How Important Are First Lines?

As writers, we hear frequently how "important" that first sentence is. Examples of what are passed around as "first line musts" Must be unique and memorable.Must be vivid.Must be truthful, funny, scary, etc any emotion.Tells the reader the genreIntroduces all the main characters.Make the reader care. It's the magical key that keeps a reader reading…

Typesetting aka Formatting aka Look Pretty

What is typesetting? Typesetting is also known as formatting. People and some programs take your completed story and handle the layout. This could be for submissions to magazines, agents, publishers, or as many do, for self-publications in e-Book and print. What formatters don’t do. They aren’t editors, though I know some editors who also do…

Newsletters of the Future

Not so long ago, followers signed up for things like "clubs" to learn information about their favorite anything. Some of you might be too young to remember the Jonathan Taylor Thomas clubs of the 90s. I didn't get into such things, but they were a way of staying connected. The rise of the internet gave…

The Book Launch Planner

Launching your book into the world can be a nerve-wracking experience. From remembering who you wanted to hire, who you've contacted to share your release, and the timeline of when these little parts need to be done can make one feel as if they are going around in circles. This planner was designed by Mandi…

Working with Editors

Working with editors is a hard leg on the journey of publishing. From finding recommendations, vetting their abilities, and paying for their services, it can be a complicated ride for a novice. If you’ve tried using Google, you’ve probably made your head spin from what type of editing is needed to the roller coaster of prices…

Pirating Sites—The Rampant Rash of Writers

From small fries to world renown authors, pirating and plagiarism go hand in hand. Some "writers" take snippets and weave it into a story while others just straight up copy an entire book and claim they wrote it. Thousands of readers flock to pirating sites that remind us of Napster or LimeWire (for those too…

Rapid Release

Rapid release is the idea of releasing books in a series in a short time frame. It comes with a host of myths, pros and cons. What's the purpose? This capitalizes on readers attention spans and market trends. Don't think this works? Look at Netflix. They drop all the episodes of a season at one…

Vanity Publishers: A Quick Guide to Identify

Vanity publishers prey on the impatient, the lost, and the overwhelmed. They look for writers who don’t know what is standard, they use flowery words and “important" phrases to capture the “I can’t wait,” and they promise to do all the heavy lifting. It looks good. It looks promising. Until you peel back the plastic and discover…

Instagram For Writers

Instagram is the fastest growing platform, and it has been for the last year or so. It's one of the reasons Facebook bought Instagram. https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/instagram-over-other-social-media-platform The phone-contained app is popular with more than just the high school crowd, and the average user spends 30 minutes in the app. My first introduction to Instagram came from…

Chapter Breaks & Scene Breaks

Knowing when to take a break is an important aspect in writing. Short stories do not have chapters, but they have scene breaks. Novellettes to novels have chapters and can have scene breaks. But what are these? As readers, we understand chapters. They act like stop signs, allowing us to breathe. As writers it's obvious…