Writing 101: Being Scary

Some storytellers know how to be frightening. But does it come to them naturally, or is being scary a skill that writers can learn? 

Boo

Like most things, writing is about 10% artistry and 90% grueling work. In other words, I believe much of the skills that create a writer can be learned. And if you can learn to write, you can definitely learn to be scary.

After all, isn't it something that everyone practices doing every single October? For Halloween, people dress up to look frightening and throw parties meant to scare their guests. Haven't you ever pulled a prank on someone, or crept up behind a friend to startle them? You've done stuff to scare other people before. Now, you have to harness that innate streak of meanness...and put it on the page. 

It's okay to be a little mean, sometimes. That's really what scaring people is all about. That...and a few other tricks. 

• Sudden shock: This is a classic horror device you'll find in every single scary movie. The sudden shock is a surprise scare that comes out of nowhere. You set the stage by painting a scene that feels calm to the reader. For example, the heroine is reading a book in the library. She's snuggled up in some large chair and there's a roaring fire. Maybe even the pitter-patter of rain on the window. Nice and cozy, right? It is until all the lights go out and a defeaning scream renders the air! ...And that's an example of the sudden shock, only please pretend it's written in a much more compelling fashion. 
• Slow suspense: To really understand suspense, watch some Hitchcock movies. He was a master of dragging out the thrilling moment you just knew was coming. Create slow suspense in your books by painting vivid scenes with words. Plant little hints and moments in the scenes that lead up to the moment. An example might be your heroine walking up a flight of stars and down a long, dark hall. With each step, she's expecting the crazed maniac to leap out at her. Each breath, each sound, each moment is agony. By the time she gets to the end of the hall, the wait is just unbearable. 
• The unexpected event: Create true horror with the unexpected event. It isn't enough to scare your readers. They're expecting a scare. Now, you've got to surprise them. Instead of waiting for the heroine at the end of the hall, after all that torturous suspense, there is no crazed maniac. It's only an empty wall. She laughs, a little hysterically, and turns back around. The killer leaps out at her from the ceiling! He's been suspended above her head the whole time. This unexpected event is surprising and scary.

With those three tricks in your writing bag, you should be able to scare readers. It also helps a great deal if you come up with a protagonist that people want to root for and a villain that's totally frightening. Think about all the stuff that scares you when you need new ideas. What gives you nightmares? What makes your skin crawl? What do you envision when you picture a guy you absolutely wouldn't want to mess with?

You've experienced fear, and you've probably tried to frighten others. That means you're already halfway to writing a great horror story. So think scary, and use writing tricks to make your words come out that way.

Writing 101: Use Amazon to Find More Buyers

When was the last time you looked at your books on Amazon? If you're doing your promotional tweets and paying attention the way you should, your answer should be today or yesterday at the earliest. If you're not looking at the page all the time, you're missing opportunities to sell more books. You can use that page to find more buyers, and that's pretty invaluable.

Right in Front of Your Face

If you're anything like me, you don't need to be reminded to look at your book's Amazon page. I checked it every 20 minutes for three weeks after I published my first book, no exaggeration. My biggest thrill came from receiving my first review, but this was only slightly more exciting than seeing something in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section. Seeing something appear in this section meant that someone actually bought the book, and I paid attention.

I'm still paying attention to that section of my book pages, and you absolutely should be doing the same. It's a gold mine for potential readers. I want you to take a look at all of the books in that section, and pay attention to the authors who wrote them. Look for those authors on Twitter. If you find them there, you're already a whole lot closer to getting more sales. 

Readers who bought your book also bought books by those authors. You know it's true because Amazon says so, and they probably have an underground lab of statisticians who do nothing but invent new algorithms all day long. So it follows that people who like those authors will also like you, right? Yes, good logic. That's where Twitter comes in. 

First, follow the authors that you can find on Twitter. Next, look at their followers -- and follow them. Now, not all of those followers are going to follow you back...but some will. And those new followers are more likely to purchase your book, because they already like books that are similar to yours. See how it works? 

That's how you use Amazon to find more buyers. So stop reading blogs and start getting to work. You've got stuff to do.

Writing 101: Use Cross-Marketing

Cross-marketing is a fancy term that's usually applied to product linking. You may not be aware of it, but you see cross-marketing all the time. When the commercial tells you that the cheese spread goes great with this cracker, that's cross-marketing. Coupons from soda that allow you to buy candy is another example. Cross-marketing is everywhere, and you can use a form of it to promote your self-published books.

Finding the Links

You're not a huge corporation and you probably don't have a bunch of industry-related ties, but as an indie author you can still use cross-marketing to push your work. Like every other type of indie promotion, it only requires a little bit of outside-the-box thinking. 

Let's play a game. Answer this question: what's your book about? Make a list of words that come to mind when you ask yourself this question. Think about all the different activities and events depicted in your book and place them on the list. 

Now use it to cross-promote your work. Link your book to products or activities and use that for marketing. A cross-marketing Tweet, for example, may read "Enjoy skiing? find out what happens when this daredevil hobby turns deadly in Sabotage Slopes."

Is there a lot of food in your book? "We all eat, but in Roman Vacation you'll find out what it's like to eat gourmet meals every day." See how it works? Now start composing your own.

You probably don't have the connections to work out expensive advertising agreements with corporations, but you can still link your work to promotable products and activities. Make your list, find you links...promote your book.

Writing 101: Wallpaper Matters in Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus all allow you to customize your profile. If you haven't yet, you're missing all sorts of marketing opportunities for your books and current projects. It may seem like a small detail, but wallpaper matters in social media...especially if you're trying to get anyone to buy something of yours.

Did You Change Your Profile Wallpapers?

All the experts and how-to guides tell you that to be a successful indie author, you've got to get out there and promote your stuff on social media. So you get yourself an author-specific Twitter profile, a Facebook fan page, maybe even a Google Plus profile. You start gathering followers and you show off your clever side with skillful updates. 

If you're doing it all with a generic wallpaper that was provided to you, then you're not doing yourself any favors. The wallpapers on your social media pages are marketing opportunities, and they're free. It's time for you to start making the most of them. 

From Words to Pictures

Don't say "but I'm a writer, not an artist." I already know how you feel, and so does every other author who's ever tried to design their own promotional website. It's very difficult to create custom wallpapers, particularly if you don't have an artistic eye (or any skill to that end). But I know you can do it...because I've done it, and I'm so inartistic I can hardly gift wrap a box. Start simply, take every step one at a time, and you'll be fine. 

• Creating an image. You're going to need a program to create your custom wallpaper. Chances are high that you've already got Paint on your computer. If you don't like it or don't have it, try this free image editor. I use it for everything. A blank image sized 2560 x 1600 should do nicely. This is big, but wallpapers are meant to scale to different monitors so it's best to start big.
• Set the color. I always start with a plain black background, because I'm not very artistic or creative when it comes to images. Pick a color that's neutral enough to inoffensive (fluorescent orange, for example, will annoy potential readers instead of wooing them), and something that will show off your important elements well. 
• Start stealing. You're not an artist, and no one expects you to be one. So start stealing stuff to put this wallpaper together. Plenty of indies incorporate their book covers into their wallpapers. Great! Grab copies of yours and see if you can find some pleasing way to arrange them. If you paid for/designed the covers, you can absolutely use them in all of your promotional materials (including wallpapers). It's not really stealing; I'm just using a strong word to make a strong point. Please do not actually re-use images that you do not own or do not have permission to use. If you need free images from somewhere, because I strongly suggest that you do not attempt to draw your own from scratch, try Creative Commons.
• Arrange. Remember that less is more when it comes to designing a wallpaper for your social media pages. You want readers to see the individual elements, and you want them all to work together with the whole. So keep the design simple, and don't forget that only very specific parts of your wallpaper will even be visible.  Most of the stuff in the middle of the image will never be seen. Concentrate on the elements along the left edge and across the top. 
• Check. Triple-check your custom wallpaper image to make sure it's perfect. Set it to your profile and check it twice before you stop working. 

Save all your wallpapers and the elements you're putting on them. This way, you can tweak the images as needed to suit different websites and profiles. Wallpaper matters in social media. If a potential reader likes yours, it could make the difference in convincing them to buy your books and read your words. Grab them with images, because that's what people are looking at when they're online.

Writing 101: Are You Getting Out Enough?

I used to imagine my ideal writing spot: a dark, quiet room. There would be a desk against the wall and a single lamp just next to my elbow. Here I would sit and type, alone with my words. 

Now I write every day, and I've come to learn that this was an insane idea. Please don't sit in the dark day after day and write...no, not even if you're writing horror stories or dark tragedies. When you're a writer of any kind, make sure you're getting out enough. 

Who's Out There? 

It sounds romantic to be a starving artist, a brooding and melancholy wordsmith. Can't you just see Poe pacing around in a room made of stone, candlelight flickering against the wall, mumbling to himself about death and ghosts and murder?

It's hard to write like that, and it's not good for you to sit in the dark all the time. Environment absolutely affects you when you're writing. If you're sitting indoors all day long in the same spot doing the same routine and looking at the same stuff, you're going to make yourself crazy. You've got to take time to step outdoors, take a look around, maybe get out there and do something. Go for a walk around the block if that's all you've got the time to do. Take the laptop or the tablet outside, if you absolutely can't leave your work, and at least just sit out there. 

Because if you don't, your writing is going to deteriorate. You've got to get a change of scenery every now and then. You've got to see different sights. You'd be surprised how much creativity a simple change will inspire.

Sitting shut-up inside a room all the time isn't romantic, and it's not an ideal way to write.

Writing 101: The Epic Novel

For some authors, it isn't enough to write a book. Some authors aspire to write the great American novel. That usually means it's an epic novel. And when I say epic, I'm referring to the length of the story. In books, epic is a sort of grandiose way of saying super long.

Big Stories

Some stories just can't help but to be big. Gone With the Wind, my favorite, is a massive book. Yet the story simply can't be shortened, and that's just how it is. Despite the length of the novel, I wouldn't want to spend one less moment with Scarlett. 

But a book doesn't automatically have merit simply because it's long. Extreme length is a huge, huge turn-off to many readers, in fact. An epic novel is epic because it usually spans many, many years and details many different events. There's a lot of change and character growth, many obstacles and challenges...a boatload of characters and interaction. A lot happens, and that keeps readers engaged. 

Writing a long book doesn't make it epic, and regular readers of the blog will know that I'm an advocate for brevity. If you can say it in fewer words, do it. Readers don't want to get bogged down in lengthy descriptions of the way leaves blow in the wind, for example. In today's world of ereading, the epic novel could become the next literary dinosaur. So write lengthy novels cautiously and with a keen eye for details you can gloss right over. 

Read your story, and ask yourself if it's really an epic...or just too damn long. If you don't want to read your story, readers won't want to do so, either.

Writing 101: The Non-Linear Timeline

Unless you're Doc Brown or Marty McFly, you're forced to slog through time the normal way. Like the rest of us, you see time march by on a minute-by-minute basis. The events of the morning take place before the things that occur in the evening. But when you write books, you're allowed to break all natural laws and visit any point in time at any moment you like. You may even get really bold with your book, and write a non-linear timeline. 

Time Travel

Many stories occur along an accellerated timeline. Something happens in the spring that sets it all in motion. The summer that follows is action-packed. By the time the autumn leaves are falling, the hero or heroine has learned a few lessons. When winter blusters in, the protagonist has captured the love interest, banished the villain and resolved all the issues. It's a neat 80 thousand words, give or take, and a simple enough storyline for audiences to follow. 

There's another option. Instead of writing scenes in a linear fashion (in which the winter naturally follows the fall), some authors opt for a non-linear timeline. This means that the story starts in summer, instead of the spring. Readers are exposed to the action first. Then they visit the spring of the past, and learn how these events all got set into motion. You'll find some better examples of non-linear stories in works such as The Iliad, Wuthering Heights and Slaughterhouse-Five. Those are all written stories; get a master class crash course on the non-linear timeline with Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction is the best example).

Showing readers events in a mixed-up fashion makes for an intriguing, engaging story -- in some cases. It's a bit like unraveling a mystery, and people love a good mystery. But the problem with non-linear stories is obvious: it gets confusing. Readers may get so caught up in trying to sort out all the different events, they get lost. It takes away from the story, and that makes it less enjoyable. As a writer, you have to lead readers through the story you're telling. If you lead them around and over and under and forward and backward and all sorts of different directions, eventually they're going to get tired of walking...metaphorically, of course. 

The point is, take your readers on a little walk if you will...but make sure it's an enjoyable one. If you can make the non-linear timeline work, use it. But if it's just not working, don't try to force it. Let the story unfold the way it needs to unfold, and you won't go wrong.

Writing 101: Crazy Character Names

Scarlett is one of those great, unique character names that stands out. But it's also a color and a decently recognizable word. Other character names are much more unusual, inventive...and sometimes, borderline psychotic. Crazy character names just aren't often a good idea, and forgive me if that word is a bit offensive. But honestly, can you find a better descriptor for names like Sookie Stackhouse, Ever Bloom and Midshipman Hornblower?

Name That Character

I didn't make up those examples above; other authors did. I'm not the most well-traveled girl in the world, but I haven't ever met anyone named Sookie or Ever. Good character names are memorable, and the really weird ones always are. But good character names should also be easy to pronounce. Otherwise, you're just going to have readers stumbling over their own tongues when they attempt to describe your book to others. It seems like a small point, but if your book is difficult to describe verbally you're shooting yourself in the foot. Word-of-mouth is still by and large the greatest advertising tool for any product, including yours. 

You want your names to be memorable, easy to pronounce and easy to spell. Why? Because everyone's on Twitter and writing in blogs, and if they misspell your character name would-be readers won't find your book and they'll go buy someone else's book and that's your fault...that's why.

If you've got those three things covered, you're in pretty decent shape...but that still leaves the door really wide open for an array of weird names. Crazy made-up names or otherwise odd-sounding names put a unique stamp on your book. Maybe too unique. The really strange names turn readers off and end up becoming the butt of jokes in blog posts like this one. So think it over. Crazy character names have their place...not always in your books.