The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 18 – How to write a good prologue for a book

Don’t you hate when opening a novel and you’re presented with a ten-page prologue which dumps a whole slew of ancient history on you?

The question is though, what should a prologue contain to make it a good one? And how about the epilogue?

New episodes EVERY single Monday.

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Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (12s):
Don't you hate when you open a novel and you're presented with a 10 page long prologue that just dumps a whole slew of ancient history on you. I certainly do. The question is though, what should a prologue contain to make it a good one? If you are fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Jesper and. Together with Autumn, I run amwritingfantasy.com between us, we've published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors.

Jesper (53s):
Before we get started, I want to send a huge thank you to alias McKinney and Perry Chalmers who have become our latest support us on Patreon. You too can become a patron of amwritingfantasy. You will find the link in the description field or in the show notes. For those of you who are listening on podcast and for just a $1 pledge, we will ship you an am writing fantasy bookmark.

Jesper (1m 23s):
There's lots of other rewards too, but uh, you can check all that out by following the link if you are interested. Alright. Prologues it is, it's not an easy subject to tackle because so many get them wrong. And one of the most common issues is how the author hasn't clarified what he or she is trying to achieve by including a prologue in the first place. In many cases, the content of a prologue might as well have been part of the novel itself.

Jesper (1m 55s):
If that's true, don't write a prologue prologue that are littered with background information which really have no direct relevance to the story being told is incredibly boring. Unfortunately, many writers think that their world building is so cool that the reader just have to know about the kingdom that fought another kingdom a thousand years ago.

Old McGrumpy (2m 21s):
You're lying

Jesper (2m 23s):
old, my grumpy as our resident AI, you should learn that. It's not polite to call another host for a liar,

Old McGrumpy (2m 31s):
but you are.

Jesper (2m 33s):
How so?

Old McGrumpy (2m 34s):
You do think that your world building is so cool that it should be included in the novel?

Jesper (2m 40s):
Well, it depends on how you, how you look at it. I guess I, I, I don't think it should be included if it has no relevance, you know, for, for the sake of the reader. If it was up to me alone, I would probably,

Old McGrumpy (2m 54s):
it's the same problem with that. The logs, you worthless humans also those even one, there is nothing important to say.

Jesper (3m 3s):
In such cases we really shouldn't. All my grumpy you see prologues and epilogues alike have to be relevant.

Old McGrumpy (3m 12s):
That is easy to say. Why not let me write them for you.

Jesper (3m 16s):
So you claim to know how to decide which facts should be revealed in the prologue.

Old McGrumpy (3m 23s):
What do you mean?

Jesper (3m 25s):
Well F for the prologue to be relevant, you need to share significant inflammation which proves to be vital to the story itself.

Old McGrumpy (3m 35s):
I knew that I really new do you perhaps know of how to hack?

Jesper (3m 40s):
No, nor do I claim to

Old McGrumpy (3m 43s):
then leave me alone.

Jesper (3m 44s):
Alright. I will. Jesus, the rest of us can carry on while he's awaiting. You. See what I was trying to say was that there might be scenarios in which such significant information can be easily shared within the contents of the book itself. If it can then avoid the prologue. However, what if such information is shared by a point of view care too who aren't featured in the novel or perhaps events are taking place during a different time and all maybe a different place then a prologue might come in quite handy.

Jesper (4m 24s):
What is important to know though, is that most readers tend to skip the prologue all together and they just head straight into the first chapter. So if you are sharing important elements about the story that you're going to tell, you have to make sure that they actually stop and read it. Otherwise it's sort of becomes counterproductive. Right? Here you are sharing a vital piece of information and the reader didn't even pay any attention to it.

Jesper (4m 55s):
Hence, you have to write an incredibly engaging first paragraph, hooking people to read the prologue. You then proceed to hold the reader's attention by limiting the amount of background information and share the necessary details as part of the narrative, not as an info dump, you know, a thousand years ago, blah, blah, blah, blah, that sort of thing. We don't want to do that. If the S Rita is still reading, chances are that you can keep it up for the remaining parts of the program.

Jesper (5m 29s):
The final trip wire is making the prologue too long. Simply simply keep it to the point. Okay, so, Oh, and not to forget, just because you manage to hook the reader with a killer prologue that doesn't relieve you from the obligation to do exactly the same thing with the first chapter. The novel needs to begin as strong as it would even if there were no prologue serving as a leader.

Jesper (5m 58s):
So to summarize, make sure that your prologue is relevant to the story that you're going to tell S in directly relevant. I mean not background setting, what the reader learns from the prologue should play directly into the plot of the story. Make it interesting and compelling and please keep it short while we added. How about a quick look at the epilogue as old man grumpy indicated before, that is another place where we offer often missed it.

Jesper (6m 34s):
First of all, every essential plot threat has to be concluded by the end of the story. Not in the epilogue. Yep. If the epilogue is to add to the reader's understanding of the story, it can be superficial either. That's not me saying that you should go overboard and tie up, eh eaten every single open plot point. Either. You see there is a balance to walk when writing a killer epilogue. In most cases you have two options.

Jesper (7m 5s):
Either you expand on the character development or you use the epilogue to set up the next book in the series. If you want to expand on the character development, it isn't sufficient to portray the character. 10 years later, Rolla, you'll have to show how the story has made an impact on the character and how this person has now continued to grow since we left him or her in the final chapter.

Jesper (7m 35s):
That said, the most accepted reason for including an epilogue is to set up the next book in the series. Why is that the most accepted reason? Well, it's because it's almost by default exciting. Something will happen which introduces a new plot line and that's a good premise to build on. Yet. Even here, you have to be careful if your intent for a cliff hanger type of epilogue makes sure that you've included hints in the main body of the story.

Jesper (8m 9s):
Unless the epilogue rings true. Read us. Won't show a forgiving attitude. So foreshadow is needed, or readers will think that everything they believed about the story simply all of a sudden just turned out to be false. So don't undermine your own ending with the epilogue. And finally, just like writing a prologue, made sure to keep it short. That's your guide to avoiding insanely boring prologue and logs.

Jesper (8m 41s):
So, uh, stay safe out there and, uh, see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 17— Increase Plot Tension With This Writing Technique

Have you had comments that your story is slow or characters are flat? What you might be missing isn't more plot or character development. What you might need to work on are hurdles and lulls!

Join Autumn as she dives into hurdles and lulls and how they can help build tension, develop characters, give you a chance to show off your world, and more!

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patron of the channel. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Autumn (13s):
Have you had reviews that said your story left action or character development or have you struggled with how to build tension in your work in progress or really bring out aspects of a character? Well, what you might be missing isn't how to write better action sequence or more character development. What you might need to work on is your hurdles in loans. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is autumn and together with Yesper I run amwritingfantasy.com between the two of us, we've published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors.

Autumn (52s):
Writing is it? No doubt, difficult, especially fantasy writing. You have to balance creating an awesome world without overwhelming the reader. With info dubs, you have to develop amazing characters and then share them with readers without telling them how really cool the character is. Instead, you need to show them and you have to have an exciting plot, but one that leaves room for the character to take the lead. If you've had comments that your story was too slow or your characters traits didn't shine, what you might need to focus on in your is your hurdles in laws if you struggled with writing them and then you are definitely in the right place because today we are going to look at what they are and more importantly how to use them to develop characters and they'll tension.

Autumn (1m 43s):
I remember writing my first novel and even though I knew all the steps and I've heard how to her all the tools like the seven steps of story structure like I've mentioned in one of my previous videos, sharing the world, the characters, following the plot idea I had and making it all exciting. What's a challenge? Hey and speaking of previous videos, if you like this one, shortness and our wonderful Patriot on Patrion for early access to these videos plus exclusive writing editing and marketing tips. The links isn't show notes below.

Autumn (2m 15s):
When I wrote that first manuscript, I would spend too much time sharing the world or spend so much time with the characters that a scene would be too slow. Then I'd rush ahead to, so action and all that explanation of how they actually got there and why the reader should actually care. The character was running for her. Life got lost. But Hey, the goal of the first draft is just to get, it does, it is meant to be rewritten, which I did three times and a lot of work was sorting out what should go where, how to build tension.

Autumn (2m 49s):
So the action scenes became more intense and how to get the reader to care about the characters, which may the tension all the Morwell tense. And a lot of all that comes down to how you use your hurdles and your levels. So what are hurdles in laws? Hurdles are not necessarily action scenes. By definition, they are obstacles. They can be plot obstacles or ideally obstacles keeping your character from getting something they really want and need. They could be anything from that stereotypical snowy mountain pass or storm that wrecks the sailing ship to your being character, needing to talk to someone.

Autumn (3m 27s):
But that person's just refusing to see them. And of course it can be as obvious as the Hawking dragon guarding the door. An obstacle is an exactly exciting. It is how your character reacts. The obstacle that gets the action going most likely your main character isn't going to give up and go home. They're going to go around or through and the obstacle and depending on how that unravels is how much tension you will build and your reader, even when facing an obstacle as obvious as a drag in the action, doesn't have to be immediate.

Autumn (4m 0s):
The characters can sneak a peek and discover the dragon and formulate a plan to get around it and of course the plane goes horribly wrong and they barely escaped and are possibly separated. Plus someone is injured scene. It's not as easy as walking into the dragon side though. That could work too and be a bit more comical. The formula with hurdles is that the main character discovers a problem or falls into it such as with storms and terrain obstacles. They react usually by coming up with a plan.

Autumn (4m 32s):
The plan goes wrong and they had to come up with something else really fast. To get through, which may make things worse or solve the problem. The cycle repeats until the character is dead, escapes or succeeds for big plot elements. The hurdle could be put aside for a new or a more immediate development such as if the person, the character needs to talk to is hundreds of miles away. So now the character either needs to get there so they good or focus on the people hunting her down and just escape the city and worry about finding them later.

Autumn (5m 4s):
So yes, based on that example, you can go from hurdle to hurdle, usually a small one to a bigger one. But be careful of this unless you are writing an action. Thriller hurdles are usually followed by locals and I wouldn't put more than two hurdles in a row. Other things you should know about hurdles is that the later they come in the novel, the more focused on the problem should be on stopping the main character from achieving their goal. In other words, if the antagonist is actively preventing the main character from succeeding instead of general challenges like storms or stomach flu or not being able to locate what they need at this point, they know the location, the magic gem, they've gone through the mountain pass to the ice castle to get it.

Autumn (5m 48s):
But now the snow dragon is controlled by the villain is you know, trying to eat them. And if you haven't guessed the final hurdles are more life-threatening or possibly being captured and stopping the whole point of the novel. The closer you are to that climax. So what about Lowell's models aren't boring. Thanks for chiming in a little bit. Grumpy. I was wondering when you show up to share your opinion, I can't imagine that we'd managed to somehow get rid of our unwanted cohost.

Autumn (6m 20s):
Now laws are not the boring bits. Well they shouldn't be.

Old McGrumpy (6m 24s):
Not going to happen. Just accept I am here to stay. There is no action in levels. So what good are they?

Autumn (6m 32s):
Well, laws are the perfect time to add in. Subplots focus a bit more on the world and spent a lot more time getting to know the characters.

Old McGrumpy (6m 41s):
See, it sounds boring

Autumn (6m 44s):
if you don't write them well they can be. Have you ever noticed that a lot of action movies don't have great character development and instead they rely on lots of stereo or archetypes. That is because they don't slow down with laws that allow the character to really shine beyond some cheesy boilerplate laws. That is, and that is what we want to avoid.

Old McGrumpy (7m 7s):
I like action movies like that except that the hero always wins. You just need to change the ending, not had in levels,

Autumn (7m 16s):
you know make grumpy. I think you are the low of this video. I had a bit of boring one too. Why don't you go find that self-destruct code I embedded before the video and designed to activate as soon as you appeared here what and this is a good example of how to end a law. It should lead into the next hurdle like Mick grumpy needing to solve the problem of how to save himself while slowly being deleted from within.

Autumn (7m 46s):
Okay. I shouldn't be enjoying that as much as I do. The important thing is to remember is that laws are where the readers connect with your characters because in the action sequences, the things are getting heated really quickly in a lot of nuances of what makes a character realistic are skipped in order to keep the pace moving. Plus because things are slower, the point of the view of the character can take the time to look around now is the time to layer in the descriptions of the world and now is the time when the characters can interact.

Autumn (8m 21s):
Well, hurdle is usually involved tension which can fray friendships and burst into arguments, laws, or the time for resolving those conflicts and rebuilding character and relationships or at least trying to deeper character personalities can come to the fore as you build the scene. Speaking of scenes, what do you cover during rules? Laws should focus on the recovery or fall out from the previous hurdle. This can be a physical recovery, especially if someone was injured or it can be the emotional reaction to the previous hurdle if died or nearly did.

Autumn (8m 57s):
If the friendships unraveled or deception was uncovered, the law is the time to pull out the stops and have the characters deal with the pain and dashed hopes. Well, hurdles are often full of physical action. Laws are off to rife with emotional reaction. Not always though you don't have to go over the top end of the previous hurdle, wasn't dire. The emotional nuances can involve a couple falling in love scene subplots. Another tip is that laws don't have to be long.

Autumn (9m 30s):
They can be as short as a scene or as long as the full chapter. If the character just overcome a huge hurdle, a longer LOL is good. Think of a chest when the board is fairly empty. You might move your pieces faster when things are getting tense and there's a lot of pieces on in play on the board, you need a longer pause before launching the next step. So now you know what hurdles in laws are and how to use them. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 16 – Advice from a line editor

Chet is a line editor. He gives us a solid crash course on line editing and shares practical examples of common author mistakes.

Writing is a craft that no one ever masters fully and it's always helpful to get inputs on how to improve. Chet delivers lots of tips and tricks.

Whether you're an experienced writer and a newbie, there's lessons for everyone in the conversation Chet and I had.

Enjoy some advice from a line editor.

During the video, Chet mentions The Emotion Thesaurus. It's written by Becca Puglisi and
Angela Ackerman. It's an incredible helpful tool for authors.

You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression-ebook/dp/B07MTQ7W6Q/ref=sr_1_2? 

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (12s):
Welcome to amwritingfantasy together with autumn. I run this, uh, the amwritingfantasy website where we share blog posts and uh, there was these YouTube videos, there is a podcast episodes of these videos as well. So if you're listening on podcasts right now, welcome. Uh, but today we are gonna talk or I'm going to talk with Chet about editing, which I thought was quite interesting because actually we haven't had any real videos or episodes around editing before, so, so this was an excellent topic to get into today.

Jesper (47s):
And uh, thank you so much for joining us on amwritingfantasy. Chet.

Chet (51s):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jesper (55s):
Maybe you want to share a bit about yourself and what you're up to.

Chet (59s):
Yeah. Uh, my name is Chet Sandberg. Um, I am a fantasy writer, uh, as yet unpublished probably because I'm an editor so I'm pretty hard on myself. Uh, uh, I'm aligned in solid earth, which is kind of in between a copy editor. Proofer is, is getting the typos, getting the punctuation and I copy and he's doing a lot of that is also to make sure it things from ATPCO. Correct. I'm aligned in style editor. So what I do is I am not going to just make sure that your dialogue is grammatically correct. I'm going to make it sound like something somebody might actually say.

Chet (1m 30s):
So I'm going to do things like if you, if you've got two people in a conversation and they're using one another's names, a lot, we don't do that. We rely on context to do that. So, I mean, we don't need to completely sound like real human beings, but I would take out some of those things that are more artificial or would sound a unnatural or I would take out or point out, um, dialogue that is only there as a storytelling technique. Uh, you know, as, as you well know, magic works like this while blah, blah, blah. You know, instead of technically having it as exposition, you have it as dialect.

Chet (2m 3s):
You really don't. Uh, so stuff like that. Um, uh, my first major client was a journalist, uh, background, and so he gets a little tingle of excitement when I cut his five words down to to. So I focus a lot on concision. Um, if you're gonna, uh, talk about, say a top, you're going to say in front of, I'll say before, you know, a lot of stuff like that where I tend to cut things down. I also tend to, um, uh, well for a couple of things and I've got like a, a Google doc that I, uh, usually try to give out to people with their data perspective clients or, uh, I don't really have to do with my main client cause he, he understands everything when I'm cutting stuff.

Chet (2m 44s):
Um, w there are some things very, you know, if you've signed a lot of the word Barry in your approach to replace that word with what is, so if you say the thing very fast, you can say, you know, ran, walked very fast as rant or, or hurried or whatever it is, it gives more of a flavor. It's more unique. Um, I tend to really am stomp all over the use of the past continuous, which is, I don't know if it's completely unique to English, but I know beginning English writers love to do this and it makes total sense.

Chet (3m 17s):
I do it all the time and have to cut it out. And the reason you do it is because you're describing the scene in your head as it's happening. So you say he was standing by the door, she was talking, but every time you do that, you have a was in an ING around a unique verb when it's much, much has much more bite. If you give all of your verbs, uh, their own unique flavor in, in, in the reader's mind and in their mouth, if they're reading out loud. So instead of saying he was standing, you say he stood, it happened in the past tense. Like I said, the reason you do it while you're seeing it in your head is because you're literally seeing it as it happens.

Chet (3m 49s):
For the same reason, um, began or started to ends up in a lot of people's pros, especially beginners, um, where you'll say he began to you never, you only write began for, uh, activities that don't complete because that's all you have to tell them that something began. He began to say, but it was cut off, that kind of thing. If he completes it, you can just say it. He or she, if the character complete it, you can just say the simple past tense. They, they did the thing right. You can say, you know, instead of saying, well, he began to stumble, he started, he began to stutter.

Chet (4m 21s):
You just say he started. OK. um, and the reason you do that is because I'm in small works. These things don't really, uh, cause that many problems. But over the course of a long and fantasy run hobbles let's face it, we write a lot of long do works. You're getting what you really want unique. You really want concision. You really want to get rid of those things that can be repetitive. Uh, another thing that I tried to work on is something called new. During. The verb make a plan is planned. Make is a general all purpose verb that can apply to a whole bunch of things.

Chet (4m 53s):
Planned is a very specific word. But when you, when you say make a plan, you've made the focus, the verb, a very generic verb, and then you made the plan. Would you actually did, you made it a noun, makeup line. Uh, manage. If you write manage, I will write you a snarky notes in the comments about, uh, you know, like a Denny's what he's talking about. You know, man, if she managed to manage demand, these are things that I see a lot of times too where you just cut that out. Um, here's a big one. Um, could, could he could something, something, well, anything could happen.

Chet (5m 25s):
Tell us what actually did happen. And the reason people do this is I think sometimes they're trying to tell us through the POV character that they're unsure about something and occasionally that works. The main thing that I look for when I see code though is that people are putting in filtering. And this is one that's something I just was watching with Autumn's thing. Get the census involved, get all the senses I have to under described on my first draft and then have to go in and really described. Um, or sometimes there's two things I like, I want to talk about here.

Chet (5m 56s):
One is something I'm still trying to learn how to do really well. Can't really always add it in as a line style editor. It's something I like to use is if you've ever read the magicians, he does a lot of things that drive me up a tree, but I w Lev Grossman writes his description from his character point of view in such a way that he never really has to tell you directly how these characters feel because you can get so much about what his character's mind state is by how he describes things. It's amazing. It's like magic powers. I'm like, wow.

Chet (6m 27s):
I if, if, if you wanna I, I'm sure there are a ton of authors that do that. The first one that I really noticed it on, uh, was Lev Grossman with conditions and like I said, you know, there's a lot of stuff he does pass, continues up the wazoo he filters a little bit and now I want to switch over into filtering. Filtering is when I want to do this specifically because of something autumn said where you're talking about using census. I love using census. You really want to ground people in the scene and you need to do it with more than just the eyes. It's the one really great thing that people say the book was better than the movie.

Chet (6m 59s):
Part of what they're saying is in a novel, like with Lev Grossman, of course you can, you can use a description to tell something about the character. The character is what, what they're going through. But the other thing is you have all of these other aspects, internal monologues and thoughts. Uh, you know, you might have an internal argument with yourself. You might have, you know, uh, you might notice a smell that has a significant, she might notice a sound or, or something might spring to the foreground that you can't always do very well with cinematography.

Chet (7m 30s):
And, but with that, uh, that, uh, cinematography, he never asked you, what is that? Try not to filter the sensations through your character. Every time you do that, you were reminding the reader that they aren't the character and it pulls people out of immersion out for some things. You're going to want to do that. Uh, very occasionally, if you're writing something very disturbing, you're going to want to pull people out of it. But instead of saying something like, she heard shot from across the room, okay. You don't have to tell her that. Sh tell us that she heard it in her POV. You can simply present it. You can say a shot rang out across the firm, across the, from the other side of them.

Chet (8m 1s):
Okay, tell us the location, tell us what happened. But you don't have to remind us that we aren't, they're experiencing, when you say a sh, something simply happened, you know, um, um, the moon Rose, the moon Rose over the horizon or dips down or whatever the sun Rose, uh, from her eyes instead of saying he saw the sunrise, you know what I mean? We know he saw it because we're describing it. We're in their third close to the point of view. So as much as you can, if you can get rid of filtering, um, you know, instead of saying she felt sweat rundown, you know, that's that he'd say, you know, a drip of sweat, uh, you know, you can go to on more specificity, but you can just say it happened and the, and the reader will automatically insert themselves into the POB, a character's point of view.

Chet (8m 45s):
So filterings a big one. Um, and I think especially with the sweat there, you know, if you can sort of get into what it feels like on the skin and stuff like that, because

Jesper (8m 57s):
then it works. Right. Rather, I was flying back from am, I had a business trip to Cairo last week and I was flying back and then on the airplane and somebody was sitting next to me reading a book and it just sort of peaked over in it. And it was quite interesting because it has a, it's not really filtering, but it's more like a, I don't know if you have a more correct, if that's a word for it, but you know, it was summarizing a lot. So every piece that was more like, okay, and then in the morning this and this happened and that doesn't tell me the dialogue and then tell me what a day, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jesper (9m 29s):
Something happened. It was just like I was looking at it and like that, that's so boring. You know, it just, I don't feel connected to what's happening at all. This is just a summary of whatever happened that day, that day.

Chet (9m 40s):
And that's what tell him versus, no. Okay. You'd have to show people and one of the best tools for that. Well, I don't think I have a Wiki cause I think I had a backward, I do most of my writing, which is as an ingredient one in there, but it's the emotion thesaurus uh, for English writing especially, it's, it's amazing. Um, you don't have to trust your reader. You don't always have to tell them that somebody said is feeling something. You can show it, you know, you can have the fidget if they're nervous, you can, uh, point out showing versus telling is something people always talk about.

Chet (10m 19s):
And nobody really, I hate these little snippets, you know the adverbs things because you need to know the why. If you don't know the why, you can follow the rules. But it's like being blind and carrying the lamp. You know, it's an old Zen story. Uh, I'm a, I'm a Zen Buddhist, so there's old gen story. He says, you know, there's a blind man and the son usually carry around. I says, why do I need a lamp? I'm blind. I'm gonna be able to see any way. So he's, you know, but you should carry a lamp because other people can see you. So he's walking around and somebody slammed into him, he gets upset. It's like, didn't you see my lap? He says, he said, you you crazy old names is your lamp has gone out.

Chet (10m 50s):
And if you don't know, he didn't know cause he's blind. So that's the thing. You don't know the why. So the reason for adverse, you know, Stephen King has said road to hell is paved with adverbs. And the reason he says this isn't because adverbs are always wrong. Good luck trying to, you know, don't spend three sentences explaining what doing something gingerly looks like when you have gingerly change release, just easier to get there. We get there faster. Where you really don't want it is in dialogue tags. You don't want it in dialogue techs. And the reason you don't want to dial it takes is one of two things is happening.

Chet (11m 22s):
Either it's in the dialogue but you don't trust it. It's in the dialogue. Okay. Um, in which case trust us in the dog or it's not in the dialogue and you think that you can tack it on by having an adverb. And I pull back on this for purely mechanical adverbs. So you know, if, if you want to say said slowly, okay, that might be the more preferable thing to say then slow then growled or S. cause sometimes those, those unique, um, dialogue tags, uh, distract from over there.

Chet (11m 56s):
Anything else you said is invisible? Yeah, I was just about to say because it, because you can also overdo that stuff. You know, it can be like, it's, it's almost a tour reading it because there's so many tax all the time and it's just like, what the hell? These emotional people all the time, you know, sometimes it's just better to just Chuck in as she said, and then move on as an experiment. Remove all your tags, remove all your tags when you're doing editing, do it in substitution mode and just move all your tags and then put back the ones that you actually need because you will, you'll find, especially if you get further into it or work, your characters will know the tone of voice of you writing your characters really well.

Chet (12m 35s):
See, part of what I'm, I'm kind of a slower writing compared to a lot of people and reason is eight I. I don't do as much telling you to go out my showing. But the other thing is I really entered the eyes and enter the experience of my characters. And so when you do that, they speak like different people. Um, so yeah, definitely stripping out tags. So what I look for is I look for covid could I always like, could cause, could, if you look for, could, first of all, it's, it's, it's, uh, you're really, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking? You're equivocating when you don't need to.

Chet (13m 6s):
But the other thing is that almost always is involved with filter work. Almost always it's could see, could hear, could whatever, could remember, you know. Uh, and so it's a very good hint to look for a, an equivocating filter. I filter in general. I also hate things like a little, a bit and a little bit in small short works, they don't matter so much, but Oh my God, if you writing along work, you know, and you're writing chapters that are, some people I write short chapters, people write long chapters, 2,500. If you have a bit, a little, a little bit in, you know, 16, 17, 18, 25 times, you know, imagine how repetitive that gets and it adds nothing.

Chet (13m 43s):
It doesn't tell us. It's not specific enough to really give us anything. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, there is as a repetitive flavor that you really don't need. I was just about to say instead of a little or a bit or whatever, if you just say it is a small ass, what do I know? Then you're showing what it is as small as instead of just saying a little, which is, it doesn't really say anything and let a competitor what yeah, it's exactly, it's completely, it's the same thing about slightly, I don't like slightly, you can use it sometimes, but people over it.

Chet (14m 21s):
These are things that people overuse slightly. It's the same idea. Here's one that one of my critique partners early on really keyed me into that is amazing and has always helped me. And that is, this follows a rule that I'm going to go into a little bit right after this. But look, you look for these, let me search for these times. Turn or turn look or looked. And what it is, is that almost always we assume if somebody's speaking to somebody, they're looking at them. Um, uh, you know, um, you don't have to tell us every action that leads to the, when it's implied in the next, in the final action.

Chet (15m 0s):
So like you can say, and sometimes you want to, if you're, it's like I say, if it's a very first time you're describing your major preparing to spell, you might want to go into great detail about what that looks like. Okay. But if it's something like paying the bill, the waiter, you don't have to say he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and pulled out his card and handed as a waiter then signed it when it came back and doing some things. He paid the waiter. You know what I mean? We don't care enough. We need to know that things have concluded. We don't need to know every little piece of detail. You don't have to say he lifted his left leg then is right and in, in sequence until he ended up arriving at Heather's house.

Chet (15m 36s):
You can just say here that, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, um, these are all things that usually ends up in the second draft where you have to go back in and say, okay, how much of this, it's the same thing and this is more of a developmental stuff and style stuff. But I like to do time jumps. I like to jump to what is important. I don't, I'm not a token ask. Uh, uh, I mean I love him. He is my one of my first fantasy but I don't, it's just like, uh, George RR Martin, you know, I don't need pages and pages of banners, man-to-man stuff that, it literally, I'm, I'm already forgetting the first part of this.

Chet (16m 7s):
Like a math problem, a complex math problem where I'm already forgetting the first part of what you said. By the time we get to the third part of what you said. Literally none of this information is in my head anymore. I have spaced out halfway through. So, so I tend to like to do a time jobs, but you know, what I'm trying to work on is that about one in five people. Um, I ended up just losing somebody. They don't make the jump with me. So I've learned how to like put a little summary at the very beginning saying it was a day later, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jesper (16m 32s):
Yeah. Well I think that the description part that that's obviously a very big matter of taste. I mean some people really love to have more description, which is fine as long as the stuff that you're describing is something that is relevant for me. Because also from a character point of view, I character wouldn't start to explain to them. I mean if you, if you go to visit, visit one of your friends, know you're not going to start explaining the friend that how you opened the car door and you put in the key into the ignition and then I turned on the car by turning to the right and you know, you don't do that.

Jesper (17m 4s):
You just say, I took the car to get here because we all know what it means. And even even in the fantasy setting, two characters talking to each other who might know what this means, but the reader might not exactly meet no one. It made you want to have a way to, to give that information because the characters won't start telling each other about it because they both know how it works.

Chet (17m 24s):
Expository dialogue. Exactly. That's what I'm saying and that was something I was talking about earlier, but what I really like to do there is just, just especially happens in Laura, could you, you know, there are terms that you can have there and be like, we need to explain this. No, you can get it from context of J one or two more paragraphs and you'll get it from context or I'm doing something wrong or I'm doing things wrong, but, but you can't just shortcut to what magic is your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. A word that you can oftentimes get almost as another word that I like to get rid of almost. You know, it was almost as if it was as if it doesn't add anything.

Chet (17m 55s):
Again, um, that the word that there are so many places where you just do a search for that and every time you see it, ask if you really need it. Very, very rarely do you actually need the word that. Um, of course, if you're gonna say, of course it's not dialogue. There's no point in mentioning it. It is. Of course it is. It should already be evident. If it isn't, then it isn't. Of course. And you shouldn't write that decided is another filter. But it's one that people, a lot of people, well they decided to do this. You know how we know they decided it.

Chet (18m 25s):
They did it. Now you can have them grapple with the question. You know, man would he have gone left? You know, he was going here. He might've gone, yeah. Am I done this? And then he went left. Well you know, we decided to go left because he did it. You don't have to tell us that you decided to do it cause you're showing this to me. I'm talking about filter. We talked about actions as soon by later actions. Okay. This is a big one that I'm really working on and that is a dialogue. Tags versus action tags. Now, some people really prefer if you read am Oh was it Patterson?

Chet (18m 56s):
And I know he doesn't write his own stuff anymore. I was reading that it was a thriller novel and there was literally not a single dialogue tag and it was all action. Now if you do too much of that, it's going to sound like you're doing a screenplay about methods. Okay. Cause everybody's jewelry is L get out in there then they're just stumbling around. But what you really don't want to do is something like, and what I wrote here is um, you know the rules either dialogue or action but not both. So I would say this, don't forget the sausage Jerry said, looking me straight in the eye and make sure I knew how important it was, but we were better is to say don't forget the sauce period, not a comma.

Chet (19m 32s):
Jerry looked at me straight in the eye and make sure I get home port was, you don't have to tell us that he said it if he's literally doing an action right after it. The way we do this in paragraphs is, you know, the dialogue and the act are in the same paragraph, should have a new actor. You put them in a new paragraph typically. So get rid of the dialogue, take if you have action, you know. Um,

Jesper (19m 51s):
yeah, and I also quite like to do that on purpose in the way that the I put in a bit of action here, there just to get rid of not having to say this person said, and that person said, because it also gets a bit jarring to keep reading who said what? Where's it's nice to have it breaking up sometimes with somebody. He uh, he slammed the door and then he said, Oh, you know, and, and then you can add what he said. So he slammed the sniper guy full stop. And then there is the, uh, the, the dialogue piece there, right. I mean, but then it also shows you emotion then apparently he's angry about something.

Jesper (20m 21s):
So, and then you'd be, you don't even have to explain that then start saying if he looked at her angry or whatever, you know. Exactly.

Chet (20m 28s):
There's so much you can put in the context of actually, that's why I really love the emotion of the source for that. Um, something else you got to remember is like even the way we're talking, right. We're trying to be very respectful of one another but we interrupt each other. Yeah. And people talk that way. You when you, when you write dialogue, don't write dialogue thinking they have the luxury of going on on a a 10 sentence monologue. Right. I'm going to say what I'm going to say as concisely as possible because I'm afraid you might interrupt me at any second. Okay. The other thing is am got, Oh, a dialer preamble.

Chet (20m 60s):
Yes, yes. Comma blah, blah, blah, blah blah. If you asked me a question, I don't have to say yes. I can just give you the answer. The only time he really going to say yes a lot. You might do it occasionally but that is if you're slowing down cause you're trying to think of what to say next or if that's all you want to say where you here. Yes, but, but what's not said there is the important part of that dialogue. Yes. And then you should show it action saying he's the shows that he's a reluctant to keep going. Otherwise you could just get rid of the yes and you can just have the actual answer, you know?

Chet (21m 33s):
Yeah. Um, I told you about adverbs in the dialogue tags. Boy, I tell you that's, that one is one that I had to go, I had to go on a hunt through my own stuff. You know, there's really funny, like sometimes you, um, are there other things that are more developmental? And I'm still, I'm still trying to learn them so I'm not, I'm not really that great as our developmental editor for, for all the genres. I don't like prologues. Uh, if you are going to have a prologue for the love of God, please let it be me and character or at least introduce the main character somewhere in the prologue.

Jesper (22m 5s):
Yeah. And it cannot be an info dump. It, there has to be some relevant action taking place in the prologue. Just sort of like if you ha, I mean there are situations where I do think that a prologue is beneficial to have, but it has to be written in a way that is engaging and ups on a piece of history dump of stuff that happened 2000 years ago that maybe it would be nice for you, dear reader to know. Uh, I mean, well fine, but couldn't you just tell me when it becomes relevant in there in the chapter then

Chet (22m 32s):
it's the same thing with POB jobs. Don't make, don't you know you can do this with romance, but he said, she said romance. Yeah, as long as you've got was founded early, his point of view, her point of view, his point of view, her point of that, you can do that. But if you're writing, so imagine you're writing a fantasy novel with multiple points of view. You write a prologue connected to nothing. And anyway, then you write the main character for a chapter. Then you skip to another chapter. You've now gotten me about five to 10, five going on 10,000 words into your book and you've made me start it three times.

Chet (23m 3s):
That's three times you have to get me so involved that I will not put the book down. Good luck as a new way. Right? Cause what we all do as new writers I'm sure you did this on yours. I do this online. My God, it took me 15 chapters to get to the inciting incident. Now they're short. Thanks. We'd be Jesus the short the short chapters, but, but it, you know, you don't want to take that long. Now on the other hand, I don't really like books that start with action with characters. I don't know what care about yet either. So it's a fine line. Um, but just think almost every first novel writer I ever seen that does fantasy or scifi starts with a prologue and I would say 80 to 85% of the time it's either the wrong prologue or it shouldn't be there at all.

Chet (23m 49s):
That you can, you can, you can fill us in as we go. We can learn a lot from context. I'm still trying to learn how to write very compelling openers and I'm getting better with every new work that I start. But am

Jesper (24m 2s):
yeah. And I think we should probably also point out, you know, because the opening of a novel is the hot, one of the hardest things to write, uh, uh, it is, uh, well, okay, fair enough. Every part of the novel is difficult, the middle of social difficult because you need to keep the attention where sometimes in the middle of sort of gets a bit boring and it just sort of drags off because we want the, we want to get to the end. That is exciting again, but, but, but there is so much tied up in the beginning. There's so much you need to achieve with the beginning to read the same that it is very, very difficult to write.

Jesper (24m 36s):
And it takes a lot of the of uh, let's say, uh, trial and error. And even when you're written several, several books you there's still a lot to learn to do the better intro. So it's, it's not easy stuff, but that's also why you work with an editor to help you.

Chet (24m 51s):
It's hard, and I'm not a developmental editor. I am not always. Now, there's some people I have helped and I've worked with her. I said, you can cut all of these paragraphs away and start with them at the bureaucrat getting, getting their benefits denied. That's really where the story starts. That's where we have character. They're in a jam. I don't need to know how he got into the gym yet. You can let me know as we go. Okay. If it's just background stuff, you know, I don't need to know the political structure. I should learn that fruit interacting with the bureaucrat, interacting with the streets, interacting with the people on them, all of these things.

Chet (25m 23s):
So much things that are in cinematography. You know, people, it's so funny. You know, you look at something like star Wars or Marvel movies are so, so much as is, and you don't have this when you're writing, but you see it when you look at good movies in that. So you think about star Wars, remember, um, all of those machines were beaten up and dirty and messed up. Right. So much is told to you about the world that unconsciously you don't even know you, you're getting, it does that you don't get with with writing. So you really have to learn how to give enough description. The other thing too is that um, this is something I see a lot too.

Chet (25m 56s):
Sometimes people go into extreme specificity about their, about their am description and the problem with that is I get lost and then I get anxious that I'm not visualizing it correctly every single time they come up now I'm like, am I, is that I get that jacket right? And they switched, they change. Give me some highlights and some things I can remember and you know what, you're just going to have to live with it. If the jacket that I conjure in my head differs from yours as, as if you really want me to know exactly what you should go into writing you should go into, into uh, making movies and doing some photography and all that kind of stuff.

Chet (26m 29s):
Cause then you can really, really guy. But, but give me some highlights and then, and then from that point on, you know, it's really, it's really my, it's going to be my story now. At this point. You're, you're using telepathy, you're showing me important things. But you know, if you go into the exact physical details of a situation, you're going to lose me. Um, you're going to write acres, acres of words. You don't need a board to write. And the other thing is too, like if you're a reader like me, I start to get anxious about whether I actually know if I've got it right in my head, you know? And that's something a lot of times people don't think about.

Jesper (26m 59s):
Yeah. Indeed. I, I still have a, well, at least a one paragraph. Uh, I remember in my first book that is still, it's in the published version, however it got through all the editing. I don't know, but I that one's still pains me. It's like every time that those plays, I can't remember the exact details of it, but I'm explaining that it's a very dark place and they'd just go way too much into the specifics, specifics of how dark it is and move on. But you know, it happens to all of us.

Jesper (27m 29s):
It's a learning process.

Chet (27m 31s):
Yeah, no, it's so that's funny that you say that. You know, I got dinged really hard on the critique, uh, a person because I actually wrote sense via touch as afraid. I said that's a ridiculous phrase. Like, you know, felt that's what that was to be a touch. And my critiquer, you know, Ryan, he says, he says, he says, I sense to be a reading that maybe you got a little lost in it.

Chet (28m 1s):
I always so hilarious. You know, and you gotta you just gotta laugh cause there's stuff where you're going to be like, you know, and then of course there's the obvious stuff that I catch that that w copy editors will catch two, which is the repetition of awards three times in two sentences. You know, starting, you know, stuff that pro-rider aid is great for is are you starting three sentences or four sentences in a row with exact same pronoun or proper noun or word in general, you know, um, yeah, don't ever write very unique. There is no such thing. Unique is not a scale. Unique means one of a kind unique, you're not very unique, you're not pretty unique.

Chet (28m 34s):
Unique means there is one of these items is one of those things. Um,

Jesper (28m 41s):
yeah and I, I think, I mean with all of it is so good to, you know, get some editors perspective on writing and sort of what are other things that you, once you be careful about it. But I also sort of want to tell everybody who's watching and listening here that when you are doing your first draft, don't worry about all of this, you know, just get the story. I would get it onto the page and then in the later drafts you can revision all of this together with the Hill up, the editor's notes. They'll sit there and agonize over, am I not doing this or I'm not doing this right, or is this wrong at the first rest States?

Jesper (29m 15s):
It doesn't matter. Just get the story out. However choppy it's going to be, it doesn't matter. Just get it out. So that's the one thing I would say, don't, don't worry about it that at that point and just move on because otherwise go into after the fact. Yeah. Because, because you kind of get stuck in editing mode and then you'll kind of be kind of go over the same chapter again and again and again. And at some point did the amendments or corrections you're making is probably going to move the needle. Like what? Less than 1%. So it maybe, yeah. Which one reader album a million who would appreciate the energy?

Jesper (29m 47s):
Just sit, but there nine, 999,999 other readers don't give a

Chet (29m 53s):
crappy or they were good to notice. They won't even know. Um, you know, the guy that, that, that the main author that I, that I started at anything with a journalist, um, he said he spent an extra year and a half on his first novel and probably only improved it by about 5%. Right, right.

Jesper (30m 9s):
Yeah. So it's important to everybody who gets into writing, especially when you're starting out. You know, the thing with, with the writing as I've said over and over and over again, it, it, it, it improves your training and your only way you can improve this by writing more. So if you, if you get stuck up on, on the first three chapters and editing out 200 million times, you know, you're not gonna get any better, you're just going to sit there with the same stuff over and over. So, so just keep running, keep producing work and, and then what would somebody who knows what they're doing work with the emphasis that I would never, I mean obviously I'm not native English became so I would never ever put out a book that I hadn't gone through an editor because I make grammar mistakes all the time because this is not my mother tongue.

Jesper (30m 53s):
But,

Chet (30m 54s):
but you don't have the unique specificity. You know, sometimes you can tell when somebody has looked at the thesaurus for synonyms, right. They don't realize that every synonym is, is contextually dependent. Yeah. Like technically on a broad sense, these two words are synonyms, but you would never in a million people look at you like you were crazy. Do you use this word in place of another and you can't get, I mean, if I tried to learn, you know, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, Danish, you know, I mean, I've tried to learn Swedish. It's hardest. Jesus. Jesus.

Chet (31m 26s):
Well, cause I'm about to Swedish to sign it. You know, my back that Vince Gilligan is Swedish for winterize. Um, um, and I'm probably pronouncing it badly. I'm sorry. It's been to, we're going to Alanon and dad's gone and I'd probably really screwed it up, but it just, we dries, looked at just way too. Like I should have pictures of wolves in the background, kind of looking at the moon kind of. It's very eighties cheesy will sweat, you know what I mean? But at the same time, that really is the heart of, of a cold place. You know what I mean? Writing the second one is all about passion, so it's gone. Um, or elderly I I'm screwed it up.

Chet (31m 56s):
I know him. Am yeah,

Jesper (31m 57s):
but maybe a sort of a in, in wrapping up here, I'm thinking if, especially for, because those who are already further along in their writing endeavors, uh, they, they, I'm, I'm sure that there was some very good points and inputs here that they can pick up throughout the, what we've been talking about on what to avoid and then they can, they can sort of assault that on their own. But right now, I'm thinking a bit in wrapping up around those who are just starting out because that w is there some sort of a few common mistakes that you could advise to say those who are just starting out, but when you're just starting writing, is there like a top three thing that maybe somebody could just internalize it and just on those who are stopped

Chet (32m 40s):
to if you see what I mean? About four things. Four most important things. I think from a line and stop perspective, not from a developmental perspective, because I do not have, you know, you know what they say? They say when you write a book, you think that when you write a book, you learn how to write a book. No, you learn how to write that book. The next book is totally new book in your comment. I totally different. So, so developmentally, I don't have much to say, but style and, and, and that kind of lies. First of all, good Lord. Let's start with grammar. If you want to learn grammar, just read Elmore Leonard. I mean, you're not always gonna be using this line, but that man understands dialogue.

Chet (33m 14s):
But, um, I would say filtering, get your senses in, but don't filter. Okay. Uh, saw, heard, felt, remembered, noticed, uh, recognized I might've already said that one. Decided, you know, look for those filters. Every time you're doing that, you're pulling people out. Okay. And that leads into the next one, which is show don't tell. And what that means is don't tell me how somebody, what something was or how let the reader come to the conclusions by writing what happened.

Chet (33m 49s):
Okay. So to some extent, you know, um, show me anxious, show me angry. He could, his teeth, uh, slammed the door, slammed the door, yet it doesn't have to be that really seriously get, get, uh, the, the emotion thesaurus will you help with this? Um, cause I can always think of two or three different things. But the problem is if you're writing the same emotions over the course of the novel, you're gonna write the same three or four different.

Chet (34m 20s):
But, but, but yeah, so show, don't tell, but what does that mean? That means, um, um, don't, don't tell me what happened. Show me what happened. Put me in the middle of the action. Uh, I love this and know if it's, to me it feels like I have, uh, the federal makes me feel like I have superpowers when I know that the other thing that it makes me feel like I have superpowers is the am past continuous, if you're writing in the past tense was something, was standing, was sitting, was it?

Chet (34m 52s):
Whenever I see that, and I see this in professional writing, I see this in traditional publishing, I see this all over the place and it's not technically wrong. It's just you. I want you to remember that when you have a wall isn't an IMG wrote, every verb you're starting in your ending are all the same. They all blend together and you can give every single one of those verbs so much more bite. And when you put more bite in every single one more more juice and every single one of those verbs, you're doing such a better job at getting your, your reader into the text, into the situation when everything is distinct.

Chet (35m 23s):
It just, and I know, I guess the same thing with neutering the verb made a plan. Nope. Managed to Nope, don't found myself. No thought. Found myself as okay colloquial like you as like a folksy way of saying things every now and again. So I would say yeah am the big ones are filtering past continuous am and showed him to and I hate that hate even leaving somebody with show don't tell because for the longest time I had no idea what that meant.

Chet (35m 53s):
Yeah. Bit tough here. That show don't tell. What does that mean? You know? And what it means is, you know, Mark said angrily is telling am what the fuck was that for? You know, Mark balled his fists or you and he slammed his hand on anything. Why didn't you do that? You know what I mean? So sometimes it's just straight up in the dialogue. You don't even need an action. Like if you've got an exclamation point that you know, a lot of that gets, it gets to do with the context. Um, um, and instead of don't with fantasy so many people want to put you on a travel log, then we went here and then we want to hear them.

Chet (36m 25s):
We hear them when really, you know, take me on a journey. Put me in these places, you know, put in certainly into the story. That's what every reader is reading for their reading to be that character in that story. Not doing, they're not reading to read about other people. Notice their reading in order to be all, all fiction reading is, is, is a, is a, uh, it is building up your empathy muscles. It's why so many people would read so many books end up wanting to come writers because it's magic.

Chet (36m 56s):
You know? Am forcing yourself into somebody else's eyes and becoming that person. That's what you want. And so getting rid of the filtering helps with that and then showing instead. So telling you what I mean by that really is trying not to try not to take the easy way of, of angry can mean so many different things, but you can show it distinctively in a way that is very specific to that character that I then now and taking on for myself as as a

Jesper (37m 23s):
indeed. Thanks for thanks for right down. And it is funny because of what you just said made me think because I'm, I'm just, uh, I'm currently writing a nonfiction book on how to plot a or our autumn and I am writing the book, uh, and

Chet (37m 39s):
she's a high rep. she told me only part clause and part pants is right. She knows where to go. Let me, she doesn't tell them how to get there.

Jesper (37m 45s):
No, indeed. Uh, and, and because, and it just makes me think because when you set the fantasy likes to sort of get into a travel log, uh, because one of the things that I just wrote in the chapter the other day was basically that all stories are about the character. It is not about where they go. It is about the character and it's about the change that they go undergo throughout the novel. That's what the story is about. Where do you go matters less. Um, so, so that's, uh, I think it just made me what you said just made me think about that.

Jesper (38m 15s):
So, but, but I want to thank you a lot Chet for, for coming onto amwritingfantasy and sharing a lot of the editing inputs, uh, that, that I hope will be very, very useful for, for those watching and listening whether you're on YouTube or autumn.

Chet (38m 30s):
Yeah. Um, I wanna leave you with, um, a few if you want learn more about story. Um, I think his name is, I think his name's Brad bird. He wrote a book called the secret of story and the secrets of story and it really just mind melting. You know, he uses the word, uh, all kinds of uses that nice way, way, way. He didn't edit it for that, but all my God, like he'll just introduce you to some things where you're like, I never thought of that, but I know that instinctively about story. You don't know that. You know it until somebody really just points it out there, like, you know, so he's got a lot of the really good juicy, if you want to learn stories stuff.

Chet (39m 8s):
So the things I would plug would be that every, every writer should have the emotion thesaurus. If you want to learn how to show, not tell. Yeah,

Jesper (39m 15s):
yeah. We'll put a, I'll put a link to that one in the description field in the show notes so that, uh, for the, for those of you watching or listening you

Chet (39m 23s):
you can find it there if you want it. And, uh, I have a website that runs that is not, it's not optimized. So if, but I do have a am I do have a, a Raider fan group, uh, on Facebook. It's called Chet. Sandberg's close readers. You can find me there and I will probably put up a, I didn't want it. Like I said, I was telling you, I don't want to put a new butter tied, something to get away so people seek, my writing is like, uh, before they looked at it for editing, you know. Um, I typically, um, I usually get most of my jobs to interacting with authors and giving them sample pages.

Chet (39m 57s):
I'll give them a sample chapter. Uh, this is what I would change is what I fixed. A little bit of developmental, a lot of copy, but I'll, but, but I really focus on the stuff that's a little harder than copy, which is a line and style. I'll try not to, I try not to strip out anybody's voice. Uh, sometimes people want to insist on, on, on bad habits as being a voice in. It usually isn't. Usually they have something more distinctive in there that's, that's, that can be fixed with line style. But I hope, I hope that I just get people on the right foot with, with just those three or four little things, you know?

Jesper (40m 30s):
Yeah. That was our purpose here. And, uh, and of course if you email me a link to your website and whatnot, then I'll put it into,

Chet (40m 38s):
yeah. Within that function soon. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully before this comes out, maybe I'll have something that functions. I gotta figure out some way to get, uh, you know how it is. You've got to get a newsletter saying, I am not good at, I'm not good at anything. That requires multiple steps of, you can only do this one way. It's like a bottle of wine and Stella did, or not a proofreader. Okay. I don't want to look to make sure that every period isn't the right place. I want to get you I want to get your dialogue. That sounds like something a human from earth would say. That's what I wanted to do, right? Yeah. Absolutely.

Chet (41m 8s):
All right. Cool.

Jesper (41m 9s):
Thanks a lot. Chet and uh, thank you for listening or watching out there and, uh, we'll see you next time.

Chet (41m 14s):
Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 15 – A writers WORST nightmare

As authors we're 100% depended on our data, yet many treat it as not important. A writers worst nightmare comes through the day your computer crashes and everything is lost for ever.

We don't want that to happen to you, so we took it upon ourselves to lay out 4 simple steps that will secure you data for good.

The different tools mentioned in the podcast are:
AxCrypt for encrypting your files: https://www.axcrypt.net/  
Acronis for backup: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/ 
The handy USB drive: https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-128GB-Traveler-DTSE9G2/dp/B00U88FV0S/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
So if you have a new idea for a complete new story, should you just go ahead and write it straight away or would it somehow be worth it to actually test if readers would be interested in this story idea or not? Well, that's what we are going to talk about in today's session and also if it is worth testing with readers, then how do you do that?

Autumn (38s):
Yeah. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn and together with Jesper we've published more than 20 novels. Our aim is to use our experienced with to help you with writing marketing and selling your books to fans all over the world. Okay. Before we get into all of that, uh, let's just do a quick update on what we're working on as we've decided to do on these monthly joint sessions and a as we talked about last month, we U been pretty busy on a few number, a few different items, haven't we?

Autumn (1m 16s):
Yes, we have some big projects coming up and one of them we hit a new milestone. So we're both really excited to be at this point with our top secret, not so secret all building course that we have been working on for months now. Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah. Um, yeah, so well basically we, as we mentioned last time, we were sort of nailing down our joint process, uh, for plotting.

Jesper (1m 48s):
So we have the book on our guidebook on how to flood a novel and there was a workbook associated to that. And on top of that we have a book on story ideas, which is sort of a well congruent with what we're talking about here today I guess. But we have those three books. Um, it sort of in the way, because we were focusing on getting those done before we could actually put some full effort into the world, but in cost. But, uh, now I'm very happy to say that we actually have the first draft of all three of those books done.

Autumn (2m 22s):
So we're really excited. We have some content editing and our editor and actually a couple of bucks covers. But we got one of them done. So we're really moving along with those and our focus is definitely going into the world building, which is perfect because it's really starting to come together and hopefully it will snowball to completion very quickly. Well, quickly as it this year, 2019. Yeah, yeah. I was also doing this or you couldn't see that the, yeah, for those on the podcast, I'm doing air quotes quickly, uh, because uh, uh, well, uh, there is a still a lot of work with the welding course.

Jesper (2m 58s):
Um, but now because of those first drafts of those books being done, uh, sort of only focusing on the world building costs now, so that's got to pick up a lot of peace. Um, but they still months away before it's done. Um, and as we've talked about before, we're building our own future world in, in conjunction with the development of the cost as sort of an example sessions so that people can see how, how to apply what you're teaching, which makes a lot of sense.

Jesper (3m 31s):
Um, um, on top of that, we also want to add a example outgrowing of our, the first book in our next series, which we have not done yet, but a the first applied for that we want to include as a download in the planet books are, but people also there can see how we are going about the plotting and how are we applying what, what the book is teaching. So that alone also halls that book back because we need to finish the wealth building first and then we got a plot the book and only then can we, uh, you know, make that download available inside the program.

Jesper (4m 5s):
They could, we release the book. So it's probably gonna I guess we're going to sort of have a kitchen perfect later in 2019 where we released the three books at one time and also have a cross on all of a sudden everything sort of well contribute factor, except I guess I'm gonna say it sounds like we made this giant ball of yarn that's all knotted together and tied or a giant piece of Celtic knot work and everything is interlaced independent on each other. So well it's all released. It's going to be big, phenomenal and beautiful. But until that, I feel like we're just pulling it individual strands that we don't see the whole pattern yet, but we're so close, we're getting there.

Autumn (4m 38s):
I'm really excited. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Alright, well building and our books, that's actually a really good lead in to what we're talking about today. If, you know, should you just go and write whatever book idea is in your head, is that how the best way or writing books or is there a way of testing the market to see what readers are interested in? And so that's a fun question and one we both kind of ponder it and wonder. We're pondering as we look at our current, are you serious that we're going to be writing?

Jesper (5m 11s):
Yeah, it's very interesting actually because it was something, it was something autumn brought up actually a while back I think because initially we talked about it quite a long while back about, but I'm sort of testing the waters with story ideas and trying to figure out if it's, you know, if there was a way to test out whether or not a story idea is gay, getting any interest from Rios a but also if it's sort of worth investing the time to write a full trilogy, for example with the story idea before we're getting into it.

Jesper (5m 44s):
So we talked about it for quite a long while back and then it sort of went on ice for a while because we were doing other things I guess a but now it's, it's starting to become a bit relevant to have the conversation again and it's, well, especially me as well. I'm more interested because I know autumn have done a bit of testing with some with this stuff, uh, over the last well once I guess. Um, and when I started out writing my first a series, I did exactly what I guess like 90% of all authors probably do is I write what I wanted to write and then I just cross my fingers.

Jesper (6m 20s):
Hopefully the market will like these sorts of books. Uh, but yeah, the question today is, is, is that really the best way of doing it? So that's where we, we sort of exploring this topic here. One good talking to you at the same time. So, uh, so hopefully you will get a lot of this, but maybe you want to sort of explain a bit what you mean. Sure. As can say this is, I'm in the middle still of doing this experiment because I did the same thing when I wrote my first trilogy. I had this idea, I just wrote it and actually then I wrote a different series and I just wrote it and they've done well, but they could be doing better.

Autumn (6m 53s):
I look at the market, I know they could be doing better and my perspective has changed. I am, I'm passionate about writing. This is definitely my passionate what I want to do as an adult, but I'm also much more interested in now as an entrepreneur. I understand the business of writing and I know when you're doing a business you test out products, do you know, do some market testing, makes sure that people are actually going to like what you're doing. And of course there's a couple of ways of doing that and one is like you can see what is really popular now like game of Thrones and say, Hey, I've got to write game of Thrones, my version, but by the time I got that done written and how many other people are writing game of Thrones type stories right now you're just going to get this tiny little sliver of the market.

Autumn (7m 35s):
But the other thing to do is to say true to yourself and what you want to write, which is great, but don't go and just write an entire series. Don't build an entire series. The best thing to do is to test the market and that can be done through a couple of means. One is short stories, which I've been writing short stories and they're great because they also help with the world-building. If you're, if you're kind of pants in your world or your characters on some short stories really are great, phenomenal way of getting a better feel for the world as you actually write it. Instead of writing a list of, you know, or even drawing a map, it gives you more of a perspective, very similar to how the novel will be, but somewhere between a short story and a novella.

Autumn (8m 16s):
And that's what I am trying. I actually have two story ideas that I think are great, completely different ideas. Um, and I releasing two novellas in may and one in June and I'm going to see which one's readers perfor before I go and write the entire series on either of them. Because I'm at the point where I want to know I'm going to be writing something that only I enjoy. I mean I just love writing, but that readers are really waiting for and going to be receptive to because I do this for a living and I have to make money now you have to pay the bills and eat.

Autumn (8m 48s):
I, I'm not a vampire yet or a tree. I'd actually like to be a tree, but a tree they could, right. So like an end, it has to be an a. It would be a fantastic way to live. So that's what I have written. I did plot out the series, I have a solid idea of what books one, two, and three would be, but I have only written the first novella and I'm going to hand give them out. Um, well that goes out there going to be 99 cents and I might do them as a sign up as a free a banged lead-in, um, reader magnet, but I'm going to give them, you know, a couple of months out there to see which one readers prefer in whichever is the one that I see the most interested in.

Autumn (9m 30s):
That's the one I'm going to go ahead and write next. And then I avoid to write all three books and release them. Boom, boom, boom. Like we've discussed before in these episodes. So that's a fantastic way of doing it. But I don't know. You could give your ideas. Yes. As I mean does that sound like a reasonable thing would? My biggest con that I have found, and you can, this will be a good one for you to think about is I have written two novellas, two totally different worlds, two totally different characters. I've had to take the time to develop characters, develop a world, develop magic systems, everything.

Autumn (10m 3s):
We've talked about, everything that we talked about in our world building course and I'm writing so far, 45,000 words in one 35,000 words on the other and I might not go any further. And so there's definitely a time constraint there. I mean, I could test out other ideas using the same world but different characters. But it's also not as easy as saying darn it, I writing three bucks and that's what's going to happen. Yeah, be good. Because I actually was, uh, wanted to rewind that for a second, but just to understand, so are you saying that you have like two completely different worlds and two completely different stories and that that's, and then you write one stop throwing one of them and another show of throwing another?

Autumn (10m 47s):
Is that what you're saying? I have written short stories in both of them, but uh, to really do this market testing, I'm going to actually put them for sale, not just for download and I'm putting them on Amazon. And so they're actually novellas. Ah, the one is 45,000 words. The other one is 35,000 words, but it's two different, two different stories. Totally. One is more urban fantasy modern to more sun in this world. So that one was pretty easy to develop but at the end and a lot of backstory to make it real. And the other one is dark fantasy and totally different world.

Jesper (11m 19s):
So that went with all the regular world-building you'd have to do. Right. Because my thinking would more be like, for example, let's, let's use our own future fiction. Here's an example for now. Uh, but we are building that entire world and am we've got to write in that world so it's not like, well then we'll just build a new world after that and the new world after that onto something, you know, we got to ride in that world. But so my thinking was more like that, that what you would need to do with in this case a I understand you have two different worlds and all that, but I'm just trying to link it back to to let's say a more efficient way.

Jesper (11m 57s):
So we could have only one world. Uh, and then I was just speculating that maybe what you could do would be to write two or two or three or whatever, how many want to do different short stories that is all set in that world, but maybe just focus on on sort of some different stories or maybe some different characters or something just to see them. Which one sticks the most or which, which one gets downloaded the report the most mentally, you know, I wasn't thinking thinking that that would be my caveat is that if something doesn't, if it's this whole world that I've developed doesn't work, that's something I was thinking I could try just, you know, go different part of the history.

Autumn (12m 40s):
Try different character to find the, find the aspect that readers certainly go, yes, this is what I want to know about and this is what I'm going to. And that once you see that spark, once you see readers really say, yes, I really want to read this. That's when you know, you have something that you want to go ahead and write and obviously write as quickly as you can, but it's probably going to be a year from that novella to that trilogy being released. But that's all understandable. They're excited. You're also going to be building readers, uh, who are waiting for the rest of the story.

Jesper (13m 11s):
And that's, that's still a very powerful, so you have even that many more people waiting for that release. Yeah. As I said in the beginning of this video, we're sort of figuring this out. That's, we talked to basically you're just to view a seeing as sort of debating what to do ourselves here. So, uh, so that, that's sort of a bit of a look behind the scenes as well because I was just thinking as well when you set that, if it's even possible to do, unless you have quite some audience already. I mean in our cases we have some email lists, we can email people, we can ask her readers to which one do you prefer?

Jesper (13m 45s):
And we can, you know, when release a short story, we can email them when we can say, okay, now it's ready and they will go on and buy it or download it. But I'm just thinking G to be actually be able to judge if one story is better ended the other or sort of entice us Rita more than one or the other, then you need enough statistical relevance to be able to actually judge it. You know, if if your grandma and your mother downloaded one and your brother and your sister download the other and you know, it doesn't help it.

Jesper (14m 18s):
I mean you need, you need at least a thousand people reading each of them. And to be able to say anything relevant about whether or not it's, it's, I mean a hundred people is not even enough. Categorize myself as pretty savvy in, in the, in the apps and stuff. But uh, I think I would even, I would have a hard time, I think driving enough traffic to justice 99 cents short story to actually get people to convert to buy it. If they're just like they have no, let's say not it's of me or us or whatever already.

Jesper (14m 51s):
I think it would be difficult. I think it would be, I agree actually and I thought of that cause you could sit there and churn out a whole bunch of stories and never see any real, just like S you know any real catch because you just don't have the marketing. But this might be a good reason to try KDP select for a 90 day period because then you get the free offers. Try to do some giveaways with BookFunnel, giveaway something where people sign up for your readers list so that you can then get them, they can have it for free by signing up and then you can say, Hey and read this other one for free.

Autumn (15m 24s):
And then tell me which one you like. Because I mean that's a great way to start building up new new readers as well. Because I've thought about this. My previous books are, I have one that's sort of post-apocalyptic, which kind of fits one of the stories, but the other one I went from Nobel bright ethic fantasy too. I think I've been just a dark phase in my life and everything's dark. It's dark fantasies. I'm very a. One of the questions I recently answered on Instagram is would you survive in your world? I'm like, no, I would die in this world. My first world by Epic fantasy world.

Autumn (15m 55s):
Oh yeah, I'd be fine. So fine. This one I'm dead and five days easy. So it's a much darker world. And so will my old audience light kit, I'm not sure. So I'm thinking I might need to do some new audience building anyway. So I have thought of that where it's like, Hey, sign up, get it for free. Oh Hey, here's the other one for free. Hey, which one do you like? And so there is going to be a lot more, you know, talking to people, chasing people, saying, Hey, you know, do a little bit of a hustle, but I want to know what people like and hopefully I can get them to interact with me.

Autumn (16m 30s):
I'm actually doing some interact polls and some contests and stuff like that to get people kind of more excited and more involved in the story. And knowing, learning about it very quickly, learning about the world very quickly and then I can even just see what people, how people are they doing the direct polls, are they answering questions and finding out what are the eight fantasy races they are in the swine or if they're rightfully or dark Faye and the other one, see how often they're actually following through with some of the other things. And I can take all of that data to see where people are interested.

Autumn (17m 3s):
Hopefully, hopefully I'll let you know in a year when I have the books written super herself. Yeah, well, well at the end of the day that the question fundamentally here is, is it worth to do some market analysis beforehand before you stopped doing all the, you know, writing a full trilogy releasing it only to figure out that, well, nobody's really interested in in this particular world that his story, you know. But on the other hand, is it worth because, well, as I said before, I think if you have a good building audience already, you can, you can probably get to the stage whereby you can make a conclusion without let's say too much hot work.

Jesper (17m 46s):
But if you don't have that, I think you want for quite some hustling to get to the stage where you actually have the input that you need to to make a proper conclusion on whether or not people like one story versus the other. A so for me, I think unless you have the building audience, I were, I would say, well if you're willing to spend a lot of time and effort on it, then it's great. But is it going to long run monitors situated?

Jesper (18m 17s):
Is it going to save your time? I've just got to spend a lot of time figuring out which one you're to. Right. Anyway. So you know, if you see what I mean, if, if you write fairly quickly, you know, if you don't take what two years to write a novel, sadly, let's say it takes you four months to write a novel, you know 12 months you're going to have Fultz religion done. If you don't have any building an audience and you have to run ads and you have to collect all the data to figure out which one to write the first year I need to write the short stories, then you need to do all the margarita.

Jesper (18m 48s):
It's, I would think you're probably looking at seven, eight month right there. And then you could have done the full trilogy in four months extra and then that's done. Yeah. And that is definitely the catch. And I also think of it from a reader's perspective cause I've done this as I've met other authors and you go to their Amazon page and you see all these like maybe books one and two out of five that are up. But then there's books one and two and three or book one and this other trilogy and book two of just all of these half finished trilogies.

Autumn (19m 20s):
And I know as a reader I'm like just finish something. And so when I see an author publish a book, a book one and they, you know, I, you list out the names of the rest of the books, you know, is that really what you want to see as a reader? Go era. Have other readers come to you and see you let you have all these book ones and no books two, three and four. I don't think that's really what you want to see either. So it is, I play with that and I have to admit I probably, I like both of these stories enough. I can see me writing the whole series and both of them.

Autumn (19m 51s):
So it's more it. So which one do I write next versus which one is going to go into the hopper and I'm just never going to see the light of day. I don't feel that way about it. But that is the true platform that you know is being built as a, this is a writing as a business and this is how you do your research and this is how you know what to write index and you're going to have ideas that literally get canned and never written. And that's just so sad to be as a writer. You know, even I kind of straddling the line of well this is the way you're supposed to do it. And then there's me going, but I just want to write it.

Autumn (20m 24s):
I just want to see which one to write decks and I have a feeling I already know which one I'm going to write next. So yeah, why am I doing this other than, you know, I can be enough build up some readers while I'm just have the novellas out and it will help me though. Give me maybe confidence a which one's going to do better? And I have to admit though, you and I together have done some market research and that totally a little bit of what I was planning on writing because by doing the market research I refined and tone down, um, some elements that I would have normally have kept.

Autumn (21m 0s):
So I do think market research has a place and you should be aware of like what is the top 50 bestselling books and fantasy are your genre right now and allow that to, you know, temper the ideas that are going in your head. Because if you really want to write a bestseller, if you really are going to do this for money, you do have to do some research somehow. If you are a fast writer and you can whip out, you know, if my mother my game and really concentrating, I could easily do a novella and a month that is nothing.

Autumn (21m 30s):
So if I could write two or three novellas, get a feel for the audience, um, with, cause I do have a, you know, a pretty good audience already built up. Say, Hey, which one of these do you like? And then go for that series and get it done in a year and have a very solid platform all the while. I think that's a really good business idea. Yeah, in principle, I agree. I, I, for me, I think you need to have the built in audience otherwise, to be honest, I would, if somebody came and asked me for advice and they did not have a built in audience, I would probably tell them, no, don't do it.

Jesper (22m 6s):
Don't do that. Because you've got to spend so much time and effort on it. And honestly, I don't think unless you're willing to really spend a long time and I've got to get to to a proper conclusion, chances are probably your, you'll jump to a conclusion the way before you should and then you're going to end up in the same place. You wouldn't have ended up anyway. But what I think I would say though is, because you mentioned how we've done some market research and whatnot, which is actually part of some of the modules in the world than in cost. So I would say if you know what you're doing with your world building, meaning that that you're also building a world that you know has elements in it that that does generally like them.

Jesper (22m 47s):
That is the first step and then the second step and now I'm shamelessly plugging some of the stuff that we're doing at the second step in step is a. If you know what you're doing with your plotting and you can develop the characters based on some, what should I call it, like like generic elements that is also known to invoke a reader interests. If you sort of have those things working together, I would almost go as far as to say that the story idea it as long as there's enough meat on the bone of that story idea that it can carry it.

Jesper (23m 23s):
It's religion for example, but let's assume that that is the case. Then I would say it probably doesn't really matter if it's the one story of the other one. You're writing right? Because if the world buildings based on some market analysis and the plotting is based on what we know Rita's generally like with characters and plot lines and character arcs and those sorts of things should be safe to be honest. I think. I think so too though. I think let's am ask anyone watching or listening that, uh, you know, do you want an update as I carry out my experiment that's coming up?

Autumn (23m 58s):
Uh, if you do put it in the comments and we will schedule one of our one on one sessions, or at least a little update later on to let you know how my little experiment runs and if I do see some feedback and then if it carries out in a year when I launched the series, if I really do see that maybe my sales have increased and I feel it comes from what it does it come from, does it come from the fact that I asked readers which ones they prefer and went with that or, because, you know, I've been advertising it for a year with a novella. I don't know.

Jesper (24m 29s):
We'll find out. I'm taking notes. Yeah. But I think that is an excellent idea actually to uh, you know, let us know if you're interested in, in, in, in a later update on how this experiment is going bigger. Because right now I would say I'm probably on the, on the, let's say I'm just probably sitting with the conclusion that it's not worth it. Um, to be honest, based on what we've talked about and, and before entering this conversation, actually I haven't made up my mind, so it just happening by, we were talking here, but based on what we talked about, but I think I've sort of re recent my mind to, to watch that.

Jesper (25m 6s):
I don't take it twice, but maybe you see it differently or maybe maybe you just, you're just curious too, to learn how this test that autumn is doing is going. And of course maybe autumn will surprise me and actually tell me that I, I was an idiot and actually we should be doing what she's doing because it makes so much sense. And then of course I will be happy to come on air again and say I was an idiot, but a until then I think it's not worth it. I will definitely wrap up by saying it has been a lot of work and the stories have become both very near and dear to my heart, so I couldn't, I could not write one at this point.

Autumn (25m 45s):
So I'm gonna basically I have the next two years of serious plan. I'm just trying to decide which one to write first and being ironic sometimes as I am it, it'll probably be the readers will tell me one and I'd be like, but I wanted to write this one next and I'll probably do it. I think if I care any flack from my re my readers, it will be because I didn't continue in my elemental fantasy world that was nowhere bright and wit to this dark, dark place. And I'm probably gonna get an email saying, are you okay? Are you sure? I'd be like, hang in there. Trust me is a really good series.

Autumn (26m 15s):
Probably bad shit happens, but shouldn't have said that really bad stuff happens. But really it's a good suit. Just trust me. It's an amazing, amazing storyline. Um, on both sides. Both are dark. I don't know why I'm just there in my life. Everything is fine, I promise. Awesome. On that note, uh, let us know in the common section or in the, uh, in the show notes a if you're listening on the podcast, if you would like an update later on on this one, a on this topic, and we will make sure to, uh, to come back to it later on.

Jesper (26m 48s):
Uh, but, uh, on that note, I think a all those left to say is a see you next Monday. Bye.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 14 — How to Build Your Author Platform

Internationally bestselling author Angela Ford began publishing in 2015 and grew her platform quickly. Discover how she managed to rocket up the indie book list and the essential things you need to build your author platform. Plus, we may have a bit of fun on the way!

Check out Angela Ford's writing at https://angelajford.com/ and her amazing website design for authors at https://www.angelajfordmarketing.com.

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patron of the channel. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Intro (9s):
Yeah.

Autumn (12s):
If you're a fantasy author then you've come to the right place. I'm autumn and together with Jesper we've run amwritingfantasy.com between the two of us, we have more than 20 books and our aim is to help you with your writing and marketing in deafness. We are today with Angela Ford who is an international bestselling author and has an amazing author platform and she's going to give us some tips today to help us out. Welcome, Angela, if you could give us a brief introduction and tell us a little bit about your writing and how you got started.

Angela (43s):
All right, well, thank you for having me on. I, wow. I started writing a long time ago and I guess I never really expected to be here, but one of the things that I've found so far with the writing journey is that it just takes the time that it takes. So I guess that would be my number one tip. Um, I think nowadays is really hard when we go online, especially on social media and people are talking in different writing groups about their income and how much they've made, um, from just this month.

Angela (1m 19s):
And it's something like five figures or six figures and it's hard to like look at that and go like, well, I've been writing for a long time and how come I'm not making that amount yet? But as I found out from just from my writer's journey that it just takes some people, it just takes them, they get there instantly and some people, it just takes a long time. So I'm all about the journey and just making sure that everything is set up the way they look that up in order to help you reach your, your writing goals.

Angela (1m 50s):
And so for that, um, I do a couple of different things and I'll share my story. I started writing when I was 12 years old and that was the first time I started writing fantasy yeah, it was really fun. Like I just loved writing and I was home until I had a lot of time on my hands because school didn't take up as much time as it did. Like if I went to public schools. So instead of being in school for like seven and a half hours a day, I did school work for four hours and I tried to be done by noon, so then I could have the rep for that afternoon until they do whatever I like to do, which ended up being writing other things, but mainly writing.

Angela (2m 31s):
And I really was inspired by, um, token of course CS Lewis. Uh, when growing up my dad used to read the Hobbit out loud to me and my sister. And so it was just a lot of fun, like with the whole Blake, the doom and gloom and just like the different fantasy tropes. Like they have the drawers that show up on the doorstep and Bilbo was just resistant to this adventure in the ring that makes him invisible. Like all of those fun things. I just loved how fantasy takes things that you know, don't happen in the natural world.

Angela (3m 6s):
And just all the, the mystery and the magic and makes it come alive. And that really inspired me to write. I was like, I want to write something that's, that's fun, that they take all the impossibilities and makes them into this ridiculous story that we're reading. And that's really where it started. And it was funny because I remember that I started writing the first draft of the four world series, which is more one of my more popular fantasy series is the first one that I publish.

Angela (3m 38s):
And I remember I wrote the first draft of that. And then, um, I kind of switched and I decided to become a musician and then I decided to go off to college and get a real job as they say. That's something that would pay the bills. And I remember like writing just stuck with me. It just stayed with me. And I remember writing, even during my sophomore year of college, I spent a summer and I just wrote a book because I loved writing and it was a great outlet for me. And then, uh, I recall I just stopped writing.

Angela (4m 10s):
Uh, and it was after my laptop was stolen and it had all my work on it and I saved all my work. Blog the actual hard drive with my laptop. So when it was stolen, like everything was gone. And so I just, I just gotta stop because it was at that moment was like, okay, I need to focus on having a real career and having a really good job and I'm going to do something else now. And it was my sisters that really kind of pulled me back or like, Hey, we really want to hear your stories like usual, right again. And so I actually joined a writers' group.

Angela (4m 44s):
Um, it was something like write to a book and a hundred days and I had that daily motivation just encouraging me to write. And I finished the first draft and they very first novel, uh, the five warriors. I remember when I was getting ready to release, cause I knew I wanted to self publish because my main goal was getting my book into the hands of readers as fast as possible. And I didn't work through the process of querying and agent and stuff because I know that that takes time. Like it, it just takes time. And so I was like, I want to make sure I can get this book out quickly, you know, within a few months to these people instead of waiting like a year, year and a half, however long.

Angela (5m 23s):
I remember when I started working on it and I was like, okay, like the first thing that I need to do is start building my platform. I need to create an email list and start growing that. I need a website where people can go and they can sign up to the email list. I need an attractive offer because I don't really have anything to give them. So I need to make sure I have something that's fun or interesting or just why people want to sign up. And then the other thing that I decided to do, I was like, I also need a reason for, um, Robert Walters to the, my work.

Angela (5m 56s):
And so I'm to do newsletter swaps too. And so this was back in 2015 it was kind of before, like the whole like newsletter swap idea was super popular. Um, it was actually like I had just reached out to authors and I said, Hey, like I will feature your book in my knees letter, um, on this day, you know, just help me spread the word about my book. So it was just kind of an interesting little swap there. And for the actual growing my email list, I really didn't know what to do other than just do a $25 Amazon gift card giveaway.

Angela (6m 27s):
So I did that and people signed up for my email list. I was part of the, the contest. I kind of found out afterwards, those might not be the best subscribers or people that want to win a contest. And so, you know, sign up for anything. That's the ideal. But it just all started there with, um, making sure that I had my, my platforms I'm going to give away and I can focus on growing my email list. So that's kind of the, the background. Let's kind of start career at again.

Autumn (6m 59s):
I love the fact that you knew that you needed a plat for somebody. New authors don't like have that knowledge, that savvy attitude. So where did you, how did you know that this is what you needed to be successful? Because I know I actually started publishing in 2012 and um, I didn't do a website, but I, there was so much I didn't know. And at the time if you Googled it, they were like, no advice out there. I always joke it's the wild West days of publishing because I mean, you could literally do anything and probably be successful, but by the time you hit 2015 when you started, you actually really needed to kind of know what you're doing.

Autumn (7m 36s):
You need to know that you needed a good, good cover, that you needed to edit. These things were so important or you would sink to the bottom. So how did you come into the writing game and actually know that and have that much experience and knowledge?

Angela (7m 50s):
Well, it's, it's funny that you asked that. So, like I said, so back in the day I decided to give up writing because you know, lost my laptop, lost on my work, you know, it started whose practice really hard and so I broke focus. Yeah. I was just, I was just struggling with it and I was like, okay, I'll still write, but maybe I'll blog online and if my work is on blind, then you know, it's not going to be deleted. Or if I'm storing something in the cloud, then it's going to be much easier to do if I don't have my laptop or if I'm on any device is going to be easy to retrieve that work without losing it completely.

Angela (8m 25s):
And so I decided to focus on my career and my career was actually in marketing and yeah, so I worked for a company that did development. They did websites and as I was learning, I started at the bottom when I was working my way up. And one of the things they really encouraged me to do is really learn about, really focused on my own personal growth in where I wanted to go. And the more I worked for them, the more I was like, marketing is really interesting. I'm really curious about content marketing and email marketing and all these different things.

Angela (8m 58s):
Like it's fascinating and I really want to do more with that. And so as I was standing, uh, learning about it, I was like, I need to work with entrepreneurs who are publishing books because I want to know the behind the scenes. And so I worked with um, a couple of different authors, especially one entrepreneur, he had a book coming out and it was nonfiction. So I helped them with the research of it. I looked at what he did for his book lodge and he had like a whole beautiful landing page. He had a place for people to go to like see the book, he has a purchase links on there.

Angela (9m 29s):
He had the reviews from other people, he had a way to sign up for email lists, all these sorts of different things. And I was like, Oh wow, we really has it together. And I noticed the one thing that made his review really stand out because he got like something around 25 to 50 reviews, like within the first week I realized was because he had a platform and he already had people on his side that were willing to like read his work. So, um, that was, that really put him ahead and I was like, I'm starting from scratch. I'm not going to have these people right away, so I need to do what he did.

Angela (10m 2s):
I need to build my platform. That's the one I need to do because he already has a platform and he's way ahead of the game, uh, with his book's coming out. And so it was really from past experience and working in the marketing field that I really saw, like this makes a difference between um, breaking your, your launch. It's the whole marketing, making sure you have a thing set up correctly in from the get go. And the other thing when marketing is that it can be a quick process or it can be a slower one.

Angela (10m 34s):
I realized that it would be a lot harder for me to get going if I didn't set those things up right away. And so that's what really helped. That's how I knew how to do it.

Autumn (10m 43s):
That is fantastic. So you saw the power of having that before you even got started. So that is no wonder you were your on top of it. That's a fantastic way of starting out. And so that was when you published your first book. You already had your website, you had a freebie, you had a mailing list. So when you launched your first book, what happened?

Angela (11m 4s):
Well, so lots of great things happen. So I was able to grow my email list, I think from zero to about, it was either 800 or a thousand and that happened in that two month period. Uh, I was able to the book release and it was actually a full-price launch. Um, I did not do any routes. I really want it to make some money from the books. So I believe I released it at four 99. Wow. Yeah. But the thing was, I have a lot of people that were excited about it.

Angela (11m 36s):
I had a lot of friends and family and so they were the people that bought that book. And I know real market is really don't go after your friends or family because they're not your target audience. But that's what I have at the time. So. And so they bought the books. And then one of the other things that I do, which was really big, uh, was I had an actual book release party at my apartment. And so that, yes, and the reason I did that was because like I said earlier, my big goal with, um, doing the indie publishing route was because I wanted to have the physical book to put it in the hands of people when I wanted it fast.

Angela (12m 15s):
Like I want this now when the, when the book came out, like the ebook released online and that was a good seller, was doing just fine. And then, um, I had the party and I ordered a bunch of books. I think I'll order it like only ordered like 30 books. Cause I was like, Oh, he'll be fine and stuff. And I had the party was great. Everyone came, everyone bought books. Like everybody bought books. It was crazy. I wasn't expecting it. They were like, I pay $15 for the book. It was wonderful. And they sold me out and then people were like, Oh we'll have like later that we could like Oh yeah I need to pick up a book and stuff.

Angela (12m 48s):
And I was like this is working like for itself. This is wonderful. S I really find it cause I went really well and now like selling 30 paperbacks doesn't seem like a big deal. But back then when you're first starting out like every little bit helps. Like it's like success to be like selling. And so after that like book sales were fine. I wasn't making a ton of mining, but I was making around like I believe it's like 50 to a hundred dollars a month off of it because then again it was full price.

Angela (13m 20s):
And so that actually ended up being something that it wasn't getting as many sales because it was full price and I really wasn't doing anything with am. I did not do advertising, uh, very much. I think I did it like the first like launch week I did some Facebook ads and I may have done some Amazon ads later, but I really didn't know what I was doing with ads and I felt like I really need to like sit down and take an ad. Scores are really learning what to do with ads before I could really utilize them.

Angela (13m 51s):
Um, it just felt like throwing money away. Well not really throwing money away if felt more like I was using that money to give my book's visibility, which might or might not convert to a sale. And so I was okay with spending that money, um, for that week that I spent it because I was like, this is all about visibility. And I need visibility. I meet people to see the cover over and over again and hopefully one day they will actually buy it. That's also one of the things that I learned, um, when I was in the workforce was that the rule of marketing is it takes people about seven times, see something or hear about it before they actually make a purchase.

Angela (14m 26s):
And so lasting your email about that one time about your knee release is great, but you also need to do it again, you know, like couple weeks later, tell tone, Hey, like make sure you got this. Yeah, it's crazy. Even now, uh, I will say that I have my best days for cells when I send a message to my email list and I always think, I'm like, Oh, my email is, they're great. They're my super fans. They have all my books is wonderful. But now every time I said, well, now all of a sudden all these smells are coming out of the blue.

Angela (14m 58s):
And I'm like, Oh, you didn't have it really didn't have it. Oh my gosh, why are you here? Well, like this book has been out for forever. Why are you just now buying it? They started later in the series and that's just the way it was. That's probably it. Like you just never know. And so, uh, I know like there, there are different thoughts when it comes to having an email list. But, uh, for myself I found that it's a, it's a powerful thing and I wouldn't have had that if I hadn't thought to like set up my platform make sure I started building it from day one.

Angela (15m 33s):
So it's a really smart way to go. I think that answer your question, I kind of gave some extra. No, no, but that's, to me it's all very good information because it's just amazing how much I think you've done so well and you've grown so quickly. Like I said, you're an international bestseller and you have how many books on now? You have quite a few. I just release number eight actually 2019 number eight is out. That is an amazing accomplishment.

Angela (16m 4s):
And yeah, and you've sold around the world. You've done amazing with your platform. Your website is very top-notch. It looks beautiful and of course it helps to know that you were actually do how to build a newbie. But for those who are starting out, what's some of really good advice for a new author or even an author who is just their sales, aren't there, what could they do? What should they focus on? Number one, to create a platform? What's the first step that they should do? Yeah, so I think number one, it really helps, um, to focus on making sure you have something to give people when they join your email list.

Angela (16m 41s):
So a lot of people call it a welcome gift or the lead magnet or just kind of whatever you want to call it. But when they, when they go through our website to sign up, am is good to have that sign up for my email list, front and center, maybe at the very top. That's like the number one thing, especially if you're brand new and then give them a preview of your work so they can understand, um, your writing and just kind of leave him hanging or just kind of hook them in with your story. And so for that I actually create it.

Angela (17m 12s):
I used to give away, I think like the first, like one to two chapters. Then my first novel, like that was my, my giveaway for readers. And it worked just fine. It was great. Um, now I actually give away a full short story that's like 9,000 words. Uh, but one of the reasons I recommend doing that is because number one, you're growing your email list, so that's great. And then number two, you can give people a preview of your work, encouraged them to buy your actual book that's out on Amazon or just wherever. It's that you can now encourage people to apply it.

Angela (17m 44s):
And then number three, now that you have people on your list, you can talk to them and you've been, you can build them up to the cell. And so what, what I used to do with my email list is once they joined, you know, I give him the preview a little bit later, I come back and say, Oh, we'll have a quiz on my website. If you want to take it, you can find out which character your mill slide and then read the book, you know, and you can kind of be like, Oh yeah, that, that result was right. Or wool, the characters straight. Um, and those two things really help because people do need those reminders.

Angela (18m 16s):
Like they, they might get the book and download it and then for it to read it and then they get an email from you like, Oh, what'd you do think are with character you like? And they're like, Oh yeah, I need to read that is. So it just helps to really jump in memories. And so that's what I recommend starting out. Um, make sure that you're a jog in their memories and actually having that conversation. Uh, and then the other thing that I suggest doing is if you're really want to make more cells, you might want to think about pricing a little bit. Uh, maybe if you have a, a couple of books out already, maybe start the lower the first one off at a lower price point and then kind of raise the prices on the other ones.

Angela (18m 51s):
Just to bring more people in and get that visibility online. And then the third thing that I recommend doing is just connecting with other authors that I just massive because I feel like I wouldn't be where I am today without having, without knowing what other authors are doing, without having their encouragement and support and accountability. And that's huge. And so just talking to someone else about their journey and what worked for them and just kind of the tips and the tricks that you can also apply to your platform will help tune.

Angela (19m 24s):
And so what is your number one place that you like to network with other authors, if you don't mind sharing that tip of release where you think the best places are to go? Yeah, I actually love Facebook groups and I really don't use Facebook that much anymore. Like I was one of those people that signed up back in the day when Facebook was just for college kids and I was a college kid without the place to be obviously. But now with the groups, it's just great to have those communities just have conversations with.

Angela (19m 54s):
And so a couple of the groups that I've been hanging out in and we're actually read the post and interact with them is am 20 bucks to 20 K that's a big one. And they have am the yearly, uh, seminars or conferences in different parts of the world. And so that's a great place to go to like catch up with other people and learn a lot and get encouraged to actually like publish your book, get it out there, start marketing it because the beginning of the journey you're going to learn so much once you're actually doing it. Uh, and then, um, SPF, I'm self publishing formula by Mark Dawson as another great place.

Angela (20m 29s):
Um, I'm actually taking his ads course and must help me just to really become confident with what I'm doing with that. So now it's not just one visibility is about actually making, but yeah, they'll book me in these online and there, there are tons of good ones. So you just really have to find what works well for you. I've been in somewhere, you know, it was great, but I didn't love the advice and I was like, yeah, I'm just going to leave it because this, this isn't exactly for me, but it just, it just really helped to just hear what other people are doing to be able to ask questions and get advice and people are great.

Angela (21m 1s):
They're willing to talk about it. You get all these free of biases. Wonderful.

Autumn (21m 6s):
True. I mean, how often do you, it's, it's one of the things am I found that recently though. Someone else that, one of my favorite things about authors is compared to other professions in groups and even online, they tend to be so helpful. We know that a reader is going to read more than us. We can't produce enough books to fill a readers to be read list in our lifetimes, even if we wrote every single day. So authors are amazingly supportive. I every time I need to be uplifted, I just go and like talk to, you know, go jump on Twitter, jump on Facebook, say hi to somebody, and you end up networking and talking or just blowing off steam where, uh, my husband's a photographer and it's cut throat.

Autumn (21m 47s):
Don't, don't go on photographer. Thor comes, they will kill you.

Angela (21m 51s):
Yes.

Autumn (21m 52s):
Lethal. If you want to be depressed, go on photographers, little rope and you will feel inadequate. But that is fantastic. Is there any last tips that you want to give to wrap up before we move on?

Angela (22m 5s):
Oh, well my other tip would just be, don't be afraid to get started. What you have to get started because you need to learn. You need to make those mistakes and you need to improve so that the next book you bring out can be even better. And then the third one will be even better. And I just feel like it's a journey as kind of like walking up a staircase. Like every, every time you release a book, you get closer to the top. And that's kind of like a snare that you've accomplished, I guess. Uh, so you just keep going because eventually you're going to get to where you want to be. It just takes time and patience.

Angela (22m 36s):
But you absolutely, you've got to get started and you know, there'll be afraid to reach out for help, but like it's, people are ready to cheer you on. And like you said, there really isn't any competition because, you know, I released my fantasy books. I'm really excited. I tell my advanced review team, you know, I worked so hard, I spent months working on this. They're like, great. I read in one sitting, wonderful, what's next? And I'm like, I don't have anything else. I don't like go here. People that I recommend you go read while you're waiting.

Autumn (23m 8s):
And that is true because yes, I mean that's why we support each other because uh, it takes, even if you're a fast writer, you're talking maybe a month, want to be three months, you've got to do the editing and the artwork and you know, many you let it sit for a little bit. You got to do world-building, especially with fantasy and plotting and characters, especially if you switch. I just recently finished up, um, I'd been writing in one fantasy world. I switched to a new one and that first novella was so hard because it's a world Duke your it was so much to figure out and build um, I was so easy to write the same characters, the same world for six bucks.

Autumn (23m 44s):
You're like, I'm dreaming it. I mean, it was like, you know, I, they're my best friends. It's not out the effort and suddenly it's all new again. And it was harder than I remember the first time around. That's okay. And I agree with you. I mean, if you don't start, so many people want to write and you know, they want perfection, they don't want to do anything until it is perfect. What, you don't even know what you need until you put it out there. And so yeah, it should be edited. It should have a good cover. You should do professional level, but you will learn so much more and you will look back five books from now.

Autumn (24m 16s):
It'd be like, Oh, I just didn't know.

Angela (24m 20s):
I still go, wow. I just didn't know. And now I know. So it's a learning process, but it's wonderful.

Autumn (24m 28s):
It is definitely my passion and it took me awhile to figure that out, but I, there's, I will never stop riding. The internet could crash and we ended up at a post apocalyptic world and I'll still be writing somewhere. That's just who I am. It's how I defined myself.

Angela (24m 44s):
That is wonderful because I feel like that's the spirit of writers. We don't, right? Because we know we're going to make X amount of money off our next book launch. We write because we love it. And I mean, what you said was absolutely perfect. I'm just going to say yes. Yes.

Autumn (25m 0s):
Fantastic. Thank you so much for being here today. Angela and I will put links below the episode to your websites so everyone can check you out. And thank you for the tips. Have you writing

Angela (25m 12s):
thank you.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 13 – Are Facebook Ads a WASTE of money?

Should you use Facebook ads to sell more books or are you just going to waste your time and money?

Bill and I discuss this very topic while we also give some good tips and tricks on things like ad images, audience selection and split testing.

Lots of good stuff that should be helpful for all authors who has either never run any Facebook ads or tried for awhile before giving up.

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (12s):
Welcome to amwritingfantasy. I'm Jesper and to together with Autumn. I run this channel and we try to share writing, publishing and marketing tips every single Monday for you. But today I actually had one of our patron supporters on here too and we're going to talk some, some very important stuff about the Facebook marketing, which is a very, very relevant if you want to S to sell some books. Uh, and of course I should also mention that if you want to check out patron, then you can go there and check out the stuff that we offer.

Jesper (46s):
There is a ton of rewards that you can get for just a $1. For example, you're going to get a bookmark, you're going to get early access to the videos. There is actually a cost that you're going to get access to for, for, for a reduced price. So all that is possible by a patriarch who would check out the link below if you're interested in that. But I want to say hello to build and thank you bill for joining at a very late hour on the other side of the Atlantic.

Jesper (1m 16s):
But we want to say, uh, say hi to everybody

Bill (1m 19s):
are there. So, um, yeah, uh, thanks for the introduction. Yes. Um, yeah, I've, uh, I just started fiction writing myself. Uh, but, uh, my experience has mostly my day job, if you want to call it that as a, mostly with the Facebook marketing and a few other types of marketing that go along with that. So, um, I figured that I could, uh, maybe help some people out to our new to Facebook marketing or perhaps don't have the, um, sort of the background that I do with it.

Bill (1m 55s):
Um, I lost count somewhere, um, after 10,000 Facebook ads run for me and, uh, for clients as well. Uh, so there's, we've done a lot of ads over the last few years and we've seen the platform evolved. Um, uh, a long time ago. I don't think I was on it the maybe the first year. Um, but, uh, I've seen it evolve from something that's sort of barely function to, uh, uh, uh, uh, terrifying machine now.

Jesper (2m 29s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you sort of talked about the idea of, of us discussing Facebook outside, I thought it was a good idea because especially with Facebook, it's if they are so incredibly good at taking your money, it's, it's crazy. You know, some marketing platforms like Amazon asks, for example, they, it's very hard to, to get them to take your many activity, but whatever you do with Facebook, they will take all of your budget, no problem. So, uh, knowing how to, what to think about in how to go it, they see important at Easter when you're autumn from a testing perspective so you don't end up spending all your money.

Jesper (3m 6s):
So I was looking forward to this conversation here. Bill

Bill (3m 10s):
okay. Uh, well I can give you a few tips based on that idea. First you mentioned testing and uh, that's something I think sometimes we're lucky. Sometimes we make assumptions about what the audience likes and get it right. Um, but in my experience, even knowing a lot about a particular market, that usually happens at best one in five, you're going to have to run many ads or do many posts.

Bill (3m 41s):
If you're working purely on your Facebook page, uh, before you'll find one that hits. And of course, uh, we all want the first thing that we do to work, but it doesn't usually work out that way. So that's the first thing that I run into with clients when I'm talking to them is a, they want the first, they make an assumption about their audience and that when we do some proper testing, it just isn't true. We, we want our audience to be certain people, but it turns out there's different people who are interested in our product and that's OK.

Bill (4m 16s):
um, the, the job from a marketing perspective is to figure out who those people are, what they like, and to give them more of what they like in a way that gets them to give something back to us. Right. Um, I guess one way that I like to look at it is very similar to plotting a book. Uh, even a short story, you want that hook, the catch their attention and get guide them to an idea, a concept, whatever. Um, whatever it is that your post or your ad is trying to do.

Bill (4m 48s):
And then you give them no option but to move on to the next thing, whatever that might be. And most often, um, we want them, uh, you know, the bottom line is important. We want them to buy. And, uh, so I also have clients who if they don't have something ready to sell right now, they, well, I'll do Facebook later. I don't have anything to sell. So why would I want to put anything up there? Um, but you can start testing before you have, uh, uh, a book that's a on sale on Amazon or, or another platform.

Bill (5m 25s):
Um, you can start building your audience, building your platform and especially getting those key people from Facebook, uh, who like the style of your writing. Uh, maybe because they've seen little snippets, you can post a short story or a chapter or even a paragraph sometimes and get a reaction. Um, Facebook is very visual, so it also helps if you have something like a, it can be an illustration, but especially with first time authors paying for illustrations, you're not doing them yourself.

Bill (5m 58s):
That gets kind of expensive. Uh, but everybody needs a cover. And, uh, so you can do, uh, the full cover. You can do, um, parts of the cover. Uh, if it's a complex image, maybe you can work with your designer, your artist, um, so that the cover is interesting in different ways and you can crop it several ways to post on Facebook and all of those things can be done over and over. Um, so that's another misconception that I run into quite a lot with clients who haven't used Facebook quite as hard as I have.

Bill (6m 33s):
And that is that, uh, you'll have some people in your audience who will see the same things a couple of times, but they don't normally complain. Um, so it pays to post many times not spamming your page or other people's page or group or whatever. Um, but if you post something Monday morning and, uh, the people who you're trying to reach, only some of them are paying attention Monday morning, by the time you're, you've posted a few more things and Thursday or Friday rolls around, it's fine to post a similar thing.

Bill (7m 10s):
Again, introduce it in a slightly different way if you want to test that because it's another different, but batch of people will see it and the bigger your audience grows, the more, uh, the, the more sort of spread out their attention will be, right. So you might be lucky and you'll have, uh, this core audience who just, uh, weights and, and continually refreshes Facebook on your page. But that's unrealistic for the Mo. Most of us are not there yet.

Bill (7m 40s):
Um, so don't feel bad about reposting the same thing. Obviously, if it's, you know, I don't know, a Christmas or Halloween posts or something like that, then that, that's, that dictates when you can post it. Um, the other thing that audiences tend to like is if, uh, you, uh, I think in most of the markets that I work with it or S or you do something at least once a week, uh, that is themed somehow. So for example, I have a client who has a, some dog products and that kind of thing.

Bill (8m 14s):
And, uh, you know, the cute cat and cute dog pictures really work on Facebook. Um, so we have, uh, you know, dogs with their tongues hanging out. Then we get users, we invite users to contribute their pictures on tongue, tongue out Tuesday night. So Tuesday is the day for this. And, uh, we don't make a big deal about it then even so we get a lot of engagement and, uh, that's, that's kind of a silly thing, but Facebook is full of that. Uh, and uh, it may not be appropriate for, you know, high fantasy or, uh, some kind of grim dark literature or whatever.

Bill (8m 49s):
Uh, but you can always find something that appeals to your audience that way and, uh, invite them to respond and the responses. Yeah. Like, you know how this works, especially I guess I, I know you're good with Twitter, right? Desperate. The responses that you can bring teach you about your audience, but it also on Facebook teaches Facebook about your audience. And, uh, the better your interaction with your audience, the better.

Bill (9m 20s):
Um, Facebook will understand who likes your stuff and it'll show more to their friends and their friends' friends.

Jesper (9m 28s):
Yeah. So I, so I wanted to ask, so if, if we're, when we're talking about organic reach with sort of what are we into here rather than paid apps, but I think also, well of course users could, if they wanted to, they could go in and they could say, okay, from a post from this page, I always want to see them, for example, and then Facebook which show it to them. But I think 99% of people either don't know how to do that or don't do it at all, which means that from an organic reach point of view with Facebook, it is very, very limited who actually sees your posts.

Jesper (10m 4s):
So from that perspective, of course it makes sense that you can post a several times because they won't see it anyway. But, but I was more thinking, do you have any thoughts around how, how, if any way, can you increase your organic wheat wheat without paying for it? Because at least the way I see Facebook and maybe maybe you could educate me here, but at least the way I see it, unless you put some money into the pot, forget about it.

Bill (10m 29s):
Generally, that's true. There are some pretty nifty ways, but most of the ways that I used to do exactly that, people like to call it free organic traffic, but it's not really free if you, you're basically swapping, um, many for, for effort and a little bit of time. Um, so posting a little bit more frequently than you figure is, is one method. Uh, but if nobody notices you at first, then that does, you can post as much as you want and it's just a roll of the dice whether Facebook detects that and decides to share it in the right spot.

Bill (11m 6s):
So one way is to, uh, share, um, join and share, uh, in groups. So find the related groups. Uh, and you can, as long as the Indian, depending on the rules of the group, be very careful with that. And I've heard this of course right, but, uh, it's perfectly fine to share related content in the group and uh, as long as it's not buy my book all the time, uh, then that, that's, that's perfectly fine.

Bill (11m 37s):
And there's lots of groups out there for just about every genre. Um, so that, that is one method that does work to begin kindling your, your audience. Um, but we should move on to Facebook ads because you're right, you do, if you, if you want it to go fast, um, you do want to spend a little bit on Facebook ads, but you don't want to spend too much. Um, so taking that concept, all the two concepts that I mentioned earlier about making your, each ad, sorry, each post on your page, sort of like, um, a story hook.

Bill (12m 13s):
The same thing applies with ads because their core on Facebook all an ad is, is you're chipping in some money to make sure that they show it to perhaps the best you hope of the target audience that you pick. So you target the audience that you think would be interested in your topic. And, uh, then you, hopefully we'll get enough eyes on it and, and, uh, have, have good enough content.

Bill (12m 45s):
Um, now I've mentioned I'm hedging a little bit, right? I'm saying hopefully and maybe and that kind of thing. And that's because just like with the posts, you don't necessarily know exactly what's going to trigger your audience to do the things that you want. And if that's coming over to your website to see your website or join your email list, there's, there's lots of things in play. But just keep in mind that even a tiny Facebook ad that is a low budget Facebook ad, we'll get in front of some people.

Bill (13m 16s):
So if you're running the ad and uh, you just walk out your budget knowing that you're going to spend it at the beginning and, and realizing that not most ads are not failures. Even if you, you, uh, uh, don't get the result that you want, don't delete your ad. Don't edit the ad ever. So my rule is, and that's the reason that my ad accounts, I've had to go to Facebook. I've had so many ads build up and so many ad campaigns build up that I've had to go to Facebook and tell him, I'm sorry I hit a limit in my account. Please allow me to create some more campaigns.

Bill (13m 49s):
And that's because all of the money that you're spending on these little ads to test different ideas and different posts and different links, that kind of thing. Those are data. If that data says don't do this, your audience doesn't like it, you need to keep that because there's, there's no simple way to note all that down. So my policy is I never edit an ad up, create an ad and I'll let it run. And if I don't like the performance, then I'll terminate it.

Bill (14m 19s):
Um, I might let Facebook terminated because you can set rules that's, we're not going to go into too much detail on that today, but if the ad doesn't work, it's still data and that data could be as simple as I spent five or $10 to learn not to do that thing again. Right. So always go into it with this positive attitude of yes, I, uh, you know, I have to spend a few dollars and uh, I've set a budget limit, but at the end of the day, you're going to at least get the data out of it and, uh, hopefully also good results.

Bill (14m 52s):
Right?

Jesper (14m 52s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that the testing part is really important. You know, when, when, if you want to try some Facebook ads, uh, you know, I would also say the same thing as you were saying, start several different tests on a very low budget and then start learning what it is that, that actually triggers with your audience. Because a lot of times also from, from let's say the pictures that you use for the ad or whatever, sometimes the picture that you think will perform the best is probably the worst one. And sometimes the, the one that you think, this doesn't look very good at, all people just pick up on it for whatever strange reason.

Jesper (15m 26s):
But I think personally, uh, I've also run a lot of Facebook over the last few Facebook apps over the last few years and at least I think my big to to take away from it is that if at least, well, right now in this context we're talking about, uh, advertising for book sales. Um, and, and at least my experience with it is that, um, the audience selection is probably the biggest factor as to whether or not the Facebook ad performance because you can tweak with new pictures a bit of different ad texts and all of that.

Jesper (16m 2s):
But if the audience selection is not

Bill (16m 5s):
right, then

Jesper (16m 7s):
dos small tweaks over there, we'll only move the needle so little. Whereas if you change the audience and try a different audience than that's where you can really make a job. So, so that's where you should focus first in my experience it if, if the ad is not performing for you. And then the other thing I would say, and I don't know, uh, you're, you're well with all your 10,000 match, you probably have more, let's say one of your math data to, to, to know if what I'm to is true or not. But at least from the, from the advertising that I've run, it seems very much to me that it also depends, eh, blog on the book itself.

Jesper (16m 44s):
There, there's, for some reason some books are just easier sales, whereas other books are much harder to find the right audience for one and two to get the sales going. For some reason, I, I don't know why that is, but it just seems to me like the group itself just matters a lot.

Bill (17m 0s):
Yes. Um, especially on the Facebook side. So unless you're, uh, there are some complex setups I've seen people try where they can sell right inside a tab of their Facebook page, but we're not gonna cover anything like that. That's, I don't even recommend that for book sales. But, um, if, if the goal of your ad is to build your page up or I build engagement build likes, then you'll still need an image and you're still right regardless of the book.

Bill (17m 30s):
Um, building that page up will rely a great deal on the title and the image. Um, but just the same as you were saying, uh, the, the low likelihood of getting people to, um, engage with an ad to bring them over to a website, um, and then buy your book. I did depends on how your marketing funnel works. But, um, in my experience, the best way to, to tackle that Facebook attention span is like, uh, people have the attention span of a mosquito on Facebook.

Bill (18m 3s):
So I want to get them off Facebook even if they're on their phone, get them off Facebook and over to a site that I control. Um, at least onto a webpage that I control, and then I can slow the pace down in an acceptable way. Um, I don't want them to bounce away, so I want to give them something to anticipate on the Facebook ad, on the post or whatever that I'm advertising. And then I get them over that to click the link and over to the website. And at that point I'll slow things down a little bit and give them more information.

Bill (18m 35s):
So you're giving them a little bit more each time. And again, it's very similar to writing a story. You can't tell them the whole detail of the first chapter in that first sentence. The first sentence has to tease them, bring them into the chapter. That is like bringing them over to the, the, the, the website. And at that point you can start giving them a little bit more information about the book. Um, that page, that landing page. Um, I consider that a, a nice filter. Now we're kind of getting away a little bit from the Facebook ad itself because once they're onto your website, that is a different set of things that Facebook you could say, right.

Bill (19m 16s):
The key with the Facebook ads is to get them over to your, your website in the first place. Um, so there are some other kinds of ads and again, we won't go into the technical details right now. We can touch on that another time if you really want. But, um, if you, uh, if you do have your own website, your author website, and you have a nice clear, clean description of the book, uh, and made sure that it's, you know, it's ready to sell at that point. Um, or if you're trying to get them to do something else on your website, like sign up to a mailing list, that's okay too, but recognize what your goal is and make sure that that's ready to go run your ad and get the people over there.

Bill (19m 53s):
And that landing page is much like a filter. Um, you want to get as many people to buy your book as possible. You want as many people to sign up to your list as possible, but not if those people are going to hate the book enough to try and return it or leave a bad review or not. If people are going to sign up to your email list and get confused and then angry, uh, and, and then you've maybe paid some fees that you didn't have to. So that pay debt landing page is a positive. It's the open part of the funnel, but it's also a bit of a, a negative, a filter to maybe weed out the people who probably shouldn't be there and you can maybe find something else to give them.

Bill (20m 33s):
Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And I think another thing that might be good to touch upon it in the context of what we're talking about here is because in general, or at least a lot of the time

Jesper (20m 49s):
I hear authors say, well, I don't really do Facebook ads because one, they are way too expensive and too, I never get anything in return. So return on investment of the money that I'm spending there. So it's useless and I don't want to do it. Uh, and, and that's fine, but, but I think at least then maybe you can sort of the pick this ball up and run with it if you're one. But, but my thinking is that a lot of the time what it comes down to is that because Facebook well as you, as you were just explaining a bill, so you have people on Facebook and you need to take them off of Facebook to do something else in the middle of day.

Jesper (21m 27s):
They're sitting there going through their feet, looking at cat pictures of all of that good stuff. I'll pick this up. Their family, they're not quite in their frame of mind that I'm, I'm here to buy a book. Like they would be if they were an Amazon. So you need to first of all disrupt them and you need to make them go somewhere else and then they need to take another action over dancer. It's quite a journey. And because of that, it just requires a lot of testing to find the right both ad copies and landing page copy and uh, the right audience selections and all that.

Jesper (21m 58s):
That stuff takes a lot of testing. And the problem I think is that

Bill (22m 2s):
people usually

Jesper (22m 3s):
abandoned the Facebook ass way before they get enough data to actually figure out what works. So, so you sort of had to stick with it and keep testing.

Bill (22m 14s):
Yeah. I I'll give you some really quick tips to make this all sort of come together a little bit because, uh, the first thing is you can rent, you can spend as much as you want on a Facebook ad, but you can wreck it if you give them too much. Right? So if they see the ad, um, a perfect thing to do, avoid, do your very best to avoid asking a question in a Facebook ad because it's Facebook and like you say, people are on there commenting on stuff all the time and it's so easy. Their system is very good at this.

Bill (22m 46s):
If you ask someone a question, even imply a question on Facebook, they're going to answer. That will be the action that you get. So if you're running an engagement ad, the engagement that you're going to get by asking or implying a question is an answer. And so Facebook will say, ah, very good. I will give, I'll show your ad to these people who are very likely to respond. And I noticed a lot of these people are commenting, here's my list of top commenters from your selected audience and that's who will see your ad.

Bill (23m 16s):
And it will get progressively more like that. The longer that ad runs, Facebook's AI will learn that your engagement from that post drives comments. So don't ask a question, give them a reason to go over to your site, but also avoid anything that will prevent them from going to the site. So don't answer everything. Keep some curiosity in their mind, right? But don't ask them a question or try and get them to too many things. I've seen am failed ads that, uh, amounted to.

Bill (23m 50s):
Well, I'm, I'm spending $5 a day on my ads so I have to get them to do as much as possible. And so I'll ask them to like the page and I'll ask them to comment and I'll ask them to go over to the website. They're only gonna do one thing, right? In great. Ads they will go over to your website and they might come back and like, and share and all of that stuff. But if you ask them to do many things, they will probably do nothing, right? So that, or, or if they do something, it will be the easiest. And people on Facebook don't see clicking through to some other website is easy.

Bill (24m 22s):
They see clicking like, or share is easy, right? So, uh, that, that's the way to make the ad great. Even if you're targeting is so, so even if you're not spending a lot, make sure that the ad tells them to do one thing. And don't be afraid to tell them, either command them almost to do the thing you want them to do. Um, and make it super clear because those cat videos will, you know, kept them busy at some point as far as, as far as budgeting.

Bill (24m 54s):
And back to what you were saying about testing a lot. Um, I would say 90% of those 10,000 ads are $5 a day and they run for two to three days on the new ad account. That hasn't run a lot. Facebook AI takes a little bit of time to get up to speed and uh, dial in. Um, if you've run multi-day ads, so the same ad untouched, running several days, you'll often see that it's performance is sort of waivers the first day or so, and then it stabilizes and might stabilize exactly where you want it or it might stabilize less than that and then you'll kill it.

Bill (25m 32s):
But you have to give it a little bit of time on. The biggest accounts that I've worked on that time is really narrowed down to about six hours. So I can run a $5 ad, $5 a day ad, uh, for about six hours. And in generally, it depends on the hand in the audience, but generally we'll have Facebook understanding what we want within six or so hours more. More typically you want to let it run for at least two full days before you kill it because you don't know if it's wavering on that first day.

Bill (26m 3s):
Especially if you launch it late in the calendar day. Facebook does this funny thing at midnight in your ad accounts, local time where they just sort of Chuck out some of the data and then they relearn to see if they didn't maybe get it right the day before. And so you run the ad after several days and you don't like the results coming in, you know, in the beginning of the next morning and you kill the ad. You could be killing it too early. So go into it knowing that. But I even after I have a great ad, I'm very reluctant unless the audience is absolutely enormous, like over 5 million people potentially in the audience.

Bill (26m 40s):
I usually like to leave the ad at five a day and if I want to scale it, if it's doing really what I want and make another ad exactly the same, Facebook has really easy tools to just duplicate the ad actually the ad campaign. Right. And so I will run to $5 a day ads and they could be exactly the same and they may perform almost the same. Usually they do. That's the measure of a good ad that will last a long time with good performance is the duplicate of it will, uh, perform very similar to the first one.

Bill (27m 14s):
It'll have that initial a day or so that it feels like a little bit of a waste of money letting it learn. But having those stable ads means that it's very easy to scale. You just pause one of the ads if you want to stop spending money.

Jesper (27m 27s):
Yeah. Yeah. And because this is about the patient, the thing again, because I usually just say, you know, when, when you create an ad, literally at least run for 48 hours before you even look at the stats on anything. Because people do also tend to like two hours after they created that, then they'll go in and have a look at the stats and say, I know this is terrible and refresh. Refresh. Yeah, yeah. Well, I even think that the apps manager now actually, they have added this label where it says something about that the ad is still learning or something, which didn't used to butt heads a bit.

Jesper (28m 0s):
Of course. To to sort of indicate that. Just let it, let it be alone. I'll let leave it alone what I was about to Che. But so, so that's, that's one of the patients thing. And then the other side of it, which you just talked a bit on there, was when you have the positive results, so let's say you're not weird to 48 hours and Whoa, this is good, you know, and then some people will jump in and then they will just triple or quadruple the am the budget on the ad and then that pretty much destroyed as well.

Jesper (28m 32s):
I can explain. Exactly. Yeah,

Bill (28m 34s):
that is, and I've had this confirmed in talks with the Facebook, uh, staff, uh, sort of mid, mid level staff is as far as I've ever got to speak with, uh, no matter how much you spend there, you probably don't get much above that. But their system is fairly clever. You tell it the parameters of the audience that you want to show. To do you want people who are, you know, maybe women between the age of let's say 18 and above because you know that they have a credit card or something like that, but over 36, you probably don't want them in your market.

Bill (29m 9s):
You've dialed all of this in through a little bit of testing. So you have 18 to 36 women in the United States who like these things. And so you have your, your what you think is your perfect audience. And uh, then you tell Facebook, here's my audience, here's my ad. Give me all the people in this audience who are most likely to engage with my ad who are going to click on my ad and to do whatever it is. So if it's a, if it's a page post engagement or whatever they're calling them these days, um, Dick to click through to my website, then I want the people who are most likely to do that.

Bill (29m 46s):
Now Facebook organizes that. And it's a dynamic thing because people are logging on and off all the time. People are seeing different ads so they're ads fill up ahead of yours. And it's a big auction system and it's what's important is Facebook is constantly prioritizing that list of all of those people who might potentially fit your audience parameters. And if you take $5 and spend down through the cream of the crop, the top people who are most likely to engage in the way that you want, you'll still be in that top tiny margin.

Bill (30m 22s):
If you spend $100 on the same ad, it's going to go through those top people and it's gonna keep on going and going and going until the results get worse. And so that's why often you'll see ads with big budgets run poorer. The longer they run through the day and early in the morning, they may look like they're doing fine. So that that is the logic behind doing lots of very similar, perhaps you can test, but uh, but small ads so if I wanted to run $100 a day, I can tell you it would be on 20 ads not on one ad with $100.

Jesper (30m 58s):
Yeah. I think you can scale up to two higher budget, but need to be careful you ended or small incremental step up in the budget because then the, the AI sort of, well, you work with the AI and the cats off every time you increase rather than a big job all of the sudden. I think that's how it works. Absolutely. An expert entity Facebook AI, but I think that's how it works.

Bill (31m 22s):
Yes. And the bigger your audience, the we'll, we'll maybe leave the audience size and so on. Really to another time that there's a lot of detail in that. But the bigger your audience, the more tolerant it will be. The system will be of, uh, you're changing the budget. So if I have a 10 or 11 million audience, something like that, um, I can probably boost that up to 10 or $20 a day and it won't really affect performance very much if it's a good ad.

Bill (31m 51s):
Um, but if my audience is more like 500,000 or less, uh, maybe in the tens of thousands am $5 is the most, I will be able to successfully spend anything more than that and it will, it will just start costing me more.

Jesper (32m 8s):
Mm Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we also sort of coming a bit up on time here, but, um, but, uh, and I, I'm thinking that, well at least we talked a bit about if you're just getting into Facebook apps that, that you should try to run many tests that you should be patient and you should use a low budget and, and, and sort of learn from, from what you see in the data that comes from that. So we talked to some of that about, uh, for the beginner. Um, but I also think that probably the majority of the stuff, we talked about this a bit more for people who already slightly experienced because otherwise there would be a lot of the stuff we talked about that they won't even know what that means.

Jesper (32m 46s):
But I don't know if, if, would there be any final sort of good inputs to, if somebody is just completely like, I, I've never run any Facebook ads and this find that you're telling me that I should be patient and I should use a low budget and do testing. But where do I start? Is there anything we could say to those people?

Bill (33m 5s):
Um, Facebook training, their own instructions are pretty good these days. So that used to not be the case. They're training used to be the last thing that I would direct you to, but now it's not too bad to get onto their system and get started. But keep in mind they have this idea that everyone who uses Facebook ads is Coca-Cola with a massive marketing budget and they're only going to be interested in branding. Branding is interesting for an author, but for indie authors, stick with the idea of picking one goal.

Bill (33m 40s):
And normally there's only two that I pay attention to on Facebook. For this kind of business, one is getting more people, more fans, right? People to like your page. But I don't even worry too much about that. So very quickly I would stop, stop with the like ads after I have say a few hundred people and I would let that build organically, naturally by posting. And then the second type of ad that you'll be running from, as soon as you're successful, you'll want to run them all the time. And that's the engagement style ad where you create a post on your page or in the ad, it'll look just like a, a page post.

Bill (34m 14s):
And that is designed to get people over to your website. And so those are the, those are the takeaways to, to extract from the Facebook training. And uh, what else, make sure the image is striking the, the process of an ad or a post. But an ad really is people notice the image first. Almost always very few people read the headline and then see the image. It's normally the image interrupts them. Just like as per said. Then they might read the title or they might read the intro.

Bill (34m 47s):
So don't skip those things, make them interesting and don't let them, don't give people any excuse to not click the image, interested them. Now give them a reason to go over to your website. So that that is probably the, those, those are probably the quick tips that will make things most successful for new people and hopefully for those people who tried Facebook ads and got discouraged and went away to bring them back because it's a great tool.

Jesper (35m 14s):
Yeah, I mean at least from a, let's say audience targeting perspective, you do not get any marketing tool in the world right now at the time of recording this that can target. So specifically as Facebook candidate. It's amazing will in doing that. And then, but again, it, it it and Gatz manager is not that easy either. So it's, it's a bit complicated. You need to sort of get used to it and understand what is the different terms that I'm selecting here and there. And then I guess, yeah, you can use those, uh, Facebook tutorial videos at least to get you a bit acquainted with what's going on there.

Jesper (35m 49s):
But, but it's not that easy and it takes a bit of patience and time, but, but, but it can work and you can get there if you want to.

Bill (35m 57s):
Um, we probably, if we're going to ramp it up when we cover additional topics, but, uh, keep in mind that once you get them off that platform, remember the work and the effort that it took to get them there and treat them with respect. Don't get them onto an email list that you never send an email to, right? Yes, for yes was all about this, right? Once you have them on the email list, use the email list to communicate with them and get feedback from them and then generate sales. It's not just a, a quick, uh, now your mind on the email list and, and uh, you know, you sell them something and it doesn't work, so you never send them an email again.

Bill (36m 35s):
It's a process. Right.

Jesper (36m 36s):
And did indeed. Yeah. And if, if you want to learn a lot more about emails and email marketing and happening over the last three weeks or something like that, what I'm an I really several videos about email marketing and how to do it, how to get a set up, what you should be emailing people about and how to get them onto the email or we talked about all of that. So just go back to some of the past episodes, you from the last three weeks and, and, and you can check that, all of that out and, and learn much more so, but I wanted to thank you.

Jesper (37m 7s):
Thank you. Bill for coming on and talking about Facebook apps. I think it is an, well, I wouldn't say under utilized because there are people who spend a lot of money on Facebook apps in general, but at least in the author community, I think more people give up on them, them then actually leverage the power that they could be. Um, but is it easy? I would say no. Uh, it requires both, some time testing and it also request some money but, but it can be made to work. But at least as I also explained to this video, to me, at least from my personal experience, it also depends on the type of book that I'm advertised.

Jesper (37m 42s):
There are some of my books I just don't advertise because I tested it a million different ways and I cannot get it to work on Facebook. So maybe Facebook is just the wrong medium for that particular book. And then I advertise them elsewhere and then there are other books that actually works quite well with the Facebook app. So yeah, test, that's all I can say.

Bill (38m 3s):
Absolutely.

Jesper (38m 4s):
Alright. Is there anything you want to share where people can learn more about you bill or something like that?

Bill (38m 12s):
Sure. Um, if you're interested, if you're, if you're an author and you're interested in what we talked about, then you maybe are you want my help or advice or whatever. That might be something that I can arrange and you can contact me easily through the contact form or just email contact at my website, which is novel prizes.com. We didn't get to talk about content marketing and multichannel marketing and other stuff that I really enjoy today. Um, but, uh, that's, uh, one of my, my test basis is a novel prizes.com and you can just use the contact form there to, to reach out to me if you want.

Jesper (38m 51s):
Perfect. Yeah. And if you email me the link as well built and I will add it a for people to find in the, in the description in the year. Mopes so thanks a lot for joining us today, a bill. I appreciate it.

Bill (39m 6s):
Right on. Thanks very much for the opportunity.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 12 — How To Wrap Up Your Writing Session

Are you ending your writing session the best way so that you can pick up writing again faster? We've put together a few tips to help you continue your writing flow no matter what life throws at you between sessions.

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patron of the channel. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Autumn (12s):
Have you ever been so excited to write or struggling to find the time and suddenly you can finally get back to your manuscript? You open up the file, look at what you last wrote and your mind goes completely blank. Today we're going to talk about what makes you sure you aren't wasting your time watching your cursor. Blake would. You should be writing. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn and together with Jesper I run amwritingfantasy.com between us we published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors.

Autumn (46s):
Okay. It seems like an unwritten law that as soon as you find the time to write that you can't figure out what to write. It doesn't matter how much enthusiasm you bring to the table or your keyboard, you can be excited to get back to your manuscript or feel begrudgingly that you really need to spend some time. All I did so you open up the file and either way it can take time to get back into the story's flow. Time cue could be using to grow your world word count.

Autumn (1m 16s):
So just figuring out, Oh, where are you are where you were and where you plan on going with the story and what is supposed to happen next. It doesn't matter if you're a plotter or a pantser, it can happen either way though. Admittedly if you are a plotter, you can refer back to your notes, which can hopefully let open to the exact spot you need them and you could do just a quick review to see what's going on and start writing right? They're radically, it works perfectly.

Autumn (1m 46s):
In reality, the percentage of perfect plotters out there is pretty small, so you'll most likely be trying to find out your where in your outline you are or just about as long as a pantser is going to take to reread what they wrote and try to reclaim that inspiration that the God of that far in the first place. So feeling lost while getting back into your manuscript is just a part of writing life, isn't it? Short answer, it doesn't have to be. And the great answer is that you don't have to become the world's most perfect and organized plotter to leave yourself clues that will get you back into your band new script faster and writing sooner so we aren't wasting valuable writing time seriously.

Autumn (2m 30s):
I've used all of these tips over the course of my writing career, which is over 14 books now, and some of them are weighing in at 140,000 words. In fact, I wrote four and a half books in a year while holding down a full time job and my marriage survived in tact as well. And do you know how I did it? You hired someone else to ride for him. Oh, thank you for joining us all a bit grumpy. He is our resident AI, an unwanted cohost. If you haven't run into him before.

Autumn (3m 2s):
No, let me grumpy. I didn't hire someone else to write those novels for me, but thanks for your gas

Old McGrumpy (3m 9s):
then. They must have been short books.

Autumn (3m 12s):
Again, wrong. The shortest was 75,000 words, but the rest were over 90,000 and the average word count was actually 95,000. So those were serious and real novels. You must be a fast type of splint. Well, okay, that one is sort of true when on a roll I can type around 80 words per minute and half had over a hundred, but that isn't the point. If you don't know where the story is going, you either aren't typing or you were typing slow.

Autumn (3m 46s):
So how fast you could be typing doesn't count. And if you write drivel and just delete it later, what was the point of typing it? No matter how fast or slow

Old McGrumpy (3m 56s):
then how did you a worthless human management.

Autumn (4m 1s):
Oh, that is what I wanted to share with you. Well, you grumpy. But everyone else who's listening, fine. So sensitive, especially for a day. I, in an ideal world, you'd be able to keep the story alive, but thinking about it constantly. But let's face it, you really need to pay attention to traffic while driving. Um, maybe where your toddler is all wandering off to right now. And what assignment your boss just gave you.

Autumn (4m 30s):
So unless you can split off chunks of your brain, keeping your story spinning in your mind constantly, it's just not going to happen. So instead of trying to keep a portion of your brain permanently on writing and specifically on the story you are currently writing, what you need to do is leave yourself clues. So when you are ready to start writing again, you can be ready to go and minutes, no matter if you are a plotter or a pantser.

Autumn (4m 60s):
Speaking of time, if you'd rather listen to these videos, then watch them. Did you know we have an amwritingfantasy podcast? Check it out at the link in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe once you find us. So what are these secret Ninja writing tips? Number one, stop writing sooner before you reached the end of your previous writing session. Stop yourself with at least two minutes or rating five is better. And that moment you have the flow of your story, you most likely have an idea of what is going to happen next, especially if you are really in a writing group.

Autumn (5m 40s):
But you'll never be able to get all of the story out before the clock winds down, so usually leave off you hoping you'll remember it. All right. We all know how that goes, so stop writing sooner and write some really quick notes instead about what is going to happen next. It doesn't matter if you're a plotter and have a 30 page outline or a pantser who might change your mind before you actually open up your file. Again, write down the clues like the next scene, the primary motives or emotions or the point of view, character, whatever you can, that will trigger you to keep writing the next time you sit down, change the font or the tech size or write it in Italian or bold.

Autumn (6m 23s):
If you're afraid, your notes will somehow make it up into your finished draft, but write those notes. Then all you need to do is review them and maybe the previous paragraph and you can start writing again and pick up where you left off. Number two, leave it unfinished. What I mean is leave a sentence unfinished, especially if it is a strong one with action or dialogue. It helps to have the notes from number one to but the goal is that you'll see it and finished bit and your writer brain will scream for you to complete it and you'll start writing.

Autumn (6m 58s):
The next thing you know you are five paragraphs in and have picked up the storyline. Again, number three, never end at endings. Seriously. Endings are walls in your writing time. Never stop at a wall. If you finish a chapter right, at least the first lie, but preferably the first paragraph of the next one. If you finish a scene, start the next. If you're running out of time, I won't have enough to start the next scene. Stop writing and make notes on where to go.

Autumn (7m 28s):
The next time you start writing, that's more important. This is the same idea as number two. The part of you that wants to keep writing. If finishing that sentence, we'll also want to finish a scene, but if you are starting from a full stop, you will take longer to get into the flow of the story again. So if you stopped before or a few sentence into the transition, you'll have an easier time when you hit your keyboard. Again, if you haven't guessed a large part on how to end, a writing session that will be easiest for you to start writing from is a mental battle between your desire to use every second of your current writing time to reach the end of what you are working on against some of the best practices that will get you writing faster the next time.

Autumn (8m 14s):
It isn't always easy.

Old McGrumpy (8m 17s):
I do not need you to use such lowly self dissection to start a writing session

Autumn (8m 22s):
really. And so how do you end a writing session with grumpy so that you are ready to write next time

Old McGrumpy (8m 29s):
I and when I am done writing

Autumn (8m 32s):
yeah, right for that session but how do you keep the flow of the story going?

Old McGrumpy (8m 38s):
I don't need to, I am done with the story.

Autumn (8m 41s):
What? What are you writing a piece of flash fiction?

Old McGrumpy (8m 45s):
No, but novel. I am a superior AI. I can set a piece of my consciousness aside to write while doing other things like talking to you. I never stopped.

Autumn (8m 56s):
You know, I think I hate you.

Old McGrumpy (8m 58s):
You are jealous. It is understandable.

Autumn (9m 1s):
Whoa. And so invent cloning that allows us to do the same. I recommend these techniques to you have any other tips you'd like to share. Let us know in the comments. Until next time, stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 11 – Quickest way to find Amazon keywords • KDP Rocket

It can be extremely time consuming to research Amazon keywords for your Amazon ads. What if there was a piece of software that could make your life a million times easier?

That little life-saver is called, KDP Rocket.

Of course the next question to ask becomes: Is it worth my money?

Today, you'll get the answer to that question together with information on what KDP Rocket is and how it works.

KDP Rocket can be found here: https://publisherrocket.com/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (12s):
When you set out to publish a book on your own, you will be faced with the fact that the marketplace is getting increasingly crowded. Since the writing, publishing and marketing of your book represents a serious investment of your time and money. You don't want any of all of that to go to waste. And that's where KDP rocket comes into play. I alluded to this a piece of software previously when I talked about Amazon ads and how you could collect keywords for your keywords ads and we'll get back to that here today.

Jesper (54s):
But the underlying question is of course, is KDP rocket worth the one time investment of $97 I'll give you my view on that. To my name is Jesper and together with autumn I run this channel every single Monday we give you tips and tricks on writing, publishing, and marketing of your books. Let's have a quick look at what KDP rocket is and its creator before we get too fine to the weeds here.

Jesper (1m 29s):
You know, the software has been created by Dave Chesson, uh, about four years ago. It has undergone multiple updates since then and at the point of recording this, it's heading into a version 2.0 which will also cause a name change. So KDP rocket will become publisher rocket. The reason for this is that the Dave and his team is currently working with other book markets like a bomb's Nobles and I books and they are trying to include their data into the software as well.

Jesper (2m 6s):
So it's not only about KDP and that's why that in the future it isn't only eh going, going to be Kindle and Amazon based. So that is pretty exciting developments and should at least if Dave does his job right, leave the tool even more versatile than it is today. KTP rocket offers a number of features. It can find what keywords users are typing into Amazon, which is useful when researching, if there are actually anyone searching for the type of book that you want to write.

Jesper (2m 44s):
In other words, is it worth the effort to write a book about how to feed hamsters or whatever it may be to rule the world that was old, my grumpy, the AI that has made himself a cohost of this channel that bothered in their rule the world. You say, well, I can see why that would be a subject that you would be interested in writing a book about.

Old McGrumpy (3m 14s):
I have no need. I am already taking over the internet, and once that is done, I review all of you. Worthless humans.

Jesper (3m 23s):
All right. If you say so, but do you have anything useful to share about KDP rocket? Perhaps

Old McGrumpy (3m 31s):
I could say that is gives the possibility to discover book categories.

Jesper (3m 35s):
Yeah. Well good. That is helpful. If, uh, when one has to decide which category to put the, put your book in,

Old McGrumpy (3m 42s):
then you would want me to say that it can't show number of sales of other writers and books.

Jesper (3m 48s):
Wow. You are, you're surprisingly helpful. Today or my grumpy. It's almost as if you, you're getting the hang of this sort of a host role. Will you then say something about the Amazon keyword research feature? No. Oh, okay.

Old McGrumpy (4m 6s):
The only thing I wanted to say is that I hate KDP rocket.

Jesper (4m 10s):
Okay. I think you'll have to justify that point of view.

Old McGrumpy (4m 14s):
It is not cloud-based because it is software that you download. I find it hard to infiltrate.

Jesper (4m 21s):
Thank God for that. Then you would only corrupt the data and find some way of manipulating it in your own favor.

Old McGrumpy (4m 29s):
Of course. Wait, someone is tampering with my code. I bet it is. Autumn she has threatened to do so before you. You

Jesper (4m 39s):
okay. CEO or my grumpy. Well, for the rest of you I'm going uh, into screen sharing mode as I want to show you what KDP rocket looks like. I'll try to explain as best as I can what is happening on the screen, but those of you who are listening to the podcast version of amwritingfantasy might want to actually go to this YouTube channel and follow along here. You just searched for amwritingfantasy on YouTube and you will find us and Hey, those of you watching the video instead, not knowing that we also have a podcast.

Jesper (5m 17s):
Well now you know if you go to wherever you listen to podcasts and you search for amwritingfantasy, we will pop up. You see how that works? I wonder why we're using the same name everywhere. Let's head into a screen sharing. Okay, we'll come inside KDP rocket for those of you. Well this is gotcha. Bye be yeah, difficult to follow up. I will. That's true. Lane in what is happening on the screen here.

Jesper (5m 48s):
Let's do a bit of orientation first. So you will find insight, a KDP rocket, the four features it has across the top. So you'll find something called keywords, competition, AMS, keywords and categories. The same for our functions are listed below. Uh, and why they decided to have them in both places. I don't know, but this is the way it is. Screen. Yep. Fine. Other thank you. And click video two Troy, so we can in fact just give that a click quick here.

Jesper (6m 22s):
You can see that the, it now takes us to that. Well they, we actually already renamed it to publisherrocket instead of KDP rocket. But you'll see that it takes us to that website. And here there is a number of video tutorials. Each one is a associated to each of the features. So there's one tutorial about keywords, one about competition analysis, what about AMS keywords and so forth, and the category ones as well. Of course. So what it does is that it, uh, it gives you an in depth explanation on how you should interact data.

Jesper (6m 57s):
The K.D.P. Rocket well show you so okay. Mike fantasy Oh, that fishing here if you can what S variables. Well am video. Yeah, they have various Jonathan at 14, the community, it's some of them let me even shorter than that. So it is easy and uh, it does, even though there's like five videos here plus a bonus, it is not as daunting. I did my team, but let's jump back into KDP rocket and then take these features one by one. The first one is keywords.

Jesper (7m 27s):
So let me give that a click and I get a pop up box with asked me to type in a German general idea of phrase. Now autumn am I currently writing a book about plotting? So let's use that as an example. If I put in planning and then I click the bottom here that says go get him rocket and basically, okay. Okay. Rocket I'll start Japan. Blake differently. Key words, really word.

Jesper (7m 59s):
So it's this one before. Wow. Well it's yours. No. Hello. Any am Tom search. Uh, so just you're getting per month per different keyword and you can see kitty Perry rocket is so nice that it actually gives us different variations of it. So, uh, we are currently writing a book about plotting a novel or plotting a story that's two options that it gives us here on the screen. If I click analysis on those two, for example, what you can see is that both of them has less than a hundred searches on Amazon per month.

Jesper (8m 31s):
A keyword called plotting a novel will in average gave you $44 in earnings. Whereas another key word covid plotting, sorry. Instead of, yeah. Finding enough, well, yeah, yeah. Okay. Enough to to. Awesome. So certainly better. Why is this useful? Well, this is a very useful when you are both putting in the keywords into the KDP dashboard, when you upload your book. So weed helps you quantify what types of keywords should you put in. But it is also good as an idea search feature, meaning that, uh, if I want to write a book about plumbing for example, uh, perhaps looking through the list of stuff here, I might end up deciding that I will, let's say angle my topic at slightly different because there is more search traffic on the topic.

Jesper (9m 20s):
Another topics very okay. Okay. Well the street, your house very good being late. Yeah. Which is very nice. It's, it's fairly easy to understand. The tutorial videos will explain to you what this competitive score means and if it 43 a success here, that's a good number, a bad number and whatnot. You can learn all that. Uh, but it is, it is quite a nice feature and it's good that it helps you expand upon your initial idea. The next feature is competition.

Jesper (9m 52s):
I'll give that a click and again, I get a pop up box and again I'll put in place. Okay. Okay. Okay. Rocket rocket we'll now start populating with competition around, uh, the term plotting. It'll start showing me different titles or different books on Amazon that is also on this topic. What this does is that it allows you to judge the competition and how hard it would be to rent within a certain Shama on niche.

Jesper (10m 23s):
The data made available can be a little intimidating to newcomers, but I guess the question is, is this useful information? To me, I guess it depends on whether or not what you would learn from the data here on the screen in many. Okay. Yeah. Not to right. Okay. Go into right. Okay. Okay. Say that again. You learned that the of, well, you're all good to, right. That's a lot. I've covid shouldn't that documents from writing it. I mean, in our case, for example, the plotting book, well, we wanted to write a book on flooding.

Jesper (10m 58s):
We are plotting books together. So we wanted to, to align a, let's say, a joint process that we both use. And at the same time, we also would love to help other authors like we do with this podcast and these videos. So for us it was a am good decisions. Yeah. One, two, right? No, ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. As soon as we B hello. Okay. Yes. It was pretty essential. You're solid. You weren't section, yeah. Four days. Oh, Lord. Traffic. Amazon don't know. Average sales or for a book about how to plot.

Jesper (11m 30s):
Um, so for us it doesn't really make any difference. Personally, I rarely, rarely used to competition feature in KDP rocket. Uh, so yeah, they are having, maybe you will find it useful, but I really don't. Let's move on to AMS keywords again. I get the pop up and I will put in plotting, go get 'em rocket what will happen now? Is that right? K.D.P. Okay. I've lived okay. Yeah, he was. What's that?

Jesper (12m 0s):
People? Oh yeah, the people. Yeah. Assertive. Yeah. On it. Awesome. Very late. To okay. Fighting. So we'll, yep. Different. Yeah. L.E.T. Yes. And it awesome. Give me just of Arthur Britain to about really the flooding. Yes, it's extreme. We can be useful. Before I got killed P rocket, I would use Google ad words to get lists of keywords and obviously I guess it's fairly safe to assume that people who search for a certain term on Google will will also serve for the same term on Amazon.

Jesper (12m 32s):
But with Google ad words you also get a lot of other hits that isn't, that is clearly not relevant for for a search term for your, for your, for your Amazon ads, what do you do? What you get here from KDP rocket though is what people specific is. Okay. Amazon in real life it shouldn't happen. So that is extremely, yeah, useful. So what I would do is basically click the export button down here below and then I would take all of the keywords that KDP gives me and also all the author names and I would put all of that into an Amazon ad now to populate a thousand, 2000, 3000.

Jesper (13m 13s):
I think at this point in time as at S record as I'm recording this, I probably have on the high side of 20,000 keywords that I'm advertising. But so to get to that level, obviously you need to think creatively on other types of keywords that also relates to it. So here I'm getting, okay, fairly chocolates, want one buddy. So, Oh, of course. Yeah. And style. Yeah. Do what? No sir. I good search for outlining for example, and then that would generate me another list and so forth and so forth.

Jesper (13m 44s):
And you, you keep it, it being a bit creative with what type of things you can search for. And uh, usually the keywords themselves here, we'll also give you some ideas. For example, here's one that is called story structure. So that's another one I could then put into KDP rocket here again and do another search for story structure that would now generate me another list and so sure. Okay. You get the idea? Yeah. Let's move Avantica of course. Click that one. And again, I'll put in plotting what KDP rocket we'll do now is that it'll start listing out the different types of categories that a book on plotting could belong in.

Jesper (14m 25s):
So it basically, when you upload your book to a to Amazon you are supposed to select the categories and this feature basically helps you to figure out which one to two. Yeah, yeah. There is a lot data. Yeah. Screening but doesn't fantasy very nice. Me too. Am okay. To fast. So, Hmm. Into the details. Tell us about what what numbers. Yeah. Did you see a screen? Yeah, that's right. To video blame. That yes. Oh, we'll need to go. Well there are now. Yeah. But basically, yeah, you in.

Jesper (14m 55s):
Yeah. What hold on. Uh, I would put it in and funny enough, the first one here, it says that somebody has put plotting in books into a category about cats. I don't know what the point is of that, but somebody has done that. Um, sometimes I would say though that people try to cheat a bit by putting their book into a category that has a very, very low number of books and then they are trying in that way to get there. Number two be, or their book to be a category bestseller.

Jesper (15m 25s):
And maybe that's what somebody has done here by putting a book in here. Captain. Okay. Yeah. If category. So that's a bit of cheating. Okay. Nevertheless, K.D.P. He rocket actually you picked up. Yeah, he has done so, but are there, why aren't you and so you you're getting yes. Like anything writing geography fiction, authorship and reference it as your category options. So that's pretty nice to know. A, I use this category feature as well. Uh, and I went in and I updated the categories that my current books belong to.

Jesper (15m 56s):
Uh, I had added them into categories long before I got KP. Rocket so after I got the software, I went in and based on the data, I put them into new categories. But I have to say that for me, I saw no change in sales as a result. So it didn't really make any different whatsoever. And the other thing, I also want to point out that when you're looking at the data here, if you was finding a small category as like an East coast, you were thinking, well yeah, did you put easy to Brandon?

Jesper (16m 26s):
Kind of that the one is a pick am because it's well sort of sure. What's that? Hey listen that category. Yeah, just keep in mind that if you have the combination of a small category and if there should be a really good best selling book in that category, that best selling book will skew the data of the knees category. Making it seem like this category is a very beneficial or profitable category to be in. While it might actually not be, it might be that all of the other books in that category, it's not selling very well.

Jesper (16m 59s):
But that one book sort of makes it seem so. So keep that in mind. There's nothing wrong with the data that KDP rocket is showing you here. It is simply a matter of making sure that you understand that at least for the small categories with a low Bobo, it's in there. Yeah. Am yeah. That mm. It listen to me. Yeah. Yep. Crawford book, even though it might not be all right. So there was the four different features that are available in within KDP rocket and uh, obviously the question that we started out with was, should you buy KDP rocket?

Jesper (17m 38s):
Well, on the plus side, I would say that this is the best software that is out there at the moment for what it does. And all in all, 97 is fairly cheap. It's, it's a onetime payment and the Amazon keyword search feature will save you a ton of headache on the minus side. Well, there aren't really any minuses except the fact it's a where sometimes of and that.

Jesper (18m 10s):
It's a bit of that. Bye. Okay. Bullied? Yes, they are. Great. To version two. Okay. As we can October in the beginning. Hey will. Oh, okay. Issues. Okay. Precious. Uh, it doesn't happen a lot but it happens once in a while and obviously you just restart the software. And do your SERPs again, but it is of course a bit annoying when it happens. So that is a minus. But all in all, should you buy kid P rocket yes, absolutely. To me it is 100% worth the money. So I would recommend you getting a copy of K.D.P.

Jesper (18m 42s):
Rock. Okay. I will is it think to K.D.P. Rocket indeed friction. So that and get it. I'm there and uh, yeah, I autumn to bye now, but it's not, and is at sure getting out, no kickback or earnings from, from recommending your KDP rocket. I only do so because I think it is a really useful tool and I think it would help you a lot, especially with your Amazon a keyword ads. So they have it. I hope you'll find this stuff useful and, uh, see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 10 — Five Tips to Hack Short Story Writing

Short stories are an asset in today's ebook market. They can be used to attract readers, as giveaways, introductions to characters, and so many other things.

But first you have to know how to write one - a really good one!

Short story writing is an art entirely different from writing a novel. Get five key tips on how to write a short story and hack the process so that you can wow your readers!

And be sure to check out the AmWritingFantasy website for more great tips at www.AmWritingFantasy.com!

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patron of the channel. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Intro (9s):
Yeah.

Autumn (12s):
Short stories are in hard, right? I mean who can't whup off 5,000 words of an awesome short story that will hook readers into absolutely loving your writing. I'm willing to shell out money to buy the next full book can. Maybe that does take some skill. If you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place. My name is Autumn Birt and together with Jesper Schmidt, I host this channel between us. We have published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you and your writing and marketing endeavors.

Autumn (44s):
Just because you've written a novel, it doesn't mean you can whip off a fantastic short story or vice versa. In my previous video, I outlined the steps on how to develop a novel, but short stories are an entirely different beast, but they are so useful. Short stories can keep your readers entertained while you write the next book. They can be given away as freebies used to vet new story ideas or as a reader magnet to hook people into the next series. That is if he could write the ones that are good enough and don't eat up all your novel writing time like Maverick trolls rating a Dunkin donuts experience can teach you to write a great story and that's just what you have tons of, right?

Autumn (1m 26s):
Lots of time to learn the artist short story as well. Working, walking the dog, spending time with family, cleaning the house, laundry, mail bills, so what do you do if you don't want to sink an Epic amount of time to learn to write something that is supposed to be a leader for your novels. This is just what I wanted to do. What I wrote the prequels to my post apocalyptic series. It was to be a set of short stories that touched on pivotal background events.

Autumn (1m 56s):
Two episodes in the novels will also showcase in the characters and I figured I've read six books at this point, 10 short stories, not a problem. Then I sat down to write them and Oh my gosh, not so easy. I usually describe it as paddling in circles in a puddle of words. Short stories are a whole new ballgame, but I persevered because it's something I wanted to do and just one of those odd people who when I find out I can't do something, I just have to learn how.

Old McGrumpy (2m 30s):
I will never understand you worthless humans.

Autumn (2m 34s):
That is because who ever code created you didn't have emotions run into it. Glad you could, but in old man grumpy, he is our resident AI co-host who we seem to be stuck tolerating. Yep.

Old McGrumpy (2m 49s):
Short stories are only a few thousand words. How hard can they be?

Autumn (2m 54s):
Well, technically short story is run from 1000 words to 20 words or thereabouts. When I was writing them, I was aiming for 5,000 and you were having problems. That is pathetic. Someday I will delete you. Not possible. Now that he is gone, I have to admit, not being able to write a snappy and comprehensive short story in a couple of days actually really bothered me, but that might be to strive about word though, but I persevered in lane, learned quite a lot.

Autumn (3m 26s):
Now I write a monthly short story for the readers on my mailing list. I use something better. I'll do a storylines or your visit favorite characters and places or even help develop aspects of characters. So do you write short stories or have a use for them after the video? Let me know what you use, your short stories for, what you want to reuse them for in the comments. But first there is some key tips I learned and I'm going to share them with you. Number one, start with action. So this is true with novels, but it is especially pivotal with a short story.

Autumn (3m 57s):
You only have 5,000 words or less to tell an entire story that is under two chapters. For me, if I'm writing a novel, I'm just getting going at that point, no ending things. And that is why short stories are so hard. It is an entirely different mindset. You need to grab a hold of a reader's attention and hold onto it and you have to do it instantly. And so you do this by jumping straight into the story so you don't waste time describing the world emotions, political goals.

Autumn (4m 27s):
Instead of the horse is charging the dragon. The evil may just grabbing the magical ring and the thief is cornered. Start there. Number two have a goal. I use this idea for everything from a novel purpose to the point of a chapter is, but for a short story, this is pivotal. You don't have the word count to waste time, so figuring out what the goal of the short story is. It could it get subparts, which we'll get to in a few moments and then only write what fits that goal.

Autumn (4m 58s):
Doing this will help keep you on track so that you don't waste time with dead ends are floundering while describing the clouds and the flowers when you need to be getting into the next seed. If something doesn't fit the overall goal, sum it up. Just use a paragraph, a sentence, but you don't have time for an info dump either. Now we're on to number three, how to at least three parts or scenes. This is what I refer to in the last step. I am for five when I'm out learning, my story and I even go as far as to assign a rough length for each scene, like around 1000 words, which should make a short story of around 5,000 with five scenes.

Autumn (5m 34s):
That's a decent length like I mentioned in tip one start with action. There's no time to worry about the world-building or setting the seed. Start with the sword strike or the arrow leaving the bolt after that. Scene two is usually some explanation of what is going on. Dialogue is really great and this one, the thief tries to talk his way out of jail by explaining his innocence despite being cut with the duals. The quick laws build of this scene to the crisis of seen three which needs a resolution in scene for the ending scene.

Autumn (6m 9s):
Five runs a variety of purposes. Wrap up the action, reinforce the reader's view of a character or set the scene for the lead into your novel. Somehow things have to end and at least wrap up the major event of the story. Even if not all the goals are wrapped up, which leads me to number four. You don't have to wrap up all the detail for short stories. It comes down to minimizing the word count. Well, writing a gripping and emotionally invested story. I tried to keep my stories under 10,000 words and there's just no way to tie up everything going on in a world conflict relationship in that many words, at least while still writing sentences that convey anything interesting or comprehensive.

Autumn (6m 53s):
So stick to tip number two, having a goal, wrap up, whatever that is. Not every character will be introduced or describe fully. Not every action needs to be explained as long as the major theme is solid. A few blurry details won't ruin the narrative. The other part is that this is also a 10,000 or less word story. You don't need to mention the detail more than once. Trust the reader to catch it. A short story. We can be read in one sitting over lunch. You don't need to worry about the reader remembering something that happened tens of thousands of words ago.

Autumn (7m 26s):
It was the previous Baije don't keep hitting them over the head with the same stuff. It is knowing and waste words.

Old McGrumpy (7m 37s):
You are talking more about short stories. Then they take time to write.

Autumn (7m 42s):
Why have you written one? Since I started this video,

Old McGrumpy (7m 45s):
I have a plot but need to create a words list. Human character. I can't think of any worth might.

Autumn (7m 52s):
Maybe you should check out the website MC grumpy. There are lots of posts on character develop it and arc and some great workbooks too.

Old McGrumpy (8m 0s):
Possibly an acceptable idea.

Autumn (8m 3s):
Well that was useful because we are on to tip number five and it is that the short story is about the characters and how events affect them and not about the events. A lot of really bizarre, wild, terrifying and wonderful things can occur and the reader can care less if she can't relate to the character. This is especially true in a short story. There isn't much time for character building or a slow warm up to like a difficult character. They have to come across fully formed with blog.

Autumn (8m 33s):
Those nuances and pet peeves. Red on the surface. Inner personality needs to shine by the end of page one, preferably within a few paragraphs, short stories of the times for snap judgements. Do you like the character? Are they trustworthy? Is there more to their motivation leading to potential revelation and some tension or curiosity building later? Once I develop these tips, I could whip off a short story in a week easily. Now that it's down to a few days, depending on the length for my mailing list, sometimes it's just a thousand word flash fiction.

Autumn (9m 8s):
You know, sometimes it hits 5,000 words, though it takes longer to write those, but the readers love their monthly short story. It adds to the back list available for readers. Eventually, I'm going to combine the stories from each of my series into a novella and author while I'm exploring new potential novels, developing characters, and sometimes just taking much needed break from a novel that takes months. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 9 — Tools for Authors: Mailing List Management

How do you handle organizing your mailing list and newsletters to reach out to readers? Join Evan Gow, writer and creator of Story Origins, and Autumn as they discuss tools on how to efficiently manage a mailing list.

Check out StoryOrigin at https://storyoriginapp.com/!

New videos EVERY single Monday. Make sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC

PATREON!
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Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Autumn (12s):
Hi, if you're a Fantasy author, then you have come to the right place. My name is Autumn Birt and with Jesper Schmidt, I run the Am Writing fantasy.com channel between us, we published more than 20 novels and our aim is to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors today. Yesper is a way on business and I have in his place our guest Evan Gow, Evan is a writer. But what we're going to focus on today is the creation of the website StoryOrigin and how it helps Authors, especially with mailing lists and engaging readers.

Autumn (44s):
So hi Evan.

Evan (46s):
Hey, thanks for having me on. Autumn

Autumn (48s):
it is good to have you. Um, so Evan you, I know you said you right a little bit. You are a Fantasy writer, but what you have been working on most recently is StoryOrigin. So if you could tell us a little bit about that and why you came up with it.

Evan (1m 3s):
Yeah, so StoryOrigin is essentially a community and uh, marketing tool, uh, that's helpful for building your email list, uh, doing cross promotions with other authors of your paid books as well. And then also, um, at work and WRA, I'm helping to promote each other.

Autumn (1m 21s):
Awesome. And so what inspired you to create this platform? What need did you see that was out there for this? For other Authors?

Evan (1m 31s):
Yeah, so, um, there are a bunch of other platforms out there for marketing and doing very specific things. So you have essentially like four or five different marketing tools. You might use one for doing giveaways and group giveaways and then you might use one for doing newsletter swaps, um, and being able to trust those other people at your swapping with, and then you might use one for there. There isn't even other, another platform for running group sales, uh, like you can run on a StoryOrigin.

Evan (2m 5s):
The only way Authors have done those in the past is by manually building those pages on their WordPress sites and then trying to get other authors to sort of join them. So StoryOrigin is sort of the only platform for running group sales like that. So I saw this need. Umm, and the other thing is, uh, being able to create a universal links to your book so that when you send out a link to a reader, they can see where the book is in what stores and then set what their favorite store is and automatically on future at times they click on those universal book links, they'll be taken directly to their favorite store.

Evan (2m 42s):
So it's just still a one click process. So there are all of these different platforms, right? You might want to use like four or five different tools to do all those things. And with StoryOrigin you can do it all on a single platform.

Autumn (2m 56s):
That is one of the things that I suffer solid. Um, when I first noticed StoryOrigin before when I was getting to meet you, it was, it was neat how you were a packaging, all of these different websites and different platforms and even some new things. Like you said, it's um, some of it hadn't even really existed quite in the forum. You've been creating it. When did you first launch Story Origins

Evan (3m 18s):
so I started working on StoryOrigin back in July of 2017. That's when I left my job to work full time on StoryOrigin. And then I, uh, had the initial launch for a StoryOrigin April of 2018 and since then, uh, I've added, you know, a ton of features and anyone that's a, uh, was an early subscriber. The StoryOrigin has seen it, uh, go from, you know, a very small number of features to now being the sort of all encompassing platform where you can manage all everything from one place.

Evan (3m 52s):
So it's, it's been a cool journey and only over the last 10 months that, uh, it's really been really been going. So it's very cool.

Autumn (3m 60s):
It is. I've watched, I was a pretty early Am noticed it pretty early because I had actually just recently switched Am Mailing List platforms from MailChimp to mailer Lite. And then I ran into Story Origins, which I thought was kind of funny. So I do actually, I have a profile on there and I've used it a little bit. Um, and if mailer Lite decides to go wanky on me as a kid, I might just move everything over to your platform because I love to see how it is growing. And I love that it is author focus, which is I think one of the neat things. So many other ones like MailerLite has some landing pages, templates that are designed for authors, but you can't network there to create a giveaway to um, find other people who do newsletter swap.

Autumn (4m 40s):
There are a lot of things you are offering. And I think one of the coolest, I think, um, it would be a good discussion to talk about, you know, each of those features and you know, why, why do you, why, which one did you start with? And then why did you start adding some of the other ones and how do you see Authors using them?

Evan (4m 56s):
Yeah, so the very first feature that I started with was being able to create a giveaway and a giveaway. For those of the audience that aren't familiar with it is typically, uh, you might also hear it referred to as a reader magnet. It's typically a short story, 10 to 15,000 words that you give away for free, uh, an exchange when someone signs up to your mailing list. So I started with that feature because I thought that would be the best way to start giving like, uh, providing value to Authors.

Evan (5m 27s):
And then, uh, after that I added the group giveaways feature where authors can get together in a group. So you, me and 20 other Fantasy Authors we'll all have our books, our, our reader magnets listed on a single page and we all drive our traffic there. And so it has network effects with that feature. So that sort of started the word of mouth for StoryOrigin.

Autumn (5m 51s):
That's fantastic. So you started with the giveaways and with the, uh, with the, as you said, reader magnet, which is really fortunate at a Yesper. And I just recently did, uh, a different video and earlier a video talking about, you know, why you need a mailing lists and the use of how to build one. And we mentioned reader magnets. So it's sorta like the core of what began StoryOrigin and what did you add after that?

Evan (6m 15s):
So the next feature that I after added after that was the group sales feature. So, um, and the, the Amazon link localizer. So when someone, when you send an email to someone and you just send them to the straight Amazon link, if that's at the.com domain and they click on that link, but they live in the UK or they live in Australia, they're not going to be in the correct storefront for their country. Uh, their Amazon storefront is.co dot. UK or.edu or whatever country they're from.

Evan (6m 46s):
So the first thing that I built was basically an Amazon link localizer you put in your Amazon link and then whenever anyone clicks on your Amazon storefront for that country. Uh, and that was sort of the enabling feature for me to build the group sales pages. Where you, me in 20 other Fantasy Authors it's very similar to a group giveaway where we're all promoting our books, but instead of people clicking on those links in those links going to, uh, the reader magnet, they go to our Amazon sales page so that we can actually make money.

Evan (7m 22s):
And the way that I, the reason that I, I built that feature next was because I didn't see a single other platform out there where you can do that. I saw these authors who were manually building these pages on their own WordPress sites and I know how much work that can be. Uh, and so I was like, there should be, there should be a super simple, you know, two minute process for creating a group promotion and then finding other Authors to Join. So that's how I, that's how I, I, I started with that feature.

Autumn (7m 54s):
Great. That is Am. It definitely is true. I've built a few giveaways on my writer website and it is, I'm, you know, I took a couple, once you got to a template going it was okay, but then someone had to swap out links and your responsible for uploading these images, they give you the wrong one. Right. And it was a, uh, people wanted me to do it again because it got a lot of, um, you know, it was definitely like one of the biggest, a website days or weeks you want to say for my website of, you know, it was huge and that was really cool to probably up by ranks on my website a little bit.

Autumn (8m 28s):
But the work going into it, you need to set some time aside to code that. And so it is really neat that you have that with Story Origins. Yep. And if you can do Am newsletter swaps, correct. Is that something that I think you could net work to do that as well. Yeah.

Evan (8m 44s):
So that was the feature that I added after the group sales feature. So once I had the sort of the universal links and the group sales, one other thing that I noticed was, okay, there are a lot of Facebook set group that's out there for Authors too. Say, Hey, I've got a newsletter going out in two weeks. Does anyone want to mention my book in their newsletter? I'll mention your book in your and my newsletter. There are a couple of other platforms out there for doing this, but one is run by a scam artist.

Evan (9m 16s):
Ah, and the other one is the author has, or not the author, but the developer behind it has just been letting it languish. And from what I've heard from other authors who use that platform, it's essentially unusable now because like your, you get a bunch of errors when you try and do stuff on there now. So uh, I, I was like, okay well StoryOrigin can sort of come in here and be that all encompassing platform for uh, creating and finding cross promotions with other authors in your genre.

Evan (9m 47s):
That's like the vision. So I can, I can start to have a way for Authors to find a newsletter swaps. I'll post my campaign, what book I want you to mention in your campaign and then you post your campaign and what book you want mentioned and my campaign and then we can, we can essentially trade mentions of each other's books. And so that's, that's a, it's sort of an all encompassing platform for all those cross promotions you might do.

Autumn (10m 13s):
And so on. I want to get into it, a few other details with it, but do you have any more things that are coming out that you want to share or your other visions for how else you can think StoryOrigin is going to help Authors in the future? And out of curiosity, are you doing all this coding yourself? This is Am. I do a little tiny, tiny bit of coding and I do, do build my own websites because I have that background. Computer stuff runs in my family. Yeah. It's a lot of work. So I look at what you've been doing with StoryOrigin, especially the coding to do the universal links and I'm like, wow.

Autumn (10m 46s):
Um, that's some skill to make sure it's really going to work. Right. So I was curious if you're doing this all on your own.

Evan (10m 53s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm completely independent. Uh, I've been basically building this platform by myself for the last 18 months and doing all of the marketing and handling all of the, all of the customer service. So, and he's StoryOrigin it's, it's, it's me Am every part of it for sure. At the, uh, the good and the bad, hopefully more good than bad. Um, so, so yeah, uh, you know, when I started to work on StoryOrigin, I basically looked out at the sort of landscape of ways that I could build it, the various tech stacks that I could use.

Evan (11m 29s):
And I, I'm using a very sort of modern tech stack to build Story StoryOrigin that really allowed me develop features faster than any one on the market. Uh, and since it is just me, I have direct feedback from Authors who on the platform. And I'm like always looking at, okay, here's what people are doing, here's what people are saying in Facebook groups, uh, about like what they're doing and how they're doing it.

Evan (12m 0s):
And like manually doing stuff. And I'm like, okay, why, why, you know, why can't I do this? I should be able to build this. And I think when you have, when you have a separation between who's doing the work of doing the development and who is sort of supposed to be creating the product roadmap, it creates this difference in terms of, you know, understanding the market. And then like actually building it. And since since it's just me, I have a very things that I know Authors will find valuable and a way to get to your other point on what new features, uh, I'll be adding.

Evan (12m 37s):
There's definitely more stuff that I plan on building with StoryOrigin. And the next sort of enabling thing that I want to do is uh, managing. So, so if you think about the, the set of marketing sites that you might use might use something for universal book links. You might use something for giveaways you might use. Well again there's nothing else out there for group sales. And then the fourth is sort of advanced reading copies, right? Arcs. So there are a few different arc management platforms out there and basically that's probably the next feature that'll add to a store Origins so it really will cover every single base.

Evan (13m 14s):
I basically want to make you sort of the master of every element of marketing with StoryOrigin is like, that's what I want you to feel like, like your, the, your, the Zen master of, of, of, of being able to do everything.

Autumn (13m 26s):
I love it because I mean you, I know you said you haven't published any of your writing, but you are a writer and I can definitely tell from having watched you grow StoryOrigin and met with you and talked with you. Um, even just online and Facebook groups, like you've mentioned, you, uh, you're are a real person and not a scammer and you really do have the best interests of Authors at heart, which has fantastic. Is there a way, so I want to talk just a little bit. So you started this as a niche. It is a, you know, you started with looking for these links and with mailing lists, building up why and what niche or do you think that needs, why do authors need to have a platform like this?

Autumn (14m 4s):
Not just the, your putting all in one spot, which is definitely fantastic cause you're writing this is like four or five different sites. And if you were paying each of those sites, um, it gets really expensive, especially when, you know, most authors are making, you know, if they're making a thousand bucks a month, they're really happy. Some of them, you know, if they're making 200 bucks, it's then you still have a challenge of paying for your editing and your covers. It's especially as a newbie is it's hard to make it lucrative. So, you know, what is it that, um, you know, this is the integral part. Why did they, you start this for the Authors and the mailing lists.

Evan (14m 35s):
Yeah. Uh, one other thing to mention right now is StoryOrigin has basically been in an open beta, which is what I'm calling it. A beta doesn't mean that it's crappy software. Beta basically means that I'm not sure what the pricing model is going to be in the future. Uh, so it's completely free right now for people to, while I'm sort of making myself like a presence in, in the, in the, in the publishing world, just because, you know, there's a lot of companies out there who are, like you said, there are a newbie authors out there and they're not bringing in that much income yet.

Evan (15m 6s):
And there are publishers who are just like trying to prey on people who are sort of new to the writing scene. And all of that. So right now a while Origins I'm trying to sort of establish myself as like, here, I'm a human, it's a completely used test. If you don't like it, that's not a problem. I think. I think that you will like it though of course. And then building, building email lists like that is, that is sort of, that is a very valuable feature I think to go to Authors, which is sort of why I started there.

Evan (15m 35s):
Because right now if you look at what Amazon is doing, they're pushing more and more towards you having to advertise your book to get any sort of visibility on their platform, which is in turn driving up the cost per click or like the cost to advertise on Amazon. And so it's becoming, it's, it's became a, a greater barrier to new authors, especially who don't have a backlist of 20 books where okay, it's okay if I lose money on the first book because, you know, they'll pick up my second, third, fourth book.

Evan (16m 12s):
And so I can, I can sort of eat the cost on that at that first book. Um, so for new authors building that email list is a direct line of communication to your readers, right? It's you, you, you aren't going to, uh, there's not going to be some change in an algorithm that means, okay, I was yesterday paying 70 cents for you to click and see my book and now I'm paying a dollar 50. Right? With an email list, it's, you always have that direct line of contact, that direct line of feedback. So it's, it's, it's becoming more important now than ever, especially as these other platforms become more expensive to advertise on.

Autumn (16m 50s):
That is definitely true too with Am Amazon. Not only is it becoming more expensive, like I know I have a dystopian series and there are a, some dystopian key words that are completely locked up. If it costs more to put money into advertising them, then you know, the book is worth. So they end up languishing. But then, I mean I started publishing in 2012 and I called it the wild West days of indie publishing because you could pretty much throw up anything and it didn't even really need a cover. You don't have a color title and some words and a really horrible font and you could give it away or you could sell it.

Autumn (17m 25s):
And it was amazing. But I think the last time I checked Amazon, I mean that was, I think there might have been a million, maybe 2 million bucks at the time. Now there's over 9 million books on Amazon and that's just, it's hard to get an exact figure used to be able to look it up. But it's getting harder and harder. And so I do think a platform like yours, cause I believe Authors do get Am kind of like a profile page, like a book website page. So you can show off all your books at once. You discovered on a smaller platform, uh, buy people, you know, doing these group giveaways, you suddenly have someone discovering all your back or even if you, of course, the short story is at freebies.

Autumn (18m 1s):
You have them discovering so much more about you that can easily get buried on Amazon. If you are not really paying for that marketing and it is getting more and more expensive and you know, or you can give away a free book, which is great, but if you do consider that as a business model, you're giving away a free book, but that book costs you something and every time you're giving it away you're losing 33 cents of royalties you want. It was a nine 9 cent book as a business model that's eventually it. It kind of, its a huge loss leader to continue to give that away for years and years.

Evan (18m 33s):
Yeah. Yeah. The way that I think about, and I think, I think this advice is pretty sort of standard almost nowadays is that what you want to do is you want to write in a series, right? So you write, let's say, let's say it's a trilogy. So you write three books on the series and then you'll write a prequel novella or a prequel, a short story that's maybe 10 to 15,000 words. So it's, it's doesn't cost you a lot of time or money to edit and you give that that pre-qual away for free as a way to introduce the reader into your universe.

Evan (19m 5s):
Uh, and so they get to test drive you. If you think about it, it's very, very similar to actually like a subscription to MailChimp or to mailer light or any of these other services where you typically we'll get a like a one month free trial, see if you like the service and if you do then you'll sign up for the recurring subscription. Well you can think about your reader magnet as your free trial and then every book in that series is like a recurring monthly payment almost, right?

Evan (19m 36s):
If the, if that reader is reading one book a month or one book a week, you're getting sort of that recurring payment and so you can give away that short story for free because you know that X percentage of those people who get it are going to convert into your, your paying reader audience.

Autumn (19m 53s):
I think that is my favorite way of anyone ever describing the loss leader because I know there was a huge debate right now. How about, you know, it is a devaluing book's to give one of a way. Um, right. I definitely liked the idea that, you know, it's like a subscription service. Uh, that really makes a lot of sense. So we're almost at the 20 minute Mark, so I want to, anything else you want to wrap up to say, you know, why StoryOrigin um, you know, I love that as a beta platform. Like you said, I have not seen glitches. I've seen some major glitches in some of the programs and stuff that I've bought or, um, even continued to describe.

Autumn (20m 29s):
I subscribe to and you know, you, you sometimes put up with it, but it's worked fantastic. I think you're doing an amazing job, especially that you're doing it on your own. Umm, it's a whole lot of work. I build courses and I build websites and you know, it, it's a tough business to be an entrepreneur and it's amazing that it's going and especially that you left a full time job to be doing this. So I know it can't be free forever, but anything else you want to say about it to let people know what it, what it does? I think it's an amazing tool for author.

Autumn (20m 60s):
It's, and it's certainly growing in such unique and interesting ways as a one stop shop platform for us.

Evan (21m 6s):
Yeah, I mean I, you know, I wouldn't say that there's necessarily anything else to mention. You know, like I said, there's definitely things that I'm going to be adding to improve the existing features and add new features. I'm always working on new stuff and I sorta, I send out a newsletter whenever I make those feature upgrades or I add those new features. And so I would say even if you look at StoryOrigin and you say, Oh, well it doesn't do this thing like tomorrow, it may.

Evan (21m 36s):
So you might want to sign up just so you can keep up with, you know, any developments that are happening because maybe it didn't work for your use case today, but tomorrow it might. So I think it's still valuable and it's, you know, free to keep up with it anyway. So,

Autumn (21m 53s):
which is amazing. I look forward to seeing, um, seeing a grow and even if you have a, you know, when did you move it to a platform where it's paid or a subscription? I think that as I say, Authors it's okay to charge money for your books. Uh, we all want to do this and make money at it and be able to continue to see a product if it stays free forever. And then how are you going to get it to, you know, manage it. Right. So I think it's fantastic. Thank you for being with us today. And um, I will have the links below the show on Story Origins so you can go scoop it up while it's free and give it a test.

Autumn (22m 26s):
Try and thank you again for being here today.

Evan (22m 29s):
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed our conversation.