It’s May Marketing Month, and we’ve got a post from Michelle Hazen with some advice on how important it is to have find some enjoyment in book promo!
Marketing plan: if you’re like most authors, these are your least favorite words. They always put me in mind of a very wise saying I like to apply to marketing: the healthiest kind of exercise is the one you’ll actually do.
If promoting your book makes you feel like this:
Welcome to May Marketing Month, RWchatters! The next four chat we’re talking branding, newsletters, and other promo fun stuff.
Every author has a brand, whether we intend it or not. Our writing combined with our interactions with readers forms our brand. Figuring out how our personal likes and social media voices intersect with the subject and tone of our books takes time. Join us to talk about your experiences with merging your author voice with your brand. Is it something you think about or work on? Or is it something you prefer to let fall naturally?
Join us to talk about it, Sunday 4pm PST / 7pm EST on #RWchat
Michelle Hazen has some wise words for us on the essence of the SHOW DON’T TELL principle! (This post was originally published on Michelle’s blog.)
Everybody’s heard of show don’t tell, right? That’s so 90s. I say, stop abusing your readers. Let them eat cake!
Before you click out of this blog, grumbling, “There goes Michelle, off topic as usual,” think of it this way: what are your readers here for?
If you write fiction, your readers are here for a good time. A vicarious experience. So why would you short-change them by giving them the literary equivalent of Cliff’s Notes? That’s what you’re doing every time you SUMMARIZE (They sat down and chatted for a while, laughing easily as they got to know each other) or TELL (He was in love with her. More in love than he’d ever been.) Continue reading
“Show Don’t Tell.” We’ve heard it from the time we first start writing–show what’s happening in the story, don’t just tell the reader. But there’s a balance. Sometimes it’s appropriate to “tell” sometimes it’s best to “show.” How do you decide which one technique to use? What has your relationship been with this touted of writing rules? Do you follow it, have you ever followed it?
Join us on Sunday to chat about it #rwchat 4pm EST / 7pm PST.
To get ready for our Project Management Chat, our guest today, Jemi Fraser shares her journey from pantsing (writing “by the seat of your pants”) to plotting a story in advance.
When I started writing, it was totally for me. As a kid, I’d created many, many stories in my head. When I had two little kids running around my house and a full time job, I decided to try writing down a Star Trek story. Over the months, every last angsty, over-the-top word poured out. I had a blast!
A year later, I wrote another story. This one was to be the first in a series with a slow-building love interest. The MC was a reporter, the hero a cop. That story poured out as well.
And thus a pantser was born.
If you haven’t heard the term, pantser applies to those who write without a plan, by the seat of their pants. This is in contrast to plotters who enjoy working with outlines and other devices of torture.
Over the next few years, I wrote a few more stories and at one point I thought I should try to write a Real Book. I discovered NaNoWriMo on October 31st that year and wrote my 50k during November, then wrote another 120k to finish the story.
That overweight story had some potential, so I ventured online and found out about agents and queries. I had no idea that so many people wanted to write novels and I was thrilled to find other aspiring writers. Then a critique group. And finally, FINALLY, I found out about revision. We’d had no creative writing courses in school and despite the thousands of words I’d written I knew nothing about revision. And the idea of plotting out the story in advance? Shocking!
Eventually I wondered if those crazy Plotters might have discovered something rather helpful. Maybe plotting wouldn’t take the joy of discovery out of the story. Maybe it would help with the ENDLESS rounds of revision I’d been working on.
Maybe.
With a little trepidation, I tried my own idea of Plotting.
Altogether, my plotting encompassed about 150 words.
It worked. Sort of.
Yes, I had a better idea of the shape of the novel, but it still left me with too much clean up.
I tried a few craft books. They hurt my head. I don’t make To Do lists. I think Big Picture and work mostly on gut and emotion. These books with their lists, questions, arcs, and bullet points probably work really, really well for people with more linear brains. My poor global brain did a lot of whimpering. Imposter Syndrome set in. Hard.
Then I stumbled across Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker. This book helped my brain relax a little bit. Libbie’s style wasn’t a perfect fit for me (are any two brains really alike?) but it was a better guideline. Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes added another layer.
Before I started my current draft, I thought a lot about my characters and their flaws. I thought about how those flaws would contribute to the plot and the problems they’d encounter along the way. I made a separate Path for each character. I blended the Paths together.
As I’m writing this, I’m nearing the end of that draft and feeling pretty good about it. I’ve tweaked the Paths as I’ve written, but I haven’t strayed too far. The biggest advantage is that the conflict is much easier to maintain.
Now I just have to wait and see how many revision rounds this story will take. Who knows, maybe it will be the one to kick start my querying process!
It’s impossible to do this alone. Writing may be solitary but without support and learning from other writers, we’ll never make it in this romance writing business. What have you learned from those you have mentored over the years? Is there a way of passing on personal experience that is more helpful than others?
#RWChat thrives on authors paying it forward. Come tell us about your experiences mentoring or being mentored, Sunday April 8th at 4pm PT / 7pm ET.
We’re continuing Social Media Marketing Month this Sunday with Instagram!
Scrolling through Instagram can be the ultimate time waster with the emphasis solely on the visual senses. It’s not the marketing heavy giant of Facebook and Twitter, but many writers say it’s on it’s way, and it’s selling their books. Do you have an Instagram author platform? Is it important or not to selling books? (We might touch on Snapchat this week too. Do you use it? How’s it different from Instagram? Does it do anything for marketing books?)
Let’s chat about it, Sunday 4pm PT/ 7pm ET.
For March 2018, we’re doing Social Media Marketing Month. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Goodreads… to name a few. We’ll be chatting about each one in the coming weeks.
Sometimes the Twitter timeline can feel like chaos, and tweeting can feel like you’re shouting into the void. While RWchat provides built-in engagement through the question and answer format, engaging on Twitter outside of the chat can be a bit trickier. Oversharing, undersharing, how much is too much? Let’s talk about engaging on Twitter outside of RWchat on Sunday, March 11th, 7pmEST/4pmPST.
For March 2018, we’re doing Social Media Marketing Month. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Goodreads… to name a few. We’ll be chatting about each on RWchat in the coming weeks.
Facebook is an ever-changing beast. Just when you think you’ve figured out how to get engagement, they change the algorithm and everything falls into chaos. But lots of authors have great success with sales and have a significant fan base on Facebook. Tell us about your experiences with the social media giant. Is there any way for us to be authors and sell books without it?
Join us Sunday 7pm ET / 4pm PT.
Tamsen Parker took on the tough topic of consent in romance, as per our chat this Sunday, and she makes some great points for us to think about.
Consent has become a bigger part of the romance conversation than ever before, and it’s a conversation that is essential to have. We don’t live in the era of the bodice ripper anymore when I’d argue that women were demonstrating agency by writing stories in which they could still obtain sexual pleasure without receiving society’s censure for acting “unladylike,” or for, heaven forbid, admitting that they wanted sex. We don’t have to do that anymore. Which raises the question: what is our responsibility in regards to consent in the romances we pen?
Romance Writers Chat 