Writing Fiction in the New World (Part 2)
I just returned from 20Books in Las Vegas, the last one. It will be Author Nation in 2024. Lots good stuff, and I got to meet blog reader/writer Peggy and her husband Thomas, and her two dogs, Archie and Smoke (if I’ve gotten any of those wrong, my brain is addled from the time difference). More on the conference later.
The writing StoryBundle is still available for another 18 days, so grab your books!
The topic:
Finding Experts in Fiction Writing
Expert is a term that is rapidly losing its meaning and importance. It used to mean you had a special skill or knowledge in a particular field. You might be considered an authority, like Dr. Thomas Holtz, a Vertebrate Paleontologist at the University of Maryland. He’s given panels at Balticon about dinosaurs and consulted on Jurassic Park. (He’s an entertaining speaker and shares his joy of learning, so if you see his name on a panel, attend.)
Now, like the Sling commercial, people can read a book on a topic and declare themselves as an expert. Being an expert seems to be how well you can market to the audience on the topic, not on how much knowledge you have.
In the book The Wellness Trap, the author discusses how anyone can create a blog about wellness and write a book on it. Some are doctors in the medical field, some have a nutritional background, and others declare, “This worked for me.”
Their marketing always appeals on an emotional level. You’re doing your best for your health. You’re taking control. And always with the suggestion to buy wellness products from them or recommended by them.
There isn’t any screening or qualification for them to do this. There have been frauds who say they cured their cancer and never had it.
Think about it: Some of these “experts” get exposed for being a fraud. With writing “experts,” they get praise if they say the right things to their audience. They just have to hit the right emotional buttons to pull in the beginners.
There’s always a new beginner wanting to write a novel. These writers will have a mingle of hope and fear and excitement. I’m going to be published! I can hold my book in my hand! Some may think, This book will be a best seller. I can quit the day job. Please note there isn’t anything in that about writing more books or having a career in writing fiction.
The first book is always a really big deal for a new writer (and sadly, some of the long-term writers put this down). We all have the excitement of starting a book for the first time and fantasizing about what will happen when we finish it. That first book is an adventure, a fun one.
But all those emotions make the writers vulnerable to marketing by people claiming to be experts. They ask, Don’t you want to have the best for your book?
The audience wasn’t even aware that such a question that makes you feel guilty for answering it in the negative is another emotional marketing pull. I attended a con panel on editing, and the panelists spent the entire session circling back to that question. Most of the panel consisted of developmental editors. They were selling their services to a rapt audience!
The first step to finding better experts is to recognize the ones who are marketing to beginners. This can be hard to do; some of them are skilled. An easy first screening test is to see if they are on the Writers Digest 100. That’s voted on by the readers of Writers Digest, and their targeted audience is the new writers. You won’t ever see a writer marketing to intermediate writers on the list.
Look also at what they’ve published. It’s always more profitable to sell to beginners, so these “experts” will often have very few novels published. Or they’ll have some fiction and a lot of non-fiction craft books.
One writer zoomed onto a writing message board to sell his craft book. The book presented a new “system” for writers. It wasn’t anything new; he’d just relabeled the beginner basics with a business buzzword. Seven years before, he’d published two novels. With such a big gap in time, it suggested that the books hadn’t been successful. Of course, it’s hard to tell why there was such a gap; could have been an illness or another life event. But at the publication of the third book, he was selling developmental editing services associated with his system.
It isn’t even enough to see if they’ve written a lot of books. Read them and judge their skills for yourself. Another writer had indie-published seven books in a series. She also was a developmental editor and offered a course on how to write genre. She billed the series as a “Science Fiction Mystery like J.D. Robb.” As I read the two genres and that author, I read the first book. She didn’t have enough world-building for science fiction readers and too much science fiction for mystery readers. Nor did she have enough mystery for the mystery readers. Instead, a romantic subplot dominated the story. Yet, she was teaching other writers how to write genre.
Another writer blogging about writing—no craft books or courses—had about ten books traditionally published. Since the series was set in a place I had visited twice a year growing up, I purchased one book. I hated the main character (that was definitely my personal taste; I think it was the selling point for the book). But this author advised doing description in “drips and drabs” and to not describe anything with physical details. That’s the way she writes. It made the book feel shallow. I was disappointed that she never described this place beyond mentioning the name. If she were to teach a class on description, I would never spend money on it.
But what is qualification then? First. not even a best-selling with 20 years of experience and over 100 books may be able to teach. Not everyone who is successful can teach how they write. There are also some writers who have a successful but not spectacular career and are amazing teachers of writing.
To start, screen out anyone selling developmental editing services. Contrary to popular belief, professional writers don’t need developmental editors; this is an area for beginning writers. Any advice they provide will likely to be sell you on buying their services.
Also dismiss anyone giving broad advice, like a two-hour course on “How to Write a Novel.” There’s just no way to even properly address the topic, so this is usually something on outlining. You will see some courses by best-selling writers; you might consider those at a future point understanding that you might not get your money’s worth out of it. Anything broad is for beginners.
Writers with actual expertise will have favorite specific topics, or even hobby horse topics. Anyone who follows Dean Wesley Smith knows he fits into both of those!
These writers will also be opinionated, and make people angry. Anyone marketing to beginners can’t afford to be anything but encouraging, and generic. Because these writers are opinionated, the beginners will also talk about them in a negative way. When I was on writing message boards, the writers all reacted to Dean Wesley Smith talking about not outlining. There was an air of superiority as they dismissed what he proposed as unworkable.
You probably won’t find these writers by searching the internet, unless you know what you’re looking for. You might hear about them from other writers. Professional conferences will be a great place to find a variety of people. By professional, I mean ones that include business as topics for panels. What you hear takes a very different path because the writers are focused on making money. Those will also be more pricey than most conferences (because beginners don’t want to spend money on learning).
Listen to the panels. Make your own judgments about the content. Remember that everything that they say is their opinion, and you are free to say, “That doesn’t work for me.”
A real expert isn’t worried about disagreement. A marketer expert is always afraid of it.
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A few expert resources for the blog readers:
Deborah Chester: She was taught by Jack Bickham and was Jim Butcher’s teacher at the Oklahoma University. She may have retired; she used to have a blog with a lot of good information, but it’s been taken down. However, she has a few books on writing published that you can check out.
Thrillerfest is another excellent conference at the professional level. It’s in New York, and it’s very expensive to attend. When I went to one, just about everything cost extra, But I attended sessions by Vince Flynn and James Rollins. Amazing experience.
