I.H. Laking's Blog, page 10

Novel Planning 1: Mapping it out.

So far, my writing has consisted of a series of Novellas and one Short Story. I’ve really had fun developing the world of the Empire through these stories, but I’ve now moved into a more serious phase of planning for my first major work – a novel centred around the Empire and the central events of its history. I’ve made sure that the stories of The Inspector Ambrose Mysteries provide a solid foundation for this world, including its cycles, people, tensions, and key characters. But there’s a lot more to come.

In order to create a living, breathing world, I had to go back to basics. The first thing I did was to draw a map. Now, I don’t claim to be much of an artist, but I was keen to get the Empire out on paper so I could visualise the places I was talking about more clearly. Key questions I considered included rivers, cities, temples, centres of business, natural wonders, etc. It was a challenging process, but a lot of fun!

Like I said… I’m not much of an artist, but then again… if Tolkien was up for drawing a map, who am I to disagree?  My map helped me to craft some unique characteristics for the novel, including factors that will influence its tone. So all up, I’m stoked with how it worked out.

The next step was to write a social structure and a brief world history. I’ll tell you more about that next time!

How I grew my Twitter Follower Count from 50 to 5,000.

Last week I wrote about 5 key things that I’ve learnt on my journey to 5,000 Twitter followers. In response to that post I received quite a few questions about how I actually got 5,000 followers. So, this is my uncensored account of how I grew my following on Twitter – the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ll preface this by saying that there are some things I would have done differently, and not everyone will agree with my strategy. That’s fine, you’re welcome to choose any social media strategy you wish!

My followers in graph form! Please note some technical glitches account for a few swift jumps in numbers.

I started my Twitter account in July, and had very little idea of how to grow my online presence, let alone my follower count. As I read up and observed the actions of other self-published authors on Twitter, I quickly made a few choices about how I would proceed. My tactics were as follows:

I began by following authors from lists on Twitter that I had been added to. I found there are many indie authors out there who are keen to connect with and support other authors. Once you follow these writers, you get yourself onto their radar and they help you out from time to time with retweets, etc.

The next thing I tried was connecting with other tweeting writers on Reddit. This worked really well, and I found myself with a whole lot of new followers, as well as some interesting content from fellow writers.

 

The next bit is more controversial. After a while, I stumbled onto Justunfollow, an app that allows you to find people to follow & also track who’s following you back. I used this to locate people that I thought might be interested in following me and finding out about my writing. I would follow people who follow librarians, other writers in my genre, etc. My general rule was to follow people for a number of days, and slowly move through the list unfollowing those who didn’t follow me back if they weren’t providing any interesting content. Twitter has a ratio & limit on the number of people you can follow at once compared to your followers, so if you never unfollow anyone, you can’t grow using this method.

 

As I started following more people, with more people following me back, I changed my content to be more engaging, and I found that my “drop off” rate people unfollowing me improved dramatically. If you’re following heaps of people but just spamming them with promos, they’ll either block you or unfollow you pretty quickly (Hence the things I learned in my previous article).

 

On the downside, I found my Twitter feed getting completely cluttered with indie authors who constantly spruiked their work – I don’t want a completely useless Twitter feed, so I ended up unfollowing a lot of them. These aren’t the same helpful authors I mentioned earlier – these are people who just treat Twitter as a sales channel.

 

So that’s how I’ve grown my Twitter follower count to 5,000 people. I followed a process of following people who might be interested, then dropping them off after a week or so if they weren’t interested or their I found that their content wasn’t relevant. My Twitter following grew steadily, and I uncovered a number of engaged followers who provide interesting content and engage with my content. I definitely wouldn’t do everything the same, especially following so many people initially. It’s better to grow steadily than have a spike of awful content on your newsfeed. Twitter isn’t just a broadcast tool – it’s a way to interact with others. Treating it simply as a sales channel is a silly idea. And following too many people puts you in that danger zone.

I know a few readers will have concerns about my methods, so I’ll do my best to cover some here:

 Yes, I have followed and unfollowed a lot of people. But most people that have followed me have stuck around, and I’m happy with the engagement I get with my posts. I don’t follow people again if i’ve followed them once before.

 

“But wouldn’t you rather have (X) amount of engaged followers than 5,000 useless ones?” Yeah, I understand that concern, and the fact is that I don’t always talk about my writing – but sometimes I do, and the amount of click-through to my website and books on Amazon I get from having a large Twitter audience is significant. Also, the links in my bio get on average 2 people clicking through a day. That kind of traffic isn’t easy to generate with less followers. I have data that shows that having more followers is driving engagement with my writing. If the data told me less followers was better, I’d follow that.

 

Do my Twitter followers know I write/self-publish? I’d like to think so. I tweet about writing pretty regularly. You can check out my feed, though over the past few weeks I haven’t been writing much. I’ll be picking up my writing over the summer, especially once my writing assessment comes in, so I’ll start tweeting about that. I make it clear in my bio that I write, but I’m not going to constantly shove my writing down people’s throats – I post things that are relevant to writers, and things that I like in general.

 

Well, that’s about it. If you’re wondering if you can grow your Twitter audience, I say get out there and have a go – it’s much better to fail fast than to never try. Social media isn’t for everyone, but I’m getting great value out of it myself. I’ve done my best to be up front about the best and worst things I’ve done on my journey, and I hope it helps you as you build your Twitter audience!

Celebrating 1,000 Downloads of Mrs Milliard’s Mech!

Wow.

So I just did some quick calculations, and somehow (without me realising it) Mrs Milliard’s Mech has been downloaded over 1,000 times from Amazon!

That’s pretty amazing considering that when I started out writing, I was pretty sure no one would ever bother to download my work. Since then, I’ve released another novella and a short story, as well as having my third Inspector Ambrose story waiting in the wings. Also, for some reason, I was the no. 1 teen mystery book on Amazon Japan for a while.

Anyway, this is just a short note acknowledging that somewhere out there, on around 1,000 devices, Inspector Ambrose is hard at work. And that’s a humbling thought.

Thanks for being on the journey with me, folks.

5 Key Things I’ve Learned on my Journey to 5,000 Twitter Followers.

90 days ago, I had 26 Twitter followers. Today, I hit 5,000 followers.

Growing my Twitter presence has been a wild ride, and today I’d like to share five key things I’ve learned on my social media journey as a self-published author.

When I started out on Twitter, my content was generally seen by 50 people per day, and around 1 or 2 of those people would engage with it. These days, I average around 2,000 views daily, with around 80 engagements, including favourites and retweets. But in order to get there, I had to learn and adapt.

Before you get into any of the following points, I’d recommend you go and sign up for Twitter Analytics. It’s free, and there’s no better tool to track your reach and interactions on Twitter. Once you’ve done that, read on:

1. Get on trend – use relevant hashtags.

Don’t just sit there harping away about your random thoughts. Tweets like “Man, I like my new T-Shirt” or “Thanks Obama” might seem pithy to you, but unless you’re someone like Owl City, no one is a) watching or b) interested.

If you want people to notice you, then you have to get in front of them. Hashtags provide this link, because people browse hashtages for information they want to see from people they don’t already follow. I know you probably don’t need a rundown on how hashtags work in general, but what I’d say is that you need to find relevant hashtags and use them. For writers, the key hashtags are #writing and #amwriting. This page has a bunch more. It’s also important to know what’s going on around you – for example, NaNoWriMo was in November, so I did a series of #writetip posts tagged with #NaNoWriMo, and they got great traction.

The bottom line is that if you don’t use hashtags, you won’t get out in front of your audience. It’s like you’re expecting people to find you in the darkness without a light. Hashtags give you visibility and allow you to connect with people who might not find you otherwise.

2. Don’t just plug your own stuff.

I’m talking to basically half of the self-published authors on Twitter. No, I don’t care that your book got heaps of 5 star reviews. No, for the seventeenth time today, I do NOT want to buy a BARGAIN 99c COPY of your latest eBook. And no, I do not care abou- ah, screw it. *unfollows*

Seriously, when I started following authors on Twitter, I was amazed at how my newsfeed turned into a spam-filled cesspit of desperation. After a while, I just started to block and unfollow authors who constantly urged me to buy their books. People don’t follow you to see your pleas for validation through sales, they want to connect with you. You know those popular Twitter accounts? They’re full of interesting information, articles, and (most importantly) interactions with a real person at the other end of the account.

3. Tweeting too much will really irritate people.

I’ll keep this one brief. If you take up half my newsfeed with constant retweets of anything and everything, I will unfollow you. It’s just straight up irritating. You severely damage your credibility by tweeting constantly, as well as cheapening your Twitter “brand”. You want people to look at your tweets and find lots of useful content that they’re keen to engage with, not just endless retweets and pointless rants.

4. Use images.

Images are gold in terms of increasing engagement. There are actual studies that have shown this, but I’ll just go on my experience. At first, I had no images in my tweets. But as soon as I started using them, I saw a huge uplift in clicks, favourites, and retweets. Simply put, images make your tweets more interesting, and people want to engage with interesting stuff. But a word of caution: Don’t use crappy, pixelated images covered in wordart. That’s not engaging, that’s tacky.

5. Have fun & interact with people.

I love interacting with people on Twitter! Whether it’s about writing, current events, or just talking things over, I’ve met heaps of cool people through tweeting. People want the opportunity to engage with you, so make yourself available! Just remember that it’s all public, and once you tweet something, it’s out there forever, even if you delete the tweet!

6. A reality check.

Yeah, I know I’m over my 5 points, but this is important: Success on Twitter won’t necessarily mean success in the ‘real’ world. You still need to be out there doing your thing. Don’t consume yourself with getting more followers and being popular online – live your life and aim for success there first. The rest will follow.

Well, there you have it. This certainly isn’t everything that I’ve learned, but I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Otherwise, jump on Twitter and see how I’m getting on.

Writing a Synopsis: It’s harder than you’d think!

I submitted my three Inspector Ambrose stories to be independently assessed this week – a process that started a while ago. So what took so long?

Well, the synopsis took so long.

The challenging thing about presenting a synopsis is that it requires clarity. Clarity in both your understanding of a story, and in your use of language. So since the assessment called for a one page synopsis of my three novellas, I found myself toiling over something I had (foolishly) assumed wouldn’t be an arduous task. A quick Google midway through the process of writing my synopsis informed of how tough it was going to be.

The main difficulty I faced was finding a way to describe the setting and events of each story in a way that succinctly informed the reader of what to expect without giving away the major plot twists, which are central parts of each of the novellas.

I found that I actually had a very good understanding of the essence of my stories, and was able to convey this fairly well – but it took time and several revisions before I felt ready to send the synopsis off. I found that writing the synopsis was different from the blurbs I have for Amazon, as I’m not looking to sell the stories, but rather to set up the assessor so they’re in the right frame of mind.

Thankfully, on Wednesday morning, I was ready to submit my work. With a (highly) nervous click of the ‘send’ button, it was on its way.

I’ll let you know the outcome in 4 – 6 weeks.

New Website Design is Live!

Welcome to my new website!

Sometimes, self publishing is very rewarding. You get to see your work get out there easily and you have a lot of creative control over the editing process. There are other times when it’s not so great to be self published, such as when you’re frantically trying to figure out how you add social media buttons to the website that you somehow just broke.

Regardless of that, I’m happy to introduce you all to my new website – I’m hoping it provides a better flow, especially with the access to this journal now being front and center, and images added to the home page, replacing the more minimalist look I previously had.

Let me know what you think!

A Prologue.

I’m excited to announce the release of a new Raw Writing sample I’ve been working on!

Following on from the events of The Murder at Mansfield Manor, this piece is the prologue to latest work. It clocks in at a little over 2,000 words, but I think it sets the tone nicely for what’s to come in my new piece of writing that will be in production over the summer.

As always with Raw Writing, it’s a lightly edited piece of work to give you a sneak peek of what’s in the pipeline. This piece is unrelated to The Murder at Mansfield Manor, which is still in editing.

Check out the link below and let me know what you think!

A Prologue.

Creating, not consuming.

I’ve had a great revelation during my time writing this year.

That revelation is about how I spend my free time. You see, I’ve always been involved in creative pursuits, specifically music, since I was very young. I sung in choirs, played lead roles in school productions, and (most importantly) started playing guitar when I was 15 – an instrument that played a large role my teenage years and my early twenties.

The thing about music is that whenever you step up on that stage, jam in your room, or bust out “Where do the Children Play?” at a party, you’re creating something. I used to spend hours perfecting my guitar technique, learning and improving my craft. As my late twenties rolled around, I found myself doing less in this area, and spending more time relaxing mindlessly on the couch. The flow-on effect of this was a strange “flattening” in my creative energy.

This year, I decided to start writing a blog. It was mildly successful, and I found myself enjoying writing. On the spur of the moment, I decided to write a short story. As I wrote my first story, I found that my creative spark had returned. I came to realise how much time I’ve spent playing video games, surfing the net, and scrolling through social media.

So here’s the heart of my revelation: There’s a difference between creating and consuming, and it’s easy to only ever be a consumer of content. In our consumption-based Western society, we find ourselves constantly invited and encouraged to consume – be it movies, music, or social media. I’ve found that connecting with creativity again has restored life in me – we’re meant to be creative creatures, and there are so many ways to express that.

For me, it’s writing. I’m blessed with the opportunity to write, and I’m loving it. Long may creative thought flow my mind onto paper, because in that I’ve rediscovered part of my soul, and I’m richer for it.

So, how are you being creative today?

My Writing is a Rhythm.

I write to the beat of my life.

Recently, I ran my second Marathon. I’ve been a long distance runner for a few years, and I love it.

Running is all about rhythm. You get your stride right, lean forward, and attempt to run with some degree of grace and style. I love the feeling that you get about 30 minutes into a long run after you’ve pushed through the initial burst and settled into your stride – when you’re in that zone, it feels like you can run forever.

As I’ve been on my writing journey this year, I’ve found that the same sense of rhythm applies while I’m penning stories as well. Generally, I’ll sit down at my writing station and start plodding away, getting distracted here and there. But eventually, I’ll put my head down, and find myself really hitting a good stride where the words flow out easily, and scenes and descriptions form together well.

Another similarity with running is that I eventually get fatigued! I found this was the case as I sprinted to the finish of Mansfield Manor recently, but focus and determination got me through.

One other similarity with running is that I have to make time in my life with writing. I run early in the morning to make sure I fit it in my day, and with writing, I write last thing in the evening, when I’m winding down. It’s tough to do both running and writing, but each has a place in my life that I really value.

So here’s to many more years of both running and writing, and to the rhythm of life that drives them.

Mansfield Manor: Reviewing & Reworking.

Time is ticking! Mansfield Manor has now been sitting in its first edit form for a few weeks. Thankfully it hasn’t been all quiet on the writing front, with great feedback coming from those who’ve read it so far, including some suggestions for clarity and flow.

I’m looking forward to getting back to writing soon, especially since I have a novel outline, world history, character charts, and maps of the Empire on the go. At the moment, Inspector Ambrose is taking a well-earned rest, but I do have a story idea or two bubbling away still…