Not Sure How To Make Your Characters Come Alive?

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This week in my inbox came a nice little surprise with the subject line of: Not sure how to make your characters come alive?

Some people might thing they're beyond this...that they have no problem making their characters come alive. But feeling this way is limiting. We can all use a little more advice. Sometimes, I find it helpful to hear the basics over and over, from different sources, because each time I hear something again I get it a little more, or I find another perspective that I hadn't previously encountered.

Even if you feel like you're beyond this step in fiction writing, take a second to read through the article. You may discover something incredibly valuable that you'd otherwise miss.

From Stand-Out Books:

Not Sure How To Make Your Characters Come Alive?

There’s a secret to writing strong characters. It’s not about perfect dialogue, vivid description, or stirring emotion. Those are all important, but the most essential ingredient in making a character feel alive is an author’s insight into human nature. Without that, you’ll gravitate to stock characters and melodrama. Why do people do what they do? Why are their motives so often hidden and seemingly the opposite of their actions? What’s going on in their minds, beneath the façade they present to the world? What makes one person noble and another self-serving? And what role do a person’s backstory and environment play in shaping these aspects of their personality?

Read the full article here.

If you have other advice you'd like to share, please leave it in the comments below!

Top 5 Websites for Author Marketing Resources

Over the first year of developing a press and author identity online, Free Flying Press has a few gems to offer other writers starting their journey to independent authorship. A few things are absolutely essential for the aspiring indie author: community (made up of readers and authors alike), social media (get out there and engage!), and a marketing platform. Of these, the latter always proves the most difficult. Here's a round up of the top 5 most useful advice and author marketing platforms that we've found:  

1. The Creative Penn

Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author.  She shares her knowledge about self-publishing and marketing with monthly emails and great content on her website. If you want to know about how to start your marketing platform, build a social media strategy, and sell your first book, check her out!

2. Author Marketing Club

AMC has it all. Tutorials for beginning authors, marketing strategies, tons of great freebies, all in a centralized, easily navigable place. Great for each novel you put out. Our favorite feature is the 'review grabber' which lets you search a genre or title in amazon, and pulls all of the reviewers email's or websites from the reviews. Then you can set up your plan to email them for reviews of your own book! For every 20 reviewers I mail out to, I get about 5 responses, and of that about 2 reviews. Not bad! It's about $25/mo to join, or $129 for the year. Totally worth it.

Here's a rundown of their services:

• Book Widget Creation Tool
• AMC Buzz Team
• Amazon Enhanced Description Maker
• New Member Book Feature
• FREE Pre-made Book Cover
• Masterclasses
• Free 99c Book Promotions
• Author Marketing Academy (videos/webcasts)
• Author Success Interviews
• Author Marketing Checklist (they give this away for free)
• Book Discovery Sundays
• Author Secrets Mastermind (marketing and promotion strategies)
• Author Tales (you can upload text or video)
• AMC Bookalyzer
• Brag Board
• Help Me Choose a Cover

3. Goodreads

This is the best place for community. Goodreads offers groups, which let you build community and find like-minded readers. There are also groups for readers/reviewers, where you can get a fair number of reviews for your book. You may have to work a little to get them, but that's what this is all about--work and results! Plus, host a giveaway on goodreads and reach thousands of potential readers who will save your book in their 'to-read' file and boost your rankings.

4. Inkitt

Inkitt is a goldmine. Here you can post your own stories and get feedback from writerly readers. You can also find great stories to read and authors to connect to. They have near-constant competitions running so you can get your work noticed. It's rather new, so you have a smaller, targeted audience, and a lot of passionate writers to connect with.

5. Standout Books

With tons of cute infographics to go along with solid writing and marketing advice, Standoutbooks is a fun mailing list to sign up with. They offer a few promotional/marketing/editing services, but I go there mostly to peruse the advice blog.

Bonus: Your Guide to Social Media

If you're like me and you loathe social media, my guide for authors who hate social media will help make this necessary evil a lot less daunting and horrible.

Get your guide now !

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The Ethical Author

"The Ethical Author" has not been a phrase or quandary I've come across during times of big publishing houses ruling the readersphere. But it comes into play more when independent authors are seeking ways to gain exposure.

Can you buy reviews?

Can you scour your friends and family for possible boosts in the amazon charts? How much do you charge for your book without the same overhead as a big box publisher?

There develops a bit of a question about the Ethical Author. A google search of this phrase will yield over 81,000 results. I found the discussion time and time again on blogs, in goodreads groups, and on amazon threads.

Most recently, digging through twitter feeds for something worthwhile, I stumbled upon a question: Are you an ethical author?

Immediately I said to myself, yes! I am fundamentally committed to keeping labor as local as possible, even if that means more expense for my product design, and I don't reflect that cost in the price of my book. I write the stories in my heart for the reader and no one else, and I've chosen the indie pub route because that allows me to be choosy, to craft my own ideal publishing house.

Want to know if you're an ethical author? Download the checklist and find out!

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The Alliance of Independent Authors offers a badge for the Ethical Author. They give you a list of responsibilities. Reading though this I felt a tug toward the importance of acknowledging the question.

Check it out:

Ethical Author Code

Guiding principle: Putting the reader first

When I market my books, I put my readers first. This means that I don’t engage in any practices that have the effect of misleading the readers/buyers of my books. I behave professionally online and offline when it comes to the following practices in my writing life:

Courtesy

I behave with courtesy and respect toward readers, other authors, reviewers and industry professionals such as agents and publishers. If I find myself in disagreement, I focus on issues rather than airing grievances or complaints in the press or online, or engaging in personal attacks of any kind.

Aliases

I do not hide behind an alias to boost my own sales or damage the sales or reputation of another person. If I adopt a pen name for legitimate reasons, I use it consistently and carefully.

Reviewing and Rating books

I do not review or rate my own or another author’s books in any way that misleads or deceives the reader. I am transparent about my relationships with other authors when reviewing their books.

I am transparent about any reciprocal reviewing arrangements, and avoid any practices that result in the reader being deceived.

Reacting to reviews

I do not react to any book review by harassing the reviewer, getting a third party to harass the reviewer, or making any form of intrusive contact with the reviewer. If I’ve been the subject of a personal attack in a review, I respond in a way that is consistent with professional behaviour.

Book Promotions

I do not promote my books by making false statements about, for example, their position on bestseller lists, or consent to anyone else promoting them for me in a misleading manner.

Plagiarism

I know that plagiarism is a serious matter, and I don’t intentionally try to pass off another writer’s words as my own.

Financial ethics

In my business dealings as an author, I make every effort to be accurate and prompt with payments and financial calculations. If I make a financial error, I remedy it as soon as it’s brought to my notice.

Responsibility

I take responsibility for how my books are sold and marketed. If I realise anyone is acting against the spirit or letter of this Code on my behalf, I will refer them to this Code and ask them to modify their behaviour.

Especially at a time when finding reviews is difficult. When your book feels like one-in-a-million-in-a-mire, do you stick to your feelings about quality, readership, and responsibility? I'd love to hear your thoughts about this.

Are you an ethical author?

Download your very own ethical author checklist and find out!

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How to get more out of Social Media

If you read my last post, you can tell this has been on my mind. Social media is a great way to build community, but it can be infuriatingly difficult at times. This article from StandoutBooks (LOVE their helpful posts) tells you more about how to use social media for maximum effect. It's clearly written and gives thoughtful, practical advice. Let me know if you have any other methods for negotiating the online social territory!  

Whether you’re a newly self-published author or someone who’s been around the block a few times, chances are you’ll wish that your social media following was a little more engaged.

Some writers struggle to gain a single ‘like’ online, while others who’ve patiently cultivated their following can become frustrated when even after months of building hype, many of their followers fail to buy their latest novel.

I find that there are four levels to any author’s fan community. I like to call them the Disinterested, the Interested But Lazy, the Engaged Who Don’t Follow Through, and finally, the Die Hards. The trick, as far as I’m concerned, to an effective social media campaign is to encourage followers to climb the ranks, slowly rising through the levels to become Die Hard fans.

Influencing fans isn’t always easy though, and as such, in this article I’ll talk a little about each of the three lower levels, and how you can encourage your fans to level up.

Read more on StandoutBooks

Tapestry of Life on the Human Highway

Today I'd like to revisit one of my journeys while on the road for my first book tour. As I'm moving through the developments for the major release of my novel, Ella Bandita and the Wanderer, I find myself thinking back to those days on the road where I met well...keeping reading...you'll enjoy it. :) August 9, 2005

Every time I'm on the road, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly friendships are bonded and easily untied - especially as the need arises.  There's something about traveling - being suspended from the day to day life of jobs, rent, bills, social obligations, community service, and established groups - that suspends the usual rules of how people interact with each other.  Boundaries are lifted, discretion is almost an insult when making friends and forming temporary community from town to town.

I met Ann at the Amped Cafe in Homer, the day after I arrived in town.  She's torn between career and more school, and which way to turn.  There was an immediate bond that forged itself when she mentioned living in her truck, with a dog, and a Holly Golightly-style best friend that was halibut fishing with a new fling, who "wore his mullet well," and thus, was currently unavailable. 

What a coincidence!  I'm also living in my truck.  

Ann talked me into doing a reading at the open mike that night to get warmed up for the Concert on the Lawn that first weekend.  The next morning, she met me at 8:30 to help me set up my booth and was in and out every so often, as the need arose.

Hey, she got into the concert for free.  After the week-end, she felt comfortable enough to let me stay in a tent outside the mullet-fisherman's house and I had a place to reorganize my truck and make coffee in the morning.

At the Concert on the Lawn, a volunteer named Lia offered to let me park my truck and sleep in her van with a double bed if I needed a place to stay.  She was widowed from the love of her life two years before, and she had done her fair share of adventuring in her youth.  She was also letting a young man stay on her property that was on a spiritual path of Buddhism and daily meditation, so it was really no big deal.  But she felt the need to assure me that she wasn't coming on to me and that the young man was not her lover. 

When Ann moved on to Seward to look into a possible dream job, I gave Lia a call and after it took her a moment to remember me...

"Oh yes, the Scheherazade..." she said.  (I totally dug that compliment) before giving me directions to her house. 

She got a little reluctant about using her van, but I had a place to park, and a kitchen to make my coffee, and an outhouse to do my business, and my body was scrunched again into my truck's proportions. 

She told me her story, and it turns we have much in common.

"We are all interconnected," she said. 

If she ever comes to Juneau, of course she'll have a place to stay.

Ann's sweet dog was hit by a car on Saturday night and killed, so she left Seward by the time I got there and the Holly Golightly-style best friend met her in Anchorage.  I doubt I'll see her much from here on out, but I have a couple of pieces of mail and her PO box key.  I'm sure we'll keep in touch and all, but I suspect that Ann was my Homer friend.

So here I am in Seward to do table to table storytelling at the Resurrect Art Coffee House.  I'm staying at the hostel and it feels like high luxury accomodation to be able to stretch out in sleep and have a place to put food.

This morning I was looking forward to coffee in the communal kitchen and writing in my journal when a born-again Christian wrecked the peace of my morning today when she had to tell me her life story of giving her life to the Lord and how happy she was that she didn't have to be good enough to get into heaven, because God sent his Son to die on a cross for her.  It's incredible that Christians never stop to think how sadistic and cruel that is... 

I felt my energy being sucked dry...dammit, I knew I should have kept my distance.

When I couldn't take anymore of her being saved speeches, I got up and told her abruptly that I had gotten screwed by the same system that had done so much for her, and would she please stop.  She said, yes of course and we made banal chit chat and wished each other a good day.

I'm only one thread on the tapestry of life, and these intersections are only a moment and some are a part of beautiful patterns and others...are not.  

But then my thread runs on, as does theirs.

As Lia said, we are all connected.