Take Time to Dig

If you're looking for the perfect gift for your writer friend this Christmas, here it is - Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass.  Definitely.  I can't say enough good things about this book.

Stick a copy in your own stocking, too.

My copy is highlighted in a rainbow of colors with notes crammed in, underlinings, starred passages, and corners dog-eared.  At the end of each chapter, the author lists soul-searching questions to break through the crusty surface and let you peek into your character's psyche and motivations.  (And by association, your own.)  I worked through the book slowly, forcing myself to take the time to dig deeply and squeeze all the juice out of the story.

One of the exercises that proved the most satisfying was to write down 20 things that only my protagonist would notice.  Until then, I had no idea that the house sucks in its breath when the housekeeper turns the key in the lock each morning and exhales when she leaves at night, or that my protagonist's husband talks in his sleep about his dead wife.

The author made one particular statement that I'm still mulling over:  "The fact is that everything that your conscious mind has yet to discover about your characters and story is already fully formed in your unconscious mind.  It's been there since the moment the first hint of the story surfaced."

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Do I create or does the character dictate to me?

In order to see the story and the characters fully formed, I need

Do Not Power Off or Unplug

Today my computer issued this warning: "Do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 5 of 26." 

Yikes! Has it really been that long since my computer updated?  Seriously, where have I been?  How did it happen that my writing computer has been silent and I have been unproductive for so long?  Bad, bad writer

If I were my own employee, I would have placed myself on probationary status by now:

 "So...how long has it been since you showed up for work?"


(Cough) "About...four weeks." (squirming)

"Weeks?"  Steepled fingers.  "I think months."

"Months?  Maybe.  I guess so.  But you know how summers are at my job.  Nine hour days in 90 degree heat.  With kids.  All day."  Big sigh.  "It really wears me out."

Silence.

"I'm not as young as I used to be." 

More silence.

"And now chamber choir rehearsals have started up again.  We're already singing Christmas music."

"That wasn't part of your job description.  Why are you letting it interfere with your duties?"

Silence.  Shuffling feet.

"I like singing Christmas music."

 "You don't like writing?"

Really long pause.

"Well?"

"I'm thinking."  Chewing lower lip and frowning.  "I like how I feel when I'm done, when the story really comes together.  But it's hard work.  And I work hard all day."

Silence.

"I've been reading a lot of great fiction.  You know, um, for research.  A writer's gotta know what's out there."

Pen tapping on desk.  "I think a plan of action will help you get back on track."

"Do I have to quit singing Christmas music?"

"Not if you can work it into your plan.  Where's your day planner?"

"Here." An avalanche of books and papers slides to the rug as I dig out the planner and blow dust from the cover.

"Write this down: 

1. reorganize your work station so you don't waste time 
2. set a writing schedule, time of day, days of the week and the month 
3. set a daily word count
4. meet with other writers to stay plugged in and encouraged 
5. read a good book on writing technique

"I'm already working my way through Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass."

"That's good, but don't get bogged down. You need to finish your rough draft.  What's your word count so far?"

"About 30,000 words."

"That's a great start. Since you have work to catch up on, you should consider putting in some overtime.  Go someplace where you won't have distractions if you can.  And consider signing up for NaNoWriMo."

I nudge a paper on the floor with my toe.

"What's the matter?"

"I sorta don't like my manuscript anymore.  The characters are boring and the story is a snoozer."

"Every writer feels that way at some point.  Once you get the rough draft finished, you'll gain momentum and feel like it's worth telling again."

"How do you know?"

"Trust me.  I've been there."

I feel better already.

"So, sign the plan of action and I'll place it in your file.  You have two months to show significant improvement."

 "Wow, you're strict."

"You have no idea."


 In two months

Getting Snarky at Donald Maass

Dear Mr. Donald Maass, sir,
We're discussing your book, Writing 21st Century Fiction, at Novel Matters today. If you've stopped by to see how much we loved the chapter on standout character, please go away now. My writing career is on shaky enough ground as it is. Being black-balled by a top New York city literary agent would shoot my career between the eyes. So, you just mosey along. Go to the corner and get something highly caffeinated or one of those famous hot dogs they sell on the street. Forget you ever heard my name, please.
Sincerely,
Patti Hill

Reader Alert: I’m a little cranky about this chapter.  In fact, I may sound snarky when I don’t  mean to. Yes, Maass says true things about characterization, but he also quotes his other books on writing. 

Hello? could we have something fresh here?

And he speaks in broad generalities, which sound suspiciously like he really is talking to genre writers. Like this:

A standout protagonist is one who quickly stirs in your reader high admiration. p. 79

Yes. No. Duh! This isn’t wrong. It’s just prescriptive. Are we all writing books about Boy Scouts? This is the kind of stuff I taught my fourth-grade students. Ack! 

(Oh my, this is snarky. So sorry.)

My pulse quickened a bit when Maass started a section on characters who lack conflict. This is a huge problem for beginning writers. They want their characters to be nice and not make the writer look bad for being able to think up very human things for their characters to do. The result is a boring story. As we talked about last time, the inner journey—conflict and all—is crucial to creating characters and stories reader can relate to. I was genuinely eager to hear what Maass had to say.  

Any character, whether wholly negative or naively positive or somewhere in between (My question: Has he left anyone out?), can be alive, alert, and engaged in life. But how is that conveyed to the reader? There are three key techniques: the use of observation, opinions, and self-awareness. P. 100

Maass uses Aibileen Clark from The Help as an example of a character who is a keen observer, especially of the white family she works for and full of opinions she can’t express. And who was more self-aware than a black woman of the south in 1962? Aibileen knew her place.

But Aibileen is not wholly negative or naively positive or anything in between.  She is human! I can hear her voice in my head. “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”  Her keen observations, opinions, and self-awareness are NOT add-ons. They’re who she is. 

(I didn’t like this chapter very much.)

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. The qualities Maass attributes to a well-rounded and interesting character are valid. They just wouldn’t, in my humble opinion, resurrect a poorly conceived character. I love a character who can see things I can’t and describe them in such a manner that makes me groan with pleasure. And I happen to like opinionated characters, too. They make me squirm and laugh, all as that character turns a mirror on me. As for healthy self-awareness, I’m reading a novel now about a man who makes note of his bowel habits in his journal. Too much?

Here are five nuggets you can take from this chapter:

1. Heroic protagonists need to show us that they’re human.
2. Stronger than surprise is selfless focus. Think Enzo in The Art of Racing in the Rain
3. Put as much planning and work into your antagonist as you do your protagonist.
4. Don’t skimp on your secondary characters, either. Give them a history and know them well.
5. Work on your characters until they fascinate you, then they will fascinate millions of readers.

I was going to continue this discussion on Wednesday, but that’s about it. Instead, I’ll share something I've learned from a master storyteller that has changed the way I populate my stories. I promise more of a take-away. Also, I will put my snarky self on the shelf--with that obnoxious elf.

And I’ll be reading ahead to see if Maass has anything more to offer us.

Was I too hard on Maass? Help me out here, what's the most important thing you do to develop human characters? From whom have you learned the most about characterization? Name a character who took your breath away. Can I hide at your house?

New Rule: Beautiful is NOT Boring

There's nothing quite so boring as a book where nothing happens. I'd recently started a beautifully written (lovely phrasing and language) book, but I finally skimmed to the end to see what I already knew would happen--no twists or surprises and hardly any outer journey, slim action.

If this particular author (and I never read and snark) had read the chapter, "The Outer Journey" of Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donals Maass, I would still be reading the story. The story contained all the elements that should have added up to a great story, but it flat-lined.

Maass spends a good amount of time outlining the differences between plot-driven and literary writers, but the message that stuck with me was the externalization of emotion into action:

A plot development is a nice accomplishment, but without emotional impact it’s just something that happens. Emotional experiences are fine, too, but unless they’re externalized in actions, they won’t touch readers. They lack the kinetic force of the real.

We all know what it means to call yourself a plot-driven writer or a character-driven writer.  The trick is to take the best of both and make give your stories higher impact. The two groups have much to learn from one another.

As a character-driven writer, I tend to envy the genre writers a bit. The threat of death that all stories need (yes, even literary stories) can be the real kind of death by stabbing, shooting, poisoning, or a long, long fall over a cliff, none of this internal or psychological death stuff. Running away from real death, facing real death, and fighting to the death are by need real action.

In character-driven or literary fiction, that external threat is harder to come by. Our art is painted with line and shadow of internal struggles—things like regret, forgiveness, and lots of psychological scars.

I agree with Maass that external struggle is crucial for strong impact, no matter what the genre.

…your artistic sensibility pulls you away from strong feelings. It pushes you toward what is subtle, nuanced, and delicate, which can be another way of saying what is small, nebulous, and weak. P 49

Ouch.

Friendly reminder: Maass is a New York literary agent. He appreciates art, but his passion is art that sells. That’s how he makes his living. He’s a keen observer of what elevates good fiction to powerful fiction, again, the kind that sells. So, art for the sake of art is not the point of this book. The melding of the best of commercial fiction with literary fiction is the point so that the story engages the reader and sells.

Let me share a bit of how this is working in my present novel. About five years ago—and I don’t remember what was going on in my life—Psalm 23 came to mind, especially the line: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life."

Oh yeah?

Either I didn’t understand what goodness and mercy were, or God had some 'splaining to do.

[Disclaimer: I am not a theologian, but I write about Jesus anyway.] It turned out that I wasn't 100% clear on what goodness and mercy looked like in everyday life. Basically, I discovered a great chasm between what is and what ought to be in my life—and your life, too, I suspect—because while we live in the kingdom of God, we also live with the remnants of the curse, most notably death and decay.  This not-so-little truth clarified a lot for me. I saw goodness is God's ultimate provision for me--Jesus!--every day, and I discovered that mercy can sometimes feel like a smack to the back of the head, at least until the larger picture is at hand.

And I wanted to write about what I was learning, of course!

As a story, not an article for Christianity Today. (They prefer their writers to actually be theologians.)

As per Maass’s direction, I needed to externalize spiritual concepts into actions, surprises, and twists—and characters with strong goals! Enter my hero, Lucy, in dire need of goodness and mercy, even though she has twin siblings named Goody and Mercy who follow her all the days of her life already. In the story, the twins manifest the qualities of their names, but not in The Shack kind of way or a Hind’s Feet in High Places way. The story is not an allegory. It’s about a girl who feels like a second-class member of God’s family due to deep regret and the accompanying shame, but her sister, Mercy, is God’s right-hand girl, and her brother, less obviously, is the source of goodness in her life. Lucy finds her sister’s ministrations perplexing and inconvenient, just as anyone would who can’t forgive themselves.

Anything important that’s internal can be externalized. p.50

And so, a promise made to a beloved parent becomes the impetuous for a felonious act. A contrary aunt spurs a race with uncertain winners. A hunger to connect with a daughter produces all kinds of self-sabotaging behavior. The outer journey is the inner journey put to dance steps.

Our job as storytellers—according to Maass—is to take these concepts like sorrow, anger, shame, regret, embarrassment, betrayal, and so on and so on and externalize them into action. He gives Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close as an example of this done exceptionally well. I couldn't agree more. I mean, a little boy who goes on a quest to express his grief? That's action. Also, my oft-referred to The Language of Flowers does this beautifully. Victoria Jones, the main character, burns a house down, gives up her infant, walks away from a lover. Action! And she will break your heart and make you angry. That's high-impact fiction.

Even if selling doesn't motivate you, strongly impacting your reader should. Why else would you sit for years and years in front of a computer screen than to connect in the most explosive way possible with our readers?

If you are the writer of upmarket, literary, high-impact fiction (whatever!), what challenges do you face when wanting to "go big" with action that represents what's going on inside your characters? Can you give an example from your work? How about a book you've read recently that demonstrates what Maass is trying to teach us? Are you even "buying" Maass's take on externalizing emotions to up the emotional stakes for the reader? Why or why not? Have you set down a book (don't give the title or author) lately because nothing really happened, but it was written beautifully? What would you tell the author? 

Book Club: Writing 21st Century Fiction, The Inner Journey

I'm reflecting on chapter 3 of Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass, "The Inner Journey." Rather than regurgitate what you've already read, I've picked two ideas that were especially relevant and challenging to me. Feel free to add other ideas from the chapter. Haven't read the chapter? Don't let that stop you from joining in. We love hearing your voices.

Think of your favorite story of all time.

Now, what has kept that story more like a memory than fiction?

Was it the conflict? The meet-you-for-lunch reality of the characters? The action? The snappy dialogue? The lyrical prose?

According to Donald Maass, it's the emotional landscape of the story. And the starting place is opening ourselves up to our own emotional landscapes. We've been talking about the power of writing personally, honestly, transparently--except when, as Latayne pointed out on Monday, writing from reality can be dangerous. But typically, the more willing we are to mine our emotional lives, the more compelling our characters will be.

By way of example, let me give you peek into one of the most traumatic periods of my life. If you're thinking high drama, prepare to be disappointed.

Just as my first novel was gaining the interest of an agent and a publisher, I started having weird physical symptoms. My hands and my feet felt as though someone was driving spikes through them. Doctors were clueless.

To minimize the pain, I discovered two coping mechanisms: 1) Stay in the most neutral position possible. This meant lying on the floor, usually with my dog, watching the 2000 election returns. Remember hanging chads? 2) Apply ice to the back of the neck.

Since this went on for 15 months, I had lots of time to till my emotional landscape. I grieved my loss of ability--every movement intensified the pain. I wallowed in self-pity. I ranted at doctors (in my
imagination only) who dismissed me. I wondered if God could be trusted. Was He even there? Could I die soon, please? I dug for courage to make it to 9 am, 10 am, 11 am...I felt betrayed by the church. I'd become invisible. My friends disappeared. I clung to the thinnest threads of hope. I asked my husband to hide my sleeping pills. My life devolved into doctor's visits, who I realized weren't going to solve my medical mystery within the allotted 1-hour period and bone-crushing loneliness. Until...until...trust leached from my bones and I settled in to live well with pain.

Writing a novel about lying on the floor for fifteen months would be b-o-r-i-n-g, boring! But writing a story with the knowledge of this kind of upheaval was like opening a Swiss Bank Account of emotional currency I could loan to my characters. And connect with my readers.

Since Jesus promised us tribulation (grievous trial; trouble or suffering) in this world, I assume you also have a Swiss Bank Account of emotional currency. In that case, what Maass has to say should redeem, at least in part, what you've been through:

One of the joys of writing 21st century fiction is the permission it gives you to feel deeply and wide. Your task is to tune yourself to the frequency where honest emotions come through with a crackle and hiss. p. 22

A huge part of our humanity is our inner conflict. Not inner turmoil (I want to do this, but I do that.) Maass describes inner conflict this way:

The strongest inner conflicts plague characters with two desires that are mutually exclusive. When believably built, inner conflict leads to unsettling actions...Inner conflict is a dilemma. It's a debate that can't be won, an unavoidable fork in a road that leads to two equally feared or desired destinations. It's a predicament that's powerfully human. p. 23

Strong characters, the kind that become as real to you as those you dearly love, have strong inner conflict. In structuring your story, you will want to deliberately inflict your main character (at least) with a very strong inner conflict.

I recently read The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. Here's the book description from Amazon.com:

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.

The description hints at the inner conflict. The girl cannot get close to people she cares about, but she desperately needs and wants to get close to those people. All while I read the story, I ached to draw Victoria into the circle of love that is my family. She. Is. A. Character. In. A. Novel. And still I ached. Hope would present itself and be snatched away. She would sabotage every opportunity at intimacy in huge ways. I fell to sleep thinking about her. I woke up reaching for my Kindle to see how she had fared in the night. The resolution is brilliant, hopeful yet guarded. It's honest. I will never forget her.

I wonder what emotional currency the author brought to this story. How did she gain insight into someone with reactive detachment disorder? That is for her to know and for us to enjoy.

What struck you about Maass's ideas dealing with the inner journey? What stands in the way of creating a rich emotional landscape for your story? Can you cite examples of stories that successfully connect emotionally? When structuring your story, do you deliberately juxtapose your character's desires? Will you? Anything else from the chapter you care to discuss?

The Death of Genre, Really?

Welcome to our discussion of Donald Maass's book, Writing 21st Century Fiction. We're jumping into the second chapter, "The Death of Genre." Don't let a little thing like not having read the chapter keep you from speaking up. We love a lively discussion around here.

Don't cue up the band or buy the confetti yet. Genre isn't dead-dead, just mostly dead--and maybe not even that dead.

In other words, I had to read this chapter a few times to discover what Maass is really saying about genre, dead or otherwise.

The first challenge to this chapter is sifting through terms Maass has created to talk about fiction. Let's see if I can't get us all on the same page.

Out-of-category novels are written by genre novelists but sell better than most. These books are sold off of large piles in the front of the bookstores and warehouse stores, and the authors are no longer authors but "brands."

I don't fit in this category. I sure hope you do. (Would you like to endorse my novel?)

But we all want to know how to get to this magical place of hardcovers with pallets of our books on display. Maass explains how our novels might earn this out-of-category status:

Deconstrust out-of-category novels and certain common factors emerge: characters we immediately care about, unique worlds, universal human experiences, high tension, plot layers, parallels, reversals, symbols, strong themes. But there's also an X factor: such fiction is personal, meaning that it directly reflects the author's own experience. p. 8

In that case, any novel directly reflecting my life would be sorted into the snooze category (I was born a poor white girl in the Hog Capital of the World), but that's not what he means. Maass doesn't intend for us to write memoirs disguised as novels. He intends for us to mine our preoccupations, our fears, lessons learned, flaws we find impossible to conquer and give them to our unsuspecting characters.

This is what makes our novels personal, our struggles in the skin of someone who's way more interesting than we are. (Maas doesn't actually say the part about the characters being way more interesting than us. That's a Patti Bonus Nugget.)

You've all probably done this--either consciously or not--when deciding what to write about. My newest novel--Goodness & Mercy--comes from my questions about the character of God, specifically His mercy. Can His mercy feel like a knife to the heart or come at an inconvenient time? My characters wrestle with the question in their story world, but so do I. The stories in this way are very personal.

Just to be clear, out-of-category novels are still genre novels, but "they use their category conventions merely as a framework. [Writers] erect inside them stories that express that which defines not their characters, but their authors." I can't help but think of Latayne's Later-Day Cipher, a murder mystery a la Dan Brown (if he were a better writer) within the culture of Mormonism. For Latayne, this novel is deeply personal as she draws on her own life and study in Mormonism. Not only is the story personal, it's highly redemptive, poetic, and chilling. The story also confirms Maass's point that "high-impact fiction requires high courage."

Another distinction Maass makes is between genre blending and genre transending. Genre blending will sound familiar to you because it's nearly the norm. We find  literary crime, historical espionage, and paranormal anything on bookstore and library shelves everywhere. Add to that time-traveling historical romance and urban fantasy. Oh, and sci-fi westerns. It's all out there. Transcending genre, I think, (this is where his distinctions muddy a bit for me) is another way to say out-of-category fiction results (impact and sales) that is not genre bound. These are tough to classify novels that connect powerfully with readers.

This is why Maass thinks so:

Perhaps in part because they have fewer rules to follow, they must rely more on universal techniques and stay truer to their inner compasses. Without genre crutches to lean on they must walk the walk of true novelists. You can call them genre-bending if you like, but I call them genre-transcending. while they may establish a new category, that are genuine fiction masters. p. 12

Fiction master. I like the sound of that. In the end, Maass is saying that it really doesn't matter where we land on the continuum between genre fiction and literary. What matters is fulfilling the purpose of fiction, taking the reader to a story world that immerses them in a new reality, characters that are relatable with dreams and desires not too distant from ours, answers to truths sought by the reader and truths that rock an unsuspecting reader's world, and lastly, a story that captures our age but manages to be timeless.

I don't think Maass meant to confuse us with terms but to cheer us on to slay the genre monster with our writing: "The death of genre will come for you on the day that you cut yourself loose from your fears. When you stop writing like you think you are supposed to and start writing in the way that only you can, then you will discover the impact you can have." p. 16

And so, genre may be a thing in our minds that we either cling to or cast off. But Maass in no manner letting  us off the hook as novelists. I hear a call to excellence. I intend to answer.

Discussion Questions:

• Why do you believe genre fiction is here to stay...or not?
• In what ways have you made your fiction personal?
• What great mystery dogs you? How could you explore it in story form?
• What's your favorite line from this chapter?
• Invent a genre blend you haven't seen yet.
• What will you take from this chapter to improve your storytelling?

Exploring the Ecosystem of Kindle for Marketing

Before I start with my topic for the day, I want to announce a new Novel Matters book club. I'm reading Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling by Donald Maas. I'm loving what he has to say so far about the death of genre, and I would love to chat with you, my most respected writing friends, about his ideas. The next couple of months aren't the best time to start a new project like this, so I'm thinking January. You can ask for the book for Christmas and read chapter one while munching on Christmas-tree shaped cookies. We'll talk in January.

Last time I posted here, I highlighted James Scott Bell's marketing book for ebooks. This is the journey I'm on with my next novel, so I'm happy to share what I'm learning along the way. After all, authors do most of the marketing for their books whether they're working with a legacy publisher or going indie like me.

Bell echoed the approach many of us have heard at writers conferences--building a platform and social media networking, plus pricing strategies and more--but with the knowledge to do a great job for our books. The book is full of wisdom I intend to use in marketing Goodness & Mercy.

But to become a market genius before March--that's my goal--I can't stop at one book or opinion.

Trust me, there are tons of ebooks out there to help you sell your ebooks on Amazon. And you have to be careful which ones you bet the success of your book on. Some of these how-to books are written by authors who have experienced major success with their Kindle ebooks. One book. One big success? Is their success a fluke? Do they come from a large family that owns many Swiss bank accounts?

I chose a book by Michael Alvear because he takes a totally different approach to marketing ebooks. Also, his book has the longest, most specific title ever. I knew what I was getting! Check this out: Make a Killing on Kindle without Blogging, Facebook and Twitter: The Guerilla Marketer's Guide to Selling Ebooks on Amazon.

Phew! Of course, we have to ask, "Just how do you sell books on Amazon without social media or full-page magazine ads?"

Alvear believes it's all about understanding the ecosystem of Kindle with the objective of optimizing the position of your book. That way the readers who are most likely to buy the book will see it as they browse.

This kind of thinking is so rare in book marketing that Alvear gives an example with his own book. At first, he tried to market conventionally through social media. After five years of work, he got 25,000 unique visits to his blog per month. Of those, 5,000 went to his book page. To determine the "conversion rate," meaning how many views it took to make a sale, he divided the number of sales by the number of visitors. Alvear came in right in the middle of the industry average at 1%.

That's only 50 books per month for all those years of work.

Ugh.

And so, Alvear systematically goes through every aspect of developing your book for market to make it rise to the top of pile. He promises everything can be done in 18 hours. This also appealed to me. But you have to start with a stellar book that you believe in. Otherwise, all the marketing in the world won't produce satisfactory results.

So far, I'm listening carefully to this guy.

Here are some of the topics he examines in his confident, been-there-more-than-once voice. I should tell you that he has 20 years of marketing experience. Ya gotta love credentials.

Okay, let's get on to the topics:

1. Create an attention-getting title. If the title doesn't work, you can always change it. That's one nice thing about digital publishing.

2. Hire a professional to design you book cover. Really? In an ideal world, yes because your cover in all of its 7/8" x 1" glory in Kindle-land needs to make a punch, a promise, and a come-hither message.I hired a photographer and a graphic designer, but I'm the art director. Probably a bad idea. I'm hoping not.

Alvear does give guidelines for hiring these professionals, depending on your budget from low to high.

"If you have already passed that hurdle of having a customer be attracted to the cover, and then they pick up the books," said Patricia Bostelman, vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble, "an enormous battle has been won."

3. Once you have a visual hook for your potential reader, you want to set up your book to gain top search engine results every time someone looks for a book in your category. I sure hope I understand this better by the time I'm launching my book. Alvear isn't stingy on pointing authors to places where keyword phrases can be embedded, so the chances of your book popping up in the first page of results increase. Keyword phrases, who knew?

"You are destined to fail if you don't use keyword phrases that lead to your book."

So, I guess I better learn.

4. Beyond keyword phrases, Amazon lets you choose two categories for your book. "Think of [categories] as the section of the bookstore you'd like your book placed (literature, fiction, history, etc.)." From working in both a bookstore and a library, I know how important these categories are. Most reader beeline to their favorite genre and do very little browsing. There are browsers--God bless 'em!--who wander the whole store. That makes your cover and title even more important.

Alvear's book gives me hope. There are things I can do to get my book before the reader. For instance, he explains how to put a billboard for your book on a competitors pages. And he talks about the power of great reviews, even how many you need to make your book page a powerful selling tool.

One chapter deals with how to write ocean-front book descriptions, another highlights the importance of formatting and using the "Look Inside" feature.

And then he tells about a feature in Kindle I'd never seen before that will definitely effect the way I format my book. It's the "Before You Go" feature. If your reader's Kindle or other reading device is set up to Facebook and Twitter, you can ask your reader to kindly rate the book and share with their friends right there and then.

Aha, there is a place for social media!

Alvear does recognize the value of social media once the book is successfully launched and selling. Your readers will be curious about you and will want to find you online. Then a blog makes tons of sense.

I plan on using Alvear's ideas to optimize the chances that Goodness & Mercy will have its best chance of finding an audience.

Michael Alvear doesn't write the kind of books (other than this one) most of us read, but he seems to have a good handle on what it takes to sell on Amazon. I appreciate that about him very much.

Next time, I'll be talking about yet another marketing philosophy. And then I'm formulating a plan for full speed ahead marketing. My brain is getting full.

Have you worked with a graphic professional? What's your take on Alvear's approach, knowing that I was only able to present the briefest details? I'm looking at this information as power, not an insurance police, success isn't following a formula, but it is knowing how the game is played. Can you recommend what I should read about marketing next? 

Project! The Art of Voice in Fiction

I’m eyeball-deep in a writing challenge, a sort of shark tank for the ever-developing writer. I’m writing in four—count ‘em!—four voices. My greatest fear is making them all sound alike. And so, I’ve been studying the topic of voice, reading The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass and Write Away by Elizabeth George, and listening to a podcast with Anne Lamott. Allow me to share what I've gleaned from these skilled teachers.

Elizabeth George defines voice (how brave of her) like this: “The narrative voice of your novel is the point-of-view character’s defining way of speaking and thinking.” Voice is the tone that comes through the narrative, and tone is the product of knowing my characters better than myself.

Before I started writing my current work in progress, I knew all about Lucy, Ada, Mercy, and Pete. I'd created very detailed backgrounds for each. Their voices were determined by their level of education, formal or acquired. And even though they are American-born, they have positions in society and family histories wrought with material. They're nice, of course, to a point (no anti-heroes this week), but the better I get to know them, I discover their prejudices and biases, their inclinations and desires, their bad habits and poor hygiene habits. Each of them has a well-developed belief system, even if they can’t express it. It's my job to know this about them. Once my characters are fully developed, they have unique, powerful voices.

Maass is especially adamant that characters must offer strong opinions to have a voice worth appreciating. This made a little light glow over my writer head. A character who makes judgments about her world is far more engaging. Consider the importance of opinion in your narrative, your story. Perhaps you've walked past a window of mannequins and thought something like this: Good grief, ugly must be the new black this year. No one older than eight could squeeze into that skirt. They must be selling fashion design diplomas on QVC.

Seeing in your head is fun, interesting, provocative. We give that same thrill to our readers by sounding opinions through our POV narrator.

I’ve rambled on. Indulge me another point.

Donald Maass also has this to say about details in relation to voice: “Even the most ordinary people have a life that’s unique. The details that make it so are a secret source of what critics glibly refer to as voice…Details are an automatic voice all in themselves.”

Here’s an example of details fueling voice from Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See:

Three days before my wedding, I began the ceremonies associated with the Day of Sorrow and Worry. Mama sat on the fourth step leading to the upstairs chamber, the women of our village came to witness the laments, and everyone went ku, ku, ku with much sobbing all around. Once Mama and I finished our crying and singing to each other, I repeated the process with my father, my uncle and aunt, and my brothers. I may have been brave and looking forward to my new life, but my body and soul were weak from hunger, because a bride is not allowed to eat for the final ten days of her wedding festivities. Do we follow this custom to make us sadder at leaving our families, to make us more yielding when we go to our husbands’ homes, or to make us appear more pure to our husbands? How can I know the answer? All I know is that Mama—like most mothers—hid a few hard-boiled eggs for me in the women’s chamber, but these did little to give me strength, and my emotions weakened with each new event.

I walk each morning while listening to a podcast called Pen on Fire (highly recommended). The hosts interview the most amazingly talented storytellers, like Anne Lamott. In a recent podcast, the host asked Lamott what advice she had for new writers on the topic of voice. Lamott is the perfect writer to ask. She has a distinctive voice and isn't afraid to give opinions--some that make me wince.

Lamott answered with typical honesty that nothing comes easy for her, including voice. If her writing sounds "conversational and natural," this only happens by writing "draft after draft after draft." Also, she sees improvement with her writing as she ages. What her pride demanded she keep in as a younger writer, age allows her to jettison. I found this encouraging. By the time I'm as old as Methuselah, I should have the voice thing down.

This is only an opening discussion on voice, but these fine authors and writing teachers have offered great pointers for developing voice for our characters. First, know your characters. Second, allow your characters to voice opinions. Third, add details that ground your character's voice in a culture. And last, be prepared to work for voice...and welcome birthdays.

Details of a story line may fade, but the voice remains forever in our memories. Share a story you have read with a distinctive voice. Any ideas about how the author achieved this? What helps you develop a unique voice in your stories? Is it okay to use yourself as a model for voice?