Choice is the catalyst for story

“You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

                        ~ Morpheus

Choice is a catalyst. Characters who make difficult choices in order to gain something they want or need are a vital component in a good story. Whether the character's choice is good or bad, it will be the catalyst for a journey, and the character will have to live with the consequences of choice, and make many more decisions that stem from the first. Neo chose the red pill and as a result learnt the truth. He then had to choose whether to fight. Characters who want something and are strong enough to pursue it make interesting subjects!

Neo’s choice was easy. Live a lie or know the truth. How could he go on living a lie when he knew it existed? We already knew that the character Neo was portrayed to be wouldn’t be able to do that. If he’d chosen the blue pill … well, story over.

What if Neo’s choice had been made for him? What if he'd chosen the blue pill, but through forces outside his control had ended up on the adventure anyway, would he be the sort of character we’d want to follow through the whole story? If he never acted on his own decisions, but was thrust into situations of other’s making. A passive character being acted on by the rest of the world.

Your characters need to want something with enough conviction that they will make the hard choices (the red pill), and lead the reader through a story worth knowing, instead of bumbling along in the dark, steeped in passivity.

Which pill would you choose? I think I know the answer - we’re all story readers here.

A to Zers, I'm trying to get around to as many of you as possible, and will return the love of all who visit, but I have a 13 hour day today with a work/uni combo so probably won't be able to visit till tomorrow.

The e-book pricing conundrum. How much are they worth?

One of the biggest debates happening in the book world these days is: how much is an e-book worth? And what is that worth based on? How do we balance the reader’s loss in utility from not being able to touch or see or smell their book (all important if you’re a book lover) against authors’ income and publishers’ revenues? People still need to make money. If they’re not making money they’re not going to keep making books.

I come at this issue from two different perspectives: the reader, and the writer who also works in publishing. So far, I’m finding it very hard to merge these two perspectives. (Dual personalities of a writer’s brain come forth.)

The reader:

When you buy a traditionally published e-book you’re often paying close to the same price as you would for the p-book version. As a reader of both e- and p-books, I have an issue with this. I prefer p-books. I like to feel them. The smell of them. To look at them on my bookshelf even after I’ve finished reading them. If I have a choice, and the price is similar, I’m going for the p-book every time.

E-books, for me, are about convenience and cost saving. Add in the fact that, according to publishing consultant David Amerland, when you spend money on an e-book you’re not actually purchasing the book, only access to the book, why should I spend the same amount as I would to purchase, and own, a p-book?

The writer and publishing industry employee:

A lot of readers think the way I do about the costs of e-books. What they don’t realise is that, for a traditional publisher, there is very little difference between the cost of creating an e-book or p-book. Sure, e-books don’t have printing costs, but they do still have editing, design, marketing, author fees and a whole host of other costs associated with them. You might be surprised to know that the printing cost associated with a single book is usually only around a couple of dollars.

So the question is: how do the big publishers compete when consumers aren’t willing to pay what the publisher needs to survive? Throw in the likes of Amazon, who willingly forces the price point of e-books down so they can sell more Kindles and put competitors out of business (predatory pricing), and you’ve got the publishers in a sticky situation.

The only people meeting the market’s price expectations are self-publishers, who are able to sell their books at very low prices because they have almost no overheads. The market is happy (yay)! The publishers are not. Although whether the market is truly happy could be questionable. There are a lot of self-pubd works out there that wouldn’t know a second draft if it bit them in the bum, but that’s a post for another day.

Here’s a quote from author Stuart Neville that I think sums up the writers' perspective:

"I'm amazed that people are that cheap. Do they think a year of my life is worth less than $9.99? Do they really believe that 10 to 12 hours of entertainment isn't worth the equivalent cost of two or three coffees, or less than two beers?"

What are your thoughts on the e-book pricing conundrum? Do you have no problem paying close to the same price for an e-book as you would for a p-book, despite the perceived loss of worth? Or will you only buy self-pubd e-books and continue to buy p-books from the traditional publishers? I’m interested to hear where everyone else stands on this issue!

Sharing genius

I've just been catching up on my blog reading, something I haven't had much time for lately and which I have missed.

I came across this post by one of my awesome critique partners, Maggie the Genius (my new name for her).

You should go read it, but to sum it up, she had a middle of the night epiphany (something I'm sure all you writers are familiar with):

Make the awesome parts of the book awesomer, and get rid of all the parts that aren’t awesome.

I'm going to frame that and put it on my wall. Seriously.

What writing gems has your subconscious brain given you while you sleep?

Make writing your habitual fix

Writers write because we love it. That may be a slight generalisation, but it applies to most of the writers I know. We love our characters, we love our worlds, we love our stories*. But sometimes writing can start to feel like a chore. I'm not sure how this happens, and I know that every day that I don't write, I think about the fact that I haven't written a lot.

I hear a lot of writers say (and I know exactly how they feel) that getting themselves to write is the hardest part. Once you've made yourself sit at the computer, gotten rid of all the distractions like Twitter and Facebook and (squee!) new blogfollowers and comments, and finally gotten around to opening your story, it becomes easy**. The words flow.

The big hurdle for many writers is not getting the words, but making themselves sit and write the words in the first place.

I no longer want to feel guilty about skipping a day of writing. I want it to be easy to sit down and get past all the distractions and WRITE! And I never, ever, want it to take three years, or even more than a year to write a first draft again. I want writing to be my first priority of the day (other than, you know, the things that keep me alive).

So, I've decided to give myself a writing habit.

habit (from Dictionary.com)
–noun
1. an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary: the habit of looking both ways before crossing the street.

I want writing to be so ingrained in my daily routine that I start getting jumpy if I don't get my fix. Ok, that could be taking it a bit far, but you know what I mean.

I've designed myself a writing habit building schedule, to help me become a daily writer for life:

   1.  Commit to thirty days of writing at least 500 words in a row on fiction. No skipping days. No complicated goals. Just get the words. Habits take repetition over time to build. Thirty days is generally accepted as the point when you can stop thinking too hard about the action, but it isn't the end. It's a good start.

Instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline, introduce rituals similar to brushing your teeth. Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. Success feeds off of itself.

-Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier

   2.  Make it a ritual. Do the writing first thing in the day. Don't do anything else until I've reached the 500 words. No blogging, no checking emails, no reading other blogs, no Twitter. Nothing else till I've got my words (other than making coffee - this is essential). This step doubles as a reward, because then I've got the other things to look forward to once I've finished.

   3.  If my self discipline really isn't doing it for me (it hasn't got the best track record), remove temptation. Since for me, the biggest blocker for writing is the interwebs, that means switching off the modem at the wall (which means no more Thesausus.com while I write - hope it doesn't come to that).

   4.  Write it down and put it somewhere I can see it. This is what I made for myself to stick right in front of me on the wall. Feel free to use it too if you want.

   5.  Have a buddy. I think, at least for those of us writers who also blog and tweet, we writers like to share experiences. Writing itself is such a solitary thing that we reach out to other writers to see how they're doing. If anyone would like to join me on my attempt to create a writing habit, please do!

There you have it, five steps that are hopefully going to ensure I never have a problem with writing motivation again.

Do you think you could benefit from creating a writing habit? Do you have problems motivating yourself to write? Why don't you join in?

* Although love can surprisingly easily turn to hate sometimes

** Unless they're suffering from writer's block

My favourite things I learnt last week from the writing bloggerverse... aka weekly mashup

I have a list saved to My Favourites in my browser called the Daily Clicks. As the name suggests, every day I go through the daily clicks and see what's new. Most people would use a feed reader to do this, but I prefer to actually go to the blog or web page and see all the pretty shiny things that the creator has put there.

So I thought I'd do a post on my favourite things learnt this week in my exploration of the writing webs.


1.  Janet Reid and Writer Beware both posted on the dangers of competition clauses, and one competition in particular. Long story short, if you are considering entering any sort of writing comp, read the fine print in full. And if you see anything like this:

By submitting an entry, all entrants grant Sponsor the absolute and unconditional right and authority to copy, edit, publish, promote, broadcast, or otherwise use, in whole or in part, their entries, in perpetuity, in any manner without further permission, notice or compensation.

Run. Run away fast and far. And don't part with your hard earned dollars to enter a competition that basically means you've granted the competition holder the right to use your work in any way without notifying or compensating you. Not. Good.


2.   Shallee McArthur came up with the idea to do a What's Your Writing Process Blogfest. In her words:

...blog about ANY part of your writing process-- how you create characters, how you plot your novel, how you organize your rewrites, your whole writing process from start to finish, anything.

The blogfest is scheduled for Tuesday the 18th, which for me is now, but for most of the participants is tomorrow, so I thought I'd compromise by posting tonight.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up. Share your process so we can learn from you.

Aplogies to the guys,
couldn't help myself.



3.   The discovery of Kristen Lamb's blog. She's a writer and social media guru, and blogs about both. I only came across her blog a couple of days ago (via Twitter) and I've already discovered so much good information. My favourite so far is how to take on the Procrastination Pixie. Excellent advice. I've been practicing using the word 'No' every time my mouse wanders toward the facebook/twitter/gratuitous pictures of Ben Barnes button when writing, and so far with good results.

If you're a blogger she also has this awesome series of posts on getting started and staying in the game. More great advice and worth checking out. And yes I'm trying to take that advice. I will blog more regularly. Promise.


4.   Ok, this one's on a more serious note. I've been meaning to blog about this all week, so now's as good a time as any. Author Saundra Mitchell tackles the topic of illegal ebook downloads in her post '"Free" Books Aren't Free'. A quick quote:

I’ve told you before that I made a $15,000 advance on SHADOWED SUMMER. In two years, I’ve managed to earn back $12,000 of that.

It’s going out of print in hardcover because demand for it has dwindled to 10 or so copies a month. This means I will never get a royalty check for this book. By all appearances, nobody wants it anymore.

But those appearances are deceiving. According to one download site’s stats, people are downloading SHADOWED SUMMER at a rate of 800 copies a week. When the book first came out, it topped out at 3000+ downloads a week.

If even HALF of those people who downloaded my book that week had bought it, I would have hit the New York Times Bestseller list.

If the 800+ downloads a week of my book were only HALF converted into sales, I would earn out in one more month. But I’m never going to earn out.

I would recommend reading the whole thing. It really.. sucks (for want of a better word) reading stuff like this. I know no one reading this post would download an ebook, because we're all writers, but we can all help to educate. There are plenty of people out there who don't realise the damage they're doing by downloading an ebook, and they could be our friends or family. So let them know. I'm sure they'll be want to spend a few dollars on books in future.


5.   Not really blogging, but favourite Twitter hashtags this week: #YALitChat, #AskAgent and #AmWriting. Great places for advice, encouragement, and finding like-minded people. Twitter is an invaluable resource for writers, so if you're not there, go to it.


And that's that. My list of favourite (and not so favourite in some cases) things learned and heard this week.

What have you learnt this week? What gems have made a difference to your writing day? Or just your day in general?

Keeping in mind that rules are made to be broken

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"