Tip O'Day #462 - No More Lazy Research

Guest blogger Cynthia Echterling on “The Facts, Nothing but the Facts.”

My pet peeves in novels or films include unbelievable incidents, bad technology, and cultural inaccuracies from not doing adequate research. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters have become famous by debunking this sort of thing for our education and amusement.

When writing my science fiction novel, Torqed: The Search for Earth, a group of characters were planning to defraud an insurance company. They discussed how to switch on Torq's ability to hibernate and trick an adjuster into believing he was dead. All they needed to do was chill him, but in an environmentally controlled spaceport, that wasn't possible. Their first thought was to slip him outside temporarily. Would it work? Would he instantly freeze or would he explode? In many of the SciFi movies I'd seen, that's what happens. Is it accurate? I did the research and the answer is, no. You can survive about 90 seconds. Your lungs would collapse, or rupture if you try to hold your breath. Nitrogen bubbles would form in your blood stream. Your bodily excretions would freeze. You might puff up some, but you don't explode and you don't freeze rock hard instantaneously. Fortunately, you'd be unconscious from lack of oxygen before any of that happened. My characters decide it is not an option.

Crime or espionage stories have people surreptitiously offing someone with a gun using a silencer, and nobody hears anything except a gentle thoop. Not happening. A silencer can only reduce the sound of a gunshot by 20 or 30 decibels. You want to kill someone quietly? Try poisoned blow darts. Keep in mind that, in many countries, blow darts are illegal. If you're planning to kill someone, that probably isn't an issue for you. Just don't plan on buying one over-the-counter from Wal-Mart. As for the poison? Curare is used in South America, but that just paralyzes monkeys. It is rarely lethal and you'd need a large dose to paralyze a human.

Historical fiction is another breeding ground for inaccuracies. Don't rely on what you thought you learned in school, because it may be incomplete, out of date, or completely wrong. For my novel in progress, I needed to research Native American cultures. There are vast differences in social roles, customs and technologies. Did you know that Native Americans drank beer? It was made from corn, potatoes, birch and other substances and often reserved for ceremonial purposes, but not always. Though drunkenness was frowned upon by the Aztecs and could earn you severe punishment, Aztec elites indulged, not by drinking, but by taking their beer through another body orifice (hint: not their noses or ears). While they enjoyed their beer, they were also smoking cigars, eating popcorn and watching ball games. They just didn't have big screen TVs.

My point is, we all make mistakes, but unless you want some factoid-obsessed geek ripping your work to shreds, do your research!

Cynthia (or CD) Echterling is a SciFi and Fantasy author. The link to her SciFi novel Torqed: The Search for Earth can be found here. She is also the author of post-Apocalyptic Scavengers and fantasy Beer Wars.

Tip O'Day #461 - Collaborate or Not?

Guest blogger Marsheila Rockwell on “Trust in the Dark Places.”

Writing is an intensely personal act, and it is perhaps the most private and isolated of all professions. (Except for lighthouse keepers, and the cosmonaut in Armageddon who got stuck up on the Russian space station by himself for months and months.) We writers spend a lot of time in our heads, creating new people and places that no one else knows and loves quite the way we do. That creation is an intimate process, one that we sometimes have trouble even explaining to other people, let alone trying to share it.

Sometimes we do share it, however. Sometimes authors collaborate with one another to create characters and worlds together, be it for a poem, a short story, a novel, a series, or an entire career’s worth of work. So how do we do it?

Honestly, a lot of times we don’t. It’s not always enough to admire another writer’s work or even to be good friends with them. When you try working together, you may find that even though you write the same sorts of things in a similar fashion, you just can’t get a project to gel. You may blame it on different writing processes or expectations, but to me it always comes down to a matter of trust. In order for me to successfully collaborate with another author, that person has to be someone I’m willing to let into the dark places in my head, someone I trust enough to share that intimate process of creation with, who I can hand the reins over to with full confidence that they not only share the vision I have for the story, but can help me make it even better.

When it doesn’t work, you have a broken, unfinished piece that usually you’re both too disillusioned with to ever touch again, and those ideas are lost, sometimes forever (and sometimes the relationship is, too). But when it does work, you find that together you have brought to life a character, a world, a story that’s better than either of you could have created on your own, and it is a truly exhilarating feeling.

Collaborating isn’t for everyone, but you’ll never know until you try, and if you can find someone you can trust in the dark places, you’ll create some amazing things together. Good luck!

Marsheila “Marcy” Rockwell is the author of The Shard Axe series, the only official novels that tie into the popular MMORPG, Dungeons & Dragons Online. In addition to working on the second book in a trilogy based on a comic book property created by one of the biggest names in fantasy, she is currently busy sharing the dark places in her head with her writing partner Jeffrey J. Mariotte. Their latest joint project involves serial killers, meteor strikes and maybe the end of the world. You can find out more here: http://www.marsheilarockwell.com/ (and here: http://www.jeffmariotte.com/).

Tip O'Day #460 - Break Out of Your Funk

Guest blogger John Grover on "Finding Inspiration and Keeping the Spark."

For about twenty-five years, I’ve been having a love affair with writing horror. I’ve been writing for as long as I could hold a pen but I really took it seriously around the age of eighteen and wrote my first serious horror story. After that I wrote a novel. The short story was picked up by a magazine that went out of business soon after and the novel still sits in my closet, unpublished. Did that stop me from writing? Not in the least!

I love writing. It’s part of who I am; it makes me infinitely happy and I’ve written horror since I was able to read the likes of Mary Shelly, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft. I never have a lack of ideas or the ever-growing list of projects but sometimes I discover that what I truly lack is time and energy.

There never seems to be enough time to write everything I want and there are days when I’m just too tired to care, too tired to put in the time and think to myself where did that young guy go that wrote every single day no matter what?

He is still there. He just needs a little inspiration, something to keep the spark alive. There was a day not too long ago where I was about to embark on a new project, a new book series about the supernatural and I sat stared at a blank computer screen. Nothing would come. There was no desire, no energy, no spark. I knew right there that I was in a funk. I wanted to write. I loved the idea of the story and its characters but I just couldn’t.

So I turned to what I loved most about writing my favorite genres and getting lost in their worlds. I took a break and read horror books and horror stories, read my peers online, put in my favorite horror DVDs, browsed horror art online, and immersed myself again in the passion and emotion of my genre.

I was carried away by words, by sight, by sound, riveted by the emotions these things stirred, no longer reading or watching but becoming a part of it. This was what I wanted to give my readers, but not just that. This was what I wanted to give myself. I broke out of my funk and wrote that book and fell in love with my characters. I think it’s one of my better books. This is the kind of inspiration I try to surround myself with every day.

When I write and get involved in the world of my story, I get into the feeling that I am trying to inspire. I collect horror and fantasy art, scouring all around the net for the frightening, the macabre, the gothic, the wondrous and I keep it in a folder on my desk, like an artist does with swipes from magazines and books. I use them as screensavers and wallpaper and I take them out to get into the mood and to add a visual to the story I might be writing. It really helps me flesh out plots, characters and entire worlds.

Not only do I collect inspirational art but I listen to music in my genre, ambient sound, creepy movie themes, gothic bands and so on. I collect movies and TV shows and have them running in the background as I write. I put my favorite authors in stacks of books beside me on the table. All of these things inspire me every day and sometimes I feel like I never left my childhood and the little boy who told stories in books made of construction paper that were bound together by some staples.

So whenever you may feel like you just don’t want to write or that you’re burnt out or in a funk, take a break, recharge and do what you did when you were young, do what it was that drew you to writing in the first place. Reread that classic book you read in school, put on that music that gave you the best feeling when you finished writing that masterpiece. These things keep that spark alive and keep those creative juices flowing.

You never know when those things may inspire your current project or inspire you to give something different or unique to your readers. Ever thought of including a recommended play list in one of your books — a list of songs that would go perfect with your book that your reader could download? Or how about interior art to go with your fantasy book, concept art that you can keep on your desktop or share on your social media? Cover art that could be made into t-shirts, bookmarks, coffee mugs or some multimedia in your eBook — book trailers, video clues to a murder mystery or sound bites.

Whatever it is you write try to find a little inspiration every day and you’ll keep that creative spark alive and your writing fun.

John Glover is a horror, fantasy and sci-fi author from Massachusetts. He’s been published in various magazine and anthologies and has a few horror novels out on Amazon. His most recent horror novel, The Fetch, was released last month. For more information, check out www.shadowtales.com.

Tip O'Day #454 - It Sounds Easy Because It Is.

Guest blogger Hayden Chance on "Five Habits That Will Murder Your Chances of Ever Finishing a Novel."

Writing is like catching fireflies in a jar. If you don’t grab the spark when the opportunity arises, the sunrise will come and the magic will all be gone. No shit. It’s really true. Every idea has a shelf life and if you don’t use it before its expiration date, your writing will do the same thing milk does when it’s been sitting on the counter for several days. It will sour and stink and no one will want anything to do with it. That means if you want to write a novel, you’ve got to get it done when the creative impulse strikes, and then get it out there for people to read. This sounds simple, and really it is, but writers like to develop all sorts of convoluted habits that complicate simplicity.

When people find out I’ve written seven books, six of them novels, invariably I get asked the same question: “How the hell do you write one novel, much less six?” I say the same thing every time: Process. A process is something that has steps, creates success and can be repeated over and over again. I have a definite process I employ every time I write a book, but since there’s not enough space in this brief blog entry to outline that process, I’ll give you these five poisons that are sure derail any novel writing process you choose to use:

One: Journaling constantly. If you continuously journal every thought, hope and feeling you ever have, you’re a diarist. That’s fine if you’re writing just for yourself or as a coping mechanism; however, if you want to write novels, then write novels. Not about how your favorite Adele song enhances your orgasms. Not about how that turkey sandwich you ate last week made you too tired to pick up the kids from school, so they had to hitch a ride with the creepy dude three houses down who smells like fish, and who’s wife disappeared mysteriously three months ago, even though someone still comes out of their house late at night wearing her dresses… (OK, maybe you do wanna write that last thing down. It might be good to give to the cops later.)

Without fail, when people ask me why they can’t finish creating a novel, and I ask them, “Are you writing?” They respond: “Um…well, I’m journaling a lot.” It’s great to have a diary. It’s just that if you’re not some sort of nympho like Anaïs Nin, no one but you is likely to ever want to read it.

Two: Talking about writing, rather than writing. For God’s sake, if you’re gonna tell everyone about what you someday hope to write, at least record the freaking conversations. The more you’re talking about writing, the less you are actually writing. Writing’s like making love. It’s your job to bring that reader to the heights of ecstasy. Put your energy into making that happen ON PAPER FOR YOUR AUDIENCE. Don’t be some cheap literary whore in random conversations with everyone you know. (For one thing, you will bore them all and they will hate you like taxes.) You don’t want to shoot your wad in conversational foreplay before you’ve even unbuttoned your jeans. Save some energy for the actual fictional act. Otherwise you’ll be snoring in self satisfaction while your audience is lying next to you, worked up, unsatisfied, and thinking of how they might poison your omelet in the morning without leaving any evidence.

Three: Constantly “work-shopping” everything. Lack of confidence kills your authority. Trust your own voice, your experience and your ability to tell a story. If you don’t believe in your work, no one else will. Getting someone to read your work for clarity is fine. Hitting workshops like a junky riding a twelve-step circuit damages your ability to determine your self-worth as a writer.

Four: Taking too long to finish. The longer you take to finish a novel, the further you go from the original creative impulse. You will change. Your views will change. The continuity, clarity and integrity of your story will suffer. Your audience will know it.

Five: Endless rewrites. Write it. Rewrite it. Get it the hell out there. Endless rewrites are just fear of success.

Hayden Chance is the bestselling author of the Urban Fantasies Taboo, Forbidden, Year of the Bull and the Amazon bestseller, Anatomy of a Wish. His latest sci-fi novel, Dream Oblivion, recently hit #1 on the Amazon’s Hot New Releases. You can check out his latest work here.

Tip O'Day #450 - Embrace Failure

Guest blogger M.L. Hamilton wonders whether the Olympics should give a medal for last place.

Recently, I applied for an academy to study Shakespeare in London. I made it through the first round and was asked to come in for an interview. I didn’t feel nervous as I walked into the interview and met the four people who were conducting it. They explained what the requirements were and told me they would be asking me four interview questions.

That’s where everything went south.

The first question threw me. I blanked and once I blanked, the rest of the interview went rapidly downhill like a luge run. Mostly what I remember is babbling. I’m one of those people who babbles when I get rattled as if I think that the more I talk the more I might work myself into something that makes sense. At that moment, I had an out-of-body experience, where I could see myself sitting at the head of the table, talking like a madwoman, wondering why I just didn’t shut up. Oh, for the love of humanity, just shut up.

I remember I said Hamlet a lot.

Now don’t get me wrong. Hamlet is my favorite Shakespearean play, but the way I went on about him, you’d think I wanted to marry the guy.

So, what was the question that rattled me so?

The first interviewer asked me how teaching Shakespeare related to my students’ acquisition of the Common Core. For those of you not in academia, the Common Core is the national standards for each subject area in American public school classrooms. Why did this throw me? After all, I’ve been told that I need to embrace the Common Core, that I need to know it, inside and out, and I think I have a pretty good handle on it. It isn’t that different from what we’ve had as standards for years. What I couldn’t articulate at the time was the idea that I had to justify teaching Shakespeare. That a number and a purpose statement were required to expose my students to one of the most enduring poets of any age.

It wasn’t until I was home, watching television, that I had a moment of clarity. The new iPad Air commercial came on with Robin Williams reading lines from the Dead Poet Society. These lines in particular struck me: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

If I had been quicker, if I had been more centered, I would have articulated this. I would have articulated that we study Shakespeare not because he trips some arbitrary construct politicians and academics created in an office space somewhere. We study Shakespeare because he shows us a mirror to ourselves, he shows us universal truths about humanity that transcend time and culture. We study Shakespeare because he is art.

But I said none of this. I stumbled ungracefully through the interview and left feeling defeated.

So, what’s the take away? As humans, we laud our successes and we should. Success should be commended, it should be celebrated. But perhaps it is our failures that are more important. Our failures give us a chance to reflect, to have clarity, to truly learn who we are as people.

Like art and music and poetry, failure is what makes us human.

M.L. Hamilton has taught high school English and Journalism for over 20 years, and saw her first novel, Emerald, published in 2010. She’s been a busy lady since then, with three more books in the World of Samar series, and about a half-dozen Peyton Brooks’ mysteries. The latest is Murder on Treasure Island, and the Amazon Kindle link is here.

Tip O'Day #446 - The Writing Comes First

Guest blogger Jennifer Allis Provost on being a writer.

So, you wanna be a writer.

Maybe you want to be a full time writer. Maybe it's just a hobby for you. Or maybe you just want to write your memoirs and preserve your family history for generations to come. No matter the type of writer you want to be -- full time, part time, fiction, nonfiction -- there is one thing you must do before all else.

You need to write.

Obvious, huh? But, not everyone realizes the obvious. In this day and age, everyone talks about building platforms, social media, queries and such. None of that matters if you don't have a finished product.

As for me, I've been pretty lucky. I've published a few fantasy books, been included in several anthologies, and my latest novel, Copper Girl, book one of the Copper Legacy series, was released two months ago. But there are quite a few other things I want to accomplish. Here's a list, in no particular order of importance:

Finish the rest of the Copper Legacy series
Re-release my fantasy series
Complete my historical fantasy and shop for agents

Okay, the above list encompasses twelve (!!!) books! Holy crap!

Now, it's not such a daunting task; four are complete, and five are in varying stages of completion. Still, that means I have to find the time to complete those five books, start (and finish) three more, shop for agents and publishers, and somehow promote my existing work. Add that to my day job, caring for my husband and children, and those pesky little tasks like eating and sleeping, and my little list takes on an aspect not unlike Mount Everest.

What's a writer to do?

Me, I made a schedule. I fired up Excel and laid everything out, from soup to nuts. I started with three columns -- one for each major project -- and listed completion timeframes for each. For instance, in 2013 I will have the first draft of book three of the Copper Legacy series, Copper Veins, completed by July, and the first draft for book four, Copper Princess, completed by December. With regard to my fantasy series, I have a rewrite due in December. The outline for my historical fantasy is due by June, and its first draft by December.

Okay, so that's three first drafts, one outline, and one rewrite between now and December. And you know what? I can do that. Now, are those the only things I need to complete to remain on track? Not by a long shot. Will I make all of my due dates? Hopefully, but I did schedule things a bit more tightly than necessary to account for little things like life getting in the way. For instance, I scheduled the first draft of Copper Princess for December 2013, but it won't be released until May 2016.

Still, unless I write the books (any by write I mean write, edit, revise, re-edit, re-revise, etc), I can't acquire an agent, or submit my work to publishers. Make no mistake, while all this is going on I'll still be promoting, building my platform, and generally being a nuisance across all aspects of social media. But you know what? The writing comes first.

Jennifer Allis Provost spends her days drinking vast amounts of coffee, arguing with her computer, and avoiding any and all domestic behavior. Her novel, The Chronicles of Parthalan, is available now, and Copper Girl was released in June from Spence City. You can learn more about Jennifer at her website.

Tip O'Day #445 - Ignore the Rules

Guest blogger Franz McLaren on “I write wrong.”

Over the years I have been told by English teachers, grammar teachers and a smattering of writing instructors that I should outline, I should write proper sentences, I should never use contractions, and so on. I listened, I learned, I wrote as I was told, and I produced dozens of stories that bored everyone who read them. Friends and family delicately suggested I should seek another career.

That is when desperation set in. Another career? I already had a day job that writing was supposed to free me from. Was I supposed to change my dreams and find something, anything, which gave me as much pleasure as writing?

However, the truth was, writing had become a chore. I did it because I had to. For as long as I can remember, writing was what I wanted to do.

In frustration I sat and wrote without thinking about rules, word patterns or structure. I let my mind wander and fingers pluck keys as they chose. A few hours later I had the rough draft of a story that I liked. I liked it because it was a story only I knew, one that I told myself as I was writing, one that carried a small part of my soul.

When I started that tale, I had no idea what I would write. I had not tried to outline. I did not know my characters or setting. I just wrote a story I wanted to hear.

Did I dare let others read this stuff? Should I put a bit of me out there and risk ridicule? Not yet.

I wrote a few more stories, each without knowing anything about them before I started and each revealing a little more about me than I felt comfortable with. Eventually, people noticed I was spending time at the keyboard not game related. Tentatively, I presented one of my new stories to a friend.

After a few comments about how it was unusual and they would not have phrased this passage that way, this reader asked whether I had any others. No trumpets blared from heaven, no pompoms were waved by ecstatic cheerleaders but in that instant, I knew I really was a writer.

Years later I sat down to write my first novel. I intended it to be a horror. How did I know that, since I had no idea what it was going to be about? Because, every short story I wrote was horror. Obviously I have a dark soul seeking release through writing.

Only the story did not cooperate. In a few chapters, my characters found themselves in a land of fantasy. My fingers put them there, but the characters were dictating the story. It felt as if I was coming home. I was finally in lands I had never seen, having adventures I could not have conceived.

I have been a fantasy writer since. I have business cards that say so and hundreds of fan letters that tell me I am not the only person who needs visions of other worlds.

When I finished the first book of the Clarion of Destiny series, my sons asked to see the outline. I decided enough time had passed since I gave up trying to write right that maybe I should give structure another try. I managed to produce fifteen lines that roughly represented the first book and wrote, "Leena has adventures on the way to the castle," as line sixteen. Then I was stumped. I had no idea what I should add next. The outline ended there. Seven books and more than 500,000 words later, Leena made it.

Not once during the writing of the series did I fire up the keyboard with an inkling of what I would write. Each day I spent time in Leena's world, learning as she learned and feeling as she felt. Each day she told me a new portion of the story.

I am writing a new serial character now and learning more about him and his exotic worlds daily. I do not know in-depth biographies of my characters. I do not have an outline. I do not choose the rhythms of their words. I should. Hundreds of books and articles tell me these things are necessary. However, when I tried to follow their advice I failed.

I know now that I write best when I write wrong.

You can learn more about fantasy author Franz McLaren at his website or on his Amazon author page.

Tip O'Day #443 - Secret Formula for Success

Guest blogger Kim Shaw on ‘writing well enough to be published.’

Now there’s an idea to chill the blood of any aspiring author. Writing well enough. It’s the monster under the bed. It prowls the murky fringes of our psyche, just waiting to shred our self-belief - for what exactly is ‘well enough,’ and how do we achieve that? Do I? Can I? Will I ever? And that’s before we even get to the P-word, that magical talisman to rescue us from the pits of aspiration and transform us into a Real Author. Did you guess yet that the fantasy genre is my comfort zone?

So is there some alchemic formula that will turn our base scribblings into the golden nuggets that publishers dream of? I sincerely doubt it. The multitudes of published how-to and rule books might be a place to start, or the myriad online writers’ sites or critique groups, where opinions are as varied as the membership. It will get you thinking critically about your own writing.

Actually, no - don’t start here. It’s bound to be confusing, and certain to awake the monster. Come back later, preferably armed with a torch and a broadsword. My torch is called Story and my sword, Passion. I know - it doesn’t quite have the ring of Excalibur, but together they might have something going on. Story + Passion = Real Published Author? Maybe...

Here is the formula I’m brewing up. It’s a regular sorcerers’ potion of analogies, but alchemy is all about trial and error, right?

Read. Simple. Read for pleasure, as much as you can, as often as you can. Read outside your comfort zone. Learn by osmosis. It’s much more fun that way. Then, when you do apply fingers to keyboard, all the basic tools you need will already be at your command. Having made the decision to write, you might then go back later (much later - once you have your own story and new-born voice) and try to figure out what exactly it was that you loved about a certain author’s style. It adds to the tool-kit. If I could pick just one ingredient for writing ‘well enough’, reading would be it.

Write your story. Story trumps all, in my book. Give yourself permission to fall in love with it, with your characters, their world. If you don’t love them, who else will? This is the arcane magical ingredient in the formula. Be passionate - there’s plenty of time to get cold and ruthless later. We all have some poetry in us when we are in love.

Write everything, now. I’ll borrow Steven King’s analogy here, since it appeals to the archaeologist in me. Excavate the entire thing from the depths, every last bone and tooth. Marvel over this wondrous thing you discovered, without trying to define what type of dinosaur you have until you can lay the whole thing out on the slab. Then switch on those unflattering lab-lights and proceed to the science - but don’t forget to hurry back to Read.

Learn the Rules at some point - it doesn’t have to be before you start writing, but know them well before you submit that manuscript, or make a conscious choice to break them. Invite the Rules in for coffee, slouch around in comfy chairs and debate the merits and applications, take some notes. Take note of the notes, and edit hard. But don’t let them Rules overstay their welcome. You have better things to do - writing and reading for passion and pleasure.

A final thought... The world of publishing is changing so fast that the keepers of that P-talisman are having serious trouble with their own formulas. It would not surprise me in the least if something were to explode - messily, and quite soon. I try to keep that in mind as I chase the big P. For now, I’m going with S + P = RPA.

Saying for Writers #134 - George R.R. Martin

A Quote which Might (or Might Not) Inspire You to Write:

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” -- George R.R. Martin

Jojen Reed is a character in Martin’s Song of Fire & Ice series the inspiration for the Game of Thrones cable series. Clever of Martin to trot out a fictional character for a profound quotation.

Tip O'Day #386 - Complex Plot Lines

Guest blogger Cynthia Richards on “Keeping all the Wiggling Worms Straight.”

I love complicated stories with twists and turns weaving intricate patterns of clues or deception. These are the stories that keep me up until midnight, turning page after page. Tracking each strand of intrigue or character sub-plot in the writer's mind, however, can be as difficult as sorting worms in a bucket. How can an author make certain their character A isn't racing in his speed boat to rescue the scientist while in character B's point of view, character A is giving a lecture on physics at the same time?

I turn to my experience as a software developer. Computer code, depending on the software application, can be extremely complex. To keep the functionality straight in their minds, developers turn to a process called "Flow Charting." They use graphic representations of each step their code goes through to get from point A to point B. Sound difficult? It's actually very simple.

A writer can follow this same process with pen and paper. Start with the protagonist's story line. Draw a box and write a brief summary of the scene or event with the perspective of how it impacts your protagonist. Do the same thing with each scene, tying them together with arrows beginning with the first box (scene or event) to the last box. Voila! You have created a flow chart for your plot. If you’re using more than one character point of view, then do the same thing with the next character's storyline. Try printing out the flow charts for all your character story lines and comparing them. I've discovered quite a few plot holes I would have missed otherwise.

Paper and pencil work just fine as you’re flow charting, but if you'd rather save your work in e-copy, there are software tools available. I recommend Open Office, because it's easy to use and it's free (big plus). Having an e-copy version comes in handy when you’re writing your synopsis. The major plot points have already been written. You’ll just need to copy/paste into Word and then freshen up the language.

A co-author of horror and urban fantasy novels, Cynthia’s first solo fiction project is scheduled for release in 2013. Learn more at her website.

Tip O'Day #385 - What Not to Leave Out

Guest blogger Katie Jennings on “The Importance of Proper eBook Formatting and Content!”

Alright guys, so if there’s one thing we can all be sure of it’s that the publishing world as we know it has been dramatically altered in the last few years thanks to the advent of the eBook. Kindles, Nooks, iPads, Android tablets, etc are the latest craze and according to all the stats out there, if there’s one thing that people are buying more of, it’s eBooks.

This is EXCELLENT news for us as authors. Now we no longer have to rely on things like traditional publishing, print shops, and inordinate expenses to get a book on paper and bound professionally…in fact, if we want, we don’t have to even consider print books at all. Now, I still think that print books are fun so I encourage Indie authors to still pursue this route (especially since CreateSpace will do it dirt cheap), but maybe it’s time we focus the majority of our attention not on our print books, but on our eBooks.

I have four published novels with a fifth on the way, and I can tell you honestly that my sales ratio of print books to eBooks is unbelievable. As in, basically the only people who buy my books in print are my family and friends. My Kindle books, however…well, that’s a much different story.

I realize now that I was making them WAY too simple. The book itself is all in there, each chapter reading just as it would in the print book. But I left out so much more that I could have included, things that would not only make my Kindle book interactive, but also market me as an author AND help me sell more books. So you can marvel at my pitiable oversight, here are some of the things I originally left out of my Kindle books (some of them are very sad, but trust me I’ve learned):

1. A cool graphic for my book title/author name
2. A dedication
3. Table of Contents (not super important, but can be helpful in an eBook!)
4. The generic copyright page with clickable hyperlinks to my website and social media pages
5. A list of my previous works with a few customer reviews
6. About the author (Omg, sad, right?)
7. Cool graphics to accompany my chapter titles
8. Interesting section spacer graphics between sections in a chapter
9. Unique bold or italics to start off the text in a chapter or a new section of the book
10. A sneak peek of an upcoming new release (the cover and an excerpt), perhaps to the sequel of the book. Even using an excerpt from a different book entirely would be better than nothing.
11. And lastly, reviews of the book itself. Send out Advanced Review Copies of your book and get some reviews to include with your eBook. Readers love to hear what other people think before they commit to purchasing.

So here’s the thing: I was so worried about making my eBook as easy to read and simple as possible, that I missed out on all the cool stuff I could have added. I was worried that if I made it too complicated that the eBook wouldn’t format correctly and it would look awful and no one would want to read it. So while my eBooks read very well with very few formatting mistakes, they are also boring to look at (hopefully not boring to read, but that’s another story). Perhaps some readers prefer eBooks without all of the flair, but c’mon, it really does improve the look of the eBook and gives it that professional edge that we are all striving for.

So here’s what I did for my upcoming new release. This time I was committed to getting it right, so I actually hired a professional to format my eBook for me. Did you even know that there are professionals who do that? I didn’t. But I was referred to a great small company by a fellow author and their price was extremely reasonable, so I said hey, why not?

Wow, let me just say right now that it was so worth it. First off, it was nice not to have to fight with the formatting myself, but they were also the ones who suggested I include most of the fun things I mentioned above. So if you’re feeling lost and having technical difficulties getting your eBook to look just right, consider reaching out to someone who knows what they’re doing (even if it’s just a friend who’s very tech-savvy). Especially because an eBook file will look different on various eReaders, so you have to make sure it formats correctly on all of them. This is something the pros can do, and it will make the difference between your eBook looking drab or fabulous when a reader downloads it to read.

Make your eBooks phenomenal, guys. Give readers the most bang for their buck, and in the end they will greatly appreciate a properly formatted eBook. And as the publishing industry continues to evolve in favor of eBooks, you want yours to stand out as more and more people catch on to all of the possibilities available with eReaders and eBooks.

Katie Jennings is the bestselling author of The Dryad Quartet, a YA fantasy series. She has a new family saga/romantic suspense novel, When Empires Fall, available now on Amazon. You can learn more about her and her books at her website. The company she used (which she highly recommends) can be found at http://www.blueharvestcreative.com/

Tip O'Day #273 - The Freedom of Fantasy

Guest blogger Rosalie Skinner, author of the 8-book Chronicles of Caleath series, on resources and tasks of a fantasy author.

For a fantasy writer, every sunset inspires. Even a cup of tea, a taste, a smell, a chance encounter adds fuel to the colour of Caleath’s world. A science article read, a whale watching trip experienced, a near death moment survived, a broken relationship shared, grief, life, love – not a moment of life escapes as trivial. Every experience becomes a resource for my novels.

That’s the freedom Fantasy allows. The fantasy writer must incorporate endless research and her version of reality, while keeping things believable. Doing this with skill and finesse is the writer’s task. Getting readers to empathize with the world you create is the benchmark of successful fantasy writing.

Learn more about this author at her website or her blog.

Tip O'Day #260 - Beware of C.O.F.A. Syndrome

Guest blogger Rosalie Skinner, author of the 8-book Chronicles of Caleath series, says to beware of becoming a Compulsive Obsessive Fantasy Author.

Imagine being able to travel to any time and place in your imagination. With no restrictions on world size, character numbers or physical laws. Take your pick of character traits, cultures, hierarchy, and villains, throw in a heroine or two, add a hero worth following to the ends of a dozen worlds. Bring with your imagination a set of circumstances that might give your troupe of heroes a little grief, a chance to shine, grow, fail, succeed, discover, teach, learn, and love.

Sound like fun?

Take care though. This daydreaming of other worlds, creating details, forming climates, cultural differences, standards and religions can be compelling. The danger lies in becoming obsessed. I speak as one who has been there. When you find each day spent in reality clashes with the moments you are able to retreat back into the world of your creation, it’s time to write. Write, and keep on writing.

Eight books later, the story is down, the conflict resolved, the characters are finally quiet. For now. There are rumblings, still. The danger doesn’t dissolve. It remains in the shadows, in the quiet moments when imagination can run amok.

Learn more about this author at her website or her blog.

Dixon says: Of all my addictions and obsessions, writing is my favorite.