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 Monday, October 12, 2009
Marketing Vs. Story: Which is King? (Plus, Craft the Ultimate Cliche)
Marketing, marketing, marketing. You hear it from writing books. You hear it from us. You hear it from conferences, published writers at readings and even unpublished writers hanging out on street corners. Sure, it’s important—if not crucial at times—but what should really take precedence when it gets down to the marrow of things? It’s something that’s easy to forget when you’re looking at the macro-view of a writing career.
It’s time for the latest in the Top 20 Lessons from WD in 2009.
No. 16: Story, Story, Story
“Keep the focus on the writing and the story. All the advertising, marketing and promotion in the world are meaningless unless you’ve got a tale people want to read.”
—Author Rhodi Hawk (A Twisted Ladder), as featured in our March/April 2009 issue.
Marketing or story: Which do you think should take precedence?
To complement Hawk’s point, as James Patterson emphasized in that issue, “If it’s commercial fiction that you want to write, it’s story, story, story. You’ve got to get a story where if you tell it to somebody in a paragraph, they’ll go, ‘tell me more.’ And then when you start to write it, they continue to want to read more. And if you don’t, it won’t work.”
In honor of Hawk, Patterson and Story, Story, Story, take today’s prompt and try to decode what makes a truly awful story: Write the most hilariously cliché scene you can. How might analyzing the ins and outs of a tired, tried and true yarn lead you to purge your writing demons and craft a more original story next time?
WRITING PROMPT: Crafting a Cliché
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post your response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below:
Write the most cliché story you can, working as many unbearably overdone elements into the scene as possible.
Top 20 Lessons From WD: 2009 | Traditional Prompts
Monday, October 12, 2009 7:33:19 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00) 
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Friday, October 09, 2009
The Secret to Surviving First Publication (Plus, Get Your Fiction in WD!)
There it sits: everything you’ve wanted, in one hub. Everything you’ve dreamed, in bouts of caffeinated madness. Important-looking editors bustle back and forth within, but you’re stuck on the outside of your new publishing house, peering in through double-buffed windows, eyes wide.
How do you set foot in that hallowed place?
As it turns out, it’s just another rung in a ladder. And like every rung in every ladder, you merely have to know how to climb it.
And to do that, you have to …
(Today we continue our Top 20 Lessons from WD in 2009.)
No. 17: Ask. Ask!
“The moral of the story is not to tremble in awe at the entrance doors of the publisher. Ask, ask, ask, even if you don’t know what to ask. Ask them what you should be asking. Ask for a publishing schedule; ask what you can help with; ask for their publicity plan so that you can compare it with yours. Start your publicity plan long before you’ve finished the book, long before it’s published.”
--Author and WD reader Jeanette Salerno, as featured in our July/August 2009 Publishing 101 package.
Have an excellent weekend, and consider taking a crack at our magazine’s Your Story prompt. In 750 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring, post your stories in the comments section of my blog, and they’ll be entered in the contest, or e-mail them to yourstorycontest@fwmedia.com. (There’s only one entry allowed per person, and you have until the Nov. 10 deadline.) Should your story win and you posted it here, I’ll contact you for your name and mailing address when the time comes. Good luck!
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WRITING PROMPT: Your Story Contest No. 22
Suffering from a mid-life crisis, a 50-year-old businessman quits his job and goes on a quest to “get the band back together.”
—From The Writer’s Book of Matches by the staff of fresh boiled peanuts: a literary journal
Top 20 Lessons From WD: 2009 | Traditional Prompts | Your Story Prompts
Friday, October 09, 2009 2:58:02 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Top 20 Lessons from WD: On Rejection
Hi writers,
Thanks to everyone who stopped by Monday to read or chat with bestseller Dianna Love. And, of course, I’d also like to extend a Promptly Thank You to Dianna for sharing her prompts and insights.
As promised, we’ll be giving away copies of Dianna’s Break Into Fiction to two random commenters. Jacqui Lyonelle and Lisa: Can you e-mail your addresses to me at writersdigest [at] fwmedia [dot] com, Attn: Zachary Petit, and I’ll make sure they find their way to Dianna?
Also, have you ever wallowed in endless rejections? How do you deal with it? (I ask this as I shiver and edit my first work of long-form fiction, bracing myself for the querying process to come.) Today we continue the Top 20 Lessons from WD in 2009 series.
No. 18: Right and Wrong
“It took 80 queries before the most perceptive agent in the world took me off his slush pile. Then it was a score of editorial rejections and nearly a year before my agent had lunch with the right editor at the right time. To deal with rejection, you have to believe you’re right and they’re wrong.”
—Ira Rosofsky (Nasty, Brutish & Long), as interviewed in our March/April issue.
Moreover, as literary agent Scott Hoffman wrote in our September issue, don’t get “even a little bit discouraged until you’ve received 50—maybe even 100—rejections on the project in question.”
For more tips, stay tuned—No. 17 is on its way Friday.
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WRITING PROMPT: Dreamy
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post your response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below:
Take your latest dream, no matter what, and work it into a scene in a story you're currently writing or editing.
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Also, the website for Digital Book World has launched. Check out our new industry insider event geared toward helping consumer book publishers and their trading partners assess the challenges—and opportunities—presented by the digital age.
Top 20 Lessons From WD: 2009 | Traditional Prompts
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 5:31:09 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Monday, October 05, 2009
Special Q&A: Creativity Secrets from Bestseller Dianna Love (and free books!)
Hey writers,
Today is an excellent day at Promptly, as we welcome New York Times bestselling writer Dianna Love, a RITA-award winner and co-author of Break Into Fiction and a popular thriller series with Sherrilyn Kenyon (Whispered Lies). When not standing dumbfounded in front of dollar-gobbling slot machines, I met Dianna in Las Vegas, where we were both teaching at a writing conference.
Going along with Promptly’s goal of boosting creativity with writing prompts and exercises, I checked in with Dianna about breaking block, plotters, pantsers and other topics, and she even provided us with today’s regular prompts.
Check out her advice below, and feel free to weigh in (post in the Comments section of the blog) with your thoughts, any questions you might have for Dianna, or a response to her prompt. On Wednesday we’ll randomly select two commenters to receive copies of Dianna’s new book, Break Into Fiction: 11 Steps to Building a Story That Sells. So don’t be shy: Chime in! Dianna will be dropping by to respond to your questions about the writing world, and having heard her speak in the past, I know she's an excellent source of industry and craft knowledge.
For more on Dianna, catch up with her at authordiannalove.com, or on Twitter: @diannalove.
In your writing, what slows you down the most on a daily basis?
Now that I’m published, I have so much more to do than “just write,” but the writing must come first. My time gets eaten by anything from answering e-mails (some take a lot of time and I get over 100 a day) to working on promo opportunities to interacting with my publisher on an upcoming marketing campaign or edits to dealing with nonwriting related issues (you know … life :).
How do you tackle it?
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. I keep lists going all the time. I schedule things to be done by a certain day and try to get to anything early that I can. I set my “personal deadlines” for writing ahead of those my publisher is depending upon, so that if I run late, it’s on my schedule, which means the books are still on time. I’ve just finished a very difficult run of days for the past month and have three days to “catch up” on everything else while the next book is with a cold reader. That means those three days have to be productive, not spent taking a leisurely break.
What best drives your creativity?
Riding my motorcycle feeds my muse. I ride a BMW 1150 RT through scenic back roads to give my mind a chance to breathe. I often come back with a scene or even the basis for a new plot.
What tips do you have for overcoming writer’s block?
I used to wonder why some writers got terribly blocked until I started developing the Power Plotting workshop Mary Buckham and I created in our Break Into Fiction™ program. We figured out the reason most people get “stuck” on a story is because they don’t know where it’s going next. This is especially true for pantsers, or seat-of-the-pants writers, because their process is to just sit down and write. BUT that does not mean a pantser should learn how to plot. That is not their process. Pantsers need a way to fix problems or get unstuck in a way that works with their process. That’s why we created the questions in our Break Into Fiction program that show a plotter how to develop a story in advance, and show a pantser how to break out of a mental log jam or how to fix a book during revision.
What’s the best craft advice you can offer?
Do not EVER let anyone change your writing process. Find what works for you and go with it.
Some writers cannot write if the book has been plotted. Some writers cannot put a word down unless they have everything plotted out. Some I call “hybrids,” because that’s what I am. I like to write a chapter when I start seeing the opening in my mind, and get a feel for the characters. Then I sit down and plot. I don’t go to the extremes of some plotters, but I create complex stories with strong subplots and everything has to hit at the right time for the climax to be powerful. For me, that’s a very freeing process, but if I had to follow someone else’s process it wouldn’t work. Write a couple books to figure out your process.
What’s the best publishing advice you’ve ever received?
To be careful not to let promo and marketing opportunities bankrupt your time.
Writing mantra:
Nothing is worth more than today. That is a Goethe quote and it has been in my office since I started my first business at 17.
(photo courtesy of authordiannalove.com)
WRITING PROMPTS: Courtesy of Dianna Love
Below are five opening lines for a scene. The first three are in third person, the fourth is in first person and the fifth can be either one. You can change the point of view from third to first or first to third. There are no names, so you pick the characters. Write the first scene that comes to mind. Don’t worry about being correct on anything—just write and have fun.
He opened his eyes and slowly took in his surroundings, searching for one thing that looked familiar.
If she didn’t make the last ridge before the portal closed in the next 15 seconds, she’d end up losing her bounty and getting blood on her new solar boots.
He appreciated having a choice, but generally he was given at least one option that allowed for a chance to walk away alive even if he had to sacrifice dignity.
My mouth fell open in shock at the gangly man carrying a cardboard box, not believing he would dare to enter my real estate office again.
A palomino horse trotted into the yard sans rider, daisies braided into the mane and a sword hanging from a leather loop on the saddle.
Q&As | Traditional Prompts
Monday, October 05, 2009 3:45:38 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Friday, October 02, 2009
Top 20 Lessons From WD Mag in 2009: Steve Berry
Hey writers,
Wasted and lost writing time: We all worry (if not obsess) over it. As it turns out, we’re not alone. It’s time for the next installment in our Top 20 Lessons From WD Magazine in 2009 series.
No. 19: Heed the Voice
“I didn’t write my first word until I was 35 years old. I wasted about 10 years before that, when the little voice in my head was screaming for me to write. All writers have a little voice in their head that drives them forward. Listen to it.”
—Bestseller Steve Berry (The Amber Room, The Templar Legacy), as interviewed in “Springboards to Success,” from our May/June 2009 issue.
Literary food for thought: How long did you wait—or are you still waiting? What's the key to kicking yourself into gear?
Have an excellent weekend, and enjoy the prompt below from the brand new issue of Writer’s Digest magazine (currently shipping to subscribers, and on newsstands Oct. 13—it features Time Traveler’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger, alongside a cover package loaded with info about writing short, from personal essays and freelancing to literary journals).
And don’t forget to stop by Promptly Monday, too—bestseller Dianna Love will be sharing her take on the creative process, as well as offering prompts and perhaps a free copy or two of her new book, Break Into Fiction. In addition to a posted Q&A, Dianna will be dropping by to interact with anyone who’d like to chat about creativity, the business of publishing, or anything else that may cross one’s writerly mind.
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WRITING PROMPT: Breaking Down
Funny, sad, or stirring, feel free to take the following prompt home or post your response (500 words or fewer) in the Comments section below:
A Tire blows out as you’re in the car with someone on the verge of his or her own breakdown. Stuck in a small town, you’re about to do something you haven’t done in years.
InkWell Prompts | Top 20 Lessons From WD: 2009 | Traditional Prompts
Friday, October 02, 2009 8:08:29 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Can Writers See the Future?
Hey writers,
Intriguing post today at Wired’s This Day in Tech blog. It’s a topic you’ve probably heard wisps of at one point or another in the pop culture of writing—the author who more or less predicted the sinking of the Titanic. Contrasting any loose Nostradamus-style guesstimations, Morgan Robertson (born on this day in 1861) published his maritime disaster epic Futility in 1898. The book’s ship? The Titan. The culprit that landed it at the bottom of the Atlantic? An iceberg. As the blog also details, one of Robertson’s short stories in 1914 depicted a war between the United States and Japan, sparked by a surprise salvo. (Read more here.)
 Eerie coincidences for a writer with bad luck—or, OK luck, depending on how you look at it (after all, his ocean liner tome was reprinted after the Titanic went down in 1912).
Every so often, you hear about other coincidences between works of fiction and reality. What do you think: How do fiction writers do it? Do they have such a strong grounding in their subject matter that they can make informed guesses about what’s down the road? Or are there so many fiction writers with such a momentous output that someone's bound to hit the nail on the head from time to time? Or, sliding further down the rabbit hole, as Stephen King said in our May/June issue: “I think every writer who does this on a daily basis has a ‘back channel’ to the subconscious that can be accessed pretty easily. Mine is wide and deep. … I sense strongly that this world is a thin place indeed, simply a veil over a brighter and more amazing truth.”
Sure, it’s all a bit out there and may even border on new-age turf, but it makes you wonder. And as writers, isn't wondering the key to getting to the good stuff?
Here’s to you on your birthday, Morgan Robertson. Thanks for the prompt. (And sorry for the Titanic pic.)
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WRITING PROMPT: Fiction to Fact
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post your response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below:
Take the last piece of fiction you wrote, and imagine that it actually happened—and found its way to the news. Now, write a piece centered around the reactions of a character watching a recap of the story on television. (What can you learn about the original piece—or the world around it—from this objective glimpse?)
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The October issue of WD is now on newsstands. Check out our community issue here, featuring writing forums, online collectives, bestsellers riffing on writers’ organizations, and even the keys to making the most of a nightmare conference. What’s worth your time these days?
Traditional Prompts
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:17:19 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Monday, September 28, 2009
The Top 20 Lessons From WD Mag in 2009: No. 20
Hey writers,
The 90th anniversary issue of WD is fast approaching (it’s our January 2010 installment, which ships to subscribers Nov. 24 and hits newsstands Dec. 15), and Editor Jessica Strawser and I are rapidly working to get everything out on time.
Which means another year of magazines is about to start. Being the type of person who has a hard time parting with anything (I still have a rather hearty collection of Pez dispensers, not to mention roughly everything I’ve ever written), I want to hang onto the 2009 series of WD magazines for as long as possible. When you work on them long enough, they become a bit like old pals—quotable and even sometimes annoyingly omnipresent, but you're always sad to see them go.
Thus, to give the 2009 WDs their due, I’m counting down to the January 2010 issue two times per week with my favorite 20 writing lessons from the year. Think simple, quotable passages of wisdom from Stephen King, Rick Steves and others, from the bestseller to the savvy newbie.
No. 20: Get Messy
“During the course of writing six novels, I realized that the days when the truth shone brightest were the days my pen flowed the freest and messiest across the pages. And I was rewarded with longer and longer satisfactory passages. It’s paradoxical that giving up control rewards you with what you seek most: concise, insightful work.”
—Elizabeth Sims, on how writing freely without initial self-editing can bring new life to your prose, in “Rough It Up,” from the January 2009 issue of WD.
After each installment of tips, you’ll receive a regular helping of writing prompts to spark new life into your work. And don’t forget to stop by next Monday, Oct. 5. New York Times bestseller Dianna Love will share some great insights about her creative process, and offer prompts and a couple of copies of her new book, Break Into Fiction.
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WRITING PROMPT: Old Habits Die Hard
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post your response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below:
You decide to give up an old habit—in exchange for something that was originally promised to you years ago.
Traditional Prompts | Top 20 Lessons From WD: 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009 4:11:10 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Friday, September 25, 2009
Remembering Jim Carroll in Prompts
Hey writers,
Here’s to poet, memoirist and rock n’ roller Jim Carroll, who recently died, reportedly working away at his desk. Carroll is perhaps best known for the chronicle of his heroin addiction and youth, The Basketball Diaries, which was raw, disturbing and poignant.
Thus, today, I offer a pair of Literary Roadshow prompts from Carroll’s Fear of Dreaming. If you’re looking for more on Carroll, check out CatholicBoy.com, a site loaded with some great articles about the author from the last few decades.
Also, after three concrete swag-offs and insightful feedback from a few of you, I’ve decided to suspend the competitions angle of Promptly and refocus a bit. Since the beginning, the ongoing competition has cast a bit of a shadow on the blog, and perhaps detracted from what it’s really all about: the prompts, and spurring creativity.
I’ve always wanted Promptly to be a hub where you can come to help break block by picking up some writing ideas, feeding off the creativity and wisdom of others, and delving into some rambling on the writing world by yours truly in the process.
To that end, we have some stirring goods in the works for the near future (including Q&As with authors and guest prompts, Your Story prompts that can land your work in WD magazine, prospective interactive challenges, and more), and of course, your pieces are always welcome in the Comments section of the blog, if you’d like to post them there for your colleagues’ inspiration, thoughts and comments.
Moreover, what would you like to see in Promptly? How could we take things a step further? Give me a shout at writersdigest [at] fwmedia [dot] com with the subject line “Attn: Promptly,” and no matter what you do, have an excellent weekend.
Onward!
Zachary
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WRITING PROMPT: Something To Cry About/The Siren
Literary Roadshow: Proving that one author’s stray sentences can be another’s writing exercise gold. Feel free take the prompts home or post your stories in the Comments section below.
Write a story inspired by or containing the following, from Jim Carroll’s Fear of Dreaming:
“There, now you really have something to cry about!”
He looks back over at me after a moment of silence, and we begin laughing again. I throw my arms around him and lay my head to his shoulders, continuing to laugh until my tears fall down the lapel of his suit.
[and/or]
When the traffic is still, I lower my hands and pass through.
I arrive before the siren, through the Post Office doors …
yet the siren has been broken, some jealous women explain, and I am far too late.
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The October issue of WD is now on newsstands. Check out our community issue here, featuring writing forums, online collectives, bestsellers riffing on writers’ organizations, and even the keys to making the most of a nightmare conference. What’s worth your time these days?
Literary Roadshow
Friday, September 25, 2009 9:03:47 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Did your story take home the Promptly gold?
It’s that time again — time, alongside a Writer’s Digest comrade, to gnash our teeth, hold our breath and force ourselves to pick a top story from the past month’s creative cavalcade of responses to various prompts.
For August-September, with the help of magazine staffer and WD Books Editor Scott Francis, we selected Megan Hyman’s “Cynic!” piece. As Scott said, “the voice and the tone are so telling that though the story is short, you come to understand the emotions of the characters.” For her story, Megan will receive a copy of Bang The Keys: Four Steps to a Lifelong Writing Practice by Jill Dearman, Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell, Sorrow Wood by Raymond L. Atkins, a copy of the WD Novel Writing special newsstand publication, and a copy of the WD Guide to Creativity newsstand publication.
As always, thanks to everyone who shared their work here in the last month. It means a lot to me, as the blog’s curator, and I’ve heard from other people at WD and scattered about the country how much they love reading all of the pieces, too.
Every time you write a story here it could take home some picks from the WD office swag bag, but perhaps most important, it may help other writers get their creative wheels turning, and it flexes and sharpens that strange muscle—the one most of us don’t have a hope in the world of burying or setting aside, even if we wanted to.
Here’s to hoping we never do.
*Megan, please send an e-mail to writersdigest [at] fwmedia [dot] com marked "Attn: Zachary Petit," so I can get the goods shipped out to you!
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WRITING PROMPT: From the Attic
To respond to the following prompt, courtesy of Scott Francis (check out his blog at seescottwrite.wordpress.com) post your stories, in 500 words or fewer, in the Comments section of Promptly:
You are awakened in the middle of the night by a strange tapping noise coming from your attic. You decide to investigate, and after moving a few old boxes, you find what appears to be a telegraph receiver hidden in a small hole in the wall.
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The October issue of WD is now on newsstands. Check out our community issue here, featuring writing forums, online collectives, bestsellers riffing on writers’ organizations, and even the keys to making the most of a nightmare conference. What’s worth your time these days?
Traditional Prompts | Winning Stories
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 6:05:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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Monday, September 21, 2009
Worst Tweet Ever?
You can run, but you can’t hide: Talk of Fail Whales, talk of Ashton vs. CNN, talk of how you found out your sibling is engaged through a revelatory 140-character missive, and so on—anything and everything, all the time.
What do you think of Twitter?
While it can be a force of evil—think unnecessary info dump overload—I think it can indeed be a positive tool in your writing arsenal if you devote time and a benefit-oriented approach to your posts. (In our May/June 2009 issue we ran a guide to social networking that offers tips on how writers can max out their use of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Click here to check it out for free.)
Or, if you’re like me and not directly on Twitter, there can be a lot to gain from other people’s Tweets. Our publisher and editorial director, Jane Friedman, runs a great (and I’m not just on the hunt for a raise) roundup series on the Best Tweets for Writers, downsizing for us the massive task of sifting the gold out of Fail Whales, "watching Nick@Nite" updates and Ashton Kutcher wars.
Speaking of bad Tweets … what form might the absolute worst take, and how might it spread like a virus?
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PROMPT: Worst Tweet Ever?
In 500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring, feel free to post your story in the Comments section of the blog:
Write a scene about the fallout from one of the worst Tweets ever. Or, simply draft a few of the worst Tweets ever.
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Also, the October issue of WD is now on newsstands. Check out our community issue here, featuring writing forums, online collectives, bestsellers riffing on writers’ organizations, and even the keys to making the most of a nightmare conference. What’s worth your time these days?
Traditional Prompts
Monday, September 21, 2009 6:01:36 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
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