Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 29

The New EU Law: What All Authors Need to Know — Guest: Kharma Kelley

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In some corners of the internet, authors have been talking about the new privacy law in the European Union (EU), known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), and what it means for writers.

In other corners of the internet, writers haven’t heard the topic at all. (*raises hand* Yep, that was me until a week and a half ago.)

I was surprised to learn that even though I’m not in the EU and not an EU citizen, the law still affects me. Li...

Why Is Head Hopping Considered Lazy Writing?

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Several writing craft issues tend to be hallmarks of what’s called “lazy writing.” Some of those habits deserve the label more than others.

For example, typos or incorrect homonyms frequently occur in our first drafts. That’s not “lazy writing.” That’s just how our fingers make an imperfect conduit for our thoughts, especially during the frenzy of drafting. (Now, if those mistakes remain in the final published version, that is less-than-id...

Promo Tool: Making Videos with Lumen5

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I had a different post planned today, but I’ll get to it next week. Instead, I’m going to share my distraction with you. *grin*

I occasionally get emails for deals from AppSumo. AppSumo is one of those “dangerous” sites that lets you know about special discounts on business (and business-related) tools, and too many times, the deals are hard to pass up. However, I’ve gotten several really good deals through them: the Pro version of the Lay...

What Does #OwnVoices Mean for Authors and Readers? — Guest: Bran L. Ayres

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Part of the push to encourage diverse storytelling is a movement called #OwnVoices. “Own voices” books are a subset of diverse books that include some type of first-hand experience.

#OwnVoices authors share a diverse, minority, or marginalized trait with their protagonist. While depictions of all types of characters are valuable for expanding choices for readers, many want to read and support authors who provide an authentic perspective, s...

How to Create a Redeemable Villain — Guest: Becca Puglisi

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The Thesaurus books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are a must-have for every fiction author. I’ve raved many times about the awesomeness of their Emotion Thesaurus and how we can use it to improve our writing.

We’ve also had Becca here before to talk about some of their other Thesaurus books. During her visits, Becca’s shared seven tips for using the Trait Thesauri and four tips for using the Setting Thesauri books.

Now, I’m excited...

Reader Connections, Fake Personas, and Catfishing

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Far off in the distant past—oh, a few years ago—authors could expect to write and comfortably remain introverts, holed up in their writing cave. Other than the rare book-signing tour, authors weren’t expected to connect with readers other than through their stories.

However, the expectations placed upon writers have grown over the years:

At first, we were just expected to create and maintain a social media platform. Then we encountered th...

Beyond a “Refresh”: Changing Our Brand

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Last time, we talked about using the opportunity of “spring cleaning” to review our brand and see if we needed to update anything on our website or social media accounts. But sometimes a “refresh” isn’t enough.

As Glynis Jolly asked in the comments on that post:

“I noticed you really didn’t touch on genre/blog/website name change. I’m thinking about doing that but am hesitant because followers may be lost in the process. How would you sugg...

Does Your Platform Need a Spring Cleaning?

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Do you know what your platform is? Our platform is everything we use to get our message out.

For most of us—who don’t have hordes following our book tour of signing events at bookstores cross the globe—our platform consists of online components, such as our website and social media accounts. We all get busy, however, so we can fall behind on keeping those components up-to-date.

Just as we might need to do a little spring cleaning around ou...

6 Ways to Improve Your Big-Picture Revision Skills — Guest: Lisa Poisso

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For many writers, the scariest step of the editing process is the first one: story revision.

The other stages of the process—line editing and copy editing—involve smaller changes, a few sentences here or a word there. If we screw it up, it won’t take much work to fix mistakes. We can always change more words or different words, or go back to where we started and try again from scratch.

In contrast, the first step of the editing process is...

Can a Story Still Be Compelling with a “Quiet” Black Moment?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, worked with beat sheets, or studied story structure, you’re probably familiar with the idea of a Black Moment turning point around the 75-80% mark of our story. If not, a Black Moment is an event in our story that steals the protagonist’s hope for a solution.

A story’s Black Moment (also called the Second (or Third) Plot Point, Crisis, or “All Is Lost” point, depending on the story structure system)...