Monday, March 14, 2011

The wonderful world of writing

Is it enough to write a good story? I'm sure many of you have heard "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The same can be said about writing a good story, "A good story is in the eye of the beholder." Some may believe a great plot is what makes a good story; however, some people will disagree with that. In fact although you have a great plot, if your story is not written well some will say it's not a good story. Education is paramount for a writer these days. There are many things to consider when you seek to have your book published. A good story is a well written story.


To begin with your writing should avoid using passive voice. Your style of writing should use more active verbs to bring your writing to life. You don't want to rely on your adjectives or adverbs. In fact you should consider eliminating most of them from your writing. Use concrete details to engross the reader into wanting to read on.

Now lets say you have done all this, will you get published now? Probably not. I know that's not what you wanted to hear but you need to know the truth. Now you need a great query letter. This query should be 250 words or less and good enough to entice an agent into requesting more. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Of course there are websites on the internet to help you understand and write that perfect query letter, yet some people still take months and countless rewrites to get it right, myself included.

Once we get that perfect query letter, now we ready, right? Wrong. Now we need a synopsis. Some may consider a synopsis evil, I agree, none the less, you might as well have one ready because an agent might require it. You see, you're not finished writing yet. You're finding yourself writing more about your writing than writing. I know it doesn't make sense, but you still have to go through it.

But finally you're done, right? Wrong. Now you have to build a platform, which means create a blog or some other media to promote your book. I know you thought the publishing house was going to do that for you. They want to see you already have a platform to build on otherwise they may not be willing to publish you.

By now you're probably thinking, "I'll self publish my book, it's easier." Wrong. Now you have to start all over because there is a different list you have to go through to achieve success with your book. That, however, is a whole different subject.

Welcome to the world of writing.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, you are so right on all these things! And the list doesn't end even after you publish your first book. It just gets BIGGER!

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  2. When it comes to publishing, there's a lot to learn! Your post does a great job of pointing that out.

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