PaperBox Books

It’s only 15 days until you can type your first words into your NaNo novel.

Unless you are one of the adventurous few who decide what to write when you sit down on November 1st, you probably have some idea of what you are going to write.

Between now and when you type your first words, there are things you can do that will help you survive and thrive.

Sign up at National Novel Writing Month and poke around the forums. Look for tips people have posted and find your region.

If you live in the Vancouver BC area, there’s VancoWrimo where our great Municipal Leaders post the information on the kick off, local write ins and eventually word wars.

Find buddies who are also participating in NaNoWriMo, you may be able to set up a challenge between your buddies – if you are at all competitive, a challenge will help you get the last few words on the page every time.

Work on your characters, profile them, interview them, write a little back story. If you know your characters inside out, they will carry you through the days when your plot falters.

Practice – try writing for 15 minutes with no interruption, figure out how many words you crank out. This will be useful when you need to get past the block. If you can write something for 15 minutes you might find the creativity starts to flow.

Above all, remember that NaNo is supposed to be fun too.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Tips | tags: NaNoWriMo, writing advice. | #

Happy Thanksgiving Canada. Happy Columbus Day America

We’ve been receiving a number of submissions lately that deal with difficult subjects like child abuse and sexual orientation. These subjects can make for a story with depth and meaning – if handled well.

Unfortunately, the subjects are not often handled that well. The top two issues seem common: preaching and jamming on the delicate subject for no story value.

Preaching – no one likes to read a sermon about why they should feel a certain way. Preaching is not just paragraphs of exposition. You are preaching when your characters have a fight and their dialogue is a simple iteration of a stance.

Jamming the subject in means you don’t have a real story reason to have the subject. For example, your story is a mystery and your character doesn’t know he or she is gay. This plot line would be great if the character’s sexual orientation was critical to the solution of the mystery. It’s not useful if you just use the story to tell the reader they should be more compassionate or understanding.

How do you make sure you aren’t putting your soapbox into your story? The most simple approach is to ask yourself ‘is this critical to the story?’. If you can’t easily point to why it is, do one of two things: take it out of your story or change your story so that it does become critical.

Keep trying to bring difficult topics to the page.

Perry

No Comments | In: Submissions, Writing Tips | tags: revision, writing advice. | #

I was on my Goodreads group this morning and I found all kinds of posts asking for help. One post was specific to one sentence the author was trying to revise. She got responses right away and three great ones (okay one was mine but it was great, really).

I guess the point is, look for help everywhere. You never know where you’ll find that gem of advice that takes you to the next level.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, Writing Tips | tags: revision, writing advice, Writing Tips. | #

Hi, I just read this great post on Ask The Publishing Guru

Great tips for creating characters – and shameless plug for my own comment about incidental character development.

Happy writing

Perry

1 Comment | In: Writing Tips | tags: Character development, writing advice, Writing Tips. | #

One of the things that a writer needs to do is develop their craft.

Simply writing more stories and stretching yourself to write new genres or working on the part of writing you find hardest will improve your skills. But, like most things in life, you can make bigger leaps if you work with others.

A conference is an organized series of talks or workshops. Some conferences incorporate writing time, but for the most part, you are there to learn skills, techniques, or career lessons from the pros. Shaw Guides is a great place to find writing workshops. It slices and dices the listing so you can easily find a workshop/conference when, where and for what skills you need.

Writing retreats are different, you will find some on Shaw Guides. but you can create your own. You can find a resort, or a B&B in some location – maybe where you’ve set your book – and go alone, or get some writer friends together, and set up specific writing tasks.

If you are trying to get started on a book, have a two day retreat on outlining or character building, or world building. If you are trying to get the first, second, five thousandth or last revision done, take a long weekend, get away from distractions. Then do it.

The benefit of taking a writing friend – not just friends who will want to golf or shop or whatever – is that you have someone to eat meals with who will understand if you are in the groove and don’t want to stop.

One conference I’ll shamelessly plug is the Canadian Authors’ Association CanWrite! 2010. June 2010 in Beautiful Victoria BC.

Happy Writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Writing Help, Writing Tips | tags: growing your skills, opinion, writing advice, Writing Tips. | #

When we got our first horror submission I was worried. I didn’t read horror and didn’t have any idea what to say. Also, I don’t read it for a reason – nightmares, baby.

We often get work submitted that doesn’t fall into what either Sue or I read. In addition, both Sue and I belong to critique groups. So I spend a lot of time reviewing and giving advice to people about books I would never read. Before I started doing it, I didn’t think it was possible.

I have found that I can give and accept critiques across genres. Here’s how I take on a review like that.

I start by looking at the premise, is it credibly set up. For horror, is it frightening? Is the ‘evil’ thing bad enough but still believable within the archetype – let’s not talk about sparkly vampires.

If that’s there, then I just start looking for the same things I normally do. Does the story start at the beginning of the action? Is the dialogue and description engaging? Does the author have a strong voice?

As I read, I look for grammar and punctuation issues. Not that I’m an editor in that sense but sometimes it jumps out. And then I try to decide if I would read the book. I have to say a few books I’ve read outside my normal taste have intrigued me enough to dip my toe into the genre.

On the flip side, I listen very carefully to critiques from people who don’t read/write in my genre. I have to know the conventions of my own genre to write a good story, but my critiquer doesn’t. So, I have to sort through the suggestions to find ones I can work with and discard the ones that I can’t because of the rules. One of my critique groups keep telling me ‘I would like to know more about the background of this person’ or ‘why didn’t you tell me about this aspect’. I thank them because I needed the reader to be wondering at that point – it’s a mystery.

I guess the suggestion here is that you don’t need to find someone who writes or reads the same books as you. Feedback is valuable. If you don’t have a critique group, go find one.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Opinions, Submissions, Writing Tips | tags: advice, critique, opinion, writing advice, Writing Tips. | #

Hi, one of the responses to our Twitter offer to give a free look at 2500 words, jumped out at me as soon as I got three sentences in. The writer had great voice! Then in my google reader I found this post at Murderati and thought I would share it with you. They say it much better than I could.

Happy writing

Perry

No Comments | In: Awesome Links, Writing Tips | tags: Voice, writing advice. | #

I’ve been reading a lot about how writers are using youtube.com for book promotion. They’re doing trailers, interviews and promotional bit to get the word out about not only their books, but also to build their reputation as an author.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing out my cameras for sound quality, scouting out locations, trying to figure out how to get rid of unflattering shadows etc. Then there was the whole – what am I going to say, how am I going to say it, what image do I want to present information I needed to have clear in my mind before I started.

It’s complex, there is a lot of non-writing stuff to think about.

I decided to give it a shot last week and put the ‘better’ results up on youtube.com – there were ‘several’ attempts. For my test run, I chose to do informal videos as Sue Nelson Buckley, the author. This would allow the style to be less polished than representing PaperBox Books.

If you want a more technical overview of the videos and tips and tricks that I’ve learned during the process take a look at my blog at SNBConsultingServices.ca (my alter ego).

In the meantime, here is some writing advice and an explanation of why I chose to publish both versions of Jake and Kathryn’s story in the Dual Version – The Trouble with Jake and The Problem With Jake. Enjoy

Fast Facts about me and some writing advice

A tale of two novels

No Comments | In: Happening in the Market, Marketing Help, Writing Tips | tags: book promotion, videos, writing advice, youtube.com. | #