Dwayne’s Comments (group member since Apr 01, 2017)

Dwayne’s comments from the Support for Indie Authors group.

Tomas wrote: "If it's to be a trait of a character, especially as a diary, I'd have no issue with it."

I don't think I've ever known a teenager who wrote or spoke in perfect English all the time. Most don't really care. So, it feels like an inherent trait due to her age.

Anna Faversham wrote: "Bad grammar can be confusing and off -putting."

I agree. I'm going to keep the bad grammar at a minimum.

Alex wrote: "I look upon it as akin to using slang or local idiom in dialogue."

I agree. A diary is much like a character talking to themselves and she doesn't intend for anyone to ever read it, so she's just writing her feelings as they come. I see her writing it on the fly between school, her after school job, and homework.

Sophie Janet wrote: "You know how "How To Train Your Dragon" has little mistakes in it, alongside ink splots on the pages, etc.? It's because the characters are so clearly inefficient at spelling, which is kinda the po..."

I read your comment and it was helpful. I have to delete it for the link. Sorry.

Hey guys,

I'm working on a short story. It's a pretty heavy topic. The main character is a fifteen year old girl and to lighten it up a bit, I'm doing it diary form. As such, since it is supposed to appear as if it was written by this girl, I've been adding a few intentional spelling and grammatical errors, such as putting numerals in instead of writing the number out, writing a few words in all caps, things like that. It's not over the top. I'll likely go ahead with it as it is. I'm still curious, though, how many people might be bothered by it.

And, no, I don't really want to put a warning or whatever on it to tip the reader off. That feels weak to me.

So, could you handle a story with some intentional erors in it?

Lexi,

Study L.K.'s blurb carefully. I think this is pretty close to what you need to shoot for (in your own words, of course). It gets to the heart of the story and sets up an intriguing premise.

Second rendition is, for me, no better than the original. I have a pet peeve against characters who call themselves "normal" and "average" as I don't know what that means to them. I don't know anyone with a normal or average life and I fear that in the context of the book it means "dull". Why would I want to read about a character that strives to be uninteresting?

I still believe it's a mistake to be shy about the subject matter. You dance around what the story is actually about and if I didn't already know, I'd be confused.

It's clear you have a talent for writing, but it's best to keep the poetic imagery in the book. Writing a book and writing a blurb are very different animals, about as different as doing a painting of a house and drawing up a blueprint.

I closed your other thread and archived it. There's no need to have more than one thread going for the same blurb.

Rich wrote: "Does one write the prologue before everything else, or when the rest of the book is completed?"

It really doesn't matter. The one novel I have with a prologue, I wrote it very late in the process. If you want to write it first, that's fine.

J.L. wrote: "I wrote a book. I have a review. You should got get my book."

Deleted. Please review our code of conduct. Thanks.

I had to read the comments here to get an idea of what your book is about. Not a good thing. The blurb left me confused.

If it's about a rape victim and the product of a rape, come out and say so in the blurb. All the talk of claws and shells and moons and tides left me baffled.

B.A. wrote: "Well, I want good and bad reviews. The good is nice for the ego, but I want to know why you gave the book 2 or 3 stars. Only with the bad reviews where they say why they didn't like the book am I able to make the next one better."

Hmm... I wouldn't call a 3 star review "bad".

As a reader, when I write reviews, I don't write them to help the writer improve. I write them to give my opinion to other readers.

As a writer, there are a lot of things I do to improve my craft. I would never use reviews to learn how to make the next book better. As Leah pointed out, no matter what we write, someone will love it, someone will hate it, someone will think it's just okay. Even the greatest writers in history get one and two star reviews. Unless you're getting a lot of reviews saying they found a lot of typos in your book, don't let them sway your future writing. I always figure, if I try to write for the average reader, my writing will come out as average.

Yep. I'm experiencing the same as Christina. Sales are kinda all over the place. I might go a couple of weeks without any, then one day have a bunch on one book. I see very few reviews these days, either.

Slightly better in sales and much better in KDP reads than I was two years ago and drastically fewer reviews.

Lisa wrote: "Can anyone tell why it's so difficult to get reviews?"

I've always thought getting reviews was the easiest part. I think you're really wanting to know why it's hard to get a lot of reviews in a short amount of time.

Putting on the reader cap:
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, I have to feel passionate about a book before I review it. If a book doesn't excite me, good or bad, I don't feel like reviewing it. I might give it a fly-by three or four stars on Goodreads and leave it at that. It's hard to tell by my reviews, especially lately, but I read a lot. And so most books tend to fall around two to four stars for me and I don't feel excited enough to review it.

Putting on the writer cap:
I write for a whole bunch of reasons. I write because I enjoy telling stories. I write because of all the creative outlets I've tried, this one gives me the most satisfaction. I write to keep my sanity. I write to make a little extra income. Way down there on the list is to get reviews. I like getting them, but I don't care enough to worry about them. I don't seek them out and don't think about them much when they do come in.

If you're desperate for reviews, there are groups on Goodreads and Facebook that can help. I would steer clear of anything that resembles a review swap or asks you to pay for reviews in any fashion.

Putting on the mod cap:
This topic comes up a lot. And it gets shut down a lot. So, just a reminder, we're not here to discuss reviews. I'll leave the topic up for now, but if it becomes negative (complaining about "bad" reviews, etc.), it will go away. Thanks.

From the nearly finished Strangers:

I slapped Boog’s ticket onto the wheel. Angel spun it and pulled it down, perusing it. “It’s a wonder Boog don’t have a heart attack,” Angel said. “Eating this kinda shit every day.”

I giggled into the back of my hand. “I’ve seen you eat the food here, too, you know,” I told the cook.

“Only when I’m about to drop from hunger. At home I eat fruit, vegetables, Slim’N’Trim frozen dinners…”

“You don’t cook at home?” I asked.

Angel snorted. “No. And I bet you don’t wait tables at home.”

“Only for my husband and kids,” I said. “And they don’t tip.”

“Bastards,” said Angel.

Jay wrote: "You're making a lot of presumptions about the poster and lecturing him needlessly on his writing.

Presumption? No. It was a careful analysis..."

The poster wasn't asking for an analysis. He's looking for beta readers. If you want to read his book and then contact him with your analysis, fine. Doing it here is off topic.

Jay wrote: "Beta readers, ideally, aren't writers. And you don't want them to be, so you can get the average reader's reaction to the prose, rather than, "This is how I would have done it," of someone who writes fiction.

What you're really looking for isn't beta readers. You're trying to form a small critique group. "

The stuff quoted above is fine, but the rest of your post was off topic. You're making a lot of presumptions about the poster and lecturing him needlessly on his writing.

It's so choppy. All the short sentences mixed with fragmented sentences and split into so many tiny paragraphs.

I'm getting no sense of romance here. It sounds more fantasy / adventure.

Also, that last sentence seems to be third person, though the rest of the blurb is in first person. I'd lose it. It adds nothing to the blurb.

If you could vary the lengths of the sentences a bit more, and gather them into full paragraphs, you might have something.

J. wrote: "It's spam. "

Looked more like a hijacking. I didn't bother reading much of it. Too long and clearly off topic.

I'm not much for poetry, so I am relating this to the closest thing that does excite me. If I picked up a CD of a band I'd never heard of and all I had for a cover was a black background and a list of titles, I'd put it away. Not finding any of these titles to be cryptic, either.