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By Deborah Riley Magnus

Seriously. I know no one likes to hear this, even my clients who are not of the Author persuasion, but without a business plan you are going NOWHERE.

It is vital to have a business plan because your books and you are the products to be sold. It makes most writers queasy to even imagine selling themselves but without a plan, you can hardly figure out a way for your book to sell itself. Think of it as a map getting you from staving writer to successful author.

Since I’m talking to writers, I’ve decided to take this nice and easy, no sudden movements or anything like that. Let’s start with a simple comparison … if you want to write a book, what do you need? Don’t say ‘nothing but your imagination’ because we both know that’s not so. You need a slamming idea and you need some talent.

Any writer can write a book, good bad or mediocre, but only an author knows s/he also needs to write a business plan because only a successful author knows s/he is now in business.

AT WHAT POINT DO YOU START A BOOK BUSINESS PLAN?

I’m going to toss this out so duck if you’re too afraid to catch but … the Book Business Plan starts when the book starts. A Book Business Plan covers all aspects of the product. At the moment you begin a novel or non-fiction book, you must already have a clear vision of the message, the audience and even the venues where it can be sold. This isn’t wishful thinking, guys and gals, THIS is the beginning of your plan.

My strongest suggestion has always been to ask the book business plan developer (that’s you) to start at the end. Start with your goal. Don’t be ridiculous and say you intend to be the next Dan Brown or Charlaine Harris, but trust that with the right strategy, you CAN be the next Dan Brown or Charlaine Harris eventually. They too had to go through this process, and as we all know, ya gotta pay your dues.

So, realize that when you start writing your book, you also should start writing your Book Business Plan. If your book is finished, it’s not too late, so no excuses there.

HOW TO WRITE A BOOK BUSINESS PLAN

Ready? Take a deep breath. Now, imagine you’re sitting at the bank, talking across the desk to the loan manager and asking for money. What’s he going to ask you? Those are the questions you need to answer when putting together your business plan.

1) How much money to you want? This should be an easy answer. How successful do you want to be? Think of the imaginary loan amount as the financial success you want to gain from your book sales. Be realistic, you most likely won’t make millions with your first novel, but if you set the right strategy, you could make millions down the road with your fourth, fifth or sixteenth book. Honestly, few authors are millionaires, but there’s no reason why you can’t be one.
2) How do you plan to organize and manage your product? Exactly what is your plan for dealing with the organization and management of your book(s)? Should you have a publicist? Do you need an advertising agency? A book video? Imprinted bookmarks or tee shirts? Remember to research everything and be sure of the success rate for each element you want to employ. It’s a lot to think about. Can you do it alone (after all, who knows your book better than you do)? Managing the product means clearly understanding it. So now is a good time to face the fact that YOU are the product. Your creativity, your talent as a writer, your expertise, your personality, your skills … your book(s).
3) Who will want to buy your product? Now is the time to jot down all those people who will want your book, why they’ll want it and how effective they’ll be at getting more people to want it. Know – really know – who your readership target is. Are they men? Women? Nothing is stranger than discovering more men read your book than women when you thought the complete opposite. Knowing your target reader is as important as knowing good spelling and grammar. It will determine the venues you choose when the book is ready to be sold. After clarifying your target, you can develop the perfect hook for your target. This is the bee line to reaching your market.
4) What makes your product so special? You better know this or put down your pen right now. No point in writing a book if you don’t know why or if it’s special. Many writers write books they’d love to read, many write books marketing studies show readers are buying, some write books because the subject is risky or has never been explored before. KNOW why you and your book are special. It’s the backbone of a successful Book Business Plan.
5) How do you plan to promote your product? Ugh, here’s where most writers cower into a corner. Relax. You know people, lots of people. And those people know people. You gotta put yourself out there. Of course there are the “big” things you must do; social networking, book events, gaining interviews, speaking engagements, seeking book reviews and attending book shows, but don’t forget your friends. Most writers have or have had another life, another career or another circle of activity that has made their lives full. People like to support people they know. This is a powerful, easy tool to enhance the “big” stuff mentioned earlier.
6) What are your marketing strategies? Think about it. Yes, it’s cool to have your book available on Amazon or in your local book store, but where else might it fit in perfectly? Stretch your mind and think this through. If your novel is about travel, maybe you should seek distribution at a travel agency or on travel agency websites. If the story revolves around people drinking coffee, cafes often sell gift items and books. Is the story about wine? Wineries have wonderful gift shops. If your novel is historic in nature, perhaps museum gift stores can be a venue. Be creative, after all, that’s what writers do … think creatively.
7) What if you fail? Forget it. I have a very strong theory that failure is just a lack of seeking success. When someone tells you you can’t do something or market a book that way … try it anyway. Chances are it just hasn’t been tried or it hasn’t proven effective for someone less aggressive or creative. There’s a slogan I use with my clients. “We are the can-do team.” Go on, tell me I can’t and guess what … I do. So can you.

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Todays post is exceedingly short
frankly i forgot this was my week
i have been busy  with narrators
and reviewing the back log of audio i have on my desktop

but that doesnt help you any does it?

Todays topic is audio erotica

the one thing i find as a repeated theme is this
even narrators aren’t really sure what audio erotica is

and authors arent sure how to write for it

so here is a little question for you
if the spoken word is story telling
then audio erotica is ________________go ahead fill in the blank

when polling people i got a lot of different answers
there are a few

  • some said it was porn for your ears
  • orgasms and words
  • several said it was sex stories
  • soft core sex stories as if making a difference
  • some took it seriously and said its just for women or gay men (a few even went so far as to say that straight men dont like, listen to or buy audio erotic stories)

that last part made me laugh because most of my clients are straight men with some pretty heavy audio erotic fantasies

but even if you jumbled them up and put them all together none of these answers actually is right
because audio erotica  like the spoken word is ALSO story telling

i know
it makes life easier to take if we put things into specific little cubicles
if we take something we dont know very much about and stick it somewhere were we dont have to be challenged by it then it is easier to forget or discount
but then if i let you do that then i wouldnt be doing my job
see i truly believe i am here to help you break down those compartmental walls

consider this
a well told story
can be told in pictures, audio and text
a well told story holds the reader/listener/viewer and makes them experience emotion

it doesnt matter if it is history, romance, erotica, fiction or non-fiction a well told story transcends

i know a great many of you will NEVER EVER record your work or even consider it
but maybe you might consider this

when i was in art school
one of my favorite professors remarked that a well made piece of art could be turned upside down or sideways and still be a well made and appreciated

now apply that to your story
if it is read with the eyes and captures the reader
how well will it stand up to being read aloud
is it still as powerful
if you answered yes
then you’re one of the fortunate few

so go ahead try it – and let me know how it reads – text and audio

links are appreciated!

this has been oceania for writesex.net

you can find more of me, oceania on radioactivesex.com; sensualwords.com and the new up and coming pureobsessions.com

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With NaNoWriMo coming up, it’s worth addressing the central conceit of the NaNoWriMo concept, which is — if you’ll allow me to take a few liberties that may piss off the punters — that you should just write, no matter what, without pausing — and without an outline. That’s the way to get a novel out of you.

I agree and I don’t. Personally, I like novels that write themselves. But not every novel wants to write itself.

Outlines are a critical part of the novel-writing process for most successful novelists. Their importance simply cannot be overstated. Writers who pump out book after book of quality prose about spunky ballerinas finding romance and homicide detectives hunting serial killers and winemakers solving crimes about cheese — those people almost all write with outlines, and tight ones, too. If it’s your first novel or your hundredth, you should do whatever works for you, but personally I wouldn’t trade the crazed madness of writing a novel without an outline for all the tea in Buckingham Palace.

That’s when the novel seems to write itself. It’s awesome. Writing a novel without an outline is the bomb.

Writers are very much split on whether doing so is a good idea or the most dangerous kind of antisocial lunacy. I tend to fall into the latter camp; writing a novel without an outline is definitely antisocial lunacy and should be avoided if you value your sanity, your interpersonal relationships, your job, the tendons of your forearms — and, most of all, your time.

But you’re not me, and therefore there are no significant consequences to my advocating that you do stupid shit.

Writing a novel without an outline is unquestionably dangerous — you could end up with a mess. The truth is, you’ll probably end up with a mess. If you make a habit of this, you may end up like me — the proud possessor of a hard drive packed with few dozen 20,000-word innovatively-cross-genre turds that steam so bad sometimes you gotta open the windows. But the experience of writing a big narrative with total abandon is something that I simply can’t give up. The problem is, that kind of muse doesn’t necessary come when you call her. She’s much like a cat in that regard. Nine times out of ten she knows you’re looking, and you can bite her.

What outlines can do for a novelist is force you to break your narrative into manageable chunks. When I write novels (or feature-length screenplays) to a tight outline, I lose the experience of sitting there tear-assing through six scenes in a sitting with no idea what’s coming next, which is a hell of a feeling. But like I said. I get that feeling a lot, then realize I have no idea what’s coming next. For this reason, I have many, many more half-novels than novels. Most novelists do.

But I also have many more outlines than novels. Hell, I have more outlines than first chapters! It’s easier for me to write an outline than it is to write a first chapter, and you know who enjoys reading them? Uh…no one. Not even me.

The point is, you can tear through an outline and think you have the framework for a novel. But from a reader perspective, there is no framework for a novel. The framework is the novel.

There’s no one answer as to whether you should outline, except to say that if it works for you, everyone else’s opinion is irrelevant. But it’s worth mentioning that most of the really accomplished genre novelists I know — I mean the kind of people who put out a book a year or more, and have been doing it repeatedly for a while — outline like fiends. Their outlines or “treatments” are incredibly detailed. Why, just this past week, science fiction legend Norman Spinrad, by way of crowdsourcing his novel queries, freely published a 113-page treatment of his next novel. James Ellroy of LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia fame writes novel outlines hundreds of pages long, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro once told me she outlines novels so thoroughly that she never has to rewrite (and, in my experience, her novels read tight).

If you’ve never written a novel, there’s a chance when it comes, it’ll just happen. You won’t need an outline because the thing will be winking at you from your computer screen, and you will have just typed END. Sure, everyone you know may think you’ve vanished off the face of the earth, and there may be an eviction notice on the door, and you may be about to get your power shut off because you haven’t paid the bill in twelve weeks. You may need a payment plan with the power company, but you still won’t need an outline. If this is how it goes down, mazel tov.

This sort of first-novel experience occurred with me on two separate occasions. That’s right; I received the lightning strike of having not one but two first novels just kind of explode out of me, in different decades, because they were in thoroughly unrelated genres. It’s an awesome feeling, a little bit like being high. High on life! High on life and six shots of bourbon. And the cocaine exports of Peru and Colombia put together. And these funny pink pills some weird guy in an overcoat sold you for $3 and a bus transfer over on 16th and Mission…

If that sounds like fun, great. If that sounds sustainable over the course of a professional career, you’re either more näive than I am, or you have way bigger brass ones.

If you’ve never written a novel and you’re trying to, or if you’ve written lots of them and you’re trying to write the next one, it won’t do you any good to bellyache about the novel that won’t write itself.

Sometimes you gotta make them write themselves. And then? An outline can be your best friend.

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How important are titles? I hear this question at almost every writing workshop or panel I attend.

The answer is that titles are very important for books. Would you have ever wanted to read “Two Mules in Harness”? Or see the movie. Luckily, Margret Mitchell changed the title of her book to “Gone with the Wind” – a much more romantic and intriguing title. What is gone with the wind?, potential readers are likely to ask themselves.

Then there was the book about women who were daughters of alcoholics who fell in love with men who turned out to be alcoholics. All these women were obsessed with their men and would do anything for them and take any form of abuse from them. Publisher Jeremy Tarcher read the ms, and felt that the idea of women who would do anything and take any form of abuse was much larger and would appeal to a much larger audience than a book just about women with alcoholic fathers who chose men like dad. He put the author through six drafts (paying her extra to do it) and retitled the book “Women who Love too Much.” And since there is hardly a woman [or man] who doesn’t feel she loved too much at least once in her life, the book became a must have as millions of women wanted to know why they acted like that and how they could stop.

In case you don’t get the urge to purchase “Trimalchio in West Egg,” you may be surprised to learn that you have probably read it, or seen the movie, and may even have a copy of “The Great Gatsby” on your bookshelves.

Some titles practically guarantee big sales. Consider these titles, for instance, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but were Afraid to Ask” and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Or these recent novels “Angels and Demons,” “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

Titles can make or break a book. Because the title is often the first thing someone learns about a book. If it is captivating or compelling or raises a powerful question in the reader’s mind or makes a promise, one is more likely to pause and consider the book and that is 2/3s of selling a book to a reader right there.

A good title with a bit of sizzle or sell to it even makes it easier to find a publisher for a book. They know that if the title catches their interest, it is likely to catch a reader’s interest as well.

Alright, you may be saying, it makes sense that dreaming up a good title is important if you are writing a book, but is a great title essential for a short story?

Well, no, in the sense of selling it. But, yes, in another sense. Let me explain.

If your story appears in an anthology or magazine, it is the title of that anthology or magazine that will impact and hopefully sell the general public.

So in that sense, the title of your story doesn’t need to be great to sell an editor, because the title of any one story will not have any impact on the public buying the publication it is in. The perceived quality of the story is what sells the editor. If a story for an anthology is good, you can call it something as pedestrian as “Lesbian Encounter” or “Gay Story” and an editor will take it. And if they are busy and fighting deadlines, they may never think to retitle it.

On the other hand, if you want your story or stories to be remembered, don’t just make them memorable, because people often remember really good stories they read, but if the title wasn’t memorable, can’t recall it. In the long run, giving your story a memorable title may even earn you additional sales, as anthologists may remember it when looking for stories to reprint.

Harlan Ellison could have called his story “The Rebel” and any scifi editor would have been happy to buy it. But readers remembered the story forever, and it was remembered well enough to be nominated for and win awards, when he titled it “Repent, Harlequin, Said the Tick-tock Man.” He scored another title bullseye when he came up with “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.”

Or Richard O’Connell could have titled his story “Choice,” but who can forget “The Lady or the Tiger?”

As for Fitzgerald, who having heard it once can forget the title, “A Diamond as Big as the Ritz.”

So if you want your work to live and be remembered a cool, stick in the mind title will take a good story a long way toward immortality.

No matter how you look at it, or what the media, a good title is a good idea, and a necessity over all. It might not be essential for selling the story the first time, but it might go a long way toward helping sell it again. And again. And again.

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“The shock of September 11 is subsiding. Each day adds distance. Distance diminishes fear. Cautiously our lives are returning to normal. But “normal” will never be the same again. We have seen the enemy and the enemy is among us …. the publishers, producers, peddlers and purveyors of pornography.”

It didn’t take me long to find that quote. It came from an LDS Web site, Meridian Magazine, but I could have picked fifty others. In light of that kind of hatred, I think it’s time to have a chat about what it can mean to … well, do what we do.

We write pornography. Say it with me: por-nog-ra-phy. Not erotica – a word too many writers use to distance themselves, or even elevate themselves, from the down and dirty stuff on most adult bookstore shelves – but smut, filth … and so forth.

I’ve mentioned before how it’s dangerous to draw a line in the sand, putting fellow writers on the side of smut and others in erotica. The Supreme Court couldn’t decide where to scrawl that mark – what chance do we have?

What good are our petty semantics when too many people would love to see us out of business or thrown in jail? They don’t see any difference between what I write and what you write. We can sit and argue all we like over who’s innocent and who’s guilty until our last meals arrive, but we’ll still hang together.

I think it’s time to face some serious facts. Hyperbole aside, we face some serious risks for putting pen to paper or file to disk. I know far too many people who have been fired, stalked, threatened, had their writing used against them in divorces and child custody cases, and much worse.

People hate us. Not everyone, certainly, but even in oases like San Francisco, people who write about sex can suffer tremendous difficulties. Even the most – supposedly – tolerant companies have a hard time with an employee who writes smut. A liberal court will still look down on a defendant who’s published stories in Naughty Nurses. The religious fanatic will most certainly throw the first, second, third stone – or as many as it takes – at a filth peddler.

This is what we have to accept. Sure, things are better than they have been before and, if we’re lucky, they will slowly progress, but we all have to open our eyes to the ugly truths that can accompany a decision to write pornography.

What can we do? Well, aside from calling the ACLU, there isn’t a lot to we can directly do to protect ourselves if the law, or Bible-wielding fanatics, break down our doors – but there are a few relatively simple techniques you can employ to be safe. Take these as you will, and keep in mind that I’m not an expert in the law, but never forget that what you’re doing can be dangerous.

* Assess your risks. If you have kids, have a sensitive job, own a house, have touchy parents, or live in a conservative city or state, you should be extra careful about your identity. Even if you think you have nothing to lose, you do – your freedom. Many cities and states have very loose pornography laws, and all it would take is a cop, a sheriff, or a district attorney to decide you needed to be behind bars to put you there.

* Hide. Yes, I think we should all be proud of what we do, what we create, but use some common sense about how easily you can be identified or found: use a pseudonym and a post office box, never post your picture, and so forth. Women, especially, should be extra careful. I know far too many female writers who have been stalked or Internet-attacked because of what they do.

* Keep your yap shut. Don’t tell your bank, your boss, your accountant, your plumber, or anyone at all, what you do. When someone asks, I say I’m a writer. If I know them better, I say I write all kinds of things – including smut. If I know them very, very, very well, then maybe I’ll show them my newest book. People (it shouldn’t have to be said) are very weird. Just because you like someone doesn’t mean you should divulge that you just sold a story to Truckstop Transsexuals.

* Remember that line we drew between pornography and erotica? Well, here’s another: you might be straight, you might be bi, but in the eyes of those who despise pornography you are just as damned and perverted as a filthy sodomite. It makes me furious to meet a homophobic pornographer. Every strike against gay rights is another blow to your civil liberties and is a step closer to you being censored, out of a job, out of your house, or in jail. You can argue this all you want, but I’ve yet to see a hysterical homophobe who isn’t anti-smut. For you to be anti-gay isn’t just an idiotic prejudice, it’s giving the forces of puritanical righteousness even more ammunition for their war.

I could go on, but I think I’ve given you enough to chew on. I believe that writing about sex is something that no one should be ashamed of, but I also think that we all need to recognize and accept that there are many out there who do not share those feelings. Write what you want, say what you believe, but do it with your eyes open. Understand the risks, accept the risks and be smart about what you do – so you can keep working and growing as a writer for many years to come.

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I’ve been pondering the question of what SEO is and how to write it, since it looks like I am to be your go-to-guy over this specific aspect of adult writing (and boy, if I’m your go-to-guy you are in trouble big!) but I realize I don’t have much to teach. So, so long and thanks for all the fish (if you know what this is from you get an extra prize in your Kracker Jack bucko), thanks for having me, don’t forget to tip your waitress and please, try the veal.

Ok, I’m joking. I do have some tips, advice, lead-you-down-the-garden-path nudges to nudge you with.

First of all, all SEO mean is search engine optimization, which in turn translates to mean (in our context here) writing copy that has key words in it. Say you have a site where you have Asian hookers displaying themselves on cam (a client I actually did do work for) and you want people (adults) to come to your site, pay a monthly fee and peruse the girls, in order to get people to your site you need to let them know you Asian hooker cam girls exists, right?  One of the ways you do this is to hire incredibly talented writers like me (and good looking to, let’s not forget that!) to write press releases, webcopy that will appear on your website, blogs, articles and in the case of this client, short fiction featuring Asian girls. The trick of course was in all of the above writing I had to make sure to include various key words or key word phrases that we knew would ‘tag’ this site when one was scrolling through Google etc, possibly looking for Asian cam girls or any variation on that theme. At that time I was working with my great friend and SEO expert, Lisa W. (Lisa has blogged here before) and Lisa was the one who did the keyword search for our client and later, took my copy to ad Meta Tags (and don’t ask me about Meta Tags, I don’t know how to do them, look them up…you want everything for free here!) The point is, once the keywords are established (in the above case words like ‘Asian’ ‘Oriental’ ‘flower’ ranked high as did all the variations on various Asian ethnicities) I knew what I had to work with. ‘Stuffing’ these words is looked down upon (putting too many phrases or keywords into copy where is reads terribly and obvious, like “The New York Botanical Garden is open year round, which is unusual seeing that no other New York Botanical Garden in New York is open year round, simply because New York’s Botanical Garden’s are at the mercy of New York’s terrible winter weather which can greatly affect Botanical Gardens) as is simply pluralizing the same word over and over. So the trick for me, and a pretty good writing challenge, was to bring this client fiction, articles, etc. with plenty of keywords in it, to be picked up later by search engines, but to make the copy sing.

This is the essence of SEO writing…as far as the writing is concerned. Like I said, dear sweat Lisa, truly the brains of our operation (but not just brains, she’s a cutie too) was the one who took my stuff and added the tags, ran the analytics for the client to keep up on what was working and what not, and generally made what I did, the writing, work so the client got hits.

The specifics of what works and what doesn’t in all this I will save for another piece.

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By Sascha Illyvich

Since I started covering plot basics, I have noticed a trend in authors. The fact that so many authors have no idea how or where their stories are going is bad because it slows down the writing process. Romance novels, whether erotic or not, have the same basic formula.

Revisited:
Hero meets Heroine
They end up in bed.
Conflict separates them
Conflict is conquered due to necessary character growth
HEA or HFN.

In that plot structure, we have to get across all of those elements just to write a story. Assuming we’re writing novel length stories (60,000 words and up) not only do we have to incorporate those elements into the story but writers must figure out what that conflict is, how it affects characters and how the story will progress. How do we achieve this?

We break our story into four acts. Three if we’re being lazy or don’t need to throw in action. This applies to movies, plays, screenplays, every form of entertainment.

Simplified, the typical Four Act Outline is as such:

Act One: Inciting Incident – What is the eternal incident that brings the characters together?
Act Two: Crisis/Ordeal – This is where we begin to throw internal issues of the characters into things.
Act Three: Confrontation – Our characters confront the issue and deal with it. If it’s an action story, a villain and H/H all share the same issue only the villain either dies a megalomaniac or fails to learn the lesson after it’s too late.

Look familiar? It should. This is ESSENTIAL to any story of ANY genre. What makes this work is the fact that it takes the reader on an emotional ride that should go through a variety of feelings so that we bond with the characters. We identify with them. Think back on the last book you read that you really enjoyed. Why did you like it?

Ultimately it’s because you probably identified with the characters and their struggle. In romance, erotic or not, the struggle is to escape loneliness and find that one person who will complete you. So our conflict and issues should revolve around why the H/H cannot be together despite all odds, until they figure out the need for growth. This happens at the end of Act Two and leads us into the Third Act with new behavior patterns.

In my next post we’ll cover how to extend the Acts and what should theoretically go next as well as how and where to write sex into our stories.

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by oceania

click here for the audio podcast

I am going to give you a tidbit….

I received a submission recently from a woman looking for help.
She wanted to narrate erotic stories.
Her voice was unusual,
but pleasing.
So i sent her a sample to read
and that is exactly what she did.
She read every single word

My first reaction was
It’s audio!
It’s for the ears!
Don’t you realize …
and that is when i stopped in mid-thought
No, she didn’t realize!
And the majority of narrators don’t realize

This isnt grade school. We don’t read every word – We project emotion
see, As a voice talent you have some artistic license in the erotic/romance realm.
For example if you had to read the following line
“I hate you!” Clare cried.

Should you read the line word for word?
HELL NO!

Remember you are not a text reader when you record an audio story. If Clare cried you bring the water works on. If she yelled and screamed then you yell, scream and throw a temper-tantrum when you deliver the lines!

It’s fairly simple!
People want to feel the words and they wont feel them if you just read it! You have to be the words, be the story and the characters and feel the emotions!

I mean really feel it and then telegraphic them to the audience in a clear voice.

Now that is harder than it sounds and does take practice!
So if Clare cried I HATE YOU! it doesn’t make one damn bit of good if the words are muffled between sobs, or if the crying is louder than the words and requires the listener to replay the scene just to know what you said.

Keep in mind that real life may be stranger than fiction, but fiction has to be believable! Well audio has to be even more so!

Here is an example from the movies:
The room is dimly lit and sparely furnished. The drapes are open and there is a sheen on the wood floors. A woman walks across the room. She is wearing high heels. You expect to hear the click clack of those heels as she crosses the room but the sound guy, as hard as he might, cant give you the sound you want to hear. It is up to the foley expert to reproduce that sound.

You’re the foley guy!
This is performance art and should be written and then performed as such!
You have to make it believable!
There are no crutches to lean on – no pictures, no video – just your voice and the imagination of the listener.

With that kind of power you flood an stadium with orgasms.

So ready for the test?
I would like you to record the line:

“Shut up and Fuck me!”, she(or he) said whispering low.
add a link to it in the comment area below!
I look forward to your read!
Oceania

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Most writers and authors I know are so much more. They are mothers and fathers, caregivers, homemakers, cooks and bread winners. They work day (or night) jobs as accountants, factory workers, cashiers, salespeople, business owners and top executives. They all struggle with finding the balance between their writing passion, their family and meeting their mortgage. Life is complicated enough without trying to write, but every one of them is driven, obsessed with their plots and characters, striving for perfection with the written word and usually dog tired. They’re courageous and talented and among the most creative and busy people I know.

Now, add negotiating the shifting paradigm of the publishing industry and what do you get? A borderline crazy person. Some writers are new and baffled by the currently vacillating publishing maze. Some are embedded in the original publishing business model and having a difficult time accepting the reality of this new landscape.

I’m proposing that change is deceivingly simple; it’s just our mindset that makes it appear complicated. Don’t panic.

Breathe.

THE QUAKING LANDSCAPE. Rising up from all this upheaval is more promise and potential than a writer ever had. There are more options and more variations available today than ever before in publishing. All should be looked at, dissected and considered for making intelligent choices. Traditional publishing, sprouting indie publishers, POD, e-publishing, market shifts in reader genre preferences, purchasing outlets and how the reader likes to read a book. (Kindle? Hardcopy? Online?). Yes, it seems like the zoo has gotten overpopulated, but really … the reader base has expanded vastly and that’s a good thing. Honest.

Breathe.

NO MATTER HOW YOU PUBLISH, YOU MUST MARKET. All authors are terrified of this prospect but in truth, I have never met a writer who isn’t so completely sure of their story, that in a few excited words they can’t sell it. You CAN speak in front of a group. You CAN talk to the media. You CAN do this. All an author needs to do is believe it and make the time for it. Time was carved from a hectic, full life to write the book, there’s no logic in deserting your baby just as it’s about to take flight.

Breathe.

MAKE PLANS. Don’t shy away from this, it’s no different than plotting your novel. All you’re doing now is plotting your success. You need a book business plan, a marketing plan, an author platform and a book platform, a press campaign plan, a speaking engagement/event/book signing plan and a plan for your next book. Close your eyes and imagine the success you want, then simply get it down on paper.

Breathe.

DEALING WITH PROFESSIONALS. Of course, you may have a literary agent and you will have a publisher to deal with. Those are based on your informed choice and you deal with them as you would your doctor or lawyer; respect them, stand your ground and smile. But there are other professionals, all clamoring for your attention, your project, your money and a coveted place on your coattail should you make it big.

There are knowledgeable people everywhere and they’re knocking on your door. You’re no longer a lone, private writer tapping away at your keyboard. Now, you’re visible. Early on you may have come across an Author’s Liaison, a newly created professional geared toward helping writers find self or join publication for their novel. If you’re not super duper computer savvy, you may be either approached by, or on the prowl for, a website designer. Later, when your book is a reality, you’ll meet local media people, bookstore owners (real and cyber) and a slew of other authors. All these people are brimming with great advice and want to help you … some for a cost. You’ll consider hiring an assistant to help organize all the wonderful book events and speaking engagements you see in your future. Then you’ll notice that all these eclectic, scattered, dismembered efforts require someone to pull them all together and keep them targeted and you may consider hiring a publicist.

Here is a vital piece of advice regarding any and all of these professionals: If they don’t know when to hold your hand and say “Breathe”, then they’re not worth their salt, much less their fee.

Everyone clambering to be part of your future success is not always there to support you, the author. Everyone you come across who loves your book and knows someone who knows someone related to Jeffrey Katzenberg or Oprah, is not necessarily your ticket to the big time. They may be, but keep your head on straight and don’t forget to …Breathe.
.
Breathe deep and do it often, with intent and determination to remain centered and think clearly. This is where all those plans you made earlier come into play. They target the goals and help you keep your eye on the prize. With the right attitude you can attract the right professionals to get where you want to go. The best professionals understand that there are times an author needs to be reminded to step back, think, and enjoy the ride.
Be happy and remember to …

Breathe.

For more information on Deborah Riley-Magnus and/or the Author Success workshops she’s teaching:

PARADIGM WARRIORS
Author Success Coach
Publicity Marketing Promotions
[email protected]

I blog – http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/
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In this post, I’m going to address in my own special way one of the recurring problems of a writer’s life. Many of us find that while we’re in a writing phase, we can’t seem to read. It’s not just about time, it’s about attention.

For what it’s worth, I’m going to argue that you gotta. Ignore me at your peril, but then, listen to me at your peril. Do what works for you, because when it comes right down to it, I don’t know shit.

All I’m trying to do is remind you — or maybe remind myself — why you sat down in that stupid chair to begin with. We all began writing because at some point writing something down seemed like a better idea than doing the dishes or emptying the litter box. Locked up in the problems of fiction, it’s way too easy to forget why it ever did.

Anyway, here’s the story:

Recently, while lost in a finger-gallop reverie in the virtual pages of my newest tender romance between a half-clothed young socialite and the crew of the HMS Bon Vivant, I realized something strange and wonderful.

All my recent first-drafts evince a familiar narrative rhythm — one I was completely unaware of during the writing of a considerable number of words.

The novels open with a conversation or interpersonal conflict that leads to an action sequence for which there’s clearly backstory that the reader doesn’t know, so that the resounding “WTF?” in the reader’s mind both intrigues them and troubles them.

The novel then proceeds to a chapter of backstory from the perspective of a single character, which tells you part of why the action sequence in Chapter 1 matters and what in the hell the characters were talking about.

Following that, there’s another conversation and another action sequence that both illuminates the events of Chapter 1, but you still don’t quite know WTF is going on.

You as the reader are more illuminated after the subsequent round of backstory, again from another character’s perspective — often a different character than the first backstory.

So on and so on — through about six or eight chapters, until roughly the midpoint of the book. After that, the narrative proceeds more or less unchecked as a series of conversations and actions sequences, to an ending that’s either a suckerpunch or a bitch-slap, depending.

Let me say here that structuring novels has always bothered me. I don’t do it naturally, which is why I’ve been more successful writing short stories. But as I wrote this round of longer works — about five of them since June — it all came to me as easily as a Cleveland drama teacher who’s mistaken me for Robert Mitchum. And for a time, I didn’t have the faintest idea why it was suddenly so natural.

Then I picked up a Jim Thompson novel, my tenth in a few months, and I realized I was aping  Thompson’s formulaic structure.

James Meyers Thompson, 1906-1977,  in case you don’t know your tough-guy literature, was one of the codifiers of redneck noir, and more importantly of the overall hard-boiled esthetic in the postwar crime thriller — and here I’m talking really hard-boiled, not the saxophone-drenched diaries of some trenchcoat-wearing wisecracker who handwashes his delicates and jots his crime scene notes in a cute little spiral notebook with unicorn appliqués and a glue-glitter “Detective Jake Fist’s Notebook” on the cover, and dots the I’s in “high-velocity impact splatter” with little pink hearts.

Jim Thompson, much like Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich, raised misanthropy in the thriller to a high art — but, most importantly, Thompson was a consummate plotter. His books pound the pavement (or West Texas alkali dust) so tight and fast Raymond Chandler curls up in his grave and weeps, “Uncle.”

Many of Thompson’s short, to-the-point suckerpunch thrillers follow exactly the structure I mention above — some don’t, sure, but the commercial crime novels he sat down and cranked out while slamming down liquor in the ’50s and ’60s all follow a similar pattern. Thompson sure as hell didn’t invent it — really, the structure’s pretty standard. But you tend not to see it quite as evidently nowadays in category crime fiction, which today is thoroughly dominated by 400-page P.I. books and lawyers from Sausalito. With the stripped-down, 60,000-word structure in 12 or 15 or 20 chapters, it’s easier to see the moving parts.

And as far as I’m concerned, the structure works.

I don’t mean it works from a writer’s perspective — who gives a shit about writers? I mean it works for the reader. Remember them? That is to say, it works for me — I love reading it. Add to that predictable an enveloping sense of atmosphere, vivid characters, wonderful narrative language and an ear for dialect, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit as long as no one tries to talk to me while I’m reading.

With Thompson, specifically, he can stuff my peepers with an endless parade of corrupt Texas oilmen, L.A. grifters, slowly-coming-unhinged small-town sheriffs and St. Louis bellboys plotting the perfect murder of a corrupt politician’s cocaine-addled wife; I’ll always be convinced I’m reading a new book, even though I’m actually reading the same damn book over and over again.

That’s probably why I read about ten of Thompson’s novels in couple months — immediately before I started writing in exactly that structure, without even really meaning to do it.

Having found the style fantastically satisfying as a reader, I started pumping it out as a writer despite the fact that at the moment I’m not writing anything even remotely resembling crime novels. The supremely satisfying framework imprinted itself so thoroughly on me that I utilized it without even knowing it — after years of not quite “getting” novel structure.

What’s the point? You are what you eat. You have to read to write. If you are writing novels, you need to read novels; if you are writing short stories, you need to read short stories; if you are writing deconstructive poetry in Georgian — well, you get the point. And you need to read a lot of it, because the structural conventions of the genre you work in need to seem so completely natural to you that you can not only make it your own but make it your own without even knowing you’re doing it.

For years I have been telling people they need to write to write — and there ain’t a damn thing wrong with that assertion, either. But you also have to know what a work of art feels like to be able to do it with a depth of instinct that allows you to make it your own.

I should say that I’ve been somewhat inaccurate for the sake of clarity above; you actually don’t need to read obsessively in the genre or genre you’re writing in. You need to read in the genre(s) you’re most influenced by. In the same way that I”m influenced by Jim Thompson in writing erotica (an improbable marriage if ever there was one), you might be influenced by Robert A. Heinlein in writing gay werewolf romances.

Mazel Tov! The more unlikely your influences, the more likely you can bring a new voice to a given genre, to which — assuming you learn to do it well, or well enough — your readers will say “Thank you, Ma’am and/or Sir, may I have another?”

Now, please don’t take that as an engraved invitation from me (like you need one?) to write “A multigenerational epic fantasy inspired by The Daily Show.” Wacky ideas are one thing. But as a cynical son of a bitch who has heard — seriously — just about every undercooked idea possible come out of writers’ mouths, nothing’s more tedious than writers who intentionally look for improbable concepts in order to impress you with how “original” they are (Hot Tub Time Machine, anyone?), I’m telling you to keep your self-satisfied precocious inventiveness down to a dull roar and leave the truly contrived mash-ups to people with absolutely bloody well nothing of their own to say. The point is not to blow people’s minds with your half-assed ideas, but to blow their minds with the vividness, genuineness and personal flavor of your writing.

You want to give readers That Barton Fink Feeling, for the simple reason that if you don’t, no one else can. How do you do that? You give them what you love — what you really love, not just what you pat yourself on the back for having come up with a sentence-long summary for.

What I’m trying to get at here is that a writer must find what books he or she enjoys reading — or, preferably, LOVES reading with a passion that makes her or him sacrifice sleep and risk life and limb to squeeze in a few extra pages while walking down the street.

I discovered that in spades this year. I spent a decade or more of being sort of lukewarm on all the fiction I read. Therefore, I didn’t read nearly as much of it as I should have. Then I started reading fiction aggressively, and I realized that the experience of reading a book that blows you away is what all this ludicrous self-torture is about.

You do have to write to write — that fact is as unassailable as the meaning of the word is being, well, “is.”

But you are what you eat — so go read something that reminds you why you ever sat your ass down in that stupid chair to begin with.

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