Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Improve Your Writing Today: 3 Easy Tips

Improve your writing the easy way: sit at your desk

Over the years, I’ve met writers, and worked with many. Here’s a simple formula if you want to improve your writing:

Desire + Time.

Do you want to improve? Wanting something is always the first step to getting it. The second step may be more challenging, but desire helps and so does enjoyment (see the second tip, below.) The second step is: spend time.

Before I forget: my student got two replies to her direct messages. One writer spends six hours a day; the other spends up to 14 hours because he’s currently working on edits for a book, while writing another one.

Let’s look at three tips you can use today.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Social Media Marketing: 3 Easy Tips You Can Use Today

Want to sell more? Use social media marketing — and focus on images. While that seems counterintuitive for a writer, images are vitally important in social media, and are vital for marketing in general.

If you’re an indie author, you know the importance of a quality cover — your cover wins attention. Similarly, in social media marketing today, images get attention for what you’re offering.

You’ll make sales when you combine social media, copywriting, and images.

An aside… Before we go on, I need to mention that we’re removing our program Social Media Copywriting And Graphics — Get Attention And Sell More. I’m devoting more time to writing fiction. So if you want to improve your social media game, take advantage of the final offer on this program.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Mystery Fiction: 3 Tips To Create Excitement And Suspense

Remember — your plot is what your characters do.

Here’s a question for you.

Mystery fiction: “how do I make this exciting?”

Try asking yourself every day (whether you’re writing mystery fiction or any other genre): how do I make this exciting?

When you look for opportunities to create excitement, you’ll find them.

Now let’s look at some tips to help you to create excitement and suspense.

1. Avoid info dumps. Mystery and suspense benefit from keeping things to yourself

A couple of years ago I suggested that you kill your TMI habit:

Want to write better fiction? Here’s the simplest way — kill your Too Much Information (TMI) habit. Keep your readers mystified as much as possible. Of course, there’s a real art to this. You want your readers to be in suspense, rather than confused and annoyed.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Serial Fiction: 3 Easy Tips To Help You Start Your Serial Today

When an author tells me that he’s bored with his novel, I suggest that he try writing serial fiction. A serial gives him a break from the novel and a fresh start may trigger an author’s inspiration — it does for me.

Of course you don’t have to wait to write a serial until you’re bored. Serials have much in common with short stories, so you can start your serial at any time.

Serial fiction: writing a serial is similar to writing short stories

You’re already intimately familiar with this form of fiction; many TV shows use this format. They have an over-arching plot for each season.

Just like a TV series, when you’re writing a serial, you’re writing episodic fiction. Look at your serial as connected short stories. Although each story is satisfying in itself, there’s a bigger plot which you move forward with each episode.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Book Marketing: 3 Tips To Boost Sales Of Your Backlist

“Old” books published a year or more ago get short shrift from authors. However, those older titles — your backlist — can be a virtual goldmine. They’re assets.

Book marketing: all your titles are assets you own

Every book you write and publish is an asset, just like your house and car. Recently I asked a group of my students about promoting their backlist.

Only one student out of the entire group had a strategy for backlist promotion. Most students focused entirely on promoting new and upcoming titles with strategies like extensive advertising and pre-orders.

via www.justwriteabook.com

Info Products: 3 Easy Tips To Help You Create And Sell Them

A tip — if you’d like to become an expert product creator, our 8 Hour Ebooks Video Training will help. Check it out over the next few days; it disappears on June 14 to make way for new programs.

Info products: share your expertise

Often we fail to recognize that we have know-how we can share; we take what we know for granted. Everyone’s an expert on something. What are your areas of expertise?

Let’s look at some quick tips to help you to create and sell info products.

1. Keep your info products short; we’re all stretched thin

This morning I watched an Adobe video about their Capture app. While I watched I realized I’d chosen the video because it was short.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Write Fiction: 3 Easy Tips To Develop Your Characters’ Motivation

Want to light a fire under your characters? Motivate them. Writing becomes easier when you know your characters’ motivations.

It’s much easier to write fiction when your characters are motivated

Why do your characters do what they do? One reason: they’re motivated. “Motivation” is defined as “a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way.” That’s well and good, but when you write fiction, aim to take your characters a step beyond normal motivation.

We’re all motivated for one reason or another.

via peneloperedmont.com

Beginning Writer: 2 Strategies To Remove ALL Your Roadblocks

You’re a beginning writer. You may consider that your biggest challenge is — (fill in the blank.) That challenge will fade when you use your biggest asset.

At least once a month a student will say something like: “yes, but then they’ll know I’m a beginner”.

A beginner is a wonderful thing to be in any field and it’s your biggest asset. Here’s why: beginner’s mind. This mind state is a gift.

Please be proud to be a beginning writer: approach writing projects your way and ask as many questions as you like. Remember that you won’t be a beginner forever — and while you’re a beginner you may come up with something truly new and innovative.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Mystery Writing: Cook Up Your Mystery With 3 Ingredients - Angela Booth's Fab Freelance Writing Blog

Choosing your crime first ensures that:

• The crime matters to your sleuth: he or she MUST solve the crime or die (literally, or metaphorically.) If your sleuth is a detective he has other reasons to solve the crime than: “it’s his job”;
• Not only must your sleuth solve the crime, the odds are against him.

With that in mind, let’s look at the three ingredients you’ll need to cook up a wonderful mystery, thriller, or suspense novel.

1. The crime: are you writing a mystery, thriller, or suspense novel?

Your crime can be anything you like. It may be relatively mild — a theft for example; heist and caper novels feature some kind of theft or a forgery.

Most commonly, the crime you choose will be murder in some form, whether you’ve chosen to write a domestic thriller (did he kill his wife?) or a serial killer novel (he’s killed, and he’ll go on killing.)

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Fiction Outlines And Emotion: 3 Tips To Write Better Novels

Let’s look at some tips which will help you to conquer fiction outlines.

1. Genre is your clue to emotions and your outline

Currently I’m writing an historical mystery. The novel started slowly and continued going slowly for 20,000 words. I hated my outline; the characters remained wooden.

Luckily this novel is #5 in an eight-novel series. (Discover why series are a good thing in Write HOT Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.)

Since there’s an over-arching plot for the series it dawned on me that I could bring back a character from novel #2. As soon as I installed the character with a single new scene and a few changes in other scenes, the novel came alive. Not only did the nascent plot start growing in all directions, the characters came alive too.

Here’s why: emotion. Somehow I’d managed to forget the importance of emotion. I lost the plot so to speak because I’d focused solely on the outline.

This contretemps reminded me about the importance of emotion. It’s a clue about fiction outlines in general — no matter how wonderful your plot and outline, without emotion you have nothing.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Write Fiction: 3 Tips To Make Assembling Your Novel’s Cast Easy

So let’s look at some tips for assembling a cast of characters for your novel (or short fiction).

1. Think in terms of an ensemble cast

An “ensemble” is a bunch of things or people intended to be used together.

Here’s why an ensemble matters when you’re collecting a cast for your current or next book: you get to differentiate your cast.

You’ve heard the writing advice to “contrast your characters.” Characters in bestselling fiction, hit movies, or long-running TV series, always play off each other. They’re different.

My favorite example of contrasting characters is the movie The Odd Couple, original version. Felix and Oscar couldn’t be more different.

via www.justwriteabook.com

New Novelist: 3 Easy Ways To Start Your Mystery Novel

If you’re a new novelist, you can write mystery fiction

In a recent blog post for new mystery authors, we said that one of the benefits of mysteries is that you’ve got something to write about:

If you’re a new author your novel can seem like a trackless wilderness when your inspiration wears off. (Sadly, it will.) However, when you’re writing a mystery novel, the writing becomes easier, because the crime forms the spine of your novel, or short story.

Let’s look at some tips which will help you to get started writing a mystery novel.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

New Author? 3 Reasons To Write Mystery Fiction

If you’re a new author your novel can seem like a trackless wilderness when your inspiration wears off. (Sadly, it will.) However, when you’re writing a mystery novel, the writing becomes easier, because the crime forms the spine of your novel, or short story.

Suddenly, you have lots to write about. You have a story question: whodunnit? or why dunnit? As you develop your sleuth and crime, your trackless wildness develops pathways and oases.

So let’s look at three reasons for you to consider writing Mystery, Thriller & Suspense (MTS) fiction.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Mystery Fiction Genres: Win Loyal Readers, Make More Sales

One of the benefits of writing mystery fiction is that readers are immensely loyal. If they like a sleuth, they want more. This means that many mystery authors write series.

Some of these series run for years, with many novels. A reader who buys one book in a series, goes on to buy others. So, the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense genres offer wide scope for authors.

To help you to make the most of the opportunities in mystery fiction, we’ve just released: Write Your Bestseller: Write HOT Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.

A common question I receive is: what’s the difference between a mystery and a thriller?

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com

Writing To Sell: 3 Life-Saving Tips You Can Use Today

Deadlines loom for self-publishing authors, as well as for freelancers writing for clients. Once you’ve set up an Amazon pre-order, it’s a non-negotiable deadline.

Writing to sell: avoid not-writing stress

Writing can be stressful, but not-writing is even more stressful. We’ve talked about procrastination; you’re avoiding short-term discomfort — but that leads to long-term pain.

My favorite acronym: DDT (Do, Don’t Think) helps many writers to be more productive. As Nike says — just do it.

Try these tips. They may just save your life (or at least, your sanity), if you’re writing to sell.

via www.fabfreelancewriting.com