Category Archives: Business

Taking Advice

Brandon M. Lindsay Craft & Skills Publishing The Writing Life 4 Comments

Everybody has an opinion. Oftentimes, a person’s opinions and ideas about a given subject will contradict those of other people. Writing is no exception.

Take any topic within writing, ask a bunch of writers what they think about it, and the answers you’ll receive will be all over the board. It doesn’t matter if the topic is agents, dialogue tags, or the best hours of the day to write–opinions on such things will vary widely. But does this mean there is no one right answer to the question you’re asking?

At first, it might be easy to think so. After all, what these authors are doing obviously works well for them. But there’s the rub: what they’re doing works well in their situation.

Now, I’m not advocating the position that there are no universal truths in the world or in writing, which I would argue is a philosophically invalid and practically worthless position. What I am advocating is the notion that these universal truths only apply within a given context.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to design a book cover for your Tolkienesque epic fantasy novel. You might think, “Well, book covers that have tramp-stamped female characters on motorcycles holding shotguns are selling like mad. I’ll think I’ll jump on that bandwagon.” Doing so would absolutely ruin your book and everyone who read it would hate it. Why? Because books with that kind of cover only sell well in the context of urban fantasy novels, not epic fantasy novels.

The reason context is so important is because our careers, our writing styles, and our stories, could potentially manifest themselves in a vast number of ways, some of which could be very unlike others who have written in our respective genre. While a particular method for getting published or selling books might have worked for one person, that same method applied by someone with very different personal qualities or writing strengths could crash and burn.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to learn from those who have come before us. It does mean that we have to know ourselves, our situations, and our writing, and that we have to know how to apply the things we’ve learned in a way that benefits us. While our writing and our careers may look nothing like someone like Stephen King’s, there is still much we can learn from him (if you haven’t already, read his book On Writing).

So if I were to give you one piece of writing advice that is universal, it would be this: do what is appropriate for your story, and do what is appropriate for your career.

Why You Should Be Writing Short Stories

Brandon M. Lindsay Craft & Skills Publishing The Fictorians The Writing Life 8 Comments

Some of the best writing advice I have ever received was given to me by an editor at World Fantasy Convention. Simply put, he said I needed to write short stories. His reasoning was that writing short stories will teach you craft better than jumping straight into novels will. Also, it will teach you how to actually finish a story. After slogging through two novels (both still incomplete) and then successfully completing six short stories, I can tell you that his advice certainly worked for me. And each story written was better than the last.

In a recent blog post, Kristine Kathryn Rusch gave similar advice, but for different reasons. She looks at the short form from a business perspective. I’d highly recommend reading her original post, but basically she said that the current market conditions, as well as the ability to reassume complete control of the rights of your story after a short amount of time, lend great potential to making a career of short story writing.

There are other reasons as well. If you write speculative fiction, you probably have plenty of notes, or perhaps even notebooks, of worldbuilding trivia, including some semblance of a history of your world. How many interesting stories can be mined from all this material? Chances are there are a few, and if you’re writing a series, these stories will also help draw new readers to those other works, and vice versa (which is the exact tack I’m taking with my short story collection and subsequent novel). An author whom I think has done a remarkable job with this method is Peter Orullian. Before his book was released, he published a few short stories related to the novel on Tor.com. I’m sure the stories helped generate more interest in the book than there would otherwise have been. It worked for me; I bought the book on release day based on the strength of those stories. Another advantage to writing stories about those events that otherwise exist only in your notes is that it could help flesh them out in your own mind, providing more concrete detail from which to draw for your novel.

I know what some of you are thinking: “I’m a novelist, not a short story writer!” I thought the same thing before. But then I gave it a shot, and now I’m a firm believer in short stories. While not everyone will get much out of writing them, it costs very little in the way of time, and the potential benefits are too great to ignore. Who knows? You might even like it.

How Many Authors Have You Rejected?

Publishing 4 Comments

When I go to a bookstore, I walk straight past the romance and horror and non-fiction over to the fantasy and science fiction section, and often browse the young adult (YA) aisles as well. Even though I know there are great books on the other shelves, those are the genres I’m interested in reading.

Now I want to find a book.

What I’m looking for depends on my personal tastes, what I last read, what kind of story I prefer, and what I consider to be a “good” book. My friends have different opinions and they have loved books that have done nothing for me, and I’ve been crazy about a book that they found “okay”.

In order to make a decision about which book to buy, I read the back copy. Sometimes I put the book back, sometimes I start reading the first chapter. I know within the first few pages whether or not I want to spend 3-4 hours with that book.

When I finally choose a book, buy it, and walk out of the bookstore, it’s nothing personal against all of those other authors .. but I have just rejected them.

 

Now – take that above situation and translate it in to an agent’s world … far more people than they could ever represent, some queries that appeal to them more than others, deciding which manuscript they want to spent 1-2 years of their life with, and then sending out rejections to the rest. Nothing personal, the agent just didn’t choose your book.

 

Stand Alone or Grow a Forest?

Craft & Skills Jason Michelsen Publishing The Fictorians The Writing Life 2 Comments

If books were trees, I’d have a forest in my head. It’s 842,622 words long, filled with sweeping character arcs, murky intentions, sacrificial heroism, the syncopated percussion of snapping bones, the crackling discharge of magic, the heady musk of blood. It’s a trilogy that has marinated in my conscious for near twenty years. It dwells in the vaults of my mind, the limbs of its beautiful prose framed by spaces, commas and periods, yearning to live the life of ink, dripped and stamped into meaning. My epic magnum opus.

Of course, I pulled that word count out of the ether, but I tend to read and desire to write doorstoppers . . . as long as they’re well-written. Twice before I tried to write the first book of my planned trilogy, and twice before I wrote myself into more corners than any house has a right to claim. The trees of my series blinded me, cramped the single tree I was trying to cultivate. It wasn’t until I heard other authors I respect and read talk about postponing larger projects that consumed their younger years while they honed their craft that I realized I was biting off more than my writing chops could chew. Carrying a story through a single book is far easier than trying to drape one over the frame of a series.

This is why most authors I’ve spoken with advise not trying to write a series fresh out of the gates. Usually, the untried author won’t be up to the challenge. Does this mean you’ll never be able to write a series? No.  Michael Jordan didn’t dunk the first time he jumped, Brett Favre didn’t throw a touchdown the first time he picked up a football. And besides, most publishers won’t buy a series from an unknown author, though there are the occasional exceptions: Joe Abercrombie, Sam Sykes, R. Scott Bakker and others. Some publisher submission guidelines even go so far as to say if you’re submitting something that’s part of a larger work not to provide any info on the later books. If they’re interested, they’ll ask.

So, the advice which was given to me and which I now pass on to any other aspiring speculative fiction writers out there is to write a self-contained, stand alone novel-or six-before tackling a series. Prove to yourself you can carry a story from its beginning, through the muddy middle to its brilliant climax. The best series-in my opinion-contain books that stand on their own with beginnings, middles and endings, so focus on that when you’re just starting out. But-and this is important-don’t hold back! Don’t cling to your best ideas so you can use them in an eventual series, use them in what you’re writing now! You want anything you write to stand out and wow the reader . . . like a majestic tree standing apart from the forest.