Book Writing

Book Writing

The Secret to Writing Best Action Books

Published by Veronica Lane Books on April 24, 2021

The Secret to Writing Best Action Books

 

What Makes a Good Action Book?

While narratives that focus on action can come from many  genres – from spy fiction to high fantasy – they are all also part of a single stylistic school. That is to say that no matter what type of action-orientated story you’re telling, you can benefit from approaching ‘action’ stories as a single genre. Continue reading the blog for some tips on writing your book, especially as a beginner.

Some of the points that make a good action book include:

  • The barer, the better: It’s a nigh-immutable law that good action thrives on brevity. Action scenes should be short, both in the length of the scene and in the way it’s written – single clauses and even a basic vocabulary help to communicate the immediacy and pace of a situation. A curt style throughout an action narrative is to imbue your setting, rather than individual scenes, with the impetus of action. This clipped style creates a consistent world, and one in which action could happen at any time.
  • Sentence length: If your action sequences are built with long-winded sentences full of verbs and descriptions, it will likely confuse and overwhelm your audience. Shorter sentences get to the point more simply, delivering the visual quickly and efficiently, cutting down on bulky filler words.
  • Active voice: Keeping the narrative voice active keeps up the momentum of your story. Readers see how the main characters are actively working and reacting in their environment in what feels like real-time, packing more punch into the syntax and keeping the narrative lively.
  • Character goals: Action should occur for a reason—characters’ actions should be based on their motivations, their points of view, and their previous choices. A character’s goals affect their character development, forcing them to change and evolve depending on the way events unfold in your story.
  • Implement a philosophy: This idea of a central philosophy ties a great deal of whom a character is to the events of the story, and cuts down on the tangents necessary to explore them as individuals. Writers control how readers encounter their world, and so the key to a core philosophy is in redefining what readers should admire and dislike in characters, and in binding all characters to one or two shared standards.
  • Taking action: The key to writing a great action story is all about effective communication. First, you have to understand the central goal of your story, then you have to focus on how the events, dialogue, and actions in your story affect that goal, then you have to communicate this relationship clearly and often to your readers.

 

How to Start an Action Story?

How to Start an Action Story

Here, you introduce the characters and setting of the story world. You set the plot in motion and create questions in the minds of the audience. You’ll begin by introducing the ordinary world where the protagonist is shown doing something they consider normal. Demonstrate their flaws and/or fear to establish empathy in readers. Demonstrate the protagonist’s want. Introduce supporting characters as rich and interesting. Use the description to evoke a sense of their broader culture or background. Don’t allow them to be a meaningless victim, flawless hero, or solely evil antagonist. Every character must have a clear and supporting role for your protagonist. Grab your audience’s attention with a life-threatening inciting incident (causal or coincidental) that launches the global story as soon as possible. Make the stakes clear. Stakes in action stories do not belong in subtext. What can the protagonist gain? What can they lose?

 

How to Create a Good Story Character?

How to Create a Good Story Character

Characters, like people, are imperfect. They don’t need to be likable, but they must be interesting. Here are some tips for effective character development:

  • Develop characters who reflect your interests: The fiction rule “write what you want to know” applies to them as well. Don’t be afraid to invest your protagonist with familiar qualities, but prioritize your passions and make sure that your main characters emerge from the setting and topics you’ve developed so far.
  • Reveal their physical world through detail: Different writers focus on different details to evoke character, whether deliberately or not. Whatever details you choose, it’s important for you to know your characters’ physical world intimately, and how they relate to it.
  • Give them the right skills: Your characters should have skills that will allow them to function in your setting. If you’ve chosen to set your novel on the moon, then make sure your character has a spacesuit or learns how to use one.
  • Create memorable characters: When creating important characters that the reader is going to meet more than once, be sure that they’re memorable in some way. Try to give each one a quirk or quality that can be used later to help readers recall who they are.
  • Give the reader access to their inner conflict: One way to create intimacy with your reader—and to get them to care about your main character—is to use internal monologue. This means letting the reader see a character’s thoughts as they happen, which exposes that person’s inner conflict, motivations, opinions, and personality. Internal monologue not only reveals character: It’s a neat way to convey information about your setting, events, and other characters.
  • Subvert your reader’s expectations: The most interesting characters will surprise your readers. Think about it: We don’t have to pay attention to stable things.

 

How to End an Action Book?

How Do You End a Story

Here, you will include your climax (the resurrection, Hero’s Journey terminology) and the resolution of the global story. The protagonist confronts their fear or flaw, rises to the challenge, and either survives and succeeds against the villain, or fails and dies. The climax plunges the protagonist into a life and death battle. The protagonist outsmarts the antagonist, rather than using their inferior brawn, and lives (prescriptive tale). Or the protagonist fails to outsmart the antagonist and dies (a cautionary tale). Editor Tip for the Prescriptive Tale: Just as the protagonist is about to be killed by the antagonist, enable them to win. Give them sudden courage, ingenuity, a tool, or a revelation that you have subtly foreshadowed–i.e., set up–very early in the story. The ending payoff is where you ramp down the tension and action with scenes that answer the primary story questions. How have the characters changed? What have they learned? If you’re writing a series, the resolution can foreshadow new adventures.

 

How to Publish an Action Book?

get your book published

The Process of Getting Traditionally Published

  • Edit Your Works: The most important step as you begin is to become a ferocious self-editor. Even if you choose to self-publish, the quality of your writing is determined by this. Put your best foot forward by learning to aggressively self-edit until you’re happy with every word. If an agent decides to take you on and/or your manuscript is accepted by a publishing house, it will still go through editing there. But your goal is to make it the best your know-how, so it will get past those first readers—potential agents or acquisition editors.
  • Find an agent: Landing an agent can be just as difficult as landing a publishing deal because they are every bit as discerning regarding a manuscript’s (or an author’s) potential. Agents know the business, the industry, the players—who’s publishing what and who might like what you’ve written.
  • Write a query letter: A query (question) letter is designed to determine whether an agent or publisher might be interested in your manuscript. It’s your first impression—your initial sales call. Make it stimulating and intriguing.
  • Write your proposal: This is the document agents want. For some, it’s the only document they require before asking to see your manuscript. Every word should pique an agent’s interest—your goal is an invitation to send your entire manuscript.

 

The Process of Getting Self-Published

The best way to set yourself apart, besides ferociously self-editing your book, is paying for a professional editor. The biggest mistake many self-published authors make is spending more on design and marketing than on professional editing and proofreading.

Writing quality sets, you apart in a saturated marketplace. Many companies offer all the services you need to self-publish, but some are more trustworthy than others. It takes a lot of success—and sales—to recoup the costs of such services. The more popular platforms to “publish” online include Amazon Createspace, Kindle Direct Publishing, and others.

 

Tips on Writing an Action Book

tips

If you’re looking to write your own action story, the following writing tips may help:

  • Show cause and effect: From the first time your character receives their call to action, follow-up activity with the consequences of their decision. Sometimes the character is causing the action to occur, and other times they’re reeling from the action  that just occurred. Moments can also be built up so that the cause of certain effects or the effects themselves aren’t realized in their entirety until much later.
  • Create visuals: Use an action in a concise, impactful manner to deliver strong images for the audience. The clearer your scenes are, the more easily the audience can understand and absorb them.
  • Drive the story forward: In a great story, the moments in between where the action is happening should still feel alive and like the story is always progressing. Even if your hero isn’t facing off against the villain just yet, the scenes without action should still be driven by the character’s goals—readers or viewers may become disinterested by a sudden slump in energy and stagnancy to the writing. Use montage, flashbacks, or other story writing techniques to keep up the pace while delivering necessary narrative information.
  • Keep action moments short: Action-adventure stories have many moments of high-intensity activity, and they should happen in short spurts so that the reader does not get exhausted with high-octane events.
  • Use effective language: When you write a fight scene or a chase scene, the action is moving quickly, so your language should too. Short sentences packed with powerful images that move at a logical pace are useful in conveying strong action sequences that are easy to visualize. Specific diction can make all the difference in how the action of your story is perceived and how your story is experienced overall.

 

How Can We Help You Publish Your Book?

Hopefully, this blog gave you some insight into writing and publishing of action books.

 

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Thriller Novels: How to Write and Publish

Published by Veronica Lane Books on April 21, 2021

Thriller Novels: How to Write and Publish

 

 

What Are Thriller Books?

Thriller is a genre of fiction, having numerous, often overlapping subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety. Thrillers generally keep the audience on the “edge of their seats” as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. Writing a thriller story is an exciting process and involves various steps. Hope this article act as a guide to help you navigate through this exciting and thrilling process.

A thriller novel devotes most of its focus to suspense, dread, and the fear of a future crime—instead of one that’s already happened. Most mysteries reveal a crime and then require their main characters to work backward to figure out who committed that crime. In a thriller, the bad guy is often established early on, and the main characters must work to stop them from doing evil. The Jack Reacher series, written by Lee Child, and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series for young adults serve as examples of high-stakes thriller novels. Thriller sub-genres include:

  1. Horror thrillers: Horror thrillers angle a classic suspense story toward the terrifying and grotesque. Many horror novels include a supernatural element, although monsters, aliens, and evil spirits extend to many corners of the broader thriller genre.
  2. Legal thrillers: These thrillers take place within the confines of the court system.
  3. Psychological thrillers: A psychological thriller novel finds the terror in madness and paranoia.
  4. Epic thrillers: An epic thriller often involves the highest of stakes. In an epic thriller like Stephen King’s The Stand, humanity itself is imperiled.

 

Thriller Book Title Ideas

Thriller Book Title Ideas

Thriller fiction titles are often short and punchy. They can be stark and contradictory. Think of The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold are some good examples. The titles of crime and thriller novels are mostly fewer than five words, and they are easy to remember. The tone of these books is often clinical, menacing, and macabre. The mood created is suspenseful, unsettling, and stark. The title you give it will have a life of its own. It is the first thing a reader will notice. You need to think about agents and editors, plot and characters, the reader, and market trends. The title is what people see first. It’s what they remember when they go home to look the book up. It’s what they say when they recommend the book to others. It’s the most important marketing decision that a writer can make because, while a good title can’t make a book popular, it can certainly keep a book from getting sold.

Some points to consider while naming  your book:

  1. It should suit your genre.
  2. It must have something to do with the plot.
  3. It should be easy to remember.
  4. It should appeal to the reader on an emotional and intellectual level.
  5. It should be easy to pronounce.
  6. Short names are better. As a rule, most book titles are three words. Most books do not have a title longer than five words.
  7. Visual titles work well.
  8. The title should also reveal a bit about the soul/theme of your book.

 

Thriller Book Plot Ideas

In terms of literature, a thriller is any story that “thrills” the reader—i.e., gets the adrenaline pumping, the heart racing, and the emotions peaked. As you can guess, that makes it fairly broad. The ability to see a story idea hiding in the mundane is one of the most valuable creative writing skills you can develop. Sometimes all it takes when confronting the blank page is a handful of story prompts and a willingness to see where they take you. Any story can generate excitement, suspense, interest, and exhilaration, but because these are the primary goals of the thriller genre, its authors have laser-focused expertise in keeping a reader interested. Use these fiction writing prompts as writing exercises or to work through writer’s block. They will surely help the beginners to get started:

Atmosphere

  1. Go out into the world and observe an ordinary scene: Write it down in your notebook, filling at least one page with a description of the setting and the people in it. Now change the story, and imagine that everything you’ve just described is not what it seems, but that a whole secret underworld exists within the scene. Let yourself be paranoid.
  2. Select two stories at random from any news source, and plausibly link them: Write down a description of how the two stories are secretly related. Tease out unexpected connections between the people and elements of both stories. Don’t be afraid to make unusual leaps.
  3. Put a dark twist on a well-worn cliché from the fairy tales you grew up with: Adopt the perspective of the villain, or a minor character, and tell the story from anywhere but the beginning.
  4. Write a story loosely based on real life, but take it in a different direction: Write a story that begins based on any ordinary aspect of life, but then diverges from reality.
  5. Leverage dramatic irony to ramp up the suspense: Create suspense throughout the story and use dramatic irony effectively.
  6. Build a suspense story around science fiction tropes: Write a dystopian, sci-fi world defined by continual blackouts, where fire, light, and a few traces of outdated technology define survival and are scarce enough to kill for.
  7. Have fun with a weird idea: Go for the unthinkable and try exploring it further.

 

How to Write a Good Thriller Story?

How to Write a Good Thriller Story

A few key tips can unlock the secrets of thriller writing—and the suspense, tension, and plot twists that keep readers on the edge of their seats. This is the common structure or framework followed for all the thriller books.

  1. Make your main character compelling: Good thrillers often feature protagonists that are flawed and complex. On the one hand, your protagonist should be strong or skilled enough to overcome the obstacles they’ll inevitably face. On the other hand, readers relate to imperfect heroes, and having the main character with flaws will increase the tension and stakes of your story. Before writing, brainstorm elements of your protagonist’s backstory. Having a deep, three-dimensional main character is an essential ingredient of a successful thriller.
  2. Make sure your opening scene has plenty of action: When writing thrillers, the opening scene is particularly important. Readers should be on the edge of their seats from the very first page. The opening scene of a thriller novel should introduce the crime, conflict, or stakes as quickly as possible. Don’t worry about character backstory or exposition just yet. The best thrillers hook their readers with instant action, then fill in the necessary character and storyline information later.
  3. Create an interesting villain: In the same way that your protagonist should be flawed and complex, your central villain should not simply be pure evil. Even if their actions are unforgivable, their motivations should be rooted in a relatable desire or emotion. Readers are more likely to be engaged in your villain’s story and character development if they can recognize seeds of themselves in your antagonist.
  4. Build obstacles for your protagonist: If there’s one thing that all bestselling authors of thrillers are good at, it’s putting their characters in harm’s way. Your main character should experience heartbreak, trauma, and anxiety throughout the book. Sometimes, the most effective obstacle is a ticking clock or strict time limit to complete their task. This will ensure that readers are constantly rooting for your protagonist and will continue to flip the pages to see how the hero wriggles out of danger. Obstacles will also increase the narrative satisfaction of the end of the book when your protagonist finally overcomes the hurdles and triumphs over adversity.
  5. Add plenty of plot twists and turning points: More so than any other genre, thriller novel writing requires the story to contain an abundance of plot twists, turning points, and cliffhangers. If you’re experiencing writer’s block when writing a scene, ask yourself what a reader might expect to happen next. How can you subvert those expectations? If a scene feels uneventful, think about what plot element or character you can introduce to raise the stakes or create a dilemma for your protagonist. Plot twists will ensure that your thriller is a page-turner and make it impossible for your reader to put it down.

 

How to Start a Thriller Story?

How Do You Begin a Story

Write the opening, but don’t get hung up here. This scene is crucial, and the weight of it can cripple you right out the gate. Don’t let that happen. Just write the scene, and move on. Later, when you have a better handle on the tone and direction of the story, you can return with laser focus and perfect this scene. The three things to remember are to start with a character, in a setting, with a problem. And make the reader care about what happens next. The opening scene is a pivotal moment in any book. In thrillers, it’s especially important because you need to start with action from the get-go. Oftentimes starting in media res is a good way to accomplish this. Avoid an “info dump” where you accidentally include too many irrelevant background details. You don’t necessarily need to start with murder — in fact, in some thrillers, there isn’t one at all, or it doesn’t happen until halfway through the novel — but you need to start with something exciting that sets the protagonist in motion.

 

How to End a Thriller Story?

How Do You End a Story

The climax is a pivotal scene in your book, so make sure you dedicate time to polishing it and make it really shine. In particular, it may be helpful to write the climax first so that you already know where your characters need to end up. Once you’ve established that, you can pave their way through your plot twists. A satisfying ending isn’t necessarily a “happily ever after.” Keep in mind the kind of story you’ve been telling so far and make sure the ending fits well. In some cases, you may want to completely tie all the threads and answer all the questions. Or you might want to leave it as an open ending, where the final conclusions are left to the reader’s interpretation. If you plan to write a series of books, then a cliffhanger might be the way to keep readers on the hook. Whatever kind of conclusion you go for, remember that it’s always necessary to wrap up the current action so that there’s a sense of satisfaction at the end of the book.

 

How to Publish a Thriller Book?

get published

 

The first step in becoming a published thriller author, naturally, is to write a great book! If you’ve added layers of suspense, amped up the chills and thrills to 11, and gotten solid feedback from your initial test readers, it might be time to think about unleashing your creation on the world. To make the most of your author career, you need a great partner—someone who knows the ins and outs of the publishing world as well as you know every twist and turn of your plot. To get your book published, you might need help with every aspect of publishing your thriller from plotting to branding, publishing, distribution, marketing, and more. Approaching a publishing company can be helpful in such cases. One might also opt for self-publishing or online publishing of their works.

 

 

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How to Write a Bestselling Romance Book?

Published by Veronica Lane Books on April 17, 2021

How to Write a Bestselling Romance Book?

 

What Makes a Good Romance Book?

A romance novel is a work of extended prose fiction with a theme of love. According to the Romance Writers of America, a romance novel must have a central focus on the development of a romantic relationship between two people. The other criteria for a romance novel are that it must have an emotional through line and build to an optimistic conclusion.

Readers come to the genre knowing they will (almost) always get a happy ending in which the protagonists find and profess their love. To entice readers, writers must therefore deliver a fresh premise with strong, evocative prose and pacing that gets to the heart of the story — usually beginning with the protagonists meeting in the first chapter. These will be the elements that usually prompt someone to pick up the book and start reading. Most importantly, the writer’s crafting of the two main characters and their emotional journeys is what will keep the reader hooked.

 

The must-have elements that will make readers go back to re-read it again and again? Here’s a list of essential elements to support good romance story ideas:

  1. Interesting characters: The two main characters in a romance novel need to be three-dimensional and lovable. Lovable, by the way, doesn’t mean perfect. Characters with flaws and imperfections have much more depth.
  2. Believable conflict: What keeps the lovers apart has to be a real obstacle.
  3. Emotions: Romance readers read for the emotions. They want to experience the growing emotional connection between the two main characters and to fall in love with them too.
  4. Magic: In a good romance, there’s something almost magical about a couple. What they have needs to be very special. Readers will re-read those magical moments again and again.
  5. A happily ever after (HEA): Romances need a happy ending. That doesn’t mean that everything about the characters’ lives has to be perfect in the end, but readers have to believe that the characters will master all problems life throws at them together.

 

How to Write a Good Romance Book?

How to Write a Good Romance Book

Romance bestsellers have many things in common: strong characters, a compelling love story, and steamy love scenes. This list will surely act as a guide for beginners. Here are some writing steps and tips to consider when writing your romance novel:

  1. Choose your subgenre: The romance genre contains numerous subgenres. The most successful romance writers write within a specific niche, which allows them to set their love story within a context they’re passionate about.
  2. Make your main characters compelling: Writing romance requires strong main characters. A reader’s engagement with the story will likely be determined by the chemistry of your protagonists. Make sure your characters have compelling backstories that inform their points of view about romantic relationships. The best romance authors know how to create rich, complex characters to fuel the love story.
  3. Set the stage effectively: Setting is paramount in romance. No matter where your story’s set, the most important thing is that it is immersive and feels real. A memorable setting will capture readers’ imaginations and create a vivid backdrop for your romance novel.
  4. Write a strong main couple: Romance is an extremely character-driven genre, so your main couple needs to have your readers head over heels.
  5. Use tried-and-true tropes: Romance tropes exist for a reason. Consider the most common romance tropes and brainstorm how you can subvert them in your work. Here are just a few tried-and-true devices that many romance authors have used successfully:
  • Friends/enemies to lovers
  • One helps the other one heal
  • Choosing each other all over again
  1. Carefully construct intimate scenes: You can’t talk about writing romance without touching on physically intimate scenes — though this doesn’t necessarily mean sex scenes or even almost-sex scenes. No matter how explicit: be careful about how you write them. Craft all descriptions of physical intimacy with a light touch, and only after sufficient buildup — make your readers eagerly anticipate each encounter. Also try to steer away from overwrought, euphemism-filled romantic language that can border on parody. Your intimate scenes shouldn’t exist for their own sake: They should advance the plot or show character development in some way.
  2. Don’t neglect secondary characters: While the main couple is obviously where most of your characterization focus should be, secondary characters are critical to a well-rounded romance. Secondary characters fill out the world of your romance novel. Friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and even arch-enemies — say, someone who’s competing with one of your main characters for the other character’s interest — all contribute to making the story come to life.
  3. Give your main couple a happy ending: One of the implicit promises of the romance genre is that of the happy ending. No matter how much turbulence your main couple experiences throughout your novel, they should end up in each other’s arms. It doesn’t need to be a “happily ever after,” but it should at least be a “happy for now”: something to reassure the reader that these two characters are stable for the foreseeable future. However, there are special cases that don’t adhere to this rule. The ending of your novel should also tie up any loose threads that you weave throughout the narrative.

 

How to Start a Romance Book?

How to Start a Romance Book

Figuring out where to start telling your story is one of the bigger challenges you face. When you’re deciding where and when to begin, keep the following options in mind:

  1. Start with one of your two main characters. Readers expect the first character they meet in the story to be either the hero or the heroine (and most often it is the heroine), and they’re immediately prepared to care about this person.
  2. Start with action. A good option is to show the main character at the point when that character’s life is disrupted by some kind of danger or threat. Starting with action is particularly effective when the situation is easily understood or the peril is something the readers can relate to.
  3. Start with an attention-getting statement. When the readers are presented with something they don’t expect, they will read on to find out what the heck’s happening.

 

How to Introduce Characters in a Romance Book?

How to Introduce Characters in a Romance Book

Good writing is filled with memorable character introductions. Here is some writing advice to help you introduce your characters as effectively as possible:

  1. Don’t get bogged down in physical appearance: It’s tempting to focus on physical character descriptions. However, one should focus on describing a character’s personality and actions. Use your reader’s imagination to your advantage, that way the character is more likely to stick in the reader’s mind.
  2. Give your character a memorable character trait: Giving your character memorable character traits or mannerisms early in the writing process can help you create distinct, instantly memorable characters.
  3. Start with backstory when appropriate: When you’re introducing a new character, it can be helpful to begin by describing the character’s backstory. However, it should be relevant to the character’s eventual story arc, focusing on formative events in the character’s life that support that arc.
  4. Introduce a character through action. Whether it’s the main character, one of your minor characters, or one of the bad guys, watching a character undergo a daily task or routine is a great way to give the reader a sense of who they are and how they interact with the world around them.
  5. Introduce the main character as soon as possible: Try to introduce your main character in the first chapter, which will allow the reader to become invested in the story and your hero’s journey as quickly as possible.

 

How to End a Romance Book?

How to End a Romance Book

In a romance novel, we’re striving for a “happy ending,” one that will leave the reader with the confidence that many years down the road, this couple will still be together. They will be able to overcome all of life’s unhappiness and find the strength to make it through in each other, which means we must spend the majority of our story showing the reader that these two people can make their own happy ending. However, various novels diverge from such a framework and go for something unexpected. Here are some tips to ensure that you end your book the perfect way:

  1. Don’t introduce any new characters or subplots: Any appearances within the last 50 pages should have been foreshadowed earlier, even if mysteriously.
  2. Don’t describe, muse, explain, or philosophize: Keep description to a minimum, but maximize action and conflict. You have placed all your charges. Now, light the fuse and run.
  3. Do create that sense of Oh, wow! : Your best novelties and biggest surprises should go here. Readers love it when some early, trivial detail plays a part in the finale.
  4. Do enmesh your reader deeply in the outcome. Get her so involved that she cannot put down your novel to go to bed, to work, or even to the bathroom until she sees how it turns out.
  5. Do resolve the central conflict: You don’t have to provide a happily-ever-after ending, but do try to uplift.
  6. Do tie up loose ends of significance:  Every question you planted in a reader’s mind should be addressed, even if the answer is to say that a character will address that issue later after the book ends.

 

How to Publish a Romance Book?

get published

If you want to sell a romance, you should probably write a romance. One wrote it is time to sell it. Honestly, writing a romance novel might be the hardest step. Instead of perfect you should focus on making your story more compelling. A critique group is very helpful. Along the same lines as critique groups, some people wonder whether they should join professional writing organizations. Before you submit to anyone, revise again. But before you submit to anyone, do your agent/publisher research. You should know which stories are popular and who is representing and publishing what kind of story. Make a list of those publishers or agents you want to submit to. Make sure they are legit (review Pr editors & Editors online for starters); there are a lot of scammers out there, ready to take advantage of eager new writers. Submission is a fairly accurate word for the process. Craft your query/cover letter to exquisite perfection. Yes, this time perfection does matter. These days, most editors and agents post submission guidelines on their websites. Follow these guidelines. An agent may not be necessary. An agent has access to the people a writer may not have.

There are many publication options for writers these days. Only you can decide what you want from your writing career—a small press, e-publishing with Amazon and Smashwords, a big New York house, eternal self-aggrandizing wankery, etc. Talk to other writers about their experiences and take their advice the same way you took the advice of your critique partners: with gratitude and a grain of salt. Get the story done first because the business doesn’t matter if you don’t have a story. As an author, one needs to have a working knowledge of (among other things): Contracts, promotion and marketing, and business planning. Carina Press, Harper Impulse, Loveswept & Flirt, Forever and Forever Yours, and others are some well known romance novel publishers.

 

Self-Publishing VS Independent Publishing

Self-publishing

  • Self-publishing: You are your own publisher in this instance. You handle all your own publishing, editing, marketing, and sales. However, there are self-publishing platforms that you can use. KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), Smashwords, and LuLu all offer services and tools to help you self-publish. You have the complete freedom of absolutely every single choice with your book. From the cover art, glossy or matte finish, the price, distribution channels, formats. Everything. However, this can be incredibly daunting, especially for first-time authors. Yes, you can buy services, but that’s not the same as having the support and expertise from a publishing company, always. Marketing and sales are probably the main disadvantages. If you haven’t published a book before or don’t have that big of a following, all your hard work might go unnoticed. With self-publishing, you pay a lot of upfront costs, and you need to ensure that you see those investments play out.

 

  • Independent publishing: Independent publishing is when a publishing company publishes the work of an author. An independent (indie) publisher is defined as one that operates on its own, rather than as part of any large corporation or conglomerate.In comparison to commercial publishers, independent publishers are interested in something else. They make their own decision, not based on profit or quantity…but quality. They have complete autonomy of all decisions, with no restrictions. They don’t publish what people consider to be popular, they publish, quite simply, what they believe in. An excellent independent publisher will also guide you through every step (and hurdle) in the publishing process. From the beginning, say, editing and proofreading, to the end with marketing and sales. Help with marketing and sales is crucial for first-time authors. With independent publishing, you still get freedom and autonomy, but with somebody there (with extensive experience) guiding you through the entire process. Another benefit of independent publishing lies in its popularity.

 

How Can We Help You Publish Your Book?

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SECRETS OF BOOK WRITING

Published by Veronica Lane Books on March 5, 2021

SECRETS OF BOOK WRITING

SECRETS OF BOOK WRITING

 

What is Book Writing?

Most of us have a great idea of a book in our heads but face difficulty in writing our book or figuring out how to get it published. Anyone with a story to tell can write a book, either for their enjoyment and publish for all to see. Getting started is often the hardest part, however, with proper planning one can successfully write the story which they have in store. Book writing is a special skill where one presents the story, following proper frameworks and the process. Book writing is an art and very few can master it. However, with proper guidance and a clear thought process, one can be able to write a book successfully. The blog focuses on various tips and ideas on the basics of writing a book. Book writing for beginners can be challenging, however with determination, and following the book writing process, one can succeed.

 

What is a Good Title for a Book?

Good Title for a Book

The title is the first thing the reader sees or hears about your book—even before the cover in most cases—and getting it right is the single most important book marketing decision you’ll make. The title forms the basis of the reader’s judgment about your book. Spend time figuring out the best possible title for your book, because it will largely determine what people think about your book, and thus, your book’s success. A good title should have all of these attributes:

 

  1. Attention-grabbing: The right title helps you stand out and make that important first impression. You can be provocative, controversial, exciting, make a promise, etc. The point is your title should make people stop and pay attention to it.
  2. Memorable & searchable: Remember, a book’s title is not only the first thing a reader hears about your book, it’s the one piece of information that a reader has that leads them back to the book itself. This also means you want the book title to be easily searchable. In the world we live in, a search is how people find things now. If your title does not lend itself to easy memorization and searchability on Google and Amazon, that is very bad.
  3. Informative: This is the least crucial aspect for fiction books, but very important for non-fiction. The title, including the subtitle, should give the reader some sort of idea of what the book is about. Though your book title should be informative and easily understood, it doesn’t need to spell out the whole book idea.
  4. Easy & not embarrassing to say: Having an easy-to-say title is a concept called cognitive fluency. It means people are more likely to remember and respond to words and phrases they can immediately understand and pronounce. Don’t try to be sophisticated at the risk of being obscure. One of the most important things to think about when picking your book title is word of mouth.
  5. Short: Generally speaking, shorter titles are best. A short title is not only more memorable and easier to say for your target audience, but it also gives space and flexibility for a better book cover. One-word titles are the best. In the title, stick to the core idea. If you want to get wordy, then leave that to the subtitle. If you can, aim to keep the main title around 5 words or less. The subtitle can offer context or tell a bit more about what the reader will learn.

 

How to Begin Book Writing?

Begin Book Writing

Deciding to start writing a book is intimidating, especially if you’re a beginner. Here are some steps on how to start writing your book:

 

  1. Start by setting Up Your Book Writing Environment

One of the most important things to remember if you want to start writing a book is designing a writing space that allows your creativity to flourish unhindered. Create an environment that is designed to help you stay focused. Here are a few guidelines:

  • Have collections of inspiration.
  • Unclutter your space.
  • Be Flexible.
  • Create a music playlist for inspiration:
  • Try Multiple Locations.
  1. Start Writing by Developing a Writing Habit

The number one reason authors fail to publish a book is that they never finish the book they intend to publish. Why? Because they didn’t form a good writing habit. Feeling overwhelmed when writing a book is natural, but you must remember that this journey always begins with the first page. And to write your first page, you must take action.

  1. Create an Outline Before You Start Writing

A clear book outline provides clarity and direction to your story. It is also the roadmap for your book that keeps you on track and ensures you have all your ideas organized in a natural flow. Before you write, spend some time creating your outline with these steps:

  • Brainstorm: List every thought and story idea you want in your book by creating a mind map.
  • Organize: Combine all related ideas.
  • Order: Arrange ideas into subsections from general to specific.
  • Label: Create main and subheadings that will eventually be your chapters.
  1. Work on ONLY Writing

One challenge many authors experience is taking on multiple new projects when they should be focused on one because their minds are full of amazing book ideas. Although enticing, the division of attention can spread your energy thin producing bad writing or worse, failure to complete your book.

  1. Maintain Your Focus

Once you get into the flow of starting your book, you want to remain focused through the duration of your writing session. Leave the distractions behind by creating a writing schedule and keeping aside all the possible distractions.

 

Schedule Your Writing Time

  1. Schedule Your Writing Time

Scheduling your writing time using a calendar is an important step to be efficient and keep a track of how much you are writing.

  1. Start by Dealing With Writing Distractions First

Distractions can hinder you and your desire to start writing a book. Resistance is a common obstacle that can distract us for too long. It’s a form of fear that intimidates you from writing and can throw you off your writer’s flow. Reading morning affirmations, exercising, and free-flow writing for 10 minutes can be useful.

 

How to End a Book?

How Do You End a Story

If you want to become a better author, learning how to end a book well is crucial. The goal of a great ending is to tie everything together, neatly summarize your book, and then provide a specific call or calls to action for your reader. Don’t overcomplicate the conclusion—just let it do its job, and it’ll work great. Here are some tips to end your book:

 

  1. Build to an intriguing climax

A great ending is all in the build-up. A taut climax isn’t equally important for every genre. How do you build to a climactic novel ending?

  • Make it harder for characters to reach their objectives – what stands in their way?
  • If applicable to your story, increase characters’ peril.
  • Vary pace – write shorter scenes and chapters to increase momentum.
  • Keep the largest confrontations between characters for your final chapters. Hint at their approach.
  1. Make sure your ending is earned, not improbable

Usually, the ending that makes sense follows the simple logic of cause and effect. This doesn’t mean that you cannot have an outlandish, fantastical or unexpected ending. There are very few absolute rules when it comes to writing fiction. Yet laying the groundwork for your ending and building the anticipation of a specific outcome creates a sense of direction and objective.

Bring on The Twists

  1. Leave room for readers’ imaginations

An ending doesn’t have to be the last nail in your character’s coffin. Story endings that leave room for readers’ imaginations are enjoyable because readers get to picture what comes next, without being told. A little mystery, a few incompletions remains.

  1. Bring home how your characters have changed

A story lies in change. Showing how your characters have changed at the end of your novel as they’ve reached (or fallen short of) their objectives creates a satisfying sense of development.

  1. Use the ‘5 W’s’ to create finality

In addition to showing how characters have changed, use the ‘5 w’s’ – who, what, why, where, and when – as a whole.

  1. Restate the book’s mission/thesis

This is pretty simple, but make sure you restate the book’s thesis. From the first chapter to the final chapter, your book’s primary message should be consistent.

 

How to Organize Book Writing?

Organize Book Writing

Here are some writing tips to help you organize your latest book project:

  1. Begin with written brainstorming: Before you can organize your ideas, you’ll need to come up with the ideas in the first place. Set aside plenty of writing time each day, and write down whatever ideas come to mind.
  2. Put your ideas down on note cards: By now, you should have a notebook or computer document filled with ideas. It’s time to transition away from brainstorming and note-taking and begin organizing. Take all of your ideas—whether they’re scenes, character needs, or plotlines—and write them down on individual index cards or sticky notes. Continue this method until all of your novel’s main points, important scenes, and random ideas are copied onto note cards.
  3. Arrange the cards in roughly chronological order: Once all of your ideas are on notecards, it’s time to put them in order. If certain notecards don’t seem to fit in with the broader scope of the story, place them off to the side for now. With all your cards laid out, you should start to get a big-picture sense of how your story looks.
  4. Fill in the holes: Based on your notecard outline, ask yourself: Which characters need to be further developed? Which subplots need to be fleshed out? Which storylines need to be reworked? Focus on making sure your characters have strong motivations and that your plot moves are earned. Seeing your novel laid out in notecard form should help you visually identify what still needs to be done for your story to track.
  5. Transfer your outline back to paper. By now, you should have a bunch of notecards that form the rough outline of your story. Copy the scene ideas back onto paper or a Word document, so that your outline is all in one place.

 

Writing an EBook

Writing an EBook

An eBook, or “electronic book,” is a book that is digitally distributed. EBooks have various benefits

  • EBooks can be used to move your potential customers down the sales funnel.
  • EBooks can have smooth navigation and plenty of visuals to keep the reader engaged to the very end.
  • EBooks can help you establish yourself as an industry expert thanks to the in-depth analysis of a topic.
  • EBooks can be stored and shared in an easy-to-access format, printed out partly or as a whole, and distributed with minimal effort on your side.
  • Build trust with your readers
  • Increase traffic to your site

Here are 8 steps to write your eBook:

 

  • Choose a topic: Having a clear vision when choosing your eBook topic will make your writing process much easier. Choose your topic based on the goals you want to accomplish with it, not necessarily your interests. Also, consider your expertise and what your audience has to say.
  • Build your chapter outline: Once you’ve figured out the specific topic for your eBook, write a chapter outline that provides valuable information about your main topic.
  • Write your eBook one chapter at a time: You can break through the overwhelming fear of writing an eBook by treating each chapter as a single unit.
  • Write the introduction and conclusion: Don’t take your eBook’s introduction and conclusion lightly—they may be the only sections some people read.
  • Proofread and edit: Don’t edit as you write. Instead, finish your manuscript first, and then edit the whole document.
  • Format and design: Once you have the body of your eBook ready to go, it’s time to format and design it to create an optimal reading experience for your audience.
  • Publish: Making it to this step means your eBook is ready for the world.
  • Promote your new eBook: Writing an eBook takes time and energy, but an even bigger challenge may be finding people to read it. Sending it to your email list and asking readers to share it, scheduling social media posts to announce it, targeting your audience with social media ads are some ways.

 

Is Book Writing Profitable?

Book Writing

We imagine a successful author’s life to be idyllic. The reality couldn’t be more different. A typical book author barely makes more than minimum wage. You receive an advance and 10% royalties on net profit from each book. You’ll make money as an author, not from the sales of your book, but from the relationships, you create with your books. Producers pay them a lot of money for the opportunity to capitalize on the relationships they’ve forged with their readers, and to give their fans a deeper experience with the stories they’ve come to know and love. 70% of books don’t make a profit. If it’s not profitable, why do so many people write books? Because being an author opens the door for other opportunities like speaking, training programs, and consulting. Plus, it makes your parents proud.

 Thus writing a book is a long and exciting journey and will bear fruit only with hard work, determination and interest. Hopefully, this article will be of some help to you in writing a book.

 

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