Category: Writing Tips

The Things They Don’t Tell You About Publication

Question: What’s an ITIN?

Answer: Why it’s an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number! That thing that stops the IRS from withholding 30% of your profits when you sell your book in the US from outside of the US. It lets them know: “Hey guys, my country has a tax treaty with your country so, don’t do that thing you do. Okay? Thanks!”

If you live outside the US and you’re planning on making use of a distributor like Amazon.com, Smashwords, etc, make sure you get one of these and get it early on. If you’re approved for an ITIN, it’s going to take them six weeks to mail it to you. Also, from what I’ve been reading, your ITIN doesn’t apply to the year in which it’s issued to you, so if this is your first time selling to the US, you’d better start this process while you’re still writing your first draft.

I don’t recall seeing a self-publication guide that so much as mentions this so, as you can guess, it was a nasty little surprise I stumbled upon while uploading my book. All I can say is: wow this is way more complicated than I thought it would be. I have way more respect for self-pubbed authors now that I’m running the gauntlet myself.

Children’s Book Writing Exercise

Okay, who wants to watch me step waaay outside my comfort zone? … Well don’t everybody jump up and down at once.

The fact is, I’m not that great at writing child characters. In Blood of Midnight, the male protagonists’ younger sister, Rebecca is as low as I’ll go with confidence. She’s 14. Naturally, I was petrified when my buddy Lofn’s Bard brought some children’s story writing exercises to Writers’ Circle. Nevertheless, I soldiered on and managed to make some improvements in the way I write kids and, perhaps, write for kids. I’ve still got a long way to go, but this has been a good start and I’d like to share one of those exercises with you.

The chief reason I find it so hard to write in a child’s voice is that I really can’t remember my childhood except for a few incidents here and there. I don’t know why. That’s just how it is. So, naturally, an exercise that helps squeeze more details out of a given memory is really helpful!

Filling in the Blanks

Take this sample phrase and fill in the blanks:

When I was __ years old, my favourite _____________ was ___________________.

I remember the time when ____________________________________.

For example: When I was 10 years old, my favourite toy was a Power Rangers action figure.

I remember the time when one of mum’s babysitting kids broke his head off and I was so angry that I didn’t talk to him for a week.

But don’t stop there. Keep writing everything you can remember on the subject. Write for about ten minutes even if you have to drift into other topics. Anything you can dredge forth from the fog of memory is good material.

Now, have a look at your finished product. Look at the age you described and at the scribbles under it. Does it sound like it is being spoken by a person of that age? Why or why not? If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably written it mostly, or entirely in your adult voice. Don’t despair. The discrepancies are telling and you can learn from them.

Rewrite the piece now, paying close attention to things like word choice (children have small vocabularies), abstract ideas (children are very literal), and sentence length and structure (keep it simple). For a really good workout, try a year or two younger and a year or two older and explore what the maturation process does to the writing.

Hope this helps you and, as always, thanks for stopping by. Make good art!

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing

This article is one I re-visit several times a year to remind myself of the big picture. It can be easy to get lost in bad habits, especially when one works for oneself. Writers, and artists in general, need to take ourselves seriously, and this list is something I find helps me to do just that.

In other news, I burned the midnight oil last night and got caught up on my NaNoWriMo. 73% done! Woo!

Thought Verbs

Thought Verbs

This was just too good not to repost. I’m guilty of doing this myself, probably because of my fondness for writing, and reading, very introspective characters. While I might not be so ruthless as to eliminate all thought verbs as described, this would certainly be helpful in the editing process to make the detail more rich and informative. 

Tunes for Writing

Hi guys! At present, I have chapters 1 through 10 of Blood of Midnight: The Broken Prophecy submitted back to my editor and things are looking great. I’m about ready to start posting some samples of the novel here for you to see if you’d like to read the rest when it comes out but I want to be absolutely sure that it’s as polished and nice as it can be. You know I wouldn’t give you crap to read!

Other than that little announcement, I’ve found a great resource for writing. It’s a site that lets you search for music playlists based on mood.

Stereomood.com seems to be rather new but I’ve already discovered its usefulness. All I have to do is type in the mood I want to set for the scene and it pops up a playlist of songs that people have tagged for that particular mood. 

I’m not about to throw away all my youtube playlists but I’m eager to see where this resource goes in the future. Take a crack at it. At worst, you’ll discover some cool new songs.

Writing Antagonists

Here’s a lovely post from one of my favourite tumblrs that I just couldn’t resist sharing. I often have the opposite problem: knowing my villain better than my hero, but I know that’s not always the case.

Enjoy!

Sculpting a Soul: Emotions That Define a Character

Here is a writing exercise to help you get to know your characters better and give them more depth:

Perhaps you know your character well. Perhaps you don’t. Either way, our emotions and our reactions to them say a lot about who we are especially when those feelings are particularly potent. Take this list of strong emotions and consider what could possibly trigger each of them in your character:

  • Fear
  • Anger
  • Sorrow
  • Pain (Physical or emotional)
  • Desire (Sexual or otherwise. It could be greed or a strong craving.)
  • Love
  • Elation

Write a short scene for each of these emotions. What makes your character feel this way? How do they react? What happens to their body? To their thoughts? Remember that emotions tend to be complex things and are often linked together. Does a particular feeling lead to another? (Example: Does the character get angry when they feel frightened?) What do they decide to do? If it’s a negative emotion, how do they cope?

Can you think of any other emotions that might be provocative? Feel free to leave comments and, as always, make good art!

How to Write Dialogue

How to Write Dialogue

Here’s a very helpful article on how to write dialogue properly. Even I got some valuable lessons from it!

Novel Setting Template

Visualizing where things take place while we’re writing is just as important as visualizing our characters. I like to organize all the info I have on prominent locations in the story so that composing and editing are a lot less of a hassle.

Not only that, but I find that in the process of filling these templates out, I can squeeze a lot more info out of the novel concept than I knew was in there. It can be handy for dealing with writer’s block.

While I like to use Scrivener to keep all my stuff in order, you can totally do this without productivity software as well by simply keeping it in a file folder. So, just like I have my character sheets, I also have setting sheets and I’ve made this filled-out version available on Google Docs for you to make use of should you find it helpful. I like to give folks pre-filled templates so they can see how I make use of the fields and decide whether or not said fields are helpful, or if perhaps they might need additional fields.

If you’d like a blank one of this or my character template, just give me a shout and I’ll make it available.

Cheers!

Doc version of Setting Template.

Odt version of Setting Template.

Novel Character Template

I find that organizing all the data I have on my characters, locations, etc really help me when working on a book. It can be hard sometimes to keep everything straight. “What was so-and-so’s uncle’s name?” and “Errr what colour were his eyes again?” can be easily answered with a character sheet much like you might have for a roleplaying character.

Unlike a roleplaying character, though novel characters tend to need some different categories for info. For example: They don’t need hit points and they probably don’t need a list of what’s in their inventory, but they do need a good list of hobbies and a description of what their home looks like.

I browsed online to see what templates were out there for novel characters and simply couldn’t find anything that suited me. So, I made my own. I will share it here, filled out with the stats for an as-yet unused character concept I had just so you can see how I make use of the fields. Feel free to download it and use it, add to it. Whatever you like. I hope it serves you well.

Make good art!

Edit: Since Google Docs seems to like to muck with my picture-placement for no discernable reason, here is the same document in .odt for those of you who use Open Office.

Enjoy!