M.P. Fitzgerald's Blog, page 6
May 16, 2018
Insane Writing Tips: Personify your Descriptors
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Describing one’s environment and keeping it interesting and varied is a constant struggle for writers. Set pieces like weather or surroundings are a great way to affect the mood of a scene but can quickly turn sour if not done right. Bulwer-Lytton infamously wrote the line “It was a dark and stormy night” which has since become synonymous for poor writing.
Though he was a prolific Victorian author, and though he coined well-remembered phrases such as “the pen is mightier than the sword” and “the almighty dollar”, Bulwer-Lytton’s legacy has been cemented in a tongue and check contest for writing terrible sentences. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is ultimately where he falls in the modern zeitgeist.
A writer can avoid his pitfalls by using personified descriptors.
Spice up your boring sentences by using these descriptors to convey a better mood and to create more memorable lines.
This technique is not without its dangers, however. One can quickly enter purple prose by personifying everything or by overusing it. “The blackened and mean storm was like an urgent pregnant mother angry from discontent and heavy with the life-giving substance of water that is itself unhappy because it was dirty like a street urchin”© is of course no better than “It was a dark and stormy night.” When you use this technique remember that being clear is always job number one.
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May 15, 2018
SPAM
There were other messages from the same address. All of them your typical spam. Enlargement pills, Nigerian Princes, the whole lot. This was the only one he responded to. These were found from my father’s email, the day of the event.
From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2018, 4:01 AM
To: John Goodchurch
Subject: naughty naughty
>please regard my english.
>i have hacked your phone and have recorded videos of you abusing yourself to illicit material.
>shame shame.
>also haves videos that you abused self to.
>send me $300 in bitcoin to bitcoin address in attached word doc
>or I will send videos of you with links to material that you abuse self to all of your friends,
>family and coworkers.
>u have 24 hours to comply.
John Goodchurch
To: [redacted]
Re: naughty naughty
>Nice try asshole.
>I’m not falling for that.
>Under no circumstances am I going to open up that attachment,
>I know it is probably a virus.
>Try harder next time.
>Peace,
>Sent from my iPhone
>Rev. Goodchurch
[Redacted]
To: John Goodchurch
Re: naughty naughty
>Fair enough Rev. Goodchurch, fair enough.
>We will do away with the facade then.
>By the end of the day, you will open our attachment.
>As of this writing, it is 12:00 PM.
>You normally get home around 4?
>Tell me, what time does Daniel normally get home from school?
>You have eighteen hours to comply.
>Return to the forest.
>[Redacted].
I was summoned to the office that day. The principal told me that she received a call from my father, said that he was coming to pick me up. There was some sort of family emergency. My mind raced at a manic pace. What could have happened? Was someone in my family about to die? They had no further information.
That’s because it was all lies.
So, I waited outside. The spring sun was warm on the back of my neck, and if it weren’t for the anxiety I was feeling as I worried about an unknown family emergency it would have been very pleasant.
I felt the chill before I saw Its shadow. Its vibrating, malicious shadow.
Then there was nothing but darkness. I was out cold.
John Goodchurch
To: [redacted]
Re: naughty naughty
>WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY SON?!
>WHO ARE YOU?!
>Sent from my iPhone
>Rev. Goodchurch
[Redacted]
To: John Goodchurch
Re: naughty naughty
>Oh, we have your attention then?
>Your son isn’t safe, but then, he never truly was, was he?
>We are your retainers, Rev. Goodchurch.
>We are very disappointed.
>You will not see your son alive again,
>but that does not mean that he will not live.
>Go to the cops and we will kill him.
>Open the attachment.
>Return to the forest, John.
>[Redacted].
John Goodchurch
To: [redacted]
Re: naughty naughty
>What do you want?
>Why are you doing this?
>WHERE IS MY SON?
>Sent from my iPhone
>Rev. Goodchurch
I have no idea how I got there. I have no idea how long I was there. One moment I am fretting under the sun in my school parking lot, the next I am fighting off the burden of sleep surrounded by darkness. No, that’s not right. In darkness. In.
I shouted for help and was startled by the sound of my own animalistic desperation.
Something squirmed beneath me, something tightened around my ankles. I felt a chill ride down the small of my back. The darkness was total. The darkness was complete.
[Redacted]
To: John Goodchurch
Re: naughty naughty
>We want your debts paid, good reverend.
>We want them paid in full.
>Do you not remember what we did for you?
>Do you not remember how we made it go away?
>Tell us, was the child the only one?
>Has Daniel ever met the same fate?
>Has the affectionate touch of his father ever turned grotesque?
>He is far from grace, good Reverend.
>Even here He will not dare to look.
>You have fourteen hours.
>Return to the forest.
>[Redacted].
There were moments where I honestly did not know if my eyes were open or shut. I felt no ground beneath me. Felt nothing around me. Only the coiling of something cold as it constricted around me. After crying, after shouting, after struggling with whatever was holding me I prayed. I prayed out loud. Each holy word was like chewing on salted glass.
I heard laughing. Hollow and mocking.
John Goodchurch
To: [redacted]
Re: naughty naughty
>Lies.
>Whatever you have been told it is lies.
>Whatever you want, just tell me, just bring my son home!
>I can wire you money right now.
>How much do you want?
>I have $50,000 that I can wire right now.
>Just bring me my child back home!
>Sent from my iPhone
>Rev. Goodchurch
[Redacted]
To: John Goodchurch
Re: naughty naughty
>What use is your money to us?
>Silly creature.
>You remember.
>The ways you treated your lambs,
>the ways that you preyed on them!
>You were always careful to keep them quiet.
>Always careful to shame them into silence with the Lord’s name.
>You will do well to return to the forest.
>We can be monsters together.
>Three hours.
>[Redacted].
I slept. I dreamed of primitive eyes. Black as the abyss and filled with the ineffable. I dreamed of no gods. I dreamed of the shattered edge of the universe. When I woke, the darkness was somehow worse.
It was hard to breathe. I remember my face being raw from tears. I remember the feelings of hopelessness beginning to feel comforting.
The grip around me slackened just a bit. I surged forward with all of my desperate energy. But in an instant, the restraint tightened its grip. The smell of acrid wood burnt my nostrils, the dead and cold feeling of bark as it tightened around my body. My chest felt like it was going to collapse under Its squeeze. I fought for air.
I lost.
I dreamed of primitive eyes.
John Goodchurch
To: [redacted]
Re: naughty naughty
>THAT’S WHAT THE DOCUMENT IS?
>YOU ACTUALLY THINK I AM GOING TO PRINT THIS OUT?
>THIS IS LUNACY!
>Sent from my iPhone
>Rev. Goodchurch
[Redacted]
To: John Goodchurch
Re: naughty naughty
>No, John, it is payment.
>You came to us, you begged for a deal.
>We took the child, battered bruised and abused,
>we strangled his parent’s memories because you asked us to.
>We were happy to just sleep.
>The deal was clear.
>The roots will be wet with the blood from your male line.
>It can be yours, or it can be your son’s.
>We do not care.
>You have an hour.
>[Redacted].
The hard feeling of ground was at once comforting and somehow unfamiliar. I was just outside home. No longer was the crushing sensation of death gripping me in a complete abyss. I came to, and I came to at home.
I have never ran inside faster. I have never locked the door with more urgency. I cried out for my father, I ran to his study.
I found him dead with a gun in his mouth, clutching his suicide note, detailing his regrets, chronicling his sins.
The terrible things he had done to the children.
I no longer dream.
The original /nosleep.
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May 14, 2018
How to Promote your Web Fiction 1: Outreach
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Welcome to the first part of a series on how to promote your web fiction! In this series, I will be going over the paths that an author can take to generate traffic to their web fiction or serial. First, I will be talking about the most important concept in this series: outreach.
The best way to gain an audience is to go where they already gather. This will be a constant theme in this series. The main principle in outreach is this: you want to foster relationships with others in your niche (preferably those with a wider audience) and get your material on their platforms. This works best in the blogging community, but there are ways to do it effectively in web fiction.
Guest posting:
Keep an eye out on other people’s sites for guest posting opportunities. Writing and updating consistently for a long time can be a strain, and every author could use a break from time to time. If no one is offering up a guest slot, approach them with an email and ask for one, but only do so after you have built some kind of rapport. I would not go to the heavy hitters right off the bat. If you just started posting yesterday it is very unlikely that say, Wildbow will take you seriously. Start with the smaller guys and work your way up.
It is also important that you keep niche and genre in mind when you guest post. Just because Wildbow gets a lot of hits does not mean that his audience is a good fit for you. If you write about sailors singing sea shanty rap battles, it is far better that you find someone with a tenth of Wildbow’s audience that writes the same thing as you. Those readers are far more likely to stay.
The best part of guest-posts is that it gives you credibility to readers on that site. Instead of shouting self-promotion into the void you are on a site that they already trust and are vouched for just by being allowed by their favorite author to post there.
A guest-post can take many forms. It can be a non-canonical chapter in another author’s story, it can be a short story in a common genre, or it can even be humorous and prank like. Once a year The Web Fiction Guide does an April Fool’s Serial swap where authors write an April Fool’s post for other author’s serials. This is not just a good way to bring in new readers, it is also an opportunity to meet and collaborate with writers. That rapport that you want to build that I was speaking of earlier? This is a good way to do that.
Make sure you put a short blurb about your own work and a link to your serial at the end of EVERY guest-post that you do, or else this will all be for naught.
Allowing guest posts on your site:
If you are feeling the stress or life gets in the way, reach out to your fellow serial writers and offer them to guest post on your own site. It is very likely that they are going to tell their own audience that they have posted on your site and it is a good way to keep material in front of your reader’s eyes when you do not have anything to post yourself (hence keeping your promise to your readers and keeping momentum).
Outreach does not have to be directly related to web fiction either. Your readers have more than one interest. I will occasionally write nonfiction blog posts for philosophy blogs (philosophy is a strong theme and interest in my serial) and this too has helped me bring in some readers. Further, places like Cracked.com are constantly looking for writers to create articles for them. Just make sure that you write something that your ideal audience will be interested in. If you write a fantasy, a list article on Cracked about the history of D&D is a good start. But if you write a sci-fi there may be little crossover in an article about the history of cheese (unless it’s a cheese-based sci-fi).
Forums:
Outreach with forums is simple but time-consuming: find the forums that your audience gathers on and be a part of that community. That last part is as important as the first. The last thing you want to do on a forum is self-promote and expect results. You have to give more than you take. Answer people’s question, discuss your passions genuinely and be there for a while before you start dropping links. Most forums will allow you some sort of signature tag and you can put a link there to start.
No one likes the guy who steps into a forum, asks everyone to solve their problems, and then complains about something. HELP people, give them a reason to trust you and they will return the favor in kind.
If you are a lurker, and always have been, don’t feel like you HAVE to join the discussion just for outreach. Forum posting is something that you should do only if you like doing it.
The Bottom Line:
Outreach works because it is a form of promotion that is not gratuitous. Readers tend to perceive self-promotion as annoying, sometimes narcissistic, and vapid. By building relationships and putting your material on other people’s platforms, however, you can circumvent this very awkward form of marketing. This will be a long road, and you have to be tenacious in following it, but the results will stack.
Join me next week as I will show you how to implement outreach on social media!
The post How to Promote your Web Fiction 1: Outreach appeared first on revfitz.com.
May 3, 2018
How to set up a mailing list for your web fiction or serial:
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How to build a mailing list form for your web fiction:
In this article I will show you the steps that you need to take to get your mailing list up and running for your web fiction so that you can retain your readers and turn them into fans. I will be using MailChimp in this tutorial, but there are other fine services like ConverterKit (which was built by and for authors) as well. Make sure that when you sign up for a service that you use their free service first (MailChimp is free for up to 2000 subscribers). Building a mailing list can take time, so no use in paying for one until you need to.
Let’s get your mailing list started!
Once you are signed up navigate to the “Lists” section of your dashboard, this should be in the upper left-hand corner of the page. Once there hit the “Create List” button in the upper right-hand corner. This will bring up a prompt asking you specifics, but this early in you should not have to worry about them. Hit the “Create List” button once more.
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You will be brought to a form for the specific name and features of the list. You can name the list anything you want, but keep in mind that subscribers can see this, so name it something appropriate. Next fill out the Default From Email Address (this will be your own email, or a specific one you have created for the list) and the Default From Name field. Under the Form Settings check the boxes under Double Opt-In and Enable GDPR fields. The first is a good practice to have to keep your list hygienic, as it forces the hand of a human on the other side to make sure that they want to subscribe (and are therefore more likely to open your emails), and the other is a requirement for EU law (a good place to learn more on that can be found here).
Personally I like to check the one-by-one box for Notifications when I am first building a list, but once the list has momentum I turn them off.
Once you are done hit Save!
Now let’s build a form!
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You will be brought to a new page (shown above). Hit the create a signup form link. This next part will come down to preference. A lot of blogging sites like to “greet” you with their mailing list opt-ins via popup, but I have always found this to be intrusive, and I am not sure if this is aligned with web fiction. After building a nice and beautiful splash page, with an awesome hook to get readers started on my first chapter, the last thing I want to do is scare them off with a pop-up. In this tutorial we will be using the Embedded Forms, and we will be placing this on the splash page, and at the end of each chapter.
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Note: if you are on Wattpad or Royal Road Legends you will not be able to embed a form. Instead, use the Form Builder option and copy the link that it provides you to give to your readers. When they click on it they will be brought to a form hosted by MailChimp.
This next bit also comes down to preference. When building your form for your pages you will be met with a choice to create a “classic”, “super slim”, “horizontal”, “naked”, or “advanced” form. I like to go with the “horizontal” form as it is aesthetically pleasing and it limits the amount of information that the subscriber has to fill. This is good because more fields can create more resistance in the reader to fill it out.
You should now have something that looks like this:
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Copy and paste the code in the box provided. This is the code that you will paste into the body of your chapters. Now navigate to your splash page, or chapter post. If you are using WordPress hit the Text tab in your post editor (this will be on the upper right-hand corner). This will let you see and code in HTML. Now simply paste the code at the end of the post and viola! You have an opt-in!
Some tips to entice readers to subscribe.
Your readers are more likely to subscribe if you offer them something in return. No one wants to join a mailing list for the sake of joining one, so offer them something that only you can give them. This can be a full book that you have written (best) or a related short story. You can offer in-world maps, or even a soundtrack for your story. Whatever you offer, make sure that it is awesome, you want your readers to have something that they can get excited about. Once you have this “carrot” to dangle, you can set up MailChimp (or whoever) to auto send their gift on sign-up. Indie authors have been using this strategy for years, but as a web fiction author you have some flexibility in your platform. You can not just offer great “carrots” like a free eBook, you can also offer time-sensitive material as well. If your chapter ends on a cliffhanger, you can offer your readers an immediate resolve by sending them the next (and unpublished) chapter to them if they sign up. This is best done at the end of an arc, as opposed to every chapter.
Finally, when building a mailing list you have to be tenacious. Be consistent in how you communicate in your newsletters and be consistent in how often you send them. Remember: this is a direct line to your readers. Use it well to turn them into fans and they will repay you back in kind.
The post How to set up a mailing list for your web fiction or serial: appeared first on revfitz.com.
May 2, 2018
A Special Thank You to My Readers
I am incredibly grateful that you have stood by this serial for as long as you have. I am constantly finding myself in awe at how clever, witty, and genuinely kind that the people who read my stories are. It was worth writing this just to share it with someone like you.
Existential Terror and Breakfast has been a strange trip for me. I could have never have foreseen the awesome people who I have been able to interact with when I started this. Indeed, I thought that no one would read it. Who wants to read a story about a man eating breakfast and freaking out over nothing? It turns out, a ton of people.
I cherish every email, comment, and strange interaction that I have received over the past year and a half from the most brilliant and funny people on the internet. One of you started your own philosophy blog (and has more passion than anyone I have met). One of you does your own nihilistic Tarot card readings to friends to highlight the absurd. One of you is on a purely Soylent diet, and sees all of the dystopian humor in it! Some of you have read Existential Terror and Breakfast out loud to their Mormon friends. One of you started working out to spite Malcolm Steadman! And still another one of you has pet a bear just because. I have got a countless number of philosophical web comics in my inbox from readers without solicitation. It makes my morning 
Existential Terror and Breakfast: Air Wolf
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Sometimes, Malcolm was lucid.
This was a rarity, and it happened less than when the nurses changed the channel on the screaming television, but it happened. Today was one of those days.
The discordant noise of Air Wolf sounded from the television behind him. His sugary cereal bled color into the warm milk of his bowl. For this brief moment, Malcolm Steadman could perceive. His affliction came back like this in short spurts.
Still, he was not fully aware of things. He was vaguely aware that a long time had passed since he was admitted to his new home, but the constant sameness of the facility made measuring that difficult. Sometimes, Malcolm was vaguely sad. He would snap to, having just completed a jigsaw puzzle, and would find himself in a sort of dark malaise. It was always the same puzzle, always the same table. Always the same channel. Sometimes his sugary cereal was different. Sometimes it was eggs. Malcolm had no idea if he chose his breakfasts or if it was chosen for him. Was choice possible without self-awareness?
It did not matter.
On this morning Malcolm came to and found himself staring at his cereal. The bright fruity red balls of corn and wheat bled their dyes into the abysmal white of milk. Psychedelia, part of a complete and balanced breakfast. It was half-eaten. Malcolm did not like sugary cereals.
He was vaguely aware of a headache.
Surgically induced childhood, Dr. Freeman had called it.
Soon the puffed balls of dyed cereal would lose their colors completely. Soon they would lose their form and become soggy mashes before becoming totally unrecognizable. The milk too would lose its form. Its abysmal white had already become pink. Given enough time it would curdle. This vaguely distressed Malcolm, but only vaguely.
“Mal?” a voice said. Malcolm looked up from his cereal and saw a face. Saw two faces. Oh, he thought, there are people here too. The first face, the one that spoke belonged to a man. His face was fat, as was his body. The man wore jeans and a white t-shirt. This was not nice looking, but somehow Malcolm got the impression that this was a great improvement from what the man used to wear. The man’s face was sullen as if guilt was the mask it wore the most. A large scar protruded from his forehead, almost burn-like. There was nothing written there. Not anymore.
“Hello,” Malcolm said, hearing his voice for the first time since— since a while.
“Say hello to Malcolm,” the man urged the other person next to him.
This person, a boy less than five years old looked up expectantly at Malcolm. “Hello,” the small child said. Malcolm waved at the boy with little effort.
“Did you choose my cereal?” Malcolm asked. Silence answered. Or was it sadness? The two were oh so common.
“No,” the man answered with hesitation and a heave of breath. “No man, and you already offered me some, so thank you but no thank you.”
“Oh,” said Malcolm.
The end credits to Air Wolf trumpeted out from the ancient television nearby. Colors seemed slightly more vibrant. Malcolm was suddenly aware of his cold feet. The man and his boy were on the opposite side of Malcolm’s table. He was in the common area. Shadows now had definition. His headache worsened. The man across from him frowned. Malcolm theorized that he did this often.
“Do you remember me?” the man asked.
“Yes,” replied Malcolm, “You’re the man who visits me.” There was more silence.
“I’m off parole,” the man said. “Got a promotion at the grocery store, they even let me count the money Mal.”
Malcolm was not sure why the man was telling him this, but he got the impression that it was important to him. Maybe they talked about this kind of stuff all of the time? Maybe they updated each other in their lives, maybe they were friends? “I eat cereal,” Malcolm stated. It was the only thing he knew about himself. The face somehow became sadder.
“Hope’s doing well too. She lets me have time with Camus on the weekend. She uh, she doesn’t know why you are here.”
Malcolm nodded.
“I get my five-year coin soon!” the man said with elation. Coins were good, Malcolm was happy for him.
This is Garry, his mind offered him like a church bell through the fog. Okay, he thought. The opening credits of The Incredible Hulk rolled on the television behind him. Soon a giant, green painted Lou Ferrigno would stalk the show with green spray painted shoes and yell animalistic cries at ne’er-do-wells and villains. Occasionally, when he was lucid, he had to face the absurd. Malcolm waited patiently for it to go away.
“How are you doing, Mal?” asked Garry.
What was Malcolm doing? What had Malcolm done? Were they one in the same? Was it a question of time? Malcolm sighed. “I’m fine,” he said and watched as Garry cringed at the word fine. Malcolm was vaguely aware that it was an acronym. He looked around himself. He saw the vacant faces of others in sweatpants and sweatshirts. He saw the forlornness, anxiety, he saw much of himself. “I fit in,” Malcolm said. Garry chuckled at this. Malcolm was not kidding. He then stared back at his cereal.
“What’s wrong with uncle Mal?” the child asked. Malcolm was curious to hear this himself.
The man shifted his weight in his chair, then looked over to his child. “Malcolm was like— well, he was like Daddy.” He said. “We didn’t like life. We were afraid of it.”
“Why?” asked the child.
“Life is beautiful, but it can also be ugly, it can be mean it can—”
“Wednesdays!” Malcolm interrupted. He knew that it was the right answer, and he was vaguely happy that he beat Garry to it. “It’s the Wednesdays, they sneak up on you.” The child looked confused.
Lou Ferrigno, with his green hair, green pecks, and green shoes cried out in ecstatic anger and flexed for the camera. The cereal had become soggy. Sometimes Malcolm had a brief awareness of the absurd! He could see he could see what life brought to the table! And for those brief moments, for those finite minutes that would pass forever into history, Malcolm would feel—
The shadows lost some of their definitions.
There was a commercial break.
The man heaved out a labored sigh. He stood with the weight of his guilt and opened his hand for the little one to clutch. Malcolm was, once more, out for breakfast. So much more needed to be said, but none of it would be understood. He helped the child to his feet. “Say goodbye to uncle Malcolm, Camus.”
“Goodbye Malcolm.”
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…A special thank you to my readers.
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