29th July 2016 | for Creatives | writing, reaching your audience, Stephen Gregg |
"Skip the dull set up. The audience craves the compelling parts, even likes the quick mental work of filling in the gaps."
"Conflict is all. Watching combat—dialogue back and forth—transfixes an audience like a tennis match. They won't have time to get bored."
"I say this with great honesty: I always approach a book by writing about the thing that keeps me up at night. What is really waking me up or keeping me from falling asleep? What am I grappling with? And then I think, I cannot be the only one on this planet thinking about this right now. I can't be the only one worried about this. I start with whatever that experience is, and I just keep peeling it until it's more of the raw experience, and that's where I think fiction steps in."
"I do believe that making one's book free remains an effective way to reach new readers who might not otherwise take a chance on your book. I've had a number of positive reviews from readers who said they liked my book but would never have downloaded if it weren't free. I do not agree with the argument that an author who makes his book free is inviting bad reviews from those readers who are trying a novel that is not in their preferred genre and may be less inclined to like it. I believe a good book is a good book, and anything you can do to attract a new reader is worthwhile."
"I'm inspired when I literally can't put a book down. I'll leave the dishes in the sink. I'll bore friends and family talking about people they don't know and situations they've never read. In short, I'm pitching to everyone around me. If a book connects with me to that extent, it will connect with others. The biggest seller of books is still word of mouth, and the most successful books are those people can't stop talkinga about, agents included."
"I don't think an author should try specifically to write a series (or a stand-alone) due to any idea of the market. A concept either cries out to be written over the course of several books with a story arc big enough to support it—some threads that tie up satisfyingly in each book with others that demand more time and effort to resolve—or it doesn't. Writing two books where one is called for or three where a duology would do only means there's a sagging middle somewhere."
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