A NOVEL Writing Site.com » Hooks

Self-Publishing on Amazon Kindle

Lynn Dean — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:59:41 +0000

Self-publishing an ebook for Amazon Kindle couldn’t be easier!

Start by going to the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) page and opening an account. From that point, publishing your story is as simple as following the instructions, but I also downloaded AmazonKindle’s free ebook, Publish on Amazon Kindle with Kindle Direct Publishing.

Of course, it helps to have your ducks in a row before you take the plunge, but there are very few ducks to line up. Here’s what you’ll need:

Your manuscript, of course–as good as you can make it, but you can edit and update it at any time, even after it’s posted. You can upload your Word document (.doc or .docx) directly, or “Save As” a filtered web page (.html).

Your cover, if you have one. A good cover makes a great showing. A poor cover screams “home job.” A thumbnail of your cover is the first thing browsers will see, so make your best effort or get help from someone with good graphic skills. I created mine using Gimp, a free photo editing program you can download to your computer. By layering photographs and experimenting with fonts and special effects, you can create a creditable image. Save it as a jpg.

A catchy description of your story. Remember our discussions about hooks? If you had to describe your story in 25 words or less, what would you say to catch a reader’s interest? Lead with that. You have a generous space to go into detail with a full “back cover blurb,” but when browsers look up your book on a Kindle dedicated e-reader, the first 175 characters or so are what’s displayed.

After that, it’s basically a matter of filling in the blanks.

I will say that I hit one minor snag. When I uploaded my manuscript as a document file, the kdp conversion process tended to lump short paragraphs into one indented block. Uploading the manuscript as an html filtered web page solved that problem, but this process could not read the black and white image of my cover that I used as my first page. I went to the Kindle Community–a support forum that you can access after you open a KDP account–and learned how to fix this by saving the cover image and html manuscript in a zipped file. There are all sorts of helpful discussion threads on the loop, and other writers tend to reply quickly with encouragement.

After you self-publish your first book, you can track your sales through your Kindle Direct Publishing account. Coming up: some ways to spread the word about your book!

Writing Lesson 2.18 – What Are You Talking About?

Lynn Dean — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:00:54 +0000

If you babysit or have younger siblings, maybe you’ve had a child burst into your presence and start talking a mile a minute. Having no context, you probably stopped said kiddo after a minute or two and asked, “What ARE you talking about?”

Readers need context.

It would be a mistake to just dive in and start talking. You have at most 5 pages to hook your readers’ interest. If they aren’t invested in your story by then, chances are they will not continue reading.

So how do you hook their interest? One way is to show, right up front, what’s at stake for that intriguing character you’ve created. We’ve covered this before. Your character needs:

A Goal - What does he want?

Motivation - Why does he want it?

Conflicts - What odds must he overcome to get it?

But there’s something else–something more subtle–and you’ll be relieved to know that you don’t have to spell it out in the first 5 pages, though you might drop a hint. This ingredient is so important, though, that it’s the very first seed of an idea for me–before the characters, before the plot, before I have a single word on the page. This ever-so-important element is . . . (drumroll, please) . . .

Theme

Theme is what your story is about.

Theme is your reason for telling the story–the message you hope your readers will take away and remember.

Theme is what makes the difference between a nice, amusing little sumpin’ and a really great book that makes you want to read it again and again. (Remind me, sometime, to tell you more about the difference between amusement and recreation. It’s amazing, but I digress . . .)

Whatever else happens in your story, it’s all building to this one important idea that you’re trying to communicate.

I didn’t grasp that when I first started to write, and as a result my stories were a series of exciting–but pointless–scenes. Now, I begin my stories by deciding what it is I’m trying to say. I write that out in big letters and post it above my computer screen. Every chapter, every scene I write relates to the theme in some way and moves my character (and my reader) towards a point where they discover the hidden truth for themselves.

Exercise:

Let’s practice identifying themes by unveiling them in works we’re familiar with.

1) The books of the Bible were written separately, so each has a different theme. What would you say is the theme of Genesis? Of the Gospel of John? Sometimes the theme is actually written out, other times it is implied.

2) In The Wizard of Oz, can you identify Dorothy’s goal, motivation, and conflict? What is the theme? (Hint: Glenda asks her what she’s discovered, and Dorothy states the theme plainly.) How does the theme relate to the G-M-C?

3) If you’ve read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (and you really should–even the guys), what was the theme? How does it relate to the title of the book?

Please Pray for Teri

Lynn Dean — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:20:23 +0000

Please pray for NOVELWritingSite contributor, Teri Dawn Smith.

Teri and her daughter, Sarah, arrived in London Saturday. While visiting Cambridge on Sunday, Teri complained of a headache and began vomiting. She was hospitalized with a ruptured aneurysm and is critically ill. They are transferring her to a larger hospital.

Please keep Teri and her family in your prayers.

Processing Contest Entries

Lynn Dean — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:48:02 +0000

If you entered our first annual writing contest, you will receive confirmation within a day or two to let you know that your entry reached us and is being processed.

If you do NOT receive a confirmation email from us confirming your entry, please leave a comment or email us at yoursbecausehis@gmail.com to inquire.

Entrants should expect to receive results in early June.

Our thanks to everyone who entered. If you only thought about entering, we hope you’ll join us next year!

More About the First Annual (First Ever) NOVELWritingSite.com Writing Contest

Lynn Dean — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:00:10 +0000

Again this week, let me remind you about our first ever Annual NOVELWritingSite.com contest.

Hopefully throughout the fall semester, you’ve been trying out some of your new skills on stories of your own. Is it working?

We’re offering you the opportunity to have professional writers take a look at the first twelve pages of your story and give you some positive feedback and ideas.

I realize that may sound a little scary for some people. When I started writing, there were many stories that I didn’t let anyone read. Not friends. Not even family. Sometimes especially not friends or family. I put a lot of myself into those stories, so I was really sensitive about people’s responses. Suggestions that my story was flawed in any way made me feel like I, personally, had failed to meet approval. But who would understand those fears better than a fellow writer? It’s safe to say that your entry will be read by kind and sympathetic volunteers who like stories and like to encourage people who write them.

If that doesn’t make you feel more confident, try this: In at least the first round, no one will know who wrote the story. Names will be removed, so we won’t know who you are until it’s time to send out the results. If this is your debute, we’ll let you “sing from behind the curtain”–totally incognito.

Sounding better?

Here’s what to do:

Select a story that you feel reflects your best efforts–something you wrote independently.
Make sure you’re subscribed by email or RSS Fed to www.aNOVELWritingSite.com. Only regular readers may enter, but subscribing is easy. Just follow the directions in the left side bar under “Subscribe.”
Send the first 12 pages of your story by midnight, May 1, 2010 as an email attachment. Your submission should be typed, double-spaced with 1″ margins, in Times New Roman font (12 pitch size) and saved as a Word document in Rich Text format. Please use a header to show the title of your story and the page number on each page, but do not include your name in the header. If you know the genre of your story, you may include that information also.
In the body of your email, please be sure to tell us your name and the name of your story. If you could tell us something about yourself, how far along you are in your story, or how long you’ve been writing, that would be interesting as well.
Entries will be critiqued by one or more of our contributors.
Categories will depend somewhat on how many entries we receive from writers of various ages in each genre. Winning entries in each category will receive a full critique and a copy of A Novel Idea: Best Advice on Writing Inspirational Fiction, a compilation of tips from best-selling Christian novelists. This is a really good book!

So be brave! Take the challenge! There’s really nothing to lose but your jitters. And don’t forget to subscribe to receive this blog regularly.

Best wishes for a happy new year from your friends at aNOVELWritingSite.com!

Writing Lesson 4 – Building Beginnings

Naomi Musch — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:00:39 +0000

Start Your Story with a Writing Hook

“Where do I begin…?” That’s the opening line of a famous song. It’s also a big question we face every time we sit down to write. It doesn’t matter if it’s a story, play, poem, essay, or a letter to a friend. Whatever the case, beginnings matter, and they are one of the most difficult parts of a project to determine.

Many writers simply sit down and speel off the first opening that comes to mind and go with that. It’s like they’ve been trained by Facebook to just dump any old thought. But really good writers rarely keep the first beginning they write. They cut it, shape it, replace it, hammer and chisel it, and in moments of complete exasperation, they stomp on it and burn it. (Kidding! I hope…)

Really, without the right beginning, no one may ever read any further.

Beginnings must have “hooks”, something that’s going to suck a reader in. The beginning of a story you’ve written may inspire you a lot, because you know what’s coming on page 43, but will that beginning inspire someone who doesn’t know and doesn’t yet care?

Readers (and editors) get bored by long, picturesque beginnings describing scenery and weather. And they despise beginnings that try to fill us in very quickly on background information that took place before the story even starts. “He was very young when he was born…” (Ha Ha). That’s called an “information dump”, and just like a garbage dump, an editor will think it stinks! Information dumps tell us all sorts of things about a character’s history that doesn’t have to be told. It’s important that we know their history, but we shouldn’t try to give it all to the reader at once, especially not at the beginning.

Beginnings should introduce us to the main character right away, and we should be able to very quickly sense that they are in a crisis. It can be a big, obvious crisis, like being captured by pirates; or, it can be a more subtle crisis, such as a character learning that her family is going to be moving across the country, and she happens to be terribly afraid of drastic changes.

It is important that beginnings actually start in the right place. Sometimes writers complete an opening chapter, then cut off the first third of it and start there, where it really should have opened to begin with.

EXERCISES:

Select several favorite books off the shelf and read the first page or two. What does the writer do to hook you in? How is the main character introduced? What is the first line? (Copy down opening lines or paragraphs that strike you as a reader. It’ll train you to think about your own opening lines.)
As you read, note any opening passages, paragraphs, or sentences you feel like skipping over. Why do you?
Take a story you’re working on and re-write the beginning another way. It could be from a different character’s POV (point of view), or from a different moment in the action. –Or– Start a new story, and come up with at least two entirely different beginnings. Which one works best and why?