Mark Phillips's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

2014 was a great year in terms of indie publishing, and hopefully, 2015 will allow indie authors to rise even higher.

It was the first year that indie authors had concrete data to prove that they were selling just as many books as traditionally published authors.

It was the first year that the stigma was finally removed from self-publishing, and successful indie authors were as respected by readers as successful traditionally published authors.

It was also the first year that I published a book.

2014 was a wild ride for me and I learned a lot about indie publishing. Putting your book out there to be read and judged by the masses is not an easy thing to do for most people, but it's a lot easier than trying to sell your book.

In years past, the biggest obstacle to publishing was simply getting your book published. Writers toiled and slaved away at query letters, trying to get them just right, so that they could catch the eye of a literary agent. That is no longer the case.

With the avenues wide open to anyone with even a passing knowledge of how the internet works, publishing a book is now as easy as one click.

Today, with the market so flooded with good (and not so good) books, the biggest challenge is in the marketing. There are firms like Bookbub (who I highly recommend) that can help you out tremendously. There are your friends and family that can help spread news of your book by word-of-mouth. Yet, there are also predators out there.

Do a Google search for ebook promotion and what you'll find is some useful information, along with a handful of people who want to sell you a website subscription or a banner ad that won't help you sell one book.

Whenever there is a group of people looking to achieve a dream there is another group of people looking to take advantage of the first group.

Now, I wish I could tell you that you need look no further than this blog to find your answers. I wish that I could lay everything out for you and give you the keys to success.

But I can't.

The truth is, there isn't just one key (or set of keys) for success. Each writer succeeds in their own way. Besides that, I'm not expert when it comes to marketing. I'm much like the rest of you; just trying to figure it all out as I go along. But if any of you reading this are just starting out I can give you a few tips.

Write a great book. This is step one and is the most important thing. Not every great book becomes a bestseller, but there are very few bad ones that do. Write the best book that you possibly can, and make sure that it is edited to perfection.

Design a great cover. People really do judge books by their cover. An arresting cover will get a lot of attention and cause people to take a look at the free chapter that most sites allow them to read. After being dazzled by your writing, they will be spurred to by the book.

The above is what you can control directly. After that, you need to come up with some sort of marketing plan. Obviously Facebook and Twitter will play a part, but what about beyond that?

How much money you want to spend is entirely up to you. Bookbub is great, but it is pretty expensive. There are other sites which are cheaper, but the return on investment might not be as good. I haven't done any research on this; I can only go from my own personal experience.

The bottom line is this, I don't think you have to spend any money at all if you don't want to. Paid advertisement is dicey at best. I can personally attest that Bookbub is worth the money and provides great results, but it's not necessary to use them. You can still become a breakout success without that.

You want to engage potential fans whenever you can. It's hard to find that line between spreading the word and being annoying, but you must find it. Word-of-mouth is still the biggest marketing tool for books and it's completely free. It's just hard to achieve.

My final piece of advice is to get lucky. This isn't something you can force, obviously, either you get lucky or you don't. However, you can tilt the odds a little bit. If you buy one lottery ticket you have a 1 in 285 million chance of winning the lottery. If you buy two tickets you have a 1 in 142.5 million chance. You doubled your odds (still extremely poor, of course) of winning by buying another ticket.

In the same way, if you write another great book and publish it your odds of getting lucky will double. The more books you publish, the more likely it will be that your name will travel and your books will sell.

So keep writing, keep reading and keep dreaming. Have a wonderful 2015.

Today is Sunday. Today is the big game. And while many football fans in Seattle and the New England states are eagerly awaiting the game, millions more are eagerly awaiting the commercials.

This year commercial time during the broadcast is going for over four-million dollars per spot. That's a hefty chunk of change that not many could afford.

Trust me, I would love to get an ad for one of my books on during the game, but that price tag will likely be always beyond my reach.

Companies pay because they know they'll be in front of the largest television audience of the year. And while companies like Budweiser and Coca-cola don't exactly need to spread the word of their existence, they do often compete for the funniest/best commercial.

Talk about all this advertising generates more buzz than the actual game because it appeals to everyone. Women, men, young, old. It doesn't matter, everyone has something to say about those commercials.

Which got me to thinking, would television advertising help indie authors?

If the name of the game is getting noticed (and as an indie author, it most certainly is) then television advertising is a way to spread the word of your book.

The problem, of course, is the cost of the advertisement. Even ads that don't run during the Super Bowl are still costly. A local television spot can run you up to $1500 for a thirty-second spot. And that doesn't count the cost to actually make the spot.

National commercials are a good deal more expensive. The average is around $342,000. That's not feasible for the typical indie author.

Would you see any increase in sales from a television spot? It's difficult to say. Books are rarely marketed on television (I can remember seeing a few from James Patterson, but not any others) and thus there isn't a big sample size to study. I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't make back what it cost.

However, it might lead to other opportunities. Increased awareness and discussion between people.

That is, after all, what the big companies are hoping for with their Super Bowl ads.

The problem is, you would have to create a truly innovative commercial. Something that would cause people to talk. Advertisers get paid very well to do this and it's not as easy as it sounds.

I think that television will always be closed-off to indie authors. There are too many obstacles for it to be worthwhile. But if you have a great idea and some extra cash, maybe you should try it. I hope you prove me wrong.

I hope everyone enjoys the game. I don't have a rooting interest (as a Lions fan I have never had a rooting interest in a Super Bowl) so I'm just hoping for a good game.

Mark Phillips is the author of several novels, including the very popular Bentley series.

I debated for a week if I should write this blog. Whenever you talk about your own critics I think it's very hard to not come off as needy and combative. I will do my best.

First, I would like to say that I have no problem with critics. I enjoy reading emails from fans as well as detractors. I have no problem with someone hating one of my books because you simply aren't going to please everyone, and it's madness to even try. Furthermore, if they took the time to email you then you must have really affected them. Of course, I prefer to affect someone in a positive way rather than a negative one, but I'll take whatever I can get.

Recently, though, I received an email from a critic that I simply have to respond to. In the letter he talked about the gratuitous amount of violence in Beneath the Mask of Sanity and how awful the book was because of it. He then (and this is the impetus of this blog post) compared Beneath the Mask of Sanity to the 1978 film "I Spit on Your Grave".

For those of you who have never seen this film (count yourselves lucky) I can summarize it very quickly for you. The first hour of the film is a woman getting repeatedly raped by several men. Over and over again. The second hour of the movie is the same woman tracking down and murdering each of the men in gruesome ways.

In my opinion, I Spit on Your Grave is one of the worst films ever made. There are no redeeming qualities in the movie whatsoever. The filmmaker tries to shoehorn the message that the idea that "women are asking for it" because they dress provocatively is wrong (and it is) but there is no coherent message at all and it's barely touched upon.

No, the only reason for, I Spit On Your Grave, is to show as many horrible and offensive images as possible in the running time of a motion picture.

I hear some of you saying, "But there's a lot of horrible images in Beneath the Mask of Sanity. Why is that different?"

Well (and again, this is my opinion) I believe that almost nothing is off limits as long as there is a point.

What is the point of Beneath the Mask of Sanity? Well, for one, Bentley Grimes is vicious and sadistic for two reasons. One, because I felt, at the time, that too often in the media fictional (and sometimes real) serial killers were glorified to the point of legend. In fiction they were often treated as the ultimate "bad boy" character. Someone with redeeming qualities that was appealing because of a roguish attitude.

This is not reality. In fact, it can be damaging to think so. Violent killers are not romantic, they are not misunderstood heroes. They are dangerous and psychotic individuals that don't care about anything but themselves. I wanted to write a book with a little more truth in it and a little less romanticism.

The second reason is that I did a lot of research for the book. I poured over case studies of serial killers, I read articles about them, I even read notes that the killers themselves had penned. Some of the things I read about were for more disturbing than my book. For instance, if you enjoy sleeping well, don't look up Albert Fish and the letter he wrote to the parents of one of his victims.

But Beneath the Mask of Sanity was about more than just showing a truer look at serial killers. It was about how our world looked through the eyes of that serial killer. As an outsider to society, Bentley had a unique perspective on things. He talked about everything from violence in the media to religion. There are a lot of issues in the book and I believe the violent nature of Bentley's crimes all underscore the themes.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, I don't mind critics at all. I didn't like my book being compared to a piece of trash like, I Spit on Your Grave, but I don't hate critics or even the man you emailed me.

I am happy that I've gotten so many more emails from people who loved the book, because ultimately I want you to think, but I also want to entertain you. To make you happy for a little while.

But if you read my book and you hated it, that's okay too. You can even write me and I will respond to you. If you have reasons that you didn't like the book I think that's a good thing. One of the best things really. Because it shows you're thinking and I have always been pro-think.

Thank you all for continuing to read and continuing to reach out. I look forward to hearing from more of the you in the future.

Writing is communication.

Maybe that seems simplistic or obvious, but you'd be surprised how often writers forget this basic fact. Good writers too, some who are considered giants of their time.

I recently read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and that was a man who had forgotten (at least in that novel) that writing was communication.

The book is such a jumbled mess of ideas and transgressions and asides and stream-of-consciousness and technical jargon that it becomes almost incomprehensible; it certainly becomes tedious to read, just like this sentence.

Now I'm not against the modernistic literary movement in any way. Experimental novels can be great fun, and as a writer, it can be a joy to toy with such new ideas to tell a story.

But, one thing that a writer must always keep in mind is that writing is communication, and the hallmark of effective communication is clarity.

My biggest gripe with Wallace's novel isn't that it is experimental (Kurt Vonnegut was a genius of experimental fiction and Breakfast of Champions is one of the greatest books ever written) my biggest problem is that it is so often inscrutable simply for inscrutability's sake. That's not an effective way to communicate.

There are pretty much no rules to writing a book and every person comes at it at a slightly different angle. Though it is important to remember that if you do not have a firm grasp of the rules of composition then you will never be sure if you're doing good or ill when you break those rules.

All of us write because it fulfills us, because it makes us happy. Most of us also write to tell the world how we feel about a certain issue or group of issues. What literary critics and academics call themes. We're all different, but in my experience I am first writing for myself (to make myself happy and to try and understand what I believe) but also for the potential reader (to entertain them and show them my point of view).

Clarity is essential to this second part of the equation. If all you're writing for is yourself then why not write your story down, put it in a trunk and come back to it whenever you want to read it? In that case you can be as cryptic as you'd like. You could write in code if you pleased.

I suspect that most of you, like me, write for an audience as well as for yourself, and if that's the case than it's important to be clear in your writing. Now, I'm not suggesting that you dumb down the language so even the thickest person could understand you. Nor am I suggesting that there isn't room for ambiguity in your plot. What I am suggesting is that you give your reader a fair shake at understanding what you mean and what you believe.

Take a murder mystery for example. During the book you're trying to guess who the real killer is, but when the end comes we discover that the killer was a character only talked about once in almost no detail and never actually seen in the book until the reveal. Did you have a fair shot at figuring that out? It seems like a bit of a cheat doesn't it?

In the same way if you don't give your readers a line that can be followed--and yes it can be a well covered line--then you are cheating your readers out of a valuable part of the reading experience.

Whenever I edit one of my books I also take one pass to examine each sentence and make sure that I'm being as clear as possible. Unless, of course, I'm being a bit coy to hide a piece of information that won't be revealed until later. And even in that instance I never completely cover my tracks. A perceptive reader could pick up on it in the first read through and certainly will see the train of logic on the second.

Even abstract painters or avant garde film makers give you enough to go on so that you can see the point of their art if you look from just the right angle.

Clarity is important, it's how you are understood. The greats understood that: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Updyke, Faulkner.

Some of them were wildly experimental and deliciously metaphorical but they all brought clarity to their writing. We should all strive to be like that.

The new Star Wars movie is coming out on December 18th and fans are cautiously optimistic. This isn't like 1999 when everyone was pulling out of their skin in anticipation of the prequel films. See, we've been burned before.

If someone wanted to make a presentation about how to write both a wonderful fantasy series and a terrible fantasy series they would only need to include one franchise: Star Wars.

Now, none of the films are completely flawless I'm not trying to say that (although The Empire Strikes Back comes pretty damn close) but what I am saying is that the original trilogy is clearly better than the prequel films.

The original trilogy had a clear arc and powerful themes. It introduced us into a wonderful fantasy world that we loved.

But wait, the prequel films had a clear arc and powerful themes too. In fact, you could argue that the arc of one man's descent into evil is a much more powerful storyline than anything in the original trilogy. The prequels were able to use better technology to fully explore that fantasy world and bring us wondrous visuals that could excite and entertain.

So why did the prequel's suck? And why were the original movies good?

Basically it all comes down to characters. Or, rather, getting to know our characters.

In the original film we spent basically the first forty minutes with Luke Skywalker. We learned about his life, we learned about what he wanted, he got to know him as a character. We met Obi Wan and got to know him. We met Han Solo, Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2D2. By the time the movie was over, we felt like we knew these people and we cared about them.

In the second film we got to know the bad guys. We learned more about Darth Vader and his history, we met the emperor and hated him.

In the third film good and evil collide for an exciting climax and all story points are resolved.

Throughout all of it there were special effects and space battles and lightsaber duels and adventure and action. But all of those elements were a consequence of the situation the characters were in. Sure, they added to the movie and made it enjoyable, but all the adventure in the world means nothing if I don't care about people. That emotional bond is what draws people into a story. It's the basis of all great fiction.

The prequel films fail at this. There is the same action, the same adventure, the same space battles and improved special effects. What those films lack though is the heart of the original trilogy. Save for one exception, there is no character in the entire trilogy that we get to know in the same way as we get to know the characters in the original trilogy. There are no bonds formed between characters like in the original trilogy. Luke and Han don't start off as friends, their friendship grows organically from their situation. Same with Han and Leia. They don't start out loving each other, it grows from what they've been through.

In the prequels we are told that Obi Wan and Anakin are friends, we are told that Anakin and Padme love each other. There is no real attempt made to actually show Obi Wan and Anakin become friends. No scenes where we see that bond grow. We are simply told they had adventures and became friends. Well, I'm sorry, but that's not a good way to tell a story. It's hard to live vicariously through your characters when I don't get to see any of the moments that formed their bond.

There is a lame attempt at showing how Anakin and Padme fall in love, but it's as if it were written by an alien who only had a partial understanding about how people actually fall in love.

The entire prequel films treats the characters as just another set piece. Something to put where you need it, have it say what you need it to say and then move on to the next plot point. Everything is in service to the plot and nothing is in service to the characters.

And that is the failing of the prequel films. They don't give us characters to root for and thus why the hell should we care? Turns out, we don't.

I did say there was one exception, didn't I? That would be the emperor. He is is the only character in the prequel films that actually had depth. He had a clear goal and everything he did was in service to his character working for that goal. He was power-hungry, evil and duplicitous. And that's how he was portrayed. His character was fully fleshed out and so his actions were able to have clear character motivation.

When you're sitting down to write your own story (space epic or not) make sure that you keep this in mind. The dazzling visuals and the exciting battles are nice but that's not what keeps people coming back. The characters are what keep people coming back. Learn from George Lucas's triumphs and mistakes. We can only hope that J.J. Abrams has.

Narrative drive can be found in all forms of storytelling. It's what pulls readers through a story, keeping them wondering what is going to happen next.

There are two ways to talk about narrative drive. One is incredibly complicated and technical and one is pretty straighforward. Those of you who are familiar with my writing and my thought process can probably guess that I'm going to take the straightforward approach. Not that I think that there is no merit to knowing and understanding the minutiae of the writing process, it's just that I believe we can get all the information we need on narrative drive in the broad strokes.

Simply put, narrative drive is what keeps the reader reading. We've all had those nights where we're clinging to our book as our eyes start to slip shut and we snap them open to re-read the same sentence for the fifth time. That's the kind of dedication that narrative drive can bring out in a reader. So how do we, as writers, accomplish this?

There are two main aspects to narrative drive. The first aspect is the one I see covered all the time and, in my opinion, it's of lesser importance than the second reason, which I almost never see talked about.

The first aspect is story questions. Those things that you're whispering to yourself as you read the book. There are the big questions (will Luke and the rebels beat the empire) which are connected to the main arc of the story, and then there are the small questions (will Darth Vader or Obi Wan win this lightsaber battle) which are connected to the action of a certain scene.

The big question should be ever present in your story until the climax. Not that it needs to be stated on every page, but rather that it informs the action of the story. This big question is what leads the story from the opening scene to the next scene to the next...and so on in a logical order. What comes before is what drives what comes next.

The small questions are what give each scene a narrative tension. And keep in mind that by tension I'm not just talking about adventure stories or thrillers or horror. There can be just as much (or more) tension in a romantic scene or a character building scene. The key is that there is something at stake, whether it be life and death or romance or rejection or friendship or hatred. There should always be something at stake in every scene and our hope or dread of what will happen will drive a reader to turn the page.

The second aspect of narrative drive is character connection. This, to me, is the most important aspect of not only narrative drive but of your entire story. If I don't care about your characters then I won't bother asking myself any questions about them. Why should I care if they live or die? Why should I care what the stakes are if I don't care about the characters?

That's why I think this is the most important aspect, it is the underpinning for everything else in your book or movie or television show. When people complain about a movie being shallow or forgettable or having no heart, what they're complaining about is that they don't care about the characters. This is one of the things wrong with Michael Bay's Transformers movies. We are never given any reason to care about the characters and we never connect with them. Therefore none of the danger seems real and we ultimately don't care about the story.

So if you want to build narrative drive then you must remember to make us connect to your characters. Let us to get to know them and get to love or hate them. Then give them an ultimate goal and drive each scene with story questions that create tension. That's the basics to how to write a successful story. Now actually doing all that with style is the hard part, but that's where your talent comes in. And, trust me, you have the talent, so put in the drive.

Good payoffs take time.

That was the writing lesson that I took out of Captain America: Civil War the other day.

I suppose that's an odd lesson to take out of a superhero movie about a clash of two ideologies, but hey, I'm a writer, I look for writing lessons in just about everything.

This is not a movie review, so there are no spoilers nor am I going to comment on how good or bad the movie was, but I'm going to focus on one aspect of the movie that didn't work with Batman V. Superman.

The comparisons between these two movies have come up immediately and it's inevitable as they showcase a very similar storyline and hit a lot of the same beats.

For me, personally, what didn't work in Batman V. Superman did work well in Captain America: Civil War, and the reason is because of timing.

For those of you who don't know, both movies feature a clash of ideology between two superheroes. Batman and Superman in the DC movie and Captain America and Iron Man in the Marvel film.

When Marvel first unveiled their plans for a cinematic universe I was excited about it even though I'm not a comic book fan nor am I a big fan of superhero films in general. The reason I was excited is because I loved shared universes. After all, Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and his books are filled with crossovers and shared storylines. There's something very satisfying about recognizing a minor character from another book in the one you're currently reading. It makes all the books seem that much more epic and exciting. I felt that Marvel had a chance to create that kind of atmosphere in cinema, and in Civil War it paid off.

The reason that the conflict in Batman V. Superman didn't work is because this is the first time we've seen them meet. The movie felt overstuffed and rushed and the conflict seemed almost artificial.

What worked about Civil War was the amount of time they spent to get to this point.

You can't expect to go out on one date with a person and immediately be ready to marry them and bare them children. You can't expect that you'll develop the marriage shorthand that all established couples seem to have. You can't expect to have hilarious inside jokes after one date. That kind of connection and intimacy takes time, and it's no different in fiction.

What works about Civil War is that we've seen Captain America and Iron Man in several movies now. We've not only seen them develop as friends and establish an actual bond, but we've also seem their characters grow in their own solo movies. They have been heavily established, their motivations are clear. Their flaws are clear.

And that's why it works.

Because when Captain America and Iron Man have a split over their different world views it's earned. We have a greater depth of emotion because we've spent time with these characters.

So how does all of this relate to our own writing and reading? Well I know many of you are writing or have written book series'. This takes the shared universe to another level as we are following a particular storyline and group of characters through several novels. My advice to you is to take a page out of the MCU. You have all that space to develop things, don't rush it. Don' t be in such a hurry to get your characters to some deep emotional place. Really take the time to allow your characters to breath and exist, to allow them to grow in the imaginations of your readers. Let it happen naturally and don't try to force it.

After all, how many second dates have you gotten after you've talked about getting married on the first date?