Celebrating Independent Authors
Young writers; Tattoo this on the backs of your eyelids and look at it every night before you sleep:
A NOVEL IS NOT A VIDEO GAME.
Novels and video games are very different media, and they use very different techniques to create emotions in people. So if you use a plotline that works for a video game in your novel, no matter how exciting a video game it would make, you run the risk that it will leave readers flat. Continue reading “A Novel Is Not a Video Game”
All right. If you’ve read Part 1, you’ve done the foreplay, the participants have gone through the rituals required by their society, and the emotions are high enough to require action. How are you going to write it? What details will you include? Whose point of view will portray the scene the best?
. Continue reading “How to Write a Fight (or Love) Scene Part 2”
The first symptom of a poorly written fight scene is: too much violence. Characters flail away at each other in a multitude of fancy ways, the body count rises, the gore gushes, and it all blends together in an emotion-numbing jumble until readers are tempted to skip to the end to find out who wins so we can get back to the story. The writer who doesn’t know what he really wants from the fight covers it up with technical details and mayhem. Watch a Transformer movie if you don’t know what I mean.
And love scenes? Same thing. Lots of graphic description of body parts in motion, but strangely unsatisfying. Watch “Fifty Shades of Vanilla” as one reviewer called it. Love and fight scenes cover two primary human activities: taking life and creating it. Let’s see how to make the best of connecting to the basic (note I didn’t say ‘baser’) instincts of our readers. Continue reading “How to Write a Fight (or Love) Scene”
Okay, so you read this book, it didn’t suit you and you’re upset you paid good money for it. Do you sit down in the heat of the moment and fire off the first barbs that come to mind in a one-star review on Amazon? Well, that may make you feel better, but sort of review is simply not effective. If anyone reads it, they’re not going to believe it. Everyone is aware of all the knee-jerk reactionaries and internet bullies out there, and if you sound like that kind of nasty, you get exactly the same reaction: “Click! Goodbye.” If you want to get more of those coveted “Your Review Helped Another Customer” responses on Amazon, read over your review before you publish, and consider what your reader is considering as he reads: your attitude. Continue reading “A Bad Review Needs a Good Attitude”