On Writing: The Essence and Passion of a Story

Last year Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted 22 rules of storytelling. Now that I’m knee-deep into a first draft again (writing the sequel to my m/m/m menage MORE), I keep going back to some of those tips she mentioned when it comes to the basics of storytelling.

Two of my favorites are:
 

“Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.” -- Emma Coats

“What's the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.” -- Emma Coats

 

I think these go hand in hand when writing a first draft. I have to know the basics of what I’m trying to say and I have to be driven to share that story. I believe if the author lacks a passion for writing any particular story, the readers can tell.

When first starting a novel-length book, if I don’t have a firm grasp on the core concept of the story as well as the passion to tell that story, I stumble my way through the first draft, going back over the plot outline and who the characters are at their core until I land on the truth of what I’m trying to say.

Some questions I ask myself:

- Who are these men? What do they believe about love? What goals do they have in life? What are their biggest dreams? What are their biggest fears? All of these can help drive the plot.

- What are the basics of the plot in one sentence? One paragraph?

- What is the ending of the story? What happens just before the ending? How are the characters emotionally impacted by the conclusion of the plot?

- What in my own life (what experiences, dreams, hopes, imaginations) is influencing me to write this story?

- What is it about my own beliefs and passions about living life that stirs me to write this story about these characters?

For me the journey of discovering all this is what makes storytelling such a powerful, enjoyable experience. It may stretch out the process of writing that initial draft, but I think my stories would not be the same (and neither would I) without it.

You can read the full list of Coats’s tweets here:
The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar
 


Award-winning author Sloan Parker writes passionate, dramatic stories about two men (or more) falling in love. Sloan enjoys writing in the fictional world because in fiction you can be anything, do anything...even fall in love for the first time over and over again. She lives in Ohio with her partner and their neurotic cats where her greatest moments in life are spent with her family, her friends, and her characters. You can learn more about Sloan and her writing at www.sloanparker.com.

When You Need a Laugh

After a really long week, I’m in the mood to share something light and fun. The following are Twitter hashtags and users who occasionally give me a laugh or share an interesting fact or quote. Even if you aren’t on Twitter, you can still click on the links and check them out. I’ve included a sampling of tweets with each hashtag or Twitter user listed below.

(For those of you who are not familiar with a hashtag, it’s a way for users to search and follow themed content across all tweets by using the # symbol to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet.)


#FiveWordsAfterSex

• Note to self: Buy batteries (via @TweakerTweets)
   
• I can't feel my legs (via @Brownskin_Mo)
   
• Round four in the shower (via @Arii_B_SoReal)
   
• Guess you're not Gay (via @Treehousecasino) 

@OMGFactsSex

• Despite conventional wisdom, men are actually more romantic than women! --- http://ow.ly/6J0pE
   
• An identical twin has 20-50% chance of being gay if the other is
   
• People have had sex 'on' the Moon! How so? -- http://t.co/BpTYPTjk
   
• Men's testosterones levels rise by 45.7% after 7 days of not ejaculating! Details -- http://t.co/Ab7Szmy9
   
• 34% of men admitted that they told lies to have sex

#sexquote

• Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night. - Rodney Dangerfield (via @Regeene)
   
• Having sex is like playing bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand. - Woody Allen (via @Regeene)
   
• Sex is like air; it's not important unless you aren't getting any. (via @MeghanJade)

#WorstPickUpLines

• I like your clothes, I bed they'd look even better on my bedroom floor (via @387wagner)
   
• girl I know yo feet hurt cause you been runnin through my mind all night! (via @FromLA_France)
   
• Do you like clocks? (Yes.) Put two hands and a face on this. (Point down) (via @SindeeDanger)
   
• Are my undies showing? Answer: "No." You: "Would you like them to? (via @The_WunderKind)

Do you have a hashtag or user you follow that gives you a good laugh?

Tweetaholic? More on Book Promotion

I promised last week that I would write this week about Twitter, so I’m doing it even though I really want to tell you about my new DOG!!!! Well, I’ll tell you a little because she is sitting on my lap right now. She is a papillon, butterfly in French, and has the giant butterfly ears to prove it. She is A-dorable. No name selected yet, but we’re considering Jolie which means pretty in French or Poppy.

Okay, on to social media. As I said last week, I’m not a social media expert. I’m just sharing my personal experience, both as an author and a PR person. Last week we talked about Facebook and said it is a very personal platform. Twitter is a different animal. I am a Tweetaholic and use Twitter more than Facebook (although I appreciate Facebook more all the time). Twitter is far more a “broadcast” medium.  Much of the world’s news – earthquakes, fires, floods, divorces-- appears first on Twitter. On Twitter, you have “followers” and you want to have a lot of them because every one is a potential reader or friend of a reader. Start by following other writers – there are tons of them on Twitter. Not only do writers read a lot, they also have people who read them who might also want to read you. Yes, you only have 140 characters, but you get used to packing a lot into that short form, plus a link to something like your blog, your book buy link, a YouTube video, etc. (This post, for example, will be tweeted several times today.) 

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is ephemeral. You Tweet, it goes out, maybe it gets “retweeted” if people are interested, and it goes away. So you can come back later and tweet about the same thing. But, like on Facebook, you can’t be too pushy. People will unfollow you if you try to sell all the time. Only about a third of your tweets should be salesy. The rest should offer useful information, be retweets of other people, and comments on their tweets. While not as personal as Facebook, Twitter is still social, and the way you treat people matters.

People freak out over Twitter wondering how on earth they can read all those tweets, especially when you get over 1,000 followers. The answer is “you can’t”. You get an organizational tool like TweetDeck or Seesmic and use it to organize your tweets. You soon start to get a sense of who you want to follow most closely. When you come onto Twitter, you read the tweets you see and maybe comment on some. That might develop a new friend from somewhere in the world. One day I saw a tweet about a movie someone liked. I asked where she saw it. She said “the city”. I said Los Angeles? She said, no, Vienna!  A very international  platform.

Mostly, on Twitter, you comment on the people who have mentioned you. It sounds hard, but you’ll get the hang of it. There are regular events like Follow Friday when you can recognize people and they may recognize you and perhaps follow you in return. Regularly, you should follow people who interest you (Twitter will make suggestions or you can look at the lists of people you follow) and they may follow you back. Some people hate the relentless nature of Twitter. But it’s a fabulous place to promote your blog, your book, your book tour. You’ll find new people that you may want to friend on Facebook or Goodreads. It’s a must for self promotion by an author. Set aside a few minutes a couple or three times a day to participate. Just always remember that book promotion is more about the book than the promotion.  Which one do you like better?  Twitter or Facebook?  Why?

Also, if you pop over to my Book BLOG and follow and/or leave a comment, you may WIN a copy of Genetic Attraction, my M/M/F menage now available from Loose Id. 

Book Promotion: Start Before You Need To

I have a dear friend who is a NYT best-selling author who retired recently, partly due to the need to promote her own books. Back in the glory days, publishers did most all the promotion, and authors just had to show up. Not so today. Even the best are expected to promote themselves.

I’m new to fiction writing, so I don’t know any better. Plus, I differ from many authors in that I have a background in public relations, so I take to the promotion stuff pretty easily. I don’t yet know how my promotional activities will pay off in sales, if at all. After all, I’m brand new. But I have had writer friends ask me to talk about what I do for promotion. So over the next few posts, if people want, I’ll talk about various aspects of book promotion from my very newbie viewpoint.

First, start before you need to. I put up my author blog, http://taralain.blogspot.com, back last June before I had even submitted my books to Loose Id. I created the blog to support what I wanted my “brand identity” to be. (Please forgive these over used words. You get the idea.) I wrote about other people’s books in my genre. I did special reports on kissing, on androgyny, and lots of pictures of beautiful men. I developed a small following, and have continued to post to the blog about twice a week. I monitor it daily on Google Analytics to see how it falls off between posts, and which posts are most popular. Most important, the blog helped make some people aware of me. I promote the blog continuously on Twitter and Facebook, and developed more awareness there. (The use of Twitter and FB are subjects for another post.)

After my first book was accepted for publication, I took Christy Lockhart’s suggestion and started posting on craft topics – where the ideas come from, writing your passion, etc I still did racy and funny videos and pictures to keep up the image. These posts built my following further.

Also upon acceptance of the novel, I developed my website. I figured people would now start to check it out, and I needed an authoritative platform to show I was a serious author. Please note, I developed both my blog and my website myself. I have very limited technical skills, and they don’t look very slick or professional, but I know how to change them myself without relying on a webmaster. Updating your site is the key to ongoing traffic building, so, for now, I’m trading the look for the ease-of-use – and the low cost.

Well in advance of publication, I also started blogging at Savvy Authors and collecting friends on Goodreads. Some of LI’s authors were kind enough to invite me to participate in their Yahoo chats. The bottom line is that before my book came out, there were people waiting for it and people who knew my name. Now, whether they bought it, THAT’S another story I won’t know for weeks and months to come. LOL!!

What do you do well in advance of a release to “prime the pump”? : )

Genetic Attraction is NOW AVAILABLE: http://www.loose-id.com/Genetic-Attraction.aspx

Want to see some of my promotional activities? I'll discuss different tools in future posts:

E-mail: tara@taralain.com

Website: http://www.taralain.com

Author blog: http://taralain.blogspot.com

Book blog: http://beautifulboysbooks.blogspot.com

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4541791.Tara_Lain

Savvy Authors: http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/member.php?2398-Tara-Lain

Twitter: http://twitter.com/taralain

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Tara-Lain/100001514105686

Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue

I joined Twitter the day before yesterday. Tweet Yeah, me. After I said I'd never add my voice to ever increasing volume of white noise that surrounds us.

So what changed my mind? A couple of things. I think maybe first and foremost, my sibs are on Twitter and when I was expressing my dismay over this fact, they came back with, "In your business you're crazy not to be on Twitter."

In your business.

Oh yeah.

THAT.

Like all writers I know, I spend a lot of time (when I'm not wracking my brains for a new way to say the same thing after already saying it thirty plus times) wondering about the best way -- or any way -- to reach new readers. New target readers. Meaning the kind of reader who will actually read a gay erotic mystery or adventure and enjoy it. Targeting all mystery readers or all erotic reeaders or all readers is a common mistake of newbie (or desperate) writers. I know I need to focus my efforts, but how and where?

And so I experiment. And Twitter is one of those bubbling green fluids in my brimming test tube.

The other thing that changed my mind -- or at least opened it -- was when I started thinking of Twitter as a news feed as opposed to merely yet another social network. Not that social networks aren't fun, but these days I need to combine my fun with business. That's just how it is at this stage of the game.

When I saw the organizations and people I could subscribe to (AKA "follow") I admit I was kind of excited. I'm currently following Food and Wine magazine, The New Yorker, the Smithsonian...and a lot of my fellow writers. And...well, it's fun. More fun than I thought it would be, as a matter of fact.

Oddly enough it feels even looser and more friendly than Face Book, and its short format makes it easier to chat and share passing random thoughts about everything from what I'm hearing on the news to what I'm working on. It's...well, interesting. And it's yet another way to network and promote, which is what I need. What we all need to succeed in a very competitive field.

But that started me thinking how vital is promotion? Is it possible to network and promote a dog of a book into a bestseller? I used to think not, but evidence seems to indicate otherwise. I can see that it might work for a book or two, but can you promote your way into a successful writing career even if you can't write?

Is it possible to over-promote? I think so. There are writers I refuse to consider merely because they get so much acclaim and I just think...well, I don't like them and I probably wouldn't like their work. I mean, I don't know them, chances are I would like them since everyone seems to, but it's an example of how promo and marketing can backfire. I actually prefer it when certain things I love are mostly undiscovered except by me and a handful of folks in the know. Is that a weird thing? Probably.

Or is it all so subjective that really everyone can write, and there's no such thing as a bad book, and maybe it's all just me? That particular book just isn't for me? (I don't believe that, for the record, but YMMV.)

Enywhooooooo, inquiring minds want to know. And since it's a while since I've done a giveaway here at Loose Ends, I'm offering a free cyber set of the Dangerous Ground books -- Dangerous Ground, Old Poison, and the brand new release Blood Heat -- to a randomly selected commenter. So comment! Share your thoughts.

Oh, er, and don't forget to follow me on, er, Tweet.