I was chatting with fantasy author Carol Berg earlier today. I asked her about issues that new fantasy writers have. The thing I see new fantasy writers do a lot is spend so much thought on world building that they ignore adding any depth or logic to their characters. When I am critiquing for writers … Read more
Speculative Fiction is a marketing category that includes the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, alternative history, dystopian, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and superhero fiction. Speculative fiction asks what if reality were different? This is the common story question that runs through the genres, though the focus of each genre is different. Note there is some debate … Read more
I was scrolling through a Twitter pitch fest a while back where I favorited pitches I liked. If I favorited the tweeted pitches, then the authors knew to send me their pages. There are several of these pitch parties on Twitter, including #PitMad* and #Pit2Pub*. My point, though, is if you scroll through the pitches, … Read more
We’ve been talking about genre-specific tropes for the last several weeks. Tropes, or story patterns, are an important concept to learn if you write genre fiction. Why? Because writers need to know how to market their books. Because booksellers need to know where to put books on the shelf Because readers have expectations that what they purchase … Read more
Tropes DAMMIT! So What the Hell? Who cares about all this shit? I was asked this the other day in reference to why I have been focusing on genre tropes for the last several weeks. Here’s an example of why genre and trope matters. I was recently approached by a person who wrote a book. … Read more
We’ve been discussing genre fiction for the last several weeks with a focus on crime fiction. This week we focus on a subgenre of crime fiction called the Whodunnit. A Whodunnit is closely related to the private eye novel, which we discussed last week. Also called a murder mystery, the Whodunnit is primarily focused on … Read more
Characters The protagonist or main character of the private eye is usually someone with a strong moral center who wants justice for justice’s sake. Money is an aside. They are usually loners and work alone, though there is often a junior partner or sidekick that assists them and does the busy work. PIs are outsiders … Read more
I have an author friend who signed with one of the big 5 publishers* a few years ago. She has done well by many standards. She has received great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. She has received various accolades denoting her writing talent. She has a huge social media following. She works hard and works … Read more
This week I’d thought we’d focus on crime fiction. In case you are not familiar, crime fiction is that genre category that fictionalises crime on some level. If you are thinking about writing crime fiction here are some stats to help with your decision. We will discuss techniques on a later post. Miscellaneous goodies: In … Read more
e We’ve been talking about the romance genre over the last couple of weeks. Romance is the hottest selling genre of any the mass market fiction category, which means that if you are an established writer of romance, chances are you are doing very well for yourself. But how do you break into becoming a … Read more