Author Archives: chucklitka

People have a lot to say about pickup lines, which is to say, first lines, but the purpose is the same – to engage the interest of someone. In the case of a story’s first lines, it’s the reader. So what do they say? Here’s just a tiny sample:

“Beginning a novel starts with crafting its very first sentence, which should grab your reader’s attention and lead them right into your story.” – MasterClass https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-great-first-line-for-your-novel

“Great first lines have that power, the power to entice your reader enough that it would be unthinkable to set the book down.” – The Write Practice https://thewritepractice.com/first-line/

“The first line of a story should create a sense of character, conflict, setting, mood, theme, or style — or any combination thereof. Most importantly, it should make the reader ask questions.” Diane Callahan How to Write a Good First Line https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-a-good-first-line-9bfef4399b9d

“No matter what genre you write, your first sentence is a seduction. It can be in the form of an invitation. A declaration. A tease. A promise. A jolt. A shock.

You must be shameless and your first sentence must be irresistible. It must induce curiosity and promise the answer to an urgent question.” Ruth Harris in Anne R Allen’s Blog https://annerallen.com/2018/04/how-to-write-a-great-first-sentence/

When the reader opens the book to that first line, it’s as if they’re opening up a line of credit with the author. But the tricky thing about that credit is that it has no substance right from the start. The reader could just give you one line and, if they don’t like it, they can close the book and move on to something else to read. Hence why writing a first line is so important.” The power of first lines in fiction by Josh Sippie https://www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/the-power-of-first-lines-in-fiction/

And so it goes. Anyone who knows about writing will tell you just how important the first line of your story or novel is.

And many of them will offer you from seven to a dozen different ways to craft a first line. To pick some random ones: begin by stating your theme, or with a strange detail. You can establish your character’s voice, convey the stakes, or set the scene.

Bridge McNulty at Now Novel https://www.nownovel.com/blog/great-first-lines-of-novels/ sets out five types of novel openings: The Teaser, The Autobiographer, The Talker, The Announcer, and The Scene Setter. In short, there is a ton of advice on how to write your first lines that is readily available to every new and old author.

Now, take off your writer’s hat and put on your reader’s cap. How many books have you put down after reading the first line? How many first lines do you recall? I am rather curious because for me, after six decades of reading, I don’t think a first line ever meant anything to me. And I’m a ruthless reader – if a book doesn’t engage my interest in the first couple of pages, or chapters, I have no problem putting it down. I’ve got better things to do with my life than spend it reading a book I am not enjoying. But even so, I’ll give a book more than a line or two to engage me.

I suspect that the perceived importance of first lines in a story is a writer’s thing. A kind of a writer’s in-game to see who can come up with the most perfect first line. And I guess, I’m not immune from that game myself. I must admit that I do spend some time on my first lines – though I do not obsess over them. In fact, I put more time into crafting my closing lines, as I think they might be more important than the opening lines. They are the “landing” that you need to stick, if a book is to work. I often have them set along with my first lines before I start writing the story, serving as my target ending.

What got me to thinking about first lines was a blog post from Mark Lawrence where he listed the first lines from his novels and short stories. You can find that blog post here. I found a number that I thought were very clever (but I like clever writing.) I’ve posted my first lines on my blog from my published and from some of unpublished scraps here. Looking over my first lines, I find that they can be divided into three categories: boring scene setting ones, “The Scene Setter”, ones that open with dialog, “The Talker”, and the ones where I make some attempt at cleverness and foreshadowing, the “The Teaser.”

There are many memorable, pithy, clever, or shocking first lines in literature. So, as a bonus, here are several lists of famous first lines:

http://review.gawker.com/the-50-best-first-sentences-in-fiction-1665532271

https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-books-first-lines/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.considerable.com/entertainment/books/compelling-opening-lines-books/

So, how important are first lines to you, as both a writer, and as a reader? And as a writer, why not post some of your first lines in the comment section. Or post a link to your collection of first lines. As I suggested, it’s something of a game, dare to play?

How close to the edge do you write? How far ahead in your story could you put into words and sentences, if you could type like Superman, before you’d have to stop and figure out what to do next?

Maybe we should think of a story in the process of being written as having two sections. The first section is the part of the story where you can – and must – find the concrete words and sentences to draw your ideas out and onto the glowing screen or the sheet of paper on your desk. The second section is further out. It’s the part of the story that you know you’re heading towards, but do not know enough yet to put it into concrete sentences.

How wide this first section is probably varies by the type of writer you are. Planners who have outlined, bullet pointed, and profiled their characters down to the minutiae could, if they were Superman, type the whole book without pausing. Pantsers, on the other hand, Superman or not, might only know enough about their story to speed type to the next paragraph, or the end of the chapter. I suppose most of us fall somewhere between these two extremes. I know I do – I do all my story outlining and choreographing of the scenes in my head, save for timelines which I put on paper to better keep track of those important details.

Anyway, while writing this week, I got to thinking about the concept of having scenes and dialog fixed so clearly in your head that you could hammer them out as fast as you can type. There were a number of days this week that I typed two to three thousand plus words in the course of four or five hours of writing. I could do this only because I had spent two months thinking about those scenes over and over again. My original plan was to hold off writing the story until I had the whole of it in my head like that, but I came to fear that, three or four months down the road, many of these early story details would have been forgotten by then. So I set them down now, and the words flowed. However, having done so, I now have to stop writing to dream up a similar set of details for what comes next. (I’ll edit what I’ve written while I do that dreaming.)

So, how do you write? How much do you know when you start writing, and how much is still vague or even unknown?

We have been known to offer unsolicited advice on this site. In this case, it’s advice on writing fiction for fame and fortune.

Don’t.

Yah, I realize that you’re not going to take this advice. Didn’t expect you to. I mention it only so that you don’t blame me if fame and fortune eludes you. The credit if you do make money writing fiction is entirely yours.

Still, there are thousands of authors making a significant amount of money from writing fiction, so it’s not an impossible dream. The thing is that there are tens of thousands who aren’t, not to mention thousands who are spending a significant amount of money in indie publishing chasing that dream and not making the money back. The odds of finding fame and fortune in writing fiction have never been good, and they’re no better today, no matter what path you take.

There may’ve been a time, early in the ebook revolution, when a writer had a better chance of making significant money in indie publishing than in traditional publishing, but those days are long gone. Self publishing has its own gatekeepers now – Amazon’s algorithms that reward the best sellers with visibility, and the best selling authors who protect their turf by spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, promoting their books to potential readers on Amazon and Facebook. You have to be able and willing to pay to play in indie publishing these days for even the chance to make money writing.

The long and short of writing is that you have two equally daunting paths to fame and fortune. This suggests that the path you choose might be best chosen by determining the type of writer you are. Are you a novelist, or a pulpster?

Indie publishing is the pulp market of the 21^st century. To be financially successful in indie publishing, you need to be a pulp writer. You need to be a very prolific writer, someone with more story ideas than you’ve time to write them down. And you need to be able to turn those story ideas into stories at 2,000 words, or more, a day, in order to produce three or more novels a year. You will also need to be an entrepreneur. You’ll need to spend money to hire cover artists and editors before your book ever has a chance to earn any of it back. You’ll need to learn the arcane art of efficiently promoting your books and be willing to spend folding money to do so. If you’re good enough, you can find fortune in indie publishing, though probably not fame.

If you’re not a pulp writer and/or an entrepreneur, if you need a year or more to write a novel, then you might be wise to pursue a career in traditional publishing – along with ten thousand other aspiring authors. Traditional publishing has its own arcane knowledge that you’ll need to master – how to do an elevator pitch, write a query letter, and compose a concise synopsis. You need to research agents, and maybe enter pitch contests and the like. Plus, it may well take several novels, hundreds of rejections or no replies, and a decade or more of your life in querying hell to sell a novel, if you’re lucky. On the upside, you don’t have to spend money on postage these days to send out your letters and manuscripts, though you can spend money on coaches and seminars, if you choose to. Both fame and fortune await your success. And there’s always indie publishing if all else fails.

Writing fiction has never been a smart way of making money, though that hasn’t stopped writers from trying their hand at it. And it probably won’t stop you either. But I believe that odds of financial success are pretty even between traditional and indie publishing these days, so that you can confidently pursue the publishing path you’re most comfortable with without looking back over your shoulder at the path not taken.

Have you ever gone back and reread your earliest published stories – not with the intention of revising them, but simply as a reader? If you have, I’d be curious to compare notes with you, since I’ve done just that. I enjoy rereading my favorite books, so rereading my own books wasn’t something unusual for me, though it did take a little courage.

If you did go back and reread them, what would you hope to find? On one hand, we’d like to find that our newest stories are better written than our earliest ones. That we have, indeed, learned something in the intervening years and tens of thousands of words we’ve written. But how much better? A lot? Or a little? If our newer stories seem too much better, what does that say about our first works? Would they be embarrassing? Of course, if we’re writing marvelous books these days, our early books could still be wonderful and we could still say that we’ve made significant progress. We’d have our cake and eat it too. But if our current work is not quite marvelous, how much “progress” would we be comfortable with, without being embarrassed to be found dead in a ditch with our first works? I suppose that the best case scenario is that we’d find that our first books are good and our most recent books are better. Kinda splitting the difference.

Well, as I mentioned at the start, I, with some trepidation, decided to go back and reread some of my early books. What I found, somewhat to my surprise, was that they were still good. Darn good, in fact, defying my expectations. Oh, I found a few typos, (imagine that!) and a few sentences that I’d like to rewrite, but on the whole, despite my efforts to write crisper, shorter sentences, these first books read remarkably well. Viewed one way, this result can be seen as rather alarming – suggesting little or no progress in a decade and several million words typed. But on reflection, I found several explanations for this phenomenon.

The first one is that my earliest self-published works are not my first written works. Prior to writing my self-published books, I’d written a fantasy novel, a SF novella, and a short story all of which I shopped around in the late 1970’s without success. After that, I’d spent a year planning another novel, wrote a YA novel, and puttered around on other stories for several decades. Thus, I already had my earliest works tucked away in the drawer, just like they say you should, before embarking on writing the books I eventually self-published.

Secondly, setting out to write seriously at age 60, after half a century of reading books, I feel that I had absorbed the art of storytelling, at least for the type of stories I wanted to write. I could write them more or less “by ear.” I knew what I wanted to write and wrote those stories, just as I’m doing now.

The third factor is that, as I’ve mentioned in other essays, I wrote these stories to my specifications, just to please myself. They’re custom-designed to please me, so it’s not surprising that I, at least, still find them very enjoyable.

The last, and perhaps the most telling factor, is that I am writing within the narrow limits of my talent. I write episodic novels. I don’t have amazing, mind-blowing science fiction concepts to explore. I have nothing profound to say about anything. And my range of narrators and characters is very limited. My characters are like old time movie actors, where you can still see the “movie star” in whatever character he or she plays in my stories. This is just as true of the stories I wrote ten years ago, as it is for my most recent stories. They haven’t changed significantly because they remain the type of stories I can write. My talent won’t take me any further. Nor, to be honest, have I any motivation to push beyond these stories, since I write what I like to read. Oh, I’d like to write them better – shorter sentences, fewer “and”(s) – that sort of stuff. But I have no ambition beyond that. I’m comfortable with my limits. I must have been standing behind the door when ambition was being handed out.

So while my exploration of my early works resulted in spending some enjoyable evenings rereading some of my favorite books, your experience may differ. You are likely more ambitious than me, and may’ve written increasingly challenging stories over the years. Or perhaps stories in different genres that might make going back to your earliest books more of a leap. Without a doubt, you were younger when you started writing and have matured along with your writing, which may also color your perception of your early work as well. And yet, skill in writing is not always the final arbitrator of enjoyment. Enthusiasm and originality may compensate for less polished prose. I would hope that when all is said and done, you too would find pleasure in your early works, should you decide to revisit them. And that with all the work and worry that went into them now years behind you, you can approach them simply as a reader and fully enjoy the worlds and characters that you, somehow, created.

In any event, I am certain we would all be curious to hear about your experiences in rereading your early work, or what you would expect to find if you did so.

One of the readers of this blog wondered how much time and detail one should put into description in a fantasy or science fiction story. I am sure every writer would answer that question differently, and there is no one way, or right way, to do it. However, because I’m a firm believer that you should write the books that you’d enjoy reading yourself, I’d suggest that you look to see how the authors of your favorite books use description in their stories. Thus, if you study how your favorite authors tell their stories, noting both the parts you like and those that you don’t, you may get an insight on how you might want to do it in your stories. In my case I didn’t so much study the books I read and liked, as I sort of absorbed what I liked in them over the decades of reading.

For a more concrete answer I’d propose that one of the most important elements in world building is the voice of the narrator. The voice of the narration sets the whole tone and mood of the setting and story. The point of view of the narrator(s), the choice of words, the length and type of sentences, and the “attitude” of the narrator(s) paint the world you’re creating in broad strokes. And it is the narrator(s), be it third person, or first, who determines what gets described and how.

In my case, I write first person narratives, and I must admit that the narrators of all my stories sound very similar because they share, in part, my attitude and outlook on life. This is one of the limitations of my talent. I can’t get into some other mind, nor do I care to. That said, they’re certainly not me – you’d never catch me doing anything my characters do – but I’m certain that my attitude towards life colors the worlds I create. This is both a limit to the imaginary worlds I create, and a strength, in that it defines the “brand” of my stories.

As for actual world-building, well, I write science fiction and fantasy stories, so world building is important. However, I have one small handicap in that regard; I don’t have a visual mind. I can’t see the worlds I create, at least not clearly. They’re an impression of a place rather than a vision of it. Perhaps, if you can picture your imaginary worlds in great detail, you would not only be able to describe them in great detail, but want to do so as well. In my case, my primary purpose in descriptions is to either create a mood, or describe a stage setting in order to accommodate the action that I have in mind. I might begin with an idea of the mood I want, and a vague, impressionist picture in my mind of the setting, and then begin to flesh out the details, all the concrete, mundane items that I would expect to find in the setting and work these little things into the narration to imply the broader world beyond the immediate setting. Some of these things I’ll invent and describe, others I borrow from the familiar world, and thus they’ll be familiar to the reader without much or any description.

I’ll conclude with a concrete example of how I use description. I’m certainly not saying that this is how it should be done. It’s just my approach to building an imaginary world.

I have a couple stories set on tropical islands. In one story my narrator is returning to his island home after seven years abroad. He has to walk up a hill from the harbor to report his arrival. The office that he needs to report to is high above the harbor because there are many volcanic islands in the sea and tsunamis are common. The fact that the office is set high on a hill to avoid being carried away by a tsunami is a little element of world building. The path up to the office is made of crushed seashells which crunch beneath his footfalls is another little detail focusing on the island and the sea — and sounds. As are the seagulls weaving overhead, calling to each other. He stops to catch his breath halfway up, because he is not yet used to the moist heat of the islands. It’s getting near dusk, so the sun is low in the sky and its golden light gilds the masts and sails of the ships in the harbor, all of which is designed to create a mellow atmosphere. He looks around. All is familiar, but after his long absence, he’s looking at it with different eyes, which allows me to have him recall the past and note the differences, giving me an excuse to toss in more description than if he had seen it just yesterday. Basically, I use little details that the narrator can reasonably take note of, and find a reason to comment on without getting too much out of the head of the in-story narrator. Still, there are times when I will need to cheat a little and describe or explain things that everyone in the imaginary world would otherwise know, but the reader won’t. Hopefully I’ll find a place and an excuse to do this — and do it entertainingly — so that it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

I know that we have many accomplished authors looking in on this blog. I, and I suspect many other readers, would be interested to learn how all of you approach world building. We would welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Lots of interesting questions are being asked on our “Ask Us Anything” post that can be found here: https://writerssupportingwriters.com/2022/01/01/ask-us-anything/

Send us more!

I’ll attempt to tackle the question about how to get your ebook published on Amazon’s Kindle – very briefly.

Step one: write your book.

Step two: edit and then proofread your book. And then either hire a professional proofreader, or get as many readers as possible to proofread your book. I have five or six people reading my book, and everyone finds different errors and typos, so that the more eyes on the page, the cleaner the copy will be.

Step three: prepare your manuscript for conversion into an ebook. What you are doing in this step is setting up your text so that when it is converted into an ebook it flows smoothly without blank pages or oddities in the text, that may cause Amazon or other ebook publishers to bounce it back to you with error messages.

There are software apps that you buy that will do this for you. One is an Apple computer only program called Vellum. It costs $265. Some authors teach themselves how to program in HTML and then use the free program Calibre to make their own epub. You can also let Calibre convert your word processor program into any of the ebook formats, but unless you know what you are doing and what all the terms mean, you are probably best to leave this process to Amazon, or Smashwords. For Google Play Store you do have to create your own epub, and I do so with Calibre’s default settings, except that I use version 2 instead of version 1, the default setting, since version 1 returns an error for me.

All that said, I would recommend just letting Amazon or Smashwords create their ebook document from your word document. They know best what they want. However, to create the best looking ebook, and avoid errors, you do need to set up your word document correctly. For example, you may have your word processing document set up to include page numbers. You don’t want page numbers in a document that will be converted to an ebook, since the number of pages changes depending on size of text that the reader of an ebook selects. In addition, there are a number of other things that should be set up for ebooks as well. All of which can be found in the free ebook by Mark Coker; the Smashwords Style Guide which you can download here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 While this was written for people planning to upload and publish their books on Smashwords, I have used its procedures without any problem with Amazon Kindle as well.

Mark Coker takes you in a numbered, step by step process through creating a document that will make certain that your book is acceptable to the Smashword’s process of turning it into an ebook. It is not a daunting process. If you are only producing a non-illustrated work of fiction, half of the book will not apply in your case, so don’t let the page count scare you. I use this process for all my books.

They style book sets out guidelines for things like how many blank lines you should have between chapters, the size and style of your text and chapter heading, how to format the pages of your manuscript, and how to eliminate invisible characters that may affect how the text appears once it is converted into an ebook. It tells you how to set up a table of contents, however, this is optional and I just let the publisher’s process create one for me automatically.

The book is written for people using MS Word. I write my books in LibreOffice, but I have found that while the terms and options may look a little different, the programs have basically the same functions and it’s easy translate the directions. Coker also suggests that you might want to make sure your text doesn’t have any unnecessary invisible characters that word processors use in the text to indicate things like a paragraph break, and such. It is possible that some of these unseen characters (unless you toggle them to be visible) might’ve crept in during the writing process and might affect the results of the conversion. This involves copy and pasting your story into a simple text editing app, and then back to your word processing app, the details of which are in the book.

Once I’m done with all this, I use the option in LibreOffice to save the manuscript as a Word 97 document, and then upload it to both Amazon and Smashwords, changing only the “edition name” to match the ebook store I’m uploading to. If you work in MS Word, you’re set to upload your book.

On Amazon that there are several options for what you can upload and publish. I believe that they even have a dedicated ebook maker that you can upload your document into and tinker with online. But, of course, you can just upload the manuscript in the current version of MS Word as well. I use the old version of Word, the “.doc” version, since it works, and why fix something that works?

Step four: uploading your nice clean ebook ready manuscript to Amazon and/or Smashwords. Besides your manuscript, you’ll need a separate JPEG image of your cover in the suggested size. Both places will ask for the manuscript and cover to be uploaded separately. You will also need a blurb, and you’ll have to decide what categories that you want your book to appear in, plus come up with some keywords that will lead people searching those keywords to your book. On both platforms the process is pretty straight forward. With Amazon you’ll have a choice to publish only with Amazon, which gives you some special deals, and automatically lists your book in their Kindle Unlimited program where readers can borrow your book with Amazon paying you for the pages readers read. If you want to release your book on other platforms, this option is not open to you, so be sure to read the instructions carefully.

Step five: select your price and push the publishing button.

Step six: start counting your money. You’re going to need a lot of it to promote your book, but that’s another story.

I read somewhere that every story needs a conflict, with consequences riding on the outcome. Now, I’m not sure that’s true for all stories. Literary writers can get away with almost anything in their fiction, and more power to them. However, expectations are different in genre fiction. Genre fiction has its formulas, be it romance, mysteries, thrillers, westerns, horror, fantasy/science, paranormal fiction, or what have you. Genre readers expect stories to include their favorite tropes. These tropes almost always involve both conflict and danger. So yes, I suppose that most genre stories need conflict and dire consequences to work. The issue I have with this premise is that the table stakes for these conflicts and consequences have escalated to the point where they’ve become so grand that they’re rather silly, even absurd. Plus, they’re often violent, gory, and ultimately so common as to be trite.

Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was content to solve mysteries that did not involve murder. Today, every mystery, no matter how cozy, must involve at least one murder. A dead man, woman, or child is the starting table stake for today’s mysteries. Often the ante is upped with a second murder. And a third. And even a fourth. And when every little village has a murder every couple of months like clockwork, these stakes get silly. I’ve lived in a small town for 30 some years and the only murders that regularly occur are self-murders; suicides and overdoses; the people who die “unexpectedly” in obits.

It possible to write a mystery that doesn’t involve murder. Doyle did. Heck, I did as well. I’m sure today’s mystery writers could do it too. But there is no tried and true formula for that type of mystery, making them harder to write. There may be thousands of such manuscripts in drawers, unpublished, because agents, editors, or publishers didn’t buy them because they believe that they wouldn’t sell. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the table stakes are too low, without death in a story. But I doubt it.

And take paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction; these stories are often dark and grim these days – or rather, “grimdark.” Moreover, it is very hard to find a fantasy or science fiction story that does not involve war. A century ago Lord Dunsany wrote a fantasy story about several servants conversing in the basement of a London club about the members of the club – the members being old and forgotten gods who gathered at the club to reminisce. Tolkien, however, brought the Great War into fantasy, and so these days those old and forgotten gods no longer sit around reminiscing; they’ve returned to wage war and makeover the world in their evil image. They’re only deterred from doing so by a band of misfits and their supernatural magical powers. At least until the publisher pulls the plug on the series. And if the heroes are not misfits, they’re princes or princesses, future or deposed, who must save the throne and kingdom, or recapture it from evil usurpers.

And in almost all these stories, a war is either looming, on going, or just ended, with graphic descriptions. Bloody battles are fought in great detail. War, gore, death and destruction are the table stakes for so many fantasies – echoing the trenches of the Great War.

It’s no different in science fiction. All too often the fate of the human race, a galactic empire, or indeed, all creation teeters on the brink of destruction, to be saved, against all odds, by that band of plucky misfits again. Destroying entire planets is the starting ante for many of these stories and it goes up from there. Now, this is nothing new in science fiction, E E Smith was throwing whole galaxies around 90 years ago. However, the amount of blood, gore, casual killing, rape, and sadistic cruelty chronicled in both science fiction and fantasy today seems to have escalated expediently over the years. I’ve been reading the short reviews of books entered into the Self Published Science Fiction Contest, and many of the reviewers mention how much violence they encountered while reading just the first 10% of the books they were sampling.

Now I have nothing against using war, gore, death and destruction – or old ladies to solve murders – in books on any moral grounds. Obviously they sell, and so they must have their fans. I’m just not one of them – a simple a matter of personal taste. What I don’t like about these tropes, these formulas, is that they strike me as being cheap tricks. Lazy writing. The table stakes have been upped to make the events of the story, and thus, the story itself seem all the more important – larger than life. Their heroes are princes and princesses, not ordinary people. And if not royalty, they’re still some sort of superhero. Conflict and consequences are then ramped up the max. “Ignore the little man behind the curtain,” seems to be the name of the game. But it was the little man behind the curtain who was, in fact, interesting, not the terrifying, but ultimately hollow, Wise and Benevolent Oz.

I believe that a competent writer can tell exciting stories without resorting to Wagnerian heights. Doomsday is indeed coming. It’s the day you die. For all of us, the world ends with our death. And so too does it for the characters you create in your story. Life and death stakes for the characters alone can make for an exciting story. Indeed, you can write an exciting story without life and death stakes. There is no need to have the fate of the world hanging in the balance as well. If you make your characters engaging, and then kill them off, would that be a less devastating ending to the reader then if Evil won in the end? Is not everything beyond the fate of your characters little more than stage settings? The theater shows that you can scale back to the essentials without losing the drama.

I like to keep things simple. I like things that are understated. However, I am fully aware that everyone is different. There are people who want to read, and writers who want to write, stories with a far wider sweep, and grander scale, than I do. Heck, there are people who like opera. Each to his or her own tastes, and I’m fine with that. Still, I wish I could find stories to my tastes, without writing them.

Perhaps the market demands vast stakes. Maybe high stakes, war and gore are what agents, editors, publishers want to buy, and readers want to read. But does that mean they won’t read and enjoy stories that don’t quite follow that formula? As writers and publishers we don’t have to follow the pack. We can chart our own course. I believe that characters – people – are the heart of most good stories. They don’t need to be the center of their fictional universe to be important. Create compelling characters and readers will enveloped in the story, without the need for a grand setting and vast table stakes.

So what’s your take, both as a reader, and as a writer, on the scope of a story? Do you enjoy vast empires teetering in the balance? Do you like to read and write about larger than life characters facing impossible odds? Is grandma solving a murder a month or vast cosmic horrors lurking on the edge of night your thing? Or do you think that characters matter more than the scale of action? The clock is ticking… Comment. You have only minutes to save the world by commenting!!!

Do you have music on in the background while you write? Are you of of those writers who writes in the local coffee shop for the subtle chatter and sense of companionship that it provides for what is otherwise a solitary pursuit? Or do you need the sounds of silence to bring forth the words?

After choosing to write an essay on this topic, I, uncharacteristically, decided that I should research the question. That’s what the internet is good for, besides cute cat pictures. My far-from-exhaustive research found that many authors write with music in the background. In fact, 80% of them, in a small survey. Scientist, on the other hand, have conducted many tests and have generally found that background music inhibits performance in students and writing. Their theory for this negative effect is that the brain has to process the music, which in turn, narrows the bandwidth available for processing the thoughts you are trying to find words for. This apparently applies to all types of music. They suggest that you use music to put yourself in a good state of mind before you sit down to write, but then write in silence.

I am one of those writers who listen to music while I write – quiet, mostly instrumental music, delivered by Spotify. I have days and days worth of music in various playlists on Spotify. Until recently, that is. Spotify discontinued the tier I’ve had for a decade, and unless I pay twice the rate I had been paying, I’ll have to find some other source of background music or write in silence. So I’ve been writing in silence for the last month or so, just to see how important music really was for me. The results are… inconclusive. I can write, but it’s not quite the same.

For example, I am writing this essay in silence. When I stop to think of what I want to write next, I find that the silence is a little stressful. I feel that something is missing, There’s a hole that needs to be filled. I think that the music in the background carries me through these pauses while I’m thinking. With music I never quite come to a dead stop. And yet, when I am writing with the music on, I hardly ever hear it. The music goes in one ear and out the other unnoticed most of the time. So it’s not some sort of soundtrack or anything like that. It’s just there, to fill holes, as needed. Plus, with music on, I don’t have to hear the ringing in my ears like I am now when writing this in silence. So I think I can say that while background music isn’t essential, I do want my music back. Just as soon as Spotify offers me a deal, that is.

In any event, what about you? Do you need music, or need silence? Are you one of the cool kids who take their laptop to the coffee house to write? And what type of music do you listen to? Do you have playlists for certain moods, certain scenes or books? Share your music.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts next Monday. Is anyone planning to write a novel this November?

I’ve never tried NaNoWritMo, but I’m planning to give it an unofficial shot this year. Winter in Wisconsin is a perfect time to write a novel. I don’t want to waste all the time I must spend indoors doing nothing. But these days it seems that I need some motivation, so I’m hoping that NaNoWriMo will provide that for me this year.

I don’t think I’ll actually sign up on the website. (https://nanowrimo.org/) I’m a time spent writing rather than word count oriented writer – and I find word count goals tend to be inhibiting rather than motivating for me. However, since I have most of the high points of a short 50-60K word novel in my current series in mind, I think that I could get at least a good start on a first draft done in a month. We’ll see.

So what about you guys? Has anyone ever participated in the program? What was your experience?

You’ve made your choice – to go wide or go all in on Amazon. If you’re all in on Amazon, move along, nothing to see here. But if you’ve gone wide, do you have your books in the Google Play Book Store? And if you do, how’s it working for you? I ask this because Google Play has recently become my best “selling” venue.

Please note that I give away my books, which is several orders of magnitude easier than selling books for money. Free, however, does generate enough “sales” numbers that they can be used to compare markets.

I started publishing books in April of 2015 via Smashwords and Amazon. In October of 2018 I got my books into the Google Play Store. I gave away 11 books that first month on Google. The following year Google accounted for about 9% of my sales, rising to 15% in 2020. This year Google started with 137 sales in January, and has continued to grow almost every month since then. Indeed, to date Google sales account for 33.4% of this year’s sales thru September, with Amazon at 42% and Smashwords at 24.5%. For some unknown reason I did really well on Google in September with total sales clocking in at almost three times that of Smashwords and Amazon combined. All in all, Google now accounts for a little more than 10% of my all times sales, though it’s only been part of the mix for half of the time I’ve been selling books.

Of course your books, the number of your titles, and readership will be different from mine, but I think it’s safe to say that if you haven’t listed your books on Google, you may be missing sales.

It used to be that you had to ask Google for an invitation to list your books, but when I googled the procedure for this article, the search took me here; https://play.google.com/books/publish/ where it seems all you have to do is sign up. But seeing that I was already signed into Google, “getting started” just took me to my Google page, so I can’t say for certain what you can expect.

Unlike Smashwords and Amazon, with Google you have to upload your own epub version of your book. If you already format your files as epubs they should be good to go. But if – like me – you don’t, then you’ll need to do it yourself. I use Calibre, a free program, to convert my LibreOffice files to epubs.

I’m no expert in Calibre so I keep it simple. I upload my LibreOffice file to Calibre, and then convert it to a version 3 epub using the default settings with Heuristic processing checked. Be sure to select version 3 when the time comes, as I get error messages when uploading version 2 epubs to Google. Once converted, the epub file ends up in the Calibre folder. From there I upload the epub file to Google. I include the cover when creating the epub in Calibre, even though you’ll still need to upload the cover to Google as a jpeg separately, just like the other stores. And like the other stores you’ll have to fill out all the metadata on the book, author bio if you like, and set the price and territories. Google reports daily sales with a day or two lag. I don’t know how payment works, but I assume that it is similar to the other services as well. Google pay 70% royalties.

It is rare that I can pinpoint a reason for any unanticipated jump in sales, and I can’t explain why Google is doing so well for me this year. I can’t find anything on the Google Play Books store to explain it. All I can say is that people are getting their ebooks from the Google store, and if you don’t have your books there, you may be missing out.