What is a writing competition? A writing competitition (or contest) is an event that you enter with a piece of your own writing. The prize is usually money, but sometimes it is just the pride of being chosen as winner. The winning piece will usually get published somewhere. Sometimes there’s an entry fee, and sometimes the competition is directed towards something – some publishers or magazines run competitions for the first chapter of a story, or a book proposal. However, there are a very wide variety of competitions – from poetry inspired by Shakespeare, to themed short stories, to flash fiction, to novel extracts. What are the pros and cons of writing competitions? Pros: Winning gets you fame and fortune! You get noticed, get money (or other prizes), and you can put the win on your writing CV. A deadline and word count are often good motivators to write. You’re often in with a chance to be published. The competitive element can be inspirational; you’ve got to be good to win! It’s an immediate satisfaction – or at least, better than six months of silence from an agent or publisher. There’s a wide variety of competitions to suit all levels of experience. You can write what you want, in your style – although if you want a theme, there are competitions with prompts and themes. Cons: You don’t get paid unless you win. You often have to pay to enter. Not all writers like the competition element, or see winning as a worthwhile prize. The lack of a theme or direction (as opposed to submission calls) can be off-putting. You don’t get feedback, so it can be hard to know why your work didn’t win or how close it did get to winning. Why do I have to pay to… read more →
When people are looking for new books to explore, there are three elements that get their attention: The cover The text at the back of the cover The introduction You’ll think about the first two elements after you write the book. The introduction, however, has no time to wait. All great books start with greatness. Do you remember the first sentence of Anna Karenina? “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” After reading that first sentence and the entire introduction, you just know that something extraordinary will follow. You know it’s more than just another love story. How do you get there? How do you craft the perfect introduction to hook the reader? We have few tips to offer. 1. Don’t Skip the It Your first chapter may be the introduction. May writers do that. Tolstoy did it. Does that mean you should do it? Not necessarily. An introduction is where you make the case. You tell the readers what this book is about and you explain why it’s an important book to read. It’s what convinces the readers your book has value. Do you know how George R.R. Martin started A Game of Thrones? With a prologue. The author gets straight into the story, but this feels like an introduction we definitely need for the complex plot that follows. 2. Find the Hook Your first sentence is a hook. When a book’s cover gets someone’s attention in the store, they will skip through the text on the back of the cover. Most people will then get to the first page of the introduction. They will read the first sentence. Will it make them pick up the book? Let’s check out an example: Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin. This is how… read more →
You’ve written a book, and it’s the best thing ever! So, now you want people to read it. How do you get it to them? In our current publishing world, there’s three major options. You can contact a traditional big publisher, who – if everything goes well – will buy the rights to your book, edit it, put a cover on it, market it and send you money when it sells. You can contact a smaller independent (indie) press, who have the flexibility to take chances on unusual work, and who are more likely to involve you in the details of publishing – but who don’t have the same marketing reach as the big publishers, and won’t sell quite as many as the big traditionals. Avoid anyone who asks you for money to publish (known as ‘vanity press’) with the promise of royalties in the future – it’s very likely that you’ll pay a lot and not get nearly as much back. A publisher should always cover things like editing and cover art for you, even if that means your royalty share is smaller. Or you can self-publish. This means you’re the one responsible for everything – editing, cover art, formatting, releasing, marketing, selling – so you’re putting the book out under your name, and you keep the profits from it. You can sub some of the work out (eg. hire a proofreader, purchase cover-art) but it’s down to you to sell your book to the world. And the great thing is that there are plenty of ways to do that! In this article, we’re going to briefly cover some alternative methods of getting your writing out there to your readers. While we tend to think of self-publishing as being a hard copy or ebook version of a book, that’s… read more →
Anything over a short story (so over 10,000 words) ideally needs chapters. They break the story up, provide helpful stopping-points, and allow the reader to skim the front page to get a feel for where the story’s going – and pick up where they left off, if needed. It’s also a good way for the reader to get a feel for how long they’ve got left in the book – especially for anyone reading on an e-reader, who can’t just check how thick it is! But that doesn’t make chapters all that easy! How long should they be? Where should you split things? Numbers or name? How long? Ideally, you want to make your chapters all roughly consistent. For example, I write novellas and make mine 3000-4000 words long. For novels, somewhere around 6000-8000 words is good: if you make one suddenly shorter it jarrs the readers, and makes them think they’ve missed something. However…learn the rules then break ‘em. You can get some very good effects with short chapters, particularly if you’ve got something dramatic happening. imagine if you suddenly switched back to one character, only to have a dramatic murder – and then that’s it, you’ve switched away again! Frustrating, yes, but I’d keep reading to find out what happens. You don’t need chapters? The standard response to this is either “well, duh!” or “really?!” No, you don’t have to use chapters! However, good idea to break it into sections, at least….and chapters are helpful and expected. They make nice chunks of text, and the titles act as signposts to tell the reader what’s happening, let them return to it from the front page if they lose their place. On which note… What to title chapters? You’ve got a couple of options: Plain: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. This doesn’t… read more →
We all know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, but it’s a truth that a lot of us do. They’re eye-catching and make us look, but they’re also a shortcut: they give us an indication of what the book is about, and what’s inside. Swooning lady not wearing much? I don’t do romance. Spaceships and lasers? Ugh, sci-fi. Plain text and plain color? Hmm, boring. Unfortunately book covers are a major, major part of the marketing of your book. They’re also hard to get right, but you know when they are – or when they’re just not quite what you want! So, here’s some thoughts on how to make sure you’ve got an eye-catching and marketable cover for your writing. A book cover needs to do two things: give information about the book make the reader curious And that’s basically it. Simple eh? Hard Information This is definite, precise information that you need to have on the cover. There’s usually a place allocated for this – for example, you’ll look for the title in large letters, the author’s name in smaller ones, the ISBN on the back…although the format can be varied, it’s usually within fairly standard guidelines. Your name This is the name you want to be known by as an author, and the name that might be used elsewhere – for example, on your personal website, or in any promotional materials. It’s quite confusing if you’re calling yourself “Tommy Smith”, and the name on a cover is “T Smith” – I’ll be searching for books by “Tommy”. Make sure everything matches so people can find your work The title of the book A blurb The ISBN (find out more about ISBN’s here) You can add some optional extras: Reviews or taglines: “the best book in… read more →
In this article, we’re going to briefly cover the printing options for self-publishing – that is, if you want a hard copy of your book. Step 1: The Finished Text This means the book needs to be edited and proofread, with all the chapter headings in the right place, a preface and acknowledgements (if you want them) and any copyright disclaimers done. Make the text as perfect as you can. However, you don’t need to make sure the layout is perfect – if fact, it’s easier if it’s not! Make the margins all standard, and the font standard. This makes the next stage a lot easier. At this point, you can either turn the text into a print book or an ebook (or both!) Step 2: Typesetting This is the point that the text is put into a printable format. The important thing here is that typesetting is not word processing; it’s closer to artwork than it is to writing. The text positioning needs to be exact, and word processors (such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice) tend to skip the little details that make the text look nice on a printed page. There are several different pieces of software that can be used for this; one popular one is Adobe InDesign, but there are various free systems available as well. You can actually now use Word, but it’s a very different process to writing, and you usually need to use a template. Alternatively, there are a number of professionals out there who offer a typesetting service to self-publishers, often with additional services such as cover creation or proofreading as well. If you’re not too sure you want to get into the details of the typesetting process, it’s worth paying for this stage. Step 3: Thinking About The End Result There… read more →
In this article, we’re going to briefly cover the ebook creation options for self-publishing – that is, if you want an ebook copy distributed through any of the major stores. There are a couple of steps to think about before you can start with the creation process: Step 1: The Finished Text This means the book needs to be edited and proofread, with all the chapter headings in the right place, a preface and acknowledgements (if you want them) and any copyright disclaimers done. Make the text as perfect as you can. However, you don’t need to make sure the layout is perfect – if fact, it’s easier if it’s not! Make the margins all standard, and the font standard. This makes the next stage a lot easier. At this point, you can either turn the text into a print book or an ebook (or both!) Step 2: Formatting This is the point that you put the text into an ebook conversion software, and turn it into something that an e-reader can decipher. The text needs to be able to change size, font, color and layout, but still have breaks before chapters; the reader needs to be able to find the chapter headings on their navigation, and skip forward or backwards; and the book needs a cover and metadata attached to it in the file. While you can do this creation process yourself via software such as Calibre, Jutoh or Scriviner, this can be very time-consuming and you have to get the details right, as well as ensure you have all the formats needed (for example, Kindle uses a .mobi format, while most other ereaders need an .epub). Most self-published authors prefer to use an online platform such as CreateSpace or Lulu. We’ve provided some suggestions below, along with a… read more →
What is Self-Publishing? You’ve written a book, and it’s the best thing ever! So, now you want people to read it. How do you get it to them? In our current publishing world, there’s three major options. You can contact a traditional big publisher, who – if everything goes well – will buy the rights to your book, edit it, put a cover on it, market it and send you money when it sells. You can contact a smaller independent (indie) press, who have the flexibility to take chances on unusual work, and who are more likely to involve you in the details of publishing – but who don’t have the same marketing reach as the big publishers, and won’t sell quite as many as the big traditionals. Avoid anyone who asks you for money to publish (known as ‘vanity press’) with the promise of royalties in the future – it’s very likely that you’ll pay a lot and not get nearly as much back. A publisher should always cover things like editing and cover art for you, even if that means your royalty share is smaller. Or you can self-publish. This means you’re the one responsible for everything – editing, cover art, formatting, releasing, marketing, selling – so you’re putting the book out under your name, and you keep the profits from it. You can sub some of the work out (eg. hire a proofreader, purchase cover-art) but it’s down to you to sell your book to the world. And the great thing is that there are plenty of ways to do that! Over the next couple of articles, we’re going to look at options for printing, ebook and online self-publishing. But first…. Things to think about if you’re considering self-publishing Have you written the best book that you… read more →
You may have heard the terms “Planner” and “Pantser” in relation to how you write. A planner is fairly obvious; you plan the story out before you write it. A pantser simply flies by the seat of their pants; they have no idea what’s going to happen, and they’re making it up as they go along! The two types of writer tend to be fairly opposite, and frankly, it’s quite hard to understand the other type if you fall firmly into one category. I’m a Pantser and for me, planning sucks all the joy out of writing – why would you want to know what happens? How can you keep so much in your head? Doesn’t it get boring? But to Planners, I’m a nightmare – how can you write a book if you don’t know where it’s going? How do you keep a plot on track? Surely it just ends up as an unfinished mess? Well – both methods are valid ways of writing! It’s whatever works for you. How to be a Planner The outline So, to start, you need a beginning, middle, and end: the basic outline of your plot. Where do your characters start from, what happens, and what’s the ending (of this book)? Chapters Next, what are the major events of each of those sections? This is the point you lay out chapters (or large sections), and if you’re using something like Scriviner, use the corkboard. You need a one-sentence description of that chunk: “The chapter where he fights the Big Baddie and discovers who his father is”. Scenes Then drill down further. What scenes would that section or chapter contain? What are the plot points, and how would you get from A to B? Who’s involved? The detail at this point means you can… read more →
When you format a piece of fiction writing, you’re trying to make it as easy as possible for the reader to read. The conventions on formatting are there as shortcuts to allow the reader to see things like the first line of a paragraph, where someone’s speaking, where the action moves or something new happens. The reader wants to focus on the words and the writing, not squinting because the font’s small, or trying to work out who’s speaking when. So, while you can write however you like, the basic formatting guidelines below should be followed before you send it off to anyone else to read. If you don’t follow the conventions, you’ll get an immediate black mark from a submissions reader and while your writing might be amazing, it means it’s much harder for that to shine through. A proofreader may charge more as it will take them much longer to correct everything, and they’d much rather be looking for the bits you won’t necessarily spot (like odd spellings or mixed up names) than fixing basic formatting. And if you publish without following the basic structure, it makes it far harder for the reader to follow the words and focus on your writing. Formatting is a pain to do, but it really is necessary. That said, have a tip: if you train yourself to do these basics as you write then it saves you a lot of time. Trust me, I’ve spent far too much time fixing commas in my work… Lines, font and margins Use a simple and readable font such as Times New Roman, preferably size 11 or 12. While you might prefer to write in single-spaced lines, submissions usually request 1.5 spaced or double spaced – if in doubt go for 1.5 spaced as this makes… read more →