SFFWRTCHT and How To Do A Social Media Event

Today we have a guest post from Bryan Thomas Schmidt.  Bryan runs #SFFWRTCHT (Sci-Fi writer chat), a weekly twitter chat that interviews science fiction and fantasy authors. He blogs about the event's origins here, and today, he shares some tips about how to run social media events.

In late October 2010 at World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio, I found inspiration for utilizing social media and my past experience in entertainment and journalism to bring authors together to discuss and learn about the craft and business of writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Knowing I wouldn’t likely attend many conventions the following year, for budget reasons, I decided to bring the panel to us and created SFFWRTCHT, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat. My little idea grew within months to a major platform and has cemented my reputation and network in the industry, leading to opportunities I had only dreamed of. So Livia asked me to blog a bit about how to do a social media event, and I offer the following tips.

From St. Martins, to Self Publishing, to Amazon: Q&A With Barry Eisler

Livia: Barry, good to have you here with an excerpt from The Detachment on the day it goes on sale.

Barry: My pleasure, Livia, and thanks for having me.

Livia: It's impossible to consider The Detachment without also considering the story behind it. You announced back in March that you had walked away from a half-million-dollar offer from St. Martin's Press to self-publish the book. Then, at BEA in May, you announced that the book would be published instead by Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. Can you tell us a bit more about the unusual path to publication for this book?

The Drawer

Note: Today's post is by Kathy Crowley, who blogs at Beyond the Margins

“Thus, we notice after exercising our muscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time; but after a day or two of rest, when we resume the discipline, our increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed this in learning a tune; and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swim during the winter, and to skate during the summer.”

- William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course

A long time ago I worked in a neurobiology lab. I was a few years out of college and trying to support myself while I completed my medical school requirements (having frittered away my college years on things like literature, and writing, and philosophy, and Comparative Slave Societies… I was very liberal with my liberal arts.)

SEO Basics for Bloggers

Note: Thank you to everyone for entering the guest post contest!  I've emailed the winners, and their posts should  be coming up in the next few weeks.

Today's guest post is from Tiana Smith.

When I'm not being a superhero/writer by night, I work for a pretty prominent SEO firm. Because of this, I've picked up a few tips and tricks about SEO and how it applies to my niche in the web (namely, as a wannabe author). So, here are some easy-peasy things that will help you gain more of an understanding about online search engine marketing and how to make your writer's blog full of SEO awesome sauce. So, here we go :)



First off, a definition. SEO (search engine optimization) is:
"A way to increase the number of visitors to your website by ranking well in the search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo) for keywords related to your site or blog." ~ Me (so, it's somewhat simplified, get over it)

This might mean you want to rank #1 for your own name, it might mean you want to rank for the phrase "most amazing author ev-ah", or something else similarly silly. *As a side note, I rank #1 for the term "porn stars named Tiana". Who knew? (That was totally by accident by the way, and no, I'm not a porn star. Sorry to disappoint).*

Now that we have the definition out of the way, let's get down to the nitty-gritty basics of how you can optimize your own blog for SEO.

1. Get a piece of the Google Analytics action. Installing Google Analytics on your blog helps you know how many people are reading your posts, which posts/pages are the most popular, how long people stay on your site, how they found your blog in the first place and oh-so-much more. If you want to understand your audience, and if you want to learn how to maintain (and grow) your readership base, Google Analytics is the way to go my friend.

2. Set up Webmaster Tools. This can help you become aware of any problems your site has (if Google cannot index a particular page, for example) and helps you fix them. Some people say it can even get your posts indexed faster ... but I'm just going off of gossip there.

3. Stop using the Blogspot RSS feed address (this also applies to using the .blogspot URL address if you know what's good for you). Just stop it already. I use Feedburner, which helps people subscribe to my posts by email, and also helps me keep track of how many people are subscribed by RSS. Now, Feedburner isn't perfect, so I promise I won't be offended (too much) if you choose a different RSS manager. An RSS manager is another way that you can tell which of your posts are successful, helping you tailor your content to get more readers.

4. Post titles - they're more than just a pretty name, so choose your words wisely young padawan. When you can, use keywords that will help people find your post. For example, I could have named this post something obscure, like "My Day Job Takes Over My Blog" but no one would search for that in Google, well, unless they were weird. Instead, I titled it "SEO Basics for Bloggers", which helps readers know exactly what this post is about.

5. Use keywords in your posts too. I rank #1 for my own name because I have talked about my name in previous posts. (I may or may not be narcissistic. Don't judge me). Don't spam your posts with keyword after keyword, since that just looks bad. Also, search engines don't like it when you're overly dense. (Ha ha, get it? Oh, never mind.)

6. Use keywords in your links. If you are writing a blog post and you want to reference a previous post you wrote because it was so ah-mazing, use keyword-rich anchor text rather than just saying, "visit this link: http://www ..." or saying "go here" with the link embedded in it, or just "link".

7. Get people to link to your blog. This is definitely easier said than done. One way you can do this is by becoming famous. If your Hollywood career doesn't pan out, try having great content that people want to link to, re-blog or Tweet about. You can also participate in blogfests. You can participate in blog awards. And, while I don't recommend it, you can annoy people and leave a link to your site every time you leave a comment on their blog... Yes, to a very small extent, that can help your SEO, but make sure you ask yourself if the trade-off (looking like a needy blogger and overly-promotional type) is worth it to you.

8. While that Archives by Date widget thingy is all well and good, you can take it one step further. If you take a look at my own page (I know, it's hard to leave Livia's awesome site, so wait until you're done here), I have an Archives Page that lists my previous posts, and, wonder of wonders, I use anchor text with links to help my SEO. Granted, this takes more work, but I never said SEO was easy. (OK, well earlier in this post I said I'd be giving easy tips, but, hey, sometimes I lie, and really, if you think about it, this is still pretty easy to do, so there. Also, I used a lot of commas in that last sentence. Please forgive me.)

9. When you are picking your labels for your post, choose keywords that are descriptive and that actually mean something, rather than just Monday Posts or something else lame.

10. This post is already getting really long, so I won't talk about Meta tags, or anything else more technical. I just wanted a number ten so that this list looked all pretty.

So, those are all really basic things that can help you boost your own level of SEO-awesomeness. Have fun dabbling in the SEO waters, and if you have any questions or want to know something more technical, give me a shout out.


Visit Tiana's blog or follow her on twitter.

Psychology as Inspiration For The Writer’s Muse

Note from Livia:  A huge thank you to everyone for your support during the From Words to Brain promotion!  I'll have more to say about that next week.  For this week though, we have a guest post from Joanna Penn, author of Pentecost: A Thriller Novel.

The understanding of the human mind and behavior fascinates us and it’s why we are drawn back to fiction repeatedly. The lives of characters can inspire, warn or teach us about ourselves, so it’s inevitable that aspects of psychology will pervade literature. The discipline is often centred around case studies, detailed explorations into the life of an individual affected by some kind of psychological or neurological issue. These case studies can be a rich source of inspiration for the writer’s muse.

For this reason I love psychology and my bookshelves are full of fascinating tomes I delve into for inspiration. I studied psychology at college and in another lifetime I would have been a psychologist so when I decided to write a thriller, my heroine just had to be one! It gave me an excuse to revisit the subjects that have intrigued me for years. As writers, we need to feed our creative wells with information and experiences that merge together to form new ideas, and psychology is a rich source.

Here are some of my favorite examples that might also inspire your writing.

Sally Feels Your Pain. Harry Just Points and Laughs.

You could say that fiction is about pain. When you boil them down, stories describe characters taking hits and trying to emerge as unscathed as possible. Neighborhood under attack by zombies? Run hard and hope you have some painkillers on hand if they catch you. Or what if it’s actually a friendly, attractive zombie who loves you? In that case, it’s all good -- until you realize that mortals and undead can never be together. Oh the agonies of unfulfilled love!


Read the rest of my guest post on pain, empathy, and fiction at Nathan Bransford's blog.   Older blog followers will recognize one of the studies. I also describe a new study about some interesting gender differences in empathy (Hint: see title).

Flash fiction should matter

Note:  Today we have a guest post on flash fiction from Simon Larter.  Some of Simon's flash pieces include Twister (published at Per Contra) and Rise, Lazarus (Flashquake).  In this article, Simon shares about a piece  that didn't make it to publication and draws some principles about what makes good flash fiction.

Thus far in my writing career (such as it is), I’ve specialized in flash fiction. That’s mainly due to my fiction writing class in my last term of college, which focused almost exclusively on flash, but I’ve found I enjoy the form. It allows me to explore small, yet important ideas without the burden of a minimum word count or expectations of elaboration.

Despite the low word count, though, flash fiction has to tell an interesting story, or it won’t work. The same strictures that apply to novels apply to flash, they’re just distilled and amplified due to the brevity of the form. Characters have to be immediately interesting, or at least identifiable; situations must be compelling, or at least evocative.



With those things in mind, why don’t we look at a bit of flash fiction? Hop on over to my blog to read the piece I’ll be examining. (I’m posting it there because I don’t want to clutter Livia’s blog with an epic-length post.)

(Waits. Whistles. Taps toes.)

You’re back? Good. Thanks for reading that.

So did you see anything wrong with it? On the surface, it’s not so bad. I feel that the prose is fairly decent, and I like a couple of turns of phrase in it—I kind of dig the “porcelain crescent” bit, and I’m quite pleased with the flashback scene in the bathroom. The editors at Flash Fiction Online thought it was all right too: this piece made it through the first round of editorial review, which places it in the top 20% of all submissions in a given time period. So again, is there anything wrong with it?

Needless to say (since you haven’t seen this piece in FFO recently), Cake and Coffee didn’t get accepted. In the second round of editorial reviews, I got some pretty crushing feedback. Here’s one of the comments:

The writing was good up to the ending. Even if I could figure out what angered Jean so violently, the story would still have no plot.

And that was the best of it. “Totally miserable and unappealing MC,” was another comment. Yeah. Not so good.

But what can that teach us about what good flash fiction should be? For my part, I think it tells us that something significant must happen to the characters. You might say that allowing someone to be scalded and possibly disfigured is significant, and in real life, yes, it is. But in fiction, being burned by hot coffee is only significant if it produces a change in the characters. Feeling “small and cruel inside” is not a significant change. And have I really set Jean up as capable of this kind of cruelty? I don’t think I have. It seems almost arbitrary, and at the very least, it’s a disproportionate response to the loss of a slice of cake, of all things.

Another problem—and all the rejecting editors noted this—is that I have a seriously unlikable main character. I might have been able to get away with that in a novel, where there’s potential for development and change. But in flash? There’s not much room for that. My main POV character was neither interesting nor sympathetic, and that brings the whole story down.

I hesitate to draw any concrete conclusions about flash fiction from this one example, since with all art, there are exceptions to every rule. A more talented writer might have been able to easily surmount the difficulties I’ve presented. Still, in my own fiction, I want to be able to learn from what I perceive are my mistakes.

In the end, I feel that Cake and Coffee turned out as a glorified anecdote, and not a particularly pleasant one. Flash fiction should be more than that. I feel it should mean something, express something true, tell an important story. Flash fiction should matter.


Simon is rediscovering writing after a 15 year hiatus, and wondering why he waited so long. He is a husband and father of three whose day job in lightning protection may someday provide a wealth of anecdotes for the next great American novel (although he’s Scottish by birth). Between work, home renovations, and child duty, he still manages to find time to write short stories and flash fiction. He graduated from Drexel University with a degree in Civil Engineering.

Does Your Voice Change?

Note: Remember the post a while back on Voice Finding Techniques, based on Will Write for Shoes: How to Write a Chick Lit Novel by Cathy Yardley? We have a special treat today -- a guest post on voice, from Cathy herself! Cathy writes women's fiction in several genres. You can find out more about her at her website.



Livia was nice enough to post about some “voice-finding” exercises I had written in my book Will Write for Shoes. Reading the comments, someone had written that her voice changes when she writes different things. I suggested that even authors who write for different genres have a recognizable voice, or voice element, that serves as a through-line for all their work.



I mentioned it on an author’s loop, and we got into a spirited discussion of whether or not you can have “character authors” the way you have character actors – people who are noted for brilliant work, but who are also able to defy pigeon-holing by working in vastly different areas. There are very few authors who work across different genres with any degree of success. We attributed that to the readerships: genre readers tend to like seeing one kind of book from authors, and are unhappy when they shell out eight to twenty-nine dollars for a book that then isn’t at all what they were expecting. It’s not a matter of whether the author has the talent to branch out – it’s whether readers will accept a voice change.

Of the authors who could straddle different genres, the one I focused on was Margaret Atwood. She can write touching, startling women’s fiction, then smack you with a dystopian sci-fi with equal skill. But I also think that she has a very strong “voice” through all her work. It’s a little removed, almost aloof, which only underlines the usually brutal things going on. She’s got great descriptions and a clinically lyrical voice, is the only way I can describe it. Sort of a cold poetry. I love her work, although I can only read it in measured doses.

I’ve written within the women’s fiction genre: romance, Chick Lit, erotica, some YA. I’ve always dealt with stories that showcase women’s journeys. My voice tends to be humorous; Will Write for Shoes is probably the closest to my speaking voice. I also know that the humorous aspect has influenced my writing choices. Chick Lit and humor? Big yes. Slapstick erotica? Not so much, at least not according to my editor.

After speaking with my editor, I wrote darker, more intense stories. I’d like to think I was successful, but I also know it wasn’t as comfortable a fit. That doesn’t mean I’m trapped writing light and fluffy stories. It does mean that I’ll stuff banter into any situation possible; that if I don’t lighten my stories with some kind of humor it winds up as angsty as a teenager’s diary; and that I need to take my writing (and my life) a lot less seriously as a general rule.

How about you? How would you describe your writing voice? What’s your through-line?

Two Tips for Finding a Nonfiction Voice

Note: This post originated from a comment Max Atkinson recently left on my blog about finding a voice in nonfiction. Although this blog is about fiction writing, the issues he raised (level of formality in prose) applies to both fiction and nonfiction, so I invited him to expand on his comment for this guest post.

The recent post on ‘Voice finding techniques’ from Cathy Yardley’s book prompted me to enter a comment about my experience trying to find a voice when writing non-fiction, and I’m grateful for Livia’s suggestion that I should expand on the points with some actual examples.

By way of introduction, here's a slightly abbreviated version of what I said in my original comment:

‘1. As a former academic used to writing for learned journals in the social sciences, I was given a great tip from my agent after he'd read the first draft of my self-help book on public speaking and presentation (Lend Me Your Ears). I was, he said, writing too much in the third person and it would read more easily if I addressed the reader directly in the second person. So I went through the whole thing again changing it as he suggested - and was amazed how much more accessible it became.



‘2. I also decided to use many more elided forms that are so common in spoken, but not written, English than I'd ever done before when writing books and articles - 'wouldn't' for 'would not', 'it's' for 'it is', etc. This again made it 'sound' much less formal and stilted to the reader than when I'd used the full forms.’

The following example comes from an early chapter in the book where I wanted to translate some fairly technical material on turn-taking in conversation (originally derived from a paper published by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson in the journal Language in 1974) into prose that would be accessible to anyone. My aim was to explain why ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ are OK in conversation but awful in speeches, and why pauses cause trouble in conversation but are good practice in speeches and presentations.

Here’s what it would have read like if I'd continued writing in the third person and used full rather than elided forms of subjects and verbs:

‘One of the commonest places for ums and ers is right at the start of a new conversational turn. The previous speaker has just finished, and it is now time for someone to come up with an immediate response. But the next speaker is not always quite ready, and needs a moment or two to think what to say. If he or she delays, it might create an embarrassing silence and give the wrong impression. So the obvious solution is to start immediately, even if it is only to say ‘er’ or ‘um’. The noise kills off the silence at a stroke, shows that the next speaker has started to reply and reassures others that he or she is not being difficult or impolite.’

And here’s how it was actually published in Lend Me Your Ears (pp. 48-49):

‘One of the commonest places for ums and ers is right at the start of a new conversational turn. The previous speaker has just finished, and it’s now time for someone to come up with an immediate response. But you’re not always quite ready, and need a moment or two to think what to say. If you delay, you might create an embarrassing silence and give the wrong impression. So the obvious solution is to start immediately, even if it’s only to say ‘er’ or ‘um’. The noise kills off the silence at a stroke, shows that you’ve started to reply and reassures others that you’re not being difficult or impolite.

I don’t claim to have completely cracked the problem of writing readable non-fiction, but I do think the changes made it more accessible than it would have been had I stayed with the first version. And that's why the emails, reviews and comments I've had from people saying that they found the book very readable has been more rewarding than they realise.

Max Atkinson is a communications researcher and consultant specializing in presentation and public speaking. You can see more excerpts from and purchase Max’s book Lend Me Your Ears here.

Writing Lessons from Gossip Girl

Note: Those who hang around my blog know that I like to take examples from published stories and extract writing tips. My critique buddy Amitha Knight does the same, but with TV shows. She is the author of today's guest post. Check out Amitha's blog Monkey Poop for more TV related writing tips and publishing news.

It's no secret that I love Gossip Girl. Even if you don't, you have to concede that it is a very successful show.

Here are some tips on crafting characters I've come up with from Gossip Girl:



#1 No one is perfect

Don't be afraid to have your main character make mistakes. The bigger the mistake the better. On Gossip Girl, everyone's favorite Love-to-Hate character Blair isn't the only one who messes things up for everyone else. Remember Dan's affair with a teacher? Yikes. And what about when Vanessa lied to her friends so she could be the head speaker at an important event?

#2 Bad things happen to good characters without fail

As a writer, I am often afraid to let bad things happen to my characters, but isn't that how we capture an audience? If nothing scary ever happened, how could we ever relate?

Ex: Jenny quits school to pursue her dream of being a fashion designer, but things do not work out, and she ends up practically homeless. Another example: Serena is pretty and popular, but her fame often gets in the way of her friendships and relationships and often leads her down the wrong path (drinking too much, meeting people who want to take advantage of her, etc.).

#3 Likable main characters don't have to like each other

Chuck and Dan don't have to get along for us to like them. In fact, it's fun watching them argue with each other and realizing that they can both be right and both be wrong at the same time. This happens in real life all the time. Personality conflicts can make enemies of good people. Likewise, people who start off as best friends don't have to stay that way...

#4 People change, but not completely

Blair has grown from the first season--she is more trusting of others and has more self-confidence--yet she is still as conniving and manipulative as ever. She just feels bad about it more now than she did before. If Blair ever stops doing despicable things, I'm pretty sure I'll stop watching the show.

#5 They look great and (more importantly) even the "poor" characters wear great clothes you could never afford

Okay, not so sure how to turn this into a writing tip. Anyone?

But not every episode of Gossip Girl is perfect. Episodes that fail for me often contain one of two things (and hopefully not both):

#1 Plotlines designed to shock and as a result feel forced (kind of like this poster)

Ex: Big news! Serena killed someone and is keeping it a secret from everyone. And when the whole secret comes out we learn…oh wait. it was on accident and not really her fault. Lame.

#2 Poorly disguised rehashing of plots

Ex: In previous seasons, Dan realizes over and over again that he has changed as a result of knowing rich people (yawn). This season, Vanessa realizes she has changed as a result of going to a private college with rich people (oh please!).

This second sounds like obvious advice but, take a look at your work and you'll be surprised. I've had to delete several chapters once I've realized how similar the plotlines were to another story I had written (sometimes even within the same book). Those of you working on series have to worry more about this than other since you have to be really careful that the cool thing you pulled on your character in book 1 doesn't get pulled again in book 3 (or 5 or 7).

Any Gossip Girl fans out there? Have you learned any valuable writing tips from watching this show?

Images from CW and anatomyofamuse

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The Art of Internal Observation

Note: Last week, I posted an excerpt from the short story "The Slave Hold" as an illustration of slowing down the action during intense moments. My critique buddy Peta left a comment saying, "The thing that really stands out for me, [about the passage] is the way the writer transitions to internal observations then back again without missing a beat." I asked her to expand on that thought, and she is the author of today's guest post on the same excerpt. It's always fun when two people look at a passage and see different things. If you find this post interesting, check out Peta's own blog Insert literary blog name here.




The Art of Internal Observation


Everyday life is full of internal observation--observation we don’t even notice.

Let’s say I have lunch with my fictional bestie, Kate. We eat, we chat, and we drink coffee. While we’re eating, I’m making mental notes about Kate’s mood--she’s yawning a lot. Is she tired today? Am I boring her? Meanwhile, Kate might be wondering if I really do like her shoes or if I’m just being polite, while I take care not to mention that I absolutely hate the faux leopard print muumuu she’s wearing.

Internal observation can be a very powerful way to make your writing stronger. Consider my lunch with Kate.

None of our thoughts are very deep, but they are quite telling. My worrying that I’m boring Kate might play into an insecurity I have--maybe Kate doesn’t like me. Maybe Kate’s taking pity on me. After all, she’s a successful CEO and women’s rights activist with half a dozen letters after her name while I’m a struggling writer trying to balance book, work, and Baby.

Like most everything else writing-related, internal observation is a bit of a double-edged sword. Writing the observations is the easy part. Fitting them into the text without interrupting the flow of the story, however--that requires real skill.

Let’s take a look at this passage from the The Slave Hold:

"If that drunken son of a Telik witch lays his hands on her ..." Kven began. He stopped, and I saw the realization in his eyes. He could do nothing. He was powerless here against these people. He could hate as much as he wished, but he could do nothing. "If he hurts her, I wish him dead," he said fiercely, his voice low. "I would give much for his death." I heard the scrape of the metal door on stone as the man opened it into the cell beyond. Neither Kven nor I could see past the darkness that lay over the air, something for which I was profoundly grateful.

It starts with dialogue, then transitions to internal observation and back again without missing a beat. Nothing in the passage is forced; at no point do I feel like the author is beating me over the head with facts about Kven’s character. The power of the observation is two-fold: learning about Kven draws me deeper into the story while also giving me some insight into the narrator. How does it do the latter? The things we notice are almost as telling as the things we do.

To give a simplistic example: walking in the park, I might notice the tulip-filled flower beds first, while you might remark upon the abundance of people playing frisbee. i.e. I’m a bit of a nature-loving introvert while you’re outgoing and sociable.

Learning to use internal observation successfully takes time. The best way to get a feel for it is to read a lot. Pick books that are character-driven, and make notes on the parts you like and why. In your own work, highlight passages that rely on internal monologue and observations to see if your over-doing it. Read your work aloud, and listen for jarring transitions, or things that don’t quite make sense. If you can, get someone else to read to you--hearing another voice, another cadence, helps us catch things we might usually skim over because we know what happens next.

Most importantly, though, write. Lots. Write from prompts. Free write. Scribble sketches based on a conversation you heard at your local Starbucks. It doesn’t matter what you write, or how, or where--the point is to get practice. And when you think you’ve got it? Practice some more. There’s nowhere to go but up!