Category: Author Entrepreneur

Shaping a hook

M.K. Tod18 Comments

Two weeks ago, I posted a draft of a hook I’d developed for Paris in Ruins on Facebook. I knew it needed something more and my Facebook friends were the ideal test group.

Version 1

Charlie asked: Where is the peril or the tension? R Ann said: I would like a titch more, while Ruth said: It feels a tad generic. Heidi suggested a couple of words about the women involved. Janet felt that “lives changed forever” is too generic. Liz suggested I add something to clue the reader in on the relationship between the two women. Many others offered suggestions for which I am very grateful. Back to the drawing board.

Version 2

Version two felt stronger to me. And a few people agreed. However, my friend and fellow Toronto author, Patricia Parsons gave me this feedback: “It feels heavy – laden with background research. Four out of the six lines are about the history. Only two lines are about the story.” She suggested that I focus on the story of the women in order to appeal to a broader audience. “I believe that in the best historical fiction, the story comes first and the historical detail provides context and colour.”

Several people agreed with Patricia. Liz added that there was too much detail and not enough emotion. She wanted to know: “What’s at stake, what’s at risk and why should we care about them? Are they allies or enemies? The theme sounds fascinating, now pull me in.”

Hmm. So I asked Patricia if she would noodle on the problem with me. Two heads being better than one!

Here’s the new version we came up with on Tuesday:

Version 3 … or maybe it’s version 10 by now

Would love your feedback!

DON’T MISS OTHER POSTS ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION.  FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.

The Story of a Novel – where’s the story arc?

M.K. TodLeave a comment

My time is fragmented into small slices these days – see recent post Writing While Caregiving – and it might not surprise you to know that small bits of time are not conducive to creating a novel. However, I have now accumulated many potential plot points and difficulties for my heroine to face. What’s not yet working is the overarching story arc and its corresponding character arc.

Source – https://hunterswritings.com/2016/03/31/character-and-plot-arc-resources/

With so many novels set during WWII, and many recent ones featuring female spies or women working with the resistance, I want this one to be different. And yet readers enjoy characters who are larger than life, who face danger and impossible odds and yet survive. What is the right blend for Claire – my protagonist. Who will be her friends and her foes? How will her biological father factor into the story? Will he have a large role or a minor one?

And then there’s the question of how the war will change Claire. Will she experience a love affair? An unexpected betrayal? A brush with death? The loss of a parent or brother or sister? The destruction of her home? Will she be wounded? If so, how? Those of you who have read of the plane crash I survived might not be surprised to know that I’m toying with that idea.

As you may have guessed from an earlier post, D-Day will play a role in this story. The planning and build-up to D-Day was a phenomenal feat with the British, the Americans, and the Canadians playing significant roles. Interestingly, despite being leader of the free French, Charles De Gaulle was kept out of the planning for D-Day. In fact, he didn’t even know the timing until the last moment. Not surprisingly he was furious with Churchill, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. How might that bit of history factor into the story?

I have a feeling that tunnels will be involved in some way. Miles and miles of underground tunnels were built during World War One. Many of these underground passages survived into World War Two. I’ve also discovered that there was a hidden tunnel complex inside the White Cliffs of Dover that formed Britain’s first line of defence in World War II. Such interesting tidbits are hard to ignore.

So, you see, I have lots of work to do to flesh out both the story arc – drawing on real historical events – and the character arc. I’ll be back when there’s more to share.

DON’T MISS OTHER POSTS ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION.  FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.

Evolving world of publishing

M.K. Tod5 Comments

I’ve followed Mike Shatzkin for years. Mike offers strategic consulting to the global book publishing business and posts every 4-6 weeks on happenings in that world. His latest post, which considers the end of the general trade publishing, got me thinking.

Mike’s premise is that “General trade publishing will be soon be recognized as an artifact of a trade that no longer exists. It doesn’t make sense any more for the organizing principle for title acquisition and marketing to be “if it works in bookstores, and we are confident we can convince them it will, we can do it”.”

Mike Shatzkin’s article compares the publishing world of the 1990s with today’s environment. I love making diagrams to reflect what’s going on and have attempted to highlight the differences Mike Shatzkin described in the following diagram.

  • It’s no surprise that Amazon is the elephant in the room. We’re all aware of its reach and influence. It operates as a home for writers who self-publish or are hybrid authors and as a publisher with at least 7 imprints. Through its electronic delivery and marketing machine, Amazon bypasses – and reduces the influence of – distributors, wholesalers, bookstore chains and small bookstores. In two earlier posts, I’ve also looked at how Amazon manipulates its best seller lists to feature its own authors. See here and here.
  • Self-publishing is an increasingly viable alternative for authors. In addition, for authors published by the ‘Big 5’, self-publishing offers an alternative source of revenue for books declined by their publishers, a more lucrative option in the face of declining advances, and/or a way to promote their backlists once they regain rights to those books. An increasing share of books are self-published.
  • Self-published authors along with Amazon reach readers directly. They bypass wholesalers and distributors, are infrequently sold through bookstores, and are less likely to be on library shelves.
  • Today, bookstores are roughly 25% of book sales. This means that it’s increasingly difficult for publishers to make the same margins they did in the past publishing a new book.
  • Audience-specific and topic-specific markets – particularly for non-fiction but also for fiction – are the way of the future. Publishers need data and marketing mechanisms to reach them.
  • General trade publishers who created profitable businesses based on selling 80% or more of their titles through bookstores must find, and are finding new mechanisms to reach readers. Unfortunately, Amazon has such a head start that this is a severe uphill climb.
  • E-books have upended the old world. With e-books more than 18 million titles are available at the click of the mouse. As a result older titles are taking a big share of revenue away from new titles.
  • Print on demand changes the need for large print runs. Print-on-demand also means that older titles that might have gone out of print under the 1990s model can in concept remain in print forever.
  • Today, a news event can trigger immediate marketing and sales from the backlist. The emphasis here is on backlist. Such sales undercut the sales of new releases.

Let me add a few of my own thoughts:

  • Bookclubs – remember the book of the month club? – are much less significant than in the past.
  • Between the 1990s and now, several book chains and many small bookstores have disappeared.
  • With the proliferation of cheap books, either through services like BookBub or self-published authors or tools like Amazon Prime, libraries do not have the prominence with readers that they did in the past.
  • Big Box stores sell books at discounted prices. They are one distribution channel Amazon uses to sell print copies of their authors.
  • Through its own pricing strategies, Amazon is training readers to expect cheap books.

According to Mike Shatzkin, all of this means that the notion of ‘general trade publishing’ is almost an anachronism.

DON’T MISS OTHER POSTS ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION.  FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.