It’s Halloween and you would think there would be spooky stories here at LWI, but we’re not really about showing our writing skills here. We have personal blogs and novels for that. A friend suggested to me that I write a spooky story for Halloween for my blog. I considered it . . . for about 2 seconds. I’m not one to go into writing trends and clichés if possible. I would rather my clichés happen naturally. Believe me they happen naturally quite often.
Two things today, they were only going to be one, but I’ll do two now that I mentioned clichés.
Clichés
I was talking to an author/blogger friend, Jenna Willett, about clichés in books and I gave the opinion that a few cliches are okay. I feel that the reader does need that touch of comfort to at least ‘think’ they know what is going to happen. That is before you rip their hearts apart or destroy there mental stability. But if you do use clichés, use them for that reason.
Use cliché moments to advance the story. Use them to comfort and lull before you smash in the jaw with that amazing twist of yours.
Research
Now to the original reason I showed up today. I did write a story years ago that I had thought about sharing on my blog, but it needed work that I wasn’t prepared to put in right now. The work? I needed to give some authentic voices to some characters from the 1700s or 1800s. They needed that speech pattern and word usage to make your mind to take on the accent of an American male teacher and students from wealthy families during the more British sounding time.
In other words I needed to do some research. Jo Robinson wrote an article about Research that goes into more detail and her writing expertise carries more weight than my meager attempts. Yes, writing for over 20 years with several novels completed and submitted, but still meager. I suppose I should self publish, and might just do that someday. But read Jo’s article for more thoughts on Research. You need to get a lot of things right to make your story work.
Much Respect
Ronovan
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You would have an instant and incredibly impressive backlist if you self-published Ronovan. Lots of agents are looking at indie platforms for new authors to sign too, so it can help you on your way to trad publishing in that way. Go for it! 🙂
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I read a horror story (not the Halloween type of horror story) from a Spanish writer I know who after doing very well self-publishing four novels, with great reviews and quite a good following, got offered a publishing contract by a big publishing company, and an advance on her next one, and it has been a disaster. Her royalties are lower, they are not doing much for distribution, as she had to remove her books from previous sites she lost reviews, and she owes money to the company for not finishing the book as they wanted it. So…I’m with Jo here. Life is too short.
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Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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