Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Write Fiction: 3 Strategies I Use Every Day

Fiction writing: it’s easy to lose your inspiration and challenging to recover it

We’ve discussed partnering with your muse.

Fiction writing requires not only your imagination, but also that your readers use their imagination—your writing helps them to do that.

If you aren’t using your imagination and your emotions aren’t engaged, your readers’ emotions won’t be either. They’ll stop reading.

Fiction is all about feelings. Imagine, and feel:

Imagine you’re on holiday. You’re in a strange city. You don’t speak the language. It’s the middle of the day. You go for a walk alone to look at the sights, and now you’re lost. Moreover, you seem to have wandered into a bad part of town.

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How To Plot A Novella: 3 Tips

Use “XXX” liberally

Tempted to stop to check the spelling of a word, or to research something? Don’t stop. Mark the spot with XXX and keep writing.

At the end of that day’s writing session, go back to create tasks out of each XXX. Some XXXs won’t need a task — you can look up a word’s spelling in seconds.

Other XXXs take longer. You might want to think carefully about how you introduce a character, or describe the setting of a scene. Create a task for each XXX in your novella’s Trello board.

via www.angelabooth.com

Try this. It helps you to be more productive and get into flow.

Self-Publishing: Fiction Bestsellers’ Secrets You Need To Know

Self-publishing: what do bestselling authors know?

Self-publishing authors know their readers. They understand the genre in which they’re publishing.

In the giant romance genre for example, bestselling authors like Nora Roberts have developed a formula which works for them. All bestselling authors who’ve published for years write to their own formula.

This means that bestselling authors like James Patterson and John Sandford can develop outlines and hire ghostwriters to write their novels. (Usually these authors acknowledge that a novel was “written with” or “with assistance from” the ghostwriter.)

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Get Paid To Write A Book: How To Get Ideas For Salable Books

Get paid to write a book: what are you selling?

Listen up. New authors tend to worry most about “who pays and how much do I get paid?” Here’s what’s more important: what you’re selling.

You MUST know what you’re selling if you want someone to pay you to write a book AND want to make a profit. Sadly, the world is filled with scammers who want books and will happily scam you out of months and years of work.

Writers and authors tend to confuse traditional publishing, self-publishing, and ghostwriting.

Think in terms of copyright, rather than getting paid per se.

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Write A Novel FAST: Edit While You’re Writing

The “standard” way to write a novel: write a draft, and revise

The standard way to write a novel, and the best way if you’re a pantser, is to start at the beginning and keep writing until you get to the end. Write your first draft as quickly as you can. Your sole aim in your first draft is to get your story onto the page. You can fix everything that needs fixing in revisions.

For many novels, this method is the safest and best way. Once you’ve written a draft, no matter how much revision you need to do, you have a novel.

But what if you’re on deadline? The draft/ revision method encourages procrastination. You’ve abrogated much of the decision-making that goes into writing your novel until a draft is written.

via peneloperedmont.com

DIY Designer: Become Your Own Social Media Image Designer

But… nothing is as easy as it looks. Although you try a couple of the easy, easy! tools , they’re not that easy if you’re a beginner. So, you tell yourself that you’re not a designer.

Shame, right? If only you could design, you’d be marketing your online store and you’d be doing a lot more book marketing too.

In a recent writers’ group meeting we discussed the challenges of using social media today. A couple of writers said that they couldn’t market their books and blog because they couldn’t afford to pay a designer.

I’m not a designer either, but over the years (in my daily life I’m a marketer) I’ve discovered that it’s always substance over form. You don’t need to be a designer to excel in marketing on social media.

via peneloperedmont.com

Short Fiction: 3 Tips To Help You Create Characters Readers Adore

A piece of short fiction is an ideal subscriber magnet.

Short fiction makes an ideal subscriber magnet

A “subscriber magnet or lead magnet” is something you offer readers. It’s an exclusive; something they can’t get anywhere else and it’s also a reward for trusting you with their email address.

I know many authors (and writers) find building a mailing list challenging. If you’re writing fiction however, creating subscriber magnets is a no-brainer. Spend a few hours crafting a short story and offer it to your readers.

How do you write a short story FAST?

I’m not a huge fan of detailed fiction formulas, although I do use loose formulas to write quick short fiction.

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New Fiction Author: 3 Tips To Write Page-Turners (Feel And Write)

New fiction author: feel it, write it (it’s all about the EMOTIONS)

When I’m working with new fiction writing students I’m thrilled when they begin thinking about emotions in their story characters—and in their readers.

Your readers read your fiction to immerse themselves in another world; a world you create. For a short time, you’ll take readers away from the stress of everyday life. You make them feel.

Let’s look at some tips to help.

1. It’s all about feelings: what do you feel?

Pay attention to what you feel, as you read in your favorite genre. Think about the emotions the characters feel: do you feel them? Why? What did the writer do, which drew you into the story, so that your emotions became engaged?

It helps to read a novel twice when you want to study an element of fiction. In your first reading, you’re caught up in the story.

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(NEW) Write Commercial Fiction: Storytelling For Fun And Profit — Angela Booth's Online Writing Classes and Programs

In today’s world, you act as your own publisher

You choose:

• A book idea you know will sell;

• A concept for a series you know will sell. (An aside: today, even if you win a publishing contract from a traditional publisher, you’ll still have to come up with ideas and concepts on your own.)

It’s no wonder authors are confused. Writing fiction which sells isn’t as simple as “writing to market”. There’s much more to it than that. You have to understand the market and how your books can fit into it.

Our new program helps you to do that.

via www.angelaswritingclasses.com

‘Mind Hacking’ Your Way to Self-Improvement

“The first step is to understand what you want, and why you don’t have it right now.”

There is a significant caveat, though. As with most things in life, you can’t have it all, and the promise of this possibility is tempered with human limits. “The world is like a giant App store,” Slawuta says, returning to her tech analogies, and our brains have limited processing power and hard-drive capacity. “We can learn anything, but not everything. The first step is to understand what you want, and why you don’t have it right now,” she adds, while also considering the benefits of not having a desired trait, “because there are always hidden costs and benefits.”

via 99u.adobe.com

12 Ways to Effectively Promote a New Product or Service | WordStream

Write a blog post

When promoting your new product or service, you may not have a landing page for customers or subscribers to go to. After all, your new offering could just be an upgrade on an existing platform or account. In this case, your goal may not be to get more customers, but to get your existing customers engaging, or to re-engage dormant customers.

Having a blog post written on the newly launched item is a great way to go into depth on all of the details, features, and benefits you would otherwise include on a landing page, and you can share the link to the blog post via your emails or social media channels.

via www.wordstream.com

Great advice if you're launching a new book.

13 Tips for Promoting Yourself Without Sounding like a Jerk

Be a learner, and share what you’re learning

Another reason to avoid words like ‘expert’ and ‘guru’ is people might think you’ve stopped learning, and are no longer open to new ideas or new ways thinking.

I’m not interested in hearing from people who think they know everything there is to know about a topic. I want to hear from people who are still learning by gathering knowledge and asking questions.

And then sharing what they’ve learned with others.

So don’t be afraid to let people know you’re still learning. Share what you’ve learned. Share the things you’ve tried that haven’t worked as well as those that have. And never stop, because you will never know everything.

via problogger.com

Get Paid To Write Blogs: Turn Your Hobby Into A Career

The steps will work for you too.

Before we get into that, a tip: the best writing jobs aren’t advertised. So you need to get proactive to find gigs. They’re out there.

1. You’re the expert: choose your topic(s)

What do you know? What are you interested in? Make a list of your experience and expertise. For example, Ashley comes from a farming family. Her parents run sheep and have diversified into growing almonds.

Ashley trained as a teacher, but ended up taking a job in industry. She’s got lots of areas she knows and about which she could blog.

Make a list of areas about which you know.

Your next step: research.

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Plottr: Scene Stacks, Custom Outlines, Prologues, and More! - Plottr

Introducing Scene Stacks

We are very excited to introduce the ability to create Scene Stacks within Plottr — groupings of multiple scenes in custom order placed anywhere you’d like on the Timeline.

This new feature (available in v2020.7.21) makes it possible to vertically stack multiple scenes on any plotline so you can easily organize your plot points in the order your work requires.

via getplottr.com

New version just released: now exports to Scrivener.

This is a huge timesaver.

Freelance Writing Tips: How To Find The Confidence To Start Today

Freelance writing: what’s the BEST that could happen?

Perhaps you want to:

• Write a book;
• Turn freelance writing into a full-time career; or
• Create a money-making blog.

Take ten minutes and think about how your life would change if you achieved the best-possible outcome.

Write a quick description of your new life. Writing down what your new life will look like is the start of building your confidence in your writing—and in yourself.

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