Advice to the Frustrated Author

 

                                                                            Pixabay.com 

We all know that writing is not the way to get rich fast, but I’m sure everyone following this blog has been frustrated with writing and publishing at least once. I know I was. Several times.

The good thing is that I’m stubborn as a mule. If I want something, I work to get it, even if it takes ages. I shudder to think how many of you give up because the headwind is too strong.

 So here are a few words of encouragement:

Things will get better!

Your Indie sales are low? Agents reject your queries again and again? That’s all too familiar to most of us. If you don’t mind listening, I’ll tell you a bit about my journey.

 When I started out Indie publishing at a time where the concept was still alien, most people told me I’m crazy (I am but that’s beside the point). I hand-sold 1000 copies of my first ever novel (a historical novels based on genealogical research) over the next 2 years, and the feedback I got was great. BTW, the novel is still selling today.

 So, enthusiastic as I was, I thought I was destined to become a good mid-list author. I got an agent and wrote more novels. One by one, they were rejected. And that wasn’t a question of quality. To prove the point: I got phone calls from German editors who apologized for not accepting my novel despite their strength. They had guidelines from their admin that told them only to buy historical novels set in the Middle Ages, or fantasy novels that were set in a Tolkienesque world.

 I returned to self-publishing, and since I was bilingual, I wrote my novels in English. I had no idea of cover design, copy writing, or marketing, and never heard of rapid release, eMail lists, or writing to genre. I only wanted to tell stories that other people liked. Sure, I found some rabid fans but no financial success.

 After Indie publishing more than 12 novels, 14 novellas, and a stack of short stories, I sat back and re-evaluated what success meant to me. I had learned a lot since the gold-rush times of Indie publishing and realized that my love and my strength lay with short fiction. I prefer writing short stories and novellas, and my fans love those tales for their rich small-scale worldbuilding. So I started honing my short tale craft and began sending out my stories.

 To my great surprise, the very first one I sent out was snatched up and included in the IWSG anthology "Voyagers: The Third Ghost" and the editors loved it. Nearly at the same time, the Swords & Sorcery online magazine bought my story "A Twist in Katlani’s Plan". And a few months later, Dean Wesley Smith bought one of my short stories for his Pulphouse Magazine (it’ll get published sometime later this year). There’s no question of what I’ll be doing for a while yet: I’ll be writing short stories, sending them out to paying markets for some time to come.

 Sometimes being mule-headed has its advantages. You just have to find the right direction for your inner mule. With that in mind:

Cherish your mulishness and write with joy!

How To Write Great Descriptions

By Katharina Gerlach

How To Write Great Descriptions

I’m a bilingual author from Germany and I learned many things the hard way. One of my biggest obstacles was (and still is to some extent) my tendency to write lean. I do not much care for lush descriptions. Why use 20 words if 5 will suffice? The reason is quite simple:

Reading is the only known way of thought transfer. Sure, it’s a buggy process but it works if (yes, if) the author knows the difference between show and tell, and description plays a major role there.

As a child, I loved the books of an author who lived in the middle of the 19^th century. His stories were adventurous and had deep meaning. However, I skipped whole pages due to big blocks of descriptions. I wanted the action to keep moving. So when I began writing in earnest, I left out descriptions wherever possible.  Either extreme is wrong. 

In a blogpost on this site in October, Rayne Hall has already given you some pointers at how you can make your descriptions more engaging. Use your scene character’s POV to your advantage.  You can reveal or hide facts you’ll need in later chapters by mixing them into well thought out descriptions. You can also use description to characterize your POV character or characters the POV character interacts with. 

Example: “How I hated the smell of his car. The scent of cold cigarettes, french fries, and stale beer made me gag, but I had no choice. If I wanted life to continue, I had to sit in his grimy VW bug where a mass of mingled rubbish had overtaken the backseat. There were scientific papers, sheet music, food, empty beer bottles, some records and even a guitar with ripped strings and a coating that must surely be a century’s worth of grime.”

Right here, the description is only there to set the scene, the reader thinks. But later on, when the young detective discovers that all murder victims have been strangled with a guitar string, this scene gets a whole new layer of importance.

The key to great description is the use of specific details. Rayne Hall has already shown how different the perceptions of your characters should be, depending on their jobs, their hobbies, and life experiences. But even with that foundation, the choice of detail is crucial. 

Why does the architect notice this house rather than the one next to it? Does he really notice the whole house or is it the contrast of the blooming geranium in the cracked pot against the once yellow sandstone that symbolizes the district's downfall to him?

It is also important to keep in mind, what the POV character is doing in the scene you’re trying to describe. Naturally, a thief fleeing from the police will not notice how lovingly cared for the garden looks that he’s passing through. He’ll only be on the lookout for the gate or a place where he can jump the fence or a hiding place. While an old widow visiting her late husband’s grave might point out to him in minute detail what has changed on the neighboring graves since her last visit.

Description should also use all senses if possible. Our normal modus operandi is sight, which is why most of our descriptions center around things we see. But we’ve also got smell, hearing, feel, and taste (which is pretty hard to put into story but not impossible). And some people claim to have a sixth sense, perception.

A final consideration is your genre. Description can be used very well to set the tone of your novel. Description in a gritty detective story will focus on different elements in the scenes and a different, more chopped up writing style than a chick-lit story with its fluffy, feel-good descriptions. The genre also determines the amount of descriptions you need. 

Readers of Romance expect a lot of sensual descriptions mingled with strong emotions whereas Horror works with the unseen in complex settings. A heavily tech-oriented SciFi story will need more expository description (beware the pitfall here) than a coming of age story set in the real world.

Make your descriptions as varied as you can, because description is what makes your stories become a movie in the readers’ minds. Skimp on it, and your stories will fall flat no matter how engaging the characters and how intriguing the plot. Put in too much, and the reader will skip paragraphs or even whole pages.

Play Along:

Describe your room twice. The first time, pretend to be a mother fetching laundry from her son’s/daughter’s room. And second, pretend to be an alien that crashed through the window of this room, so this is the first glimpse of humanity it gets. Keep it under 100 words.

Feel free to post, and I’ll do my best to comment.