old Testament | Exodus 20:17 – 19)
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass [we’re talking animals, folks], nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.
19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God aspeak with us, lest we die.
20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.
21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
Dude, the “thick darkness where God was.” The thick darkness . . .
I love the images in that passage. Moses going to talk to God face to face. Talk about spectacle. As for the commandment, well, let me just say that I might be smite-worthy.
I do not covet many things. Certainly not any dude’s butt, but sometimes it’s so hard not to covet my neighbour’s writing success. And it’s not the big boys that kill me.
I read a Lee Child or Orson Card or whoever, and I can legitimately say, “Hey, those guys have been writing for years and have produced a lot of novels; it’s unrealistic to compare my skills to their current masterly levels.” I can legitimately say, “Hey, best-sellerdom takes craft and luck, and I just need to be ready the next time the opportunity train stops at my station.” I can even say of those who start off as best-sellers, “Dude, maybe they DID start out with more skillz than me. Doesn’t mean I can’t learn. Give me some more books, you’ll see the Brown dog rise.”
These are all true statements. I’ve got the big guys down. I can spot the Brain Nazi trying to hit me with them a mile away.
It’s the other folks that get me. The guys at my level.
I just had an email exchange with one of them. (No, I’m not going to tell you who it is. Author X might read this, get a fat head, and then be ridiculed and derided by small children. I’m not that heartless.) X comes up with great ideas. Has a ton of them. X is one of those other pro writers I meet who are always lamenting about how many ideas they have. Truckloads. Boatloads. They could employ all of the peasants in a small country like Mozambique just writing the fab things that flow from their brains.
I don’t have boatloads of ideas. I don’t have a truckful. I’ve got maybe two or three riding around on a Yike Bike.
Covet, covet, covet.
Author X is also funny. X can take a pedestrian idea, twist it, maybe with a great character or situation, and suddenly I’m dying to know more. X watches a TV show I’ve been watching for years. Bim! Bam! Comes up with another great idea I want to steal. (I think I average about two ideas a week I want to steal from other authors.)
Covet, covet, covet.
Author X has great sales. Better than mine, at least.
Gol-leeeee, Mother of Hacks, please, put me out of my misery.
Or not.
I’ve got this freaking Brain Nazi’s number as well. The truth of the matter is that while Author X may have some minimal amount of writer-fu, X has also sold his/her soul to the lizard people of the hollow earth. I think they’re going to breed X. So I could have writer-fu too, but I don’t want to become anyone’s genetic experiment. I have standards.
And with that, I’ll sign out. Happiness!
Gallup did a poll in 2005 asking readers how they selected the books they read. Here are the results.
What this says to me as an author is that the most important thing I can do to help my career is write the best dang story I can, seeing that almost 60% of what readers select is driven by the experience they or someone else had with the book.
The next most important factor has to do with helping my book stand out for browsers. This would include the cover, store placement, blurbs, flap text, and the opening pages. The only part of this an author can really focus on is the opening pages–again, writing the best dang story I can.
So it seems authors, especially debut authors, can’t do much to affect sales. But not being able to do much doesn’t mean they can’t do anything. Somewhere, somehow the first readers have to be enticed to give the book a go. Robert Sawyer talks about some of the methods to do that here.
EDIT: 4/8/2011
Kris Rusch adds more information that confirms the findings of the poll above in “The Business Rusch: Promotion”. READ HER WHOLE ARTICLE. Notice she does concede that publishers can get some notice for a book. So there ARE things that can be done to make the offer. But I agree with her advice that the best thing to do is get more product out the door. The studies she cites are:
2010 Survey of Book-buying Behavior by VERSO Advertising. The key conclusion on book-buying is that “Multiple factors impact consumer awareness of a particular title, but final purchase decision (online and offline) driven by author reputation, personal recommendations, and price.” If I were you, I’d read the whole presentation.
| # | Reason | % Respondents |
| 1 | Author reputation | 52% |
| 2 | Personal recommendation | 49% |
| 3 | Price | 45% |
| 4 | Book reviews | 37% |
| 5 | Cover artwork/blurbs | 22% |
| 6 | Advertising (including on-line) | 14% |
2007 Survey on what motivates readers to by a book by Spier Advertising, reported in Publishers Weekly
| # | Reason | % of Respondents |
| 1 | Friend’s Recommendation | 49% |
| 2 | Familiarity with Author | 45% |
| 3 | Description on Jacket | 32% |
| 4 | Reviews | 22% |
| 5 | Advertisement | 21% |
| 6 | Place on bestsellers list | 17% |
| 7 | Reading group pick | 16% |
| 8 | Cover design | 12% |
The recording of the session with Larry Correia at LTUE is up on YouTube. I really enjoyed this session, and it’s always fun to work with Larry. A few additonal points.
First, you might think, well, heck, they didn’t finish a story idea. No, we didn’t. The purpose wasn’t to wow the audience. It was to show them the process of generating ideas. But . . . that doesn’t mean we weren’t close.
The big thing we’re missing from the story at the end is the situation, the problem. So if you want to extend this, ask yourself a question to help you identify that story core. For example, you might say, let’s narrow this down by genre. What genres could we use? Romance, political thriller, crime, horror, humor, scifi, western, paranormal, etc. If we select paranormal thriller, we limit our options (a good thing), and can start to generate ideas around a question like, what’s going on, what’s the problem? Potential answers:
Do you see? If we had more time, we’d have delved more into the situation with creative Q&A. Sooner or later as we generated ideas around character, setting, and problem a story idea would have come to life.
And (thank you, Mike Barker) here’s a transcript.
People are always curious about this, so I thought I’d post it and refer to my previous post about what kind of sales numbers it takes to make a living as a fiction author in the US. Of course, the royalty rates depend on what’s in your contract. Many contracts have sales volume break points. For example, an 8% royalty on the first 50,000 paperbacks sold, 10% on anything above that. But this should give you a good feel.
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Will someone show the last few minutes of that to Scott Lynch? I would love to read more of his books, but really am not interested in 20 f-bombs every page.
Tell me about it. He’s totally bumped me out of the audience.
BTW, I’ve been listening to Finder. I think he was focusing on the f-word class of explitives. There are other milder obscentities in his stuff. Still, I think he’s right. The story is what matters. There are many ways to paint a person and make them believable that don’t require that. Although language is a fairly quick and powerful way to do it.
I found his book Killer Instinct some tiem ago and never saw anything elseby him. I enjoyed the book very much even though it’s not exactly the genre I typically prefer. I appreciate the comments rearding the expletives. I’ve wrestled with the same issue and pretty much come to the same conclusion as John.
Ooh, Killer Instinct is next on my list. We’ll see how it goes.