“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

What is your method for getting ideas? What gets you inspired to write?

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Sorry for the late post today. My bad. Today I have guest posters – Wizards in Publishing – a service I’ve used to self-publish my books with people I enjoy working with. The have services for critiquing, plot refinement, publisher submission refinement, proofreading, cover art services, formatting and uploading to booksellers. Kate Richards and Valerie Mann are the Wizards behind the services. Welcome, Wizards!

What’s Going on With the Publishing World?

Authors today can tell you the publishing world changes rules and course on a regular basis—what works today may not (okay, most likely) won’t be as effective tomorrow. Digital publishing has increased the rate at which these changes occur. Every time an author thinks he/she has a handle on marketing, promotion, genre trends, etc, the market changes and so does the way the game is played. Who’s writing these rules anyway?
Readers!

But the good news? Digital or e-book publishing has created opportunities for authors to have their precious stories seen by millions of readers—authors who arguably are just as good as the big-name writers making tons of money and selling tons of books with the traditional publishers—but may never have had that opportunity when publishing was strictly paper. You remember paper, right?—or what some digital houses call “dead-tree books”, but seriously, that has such a negative ring to it. There is no “bad” way to publish a book. Period.

Even better than just creating new opportunities for more books to been seen is the wide variety of ways for authors to market and promote their works. They can go strictly paper, or digital, or both. The marketing opportunities are endless. The only drawback we see at Wizards in Publishing is with the endless opportunities comes endless research by diligent authors because the market does change all the time. What works to sell your book today may be a seemingly fruitless effort tomorrow. Staying on top of what works and what doesn’t is a full-time job. Knowing the best bang for your buck can be daunting.

Bottom line—unless you’re a super-famous author making your publishing house a lot of money, the marketing and promotion falls on you, including setting a financial budget for your marketing plan.

Our tips:
1. Write what you know. If you don’t know the genre but your characters won’t stop talking to you, it’s your job to learn everything you can about the time period, fashion, language, politics, etc. of the people and place you’re writing about. Readers are way too savvy these days and they aren’t afraid to call authors out when details aren’t precise.

2. Do your research. What is trending and selling right now? The best-written book in the whole wide world is going to be a much harder sell which translates into a whole lot more work for the author to make readers want to buy it. That’s not to say you shouldn’t write that amazing story. Just be prepared to work really hard to sell it.

3. Decide how you want to publish. Do you want to submit to a publisher? Or do you want to self-publish? Right now, indie publishing (self-publishing) is huge, putting even more books into the hands of readers. Some authors like the idea of a publisher handling the editing, cover art and formatting, in return for splitting royalties.

Some authors (including the Wizard in Publishing owners) straddle both fences, having published books independently and with publishing houses. It’s okay to do both! The market is wide open to doing either or both!

Be warned: no matter which way you decide to go, the majority of marketing and promotion is still going to fall on you, the author. Publishers (even the big ones) are taking a more passive, backseat role in this regard. Authors may or may not agree with this, but it’s just one more thing to know—YOU, dear Author, will have to commit to promotion, no matter what.

4. Decide when you want to publish. Is there a better time of year than another for releasing the book? In other words, a story set in December in Montana probably won’t be as desirable a beach-read as you might think.

5. Keep up with the marketing trends. Have an active blog/website, use social media. Find what social media works for your genre. Social media is your best friend and it’s almost always free. Promote yourself as well as your books. Find a personal branding that readers see often and relate to you. It can be a picture of your dog that you include in your blog/Facebook/Twitter posts, etc.

There are lots of small businesses that specialize in helping authors promote and many of them are fairly inexpensive. Talk to other authors in your genre and see what is working for them. But remember: you have to do your homework and legwork, even if you hire a company to find those opportunities for you.

6. Editing. Get your book edited. Don’t think it doesn’t need it because honestly, it does. The best authors in the world (with amazing writing skills) will tell you their editors are their best friends. This goes back to the savvy-reader thing—readers are educated and they know when a book has been edited or not. Online reviews are rampant with negative comments about this. Paying an editor is money well-spent, and we’d say this even if we weren’t editors!

7. Write. Remember that author who never finished his book? We don’t either.

TKZers – Any questions for self-publishing, formatting, trends? Feel free to ask the Wizards.

Wizardsinpublishing.com – Email addy is thewiz@wizardsinpublishing.com

Happy to report… I’m still in France.

Two weeks ago, also while I was in France, I posted an excerpt from my newly released writing book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Novel From Broken to Brilliant” (Writers Digest Books). Here is another one, this from Chapter 13, “The Doctor Will See You Now,” which refers to the three real life case studies — not from published novels, but from unpublished authors — that follow.

This excerpt helps set up the context relative to the value of reading unpublished (and dare I say, unpublishable) novels, provided you are reading with a full awareness of the principles of effective storytelling.

If you aren’t — and if you’ve ever been in a critique group you’ll know what I’m saying here — you may not be able to tell the difference.

Here then, is the excerpt:

The Best Learning of All

As we move forward in our writing journey we gather knowledge and evolve our skills. Part of that process includes reading the published work of best-selling authors and, sometimes, the novels and screenplays of our peers. What we learn there depends on what we bring to that reading experience. If you are new to writing, then perhaps those published stories appear to be nearly seamless; they almost look easy. Sometimes, in the quiet of our own hubris, we think we could do as well. And so we learn to duplicate what we see in successful works relative to storytelling craft.

But this can be like watching heart surgery from the O.R. gallery and to go home to try to insert a valve into the heart of a loved one in your living room. Because it looked easy. It’s a rather dark and absurd analogy, I grant you, but it’s also apt. In the hands of a professional, the complex can appear symmetrically accessible. Chances are—actually, it’s a certainty—your less-than-fully-enlightened eye doesn’t capture all there is to learn when you read a bestselling novel or see a great film. Many of the details, principles, nuances, and creative moves disappear into the whole of the story.

The theory of spending ten thousand hours of apprenticeship to reach a professional level of excellence has no better testimony than in the field of writing fiction.

I contend that the more you understand about craft, the easier it is to identify both strengths and weaknesses in the work of others, which turns those works into better teaching tools.

And so, now that you’ve internalized this information and stand at the gate of storytelling enlightenment, you are about to enter an exciting new world, the realm of the principles screaming out to you from the pages of those same published novels in a way you’ve never been able to see and comprehend before. Your learning curve is about to go vertical, because this very experience—looking for and recognizing craft in the stories you consume, seeing how they did it, recognizing the principles in play—is the second most enlightening opportunity you’ll ever know in your life as a writer.

This is assuming that you bring along your knowledge of craft as you review published stories. If you’re still guessing or trying to prove these principles wrong, then you’re on your own in recognizing the symmetrical and nuanced beauty of craft imbedded in the complex and distracting ambiance of a well-told story. It’s like looking at an X-ray. It’s almost impossible to see anything of importance until someone with a white coat points it out to you.

Hopefully you now have a white coat of your own to bring to the discussion.

You might be thinking, So you said reading stories from this new context is the second most enlightening opportunity I’ll have. Then what is the first, the best learning experience available?

I was hoping you’d ask.

The only compromise in using published works as learning models is that any problems and miscues that may have existed during development, any departures and fumbling of the principles, has likely already been caught and remedied. Sure, you may find a typo or two in a published book, but we’re talking story-level issues here, and those have been, for the most part, repaired. There’s no case study of revision-in-waiting to be found in a finished David Baldacci novel or a Steven Zaillian script.

The richest learning experience awaits in reading the work of newer writers and their unpublished stories, stories that haven’t yet reached up to grab the bar, even stories in development that expose what the writers aren’t seeing, aren’t getting, and may be tripping over as their stories tumble into an abyss of their own digging.

When you read these stories and story plans with an enlightened eye, with an embrace of all the principles and criteria you have just consumed, this becomes the most affirming, illuminating, and clarifying learning experience of all. Because now you can see how it looks behind the scenes, on the bloody battlefield of story development, where chaos must be confronted and ignorance leading to seductive temptation must be conquered.

I’m betting you can relate to that. 

And I’m trusting that, in these case studies, you’ll quickly see what I saw as the guy doing the evaluation and giving the often difficult feedback.

Read and learn. Other than helping your writer friends or participating in a critique group, this may be the best opportunity you’ve ever had to have a writing epiphany, for realization to manifest before your newly enlightened eyes.

Put your story-coaching hat on and see how a story looks from the outside, with a view toward understanding what went wrong from the inside.

It’s the most mysterious part of the fiction craft, but the one thing agents and editors say is most essential.

It’s something writers talk about––and readers respond to––but no one seems to know how to teach it.

Indeed, there are those who say it can’t be taught, because you either have it or you don’t.

It’s voice.

Writers hear about it all the time at conferences. Yet no one can agree even on a definition.

Over the years I’ve jotted down the ways agents and editors describe voice. Here are a few:

• A combination of character, setting, page turning.
• A distinctive style, like a Sergio Leone film.
• It’s who you are.
• Personality on the page.
• It’s something written from your deepest truth.
• Your expression as an artist.

You’ll often hear these same people say they turned down a book because the voice was “weak.”

So how the heck do you find your voice when the very definition is so vague? Is it something that can be developed? Is it something you’re just born with? Do you have to find it by trial and error, if you find it at all?

What if you write in different genres? Is your voice in a noir thriller going to be the same as your voice in a romance? Should it be?

In my new book, VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing, I provide the answers.

And it starts with a stunning realization: voice does not come from the author.

I’ll let you chew on that a moment.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I mean that we should not conceive of voice as coming from the author alone, without any other considerations. The best fictional voice is an interplay between the characters and the author, and then between the author and his craft as he puts the words on the page.

My definition, therefore, is as follows:

CHARACTER background and language filtered through the AUTHOR’S heart, and rendered with craft on the PAGE = VOICE

In the book, I explain how this relationship works, and give you specific techniques to put it into practice. The goal is to make every book you write unique and compelling on its own terms.

I call this the CAP Method.

C is for Character. I describe five key questions a writer must answer for every POV character. Then we proceed to the best ways to both see and hear the characters before you write them.

A is for Author, and this is all about achieving symbiosis, that mysterious connection between creator and character. It’s similar to how great actors approach a role. I’ll show you how to do it.

Finally, P is for Page, the craft part of the writing, and here I offer you a writing technique that I’ve never seen taught before, something I developed from my own days as an actor. It’s a way to feel your character’s emotions every time you write a scene.

Which is when the magic happens.

And magic is what you need. Because the main complaint I hear these days from readers is that such-and-such a book was “okay,” but felt like the “same old, same old.”

Tapping into the power of voice will obliterate that objection.

Let me give you an example. Below is a paragraph from a published thriller describing a bit of New York City:

There were sidewalk vendors and bustling clothing stores and lines of people in front of curbside food carts. There was also a lot of scaffolding and cranes from new construction and building renovations. I even saw a Times Square-style double-decker bus go by filled with wide-eyed tourists.

Ugh. There were and There was in two consecutive sentences. Then simple reportage that could have come from a brochure. There is no voice here, no sense of character. Anyone could be describing this scene.

Now look at a master at work:

Some days hang over Manhattan like a huge pair of unseen pincers, slowly squeezing the city until you can hardly breathe. A low growl of thunder echoed up the cavern of Fifth Avenue and I looked up to where the sky started at the seventy-first floor of the Empire State Building. I could smell the rain. It was like the kind that hung above the orderly piles of concrete until it was soaked with dust and debris and when it came down it wasn’t rain at all, but the sweat of the city.

That’s the opening of Mickey Spillane’s The Killing Man, and from the get-go we are inside the character. We see the city through his eyes, feel it through his heart.

It’s the difference between fiction that is fine and fiction that is unforgettable.

An acquisitions editor for a major publisher, Marian Lizzi, once said, “As my first boss used to warn us green editorial assistants two decades ago, the type of submission that’s the toughest to spot – and the most essential to avoid — is the one that is skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable.”

That’s why voice is so important. It takes you from skillful, competent, literate, and forgettable to the kind of book we all love to find—unputdownable.

Which is why I felt we needed a book on the subject. It can be found at:

AMAZON

AMAZON INTERNATIONAL STORES

BARNES & NOBLE

KOBO

PRINT VERSION

So what characters come to mind when you think of a compelling voice? I nominate Holden Caulfield. What about you?

JordanDane
@JordanDane

I’m excited to have my friend, New York Times & USA Today bestseller Linda Castillo, as a guest today at The Kill Zone. I’m a huge fan of Linda’s Kate Burkholder series set in Amish country. Highly recommended. Her debut thriller in this series (one of my favorite books), SWORN TO SILENCE, earned starred reviews from Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist—and spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The book was also adapted into a two hour original movie re-titled AN AMISH MURDER, starring Neve Campbell as Kate Burkholder. I really liked the film adaptation. Linda is here today to talk about the special research she does on this series. Welcome, Linda!

NYT & International Bestseller Linda Castillo

Linda Castillo: Website & Twitter

Nothing gets a writer’s creative juices flowing like research. Okay, that’s not exactly true for everyone, but the importance of solid research should never be underestimated.

There are three camps when it comes to that aspect of writing. First, there are the writers who love it. The obsessive-compulsive types who spend days or weeks or even months completely and happily immersed in whatever subject matter they’re about to embark upon.

Then there are writers like me, who walk a center line (not necessarily a straight line.) I research the central external theme of my book. For example, if the story involves a cold case and there’s a dead body in the mix, I’ll read everything I can get my hands on about decomp, forensics, and police procedure regarding old cases. For the smaller details, I research as I write.

And, finally, there are those writers who detest research. Writers who would rather . . . well . . . write than bury their noses in tomes of seemingly extraneous information for weeks on end. They want to get to the story already, and who can blame them if said story is burning—or a tight deadline beckons? Well, slow down, Mr. Type A, because in the end, solid research can save you hours of re-writing—and maybe even save the book.

One thing is certain: A writer can never know too much about his or her subject matter. That is an indisputable fact. Do your research and take the time to do it right. Thorough research will help you write the book. It can help you find that brilliant twist your story is begging for. It adds confidence to your voice. It adds power and credibility to your writing. In the long run, it can save you time. Knowledge and/or expertise cannot be faked, no matter how good a liar you are. If a writer tries to write about a subject he or she doesn’t know squat about, it will show. Readers will know.

A couple of quick caveats:

While it’s true that a writer can never do too much research, keep these two points in mind. Your research should never show. And you shouldn’t hide behind your research because you’re afraid to write the book. Writers, you know what I mean.

Image provided by Linda Castilo

I write an Amish-set thriller series. My protagonist, Kate Burkholder, is the police chief of a small farming community in Ohio’s Amish Country. Kate left the plain life when she was eighteen and eventually found her way into law enforcement. Years later, when her mother passed away, Kate returned to her hometown to bury her. While she was there, the mayor and town council approached her, informing her that the police chief had retired and asking her to fill the position. The Amish are a large part of the local economy and they believed Kate could help bridge the gap between the “English” and Amish communities. Not only did she have big city law enforcement experience, but she knows the Amish traditions, the religion, and she’s fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch.

Does anyone see a few research challenges lurking in there? Believe me, there were many challenges, especially early on. As a writer, it was extremely important to me to depict the Amish correctly and honestly. I wanted to write a protagonist who could immerse us not only in the world of a small-town chief, but in the Amish culture as well. I wanted my police procedure to be spot on. I wanted to paint a vivid picture of this bucolic small town. I wanted readers to see it and hear it and smell it. I wanted them to feel as if they’d walked the streets and seen the endless cornfields, heard the rustle of the stalks and clip clop of shod horse hooves on pavement.

Here are some of the things I did to get it right:

I’ve always enjoyed writing cops. Early in my career, while I was still writing romantic suspense, I enrolled in and graduated from two citizens police academies. The experiences were incredibly fun and a tremendous learning experience. The classes and field trips were exciting and in many ways, real eye openers. The things I learned and the contacts I made have served me well in my writing life. If you’re writing a character who’s in law enforcement or a police procedural, I highly recommend you grab a buddy and enroll in (and graduate from) a citizens police academy (or two!)

On the forensic side:
I’ve had the opportunity to tour two morgues. The Charity Hospital morgue in New Orleans and the Collin County Medical Examiner’s office and morgue near Dallas. I was invited into the “cold” room of the Collin County Morgue. Luckily, there was only one “customer” there that day. One of the more unforgettable aspects of the tour was the smell. I was surprised that even with a separate, state-of-the-art HVAC system, the smell of death was unmistakable and strong. It was a fascinating, disturbing and enlightening experience that has been a tremendous help with my writing.

I also scored an in-depth tour of the Criminal Investigation Laboratory at the Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, which was utterly fascinating. This is a bit of an inside joke, but I’ll never look at a lunch-size brown paper bag the same way again. Who knew the storage of forensic evidence could look so benign?

Writing a different culture:

As you can imagine, writing an Amish-set series required a huge amount of research. The Amish culture is complex with a long history. They’re also somewhat of a “closed” society. Many Amish prefer to stay separate from the rest of the world. While that made them infinitely more interesting to my writer’s mind, it made making contact with them and learning about their culture more difficult. I took advantage of several in-depth and well-researched books. But I needed more . . .

A librarian from Ohio to the rescue . . .

Don’t ever underestimate the ability of a librarian to help you find exactly what you need in terms of information. During my first book tour in Ohio, I met a wonderful librarian and we’ve become fast friends. Denise lives in the heart of Amish Country and has generously shared her infinite wisdom of the Amish culture. She has gone above and beyond, planning research trips, sending me books and articles (and apple butter!) She’s friends with many of the local Amish families and has introduced me to them, included me in social events with them. (Yes, I even got to drive a buggy!) She is a dynamo, fun to hang out with—and a good friend. She’s been indispensible in terms of research and I’m so lucky (in so many ways) to have made contact with her. Writers, get to know your librarians. They are a wealth of information, and they love to help.

That brings me to my next research topic: Know your locale. Familiarize yourself with the area in which your book is set. That’s especially true if your locale is unique, such as Ohio’s Amish Country. While it’s true you can learn quite a bit about a place by reading about it and by looking at pictures, nothing beats boots on the ground. When you’re there, all five senses are engaged. When you talk to someone, you not only hear their voice, but their inflections. You see their mannerisms. You notice so many things all around you that can add richness and depth to the world you’re building. Of course, there are times when you can’t visit your locale. Travel is expensive and time consuming. But if you get the chance—go and experience your locale.

I’m a firm believer in that this kind of hands-on research is a vital part of writing a more powerful, credible and vivid novel. Research becomes part of the creative well from which we delve when we set our pens to page. It becomes part of our muse, and that’s a precious thing. Keep your muse happy and refill the well often.

BIO:

Linda Castillo knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer—and penned her first novel at the age of thirteen. She’s published thirty books for three New York publishing houses and won numerous industry awards, including a nomination by the International Thriller Writers for Best Hardcover, the Golden Heart, the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence, and a nomination for the prestigious Rita.

Her debut thriller, SWORN TO SILENCE, garnered starred reviews from Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist—and spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The following books in the series also hit the NYT and USA Today lists and became international bestsellers. Last year SWORN TO SILENCE was adapted into a two hour original movie re-titled AN AMISH MURDER and starring Neve Campbell as Kate Burkholder.

In her spare time, Linda enjoys trail riding, and dabbles in barrel racing. She resides in Texas with her husband, two rescued Blue Heelers, and two Appaloosa horses. She’s currently at work on her next novel, a thriller set in Amish Country and featuring Chief of Police Kate Burkholder.