Another great meeting! Peter Clines graciously agreed to serve as host, prior to his signing at Mysterious Galaxy (you can order his new book here)
We tried out a slightly different format this time, formally splitting the time between writing craft questions (first half) and publishing/sales questions (second half).
Many thanks to Mysterious Galaxy for the venue, and to Peter Clines for running the show!
My notes:
- Absence of sci-fi thrillers currently, editors starting to mention it
- Character delineation: how to do it? How much is enough? Too much?
- Clines: doesn’t like recommending writing books, because writing is so personal and unique from person to person
- Protagonists need to be: likeable, relateable, and believable
- 3 easy ways to express character: what they say, what they do, and how others react to them
- Indy: when intro side character, will give reader info that the main character doesn’t have, to increase tension
- Plot is what happens outside, story is what happens inside, the character. Every book needs both, the plot to move things along, the story to move us
- Save the Cat: at start of story, main character needs to do something small and simple that lets audience know they’re the person to root for
- Things need to go wrong. We all say the wrong thing sometimes, or have plans go awry, and how we react to that shows a lot of character
- Techniques: one person wrote poems about each of his characters before the book, another wrote backstory for the door her character couldn’t touch, another person puts together portable “murder” boards for her books
- Potato-chip chapters: point is to make each chapter either small enough or end on tasty beat enough to make reader want to go to the next one
- Q: have book that is on the edge of ya and adult, how to market it? Have two versions...
- A: write it the way you want, submit it the way you want, let editor push for the other if they want it, let them worry about marketing it properly once it’s published
- Q: how to design a book cover?
- A: hire a book designer, don’t try to do it yourself, if you’re going indy
- Q: do you really sell books on twitter?
- A: yes, because people tweet that they just bought the book; though took four years of building audience before the book was published
- Social media: different posts for different sites, since the audiences are different between them
- Facebook ads: basically not worth it; check the veritas youtube channel for a good breakdown of how the ads actually perform
- Q: are they going to ask me about how many followers i have on facebook?
- A: if you have a lot, that’s great, but they care more about how good the book is than anything else
- If you hear about a cool gimmick for your query letter, don’t do it; by the time you’ve heard about it, the gimmick’s played out
- Q: Querying for comics?
- A: get an artist on board, have the first issue done, and the rest of the arc outlined
- Q: What about hiring an editor?
- A: nice if you can afford it, may be a good learning experience at first, but not essential to selling a book (just get it in the best shape you can before sending it out)
- A lot of hired editors will start out with just fifty pages, critique that, see if you two want to work together, then continue on with story edits, then finally a copyediting pass
