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Best of the Blogs

Christian Editing Services | Best of the Blogs | 18 November 2017

We’re more than halfway through November already! For those of you attempting NaNoWriMo this month, how are you going?

I’ve flunked. But I have written and loaded a heap of blog posts, almost finished the visual rebranding for a group blog (we’ll roll that out over the Christmas break), and I’m currently doing two online courses with Lawson Writer’s Academy, one on writing craft, and one on marketing. The writing course has shown me how little I know my characters … which is why I’ve flunked NaNo.

Anyway, on with the news …

Writing

Theme

Michael Hauge asks What’s Your Theme? A novel needs an overall theme … but it’s something a lot of authors either skim over, or try and shoehorn in at the end.

What Are You Writing?

David Farland asks Are You Writing a Book, or a Movie? He goes on to explain the differences in point of view for novels and movies. As it happens, I’m currently writing a blog post on this subject, inspired by a course I’m taking through Lawson Writers Academy.

Publishing

Cover Design

Paul Barrett, Art Director of Girl Friday Productions, visits Author Marketing Experts to share Book Marketing 101: 10 Things Not to Do on Your Book Cover. There are so many bad book covers out there! Unfortunately, the authors don’t know they’re bad (because surely you wouldn’t deliberately allow your book to go out with an awful cover?).

I suspect that’s because many newbie authors can’t see beyond it’s a book! With my name on the cover!

They don’t know the principles of good design … and it’s something you need to know before you start designing your first book cover (actually, for many authors, that’s their first mistake. Designing their own cover).

Fighting Piracy

Following Maggie Stiefvater’s blog post about her experience with book pirates, Jana Oliver visits Fiction University to share what she’s doing to fight the book pirates in Why eBook Piracy Matters.

Marketing

Branding

Belinda Griffin of SmartAuthorsLab visits The Creative Penn to share 7 Best Ways to Build an Authentic Author Brand.

If you’re interested in learning how to build your brand from nothing, I have two suggestions:

1. Follow my blog. I have a blog series on branding coming up in February 2018.

2. Click here to sign up to my Kick Start Your Author Platform information list. I’ll be running the programme again in March 2018 … and there will be more information about it coming up soon!

Cross Promotion

Diana Urban visits the BookBub blog to share 14 Ways Authors can Cross-Promote Each Other’s Books. You will note none of them include commenting on blog posts (although that’s always welcome!).

Facebook Chatbots

Louise Harnby introduces Facebook Chatbots in How To Market Your Book and Build Your Author Platform Using a Chatbot. What are chatbots? Are they the next big thing in book marketing? Who knows? But they are currently underutilised, and if there is one thing I’ve learned about book marketing, it’s that it pays to be at the leading edge of the curve.

That’s my top seven posts for this week. What’s the best post you’ve read this week on writing, editing, publishing, or marketing?

Best of the Blogs

Best of the Blogs: 24 June 2017

Best of the Blogs: the best posts I’ve read this week on writing, editing, publishing, and marketing.

Although mostly on writing, thanks to the #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop hosted by Raimey Gallant. (Click here to read my contribution to the blog hop).

Writing

Passive Voice

What’s The Deal With Passive Voice, from ML Keller, is one of the best posts I’ve ever read on passive voice—what it is, when it’s bad, and when it’s not so bad (hint: it’s not removing every was or to be from your manuscript).

Point of View

Point of view is a huge issue for writing. With beginners, it’s understanding that third person is not omniscient, or that headhopping an issue. (Adding a *** every three lines doesn’t make it a new scene with a new POV character.)

In Deep Point of View, K Kazul Wolf shows how to write deep point of view. As she points out, it’s nebulous and hard—it’s moving beyond ‘rules’. You can make a ‘rule’ not to use filler words. But it takes skill and hard work to move from “they fought” to showing the reader the fight.

Micro-Plotting

Micro-plotting is David Farland’s term for ensuring you’ve got all those nitty-gritty details in your story that ensure your readers are engaged with your character, and that your plot makes sense. Confused? Read the post.

Writing Christian Fiction

Blog posts from Mike Duran at deCOMPOSE always get me thinking. In The Importance of Implicit (v. Explicit) Christian Content in Fiction, he explores the trend for Christian authors to write for the general market. Duran introduces Holly Ordway’s idea of a “two-step conversion”: moving first from atheism to belief in God, then to embracing Christianity.

He points out that many Christian novels focus on this second step (or feature characters who are already Christians), and don’t address the necessary first step. Duran says:

While a work of fiction may not explicitly articulate the Gospel, it can still contain implicit elements which engage a person’s imagination and move them forward in their spiritual pilgrimage.

Not Writing Preachy Characters

It’s not just Christians who overdo the preaching in their writing. In this post (also from the #AuthorToolBoxBlogHop), Raimey Gallant shares Five Ways to Temper the Preachy in Your Plot. She’s not talking about religious preaching, but about the issues preaching—the environment, assisted suicide, political views …

I can think of a general market romance author I stopped reading after her novels detoured from straight romantic suspense with a touch of comedy to romantic suspense with a heavy dose of gay rights. I could have lived with a gay couple (hey, I can skip pages I don’t want to read). What I couldn’t live with was the preachy telling. Remember the show, don’t tell rule? Well, this author switched to tell, don’t show, and it did her message no favours.

I’ve recently read a Christian romantic suspense novel where the heroine was All About The Issue in a way which made Erin Brockovich seem like a disinterested lightweight. I couldn’t like the character even though I agreed with her stance, and that made it impossible for me to enjoy the novel.

Marketing

Craft Your Self-Publishing Plan for Success: Tips From an Indie Author is an outstanding case study from author Laini Giles, visiting Your Writer Platform. Giles takes readers through her publishing objectives, and how she worked to achieve them. What I thought was especially clever was how she identified her target audience, then marketed to them—including attending events her target reader would also attend.

One learning point: for all her success, she wishes she’d started building her email list earlier.

Productivity

Book coach Nina Amir is also a Certified High Performance Coach. This week, she gives solid tips to reaching your writing goals (and not making excuses).

What blog posts have you read this week that are worth remembering?