Writing Articles

Don’t Write Me Off Yet

11/1/2018

It’s been a year and a month since I last posted on this blog.

I haven’t published a book on Amazon in 9 months.

That book was the last book in my 12-volume Mountain Man Series. The book has sold just 26 copies.

Prior to that, I hadn’t put out a book since April 2017, and another the month before that.

One was Dulce Truths and the other was Rose’s Rage, and they’ve sold 24 and 217 copies, respectively.

So far this year I’ve sold 993 books on Amazon, D2D, and Createspace.

The bestsellers this year are:

Social Media Politics: 87 sales
English Rocks: 87
Colter’s Winter: 79
Colter’s Hell: 66
Colter’s Run: 51
Colter’s Revenge: 36
Colter’s Friend: 34
Rose’s Rage: 28
Clark’s Campaign: 27
Tarot: The Mystery and the Mystique: 27

Those 10 books gave me 468 sales, or about 50% of my total sales this year.

I’ve made just over $3,000 in book income this year. I’ve made $31,449 from Amazon since 2013 when I started, and probably another $5,000 or so from D2D, Createspace and Smashwords.

I’m pretty happy with that, and also with the fact that my books still sell…and with no marketing behind them whatsoever.

In fact, I haven’t done a paid book promotion since April 2017.

I don’t write much these days because I just don’t have a lot of ideas.

The last few books I’ve put out are just sequels to other books I wrote earlier. I haven’t come up with a completely new story-line idea in years.

I used to come up with a lot, but many of those ideas never really sold. I don’t think they were wastes of time – they got me a lot of practice and improved my skills – but the marketplace wasn’t favorable to them.

I do get some good reviews from time to time, such as these:

Colter’s Friend, 5-stars
“This book was very good. Things didn't turn out the way you thought they would. I would recommend this book highly. I have been to the Three Forks recently and while reading this book I could picture the landscape.”

Dulce Truths, 5-stars
“Better than the 1st! I'm loving these books and can't wait for Volume 3..”

Rose’s Rage, 5-stars
“Exciting, educational, and INTERESTING! Considering that I have read this whole series in the last three weeks, it is needless to say these books are almost impossible to put down! I would recommend this series to anyone but especially those interested in historical fiction. I enjoyed it immensely.”

I’m not working on any fiction stuff at the moment, and haven’t done so in months.

The last 'writing work' I did was a few weeks ago when I put out the print version of Dulce Truths, mainly because someone gave it a good review and I thought others might want to read it too. Since then the print copy has sold a few copies, so I guess I was right.

Maybe I’ll get some ideas and start on some new books again. We’ll see. Thanks for reading.

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How I’m Doing NaNo This Year

11/6/2016

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I decided not to let NaNo jerk me around this year.

I’ll be the one jerking it around.

I’m doing that by hitting a high word count each day, mainly with the hope that I’ll finish my 50,000 words sometime mid-month.

That’s a lot easier than fretting over it.

Something that’s helped a lot is writing what I want to write.

But…shouldn’t you always do that?

Yep, but sometimes we get to writing things that we don’t really want to write, and in that regard, we shouldn’t write them at all.

I’m talking about the boring parts.

My books are full of them.

In fact, if you took all the boring parts from all of my books, you’d probably have a 3-book box set…at least!

So I try to cut down on that.

How can that be done?

My strategy this year was to skip right over to the book I wanted to write instead of finishing with the book I’m currently working on.

Considering this is like putting a Book 3 before a Book 2, that doesn’t make much sense.

But when it comes to cutting down on the boring parts, it does.

I mentioned in my monthly post that I wanted to write the book on mountain man Edward Rose but I was hung up on this book about Manuel Lisa’s money.

So I skipped over to Rose, got about 10,000 words on it, and now I think I’ll stick that right into the Manuel book.

This breaks up the boring parts, and if I’m real smart I’ll figure out a way to alternate POV chapters between the ‘boring’ downriver parts with Manuel and the ‘more exciting’ upriver parts with Rose

That’s the idea anyways.

If this makes no sense to you, that’s fine – I’ve found that writing about my current work in progress when I’m stuck will actually help me get going again.

It’s kind of like I confess what’s not working, get over it because of that, and then move on to solve the problem.

In that regard, I think one of the best pieces of NaNo advice is to skip to the parts that are interesting or excite you.

Many times you can skip that chapter you think needs to come next, that kind of filler/explainer chapter where people talk, or travel, or generally do nothing but waste a few pages of the reader’s time.

Lots of times you can make that whole chapter just a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph.

But what if it’s good prose or narrative?

What if it’s not?

I find that people want suspense, thrills, action, and adventure.

Maybe not the adventure part so much, as that’s often the boring parts in between the suspenseful, thrilling action.

So you need to find balance. The more you write, the better you get at this.

Another great piece of NaNo advice is to constantly throw problems at your characters.

I’m doing this now with Rose, where he gets attacked, then wounded, then weak because of it, attacked again, and then more bad stuff happens.

When you can make your characters the victims of circumstance, it often works.

They don’t know what’s going on, they can only react.

They don’t know what’s coming next, they can only react.

The readers sure don’t know what’s about to happen, so they keep turning pages.

But…how do you know what problems to throw at the characters?

Personally, I find writing out a two-to-three sentence outline of each chapter to be useful.

I call these ‘chapter starts’ and that’s another piece of NaNo advice – write a couple hundred words with just that.

It’s easy…write a chapter title and put something under it.

Anyways, those are just some thoughts for this year’s NaNo.

I try and do all my words first thing in the morning and so far I’ve been doing well with that.

How about you?

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NaNoWriMo 2016 Draws Near

10/20/2016

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It’s getting close to November.

That means NaNoWriMo.

That’s National Write a Novel Month for those who don’t know.

It got started in 1999 and last year more than 231,000 people took part, many of them finishing a 50,000-word novel…or at least a good start to one.

Wow…50,000 words.

That’s like 200 pages…maybe more!

How in the hell do you do that?

I’ll be honest – you have to make yourself…and we’ll discuss that more in a bit.

I’ve made myself do it since 2013 and looking at my NaNo stats I see that I’ve written 198,162 total words in that time.

That’s produced 3 books.

I’ve published all of those books and each year they do better in sales.

Here’s a look at my NaNo results:

2013: Tarot Card Killer, 50 total sales
2014: Dulce Base, 176 sales
2015: Colter’s Friend, 461 sales

So each year I write a better book…if you go by sales.

Those sales have translated into $1,700 of income for me.

So really, I cannot complain – 687 sales on books I’ve written in just one month.

Oftentimes I finish in 3 weeks.

Typically I take the approach of doing 1,667 words a day, though I usually get closer to 2,500.

I keep myself doing that by using a daily counter. People on my site can see that, and while I don’t think anyone cares, I like to pretend they do.

It keeps me in line and keeps me writing. It holds me accountable, and when you’re doing NaNo, that’s one of the hardest things.

If you want more tips, check out this detailed post called NaNoWriMo Strategies for Finishing a Novel in Less Than a Month

So…back to those 50,000 words.

It’s a lot, isn’t it?

Many on November 1 start writing but not as many finish at the end of the month with those 50,000 words written down.

So how do you do it?

How do you keep going?

Lots of the time we write fluff, or boring scenes that are primarily meant to get us to our daily word count…which in this case is 1,667.

I’ve done this a lot, trying to get my NaNo word count goal for each day.

I’m not sure I want to do that this year…write fluff and boring scenes and filler until the next fun part that readers like.

That’s the problem with pushing yourself each day when you might not have ideas.

One of my weaknesses is writing boring characters, or lots of characters that are the same. Readers can’t tell ‘em apart and I often can’t remember ‘em.

So that’s something to watch out for.

Still, if you don’t push through each day…perhaps the story will never get written.

So it’s a constant struggle, with yourself and your writing and that damn clock and calendar telling you that time’s a wastin’.

All of that makes me wonder…do I want to do NaNo at all?

That thought’s going through my head (as it does each year around this time).

Still, I’ve went ahead and declared my new novel on the NaNo site and given it a synopsis.

It’ll be “Manuel’s Money,” the book I’ve been working on off-and-on since August.

It’s Book 10 of the Mountain Man Series and I have about 20,000 words on it now, or around 90 pages.

I hope to get it up into the 50,000-word range, which might be 230 pages on Kindle.

That’s the goal and I’m sure I’ll do it.

Don’t ask me how, as I have no idea where this current story is going at the moment.

Perhaps you’re the same way.

Any NaNo plans this year…or just November as usual?

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How and Why I Write Novels Differently Now

2/15/2016

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Boring kills

I don’t write novels the way I used to.

I realized that the other day when I was looking at my third full-length novel, The Warring States.

I wrote that book in 2011 or 2012…I can’t really remember.

It was before I knew anything about Amazon publishing, I can tell you that.

I was living in China, had been for about 3 years by that point.

I taught English and had that down pat. That left me a lot of free time to do…not much.

Living in a big city in China was pretty boring. I exercised a lot, drank a lot, and watched a lot of movies.

I also decided to start writing and cranked out quite a few books before I left for good in 2013.

Now it’s 2016 and I look back on those early works of mine with wonder.

I’d like to discuss the reasons behind that in this post.

Mainly, I want to show you how my writing has evolved.

This might help you write better or even help you get started.

Overall, these are tips and tricks I’ve learned to follow.

I Write Shorter Chapters

One thing I noticed with my older books is how long the chapters are.

Things go on and on in one chapter.

We see several different characters.

Oftentimes we go to more than one place.

I don’t like that.

I don’t write like that anymore.

Now I think more of the scene. I like to have each chapter serve as a single scene, in one location, and typically with just a couple characters.

If I need to have more than once scene in a chapter I’ll break it up with a set of these: “~~~”

I used to use “* * *” but gave that up.

Mainly, you want to let readers know that this is a new scene, with new characters, and a new outlook.

I find when you stick to a scene you cut out a lot of the boring stuff and keep things moving quickly.

That keeps the reader’s interest, and that keeps ‘em turning the pages.

I Think About POV

I never really thought about point of view with my earlier books.

I mainly just wrote, hoping my narrative voice would carry me though.

Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about the main character of each chapter (or scene)…and well before I write it.

This helps keep the chapter centered, and it helps keep the reader from wondering what’s going on.

One of the most important things that I’ve started doing is having the alternating POV’s.

This usually has a hero then a villain, not necessarily every chapter going back and fourth, but more like every third chapter or so.

I do like the idea of going to a new POV at the beginning of a chapter, leaving a cliffhanger-like feel to the last chapter.

That’s why I typically have about 3 to 4 POV characters in my books now.

I Describe Less

I just don’t describe things much. I don’t describe the room we’re in or the landscape we’re on.

I’m bad with this, and I do it for people too.

One thing that helps me is editing. When I first see a character I make a note to describe them. Sometimes I do this with places too.

For the most part though, I don’t describe.

Readers find this boring. They don’t want a page of description, or even a paragraph of it. A sentence or two is usually enough.

I know this because of poor reviews that I’ve gotten.

So I do this less and it seems to work for me.

I Have Less History

Readers just don’t like backstory as much as we writers do.

I skip this stuff now, keeping it in my outline or notes. When I describe a character I might add in a sentence or two of this, and perhaps more if that character is or will be important.

But I really try to cut down on the paragraphs and pages of old history, worldbuilding, and character life stories.

Readers just get bored with that, and when they get bored they stop reading.

I Focus on Plot

If you look at the reviews of my books, particularly the books with just 1 or 2, you see something:

Most say the story or plot was good.

I like hearing that. Mainly, this bit comes about in the planning and thinking stages.

I like to have a notes document that lists the characters, descriptions, places, and other stuff (who died, distances, characters from previous books).

What I do is try to build a workable world and story in that notes document.

This is really where I have that backstory and character history. It’s easy to cut and paste from this document.

More than that, though, it helps me develop the book’s plot.

For the most part, I think of the three-act structure:

Introductory Sequence
Rising Action
Falling Action and Resolution

For most of 2014 I wrote shorter novellas that focused on that three-act structure.

I’d break the books into parts, like so:

Part I: Meet the heroes and the villains and realize what the dilemma is

Part II: Heroes take action to stop the villains or somehow overcome the dilemma.

Part III: Heroes reach the final battle with the villains or enter the confrontation with the dilemma. Somehow, this challenge is overcome and the story ends.

That’s pretty basic and we all know this from movies.

I started thinking a lot more about that procedure in 2014 after I looked more into the book Save the Cat as well as the beat sheets that can help with plotting.

For the most part, this really helped me. I feel my stories are stronger, and my sales attest to this.

Conclusion

You want to keep the reader reading. You don’t want them to get bored.

Shorter chapters, less description, snappy dialogue, and fast-paced action all help with this.

I write this way now.

My books are selling better.

Oh, those old ones aren’t. I wrote those in another style and readers just get bored by it.

My newer books, however, are doing well.

Readers like these for all the reasons I just listed.

Think about making your books like that too. It’s not compromising your artistic ability.

It is augmenting it so that you can actually make a living doing what you love.

You’ll get more ideas on writing books that sell in my self-publishing books for authors

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Building Suspense and Keeping a Reader’s Interest

1/3/2016

1 Comment

Keeping your reader interested is one of the most challenging things, especially when you think every chapter is interesting.

They may be, but are they thrilling, suspenseful, and able to take readers to the edge of their seat, the pages turning?

Maybe not.

That's why lately I've been color-coding my chapters based on this strategy:

Red = Action
Blue = Backstory/Story Building
Green = Reversal

Action really keeps people turning pages, so the more the merrier, but you can't have it all the time. That's what backstory is for, but that gets pretty boring if you do too much.

So throw some reversals in, maybe a change of POV or a real bash over the head where everything the reader thought was true suddenly changes. Those are almost as good as action for keeping the reader interested, sometimes better.

When you do those things, perhaps color-coding your TOC, you can see where you might have problems. For many of my books I have a strong and then things quickly get bogged down in boring backstory and story building.

I'll need to figure out how to get more action in there, which is a lot easier now than after you've finished the book and realize there's a problem.

Hope this gives you some ideas!

You can read more about this in my post called Using Mousetraps to Write Your Thriller Novels.

Now, let’s look at some ideas that other authors have.

These mainly revolve around pacing, plotting, and the type of tone or voice you’re using.

One of the most important parts of the outlining process is plotting. Some authors like to wait and do this when they write. Either way, you’ll get lots of advice from authors that have had troubles and worked through them.

I’d like to add that the 3-Act Structure works very well. Try to understand that. When you do, you can start to try other things.

Focus on things life rising motion and increasing tension and suspense. Figure out how to add in hooks to pull your reader in, or ways to pull the rug out from under them at just the right moment.

When you do those things you’ll have a page-turner on your hands, one that readers will buy up in droves.

Ideas from Other Authors on Story-Building

Now consider some of these tips from other authors. I feel you’ll get ideas on how to make your story better.

Nailing that Beginning
I’ve got a question for you – Writers: Is Your Beginning Good Enough? Deb Vanasse had this post in July 2014 on Self Made Writer. The post is very short but offers a few tips on getting the beginning of your book where it needs to be. Might be just what you need.

Pacing Your Transitions Right
Pulse on Pacing: How Smooth Transitions Keep Your Story Moving was a July 2014 post by Angela Ackerman on Writers Helping Writers.

Mainly she talks about movement and transitioning between scenes. There’s not a lot of wheat on the chaff here, but you still might get a few tips.

Hooking Your Readers Fast
Anirban Bose had a post on the Published Author in August 2015 called A Solid Start : The First 10 Pages of Your Novel. This is a great post because it tells you how a person walks into a bookstore, picks up your book, and starts reading. You need to do the following with your plot:

– Move It;
– Set the Tone;
– Employ the Hook;
– Introduce the Protagonist;
– Maintain Suspense.

If you can do those things in the first 10 pages, you probably have a sale. Better yet, you might just gain a fan. Check it out!

Story-Killing Mistakes
John Yeoman had a post on Writer’s Village in February 2015 called Seven Big Mistakes That Can Kill Your Story - And How To Avoid Them. Those seven mistakes were:

– Your story looks boring;
– Your first paragraph is a bad advertisement for the story;
– Your last paragraph fades away;
– Your structure is all over the place;
– Your plot is a cliché;
– Your characters don’t excite us;
– Your presentation screams ‘amateur’.

Each one of those mistakes has a few paragraphs explaining how it’s committed and what can be done about it. If you’re looking to improve your writing craft, I’d give it a look.

Dealing with the Passive Voice in Your Writing
The Passive Voice — Its Darkest Secrets Revealed! was a June 2014 post by Chris J. Randolph on Octopods. You’ll get great tips and examples on what the passive voice grammar issue is, what it isn’t, and whether it will kill you.

“The passive voice is a feature of grammar that allows a transitive verb’s object to become its subject instead,” Randolph tells us.

He uses the example of “I kicked the cat” and “the cat was kicked.”

That last one is passive, because the object has become the subject.

Oftentimes you can get around this if you know you’re using the word “be,” whether it’s in the form of “be,” “was,” or “is.”

Oftentimes I’ll catch myself using that and that leads me to correct myself, typically in the editing phase. When you’re on a roll there’s nothing wrong with making these mistakes. The real error is not going back and correcting them.

Will it kill you if you don’t correct them? No.

Yeah, you can write books with passive voice – I probably do a lot – and readers will read them. Will they get to #1 on Amazon? Probably not.

That’s why I’d suggest giving this post a look. Maybe your grammar will improve, and your sales too.

First Person vs. Third Person POV
Which is Better—First or Third Person Point of View? That’s the question that Jeni Chappelle had on her blog in July 2014. The post lists off the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches.

For instance, first person is more realistic but you often tell more than you show. On the other hand, third person is what most readers are comfortable with but it can “feel emotionally distant.”

Get more ideas in this short post. Who knows…maybe you’ve been writing in the wrong POV all this time.

New eBook Promotion Sites I Found Out About

I put out a big book of marketing sites at the end of 2013.

It’s called Sell Your Book and it still gets lots of buys and pages read.

I missed some sites, however, or at least some new sites have surfaced.

Here they are – they might help you:

http://readcheaply.com/

http://choosybookworm.com/

https://ohfb.com/kindle-book-advertising-for-authors-and-publishers.html

http://readingdeals.com/

http://www.justkindlebooks.com/

https://www.themidlist.com/

http://sweetfreebooks.com/

http://bettybookfreak.com/

http://robinreads.com/

That last site there, Robin Reads, costs $15 and gets you a email send-out to 30,000+ subscribers.

I used them on a $0.99 or free day, but I forgot about it and didn’t lower my book’s price. Still, one person bought the book.

Conclusion

I hope these ideas gave you some tips that will help you get that book written.

More, I hope they’ll guide you in writing a book that actually sells.

Yep, anyone can write a book. Kids do it.

The tough part is getting that book to sell. When you take pacing, plotting, and your novel’s voice into account, however, you can write a book that will sell.

Get more tips on how to write, both from myself and from other authors, in my book Strategic Self-Publishing.

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7 Things that Help Me Write 100,000 Words Every Month

12/25/2015

2 Comments

I write a lot.

You probably saw that number I put up at the beginning of the month, the 166,930 words that I wrote in November.

That was my 10th month of more than 100,000 words this year (I had 85,000 in April).

In 2014 I had 11 months of 100,000+ words (May got me that year) and in 2013 I had 6 months.

So most months I put out a lot.

How do I do that?

I’d like to explain how I do that by outlining my daily routine and work habits. I’ll do that in 7 examples.

Who knows – maybe you’ll get some ideas that bump your word count as well.

#1: Work Early

I get up in the morning everyday, usually around 7:30 or so…maybe a little later on the weekend.

I have a wife and son and they have to get off to the real world to do stuff.

The good news is that I get up. Oftentimes I can get a couple hundred words right there, if I’m working on a novel.

That’s the thing – when I’m writing a book (novels, mostly) I’ll usually have that on the top of my list.

That means first thing upon the computer warming up enough for me to use it, I’ll pull up a section of the book and start writing.

I do this a lot and I’ve done it on many books.

It works.

More than that, however, first thing in the morning you have a lot of words. Good job – now do a word count on your word processor and jot that number down on your notebook.

Oh, you don’t have a notebook?

#2: Have a To-Do List

Sitting beside my computer I have a small $0.99 to $1.99 notebook that’s 4 x 5.5 inches.

I have about 5 more of them in a drawer in the spare room.

Each of them has pages of days that usually have 10 items written up. Below that I have a section where I put my word count.

Folks, you cannot write a lot of words if you’re not counting them!

It’s like catching a fish this big and bragging about it at the bar – without proof, no one cares.

Daily to-do lists make it easier to get things done

So that’s my page for the day I started this post.

Things like that keep you on track. It always surprises me how much I get done when I say, ‘oh…alright – I’ll do one damn thing on that list, but just a little bit!’

A lot gets done that way.

#3 Breakfast Routine

How do you eat breakfast?

Do you do it at the table, reading the newspaper?

Is it in the car, driving through traffic?

How about in the office, when you’re supposed to be working?

Maybe it’s not at all, because you just don’t think that meal is important?

I’ll tell you how I eat breakfast. It’s at my computer while I’m looking at my 18 morning content sites (a lot fewer now that I’ve put up my 2-month follow up case study post).

What I do is eat a bit of my extra-dry oatmeal, chewing on it while reading and writing on those sites.

Oh, yeah…did I forget to mention it? I write comments.

Yep, I write comments and I cut and paste those comments into a document. At the end of the day I do a word count on that.

Sometimes it’s 200 words for the day. Sometimes it’s 2,000.

Now, some will say those words shouldn’t count. I’m not one of them.

#4: Multitask and Transition Well

Alright, when I’m at those sites in the morning something else I’m doing is organizing and analyzing that content via my browser’s tabs.

When I find a good post, or maybe when I’m all done reading through all the sites, I’ll write up the best posts.

I do that to make my Midweek Content Roundup post each week.

Those typically stretch into the 2,000-range so we’re only talking about 8,000 to 10,000 words a month right there.

What I also do, however, is add a bit more on Google+ when I share 3 to 4 of those articles.

Again, this is cut and put into the comment section, or sometimes rewritten for the roundup post.

It’s just another way to get extra words. More, it’s a way to transition from similar tasks in a way that keeps your productivity going.

That’s how large word counts can come about.

#5: I Know How to Type

This one seems pretty easy, but a lot of people don’t know how to type, or if they do, it’s too slow.

I’m not sure what my words per minute is, but it’s surely more than 100 and probably approaching 200.

I can write like it’s a stream of consciousness because I so often tap into the subconscious while doing it.

You do this a lot too, like when you’re driving or washing the dishes. You can just see things in your head and if you can translate that into your fingers moving across the keys, you get a lot done.

I had a hard time learning how to type. It was in 1996 or so at Helena High and I was in Mr. Wood’s keyboarding class.

The fact that it was just before lunch and I was usually hungry then didn’t help. There was a hot girl sitting next to me too, and that didn’t help.

Mainly, though, I was worried about mistakes. I was really slow because of that until one day I said ‘to hell with it’ and went for speed over accuracy.

After awhile the accuracy came back, this time fueled with speed.

So…learn how to type.

#6 Clear Delineation of Tasks

I feel that one of the reasons so many people have a hard time writing anything of quantity is because they get off-task.

It’s hard staying on top of things.

Even my simple little list is hard to follow on some days. Still, it’s there. Also, you have to stay active.

One way I do this is by segmenting the day further. Here’s a look at after breakfast/lunch:

Content Work: I have paid work and I have work that I do for myself. So far we’ve talked about the work I do for myself. When I get done with that I do any content writing jobs I have for others. Typically these are blog posts about an industry or niche or content/services pages for some type of business. This gives me a few hundred to a few thousand words most days.

Blog Posts: I work on two main blogs each day – my writing blog and my Montana blog. Oftentimes I’ll get a spark of creativity from something I read online, see on Twitter, or hear on the radio news. That fuels my Montana blog, which is geared toward current events. For writing, I often get ideas after my morning content roundup routine. If I choose to write those down in a blog post I’ll get a few hundred to a couple thousand words. That’s a draft and over a day or two I’ll refine that and tally the words.

Project Work: What I do for these couple of hours after breakfast is skip around between my work and the work of others. I also skip around on my various projects. I’m always working on a novel or nonfiction book, so I can work on that. Often there are other books in progress, however, so something always gets done. That’s the thing – variety spurs you to do more when you might not otherwise want to.

Alright, let’s get to lunch.

I eat a small meal, watch a bit of news, and then when I’m still sitting at the table there, my dirty plate or bowl still sitting there, I often start writing a few hundred words.

Sometimes this stretches into a thousand. Oftentimes it’s something that I felt motivated to write after watching the news.

Really, you see something and get passionate to write. That really gets the fingers moving and that pushes the word count up quickly.

#7 Repeat All Day

After that you’ve done a lot for the day. A lot of it comes down to repeating it, working a bit more on what you did in the morning.

Do that again after dinner. I do that. I don’t watch TV and since I don’t do much with other people I have even more time.

Most evenings I take a hot bath. Afterward I feel refreshed and can write more.

Find little things like that that can help you break up the day, stay motivated, energized.

That’s what I do. That’s how I get more than 100,000 words a month.

Maybe you don’t want to do that. That’s perfectly fine. There are also tons of ways to get more words through other methods.

For me, it just comes down to doing the work.

Being passionate and caring about your subjects helps. Being motivated by money to work for others also helps.

Remember, I don’t have a day job so I have to write content, I have to write everyday.

So those are my tips. I hope they help you or give you some ideas.

Anyone can write. It just comes down to doing it.

Get this book and get 600 more pages of ideas

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Using Mousetraps to Pace Your Thriller Novel

7/28/2015

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I finished my 23rd novel today.

It’s called Flight 370 and I’m getting a POD cover made for it right now. When that’s done I’ll upload the POD version to Createspace and have a proof copy sent to me. When it arrives I’ll sit down in my chair and read through it with a pen, circling any typos I see, perhaps changing a line here and there if need be. And then it’s done – I’ll release the book on all the retailers and move on to the next one.

That’s the process I follow now when I write books. I find that reading through the POD copy is the best final proof, and it’s also a good way to read your story after letting it sit for a week or so (I feel that letting a book sit for months is wholly unnecessary, unless you’re highbrow).

Going at your book with fresh eyes is important. It gives you perspective and allows you to find plot holes and other mishaps that the reader may encounter. A large part of that is pacing, and how action is interspersed with the ‘slow parts.’

I’d like to talk about that today, and I’ll be calling the idea ‘mousetraps.’ The reason for this is that Russell Blake brought this idea to my attention back in April with a post he wrote called Better Mousetraps, one I profiled in Midweek Content Roundup #55.

This is the gist of what Blake is getting at:

Here’s how I do it: First, I ensure that if it’s an action book, there are sufficient beats to keep the reader engaged. I do this visually, as I outline (I do single sentence summaries of each chapter, usually in three acts, approximately 15 chapters per act), by color coding my chapters with action beats or reversals. So if my typical book has, say, 45 chapters, and I don’t have a beat every two or three chapters, it’s probably going to be a snoozefest. I’d rather know that going in and contrive more story than discover I lack beats once written.

I take this advice seriously, because Russell Blake knows how to write books that sell. It’s why Clive Cussler contacted him a while back and suggested they write a book together. So when I started to get back into writing this novel a couple months ago, I decided to come at it with that mousetrap approach. To do that I used color coding, which goes like this:

Red: Action Scenes;
Blue: Story Building;
Green: Reversals.

When I apply that to my story/chapter outline, this is what it looks like:

Part I – The Operation
1 – Signing Off
2 – A Bumpy Ride
3 – Touching Down
4 – Sri Lanka
5 – On the Ground
6 – A Done Job
7 – Cheap Surroundings
8 – Up and Running
9 – Turning Her Around
10 – Fire on the Runway

Part II – Pulling Back the Lens
11 – Shooting Down a Plane
12 – Word in Washington
13 – A Lift Down
14 – Malevolent Forces at Work
15 – Cleaning House
16 – Racing to Friends
17 – The Twelve Apostles
18 – Into Iraq
19 – Smoke-Filled Rooms
20 – The Praetorians

Part III – The Front Lines
21 – A Botched Beheading
22 – Hidden Identities
23 – Next Moves
24 – The Spread
25 – An Old Haunt
26 – Lining up the Dominoes
27 – Rallying the Troops
28 – Lone Wolf
29 – Hitting Home
30 – Detractors

Part IV – The Missing Piece
31 – The Changing of the Guard
32 – Meltdown
33 – Hearing the News
34 – White Smoke
35 – A Roman Holiday
36 – Somali Slums
37 – All Aboard
38 – Eskan Village
39 – Coming to America
40 – On His Tail
41 – A Tuesday Morning in New York
42 – Into Thin Air

Now, that’s my finished chapter list. When I was actually doing this, it was a lot messier. I figured I’d save you from the nitty-gritty of how books get done.

So let’s break this down a bit.

Story building is what you want to avoid, but it’s like the mortar holding the bricks of the house together – you need it. That doesn’t mean you need a lot of it, however, so use your story and character building sparingly, just like that mortar.

I go for a lot of those reversals because it’s a way to continue building the story while ratcheting up the tension and suspense. You get the same physiological response as you would from an action scene, that edge of your seat feel, but you’re still building up, moving up the steps of that rising action arc that leads to your climax and ultimate conclusion. Here’s what Blake says about this:

I also try for as many reversals as I can achieve. She’s being chased, the situation reverses, she’s now the hunter, the prey eludes her, and doubles back, putting her in harm’s way again. She was on top, now she’s scrambling. The love interest was making advances, now he’s distant. Reversals make it interesting. The more the merrier, and if you can achieve multiples within a chapter, so much the better.

Besides that it’s the character and story building, which you see in blue. There’s quite a bit of that, and you want to have a balance…sort of. I’m worried about a few areas of Flight 370, including:

The 5 chapters of “slow” stuff in a row in Part I;

The 4 chapters of “slow” stuff at the end of Part II;

The 4 chapters of story building in a row in Part III.

Is there something I can do about that, or were the earlier action scenes leading up to that sufficient to keep the reader’s attention? I’d say that you really want to be thinking about this as it applies to your first few chapters. That’s going to be your ‘Look Inside’ on Amazon, and you want to really grab the reader with it. In other words, that’s the last place you want blue text appearing in your chapter outline.

Conclusion

Pacing is important for thriller novels, or any novel for that matter. You want to grab the reader’s attention, and keep it. That’s hard to do for a 200- or 300-page book, but with the right mix of story building and reversals thrown in, you can do it.

I’ll be thinking of these things when I give Flight 370 its final edit here in a week or so. Maybe I’ll change some things because of those slow parts I mentioned. Maybe I won’t. Either way, I feel that I made this thriller novel a lot better because I knew the importance of pacing, and how to break it up. Hopefully you’ve picked something up that will help your novel. Happy writing!

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My Writing Projects are Stalled

3/8/2015

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Remember how last month I said that I’d have some new books out, like a new John Colter novel and a new Montana history book?

Yeah, well…that’s not going to be happening.

Late in February I got a few big writing jobs from different people around the world. These require most of my attention, so my other stuff has to wait.

I’m not that disappointed – most of the work I have right now involves writing history or political-style stuff or even conspiracy-style stuff at times, and I enjoy that. Plus I’m getting paid well.

Let me tell you – getting paid well really makes things nice. For several months this year I won’t have to worry about picking up shit writing jobs, paying bills, or contemplating a ‘real job.’ Yes, I managed to stumble on some good jobs. I got lucky, I got blessed.

What are these shit writing jobs that I’m referencing, you ask? You can figure out what many are like by reading my old series, Adventures in SEO. Mainly, though, they look like this:

Writing website content pages for websites that really suck, or have no chance of ever not sucking, or will likely go out of business soon;

Writing health-related content for websites that want to cash-in on people getting sick and looking for “professional” medical advice;

Writing financial-related eBooks, which although you can learn a lot through research, just aren’t my favorite thing to write;

Writing for people in India or Bangladesh or Pakistan or a few other places, for these people are hell to negotiate and do business with.

Those are just a few things, but I don’t really have to worry about them for a few months.

That’s such a great feeling!

Unfortunately, my own work suffers. Perhaps that’s an oxymoron, as many would say my work has done nothing but, though I still like doing it.

Perhaps I can squeeze in a bit here and there, and make progress. Anyways, I just wanted to let you know, in case you were expecting some hot new releases this month.

Thanks for reading!

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How to Write is New and Updated

3/2/2015

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I’m happy to announce that my book How to Write is updated.

What does this mean?

When the book was first put out in November, it was 529 pages and just over 104,000 words. I’ve since added to it, which means it comes in at 667 pages and 124,000 words.

You’re getting a lot of writing advice here, and for the price of $4.99, it’s a real value. Honestly, I don’t think you’d get that kind of value at a university.

First, university writing programs will typically charge you $10,000 or more, and that’s just for one year out of four;

Next, many university writing professors don’t have a lot of books out, or if they do, these books don’t make a lot of money;

Then, even fewer adjunct professors and teaching aides have books out, and those will most likely be your “teachers” for the first couple of years;

Finally, how are you going to learn how to write in school?

The only real way to write is by learning how through practice. And everyone knows that university students procrastinate more than anything. I did it, you did it…and that doesn’t lead to words on the page.

I practiced and I have the books on the shelf to prove it. I also have the sales to go along with those books, though they’re not that impressive.

You get that honesty in this book, and you get tips on how to write. You get a lot more, as the 140-chapter table of contents makes clear.

Check the book out on Amazon and read the first few chapters. If you don’t pick up any new tips, don’t buy the book. But if you do get a new idea, maybe spending $4.99 is a good idea. After all, it’ll put you ahead of about 75% of the struggling authors out there, authors that have no clue how to succeed.

You do, though – you’re reading this site. Now go read this book.

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How I Work with Everyday People to Get Books on Amazon

2/26/2015

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Each week people contact me by email and sometimes by phone.

They want to know if I can help them get a book on Amazon.

Sometimes they have something to work with.

Sometimes they just have an idea.

Sometimes they have a completed book and just need direction on what to do next.

Sometimes they’ve tried to do things themselves but found it damn near impossible.

So what can I do?

If someone has a book, this is what we can do to get your book on Amazon by the end of the week:

Take your cover drawing or idea and give it to a professional artist. Then get that image sized-up with layout into a 1563x2500 JPEG cover for Amazon.

Format your MS Word document into a standard template that will work for Amazon and look good on a Kindle eReader.

Get you a bit of eBook marketing so people actually see this book and it gets some sales on its launch date and you get onto a Top 100 chart in your genre.

If you do those things you have a chance. And while we’re at it, why not get the POD cover and get it into a Createspace template so you can have physical copies to hand out to friends and family?

Those are all things I do, and I’ve done them with my own books. It’s why people contact me.

You can contact me too – just use my contact form and tell me where you’re at. I’m certain I can help.

When it comes to that book cover, I think the cost really depends on what you want to spend on art and how you want that cover to look. Here are some ideas on that in a post called 10 Master Deviant Art Artists for Your eBook Covers.

If you don't want to do any editing then it's pretty simple after that art. But…do you want to get a print copy too with Createspace? That's a bit more because you need a different cover. But remember, then you’re in print – a real author!

What I need to do is format your book and upload it on Amazon, but you need to create the Amazon account and give Amazon your bank account info to get the book live on Amazon. Yeah, bank account info – you want to get paid, right?

Typically if I’m uploading the book for someone I’ll get their username and password and do everything but the financial information. They fill that out and hit publish and then change their username and password.

For the marketing end of things, you have to have the book live then contact some direct email marketing sites that email about 5,000 to 20,000 people that are interested in that book genre.

So costs:

Cover art and layout: $40 to $100 or more
Createspace Cover: $10 to $20
Formatting and upload: $50
Marketing: $30 to $75 or more

Total cost = $130 to $245 or more

That’s just base cost, not counting what I charge. And we didn’t even get into editing. So if you want to do that $130 range, I’d say give me $200 and we can get all that done. If you want to go more expensive, no problem – I’ll take a fee for doing all this headache-inducing stuff for you. In a few days or a week I’ll email you and say let’s do the final steps and get this book live on Amazon in 24 hours.

From there it’s simple, and then you’re done. It’s a pretty good way to get your ideas out there, and it doesn’t cost a lot.

So if you’ve been thinking of getting that book on Amazon, contact me and let’s get it done.

That way you can tell everyone you wrote a book. More importantly, you can show them where to buy it.

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<<Previous

Don’t Write Me Off Yet

How I’m Doing NaNo This Year

NaNoWriMo 2016 Draws Near

How and Why I Write Novels Differently Now

I Write Shorter Chapters

I Think About POV

I Describe Less

I Have Less History

I Focus on Plot

Conclusion

Building Suspense and Keeping a Reader’s Interest

Ideas from Other Authors on Story-Building

New eBook Promotion Sites I Found Out About

Conclusion

7 Things that Help Me Write 100,000 Words Every Month

Using Mousetraps to Pace Your Thriller Novel

My Writing Projects are Stalled

How to Write is New and Updated

How I Work with Everyday People to Get Books on Amazon

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

I Write Shorter Chapters

​I Think About POV

I Describe Less

I Have Less History

​I Focus on Plot

Conclusion

​Ideas from Other Authors on Story-Building

New eBook Promotion Sites I Found Out About

Conclusion

Writing Blogby Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

Categories

My Books(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

I Think About POV

I Focus on Plot

Ideas from Other Authors on Story-Building

Writing Blog
by Greg Strandberg

My Books
(By Publication Date, New to Old)