Weekly Round-Up

Weekly Round-Up

Sorry for the hiatus in my content, I have been extremely busy with editing and it has not allowed time for creating content, and I spent the first two weeks of April visiting family in Zimbabwe. Don’t worry: I won’t bore you with my holiday photos.

This post has something for everyone. There are links to some great advice as well as some interesting news from PRH who plan to reward readers for their loyalty. I’ve also included some great book suggestions.

Articles

Penguin Random House in the US has launched a ‘Reader Rewards Loyalty Program’, a free promotional initiative that lets readers earn one free book for every 12 PRH titles they purchase.

Recommendations

5 Secrets of Story Structure: How to Write a Novel That Stands Out (Helping Writers Become Authors Book 6)

by K. M. Weiland

 

Want to take your writing to the next level? Discover the “secrets” of story structure other authors are overlooking!

If you’ve read all the books on story structure and concluded there has to be more to it than just three acts and a couple of plot points, then you’re absolutely right! It’s time to notch up your writing education from “basic” to “black belt.” Internationally-published author K.M. Weiland shares five “secret” techniques of advanced story structure.

In the multi-award-winning Structuring Your Novel, Weiland showed writers how to use a strong three-act structure to build a story with the greatest possible impact on readers. Now it’s time to take that knowledge to the next level.

In this supplemental book, you’ll learn:

    • Why the Inciting Event isn’t what you’ve always thought it is
    • What your Key Event is and how to stop putting it in the wrong scene
    • How to identify your Pinch Points—and why they can make the middle of your book easier to write
    • How to create the perfect Moment of Truth to move your protagonist from reaction to action
    • How to ace your story’s Climactic Moment every single time

And much more!

By the time you’ve finished this quick read, you’ll know more about story structure than the vast majority of aspiring authors will ever know—and you’ll be ready to write an amazing novel that stands above the crowd.

Outline Your Novel

by K. M. Weiland

Can Outlining Help You Write a Better Story? Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly wielded, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal.Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success will:•Help you choose the right type of outline for you•Guide you in brainstorming plot ideas•Aid you in discovering your characters•Show you how to structure your scenes•Explain how to format your finished outline•Instruct you in how to use your outline•Reveal the benefits•Dispel the misconceptions include exclusive interviews with ten respected authors, answering important questions about outlining. Outlining can organize your writing and help you take your stories to the next level. Find out how!

Edit Ready: How to make your book as good as you can, before you send it to an editor.

By Harry Dewulf

 

Edit Ready is an author’s reference book for use during story development, writing and both self editing and when you get your manuscript back from your editor.

Put like that, it sounds rather dry, but reference books always do.

Actually, though, although it has an exhaustive contents page, three different indices and 6 appendices, this is not a dry reference book. In fact, the ink is never dry for long.

Because Edit Ready is compiled from notes, guidance, teaching and conversation with authors, while working with them to make their manuscripts as good as they can, but also, to help them to become better authors.

Every time I edit a book, I look at the topics that arise, and try to find a way of generalizing the help and advice I give to its author, so that I can pass the advice on to all authors.

So really, Edit Ready is an attempt to avoid editing, by ensuring you know in advance about anything and everything that your editor has to deal with. The idea is that this will make you a better writer.

Speaker for the Dead

by Orson Scott Card

A FALLEN HERO – HAUNTED BY HIS PAST, BUT CAN HE CHANGE THE FUTURE?

Ender Wiggin was once considered a great military leader, a saviour for mankind.
But now history judges his destruction of an alien race as monstrous rather than heroic.

In the aftermath of the war, Ender disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story behind the battle with the aliens. Now, years later, a second alien race has been discovered. But again they are strange and frightening – and again, humans are dying.

It is only the Speaker for the Dead, secretly Ender Wiggin, who has the courage to confront the mystery . . . and the truth.

The Hugo and Nebula award-winning sequel to the classic science fiction novel Ender’s Game

Broken Empire

By E. A. Copen

In an empire where political power is everything, Captain Timothy Val wants one thing: to serve his empire with honor and distinction. But after a mission to quell a revolt goes terribly wrong, Timothy is branded a traitor and barely escapes with his life. His only hope of regaining his lost honor and clearing his family name rests in the hands of a senator planning to use him as the face of a revolution.

With an intergalactic war looming and civil unrest spreading through the empire, Timothy must tread carefully. Assassins wait around every corner, and his new allies have made him powerful enemies, enemies that may not be entirely human.

Tuesday Round Up | 22/01/2019

Tuesday Round Up | 22/01/2019

Good morning!

Welcome to another Tuesday round-up. This week we have another great podcast from The Creative Penn (okay, total fangirl) discussing running a one-person business, the Kobo Writing Life talks about podcasting as content marketing., and the Writership podcast discusses scene and story resolutions. In articles, we have two very informative articles on shrinking author incomes, and another on corporate censorship and their unchecked power. I’ve not had time to check out videos for this week’s round-up, but hopefully, I’ll be able to gather a few links for next week. 

Happy reading!

Articles

The Disastrous Decline in Author Incomes Isn’t Just Amazon’s Fault

The bookselling behemoth is making life harder for writers, but so is the public perception that art doesn’t need to be paid for.

Publisher's Weekly | Breaking Down Financial Woes for Writers

In an effort to gather as much information as possible about how much authors earned in 2017, the Authors Guild conducted its largest income survey ever last summer, reaching beyond the guild’s own members to include 14 other writing and publishing organizations. In all, the survey drew 5,067 responses from authors published by traditional publishers and from hybrid and self-published authors as well.

Corporate Censorship Is a Serious, and Mostly Invisible, Threat to Publishing

When state or civil authorities blacklist books, the act is correctly labeled censorship. But what is the word when corporations order their subsidiaries to snuff out information?

Podcasts

The Creative Penn | How To Be A Successful Company Of One With Paul Jarvis

What if you could scale your revenue without growing your expenses? What if you could make a living with your writing but still remain alone in your writing room? I discuss these questions and more today with Paul Jarvis.

In the intro, I talk about second-hand book sales [Dean Wesley Smith], how the death of poet Mary Oliver can help deepen our writing [listen to her on the On Being Podcast], why ‘sparking joy‘ is so important (referencing Marie Kondo on Netflix), plus the Kickstarter for Intellectual Property Tracking.

Kobo Writing Life | Ep 133 – Let’s Talk Podcasting with Amanda Cupido

n this week’s episode, Cristina sits down with author and podcast producer Amanda Cupido to talk about her book Let’s Talk Podcasting: The Essential Guide to Doing it Right. Amanda talks about how she got into podcasts, the difference between podcasts and older media such as radio, and she discusses the underrepresented voices in the podcasting community. Amanda also shares her tips for starting your own podcast and the most common roadblock that aspiring podcasters encounter.

Writership Podcast | Ep. 136: Resolutions

We all have some idea of what a resolution is, but what are these scene and story-enders meant to do? In this episode, I explore scene and story resolutions in the context of C. Gabriel Wright’s LBGTQ love story, “Someone.” The editorial mission encourages you to collect resolutions by reading and watching stories—and from your own life. 

Ten Tips to Help You Avoid Telling Writing | Scribendi.com

10 powerful tips on avoiding telling writing in creative writing.

“Creative writing teachers love to dole out wisdom or advice about fiction writing, as if they’re part of some esoteric order that guarantees enlightenment to all who memorize their pearls of wisdom. One of the most often quoted axioms is: “Show, don’t tell.” The idea is to keep students from explaining the story, that is, to stop them from using telling writing and get them to use showing writing instead.”

Source: Ten Tips to Help You Avoid Telling Writing | Scribendi.com

Look what came in the post this morning!

Look what came in the post this morning!

Since 2011, while looking after my three delightful [read as you deem most appropriate] children (7, 5 and 3), I have been studying with the Open University.  Today I got my certificate. It’s kind of a weird feeling actually.  While it marks the end of five years of extremely hard work, it also marks the beginning of something.  What that something is, is not quite what I had initially intended because I needed a better degree than this to take that road. I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed, but the world is full of disappointed graduates and I am not prepared to let my efforts, thus far, go to waste, or let others set horizons of my ability anymore.

degree-cert-001

My certificate!

 

Courses (Part 2)

Okay, make that four online courses.  Queue the statement “My name is Anna, and I am a study addict.” Why have I done this?  Simply put, to make me better equipped at helping the authors who come to me for my services. I digress.

Harry DeWulf has very generously given me a voucher to take his Read Worthy Fiction Course (and inadvertently enabled my addiction to self driven distance study). I’m currently listening to the audio files for the first two lessons and madly jotting down ideas for my first 500 words. In keeping with the theme of the course, I intend to publish my finished article but I am undecided about how.  I am considering an episodic approach to publishing. Right here on this blog.  I have (probably unwisely) decided to allow my readers have a say on this.

[polldaddy poll=9542330]

I should probably go away now and consider what I have actually let myself in for…

Additional information.

  • Harry Dewulf can be found on Twitter @densewords.
  • The Read Worthy Fiction Course is available via Udemy.com and normally costs £95. I have placed a link to his website in the sidebar of my main website but you can find links to his courses here. I highly recommend his advice.