deannaknippling.com

If I collected all the reviews I’ve written over the years, I would probably have enough to make a novel.

But when I don’t record what I read somehow, I pick up books that I’ve read before from the library or the bookstore or whatever.  I do.  I seriously do, especially series books and nonfiction.

If I did nothing but write fiction all day, I’d have more books and stories out, and I’d be a better writer.

But if I didn’t connect to anyone–I’d be too lonely and depressed to write.

If I never wrote another review, I’d never have to worry about alienating a reader with something I’ve written, for example, if I didn’t care for their favorite author’s latest book as much as they did.  And I’d never have to cope with the Blog Comments from Hell.

But if I didn’t give props to the people who inspire me, that’s just sad.  And if I had to live in fear of what I say all the time, I might as well quit writing now.

—

I’ve been back and forth on the subject of writing reviews lately:  should I or shouldn’t I?  I went a while without writing them after going to a workshop where I saw–in person I saw–an editor judge someone based on something that the editor had specifically been told they couldn’t judge writers on.  It was terrifying.  Suddenly all I could think was, “What if someone judges me for something I blog about?  What if someone judges me based on a review?  Oh crap, Facebook.” And so on.

So I mostly quit blogging, quit writing reviews.  Stopped doing a lot of things on Facebook that might, someday, get held against me.

In the case of Facebook, I feel like I’m doing the right thing, because the kind of posts that I started holding back on were the kind that made me mad when other people posted the same type.  Facebook is different than blogging–not by much, but enough.  When you post, your entries show up in other people’s feeds, and a lot of time, just skimming through Facebook entries, you can easily get dragged down by negativity and hate and resentment and repetition.  And more repetition.  And more…

Blogs?  They’re different because you have to go to a blog on purpose.  The entries have titles: a hint as to what you’re getting into.   You can get surprised, but you have a choice to get surprised.  In Facebook, you can get dragged down into despair from a thousand directions without having to make more than one click.  Twitter, too.

And book reviews?  You have to go looking for them, most of the time.  You have to want to know.

That’s not to say reviews and blogs don’t need some gentleness.  They do.  Blogs and reviews need to be generous, I think.  And short, because novels are otherwise not getting written.  Short stories.  This blog is easily a flash fiction–about 500 words.

But I didn’t get into this writing business in order to not express myself.  There’s wisdom…and then there’s life.   Now that I know a little more of the cost of being out in the world, I’ll do it differently.  But I still want to be there.

Writer Friends in COS/DEN area: I want to try something weird, a collaborative novel project using a particular technique. The specifics (like genre) will vary on who/how many/where the people are who want to jump in. I want to run this something like a writer group, where we meet for a couple of hours and write: like, 1/2hr kibitiz, an alarm goes off, and we speed-write for an hour or so, the alarm goes off, and done.

I want this to be a NON STRESS project, a fun/learning project. There will be no critiquing. When we’re done we can decide what, if anything, to do with it. This is just to get writing and look at plotting.

OWNers and people taking the DWS online workshops: This is the novel-in-a-weekend project, just not in a weekend.

Drop me a line if you’re interested, and I’ll get a conversation started somewhere convenient.

You can get it at these places, with more to come: Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords.

Red Meat Riding Hood

by DeAnna Knippling

Once upon a time…in some very strange woods indeed.

Once upon a time in a forest so far away as to be entirely unlike the forests that you get around here, a little girl realized that it was time to grow up and go out into the world, despite the best intentions of everyone around her.

And so she set off in search of Grandmother’s house, for Grandmother was known as entirely strange sort of person who had left the path—all paths—behind.

She took a basket that looked like an egg and felt like an egg but was really the shellacked pages of books, from which the words had escaped or been elided, containing an umbrella that would keep off the rain of other people’s dreams, and a persimmon that was a cure for all doubt, and set off from the words that anyone could know…

A surreal retelling of a young woman’s journey through an unknown and unknowable forest.

Congratulations to everyone who entered the contest!  Here were the rules, which I put up at the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference:

Do you have what it takes to write a perfect short story?  Me either.  So we’re not going for “Great.” We’re going for “Done.”
Rules:

• Your character is an insecure traveler who is obsessed with obtaining something in particular.  You get to pick what they’re obsessed about.
• An ancient ruin in the middle of a forest.  Any place, any time, doesn’t have to be our world.
• Your character is about to get married to the wrong person (whether they know it or not).
• Story AND PROOF OF SUBMISSION must be emailed to dknippling@gmail.com by midnight Wednesday, April 24

Prizes:

• $50 Amazon Gift Card for first story received.
• Two $25 Amazon Gift Cards drawn from all stories received by deadline.
• No other judging will be performed.  Goofy?  Serious?  Planet destroyed by aliens, the end?  All we care about is done!

The point of all this?

• To help motivate people to write, finish what they write, and submit what they write (look up Heinlein’s Rules sometime).
• To take perfection out of the equation and just have fun!

Here are the results:

We had 10 entries.  Yay!  Each entrant had a one-in-ten chance of winning.   But wait…

Of the 10 entries, in the end, five didn’t give proof that they submitted the story to a market.  Upon rereading the directions, I allowed that it might have been easy to overlook that requirement, so I emailed all the people who didn’t send proof to let them know…and still ended up with five who didn’t get back to me.

Which mean that each entrant had a one-in-five chance of winning.  But wait…

Of the five remaining entries, two were received past the deadline.

Which mean that each entrant had a one-in-three chance of winning.  But wait…

There are three prizes.

So!  Everyone who followed directions…gets an Amazon gift card out of this.  I’ll reveal names in a minute.

Other items of interest:

• Wordcount ranged from 705 to 5700 words.
• Genres submitted: SF, Fantasy, Adventure (Mainstream or, mmm, maybe Thriller on that one), Modern fairytale (fantasy), Western Romance, Romance, Fantasy, Pulp Adventure (Mainstream or Mystery/Crime, depending on how the writer was feeling about markets that day), Magic Realism (Mainstream or Fantasy), and Mainstream Fiction (that could easily slide into Mystery/Crime with a few edits).

Two of the stories used the same-ish setting (Mexico), but in commmpletely different ways.

What did we learn out of this?

• ME: Write clearer directions.  WRITERS:  If submission guidelines aren’t clear–ask.  And follow up on feedback ASAP!
• ME: Specify standard manuscript format.  WRITERS:  Always submit your work in standard manuscript format unless specifically instructed otherwise.  I prefer Times New Roman subs, but hey, Courier’s cool.  Do not show up at your writer-job-interview wearing bunny slippers.  Sadly: LOTS of bunny slippers here.
• ME: You have to draw the line somewhere.  WRITERS:  Deadline, deadline, deadline.
• ME:  People were a lot more positive about this than I expected.  However, a lot of people I remember saying “Oh, what a cool idea” didn’t send anything.  A couple of people told me that they started but didn’t finish (extra props to them…but no $).  WRITERS:  No, you can’t chase down every opportunity that comes your way, but you should be chasing down as many as you can.  Repeatedly.  Because often if you follow the directions…you win.

Where the stories any good?  Ahhh, that wasn’t part of the contest, was it?  But let me say – they were stories, no better or worse than what I see come through the slush pile.

Great job to everyone who participated!  Keep working on professionalism…you’re already ahead of the people who didn’t turn anything in.  As for the people who didn’t submit:  You can’t win if you don’t play.  Rejection isn’t losing, it’s just a busted lottery ticket

Winners!

• First in – John K. Patterson ($50 gift card).
• In by deadline – Dori McCraw ($25 gift card).
• In by deadline – AmyBeth Inverness ($25 gift card).

Thanks all, and we’ll have to do this again sometime

Right, at the last minute I decided to not submit to my own contest, but to just write for it using the same parameters.  I’m itching to write something fun and fast today, and I don’t have a lot of time.  We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, here’s my steps:

1) Pick genre (and market).  I’m planning to submit to Neverland’s Library: 9:37 a.m.

Neverland’s Library will be an anthology focusing on the rediscovery of the fantastic; magic, dragons, the supernatural, etc. We are looking for stories which highlight finding that which was once thought lost, incorporating fantastical and/or fictitious elements. We will not restrict how the story is told. All styles, settings, and tones are welcome.

2) Wrote log line and blogged.  9:57 a.m.

An insecure school teacher obsessed with finding a fiction blade, Flamestriker, from one of her favorite novels, flees her wedding to go to a lost temple in southern Mexico to find it.  But when she finds it, will she be strong enough to keep it from murdering her handsome tour guide…or her archaeologist fiance?

Updates:

Opening done, 275 words.  10:21.

First try/fail cycle done, 803 words.  10:49.  Hungry, time to make some ramen.

Second try/fail cycle done, 1726 words.   11:50, with 20-minute break for lunch.  I went sliiightly overboard on this section, almost 1000 words.

Third try/fail cycle done, 2152 words.  12:12.  Poor, poor Elaine.

Climax done, 3054 words.  1:09.  Galadriel goes into the West.

Validation done, 3400 words. 1:21.

Ugh, editing.  The joy of writing is collapsed like a souffle poked by the brutal fork of analysis.

Time to quote myself:

The temple itself isn’t terribly large.  Once past the intimidating exterior and the baleful glares of monkeys stuffing their faces with cockroaches and mangoes, sunning themselves, and picking bugs out of each others’ fur in the dawn light, it is cool inside, and deliciously free of bugs, although admittedly the ammonia from the bat guano burnt my nose and lungs severely, to the point of coughing a few thin trickles of blood.  The stones are rather plain and free of carving, except for the first few dozen feet of the entrance hall.  For all I know, the twisted, grotesque carvings could mean, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” or “Twelve bedrooms, two baths, no insects!!! If you love bats, call Nahuatl Chimalli, 555-9973.”

Done editing.  3652 words.

Sent to Neverland’s Library and reported on Duotrope.com.  2:04.

Total time: about four hours.  That is, about four hours and 20 minutes, less 20 minutes for lunch.  (I also took another 10 minute break in there while I was working out the ending and did dishes.  Cleaning things helps put my thoughts in order.)

Final note:

Successfully ignoring the voice in my head–shouting–”You suck you suck you suck!!!!”  That is, I hear it, but now that I’ve clicked “Send” it’s too late for it to do anything about it!  Now off to do the editing and 1001 other things I’m already behind on.  But I feel pretty good anyway.

What tools do we need as writers?  How are they different from the tools we needed and learned as readers?

There is a difference.

For example, readers learn that well-rounded characters are interesting, but how do you write a well-rounded character, if you don’t have an innate sense of what a well-rounded character is?  Readers learn how to recognize one when they see one.  But that, alone, doesn’t make you a writer of well-rounded characters, or of any character at all.  What if you’ve read plenty of examples of well-rounded characters, and your characters still fall flat?

I”m trying to reconstruct what the writer tools are.  I’m at that point, I guess.

Today: my current guesses as to character, setting, and problem.  I’m using the Algis Budrys seven-point plot outline, for reasons I won’t get into here.

1. A character
2. in a setting
3. with a problem
4. which the character tries to solve
5. only to experience unexpected failure
6. followed by either victory or defeat, leaving a need for
7. validation.

Character

I ended up with three traits to make a character:

• An attitude
• A role in society
• A background

A character is a fictional person with an attitude, role in society, and background.  I think this is a good starting point for discussion, because by combining these three elements, you can end up with interesting characters to write about.

• A rude waitress from 1950s Alabama
• A disdainful Viscount from 1810 Yorkshire
• A dreamy-eyed cook from ancient Egypt

This should at least tell you whether you have the right name, clothes, and dialogue for the character when you start writing. You can always round out the character by making them have two conflicting elements, like “A rude but tender-hearted Asian waitress from 1950s Alabama,” or “A disdainful Viscount with a flair for engineering from 1810 Yorkshire,” or “A dreamy-eyed, pinch-fisted Greek cook from ancient Egypt.”

Setting

With setting, I narrowed it down to three (but possibly four, depending on the story) elements.  You can really go nuts (and should, if that’s what you like) on working out historical fact, or rules for how things operate, or maps, or how people dress, or whether a certain word fits in the time period (my favorite), or any other of a thousand different things.  But here’s my guess at the basics.

• A place
• A time
• An opinion
• (Optional) How far from reality it is.

A setting is a place and time, as framed by an opinion, possibly also by how far away from reality it is.  The characters have to have an opinion on the setting, even if it’s just to take the place for granted.  But there’s also room for opinions like, “I like it when magic has as much structure as technology does,” or “Sometimes the people who try to save the environment do more harm than good,” or “I’m a [insert political orientation here] and you should be, too.”

• Surreal 1950s suburban landscape
• Politically charged, magical ancient China
• Dystopian post-industrial future
• A careless day in Regency England

I think here that there is no limit to the complexity you can add, but if you want to make a “well-rounded” setting, I’d go for complexity of opinion.  ”Surreal but comforting 1950s suburban landscape.”  ”Politically charged, nostalgic, magical ancient China.”  ”Dystopian yet hopeful post-industrial future.”  ”A careless but tragic day in Regency England…the day Queen Charlotte died.”

Problem

I found breaking down problems trickier than the other two.  I’m not sure I’m there yet.

• A situation
• That compels the character into action
• But there’s a caveat

I’m going to say a “problem” could be an opportunity, as long as there are issues in chasing the opportunity.  Indiana Jones doesn’t have to go looking for that idol, does he?  But it’s not easy.  The thing that compels the character into action is some part of their character. If you like, the situation is the external goal, the thing that compels the character is their internal motivation, and the caveat is the conflict.  Without the caveat, a situation can be resolved by a sufficiently competent character (I treat incompetence as a caveat).

• X can’t resist the challenge (compel) of a tomb containing a priceless antiquity (situation), but it’s guarded by countless traps (caveat).
• A bad day at the subway (sit) that makes X snap (comp) when X can’t afford to lose focus on an assassination job (cav).
• An unbearable (comp) injustice happens to X’s worst enemy (sit) when any attempt to help him will cause a war (cav).

Saying that a problem is goal, motivation, and conflict doesn’t do it for me.  It doesn’t build stories for me; it only helps me analyze.  Thus, this.

Shake it all about

• An unbearable injustice happens to a rude waitress from a surreal,1950s suburban Alabama’s worst enemy, and any attempt to help him will cause a war between diners.
• A dreamy-eyed cook, brought to a dystopian post-industrial future from ancient Egypt in a failed time-travel experiment, has a bad day at the subway that makes her snap when she can’t afford to lose focus on an assassination job.
• A disdainful Viscount from 1810 Yorkshire sets off on a careless day in Regency England because he can’t resist the challenge of a tomb containing a priceless antiquity, but it’s guarded by countless traps: marriageable women and their domineering aunts.

Sticking these things together: on the first one, I tried to stick together two things that matched and one that didn’t, and patched the holes to make sense (I liked this one the best).  The second one, I stuck together three things that didn’t match and patched things together as little as possible (it feels like a Phil K Dick story to me, actually, too much of a muchness).  The third one, I stuck together three things that matched (it sounds so plausible that I have no interest in writing it, but I wouldn’t mind reading it).

There are still a number of ways for each potential story to go; I doubt that any two writers would handle them the same.  But they are story ideas, so I think I’m getting close

Last week I did a post called “When you promise genre, what do you promise?”  More thoughts on the subject here.  (Yes, it’s arrogant of me to pick genre apart at this level.  No, I really am that analytical, so I will end up doing it anyway, even if it’s idiotic.)  The tl:dr is after the last bolded header

One of the things you ask as a beginning reader is, “What should I write?”

The usual advice is, “Whatever you want.”

If you push people a little further they’ll go, “You shouldn’t write to the market, because the market will change by the time you get done writing.”  And if you keep pushing, agents and editor may admit that yes, it’s nice to keep an eye on the market, but really, you have to write what you want to write.

Dean Wesley Smith talks about this this week too, in “Return on Investment,” which sparked some thoughts on this snowy morning (about three inches, thanks) about how it ties to my running meditation on genre.  If you’re a Zen master you think about the nature of desire and how it’s illusory.  If you’re me you think about how to make people want to buy your books.

I started out thinking, “Okay, I’ve done more or less what I wanted to with the main genres, and getting things organized.  What about subgenres?”  I quickly realized that I don’t know enough about every damn subgenre to be able to lay out the emotional expectations for every one.  I only know some, and some of those that I read, I don’t understand well enough to explain.  After talking to my friend Doyce about magical realism last week, I realized that you can go down the rabbit hole, trying to figure out the fine points of a subgenre.   There probably isn’t a limit to the knowledge of a subgenre you can gain, and you can follow a specific niche up to the bestseller lists.  I’m pretty sure being “the” expert writer in a niche is a good way to go.  I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t study subgenre, just that I’m not the person to give an overview of all of them.

But I still have to answer the question: “What should I write?”

The problem is that subgenres change.  (I’m going to avoid pointing out in detail how subgenres are like froth on the top of an ocean wave, because I’m going to have to name names, and someone will be defensive about their subgenre not being dead, and that’s not the point.)  At any rate, aiming at a subgenre is trying to hit a moving target, which is what I think agents and editors are talking about when they say, “By the time you go to get published the scene will be different.”

After some thought, I ended up with four points to consider with subgenres:

• What you want to write
• What you’re good at writing
• What readers want to read
• What gatekeepers think will sell

Indies, stay with me on this last one.  Amazon is a gatekeeper when they list their categores and decide whether or not to put you on some list.  (Anyone who’s had to deal with the current lack of YA as a category at KDP knows what I mean.  WTF, Amazon?)  Indies have gatekeepers, too.

Okay.  Imagine a Venn diagram (those ones with the overlapping circles) with four circles.  Ideally, what you should write is someplace where all four circles overlap.  You write what you want to write, which you’re good at writing, and it’s what readers want to read and what the gatekeepers think will sell.  Money!  Success!  Fame!

However, all four circles move.

This means that you need different strategies for different stages of your game.

• As a beginning writer, you’re not good at anything (or don’t know if it you are), you don’t know what readers want, and you don’t know what the gatekeepers think will sell.  Therefore, write what you want to write and work on improving craft.  If you get published, great!  But it’s really dumb luck, and might not be repeatable once those circles move again, so keep working.  You can guess at the other three circles and should.  But the important thing is just to keep writing, really.
• As a writer who is getting better at craft, you don’t know what readers want and you don’t know what the gatekeepers think will sell.  Write what you want to write with an eye towards expanding your craft skills.  Write specificially to improve something you’re not good at.  Now you should know what you’re good at.  Don’t just write there.  Don’t sit still; all four circles are moving.  You can guess at the other two circles and should.  You might end up in a subgenre, you might not.  It’s more luck than not.
• When you know what you’re doing, you can really start getting into the meat of what readers want, and how specifically to do it to them. This is where you really have a handle on subgenres, on your subgenre.  You can actually write fast enough to keep up with the markets and trends now, but should you?  Should you write something that isn’t within your area of interest?  If you’ve been working on expanding your craft (you have), then you have a pretty wide area of interest, because it turns out it’s really hard to learn certain techniques without reading the hell out of certain genres, dammit, so now’s the time to start considering whether you should write a project to a subgenre if you don’t naturally read that subgenre, or if it’s a new subgenre.  I think.  (A note: I’m not here yet.  I can almost see it over the top of the @#$%^&* hill, though.)
• When you know what you’re doing with readers…you can make your own subgenre.  Or even genre.  You can move the little circle that is “What the gatekeepers think will sell” all by yourself.  This might happen accidentally, by being at the right place at the right time and being good at it.  Or it could be on purpose.  The more I read Patterson, the more I go, “This guy invented Thrillers.  Other people were headed toward that spot.  They built a fertile ground.  But that guy said ‘this is how it’s going to go down,’ and nailed it to the wall.”  It didn’t happen without knowing what the reader wanted.  He didn’t just say, “You will want Thrillers.”  But he did go to the gatekeepers and say, “This is what you will sell.”

Should you try to write to a certain subgenre or to follow a trend that may or may not become a subgenre?  Yes, if you’re a pro-level writer and you’re interested.  No, if you’re much under or above pro level.  (That is, go ahead and do it anyway, but don’t force yourself to write something you don’t want to.  I’m all about breaking writing rules.  But don’t expect to make the same sales as a pro writer doing the same thing.)

But does that even answer the question about what a subgenre means, emotionally or otherwise?

No, it just sets the stage.

How do you figure out if you’re in a subgenre?  What even makes a subgenre?

I suggest that subgenres are so different that it’s pointless to say, “You just need to find out X, Y, and Z, and that will tell you the subgenre.”  The subgenres split along such different lines that categorizing even what makes a subgenre across different genres becomes meaningless.

So…how to find out your subgenre?

I propose two methods for finding out:

• Research existing books.
• Research the audience.

How would I research existing books?

This sounds pretty basic, but I hadn’t been doing it, hadn’t even realized that I needed to be doing it, so maybe it’s not as obvious as it sounds.  Bear with me.

Find out what the top 100 books of that subgenre are.  Make sure you’ve read at least one book by each author on the list.  On a list dominated by one guy (e.g., Patterson), read a lot more of that guy.  Make sure you’re up on at least 25 specific books on that list.  What King did 30 years ago is not what he’s doing today.  Study books from the last 10 years especially (thank you, Dean).  You might think you know a subgenre, but what you know is Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers (cough-me and cozies-cough).  The circles have moved since freakin’ Heinlein and Asimov, right?  They’ve even moved since Snow Crash.

Look for patterns.  What types of patterns you find will be different and not limited to these.  But play with:

• What type of character is the main character?
• What problems does the main character face?
• How many “real” people are there, who affect the outcome of the story?  Versus “extras.”  Who are they?
• What is the main character really afraid of, when stripped of all situational/external trappings?
• What are the main character’s goals?
• What does the main character want–their motivation–underneath it all?
• What kind of external/internal conflicts are there?
• What is the setting like?
• Are there rules to the setting (e.g., rules of magic)?
• What does the character feel about the setting?
• What possible opinions of the author does the setting reflect?

I keep thinking in terms of character/setting/problem here, and finding out what external goals in internal conflicts are implied in that. I wish I could nail this down better, but I think I’m working at the edge of my abilities here

How would I research the audience?

Who is reading this type of book?

• Age
• Gender
• Social status
• Educational background
• Opinions (political, religious, cultural)

Once you know those things, think about what that kind of person is likely to want.

Let me apologize here for not actually being an expert on this, just someone who likes to analyze.  This could be, and probably is, totally off.

But–let’s go back to the example of Geezer Lit from the other day.  It’s so new that there probably isn’t a bestseller list for you to look at, and the audience is pretty clearly defined: geezers.

They feel mature but not decrepit; they have a sense of humor; they’ll appreciate references to Baby Boomer stuff.  (A facile assessment, I know.)  They probably want to be reminded of good things from the past (with maybe a shrug towards the bad things), they probably want to feel more in control of or more accepting of a changing environment, they want to make fun of young idiots (cheap shots are still pretty satisfying), and they want to laugh.

I think that probably “chick lit” was such a hated term not because of the books that came out of it but because the label made assumptions about the audience that the audience didn’t make about themselves.  It showed a lack of reader understanding by the gatekeepers.  You say, “African-American fiction,” not “@#$$%^ lit.” (Sorry.)

I don’t know that “geezer lit” will fly.  I see a lot of Boomers who have a good sense of humor, who are at ease with making fun of themselves…but “geezer.”  I’m just not sure about that term.  I guess we’ll find out.

But…

Most subgenres aren’t going to be as easy to identify via audience research, unless you do surveys or something.  Who reads Regency Romances?  Who reads Steampunk?  Who reads cozies?   With solid subgenres, there has been this kind of research, so I’d go in search of it.  But it might also be good to do the reading and hypothesize about the audience from the patterns that you pick up from the books.

Example.  I’ve been reading a lot of Regencies lately, after not having been a romance reader at all.  I’ve loved Jane Austin forever; it seemed logical.  However, I found that I tend to dislike earlier actual Regencies.  Georgette Heyer puts me to sleep.  There’s only so much Stephanie Laurens I can take.  The newer stuff, I’m quite fond of.

One pattern I’ve noticed that carries throughout:  social customs are important.  One pattern that I’ve noticed that’s changed:  how one deals with social customs.  For example, the idea that if you don’t inherit or marry money that you will be poor is there, but how the characters deal with it changed.  Before, the story was: a poor girl marries a rich man (Mr. Darcy).  Now you get things like The Ugly Duchess, where the main character not only is a self-rescuing princess but makes her own dresses.  It’s the guy who needs the money, to bail out his craptastic dad.

Extrapolate.  How has the audience for Regencies changed, and how have they remained the same?

We still want the pretty dresses.  But we don’t want to be rescued so much as…what?  Known?  Accepted for who we are?  There are different opinions, both in books and in the people who read them.   The main characters are more active.   They don’t rebel against social mores just to be rebelling, then have to learn how to tone it down in order to fit into society.  They tend to make themselves the exception to the rule more:  the ton can say what it wants.  I have what I want and I live by my rules.  –A wish fulfillment, but a different one than in the past.

It’s a solid subgenre, but that circle’s still moving.  I think what readers wanted changed, and what the gatekeepers thought would sell changed, and what the bestsellers did to fill what the readers now wanted changed the gatekeepers, etc.

So after all that…

1) What should you write? Write what you want to write.  Don’t kill your desire to write by writing what you don’t want to write.  Eventually you will have broad enough tastes and skills that you can fuss with following or creating trends.

2) Are you writing in a specific subgenre?  If you want to write in a specific subgenre, you have to pay your dues and research the subgenre and the audience of that subgenre.  Things change too much, even in established subgenres, to come up with a systematic answer.  Do mess around.  But if you want to nail it, first you do the research, and then you write the story.

This is one of those “duh” moments that I’m sure other formatters are already doing.   But it makes me pretty happy nonetheless.

Okay, someone wants a PDF copy of your book for their ereader, and you’re willing to send it to them.  How to do that?

To size the PDF for an ereader, assume that the ereader screen is 6 inches.  They may be bigger, but if you assume 6 inches, you can also catch the larger smart phones.

To resize the document:

1. In your word processing program (e.g., Word), set the paper size to 3.5 by 4.75 inches.
2. Change the margins to .15 inches.
3. You may want to make sure any images are resized/compressed for screen viewing.
4. Flip through the pages to make sure there’s nothing too odd.  The way the pages are laid out is the way the pages will look on the ereader.
5. Convert the file to a PDF the way you normally would.

Update:

Resize your cover to ~45% of original size (if it’s supposed to correspond to a 6×9 or 5x8ish cover, trade paperback or mass market paperback size).

See?  Duh, easy.

You should be able to send them this file, and they can transfer it to their ereader via USB cable.

However, to send the PDF to their Kindle,  send it to their Kindle email address.  To find your Kindle email address:

1. Go to Amazon, log in, and click on the “Your Account” link on the upper right.
2. A dropdown menu should appear.  Select “Manage Your Kindle” from the menu.
3. Amazon may ask you to sign in again.  Do so.
4. On the left, scroll down until you see the header “Your Kindle Account.”  Under it, click “Manage Your Devices.”
5. Your Kindle(s) should be listed.  From here you can edit your Kindle’s name, see the email address, and more.  Incidentally, if your Kindle is ever stolen, this is where you go to deregister it, so nobody can access your credit card from your Kindle.  (You can re-register it here too, if you get it back.  True story.)  You can also, if you scroll down, turn on Whispersync, so all Kindle apps/devices, when they can access the Internet, update all your books to the last page read.  If you have several members of your family on the same account, don’t do this.

The person who is getting the file (even if it’s you) has to go to their Amazon account and allow emails from that address.  This way, your Kindle won’t accept spam.

1. Go to the “Manage Your Kindle” page.
2. Scroll down to “Your Kindle Account.”
3. Click on “Personal Document Settings.”
4. Find the header “Approved Document E-mail List.”
5. If your address isn’t already added (you may have added your own email address while registering), click on “Add a new approved e-mail address” and follow the directions there.

Yes, this is a pain in the butt for the reader.  If they don’t like it, they can use USB or email it to themselves.

To email the PDF:

1. You may have to pay to do it this way.  It’s $.15 per megabyte in the U.S. if you have to use/can use a 3G account.  It’s free via wifi.
2. You can force Amazon to send it via wifi by changing the address from [name]@kindle.com to [name]@free.kindle.com.
3. I think if wifi is available, [name]@kindle.com will use wifi for free instead of charging you, but I’m not sure.
4. On a Kindle Fire, you will not see the pretty cover, even if you’ve embedded it in the file.  You’ll see a PDF-logo cover.
5. You may see some weird issues with text that takes less than a full page aligning to the center or bottom of the page.  (No idea what’s causing this.  I checked the vertical alignment and nothing was odd.)
6. You can also force Amazon to convert the file to Amazon proprietary format (.azw) from PDF.  It looks okay, but if you are sending over PDF that’s really the interior layout for a POD, all your tracking will show up (smooshing words together in some spots), and the tabs will be gone baby gone.  If you want to send a professional-looking ebook file, this isn’t the way to do it.

Note: I can’t currently see how to email a document to a Kindle app.  It’s supposed to be the same as for anything else, but I’m not seeing my PDFs come up on my app, and they’re not in my archive.  But then again, I have a really old phone, so it could just be that.

Also: No idea what to do on a Nook, Kobo, iPad, etc.

The first rule of Writing Club is that a rule that doesn’t suggest how to successfully break itself is a boring rule.  No, I lie.  That’s the second rule of Writing Club.  The first rule is “don’t be boring.”

I’ve been playing around with the idea that genre means making certain promises to the reader–setting up certain reader expectations–and that everything else about the story will revolve around that.  I’ve been using romance (as a genre) as an example a lot lately in personal conversations.  It’s great: I’m approaching the genre with fresh eyes (I’ve only been reading it seriously for about six months), and everyone in the genre is so very, very clear about what it’s about.  It’s about the feeling of falling in love, and the risks that you take in love.  The reader expectation of a romance is that you’re going to watch people falling in love,  and that the story will be about falling in love, and that the characters will feel the feelings of falling in love and share them so effectively with the reader that they feel like they’re falling in love too.

Romance is pretty easy to work out that way.  But other genres aren’t, necessarily.  I’m going to make some preliminary guesses about genres here, and see whether I end up with “rules” that encourage clarity and play.

Here’s how I’m splitting these out: main genres are the main types of stories, age categories arethe age of your audience, and meta-genres are analagous to Dean Wesley Smith’s “umbrella genres.”  I just like “meta” better…the rules of meta-genres seem to me to have rules about how you’re going to tell the main types of stories.  Like a Christian romance…you tell a romance story, but you have to follow the rules of Christian fiction in order to do so.  You can’t really have a meta-genre story without a main genre.  It might look like you have a standalone meta-genre story, but you don’t really.  For example, you might have a thriller, and that’s all you call it, but what is the main story about? It’s a mystery, usually.  Hidden somewhere in any story is usually going to be one of the main genres; it might not have the trappings of setting that the genre itself has (like SF)–you can write a story about your fears of society without having a single futuristic or alternate or science-oriented element about the story.

So here are some preliminary guesses about the main genres:

Romance – falling in love/feeling unloved

SF – hopes for society/fears for or of society

Fantasy – mastery of society/lack of mastery

Mystery – increasing order in the world/increasing chaos

Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)

Horror is an interesting case.  Dean Wesley Smith argues that horror, as a genre, is going away.  I had my doubts, but I’ve been watching the bookstores that I go to, and they’re starting to break up the horror shelves, King into fiction or bestsellers or thriller, anything heavy on an alternate setting into SF/F, and anything with a relatively normal setting into suspense/thriller.  So what was horror about, emotionally?  My guess is being hurt/hurting someone else.  I want to stay away from fear as a description of horror, because all genres rely on fear.  Romance, for example, can deal with the fear of falling in love, the fear of feeling unloved.  And horror doesn’t really contain any hope, or if it does, it’s not the point.  If you go with “hurt” as the continuum there, then you can explain things like Cabin in the Woods, which isn’t a book, but comes to its unusual conclusion after weighing the balance of pain in the world, and what you’re willing to do to make the hurters stop hurting you.  Notice that it’s easier for me to find a recent horror movie that we’re likely to have read, versus a recent horror novel that isn’t one of Stephen King’s.  He’s broken out of genre, and I don’t know that he can single-handedly count as the justification for independent sets of shelves in bookstores.

And on the age categories:

Children’s (picture book) – Questions of sorting, establishing the basic categories of life.  At the earliest level, it’s about sorting out things like colors, numbers, and what sound goes with what animal.  You can crack up a little kid by pointing to a red ball and saying, “What a pretty yellow duck!” “No!” says the little one, extremely proud of being able to sort that out.  You can also get things like, “What is a family?  What are the roles in a family?  How do you know when it’s a good family or not a good family?  What is real?  What is imaginary?”

Chapter book – Sadly, I don’t think there’s a really good idea of what a chapter book (for Kindergarteners to, say, eight or nine) should do for kids.  I have some pretty strong opinions about this, but I’m not really clear on what I would have a chapter book actually do, so I’ll reserve spouting off on this one too much.  I do know that Ray never really got into chapter books, because they were SO boring.  She stuck with picture books for a long time, until she was ready to get into MG.

Middle Grade – fear of independence/longing for independence

Young Adult – asserting identity/fear of not fitting in

New Adult – I haven’t really gotten into these, and can’t really talk to them.

Adult – longing for the good life/trapped by the less-than-good or ordinary life

I also know there’s an emerging age category called “geezer lit.”  I haven’t read in it yet, but I’d predict that you’d see something along the lines of resisting change/accepting change in it.

And on the meta-genres:

Christian – Christian/unchristian.  I think how people define “what is Christian” is diverse enough, and I don’t read the genre enough, that I’ll leave it at that.

Erotica – sexually compulsive/sexually repulsive.  Another genre that I don’t read, so I’m just guessing.

Literary – ugly/beautiful.  This is a question of writing style.  You can have this elegant style writing about something horribly ugly – and it’s a great fit for literary fiction.  I don’t feel like I’ve really hit the nail on the head here yet.

Fiction – I list this here, but I think this is really just “adult genre, not overwhelmed by other genres, or approachable and popular enough that nobody cares.”  For example, women’s fiction is the longing for independence as a woman/fear of being trapped as a woman.

Historical – This isn’t really a genre anymore, but a subgenre you can apply to any other genre.  Hm…I may have to talk about the emotions involved in settings at some point.  With SF, you imbue your setting with your opinions about society so strongly that they’re impossible to miss.  With historical…you try to be accurate, yet exotic.   More thought will be required here.

Thriller – inevitable collapse/impossible victory.  There’s so much at stake, so many impossible odds, that there’s this constant feeling that there’s no way to succeed, and that if you do succeed, it’s not for very long, or something else will go wrong very soon.  If you stop a murderer, there will be another one, usually in the same book.

I’m going to invitingly add “Pulp” as a meta-genre.  It’s been coming up a lot lately in discussions I’ve been having, and I want to say that the range of emotion in pulp deals not with good or bad (and is almost negated, as a genre, by transformation of character, precluding use of that kind of structure, like the Joseph Campbell stuff).  It deals with the poles of strength and weakness: physical, mental, emotional, what have you.  I know “pulp” isn’t a genre on the shelf – but I think it should be.  (Pulp – strength/weakness.)

—

Each genre has its own subgenres.  Each subgenre has its own specialization of emotion.  There are many fertile areas of cross-pollenization.

So.  You have to pick one main genre and one age category.  You may or may not pick a meta-genre.  You can specialize into a subgenre (I may go there later; we’ll see).  You can pick pieces of one genre and use them in another (like science fantasy or Star Wars).  This is a toolbox, not a straightjacket.  However – when you start playing fast and loose with your genres, how do you know what genre to put things into?  What are the unavoidable constraints?  The answer I hear is usually, “Just pick one.”  Bleah.  I hate that answer.  It’s boring, confusing, and belittling.  Because the answer is really, “Just pick one, stupid.”

Let me pick something at random, build a story out of these categories.

• Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)
• Romance – falling in love/feeling unloved
• Adult – longing for the good life/trapped by the less-than-good or ordinary life
• Erotica – sexually compulsive/sexually repulsive.  Another genre that I don’t read, so I’m just guessing.
• Christian – Christian/unchristian.  I think how people define “what is Christian” is diverse enough, and I don’t read the genre enough, that I’ll leave it at that.

And a tentative flow for sorting:

1. Is the age other than “adult” or older?  If yes, then that is your main category (children’s, middle grade, etc.).
2. Is there a meta-genre?  If yes, then it’s your genre, unless 1 applies, in which case it’s a subgenre.  2a.  If there is more than one meta-genre, then research both metas to find out whether that combination exists as a subgenre to one of the two, and where.  Is there a Christian erotica subgenre?  Or Erotic Christian subgenre?  I’ve heard the first exists.  If the genre is Christian and the subgenre is Christian erotica, then the polarity of Christian/unchristian emotions must be more important than questions of sexually compusion/repulsion.  If it’s Erotic Christian, then the question of sexual compulsion/repulsion has to be more important than the Christian aspects.  Or whatever.
3. Is the setting the most important part of the book (ignore any historical aspects for now)?  Then sort the book into the appropriate genre for the setting.  3a.  If there is more than one possible place to sort the book by setting, then the heirarchy of settings goes like this: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Western.  If a book is a SF Western (e.g., Firefly), then it’s SF, with a Western subgenre. 3b. If you have aspects of SF, F, or Western but they aren’t the main genre, then list them as part of the subgenres.
4. If there is a more or less accurate historical aspect, then the subgenre is Historical.
5. If the story is about falling in love and has a happy ending, it’s a romance.  5a. If the most important thing about the story is falling in love with a happy ending, then all other main genre aspects are subgenres. 5b.  If the romantic aspect isn’t the most important one, then the book has a romantic subplot, and you usually won’t have to mention it.
6. If the story is about a crime and the resolution thereof, it’s a mystery.  6a.  If the most important thing about the book is the crime and its resolution (bringing it to order, although not necessarily justice or truth), then all other main genre aspects become subgenres.  6b.  If the crime/order aspect isn’t the most important one in the book, then the book has a mystery subplot, and you usually won’t have to mention it.
7. If you don’t know your genre yet, it’s fiction.

So here, we go:

1. The age is adult or older, no determination of genre.
2. There is a meta-genre (two).  2a.  There’s a Christian Erotica genre, so this book is a Christian Erotica, with the most important aspect of the book being questions of Christianity.
3. The setting is not the most important part of the book, but there is a Western aspect.  I’m going to say the question of value/justice is stronger than the Erotica here.
4. The setting’s in the Old West, but Western is more specific than Historical, and there’s the emotional aspects of a Western, so I’m going to stick with Western as a subgenre.
5. The story is a romance, but there are meta-genres, so they win out.
6. N/A.
7. N/A.

Our genre is Christian Western Erotica, or possibly even Christian Western Erotic Romance.  The emotions in the story should be (from most to least important):

1. Questions of Christian/unchristian behavior.
2. Questions of value and justice (set in the Old West or something like it).
3. Questions of sexual compulsion/repulsion.
4. (And/0r) Questions of love and romance.

A likely plot might be something like, “A former preacher and now mercenary gun in the Old West is hired to eliminate a brothel.  But when he meets the madame, he finds her irresistable and falls in love with her.  Can he save this woman from a life of sin–and should he carry out what he was hired to do?”  With a plot like that, you satisfy all the emotional promises that you’ve made to the reader, in the priority order that you’ve made them.

I think writing the book first and then figuring out the genre, if you don’t know genre, is going to make it really, really easy to screw up the promises that you make to the reader, because you have specific promises that you’ve made, and they have to have specific priorities (you can play with the priorities, of course, but you have to be specific about them).  I’m probably off about more than a couple of these emotional promises that you’re making to the reader, but I think the idea as a whole is useful.

I don’t actually read either Christian or Erotica, so I’m going to play this one again:

• Fantasy – mastery of society/lack of mastery
• Western – what has value/what does not have value (usually expressed in terms of justice)
• Middle Grade – fear of independence/longing for independence
• Pulp – strength/weakness.

1. Middle-grade is the genre.
2. Pulp is a subgenre.
3. Settings are Western and Fantasy.  Fantasy takes precedence over Western.
4. Western beats Historical, so Western.
5. N/A.
6. N/A.
7. N/A.

My genre is MG Fantasy Western Pulp.  My emotions should be:

1. Fear of/longing for independence.
2. Mastery of society/lack of mastery.
3. Value/Justice.
4. Strength/Weakness.

A likely plot: “An eleven-year-old boy sets off on a quest to get revenge against an evil wizard who runs his backwater town and who turned his sister into a gibbering idiot for breaking a minor law, after his parents reveal they’re too afraid to act on their own.  He finds and hires a famous outlaw to murder the wizard…but the outlaw only makes things worse.”  The boy has to act independently, and live with the consequences of his actions.  He gets the wizard killed, and then has to deal with the outlaw.   I should probably give the kid a magic power in there to help him accomplish this.  He’s going to be wondering about whether he should have tried to get the wizard killed or not the entire time: whether it was right for his parents to accept the wizard, or whether they should have fought back.  And this isn’t a situation that’s going to be resolved by talking things out, but by sticking it to the wall, a strength of determination.

Right.  And now I’m going to try to write that, to see how well my ideas are working out

So you’re a writer and you don’t know what to do with Goodreads.

And I’m going to try to tell you all about it.  Wish us both luck…

Here is the link to Goodreads’ intro to the author program.  I suspect this is just the first post on the subject; it’s not thorough, but covers the info that I couldn’t find easily when the issues came up, as well as the basics of getting started.  Feel free to shoot me more questions.

1.  First, you need to set up an account as a reader.  If you clicked on the Goodreads link and got a page that has an account creation page, that’s what to do first.  You can also sign in using Facebook, Twitter, etc., if you have an account there, by clicking the Facebook, Twitter, etc., button on that front page.

2.  Once you’re signed up, you need to set up a writer account.  Start out by searching for one of your books or your author name.  (You may need to wait up to 2 weeks for a new book to show up; they collect feeds from several indie publishers, too, so indie writers can find their work, too.)  Just type one or the other in the search field and skim through the results until you find your author name.  Click on your author name.

You should go to your author page.  Somewhere near the bottom of the page is a link saying “Is this you? Let us know.”  Click on it.  Fill out the form on the next page (I forget exactly what it looks like) and submit it.  Wait a couple of days for your author account to be activated.  You’ll get an email when it’s ready.

Note:  You have to set up an entirely different login account for each pen name that you want to activate.  You can only set up one author name with one email/FB account.

3.  You’re signed up, but something is amiss about your books or author page.  Help!

Navigate either to your author page or to your book page.  Click the “edit profile” or “edit details” link to update the information.

Double-check that your cover image isn’t too big, if it’s not updating.  If things aren’t working, contact Goodreads or a Goodreads Librarian for help.

4.  You have more than one copy of a book listed.  Help!

This might be good or bad.  Goodreads is run along the lines of a library.  Librarians are thorough.  Did someone helpful add every single edition and/or cover of your book?  Even ones that you don’t want?  That’s what you get.  You cannot remove a “real” edition or a “real” cover, even if you’re no longer using it or you hate it.  Too bad: Goodreads will err on the side of thorough.  You might have a listing for an ebook, a Kindle ebook, a Print book, etc.  Whew!

All the editions of a book should be “combined,” which means that all the blurbs on one book will tie to the other, and any rankings/listings/etc. you have on one will feed to another.  If they are “combined,” then all editions of the book will be listed under the “Other Editions” bar on the right hand side of your book’s page.  If they are not combined correctly, then click the “combine” link on the same bar to go to the combine page.

Note: if things aren’t working at this point, you may want to check all versions to make sure there are no extra listings of your author profile.

If there are, make sure there are no extra spaces in the author’s name.  Let’s say there are two authors named Stephen King.  One will be listed as “Stephen<sp>King,” and the other will be listed as “Stephen<sp><sp>King.”  The extra space will not be apparent from the public page, and is used to keep the two authors’ books from getting shoved into the same account.

Sometimes an overly helpful person will overly helpfully add your book, overly helpfully creating a brand new account for you, just you, and, noting that you already have an account and not being sure that you are really you (overhelpfulness seems to go only so far), they’ll add an extra space in the name so they don’t have to do extra research.  You have to click the “edit profile” link to change this, and it may be that you can only get into one of the two profiles to check on things.  If this is the case, contact Goodreads or a Goodreads Librarian or sign up to be a Goodreads Librarian.  Warning, it’s kind of like having a large pickup truck when it comes time for your friends to move, only there’s no heavy lifting and nobody buys you pizza afterward (hint hint).

5.  You want to run a Goodreads giveaway.

You have to have a print edition in order to do this.

If your print edition is not automatically uploading on the site, then check the exiting edition to make sure nobody overly helpfully added your print edition’s ISBN to one of your ebook editions.  If they did, remove it from the ebook edition and manually add the print edition WITH the ISBN, then combine it with the other editions.  You may need to wait ten minutes for everything to update through the system.

—

Okay, these are the questions that I could think of, off the top of my head.  Drop me a note if you have anything else you’re struggling with, and I’ll add the answer

Update:

6. Are there metadata/tags on Goodreads?

Yes.  The metadata and tags are added by readers, not authors.

When you add or edit a review, there’s a link near the bottom of your review, “more options.”  Click that.  More options will appear.  At the bottom of the extra option is a link that says, “edit book metadata.”  A new window should appear, showing a series of questions.

If you want to see the metadata for your book, go to your book and click on the “edit details” link. There are two tabs near the top of your edit page, “edit book” and “show metadata.”  Click on “show metadata” to see the metadata other people have listed for you, in general.