http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com It's not sexy, and it's not an emporium. posterous.com Mon, 25 Apr 2011 11:52:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/YdniM-VmU7A/its-not-okay-reasons-to-make-your-characters http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/its-not-okay-reasons-to-make-your-characters <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />One thing I tend to find myself cutting lately &nbsp;is little asides that ease the protagonsists' minds. It's surprising how often I've put in little thoughts and narrative cues that set both characters and readers at rest, when <strong>I should really be cultivating dramatic tension</strong>.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Take this example where I've sent a character who's investigating a series of incredibly violent attacks, to a place he believes to be the villain's secret hideout. He's going <strong>into the unknown, potentially exposing himself to extreme danger</strong>, and at the start of the chapter where he arrives there, I've gone and put this...</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><em>"It looked safe enough, for the time being; Calloway appeared to be alone here."</em></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Why the hell did I do that? Hey, nerve-wracking situation! Let's castrate you by telling the readers <strong>everything's fine!</strong>&nbsp;</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; color: #ff0000;"><strong><em>DELETED!</em></strong></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Or from earlier in the same manuscript, the lead character has been forced to work with a woman, when he prefers to work alone, and <strong>he's just found out that she lied to get the job</strong>. There's silence between them after they've argued and she's worried she'll be kicked off the job. For some reason my narrative tells the audience.</span></div> <p /> <div><em><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">"It wasn't really that big of a deal to Linc, but he was happy to let her sweat for a while."</span></em></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">So I've instantly negated a source of antagonism for the main character, and killed any speculation (no matter how slim, I mean, your guy needs a gal around, right?) about whether this woman will be along for the ride or not.&nbsp;</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium; color: #ff0000;"><strong><em>DELETED!</em></strong></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">If you want readers rooting for a character, antagonise those who protagonise. Dump crap on them, tons of it, and keep it coming, and <strong>don't make it okay</strong>. Smug characters who take everything in their stride are no fun, and defusing dangerous situations as soon as they've started is a dramatic dead-end.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Even if you really like your characters, don't go easy on them! It's not real. you know?</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/its-not-okay-reasons-to-make-your-characters">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/its-not-okay-reasons-to-make-your-characters#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/YdniM-VmU7A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/its-not-okay-reasons-to-make-your-characters Sun, 10 Apr 2011 12:07:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/-JTzP8_TniA/necessary-roughness-editing-for-the-lazy http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/necessary-roughness-editing-for-the-lazy <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/4199232660_c85b7bde3b_s.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />If anything has improved my editing, it's my <strong>short attention span</strong> for long internet articles. Do you ever get a few paragraphs into an article and then look across at the scroll bar and see you're barely a fifth of the way down the screen? At this point, I tend to switch to a scanning mode.</p> <p>Books, I try to read every word. If someone has troubled to write it, I try to take the trouble to read it, but on this here internet, my butterfly net-flitting means my patience runs out quite quickly unless an article is riveting.</p> <div>You're bored already, aren't you? <strong>TITS!</strong> I apologise, I felt you slipping away.</div> <p /> <div>Once I hit that point, I'll tend to read just the first sentence of the next paragraph, then the last sentence, if <strong>nothing seems to have moved on</strong> I ignore the middle and <strong>skip to the next paragraph</strong>, then I'll just read the first few words, and if that doesn't grab me I start skipping whole paragraphs, just scanning for interesting words.</div> <p /> <div>If you don't want your hard-wrought words to get this kind of treatment from readers you have to treat your own work this way. <strong>Let lazy reading guide your axe-hand</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>If you've got a paragraph that doesn't move things on, you need to <strong>rip that sucker out</strong>. If it had a phrase or a little couplet you liked and don't want to lose, move it into the previous or next paragraph.</div> <p /> <div>If it's <strong>something you'd skim</strong> in a blog post or an article, <strong>you don't need it</strong>, or want it.</div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/necessary-roughness-editing-for-the-lazy">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/necessary-roughness-editing-for-the-lazy#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/-JTzP8_TniA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/necessary-roughness-editing-for-the-lazy Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:53:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/-ROTSFOfjzw/bad-blogger-nawdy http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/bad-blogger-nawdy <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv1185324311" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"> <div> <table class="yiv1185324311" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"> <div> <table class="yiv1185324311" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"> <p><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />I've been a naughty blogger, neglecting this bodacious blog-hole, kept away from my task by a filthy habit. <strong>Reading!</strong> My reading schedule last year was pitiful. Apart from proof reading and editing my own stuff, my consumption of the printed word was abominable. The silly thing is, I probably read more than ever these days, but mostly on websites, blogs, Twitter, but I ain't been much fer book learnin' lately.</p> <div>Last Christmas, I gave you my heart... no, wait, that's not it... last Christmas someone was kind enough to <strong>Kindle me up</strong>, which is not a euphemism. It may surprise that for all I've talked about ebooks, the Kindle and e-readers in general, my experience of the ebook revolution has been restricted to squinting at a few things using the excellent <strong><a href="http://www.lexcycle.com/">Stanza</a></strong> app. on my iPod touch.</div> <p /> <div>After 2 - rapidly read - books, I was a Kindle convert. In fact it was a bit of a struggle to get back the habit of picking up a paperback when the time came to get back to reducing the altitude of my bedside book-pile.</div> <p /> <div>There's the rub though. With a book pile you can see what's waiting to be read, whereas a quick look at my Kindle's contents this morning revealed 2 books I'd bought last month and forgotten were on there, not to mention some short story compilations I haven't looked at yet.</div> <p /> <div>The convenience, and utilities like text-to-speech are hard to beat, as is not having to worry about <strong>escaping bookmarks losing you your place</strong>, but there's a definite aesthetic to a shelf full of books that is much better than a shelf of CDs, so I don't see the printed word having quite the fall from grace that multiple music media have suffered over the years.</div> <p /> <div>It's surprisingly tempting not to read other people's work when concentrating so hard on your own, especially when there are so many instantly-gratifying things to point your eyes at on the internet, but if everyone stops reading, we'll be writing to an audience of none.</div> <p /> <div>You read mine and I'll read yours. (As I used to say to all the girls at school... something like that anyway.)</div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/bad-blogger-nawdy">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/bad-blogger-nawdy#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/-ROTSFOfjzw" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/bad-blogger-nawdy Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:58:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/0y95C7TzjLc/culling-characters-can-cripple-cryptic-conund http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/culling-characters-can-cripple-cryptic-conund <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv1182544766" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />Long time no post, so let's get me back in the swing of the things by giving another writing rule to kick in the nuts. Like all of the rules, it's a rule that has its place, and can save a writer from a lot of complexity, and from writing they don't need to do, but like most rules, if it's applied in every situation no matter what, it can balls things up good and proper. <p /> <div>Which rule is it? The one which says, get rid of all non-essential characters.</div> <div>For any number of stories, this is good advice. If it's a piece of chick-lit, or an action packed story with clearly identified protagonists and antagonists, it makes sense to clear out the clutter of a huge and unnecessary cast. However, many stories across many genres rely on mystery to keep the readers' interest.</div> <p /> <div>Whether it's a mystery admirer for the protagonist, a mystery mole in an organisation, or a mystery villain the protagonists must unmask, cut back characters too far, and that mystery you're saving up for your climax will have been guessed by most people before they're halfway through.</div> <p /> <div>I recently read the novel which was adapted into the TV series Flashforward, Robert J. Sawyer's "Flashforward" (I bet you never saw that coming). It had a decent sized cast of characters, all coming to terms with their visions of a future some 20 years away. However, one character had no future vision, and soon discovered this was because in the future he was dead, murdered in fact.</div> <p /> <div>The book follows story arcs for a clutch of characters, but the man trying to solve his own murder yet-to-be is obviously the most compelling. Unfortunately, quite early on he meets a man with a very clear motive for wanting him dead, although at the time neither of them knows it, and though he meets and suspects plenty of people, he doesn't meet anyone else with a motive, at all.</div> <p /> <div>Via the man's own internal monologues we are offered weak reasons that other characters and colleagues might one day want him dead, others he suspects due to thinking that is against all reason, none of which does its intended job of distracting from their being only one realistic candidate for the murder.</div> <p /> <div>The same thing happens in many cop shows on TV. With time constraints, casting decisions and an audience's attention to keep hold of, introducing a lot of characters isn't viable for the pace most shows aim for. If they're paying attention, a lot of viewers will probably know who the villain is before the show is half-way over, the rest of the time is just seeing how the characters work it out.</div> <p /> <div>If you're trying to keep your readers guessing till the end, cutting too many characters could easily kill the mystery.</div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/culling-characters-can-cripple-cryptic-conund">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/culling-characters-can-cripple-cryptic-conund#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/0y95C7TzjLc" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/culling-characters-can-cripple-cryptic-conund Sat, 01 Jan 2011 11:58:00 -0800 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/bi01ufnSROA/happy-2011 http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/happy-2011 <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />Another fresh year is upon us, and ebooks and e-readers continue to make the headlines, and make a lot of money (and still cost a fair bit of money, too). <p /> <div>One thing that wasn't <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/will-the-fire-thats-being-kindled-burn-all-of">among my predictions last year</a> was <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/124047-agent-andrew-wylie-launches-e-book-list-on-kindle.html">Andrew Wylie's entry into publishing</a> with Odyssey Editions. With big publishing in a Mexican stand-off with Amazon over pricing, Apple's iPad gave publishers a glimpse of a market entrant who could challenge Amazon's dominance. The Wylie agency bypassing traditional publishing for it's clients e-editions certainly put a new spin on the industry head-banging over the <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen">Agency Model</a>.</div> <p /> <div>The news that old James Bond books would be published for the benefit of the Fleming estate, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8105789/James-Bond-novels-go-digital-cutting-out-Penguin.html">cutting Penguin out of the equation</a> for ebooks was a big surprise for old-school publishing too.</div> <p /> <div>Joe Konrath's experimentation with <a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/steal-this-ebook.html">giveaways and low pricing</a>&nbsp;showed keen pricing can make for big sales (although being a name author helps a lot), and our <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results">poll on what people felt was a fair price</a> showed while being cheap can boost sales, you needn't be <em>too</em> cheap to attract the thick end of the market.</div> <p /> <div>For the year ahead, I think we can expect a good deal more of publishers "not getting it", when it comes to pricing on ebooks, or even having a presence in the ebook market. It can still be very hard to get older titles as e-editions, and pricing is still frequently considerably higher than for discounted paperbacks.</div> <p /> <div>I don't predict any game-changing new entries to the ereader market. The iPad is a premium price item, and though prices for dedicated ereaders are trending down, they're still a way off the "10 paperbacks" price point I feel is the tipping point for ereaders becoming as ubiquitous as mp3 players.</div> <p /> <div>If you have an ereader, I highly recommend Zoe Winters' <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Becoming-Indie-Author-Smart-Self-Publishing/dp/B004AYD90U/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1293911348&amp;sr=8-6">Becoming An Indie Author (Smart Self-Publishing)</a>&nbsp;whether you decide to try traditional publishing or are thinking of going the indie route, it's well worth sharing Zoe's experiences.</div> <p /> <div>Happy reading, and happy writing. Happy 2011.</div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/happy-2011">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/happy-2011#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/bi01ufnSROA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/happy-2011 Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:58:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/MqChAmp9An8/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/4199232660_c85b7bde3b_s.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />Once upon a time, for better or for worse, publishing had things its own way. Books were sold, profits were made, authors were nurtured, marketed and published. Retail was healthy, with a wide selection of titles on sale. Going round <strong>a bookshop was like exploring a treasure trove</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>Is this nostalgia? Maybe, but <strong>I can't remeber the last time I went into a bookshop and felt spoilt for choice</strong>, spending an hour or more trying to pick just a couple of books out of a dozen to finally spend my limited money on. These days, the push is celebrity, novelty and bestsellers. This is just good commercial sense, of course, but the balance of stock between high-volume and niche titles is now hugely out of whack.</div> <p /> <div>In the UK, publishing and retail had a built in protection of sustainable revenue called the <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement">Net Book Agreement</a></strong>. Essentially, this was price fixing. Any retailer who sold books below a price agreed with the publisher would receive no more books from that publisher. While this was a restriction on retailers, there was a broader benefit that they would not get into damaging price wars with other booksellers, and independent book shops could compete with big chains.</div> <p /> <div>If there was a victim, it was the consumer, but publishing isn't just a business, any more than an art gallery is just a business. It's a cultural pillar. While customers may have been forced to pay more, in return <strong>there was a much broader spectrum of work to choose from</strong>, whatever you tastes. Higher price for a wider choice was not a bad trade-off, in my view. Sure it was designed to make publishers more money, but there were upsides for retailers and readers alike.</div> <p /> <div>The Net Book Agreement stood for 95 years, before finally succumbing to the calls for it to be&nbsp;scrapped. Initially, the ability to discount heavily led to a surge in sales, and seemed to prove the book trade was better of without it. As time has gone on, forces such as supermarkets and Amazon selling cheap have driven the market towards focussing on giving more space to trusted sellers, meaning a <strong>much smaller selection of titles on the shelves</strong>. Retail book buyers focus higher up publishers lists, reducing choice for readers, giving fewer opportunities for new writers, and making for a riskier market for publishers to try to develop new talent or sell less commercial works.</div> <p /> <div>Hey! Books are cheaper, win for readers, right? Not if you value bookstores. The heavy focus on what's new, what already sells, and ghost-written celebrity memoirs will make bookstores less and less relevant to the sort of people they need most. The more the front of <strong>book stores resemble supermarket bookshelves</strong>, the less reason there is not to buy your books with your groceries. The retail side of book selling is in serious trouble, and as ebooks are going from strength to strength, the situation will only worsen if things go on as they are.</div> <p /> <div>Though I felt at the time the scrapping of the Net Book Agreement was a bad idea, and believe&nbsp;that's proved to be the case, <strong><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be2NnGDXqJA">you can't turn back the clock</a></strong>. But publishers seem to be attempting to do just that, with the push towards the agency model. By dictating prices for ebooks, publishers are trying to reassert control over pricing.</div> <p /> <div>This is causing <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/132917-customer-anger-at-agency-price-fixing-in-kindle-forum.html.rss?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter"><strong>quite a backlash</strong></a>, not least of which because the focus is on gaining revenue&nbsp;from the least substantial product, ebooks. Selling a few hundred kilobytes of data for four or five times the price of heavily discounted paperbacks is a ludicrous approach. It is completely backwards. The product with the least intrinsic value is the one publishers are trying to burden with the highest price. There can be no pretence that this benefits bricks and mortar retailers, or readers. The only people to benefit are publishers.</div> <p /> <div>The only plausible model for the future is for ebooks to be the mass market, and for <strong>print to be the premium product</strong>. Let ebooks do the heavy lifting in revenue raising, by making them well priced (not necessarily cheap, but fair) so they generate revenue by volume, not by artificially high prices. On the print side, <strong>publishers and retailers must work together</strong> by creating a physical product people want to own, and in agreeing a common pricing structure that rebalances the market. Physical products that have to be stored, transported and displayed, <strong>physical products that require physical infrastructure should carry the premium</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>The biggest threat to this model are heavy discounters like Amazon, and the supermarkets, those that profited most from the publishers grip on pricing being released in the first place. These are also the groups who have least interest in the survival of high-street bookshops. Publishing does need to take on these interests, but the <strong>ebook agency model is not the way to do it</strong>. By forcing prices up with no benefit to hard-pressed high-street stores or readers, it's big publishing that comes off looking like the bad guy.</div> <p /> <p /> <div>Hughes.</div> <p /> <div>Extra: If you're interested in having your say about pricing andthe future of publishing, FUTUReBOOK have a survey that's worth taking, <strong><a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/digitalresearch" title="here.">here</a>.</strong></div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/MqChAmp9An8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/is-the-agency-model-the-new-net-book-agreemen Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:30:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/a6Xmff2NzXY/30906935 http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/30906935 <p> <p><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; font-size: medium;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /></span><span style="font-size: medium;">What were Bananarama trying to tell us about novel writing in that inscrutable song? That's right, nothing. And with this thin premise for an intro done away with, let's talk about that rapidly approaching time of the year known as&nbsp;<strong>"NaNoWriMo"</strong>, which, not being a fan of the not quite an acronym, not quite a portmanteau name myself, I shall hereafter be referring to as&nbsp;<strong>"Bananawrimo"</strong>. </span></p> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">I covered the&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/nanoo-nanoo-a-book-in-a-month" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">topic last year</a></strong>, but, things have a changed a little since then. I don't participate in Bananawrimo, one of many reasons being, I'm not a&nbsp;<strong><a href="http://www.cindimyers.com/plotterorpanster.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"pantser"</a></strong>&nbsp;(another being, for me, every month is novel writing month). Most of my observations remain true, about the positives and the negatives, but what has changed a great deal in the intervening time, is the new opportunities to get work before the eyes of the public, and the new flexibility in terms of word-count requirements.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Various outlets have been throwing the doors open for those who wish to self publish, Amazon's CreateSpace platform is wide open now, to name but one. The surge in digital publishing also greatly reduces the need to aim for traditional word-count goals.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Admittedly,&nbsp;<strong>50,000 words is still very strange territory</strong>, in a no-man's land between novella and novel, but the novella is staging something of a comeback, thanks to epublishing. As I've mentioned before, ebooks are all the same thickness, the thickness of the device you read them on. As long as the price reflects the word count, and people aren't expecting more than they get, with no publisher to placate&nbsp;<strong>you're free to decide the length</strong> that best fits the work.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">A month of unedited, first-draft prose won't deliver anything anywhere near ready for publishing, but the new routes into epublishing mean you won't necessarily be left with <strong>nothing but&nbsp;a one month hobby horse to be locked in a drawer</strong>&nbsp;once the month is up. Revising and editing a manuscript is a huge labour, but those 50,000 words may have the kernel of a good novella lurking within them, which there is now a potential, maybe even burgeoning market for, in these time-poor days.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Have you tried Bananawrimo before? Will you be trying this year? Do you think I went to far with the Bananarama references?</span></div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/30906935">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/30906935#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/a6Xmff2NzXY" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/30906935 Sun, 10 Oct 2010 16:00:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/ILw83pquPLc/show-tell-a-special-writers-hell http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/show-tell-a-special-writers-hell <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />Don't you love it when someone writes a blog post so you don't have to? Well, when you're neck deep in revisions and editing like I am right now, you certainly do. <p /> <div><strong>io9's Charlie Jane Anders</strong> has articulated feelings that echo my own on a subject that always irks me when I see it thrown out on yet another writing site or blog. <strong><a href="http://io9.com/5655794/5-situations-where-its-better-to-tell-than-show-in-your-fiction">Here</a></strong>&nbsp;Charlie Jane explains why and when it can be perfectly okay to "Tell" rather than to "Show".</div> <p /> <div> <div>I've intimated before that I'm not a big fan of "The Rules" of writing when they are laid out like holy decrees, all of which you can find shattered to pieces in some of the greatest works ever written. If you frequent any writers sites you've probably seen the same rules crop up again and again <strong>"if they said it then just say 'said'", "never use -ly adverbs" "don't head-hop"</strong> and the evergreen <strong>"Show, don't Tell"</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>These rules will generally keep work tighter, and help to hone writing craft. They help stop writing from becoming overcomplicated, confusing, or tedious, but the fact is, the vast majority of book buyers aren't reading with the eyes of an editor. They may be aware things have slowed down, or have become hard to follow, but they won't be tearing their hair out if, once in a while, a character <strong>"responded"</strong> to something "<strong>wistfully"</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>Adverbs exist. When someone tells you you should always show instead of telling how a person&nbsp;reacts or responds, that takes no account of what a writer may be trying to achieve in terms of pacing. If you have a fast paced scene, moving the reader through it quickly by using an adverb like "aggressively" or "impatiently" better matches the narrative to the pace of the scene than actually describing aggressive behaviours and facial expressions. Narrative controls pace, <strong>when rules harm narrative flexibility, the rules are flat out wrong.</strong></div> </div> <p /> <div>Likewise rapid scene setting can be hampered by trying to artificially create a scene where exposition or back-story can be introduced. If you already have the reader chapters deep into a book, beginning an occasional chapter with a paragraph or two of well written info-dump will likely go unnoticed by the vast majority of readers. If your narrative style is confident and you've cut the information back as hard as possible, a quick info-dump will actually help the reader press on through the story rather than act as a roadblock, like a clunky explanatory scene which would more likely run to a couple or more pages would. A paragraph or two versus a page or two, in the name of a rule that's supposed to help readers through the story?</div> <p /> <div>So many of these rules are thrown out as a quick excuse for a place-holder blog post, they can go from being useful guides to <strong>becoming oppressive truisms</strong> that if applied universally actually bloat prose rather than improve it.&nbsp;If everybody followed all of these rules, we'd all wind up writing exactly the same books as each other.</div> <p /> <div>As with all rules, <strong>know them, and know what they're trying to achieve</strong>, then, if you feel really the need to break them, do it, and move on with your life, because you've probably made the right choice.</div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/show-tell-a-special-writers-hell">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/show-tell-a-special-writers-hell#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/ILw83pquPLc" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/show-tell-a-special-writers-hell Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:20:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/FB0UFP3MpiA/win-nothing-in-my-1st-anniversary-not-contest http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/win-nothing-in-my-1st-anniversary-not-contest <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <p><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />It's been a year since I started this Posterous blog. Like so many blogs, I started out talking to myself, getting down writing hints so I wouldn't forget them and for the benefit of anyone else who happened along; talking about publishing and the way it's going, and the writing trade as a whole. Along the way the blog has had over 18,000 views from 40 different countries, and has made me top hit for any search of my name! (I hope that guy from Florida on Facebook never wants to get into the book business, HA!)</p> <div>The most popular post so far is the <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll">poll on ebook pricing</a>, with over 1,700 views, and many helpful retweets and blog mentions from too many lovely people to name. Out of all of that, only 45 people actually took the poll, which if nothing else proves that it's much easier to get people on the internet to look at something than to do something. The poll produced definite results though, so thanks to everyone who voted (the poll's still open, by the way)<br /> <p /> <div>A lot of my <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/will-the-fire-thats-being-kindled-burn-all-of">New Year's day long term predictions</a> have come to pass alarmingly quickly, and the trade is much changed from how things were those few 12 months ago when I started this thing. From a self-publishing sceptic to a full-on supporter of Indie writers. From someone who had only ever considered print publishing by traditional means to someone who is in final preparations for a self-published book, I've changed too.</div> <p /> <div>Thank you for reading. Thanks for commenting. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for the retweets and the blog mentions.&nbsp;To celebrate all of this, there's no contest and no prizes, but why don't you buy yourself something nice? Go on, treat yourself.</div> <p /> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/win-nothing-in-my-1st-anniversary-not-contest">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/win-nothing-in-my-1st-anniversary-not-contest#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/FB0UFP3MpiA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/win-nothing-in-my-1st-anniversary-not-contest Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:24:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/7e2x76E2zn0/if-thine-chapter-offends-thee-pluck-it-out http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/if-thine-chapter-offends-thee-pluck-it-out <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /><span style="font-size: medium;">A finished manuscript is <strong>a big thing to wrestle with</strong>; tens of thousands of words stretching for hundreds of pages. It can feel like playing with a Jenga tower, worrying that pulling at the wrong piece could cause the whole thing to collapse. </span> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes a chapter needs a lot of pushing and pulling, cutting and pasting, hammering and amputating to whack it into shape. It's much better to do that away from the main manuscript.&nbsp;</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">When revision time comes around highlighting and copying the chapter you want to work on into a new document will leave the original chapter intact, so you can be as brutal as you like <strong>without worrying you'll be messing up your manuscript</strong>. You'll also have the original to refer back to if you feel you've inadvertently cut something you shouldn't have.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">You can break the chapter into chunks to make it easier to tackle dialogue, descriptive passages and action, without the pressure above and below, and without worrying about harming any formatting you've arranged in the original document, and once you've beaten that thing into shape copy it and paste it back in and move onto the next chapter.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">To aid the lengthy revision process, it's also worth making chapter headings into bookmarks, which will make it <strong>much easier to navigate quickly</strong> through all of those words. Also, <strong>make sure to end chapters with page breaks rather than return strikes</strong> to the next page. This will preserve formatting whatever shape each chapter takes, and will also make eventual formatting for any e-book versions a great deal easier.</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/if-thine-chapter-offends-thee-pluck-it-out">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/if-thine-chapter-offends-thee-pluck-it-out#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/7e2x76E2zn0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/if-thine-chapter-offends-thee-pluck-it-out Tue, 10 Aug 2010 07:11:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/7T8U5ruv0n0/get-paid-dealing-with-the-creative-schmuck-ec http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/get-paid-dealing-with-the-creative-schmuck-ec <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv180329569" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv180329569yiv420999696" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv180329569yiv420999696yiv18063417" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <p><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/4199232660_c85b7bde3b_s.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />You may have seen an online hoo-ha yesterday, revolving around a Flash game designer's open admission of the business equivalent of realpolitik. A blog post from said Flash game developer about how he <strong>uses the naivety of aspiring and amateur artists</strong> caused harsh reactions. The augmented and rationalised, but un-redacted post is <strong><a href="http://kaitol.com/how-to-hire-an-artist/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a></strong>.</p> <div>Now, any business should do what it can to get the best value for money, so this pragmatic approach (though brazen to the point of offensiveness to many) is just business. Issuing <strong>a how-to guide for exploiting schmucks</strong>, is not business, and it came across as rather truimphal, to me, but that may just be me reading more into than is there.</div> <p /> <div>However, I actually hope it spreads far and wide, not for the benefit of those who exploit naifs, but to serve as a cautionary tale, and a wake up call to those who are so grateful for any exposure that they, wittingly or unwittingly, conspire to <strong>devalue every creative enterprise</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>The rapid and broad exposure the internet provides has caused a huge surge in what I call the <strong>"schmuck economy"</strong> surrounding creative endeavours. Viral fame means lots of people think the right break will lead to global fame and fortune, which leads them to trade off proper recompense now in the fanciful hope of great riches later. And if it doesn't work out, what have they really lost?</div> <p /> <div>Well, a little bit is lost to everyone, every single time some wannabe gives their work away for free. The first thing I thought of when I saw the post in question was Harlan Ellison's rant-of-great-justice, about how <strong>amateurs are screwing everybody</strong>. The following video is NOT safe for work. (It's worth watching the whole thing, but if you're in a hurry, you can skip to 2:02 for the kernel of the argument.)</div> <p /> <div> <object height="385" width="480"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mj5IV23g-fE&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1?rel=0&amp;color1=0xe1600f&amp;color2=0xfebd01" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mj5IV23g-fE&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1?rel=0&amp;color1=0xe1600f&amp;color2=0xfebd01" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="385" width="480"></embed> </object> </div> <p /> <div>Sometimes I think Joe Pesci is just a Harlan Ellison tribute act... ANYWAY! There are people out here who make their money from their creative efforts, anybody who's dumb enough to work for free is taking food out of their mouths. <strong>This is real life.</strong> If you're serious about being in any creative industry, lesson number one is GET PAID. If someone says they want your work, make them pay for it. If they won't, they don't want your work, <strong>they just want a schmuck</strong>. If your work is good enough they want to use it, it's good enough for them to pay for.</div> <p /> <div>A schmuck doesn't just let their own sweet selves get ripped off, a schmuck is screwing everybody. Every time someone gets work done for free by a hobbyist, <strong>it ingrains the idea that creative work is worth nothing</strong>, and that creatives should be glad to even be offered the chance to have their work seen. Fuck that. Get paid.</div> <p /> <div>If you don't know what your work is worth, <strong>find out</strong>. Or work it out. Place a value on your time, and work out how much time it will take. Multiply one by the other and GET PAID.</div> <p /> <div>Doing favours for a friend is one thing, giving something away for a good cause is another thing, giving it away to build your own brand is different again; but if someone who is in business wants you to enhance their business, and to give you nothing in return but a namecheck and a bit of exposure, you'll be getting screwed, and you'll be screwing everyone else who's trying to make a living at this.</div> <p /> <div>Get paid. Day 1, even if you think you're a hack, and you're not that good yet. <strong>Value your time</strong>, and don't drag the value of everyone else's work down by reinforcing the idea that it's of less value than it is. Get paid, first time, every time. Make it your habit. Insist on it.</div> <p /> <div>Creative work is fun as a hobby, but <strong>like anything else done everyday, it gets hard, it takes effort</strong>, and it comes at a price.</div> <p /> <div>Get paid.</div> <p /> <div>Final word to Harlan - <em><strong>"I sell my soul, but at the highest rates."</strong></em></div> <p /> <br /> <p /> <div>Hughes.</div> <p /> <br /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <div><em>&nbsp;</em><strong><em><span class="yiv180329569" style="font-weight: normal;">Note: Harlan Ellison received no money for his appearance in this blog post.</span></em></strong></div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/get-paid-dealing-with-the-creative-schmuck-ec">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/get-paid-dealing-with-the-creative-schmuck-ec#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/7T8U5ruv0n0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/get-paid-dealing-with-the-creative-schmuck-ec Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:39:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/O3bbI1sp_hw/how-to-look-at-your-work-with-perspective-tac http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/how-to-look-at-your-work-with-perspective-tac <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv994381423" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table class="yiv994381423yiv1342141527" border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <p><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /><span style="font-size: medium;">Nothing feels quite so free and fresh as working on a first draft. Even if you like to do a lot of outlining before you start, you still have a lot of freedom to play within that framework. It's a good feeling. It's playtime.</span></p> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">But, the saying "<strong>There's no such thing as a good first draft</strong>" isn't just there so you don't get put-off or hung-up by occasional chunks of clunky, lumpy, inartful prose. It also means that when you've "finished" a piece is when the work really starts. It's the part of writing that really feels like hard work. Trimming the fat, making the dialogue sparkle, hunting down slabs of exposition you hadn't even noticed you'd been writing, and yes, where needed, replacing "telling" with "showing". (don't get me started on this, sometimes, telling is absolutely fine, but that's another blog post)</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Fact is, all those "rules" that seemed so restrictive and unhelpful <strong>now need attention</strong>. It's fine to break the rules, but only if you understand why the rules are there, and you need to consider in each case you've broken them if it would be just as good a story if you put a little work in and conformed to that rule after all. </span> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">The revision process isn't about proof-reading, comma placements and errant apostrophes; it's&nbsp;about structure, it's about seeing how what you've done stacks up against what you planned. <strong>It's about pace, interest and readability.</strong> It demands reading and re-reading what you've written until you're near sick of the sight of it.</span></div> </div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">It can be hard to look at your own work with proper perspective, but I've found a good way to get an overview is to layout some empty boxes on paper, like a calendar, &nbsp;with one for each chapter. Write in each box, in the most basic terms, a breakdown of what happens in each chapter. <strong>A few verbs will give you a good idea of what readers will be ploughing through.</strong></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Here's an example of the first 4 chapters of my current project break down:</span></div> <p /> <div> <ul> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Chapter 1: Arriving, Talking, Introducing</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Chapter 2: Meeting</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Chapter 3: Attacked</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Chapter 4: Introducing, Talking, Leaving</span></li> </ul> </div> <div><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>No character names, no adjectives, no details</strong>, just the simplest representation of the action, and only the action.&nbsp;You don't get caught up thinking "But I really want to keep that one scene", because the scenes aren't there. This gives you a dispassionate overview of the dramatic flow of the story, and can help you be nearly as effective an editor of your own work as an outsider would be.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Doing this with my first book showed that chapters 5,6,7 &amp; 8 were all meetings of one kind or another. Now these were each very different kinds of meetings, but my breaking down the chapters into the simplest terms showed that, different as they were, I was effectively presenting readers with 18,000 words of meetings, right after my inciting moment.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">That was clearly going to be a problem, but <strong>there's every chance I wouldn't have seen it myself by simply reading the book through</strong>. I already know where the book is going, I know when the exciting bits are coming, and I already know they're worth waiting for. But, the reader doesn't know these things, and as I've said before, a reader can decide to drop out of a book at any time, either through boredom, or simply buying something new and starting that instead.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Not every book is "unputdownable"</strong>, but you can't afford to have someone forget they were reading your book, because they're unlikely to ever buy another one that you've written if they do. You should always try to keep the reader engaged, and <strong>anticipate parts of your work where they might start to lose interest</strong>, and find a way to keep it.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Those 4 chapters stayed as meetings, but a change of temperament leading to tense dialogue; introducing a time-pressure element; a death; an attempted assassination, and moving one meeting from a static room to a rushed helicopter journey across a city, meant I could keep the basic structure, but, with the addition of extensive dialogue cutting, gave it enough of a dramatic edge that readers should be carried through and still get all the information I wanted to impart.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">It's a lot of work, and, unlike the 1st draft, <strong>the text now exists in full, and must remain chronologically and contextually sound</strong>. If you move a chapter, events must be made to mesh up, details about time of day, or weather may need to be adapted. Things you've changed must be accounted for if they will alter circumstances further into the story. You can't kill someone in chapter 9, move it to be chapter 7 and forget that the character appears in chapter 8. A mistake that big is easy to spot, <strong>not all of them are.</strong></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">While the first draft is freedom, the revision process is hard work within a solidly established framework. It needs to be great, and it needs to fit.</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/how-to-look-at-your-work-with-perspective-tac">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/how-to-look-at-your-work-with-perspective-tac#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/O3bbI1sp_hw" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/how-to-look-at-your-work-with-perspective-tac Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:30:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/JPWAekIqOTM/the-dupe-when-backing-up-your-work-goes-wrong http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-dupe-when-backing-up-your-work-goes-wrong <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /> Thumb drives, external hard drives, cloud storage, there's a lot of ways to <strong>back-up your work</strong>. Obviously, everybody should make a very regular habit of this. I mean, of all the people who found they had a recent back-up to save them when faced with a corrupted drive, virus-buggered computer or a stolen laptop, how many of them said <em>"I wish I hadn't backed my work up!"</em>? I'm thinking, none. <p /> <div>But, I'd imagine most of us have lost some work at some point, and kicked ourselves for putting off making a back-up of what we were doing. If you're a writer, that could be weeks or even months of hard work, gone for good. <strong>Maximum frustration, with no real excuse</strong>. Tell you what, I'll bet you've got something that could do with backing-up that you haven't done for a while. Go do that and I'll wait here.</div> <p /> <div><strong>*scratches*</strong></div> <p /> <div><strong>*yawns*</strong></div> <p /> <div><strong>*picks nose*</strong></div> <p /> <div>Oh you're back!</div> <p /> <div>...I wasn't going to eat that.</div> <p /> <div>Job done, right?</div> <p /> <div>Okay, now I have a warning. Keep track of your back-ups. Especially if you work on more than one machine. Make sure you <strong>only have <em>ONE</em> file that you work on</strong>, and that you know exactly what that file is called. Know which is the latest version and every time you change machines, replace the file with the latest version.</div> <p /> <div>Why? Let me tell you a story about a writer who was very good at making back-ups. He wrote on a laptop, and also on a desktop. Having been revising a completed manuscript for several months, between 2 machines, using a memory stick to transfer the file, he realised that at some point, he'd got <strong>mixed up which document was which</strong>, and had been revising 2 different documents.</div> <p /> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Ohshit" height="295" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/US07vnISWIagC9fuCl8X4xPymKF5FmVn3TBF31WERFCoZUSqHbhY5gruedAn/OHSHIT.jpg" width="450" /> </div> </div> He wanted all of the revisions, in both documents, but finding them all would involve <strong>going through over 200,000 words</strong>, a paragraph at a time, finding what was different in each document, and which bits he wanted and which he didn't. It was a horrible mess. He didn't even want to look at either version of the manuscript, or carry on with the revision process, because he didn't know which file to work on, and couldn't face the <strong>massive task of untangling the hundreds of revisions from the 2 documents</strong>. <p /> <div>Eventually, after weeks of frustrated paralysis, he decided to see if change-tracking could help, and discovered a little menu option called <strong>"Compare Documents"</strong>. This option is available in both MS Word, and in <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">Open Office</a>. Comparing the two versions, all of the changes were highlighted. Deleted words, sentences and paragraphs were struck-through, new stuff was underlined. Checking the entire book was still a major undertaking, but vastly preferable to sifting meticulously through 2 texts with only careful reading to spot every change. The day, and the revision process, was saved.</div> <p /> <div>Of course, back-up. But it would be wise to come up with a system, maybe even giving every back-up a version number (relying on dates is no guarantee if you're working over a long period of time, mistakes happen) as you make them, and keep a note of the latest version so you're <strong>always working on the correct file</strong>.</div> <p /> <div>And yes, that stupid tit in the story was me.</div> </td> </tr> </table> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-dupe-when-backing-up-your-work-goes-wrong">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-dupe-when-backing-up-your-work-goes-wrong#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/JPWAekIqOTM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-dupe-when-backing-up-your-work-goes-wrong Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:04:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/zMiIXU87cw4/you-lazy-git-focus-vs-procrastination http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/you-lazy-git-focus-vs-procrastination <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /> <ul> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Sit down to write</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Stare at the page</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Go and check Twitter</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Stare at the page</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Delete a word</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Put that word back</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Delete it and try another word</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Ctrl+Z</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Ctrl+Z</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Check email</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Check Facebook</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Stare at the page</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Check Twitter</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Follow some interesting links</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Check some blogs</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Stare at the page</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Delete a sentence</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Move that sentence to a different part of the paragraph</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Check email</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Decide to really get down to writing</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Realise it's time for dinner/dog walking/going out</span></li> <li><span style="font-size: medium;">Promise to do better tomorrow</span></li> </ul> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Any of this seem familiar? The odd day like this isn't the end of the world, but this kind of behaviour tends to snowball, <strong>the odd day becomes every other day</strong>, and if you're not careful, it becomes every day. <strong>WiFi can be the writer's worst enemy</strong>. Being able to instantly research something, or check spelling, grammar and punctuation, or consult a thesaurus sounds brilliant, but along with that comes infinite potential for distraction. The worst part is, this isn't necessarily laziness, you can actually be very busy and achieve nothing.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">During just such a round of displacement activities, I happened upon this article on <strong><a href="http://lateralaction.com/articles/art-of-remarkable/">LateralAction.com</a></strong>, where author <strong><a href="http://www.stevenpressfield.com/">Steven Pressfield</a></strong> has some fascinating thoughts on the sort of <strong>subliminal sabotage</strong> that <strong>is all around us</strong>, all of the time, from within and from without.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">The chat between Mark McGuinness and Steven is well worth listening to, and can be had direct from <strong><a href="http://media.lateralaction.com/lateral-action-steven-pressfield.mp3">here</a>.</strong> </span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Personally, if I'm to best capitalise on my time, I find it best to think of my attention like a liquid. Liquids want to follow the path of least resistance, and will trickle away so very easily if you don't keep their flow directed.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Flow is incredibly important for writing, when it comes, there are no distractions, you can get up and do anything, come back, and it's all still working. The best way to get a good flow more of the time is to <strong>heighten your awareness of attention trickle</strong>. That thought where you come up with a funny quip for your Twitter feed, that moment where a sentence stumps you so you quickly go to check your email. That block where you go to an online thesaurus to get the perfect word, then decide, as the browser is up front now, you might as well see if your favourite blog has updated.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Everything there, will still be there when you're done writing. If you catch yourself thinking "I'll just..." anything, say <strong>NO!</strong> and keep your mind on the page you're working on. This way, you direct your flow of attention, instead of letting your mind and your time trickle away into half a dozen <strong>displacement activities that will mean a wasted session</strong>. We all know the tag <strong>NSFW</strong>&nbsp;stands for <strong>Not Safe For Work</strong>, well, if you've sat down to write, you should treat every link as <strong>DSFW</strong>, that's&nbsp;<strong>Do Some Fu</strong>... you can guess the rest.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Stop the little trickles before they start and even on a poor day you can channel your attention in a productive direction, and on a good day you can direct a veritable flood. Anyway, here's a distraction, you've earned it, haven't you?</span></div> <p /> <div style="text-align: center;"> <object height="344" width="425"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qAYLD06MefI&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qAYLD06MefI&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="344" width="425"></embed>&lt;/object&gt; </object> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/you-lazy-git-focus-vs-procrastination">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/you-lazy-git-focus-vs-procrastination#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/zMiIXU87cw4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/you-lazy-git-focus-vs-procrastination Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:04:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/jN8cAqMIWGA/and-while-were-talking-about-prices http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/and-while-were-talking-about-prices <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">So, thanks to my evil twin, Hughes. for putting together what shall forevermore be known as</span>&nbsp;<a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll">The Great Book Pricing Poll of 2010</a></strong> (Hey, why undersell it?). Some strong patterns emerged in <strong><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results">the results of how you voted</a></strong>, but there's still another cost issue as a barrier to the ubiquitous spread of ebooks, and that's the cost of the devices you read them on.</p> <p>As I said back on New Year's day, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/will-the-fire-thats-being-kindled-burn-all-of">the price of ereaders</a></span> is the biggest barrier to their uptake, expanding feature-sets and needless convergence crap are trying to value-add, instead of simply offering good value to people who <strong><em>just want to read</em></strong>. <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/">Seth Godin</a>&nbsp;has now coined the phrase "<a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/paperback-kindle.html#"><strong>Paperback Kindle</strong></a>",&nbsp;to sum up the utility device I was talking about when I said "<span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #595959; line-height: 22px;"><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/ipad-upad-we-all-pad-for-no-that-doesnt-work"><em>Low-priced units that you can confidently throw in a bag are where the mass-market for eReading lies.</em></a>",&nbsp;</span>and this is exactly what Seth describes in his idea for <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/paperback-kindle.html" title="an Amazon device to outmanoeuvre the iPad">an Amazon device to outmanoeuvre the iPad</a> stampede.</p> <div>I hope all manufacturers of ereaders pay attention, and realise that a cheap utility device that would be as widespread and popular as MP3 players, is doable, right now, and that <strong>premium prices and feature-bloat are NOT what will defeat the iPad</strong> in the race to become the iPod of the reading world.</div> <p /></td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/and-while-were-talking-about-prices">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/and-while-were-talking-about-prices#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/jN8cAqMIWGA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/and-while-were-talking-about-prices Sun, 06 Jun 2010 07:19:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/GIGsu4iZ06U/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <p><span style="font-size: medium;"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/4199232660_c85b7bde3b_s.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />It's been a week since I posted </span><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll"><span style="font-size: medium;">this poll</span></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> to try to get an idea what people feel is a fair price for digitally downloaded books. I'll be keeping the poll open, but the results have definitely shown a pattern. Even though the poll was deliberately bottom-weighted for price, that range seems to have been about right for most people. More options over the 4.99 range might have been interesting for established authors, as people are understandably more open to paying more for those books, but there's a definite fall-off above the $/£10 mark.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: medium;">There are typical mental price barriers showing around the 0.99 mark, the 1.99 mark, 2.99 and the 4.99 mark , but most people seem fairly generous, and it seems if people have decided they want the book, then 4.99 is not considered too high a price to pay (by far the most popular price in the combined results). That said, for a new author there's definitely a lot to be said for going cheap to get as many eyes-on-words as possible. Being read is always the first, best step in establishing your name as a writer.</span></p> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Here's the goods:</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> <p> </p> <p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/QablGhd2o0x1cDxB8T25SUK2QOpwKSzR13Az1mkUbS16VIPtJGQBR6ucWRal/graph_5.jpg"><img alt="Graph_5" height="386" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/iVah2Hf3yFtapV9ywFbPLxzg3wspw1XUokBKrxwAq8AyUvcVrKWu014TpjkH/graph_5.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/SUjeO64BAY6jph1e4e7LKLd3Qb3L42f5kP5mAmOl75HbM0eIBKuxOCtyU7to/graph_4.jpg"><img alt="Graph_4" height="386" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/KtwMknIN1ZgSWj3YRbBeJjcyuQBoAIVeWEfQ51D9GlKQmwnwjcKhWNXtwvjH/graph_4.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/LMoL19jAsh05ndkC7bQ8i0eSWxRuk4F1bql32r3T1CFV2QgIYlunVRGBcpru/graph_2.jpg"><img alt="Graph_2" height="386" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/2a2UEqHKx1wvZwBI1jpyN64Rgv7e8Xmc4M26ckkFy3TtUudyOvCiZ1modFsk/graph_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/B13Gk40HNMpHlx0bQkrGDm7BPThMCmvwsPFyCQRQfZWaloFNudJb8Y5VMInH/graph_3.jpg"><img alt="Graph_3" height="386" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/write-and-wrong/7FlEQkoY95WNfc02Dib1gCXowYaiVmBGscTWpk6HO2kjArRwM20iLou1UbpJ/graph_3.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </p> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/GIGsu4iZ06U" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/the-ebook-price-poll-1st-week-results Sun, 30 May 2010 13:06:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/Ri8jRIiXEFI/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2545/4199232660_c85b7bde3b_s.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /> <div>If one question has kept popping up this year, it has been "<em><strong>What's a fair price for an ebook?</strong></em>" Publishers have been putting their case for the prices they're asking. Writers have been explaining how cheaper ebooks are boosting their sales. Readers have been asking why there aren't bigger savings with no physical product to make, store and distribute?</div> <div> </div> <div>Readers are what matter to me. Readers should be what matters to everyone in the trade, so I want to ask as many readers as possible what they think is a fair price for a digital book (writers, editors and publishers are readers too, so all votes matter). I know dollars, euros and pounds aren't exactly on a parity, but it's near enough these days, so <strong>read the price in whatever currency you're most familiar with</strong> (Sorry if you work in Bulgarian Levs or Polish Zlotys).</div> <div> </div> <div>For all 3 questions let's assume it's a regular length book, that you're already interested in buying when you arrive at the product page and find out the price.</div> <div> <div> </div> <div> <div><script src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/3277179.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div> <div> </div> <div><script src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/3277227.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div> <div> </div><script src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/3277247.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script></div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div> <strong>The more people who take part, the clearer the picture will be</strong>, so please tell everyone interested in reading, writing, publishing, books, kindles, iPads, Nooks and crannies, about this poll.</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>Hughes.</div> <div> </div> <div> <strong>ADDITIONAL:</strong> If a dollar/pound is too rich for your blood, Joe Konrath is giving away a copy of Jack Daniels Stories as an experiment into book piracy and encourages you to steal the book, and tell as many people as you can to steal it too. Read his rationale and download the book from here... <a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/steal-this-ebook.html">http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/05/steal-this-ebook.html</a> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>*Sorry there's no euro symbol, euro friends, the poll code didn't seem to like it.</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/Ri8jRIiXEFI" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/whats-a-fair-price-for-an-ebook-poll Sat, 01 May 2010 10:18:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/kFI7NvZYwyM/on-conflict-dont-get-even-get-mad http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/on-conflict-dont-get-even-get-mad <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /><span style="font-size: medium;">Is your blood boiling? Do you want scream filthy obscenities at someone? Are you ready to whack someone in the face with a cricket bat? Brilliant! Let's go to work. </span> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Conflict. It seems every other article about good storytelling says that lots of conflict is the only thing that keeps a story interesting. Well, that's a bunch of crap. There are been plenty of great stories that have very little conflict. But! <strong>Conflict does make a more compelling story</strong>. If your characters have something to rage against, you and your <strong>readers will feel more involved in their journey</strong>, more invested in their success. Especially if the obstacles put in their path, and the attitudes of those standing in their way, piss you off too.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;"> <strong>Injustice</strong>.<strong> Lies</strong>.<strong> Spite</strong>.<strong> Betrayal</strong>.<strong> Cruelty</strong>. We all hate these things. A protagonist being beset by these things makes us sympathetic, and keener to see them succeed. A spirit of defiance will raise the spirits too, enriching the successes. There's a reason the clich&eacute; of the maverick cop still persists, with authority to rage against, the large support structures available to a police officer are negated, giving the protagonist more to overcome, and more sources of conflict where there would normally be a safe haven among colleagues.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Police shows are finally moving away from this overplayed old McGuffin, instead drawing conflict and interest from unlikely partnerships. Shows like <strong>Bones</strong>, <strong>The Mentalist</strong>, and <strong>Castle</strong> are just a few examples of tension being drawn from throwing together people from different disciplines with different attitudes and contrary approaches (it's already becoming a clich&eacute; in its own right).</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Such conflicts add a dynamic aspect to storytelling, but &nbsp;<strong>you don't want to shoehorn it in</strong> anytime you think things are getting too slow (this is actually a sign you need to be cutting). It'll seem fake and contrived if you're trying to manufacture conflict where there's no rational cause for it. Certain writing style gurus will tell you every scene must have conflict. If you take a second to think about that, it's ridiculous. Why not let readers relax in the company of your characters once in a while? Do we only learn about people when they're screaming at each other, or at each others throats? Of course not.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Trying to cram conflict in every interplay is completely unnecessary. Firstly because of the aforementioned obvious contrivance of the thing, and secondly because <strong>constant conflict will become as dull as no conflict at all</strong>. For it to be realistic, and for the motivations to be credible and relevant is critical.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">The important factor, dramatically, is to have the conflict be energetic. Expressed as much in behaviour, posture and actions as in dialogue. Personally I find the best way to do this is actually to get angry. Politics is a great way to get wound up. Whether you object to the "devil take the hind-most" thinking of the hard Right, the assumption of entitlement to the contents of your wallet of the hard Left, or the divisive partisanship of both. Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann, Mandelson or Tebbit, Ann Coulter or Rachel Maddow, Polly Toynbee or Richard Littlejohn; politicos can be golden opportunities to <strong>get TV kickingly mad</strong>.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">If that's not your thing you could always call on your own past. Call it "method writing". A girl called Marian once knocked over a chair in class and told the teacher I did it! <strong>5 year old me is FURIOUS!</strong> Both with Marian for lying, and much angrier with the teacher for believing her over me! &nbsp;I'm so angry I could start a nuclear war!! (This may not be a believably proportional escalation, but you get the idea). You don't have to be angry about the same thing as your character, but it'll be better still if that makes you angry too.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">If you want your characters angry, get angry with them, get angry for them; that way it's a lot more likely your readers will too.&nbsp;Shout at the TV or stir up those bitter memories; turn everyday frustrations into fuel for dramatic scenes. That's one joy of being a writer. If life gives you lemons, have a character smash someone in the face with a lemon!</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/on-conflict-dont-get-even-get-mad">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/on-conflict-dont-get-even-get-mad#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/kFI7NvZYwyM" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/on-conflict-dont-get-even-get-mad Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:52:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/mXV0A1Jl2to/a-reply-from-createspace-about-episodic-relea http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/a-reply-from-createspace-about-episodic-relea <p> <table border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" />Following up from the <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>last post</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.createspace.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>CreateSpace</strong></a> got back to me to say that supporting episodically released books wasn't something they'd considered yet. As things stand right now, assembling a book that way on an e-reader may be scrappy way to present a book. A series of shared-world stories would still collect under your author name though. Something to think about.</span></span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></span><div>Anyways, to tide you over in between proper updates, here's some blogs and sites I follow and sites that have drawn my interest lately (plus a few of the tabs I have open that I haven't had a proper look at yet).</div> <p /> <div>As&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/zoewinters" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Zoe Winters</strong></a>&nbsp;was mentioned and commented last time, she's a highly active online presence with plenty to say. Her&nbsp;<a href="http://www.zoewinters.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>own site</strong></a>&nbsp;is a great place to start, with a regular podcast.</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://twitter.com/JFbookman" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Joel Friedlander's</strong></a>&nbsp;site,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thebookdesigner.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>thebookdesigner.com</strong></a>&nbsp;is a goldmine of great information, as are&nbsp;<a href="http://www.publetariat.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Publetariat</strong></a>,&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/thecreativepenn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Joanna Penn's</strong></a>&nbsp;blog&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thecreativepenn.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>The Creative Penn</strong></a>.&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>The Bookseller</strong></a>&nbsp;is geared more towards the trade side of things, but it doesn't hurt to familiarise yourself with all sides of the business. They also have a&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/thebookseller" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Twitter feed</strong></a>, as does their very own&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/HoraceBent" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Horace Bent</strong></a>.</div> <p /> <div>If you've been reading <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/get-shorty-why-short-stories-matter-craig-hug" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Hughes.'s posts</strong></a> about <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/i-like-short-shorts-shortcuts-and-shorthand-f" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>short stories</strong></a> and are wondering about commercial outlets for short fiction,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.commutabooks.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Commutabooks</strong></a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.etherbooks.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Etherbooks</strong></a>&nbsp;are both offering short works for mobile platforms. I have no idea of their submissions process or royalty rates, so if anyone wants to investigate these, let me know what you find out.</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.bookbuzzr.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>BookBuzzr</strong></a>&nbsp;is a publicity resource I haven't had a lot of chance to investigate yet. If you're not ready to use that yet, their&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/BookBuzzr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Twitter feed</strong></a>&nbsp;still offers up plenty of good links, so is worth a follow.</div> <div><br /> <div><a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Publishers' Weekly</strong></a>&nbsp;lets you know what's going on in the business; who's buying what, who's publishing who, who's looking for this that and the other.&nbsp;<a href="http://publishersmarketplace.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Publishers' Marketplace</strong></a>&nbsp;is worth looking at for the same reasons.</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Self-Publishing Review</strong></a>&nbsp;is a great place for networking, feedback and peer-promotion. If you're self-pubbing, every avenue of exposure for your work is worth pursuing.</div> <p /> <div>Oh, and I suppose you could also follow <a href="http://twitter.com/victorfinch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>myself</strong></a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/i_am_hughes" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>Hughes.</strong></a> on Twitter (mostly follow me, though, Hughes. already has more followers than I do).</div> <p /> <div>That's all for now, as I must return to my ceaseless toil. Happy clicking.</div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/a-reply-from-createspace-about-episodic-relea">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/a-reply-from-createspace-about-episodic-relea#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/mXV0A1Jl2to" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/a-reply-from-createspace-about-episodic-relea Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:37:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/VictorFinch/~3/dUUOISBL77A/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor <p> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"> <div> <table border="0"> <tr> <td style="font: inherit;"><img src="http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg" align="RIGHT" alt="" /><span style="font-size: medium;">Time was, serialisations were common in magazines and papers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad are just a few famous names among many who had their work published this&nbsp;way. Unfortunately, for a long time this stuff has been pretty much limited comics and graphic novels.</span><p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">It doesn't have to be that way, though. The flexible and accessible nature of e-publishing could lead to a new surge for bite-sized works. Hughes. pointed me toward&nbsp;<a href="http://zoewinters.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/word-counts-not-as-boring-as-it-sounds-i-promise-probably/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>this post</strong></a> on the blog of self-publishing evangelist, Zoe Winters, and it set me wondering about whether word counts are still important now that e-readers are becoming so popular. Zoe's book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Zoe-Winters/e/B002BOD2JE/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1271606076&amp;sr=1-2-ent" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>"Kept"</strong></a>&nbsp;weighs in at a mere 20,000 words, which she feels is the perfect length for the story.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Now, in the regular scheme of things, even a novella would be expected to have a word count of around 35-40,000 words, but Zoe charges only 99 cents for the book, which has been well received and has <strong>regular sales</strong> that plenty of mid-list authors would be happy to achieve.</span></div> <div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">A lot of people associate a book's quality with its weight. Even with the copyright page, acknowledgements, index and the rest, a book with a 20k word-count probably wouldn't stretch to much more than 60 printed pages, which would feel pretty slight. But, on an e-reader, all books feel the same in your hands, in terms of&nbsp;<em>physical</em>&nbsp;presence&nbsp;<strong>everything has equal heft</strong>.</span></div> </div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Short story long - a story doesn't need to be long on an e-reader. The platform is wide open and you can make a story exactly as short or long as you think it needs to be (that's <strong>no excuse to avoid editing down an early draft 200k shelf-bender</strong>, though). As long as a reader knows what they're getting up front, and can judge the fairness of the price, you've got an incredibly flexible platform.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Freedom to write shorter stuff than a publisher would want is one thing, but there's a more interesting prospect for writers who want to <strong>engage more, and more often with their readers</strong> than infrequent releases of full books allow. Writing a book takes a long time, but what if you could sell it a few chapters at a time? Keeping readers engaged with regular fresh content.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Instead of readers having to wait for months or years for the next thing you write, what if they could get it episodically, as soon as you'd edited and proof-read it? Think of how this could increase engagement with your readership. Letting readers now through social media and your blog when the next chapter/chapters were going up, <strong>discussing it with them while it's in progress</strong>, building a readership for the book before it's even finished.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Sure you'd probably need to be more thorough in planning the book before you started writing, to be sure each chapter would maintain continuity, and to be sure you wouldn't want to make a huge plot revision when you're halfway thorugh, but if you were selling a chapter, or maybe 3 chapters at a time for a very low cost, you could have a small but steady revenue stream, and finish up with a complete book that was <strong>earning you money the whole time you were writing it</strong> (who needs advances?).</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Taking cues from the profitable street-corner pharmaceutical industry, you could give away the first 3 chapters for free (basically the same as the sample chapters you'd send to an agent or publisher), the get them hooked, then charge a small amount for subsequent chapters, or parcels of chapters. You could wind up with a self-financing book, and a model of business a lot more tasteful to most than <strong><a href="http://quietbabylon.posterous.com/an-argument-about-crowdfunding" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">crowd-sourced advances</a>.</strong> </span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">As Joe Konrath discovered,&nbsp;<a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/04/looking-at-kindle-bestsellers.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>low price lowers the barrier of entry</strong></a>&nbsp;for a lot of people, and can lead to much higher sales than conventional pricing. Applied to serialisation, it would also mean you can get reader feedback much more rapidly, find out what your readers like and what they don't (you can't please everyone, but it'll help you keep&nbsp;pleasing more of the people who are buying your stuff).</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">The first two Sherlock Holmes books sold very poorly, and it wasn't until he started appearing in a series of self-contained short stories in The Strand magazine that he became the phenomenon we now know. As in the comics world, anticipation for the next instalment <strong>builds loyalty and interest</strong>, and gives a lot more opportunities for word of mouth publicity to spread than a once a year book launch/promotion cycle can give you.</span></div> <p /> <div><span style="font-size: medium;">Are you tempted yet?</span></div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> </td> </tr> </p> <p><a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/VictorFinch/~4/dUUOISBL77A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/681930/VictorFinch000.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4al53zjWLQ5j Victor Finch MisterFinch Victor Finch http://write-and-wrong.posterous.com/see-you-next-wednesday-could-serialising-stor