Janice Hardy's Blog, page 97

Real Life Diagnostics: Is This Voice Interesting Enough?

Critique By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Real Life Diagnostics is a weekly column that studies a snippet of a work in progress for specific issues. Readers are encouraged to send in work with questions, and we diagnose it on the site. It’s part critique, part example, and designed to help the submitter as well as anyone else having a similar problem.

If you're interested in submitting to Real Life Diagnostics, please check out these guidelines.

Submissions currently in the queue: One

Please Note: As of today, RLD slots are booked through September 8.

This week’s question:

Is Sam’s voice interesting enough?

Market/Genre: Historical (mid-twentieth century)

On to the diagnosis…
Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Writing a Good Scene

By Jess Lourey and Shannon Baker

Part of the How They Do It Series

Jess Lourey and Shannon Baker here, making one of our favorite stops on our annual Double-Booked Blog Tour. We both started out as traditionally pubbed mystery writers and now, over 21 books into it, have branched out to magical realism, young adult, romance, thrillers, suspense, and even nonfiction, both traditional and indie.

Mercy’s Chase , the latest in Jess’ feminist thriller series that Lee Child calls “highly recommended,” is launching in a week and available for preorder now. Bitter Rain , the third installment in Shannon’s Kate Fox mystery series, is only days old and available now.

Be sure to read to the end to find out how you can win one of three copies of each! Now, on to the guts of this article: how to write a commercial fiction or genre fiction scene that will pick your reader up and sweep them away.
Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Florida Heritage Book Festival Novel Workshop: How to Turn Your Idea Into a Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Just a heads up for everyone who was interested in this full-day workshop. The registration link is now live. Just scroll down to the bottom under the writers conference schedule. It's the "Thursday Writers Workshop" for $80.

For those who really want a fun writers weekend in St. Augustine, my workshop is just the start of  three great writing and book festival days. Here's the full lineup:
$235 Complete Package: 2-day Writers Conference, with lunches and Literary Legend Reception  $180 2-Day Writers Conference (Thurs & Fri) with lunches   $80 Thursday Writers Workshop, includes lunch (this is mine)   $160 All Day Friday: Conference, luncheon, Legend Reception $105 ($120.00 at the door) Friday Writers Conference, includes Keynote luncheon  $100 Friday Luncheon with Robert Macomber and Legend Reception  $35 ($240 Table for 8) Friday Luncheon with Robert Macomber
Workshop Details: September 13: St. Augustine, FL

Thursday, September 13, 2018
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
World Golf Village Renaissance
500 South Legacy Trail, St. Augustine
$80 (includes lunch & workbook)

Florida Heritage Book Festival Novel Workshop: How to Turn Your Idea Into a Novel
This day-long workshop is hosted by the Florida Heritage Book Festival.

Ideas hit us all the time, but we don't always know how to turn those ideas into a novel, or what's the best way for us to develop those ideas. In this workshop, you'll learn multiple ways to break down your idea and turn it into a solid plan for your novel. You'll work on exercises designed to help you:
Brainstorm your ideaFind your protagonist and antagonistCreate compelling charactersFind your core conflicts and use them to build your plotDevelop your settingDetermine the key turning points of the plotDiscover your themeFind the right structure for your writing process This hands-on workshop will guide you through the novel-planning process and help you find the plot and story within your idea. By the end of the day, you'll have a solid outline (or guide for those who don't like to outline) to your story.Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Hey Indie Authors! Create Space is Closing Down.

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

Part of the Indie Author Series

If you’re an indie author, odds are you’ve already discovered this simply by logging into your Create Space account. But I spoke to some writer friends this week who were unaware this was happening, so I figured a quick shout out couldn’t hurt.

Amazon is closing Create Space and merging it into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Amazon KDP has had the option to publish print books as well as ebooks for a while now, but with Create Space handling the print side of things, few authors seemed to use it (at least in my experience and conversations with authors). But that’s over now.

Amazon has made this entire process fairly painless. They have a nice “before, how to, after, and FAQ” section that will answer your questions and tell you what you need to do.
Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Finding the Right Balance With Your Stage Directions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Awkward stage direction can turn an otherwise good scene into a clunky mess. But the right balance of action and character thought lets the reader sail on through.
No matter what type of novel you’re writing, at some point you’ll have to describe how the characters move about and interact with the world—the stage direction. Like the theater, you’re directing how your “actors” move on the stage (or the page in this case).

Sometimes the direction is basic, such as “she walked across the room.” Other times, it’s a complicated fight scene involving six guys and an eight-legged monster. Or it’s a show of emotion, such as when someone “curls into a ball and cries.”
Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

COMP LIT: Claiming Your Place on the Genre Shelf

By Damon Suede, @DamonSuede

Part of The How They Do It Series

One of the first thing any credible marketer will ask you is where your books fit. What are your comp titles and also-buys? As genre authors we write within a framework which we are constantly stretching and testing.

Even for authors working in the same genres and subgenres our books, our voices, and our fan bases often differ in wonderful (offtimes wacky) ways. Whatever their approach, all authors face the task of clarifying why their books are extraordinary. Attracting your unique readership starts with claiming your spot on the genre bookshelf: your niche.

Niche covers a wide spectrum of differentiators: subgenre, scale and setting, voice and vibe, heat/violence/suspense level, intensity, tropes, types, tone, and more. Some authors hunker down in a very narrow patch and never budge. Some folks wander the woods…peeing on trees all over the publishing forest, constantly marking out new turf for their fans. Essentially your niche is the stretch of the virtual bookshelf that your books fill perfectly and that your ideal audience and likely allies seek out instinctively.
Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

3 Ways to Tell if a Manuscript Is Worth Going Back to

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Some trunk novels really are worth going back to. The trick is identifying the salvageable ones.
The other day Romance University posted about why you should pull out the manuscript under your bed. It resonated with me, because earlier this year I returned to an old manuscript that had been poking at my brain for a month. It was a book I’d written almost eight years ago, revised a few times, gotten mixed and lukewarm feedback on, and had figured was an idea that just wasn’t ever going to work.

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

What triggered my desire to return to it, was an out-of-the-blue idea on how to make the premise I loved finally work—a prologue of all things. But it fit this particular book, and when I reread my earlier pages, I realized it had never been as bad as I’d thought. It had just been missing a few key elements.

Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Writing Prompt: The Re-Write: Let’s Talk About It

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week’s prompt is designed to help you practice your revision skills without the risk of messing up your manuscript. Edit the bad writing, strengthen and clarify the goals, conflict, and stakes, develop the setting, establish the character, etc. You know the drill.

You have to keep the bones of the piece, but how you get those ideas across is up to you. Add whatever details strike you, as long as you can still identify this scene as the scene I started—so no completely rewriting it from scratch. The goal is to make this scene better.

Last time we turned a white room of dialogue into a scene, so this time, let’s add the dialogue to a scene that needs some.

Edit this page to include dialogue that supports the scene:

Killing five thousand colonists was an easy decision for Jeremiah Sullivan to make. Killing his brother was harder.

He didn’t need his brother to destroy the Tellus colony—he already had an undetectable device hidden in the ion regulation system of the Lancaster’s engines—but the device was unstable. It was possible the detonation would occur after the colonists had disembarked for the planet.

And that would not do.

Jeremiah reached out and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. After all, history was written by the victors.

Write as much or as little as you’d like.

For the curious, this is actually part of an abandoned prologue for a very old project of mine.Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

Real Life Diagnostics: Does This Opening Work?

Critique By Maria D'Marco

Real Life Diagnostics is a weekly column that studies a snippet of a work in progress for specific issues. Readers are encouraged to send in work with questions, and we diagnose it on the site. It’s part critique, part example, and designed to help the submitter as well as anyone else having a similar problem.

If you're interested in submitting to Real Life Diagnostics, please check out these guidelines.

Submissions currently in the queue: Two

Please Note: As of today, RLD slots are booked through September 8.

This week’s question:

1. Does this opening work?

Market/Genre: Unspecified

On to the diagnosis…

Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com

An Easy Tip for Developing Story Ideas

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy
This week's Refresher Friday takes an updated look at developing story ideas from nothing.

It's not unusual for a writer to have an idea for a general story (such as a series, trilogy, particular genre), but have no clue what that story is going to be. Often in these cases, they have a character, world, and even rules in mind, but only a vague idea, not "An Idea" they can write an entire novel from.

If you truly have no idea beyond premise and character, it's helpful to first look at concept and theme. Until you can narrow the story focus to something manageable, it's just too large to work with. The first step, is to figure out what general type of story fits the rough ideas you have.

Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com