The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 77 – Top 10 Traits of a Great Villain

Every story needs a villain. Someone to oppose the protagonist.

However, there are some traits that will make the antagonist memorable and feel like a real person, with true motives.

In episode 77 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper explore how to create the best villain for a novel.

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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).

Narrator (2s):
You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape. You can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello? I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 77 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And today's episode is sort of a continuation of last week's episode where we shared 10 Traits that makes a protagonist great. So, today we will do the same thing, but this time it's the antagonists, or the villains turn And I was so,

Autumn (55s):
So looking forward to this one and it ended up being so hard or it's so much harder than the heroes. Yeah, it was a actually.

Jesper (1m 4s):
But yeah, I hope it's got to be just as much fun as last week, but at least in coming up with the 10 items and that wasn't even a bit harder. And I, as I said before, we started recording, I felt like the first six or seven of them, those were quite easy. But then number eight, nine, 10 at the bottom end of the list, those where a bit harder. Yeah. I had to think a while, but those,

Autumn (1m 27s):
Yeah, I would've had been happy if we're coming up with the top five things for our top. Traits for Villain, but I'm in, it's two. I told you this, I a sat down the sporting and stared at my computer until I came up with my final two. I really had a forced myself to think this went through and I might the heroes, I try to do the hero's like in positive traits, but this one that ended up being more, the things Villain shouldn't be so will have to see how much we overlap this time. It's interesting.

Jesper (1m 57s):
Interesting. But anyway, will get there first. How were things on your side of the Atlantic? It's good. It's good. We, we have guests over the weekend, so yeah, that was quite good. Yeah.

Autumn (2m 11s):
Koshi and a nice to see some friends and a quick visiting, but of course we couldn't hug each other due to the COVID-19 situations. So that was a bit weird, but at the same time, at least having friends in the house For me, after a long while in isolation, that felt a bit like returning to normal, at least. So that was quite nice. Oh, that's excellent. Yeah. It it's good to be able to see people again. And we haven't, we seen a few extra people, but it is difficult because I know even my parents had said, do you know someone?

Autumn (2m 42s):
They haven't seen happen to me driving by? And so my dad in the guard and instantly when you go hug and it's like, he's immuno-compromised, you can't do that. You gotta think before you tackle somebody and is yeah, but it was also when we, you know, we had to remind ourselves when they, when, when they entered that we couldn't hockey to it because it feels natural.

Jesper (3m 4s):
That's what you do. So that was a bit weird, but, but I think other than that, it was, it was very nice. A guy with a bit of normal T in the light again. And, but I think otherwise it, she has also been quite a busy week. I got all my modules, it was completed. I'm so impressed. It only took like two years. I'm so swamped with formatting and creating pictures for the books were going to be releasing here over this summer that I still behind on my modules, but I'll get there.

Jesper (3m 38s):
I'll get there. Yeah. But in the meantime, I also got started on the self publishing success course that this week course. So I started on that earlier today and I actually upload it the first module fully recorded and uploaded to our hosting platform as well. That is fantastic. Oh yeah, that's good. So nine more modules to go and I would really love it if it would be possible for me to have all of them done before summer holiday. But I don't know if that's going to be go on holiday in, you'd be like, could you build a website while I'm gone?

Jesper (4m 14s):
So I seen her, this was going, I was planning on doing my world building modules. Well, you were on vacation. So just keep that in mind. Right. All right. Yeah. Well, it's not me. It's more the model or listeners who we'll be on your back because the sooner you get done, then as soon as they will have their free cost delivered two to, I need to clear, I've heard several people say I need to clone myself, or you can think that I just need to clone myself. Yeah. It can be that hot. Right. Of course, there's got to be a magic fairy or something around here who can figure it out for me or a mad scientist.

Jesper (4m 50s):
Somebody's put in a way to put in an add in the newspaper that your looking for a math scientist, because we need to get more worked. Yeah, I'll do that. Just kind of, not that cracks starts responding to that app should actually be kind of funny. Yeah. Well, at least we we'll have some stuff to read out loud on the, on the Podcast afterwards. I'll do a Facebook ad. That will be even more entertaining. Yeah.

Autumn (5m 21s):
Yeah. Okay. But how about you then? You seen any people have done anything interesting over the last week? Oh, the person who owns the land, the cabin is on its head. Her daughter is up for 'em of ones from Georgia and the other's from Boston. And so I've seen them and actually got to give everyone a little bit of a tour of the cabin and the work we did. And then, you know what? My, my big project has been three years in the making. I finally put together the trailer two, my Epic Fantasy series.

Autumn (5m 52s):
So both trilogies combined into one trailer, because if you've got to do it, you might as well just do it for everything. And so I'm so excited to have that three year task off my back burner list. So that feels really good. Yeah. I can understand the why. Yeah. That's good. We got the internet WRITING Fantasy Podcast Oh, well, first of all, a huge and very warm welcome to Jeffrey Crosby who joined us on Petro on there.

Autumn (6m 29s):
That's right. I saw he joined this last week. So welcome. I hope you're enjoying their, all the tips that are up there on Patrion and the fun in the exclusive benefit's as well. Yeah. That was a, of, there was a ton of posts. I think Petron has started list. I don't know if they've already done or always I'm interested on this and not quite sure, but I have noticed how, if you go to the site, when, if you're not locked in, like, like we normally are, then it we'll list how many posts are in there.

Jesper (6m 60s):
What kind of categories in just like modern a hundred in writing. And I don't know what it was like 40 world building, or I can't remember how many, but it was a lot. So it had been that busy. Yeah. So there was a lot of posts in there that ah, that one can dive into. So, but that was great. Thank you so much, Jeffery for it, for joining us. And we also need to give a heartfelt thank you to say it, who increased his pledge and totally made me smile with his recent comments.

Autumn (7m 32s):
I actually have to save this. One's ate because I do. There's a few comments that every once in a while, just to make you feel like Yeah and he, I, we were talking about some of his world building because we have a little task world building extravaganza going on on my Monday post. And he replied too, one of them as such an amazing answer. Or you rock it with those smiley face. I'm like, Ohh, that's going on in my little Pinboard for when I need to smile. So yeah. That, and then sometimes it's this short sweet, enthusiastic in heartfelt one's that just make it kind of like, Oh yeah, I'm saving it.

Jesper (8m 6s):
Its awesome. Yeah. So I'll have to say that the way it is, those of you who choose to help us on Petro on that are the backbone of this show. It truly is, you know, it's you who keep this show going. So it means a lot to us that you are supporting us if you're listening and you haven't yet checked out Petra, there is a link in the show notes. So please go and check it out. You know, as a patron supporter, you are getting access to a ton of perks on top of all those a story's and, and, and post out there we just talk about, but there was a lot of other purchase.

Autumn (8m 41s):
Well, and you get in for just a dollar a month, so it doesn't get much more affordable than that. So check it out. It really makes us happy. Yes anything from a THE worldwide web world web. And they're saying, well, yeah, I know. And to see now it was a tongue twister am not going to be able to figure it out. No, I mean, I Am Writing Fantasy group, it's been a ton of fun again. This week there's been some really good posts and they've been continuing with a, some of their breaking down trope.

Autumn (9m 15s):
So it's just, ah, again, I've only been into a couple of times as a week. It's been, it was such a crazy week, but I do love seeing how everyone is interacting and it's a great resource too. If your looking for some tips, some feedback, just everyone is so nice and response to all the questions and you are usually answering things before I ever even get in there. So it's wonderful platform. So it comes to search for us on Facebook, under Am Writing Fantasy and come check us out and join the group.

Jesper (9m 52s):
Yes. Yes. So as we talked about at the top of the show here, we, we did have a lot of fun last week, actually automated through our list of 10 Traits and we try to see how much a will that we have it yet. So we can do the same this week, but I wonder how much overlap there's going to be a one sheet. I said that last week as well, but I am actually agreeing with you this week. I know because especially, cause you sounded surprised at my mine are more of what Villain shouldn't be. So I'm thinking maybe we won't have quite as much overlap this time.

Autumn (10m 25s):
Yeah. I've been, I don't know. I, off the last weeks experienced, I feel like so much less confident about my ability to, to have this run, right. Because Oh, you know, a boy I was wrong as well. So I don't know why should I predict how many overlapping Traits we have this time? Alright, well I'm going to say, I'm going to go with under 50% at this time. So do you want to go with it over? You want to switch places from last week or, or, you know, what does that mean?

Autumn (10m 55s):
And there are four, I think will have about 40 to 50% overlapping out of the 20 or 20 Traits each week or a 10 Traits each to the 20 total. I'm saying maybe eight to 10 will overlap.

Jesper (11m 10s):
Yes.

Autumn (11m 12s):
Eight to 10. What do you mean? Yeah, I think eight we'll have eight or so. Yeah. Eight. So about four or five of our as well, at least five over there. And last week we have seven. Was it a yeah. Well I think it was a 13 cause I added up, you know, a 13. Yeah. I was 13 out of 20 overlaps, so right. Yeah. So, Hm. Okay. I'll I'll be bold at this time. We'll say Oh 11.

Autumn (11m 42s):
All right. You see a 11 sounds good. So that means like six out of 10. It should be overlapping. Yeah. And I'm saying four to songs sang right around. I'm saying it a little less than a week to 10. Yeah. You somewhere in there. So we're a little, we're really close and are guesstimate of how it much overlap will be. We'll probably ended up with like 20 or something. Oh, well, okay. If that happens again, I don't know. I I'll be lost for words.

Jesper (12m 13s):
Are we good? Oh, we'll have to give it a go. Alright. I started last time. So I think you should kick us off with your number 10. Okay. Yeah. I can do that after. So you don't need to have a notepad there so that you can keep track of our overlapping them. I will. So again, reader a listener's if you happen to hear some typing, I'm just trying to keep track of, of what we are. And if you, if you keep track and find out we're wrong, please let us know if I miscount.

Jesper (12m 44s):
OK. So I will start with number 10 and I think as well as last time around, let's try to see if we can just share a bit of thoughts about why we picked each one is I think that's yeah. Okay. This sounds good. OK. So I will start out and again, as I said in the beginning, the last three ones, that means numbers, not a spot number is eight, nine, and 10. Those were really hot. I have trouble finding one. So I think it gets better than further down to watch.

Jesper (13m 15s):
Number one, we get like a So number 10 was a guy being jealous. Oh, how interesting. And yeah, because when I have, so that's no overlap. Okay. But it's just like being jealous as an emotion. We all can relate to M and a technician who is perhaps feeling jealous of what the protagonists have, or maybe it could be jealous about some of the protectionist personality traits, you know, that the Villain wishes that I could be like this and that, or do like whatever, you know, it, I think it makes the Villain instantly relatable because as I said, jealousy is something we all understand.

Autumn (14m 1s):
So I think that's good trait. What is a good day? I don't disagree, but it's not what I thought of, but yes. So it's definitely makes them a very relatable person. So yes, I agree. My number 10 is not like a huge one, but it's one is definitely a per more personal than in a more generic Hey this is a good Villain. So for me, one thing that I do live in a really good Villain that really kind of makes me like it is sarcasm. I know it sounds silly, but I love good sarcastic Villain and Someone with like a dry wit and maybe a well earned arrogant air, sort of like they not only think that there better than everyone else, they've pretty much proven it.

Autumn (14m 41s):
And they have the, the wit, the sarcasm to remain others with some veil threats or amused patience. You know, I know it's maybe my little cynical side, but yes, sometimes you get those characters who had that half smile, a Glint in their eye while there are also a stabbing you and I'm like, I'd love those guys. So that's when I liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I, especially like, you know, if, especially in movies, you know, if, if, if you have this really bad, Villain there, Andy.

Jesper (15m 16s):
And it was just like, he just care at all day. You know, we could just see like, he is completely unimpressed by, by the, by the Hero or the army that his before him or whatever, it was just like, Oh, whatever. . Yeah, exactly. Just like, okay. I Yeah, if I'm ever, like, if I was ever a super villain, that is totally they'll persona. I want to go for it. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah. It was just, Oh, I don't know. I shouldn't have thought a set up because now I lost a penny dreadful.

Jesper (15m 46s):
We just talked about over this weekend that there was a new season of penny dreadful. I haven't watched it, but, but my, our friends who visited have watched it in the end, they set the, actually that there was two gods' in that new season. He was just, it was a good and a bad or a good and evil God. And they are sort of competing, you know? Oh, well the evil God has just being really evil in manipulating or a human or mankind. So I have to watch that after he set that up, it's like, okay, no, I have to watch it.

Autumn (16m 16s):
Yeah. And that's funny cause we're just looking for a news show and we've been watching, we just started on upload, which is quite interesting. But I am gonna add that one to our cue because I did see it night for God and it would come out. So I thank you. Yeah you can watch it right after what's the tiger King. What you're really trying to avoid. I actually have watched that episode four, but that's when Adam was a way and he does a lot. It was better than I thought I will actually fish it out. Yes. I will finish it at some point when I'm not torturing my husband.

Autumn (16m 47s):
Cause he refuses to have anything to do with it. So I've got to spend some quiet time. So for sarcasm, it's not one you have, so there is no overlap. No, no, I don't think that that so far, no is zero for zero. All right. This is unusual. I just kind of know, but this was going to end up with just like last week, last week I was way off in my prediction and not going to be way off again. It will be interesting. Okay. So you want to have my number nine, so lets go for it.

Jesper (17m 20s):
Okay. Vengeful fit. Ooh. That's an interesting lion. I think this is a good one. You know, somebody who has an Axe to grind, it's a, it's a believable person, but also interesting because one day a vengeful about something. We also want to understand why and we want to learn what happened to the person. So I think that's a good trait for a Villain that it's a very good training and I had something maybe similar, but it's not really close enough. So I'm going to say no overlap, but I knew it was just so weird.

Autumn (17m 52s):
We, again, I think it's because we struggled so much with this one. After we out of sync, freezing through something wrong, you know what it is? It's a Monday, but it's always a Monday so Hey, all right. Yeah so nine, my number nine is smart and I don't just being clever, but I mean like truly intelligent to the point of DVS and our thinking the Author because goodness knows I had a Villain one of my favorite villain's and I could see he was always out at maneuvering MI. I thought he was gonna win the entire trilogy.

Autumn (18m 22s):
So I really did not trust him except two trust in that he had figured out what he was doing and tell me eventually. So if this is, especially, if you think about it logically though, this is if you're a Villain your antagonist is a figure who is like risen Farr from the ranks, like maybe started as a peasant and Roosen up through the government or something like that. That is someone who is going to be able to outfox just about anyone to have come so far. So I really like a master chess player of whose doing the long game and can handle the short game.

Autumn (18m 55s):
That's just so impressed with me when I'm just like,

Jesper (18m 58s):
Wow. Fully agree. Fully agree. Yeah. I think we'll have some overlap there. Some of us, we got one I think. Yeah. I don't think we, I think I haven't worded it exactly like that, but I think it's closest to some of my other ones. So all right. But number eight is a persuasive. Ooh, because I mean, they're, there's a few of the Traits on my list. You had to come here and that will compliment this one. So I hope it's not too much of a cheat because if there's too much overlap with one, some of my other ones, but, but I just think that, you know, a Villain who is able to give a logical argument as to why it is necessarily to do what he or she's doing.

Jesper (19m 45s):
It just works wonders in showing the reader that this is a, you know, this is a real person that doesn't mean that the Rita has to agree with a logical argument, but it just like as long as you can follow the logic behind it, if you see what do I really liked that? Mmm. Because it, it shows the real person behind this scheming and what not. Right. So I like that. I like

Autumn (20m 10s):
That too. I'm trying to decide if it's similar to what I have are not, will have to decide to when we get there. But yeah. And I kind of did the same thing. Some of mine kind of built off of each other and I wasn't trying to treat cheat as well, but I thought there was kind of different, different veins or flavors. Yeah. That's a different one. So that's all fine. I don't have good solid words like persuasive for some of mine. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough, but my number line or phrases to my number eight is committed to what they are seeking.

Autumn (20m 43s):
I mean, they are so committed. They would give up their mother, their best friends or lovers achieve whatever their goal is. And they would do without any hesitation are coughing. There will be like, sacrifices must be made your It so forth. But I like that level of commitment. They don't sit there and go, Oh God, what's the right thing to do. They're just do it. Yeah score another one at another point from me. I think I have that. Great. Excellent. That's so encouraging. You have some overlap, you know, we were getting close to two.

Jesper (21m 14s):
I need to get to 11. I don't want to be off one book now after I've come miscalculate it last week, I want to have this one right here. We need to get to 11. All right. What I'm at now? You're at one to two to that's all I'm counting us as a long way. Two were only on seven. There is hope. Okay. So number seven is likeable qualities. Oh and this is short of a flipping at the whole thing on his head, I guess.

Jesper (21m 46s):
But I think that's a good one because the bad guy who isn't bad all the time, it's a much more complex character. And I really like it when the bad guy, all of a sudden does something that is quite likable. And then the next moment he is putting it back to being a bad guy. I really think that that works well because nobody's bat all the time for, just for the sake of being bad. So I liked that. Yes. And definitely overlap, but I have a word. It is slightly different, but Hey, we've got that one comm, so that's a good, I'm getting close to home.

Autumn (22m 20s):
So my number is seven is again a phrase, but a character who is not just evil because the Author needs an evil character to pit the heroes against. And then they just go in, they give 'em like every bad trait that could think of like, Oh, you should just eat baby. He is or kicks puppies or a starves dragons or, or whatever. But I don't like just a list of evil for the sheer sake of making someone hoard that you'll just hate. They should have an actual personality, an arc reasons for doing what they do and all of those things.

Autumn (22m 52s):
So I just, I still think even about the star Wars in the evil empire. And I mean, I think it took until maybe the clone Wars and stuff are making, you know, you do assume that dark Jetta in a dark forest is the reason is, is evil. But obviously I still feel like I missing something like why are there so evil people in the evil empire who seemed pretty decent? So I don't know which Cypress was to be rooting for it. It seemed to be heroes. Is that, aren't that decent? So what's the deal.

Jesper (23m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think we have some overlap there as well, but let's see. Alright. You can't make that up just because you want to win and I can just start saying, Oh, which one was the second one you had before? And then yeah. Yeah. That's my next, you keep asking what's account. No. OK. I need two more. Yeah, I know. I'm gonna, you know, I might not give you the Real so you watch out, He has some typing. That's just me correcting my notes. You have to do something else.

Jesper (23m 54s):
All right. Number six unethical. And so I think we actually have some overlap here is just, just the words that we've chosen to it for it basically, but you know, Great villains. So they tend to do terrible deeds, but what makes it work is when the Villain firmly believes, like sincerely believes that the end goal just justifies the means so that the antagonist we'll, you know, well basically put aside normal moral conduct are moral considerations.

Jesper (24m 32s):
And just to feel like this doesn't apply to him or her, that that really becomes a pretty frightening character when they do stuff like that.

Autumn (24m 40s):
And what do you know what's really interesting about your number six is it's pretty much my number, so I, I didn't, I could get a bonus point. So if we end up a 10, then it comes to 11 because there is a bonus. It kind of goes both ways. But I guess, yeah. It's because I, I phrase it, this just fully believes what he or she is doing is right. And again, I don't mean is that the necessarily that they don't think that there are evil, but that what they are doing is the right thing to do.

Autumn (25m 11s):
And it's really the hero. That's upsetting the balance of how things must be in their eyes. But yeah, just that total commitment of what I'm doing is the right thing to do. So I think it was almost exactly a phrase you used in there. So I think we're pretty much on par for that way. Nice. Okay. I'm getting close. So you might still where you might get this one. I hope so. Otherwise it'll be embarrassing and I can't sleep tonight will probably end up like, well, we can't rent a, it ended up at 18, but will probably end up with 12 or 15 just to spite us both.

Jesper (25m 48s):
Ah, okay. At least I'm closer this week, last week I was so bad. Okay. Number five is past wounds. So what I mean by that is an antagonist who have suffered something in the past. You know, it's probably some emotional wound and then how that informs the way he, as she behave in the precedent. I think that also makes for a compelling Villain. It also gives the reader a plausible explanation as to why this person behaves the way he or she does.

Jesper (26m 25s):
And, but I have to say, you're also have to be careful and come up with something good here, you know, something a bit original because yeah, yeah. The, the, the kid who lived in the street and was an orphan, whatever, you know, that's just, I know I've grown pretty tired of those. So I don't think that's a good past wounds. So you have to, to find something that hasn't been seen a million times before, but, but if you can do that, I think it gives a good origin story for the Villain, but it also gives a good explanation as to why they might think a bit differently than the rest of us.

Autumn (26m 59s):
Now, see, I'm wondering if, is it possible to have an anti overlap that might be erase a point

Jesper (27m 7s):
Only if we, our 12th than it will count because we get to pick on it then it absolutely. But its only something I can answer in hindsight. I don't know if it's been

Autumn (27m 17s):
So it, it should be a double and tie overlap because my number five is not just eval because of a past trauma. So I prefer a failed character arc. Even if its a character arc we, or we haven't seen in the current book, something that happened before the story started, but sort of like where the character made a, they had a choice of like the good internal motivation, but they chose to go with like power or fame or control instead of doing the good thing protecting the week or something like that.

Autumn (27m 49s):
So, so for me like someone abusing the character as a child is not a good, an excuse to be evil as an adult. I just, I want to see a series of bad choices and bad decisions that went wrong that led them to do increasingly evil or misguided things. I like that set of series and not just, Oh, this event happened in the past and therefore I'm bad. I'm kind of, to me, it's almost like a victim mentality and I want to see someone who's just taken the wrong turn even in despite themselves.

Autumn (28m 23s):
I guess I like a more nuanced growth. So almost the opposite of yours if I'm reading it correctly.

Jesper (28m 32s):
Yeah, no, I actually agree with what you're saying. I don't know if it's completely opposite because it's more like, OK, so yeah. I want to go with the orphan kid who lived in the street. Right. But, but okay. So something terrible happened and so it may have becomes like your coping mechanisms for how you survived, you know, so okay. Something bad happened and I try to do with the nice thing and I tried to talk to the people or whatever. Right. Nothing happened. It didn't help me. Then I beat them up and that actually helps, you know, something like this and that.

Jesper (29m 6s):
And then it builds on, on top of each other because then, then I started incorporating into my mindset. Okay. If I, if I need to, if I need to get my way, I need to beat people up and then you do that as a child. And then, you know, when you get older and you get adult, then it sort of accumulates into nastier and nastier things that you or the Villain is doing. Yeah.

Autumn (29m 27s):
Yes. So maybe it is an overlap because we're basically both saying that maybe there was something that started the tendency towards the evils site, you need some sort of trigger trigger. And then after that though, that's not the only excuse, they also continue on a path that makes that develops. That makes it more nuanced and keeps reinforcing it into this evil character. So I guess it is the same and again, on the exact same number, which is kind of funny.

Jesper (29m 58s):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see where we end up and then we'll decide if it was to say more if it needs to add or subtract. OK. Depends on where we asked if we had a 10 or 12 or Indian, then we'll see. Alright, alright. Now before this is intelligent and I find this one important it's very much along those same lines. Just what you've said already, because I don't think there's anything scary about Villain who just keep doing stupid mistakes.

Jesper (30m 31s):
You know, the Chip's keeps falling into the hero's favor. That's really annoying a I don't like that. A Serita and its incredibly frustrating, but as a villain who is an extremely intelligent and our maneuvers, every body at every turn that is just, I love that is definitely. And yeah, so that's why it, it was my number and nine, but its to me a very, it's just an important feature to have in the villain. And that's why I could probably be the two, your number for Yeah. And what's funny is my number for was pretty much your number seven.

Autumn (31m 3s):
So mine is, has good Traits so that relates to be, that relates to what I said before about believing what they're doing is right. But they earnestly believed they have the answer too, an important question or their, the only one who was powerful in or can get this done. Right. You know, or like you said, maybe they love someone or their kind of children or misfits, but there's truly something deeply decent somewhere in them. I think that's so important because no one, no one is so 100% truly evil.

Autumn (31m 35s):
Maybe if your writing Christian literary, a religious lit and you have to have a devil that is truly, truly, truly all encompassing evil. But heck I mean, even if you watch supernatural, most of the devil characters on their are actually kind of likable. So it's just kinda the world right now. We've seen things gray. I think that is important, but it also balances it also balances outright because it, it makes for a more three dimensional character. If you're also have some good traits of a loosely and it, again, I think it's interesting to have a character or an evil character that's a more nuanced and that they feel more real because again, not everyone is that bad.

Jesper (32m 18s):
Okay. We enter Top I am not going to count how many we know are serious. We've had quite a few overlaps recently, so will have to see how this ends. Yeah. Yes. So let's see if we can agree in the Top. So my number three is formidable. That's an interesting one and yeah. And yeah, But the word formidable doesn't have to be understood as raw strength, you know, it can be, but it doesn't have to be, it can also relate to, well, some of the stuff we already talked about, so being like exceptionally cunning, but it could also be a person who has a great wealth in a lot of resources at their disposal.

Jesper (33m 0s):
Something that just makes them miserable. Well, that Villain but more of a position to the Hero as such so that it adds tension. And the more attention we get, the better to story we have formidable is a very good

Autumn (33m 16s):
And that's what kind of be another one where I might have to ask the question of, do we have an anti overlap, but it's not my number of three will come back to it. Tune obviously it, we only have three left. So my number three is again, this is where I'm starting to get into the negatives. My number three is me. They may not be an evil at all. My favorite villains are not necessarily evil. I mean, I truly love a good antagonist that has almost like a competitor to the protagonists.

Autumn (33m 47s):
So they could just be taking a different approach on what needs to be done. And it's more like a race to see who can get the upper hand and solve the issue first because to me and not every story has to be good versus evil two, make it full of tension. Not every hero has to be a hundred percent justifiably. Correct. And right. And good. So it sort of THE Hey, Hey, you know what, you're a hero. You're a Villain does not need to be a necessarily evil. They could just be a very nuanced character and a different position was a different take on things.

Autumn (34m 19s):
And it's just not working for your here or whatever. They believe maybe works for their set of people, but it doesn't work for the set of people that the Hero is from. And so that's where the clashes, the Rite in their own each of their own way, but buy being right there are hurting each other or somehow those are much more nuanced novels, but I do find them engaging. Oh a very interesting, I think that overlaps and so, okay. Interesting. All right.

Autumn (34m 49s):
So I'll put an overlap in, I'll leave my question to Mark with who are formidable to see if it is like one of my final to we'll have to answer that soon. Okay. Yes. Yes.

Jesper (34m 59s):
Okay. My number two is one that you have more or less already set up word by word that I think I just probably labeled the different the, I called it determination, but this is basically just the Villain who is unyielding. You know, somebody who is pursue a goal until the very end, no matter what it takes. Yeah. And that is pretty scary. That's what you already said it as well. Definitely. It's just someone who has committed. I think it is what I put it. Yes, definitely an overlap there.

Jesper (35m 32s):
So my number two, and this is my anti to your formidable is not all powerful. So I think I've seen it more that the opponent is the villains to formidable, but I like once who are not all powerful there, you know, either whether you call him magic power, wealth, there's they are also working in a system of constraints.

Autumn (35m 54s):
Plus they have to be able to be defeated. So they have some weakness, blind spot or arrogance, that's going to leave them exposed. So that's my number two is that they're not all powerful so that they're not a 100% formidable. So I dunno, is that an overlap? Where is it a, not an overlap. Yeah,

Jesper (36m 11s):
But this is formidable and necessarily mean that you're all powerful. Yeah.

Autumn (36m 14s):
No, not necessarily. That's why I'm thinking it's not quite the same thing. So we might not have an overlap there it's similar, but yes.

Jesper (36m 21s):
Different. Yeah, no, I think you're saying something slightly different, to be honest, I didn't mean mine to sound like you have to be unbeatable or something like that. That was not the point of it. But I think still you might be saying something slightly different,

Autumn (36m 39s):
So we are going to call those no overlaps, but they're pretty, they're almost along the same veins were, you know, there is this, they are incredibly challenging in, on one hand, but on the other, they have weaknesses as well. So there kind of like two sides at the same coin. Yeah,

Jesper (36m 56s):
Yeah, yeah. I agree difficult, but okay.

Autumn (37m 2s):
Is there a number one number one, right. This will be interesting. What is your number one answer?

Jesper (37m 9s):
Yeah. So this was the one that I found most important out of all of the Traits to give to a year. And I called this one Modi. And what he meant by that was, you know, an antagonist who clearly knows what he or she wants. That's just a lot more interesting. And again, it is overlapping some of the stuff you said earlier as, or one is never an evil for the sake of being evil. So a good antagonist who believes in what he or she is doing is very important.

Jesper (37m 45s):
And also the fact that at the antagonist will see him or herself as a hero while thinking that the protagonist is the real Villa. So it's one of those I have to be holder kind of things that you have already mentioned. Yeah. But I

Autumn (38m 0s):
Really, when they have, when the Villain truly believes what their doing is right in justifiable and it's the Hero, who's the evil one eye just, and you get sucked into their mindset almost. That is a fantastic character. That's the way she is. I kind of cheated because my number one is very similar to my Hero number one. And that it is again that you can take these lists in all of these ideas. But what I want is a, well-developed a fully developed character and with an antagonistic, because I actually really like to a point of view of character, because like I just said, I wanted to be sucked into their mind.

Autumn (38m 37s):
I want to see the world through their lens and see it makes me question what, you know, the Hero is seeing it, is it right? I like that kind of internal tension of getting to decide who is the right viewpoint. So I don't want them to have all the Traits we listed at which some of them kind of do contradict each other. So they shouldn't just be the list of these as well. Not quite 20 But 20 different traits that they should be something unique. And again, I mean, one of my favorite villains actually ends up joining the hero's in the second trilogy because it was such a cool character.

Autumn (39m 12s):
He's still not good, but he's still not evil. He's just very complex. And I guess if I could have chosen one word for a character for a Villain complex, maybe should have been my number one choice. Not that. Yeah. That's also a good one. All right. Well, do I, is it time to add a note? So what's the score that overlap my number one. Does that count as an overlap or not? I'll decide one day, if I have put a question Mark.

Autumn (39m 44s):
So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, or 13, 13, 13 out of the 20th, which is the exact same was last week. We had 13 out of 20 last week. I had an expected that, no, I didn't either. I thought we'd be further apart. So, and as usual, we tended to agree too, with each other about the ones we chose, including complex.

Autumn (40m 14s):
The one that my 11th one I've thrown out there. It's two, you were consistent. I feel good. All right. This will be a lot better than the last time I guessed a little higher. I have wouldn't have guessed there team. And that is hilarious. We were totally consistent. Apparently is. So even though, even though we're creating these lists felled a lot harder than if it really did it last week, I sent you Bonnie Tyler's I need a Hero I couldn't no pop songs came in my head.

Autumn (40m 47s):
Maybe if anyone listening has a good Villain theme song, just go ahead and put in the notes. We obviously need some Villain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did some Villain inspired music. Yeah. What would be a good Villain song? You know, hit us up on in the Facebook group on Twitter or in the common sections here on the podcast or whatever, you know, I would like to know what what's a good Villain saw would be good, but I think that's what we were lacking, but I think of all, you know, take from this and this list have 20 different things were 13 of them would be really close to what, the way it's just, I just have to put that in their, just in case anybody who was very close to be my social Jesper won this week, I one last week.

Autumn (41m 39s):
I can remember that, but I think that nevertheless, you take what you can come from this 20 items on, use it as inspiration. I think all the antagonist is a critical part of any story. And he, or she is the one who forces the Hero to find smart and clever ways to solve his or her problems and can also at times service to the catalyst for the character arc.

Jesper (42m 5s):
So all of what we talked about here is actually really important. Absolutely. And Hey sometimes by seeing the antagonist lens, maybe the character of the hero will grow and see a bigger version of the world than they would have otherwise. Absolutely true. So take what you can from this and next Monday or Tuesday, and I will discuss whether or not marketing counts as working on your author business or not.

Autumn (42m 36s):
Yeah.

Narrator (42m 37s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/am Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 76 – Top 10 Traits of a Great Hero

What traits make a great hero? One that will linger in your reader's minds and hearts far after they close the book? Well, get ready for a raucous discussion that breaks down into a bit of a competition between Autumn and Jesper as they debate and compare what characteristics they think goes into the making of a memorable hero!

The 5 Day Writing Challenge Supercharge Your Scene hosted by the awesome J. Thorn that is mentioned in the episode is available for free sign-up at https://theauthorsuccessmastermind.com?aff=Am_Writing_Fantasy (this is an affiliate link and if you do signup for the paid mastermind group, we will receive a small percentage.)

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (1s):
You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape. You can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts. Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello, I am Jesper

Autumn (31s):
and I'm Autumn.

Jesper (33s):
This is episode 76 of The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast and S authors. We want the reader to root for the protagonist because when the last page is turned, the reader needs to wish that it wasn't over. However, it can be mighty hard to understand how one should create a character who is likable competent, realistic. And well-rounded so Autumn, and I will try to share our thoughts on this topic today.

Autumn (1m 3s):
Yes. I've been looking forward to this topic all week. I emailed you earlier that every time I was thinking about it, I had Bonnie Tyler's. I need to Hero go in my head. Uh, so it's been quite a fun and I can't wait to get to it. It, it became almost like, um, felt like I was filling out a dating list form of the, my ideal mate's. I think we had an, I think we've came up with some interesting tips that I hope will help out other readers, but until we get there, how are things on your side of the great ocean Atlantic?

Jesper (1m 39s):
Well, it's pretty good. Um, they've slowly started starting to open things up now. So my youngest son is actually very happy because he's done it. He, he gets to go to soccer practice, uh, two days from now. Yes, he's quite a soccer player. Oh, he loves it. I think to be honest, I think that boy probably loves soccer. Modern, modern is that Oh wow. And your a referee. So that's amazing. Yeah, he likes it a lot. So, but it's funny. We will see how much she's going to enjoy the soccer practice, to be honest, because there's so many restrictions on it, uh, that they have to follow.

Jesper (2m 16s):
You know, they're only allowed to train in fixed groups and they can only do like specific set pieces and there's no matches and Oh, you cannot had the ball. You cannot like, you know, use your chest to, to stop the ball or any, I mean, there's just so many rules that they have to follow in order to be allowed to play. So, um, we'll see if he actually enjoys it or not. I don't know once he gets frustrated, I don't know. But, uh, but they did, they did write out all these, he an email with all these rules and then they basically asked all the parents, uh, you know, can you please let us know if you're even interested in this way of practicing on that?

Jesper (2m 57s):
And then I went to my youngest son and I said, so

Autumn (3m 0s):
This is how it's gonna work. And I sort of laid that out to him and a say, so do you want to, do you want to go to practice? If this is the way it's going to be? And he looked at me for a second, like, I could see like the cock Wilson. He said, Tony, like, what is he asking if he didn't it for a while? And he didn't comprehend what, why I was asking if you want it to go to practice. He was this. And he looks at me like for a while. And then he said, yes, by what do you mean the answer to any part of this involved in it boils down too.

Autumn (3m 32s):
I'm going to practice right now. Yeah. That was also almost like he was expecting me to say something else or something like, you know, what do you want about, what do you mean? What is the question here? Well, I hope he enjoys it. That's great that things are returning to some semblance of a new normal for you guys. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Right? Because now we've been in lockdown mode for what? For a long while now. And, um, once we start opening up again, obviously we don't know what the effect is going to be.

Autumn (4m 4s):
Right. In which case you could go back to lockdown, but I will see, we'll see how it goes. Well, fingers crossed. It will go. Well, your ahead of us. So your experimental country to see how you do, you're the Guinea pig, I guess, but how, how is things on your side? Oh, pretty good. I actually planted by a garden, which is a little, a little will be releasing this later. But for now it's, um, sort of earlier, before the official, last frost date of may, but I figured between climate change and the 10 day forecast, I'm good.

Autumn (4m 39s):
And plus, I mean, I live in this tiny cabin and I actually brought my tomato seedlings in some sweet pepper seedlings out to my cabin just to make room, you know, where they're growing. And I'm sorry, when your screw is sharing, like a 200 square feet with seedlings, a dog and a husband, something has got to go outside. So it was the seedlings. And what was fun is I was getting so impatient is waiting for someone to lend as a teller, but it wasn't coming. It was broken. I finally just Whit and actually hand Doug like a 10 by this baby.

Autumn (5m 12s):
It's an eight by 12 garden spot. Um, and well, I am not 20 anymore. I do not recommend hand digging in a garden, but a lot of energy out over a course of two days. And then the next day I planted my little garden and they're outside. They're doing well, they're surviving, nothing's eaten yet. And I actually harvested some lettuce from STEM stuff I had in cold frame. So I, as much as I did, 16 years, a sustainable agriculture, I, I actually joined CSA as I never really had time to garden.

Autumn (5m 43s):
And my mother has this huge green thumb. So this is my dad by both. My parents are master gardeners. I was, you know, like buying seedlings or buying vegetables from a farm. So now I'm like, I have a garden. It's kind of fun.

Jesper (5m 58s):
It's a lot of work, but it's fun. Yeah. It's people have very different views on God. I mean, I hate it. I like going out into the garden and I like to sit there in the summer, but I do not like to do any gardening work. And the problem is you can't have a garden without doing gardening work so that you need a lot more money to hire other gardeners on that. Remember, I did share with you, I had a dream where we lent someone $20 million for a startup costs for their business.

Jesper (6m 29s):
So yeah, it was like a, I don't know, maybe two years ago was something I did hire a gardener because I just felt like I am not going to do this. I don't, I don't like it. Um, and then, but I couldn't afford like gardening company to do it because then it's very expensive. Right. You have to pay them a monthly fee and all this. So I found this, uh, basically like it probably a retired guy, I think he's retired at least, but he sort of just had his own little company doing some gardening work and all that.

Jesper (7m 4s):
So I hired him and he was doing God and Wagner is like, so half the time he was doing a pretty good job half the time, it was not that good. And then I also had to constantly, uh, you know, okay, so we went like this. So at the beginning, when I hired him, I said, okay, so you can spend, I don't, I don't remember the actual money anymore. And now at the value of it, but it was something like six hours, six hours a month or something. I can't remember something like that. So I said, if there's something to do for six hours, you can just do it.

Jesper (7m 37s):
Uh, if there is less to do to, and of course you just do less and then I'll pay you, pay you every month, uh, up to a maximum of this amount of hours per month. And then I said, and I don't really want to go around my garden and figuring out what needs to be done and give you task lists and stuff. I rather, you just figured out just, you can see what needs to be done. Right. And you just do it. You don't need to check with me, you know, how many hours you can Spencer just do it. Right. And he was like, yeah, that's fine. And it ended up, like I had to go and check everything all the time and say, Well have you done this.

Jesper (8m 10s):
Could you do this? Can you do that? And it just annoyed me so much in the end that I just stopped it because it's like, this is not what I wanted. Right. I just want to pay somebody and they take care of it. And I don't even have to think about it. And that's not what he did that annoyed me at the end. Hopefully we'll get to a better gardener eventually. Who knows? Oh, we got on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy Podcast so we have something pretty exciting to mention here.

Jesper (8m 42s):
Oh yeah. J Thorn a friend of our show, a fellow author, a certified story grid editor, and the host of several different podcasts. Actually he's offering some free help to anyone who feels they're, Scene just, isn't good enough. And maybe if you are struggling to understand what's wrong with your scenes, then he is going to help you out. Because as we've talked about so many times here on The Am Writing, Fantasy, Podcast Writing is a skill, so it can be learned.

Jesper (9m 16s):
And I am happy to vouch for J thorns a and say that he's a really good teacher. And he has worked with hundreds of authors on thousands of scenes. So he knows his stuff. And what he is offering is something he calls Supercharge Your Scene and it runs from the 15th of June to the 19th of June. So that's a week after you are listening to this. If you're listening to this, Episode when we release it. And what we'll do is that we will help you decide with Scene.

Jesper (9m 48s):
You want to write and also how to frame it with a clear purpose and adding in character motivation. And then each stay throughout that week, he will post you a free lesson. Two, walk you through the process of writing and revising compelling scenes, right? This is like, it's a five day challenge. Isn't it? It is. Yes. So if basically he gives you a four, a five day Challenge and everybody who completes those five days will be automatically entered into a price pool drawing.

Jesper (10m 20s):
And there's going to be some really cool prices in there, including one of them being a free 30 minute, one on one consulting with J. I think that's pretty cool that as a really cool, also a mastermind tacked on the end of this free Challenge that's a pay paid mastermind, but there's no requirement for you to go and join the mastermind. Two, you can easily participate in the free challenge if that's all you want to do and just leave it at that. That's no problem at all.

Autumn (10m 49s):
Yes. I mean, I just did. I'm a AMS ads. Challenge a five day challenge with Brian Cohain and there is so much fun now. I mean, I'm totally addicted and we are going to have to do one. I actually forgot to tell you I've been working on a little outline for one for us, but there it's so much fun. You learn things. There's a community there's SUPPORT. So, I mean, I've not that worried about my scenes, but I'm tempted to go Join J to Join this one just because they are so much fun and there's always something to learn and it's so much fun to interact with other authors. So I hope you guys go check it out as well, because it'll be great.

Autumn (11m 23s):
And I'd love to see you there.

Jesper (11m 25s):
Yup. I add on, I will add a link in the show notes here so that you can just go straight from there and check it out. But of course, in full transparency, please know that it's an affiliate link just in case you do decide to join the mastermind afterwards. Then we will get very small kickback here on our side too. The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast, which is quite nice. And it helps us a little too. So anyway, this things live in a week

Autumn (11m 54s):
From the release of this Episode so hurry up and go and join us soon as you listen, if this is something that interests you. Yes. And I've been actually being a good girl and hanging out a little bit more of the Facebook group, which has been so much fun. There is so many post going on. So when shared a world map that reminded me of a West wing episode, which is totally dating me because it was, so that was a show that was on age as I go, but they had won that they changed the projection of a map and flipped it upside down.

Autumn (12m 30s):
And I just remember the one character going, I'm just trying to figure out where Francis'. So if you're we had a little map nerd fast and going on their, so that was a ton of fun. And recently a few people have been breaking down tropes. Like the most recent is, is what does an elf? I think the first one was What is a dragon. A Jason's been posting those. So shout out to some amazing folks who are on their, and the great conversations. And I'm sorry, I took a break, but it's so much fun to dive back into the Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group.

Autumn (13m 5s):
So you can just go to Facebook and Google Am Writing Fantasy and come join us because it is so much fun and everyone is so nice

Narrator (13m 14s):
And onto today's topic.

Autumn (13m 18s):
So there's lots and lots of well-intended tools and techniques out there to help the writer avoid generating a flat character. But we decided to come up with 10 Traits that makes for a Great protectionist. And we all know, yes, we did. It was like I said, I had so much fun thinking about it. Um, I didn't actually get to sit down to write it down to like think a day or so ago. But at that point, I think it took me all a five minutes because I'd been thinking about it. I always think of, ah, there's a story about Frank Lloyd Wright when he designed Fallingwater and the story goes that, you know, he would keep telling the clients who bought falling water that, Oh, I'm working on it, I'm working on it.

Autumn (13m 57s):
And he actually didn't draw all the design until they were on their way to his studio to pick it up. I totally get that. That is me. I totally think about these things over and over and over and over again, and then just write it down. It's perfect. Right. But I can't wait to share these because we both have 10 things. And like I said, it was hard. I wanted to come up with, I mean, I analyzed some of my favorite heroes from the books. I read the ones I've written and I really thought about this for a long time. Nice. Yeah. And I think the interesting part is as well that we on purpose decided not to share things with each other in advance.

Autumn (14m 35s):
So I'm going to be quite curious here to see how much overlap we have if we don't have any overlap on which Traits we find important and I'm not worried. I think at least 50% of the time we will have overlapped. They just might not be on the exact same order. We did order these as well. So it'll be really fun, but we do, we agree on so much and we're writing books together and plotting things. I think we kind of have some overlap on what we think are it makes up a good Hero yes, I think so too.

Autumn (15m 7s):
A I think, I think definitely we will agree on a different things here. I'm not sure that's going to be a 50% overlap, but let's see. Let's see how it goes. I think it's quite interesting, but I don't think there's going to be much that we disagree on the way. That's true. It's true. But let's see. Um, and I guess we should alternate to keep things interesting. You won at a time and a, and then maybe also at a bit of what it's about why we picked eats of the traits. That is probably a good idea. And maybe explain what we mean by it too.

Autumn (15m 38s):
So, alright. I am ready. And we're going to start at number 10 and work our way for the most important, um, yes, let's do that. Let's do that. Excellent. Alright. Do you want to go ahead or you want me to, no, go ahead. Alright. So number 10 on my list of important traits for a great Hero is empathetic. I think it's important for the Hero to feel for others. And this isn't just self absorbed. I cannot stay on reading stories where it's all about the character, his needs, and once, and he never thinks about anyone else who was with him or her know.

Autumn (16m 18s):
I think that that's a, that's a good one. It probably goes well with one of mine as well, but keep it on how much they will that we have here then, because I don't know. All right, well, we'll have to tell, okay. Go for it. Alright. So I will start out with, uh, with One that many, many authors just believed to be universal truth. And when that must be adhered too, at all costs, and that is being likable.

Autumn (16m 50s):
Oh yeah. But to be honest, I'm cheating a bit. It's all the way. I don't think there's going to be 50 if it's, I don't, because after all this is more like one that I'm almost saying that you try to avoid rather than it being a trade to use. Right. Um, and this requires a bit of explanation, doesn't it? Possibly, but I think, uh, I think I know what you're saying, but go for it. Alright.

Autumn (17m 20s):
So I just don't want people to be too concerned with K creating a likable character. Um, it's much more about making sure that the protagonist fits the role of being a protagonist because that there's, there's plenty of characters out there who aren't exactly likeable, but we still route for them. Um, I don't know. Have you seen the TV series black sails? Oh, I've started watching it until we lost our free subscription because of the coronavirus, but yes, like after the first series or the first season.

Autumn (17m 56s):
Very good. Yes.

Jesper (17m 57s):
I really liked black sails, but captain Flint, he's not exactly likable, you know, or you could say, and a can Skywalker Michael Corleone from the godfather. I mean these characters, they're not really, I mean, they do things that at times you would say that's not likable is still a very interesting and compelling characters. Right. So I guess my number 10 is sort of an anti number 10 and

Autumn (18m 26s):
I agree cause I have something very similar. I thought about a way of phrasing this, but I couldn't think I wasn't just trying to stay away from negative. So I have it worded slightly differently, but yes, I think we have overlap on this one too. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, yeah, it's just more like don't be too overly concerned with about, I have to create a likable character because as long as you give the character or the protagonist, a good reason to act the way he or she does, then it's going to be a good character. Yes. I agree.

Autumn (18m 57s):
And I actually have my version quite high on the list. So I'm not going to tell you what number though. Oh, okay. Alright. So it's very important to me. Very important to me. All right. So number nine on my list is I like a Hero who's protective. So it's sort of this person that's always got your back. Even if you are in the middle of a fight or a disagreement with each other there still going to be there to support you. So I kinda like that element that, you know, you, you trust this person, you can rely on them.

Autumn (19m 28s):
I like, Oh, Hero, The, who's reliable, I guess will be a good way to put it.

Jesper (19m 34s):
Yeah, I can see that, but that's a good one. All right. So my number nine, um, well we, we often find a beginning of a novel where the protagonist is showing, going through some kind of hardship. And I feel like a situation like that does elicit sympathy in the reader and sympathy is important too, to make sure that the read the field's sympathy for the character. But my number two is therefore kindness.

Jesper (20m 6s):
Oh, that's so funny. Yeah. Because of a character who for some reason are trying to help out others or out help an animal that always works wonders, but you know, kindness, even though you're going through hardship of your own that's that just works really, really well.

Autumn (20m 24s):
Yes. And I actually have the word kindness on my list. So we will see this one again. What do we get down lower or higher? Should we, yeah, we have probably about 50% already think we are. I think it's only, yeah, we were pretty much there. It's one out of one out of four, so that we'll see if you're going to be right there. It wasn't me, I'm keeping track of, so if you hear any typing, it's just making little notes to on which is which, which are yes, for sure. And if there's any overlap between us. So yeah.

Autumn (20m 54s):
Alright. Okay. So my number eight, I like a sense of humor of one of my characters. He is a total smartass, a captain, Jared RI is from my post-apocalyptic series. He cracks me up, he in the middle of an emergency situation that comes up with a smart ass response, but I also don't mind, you know, like a gentle, joking, just a kind hearted joking. And I have of course, a couple of heroes like that. So just those moments that make you laugh, even if you want to cry, even if you want to run screaming, I just like a character who has that kind of can laugh at themselves, can laugh at a situation that warms me up so much as a reader.

Autumn (21m 35s):
I'm just in love with the character instantly with that. Yeah. I like that. But I just find it really hard to write. I think that you have said that before.

Jesper (21m 44s):
Yeah. Writing humorous characters. I find that really difficult. I always feel like my own jokes are so lame, but a yeah. Okay. So what is it on number eight, number eight. Yours. Alright, so being honorable, that's an easy way to put a character in a positive light. Um, I'm not saying that you ha uh, the character has to be honorable all the time.

Jesper (22m 15s):
Uh, you know, I think throughout all my 10 Traits here is just, it's not that you have to do it for any of these four, all of your characters at all times, but they're going to pick from, um, so being honorable. Yeah. I liked that one.

Autumn (22m 31s):
I have something very similar. So I'm, I think there's a slight overlap. It's a different way of phrasing it on that one. So it'll be interesting. You'll you'll hear my take on it. Alright. So we're up to number seven, uh, intelligence. So this is a, I don't mean a CURO who's a genius, uh, but they have, should be able to be clever or they look at things differently and they can figure things out. So, and especially if you, like I said, so we can see things in a way that others don't.

Autumn (23m 1s):
So they just have a unique perspective, but they're definitely clever. I can't, you know, someone who's just dumb luck in that as dumb as a, an ORC or a something. I just, I don't know. I can't respect a character who makes me, if I'm shouting at a book every other page, what, why don't you see that? I rather be all going, Oh my God, I didn't even see that. So that's mine. Okay. All right. So some overlap. Yeah. I guess we'll see.

Jesper (23m 30s):
Um, okay. So my next one is being proactive.

Autumn (23m 35s):
Oh, nice.

Jesper (23m 38s):
This one is so, so, so important. And I, yeah, actually I know I just said a minute ago that these are more like things to pick from. And not

Autumn (23m 46s):
Every character always have to have it, but this one, I would say EVERY protectionist always, always, always have to be proactive. Every single one in every single story, you do not want to protect in the us to just react to what's happening in and somebody, you know, if somebody is coming they're and telling the person the age, well, you probably need to do this, this now. Then they go off and do it know you want them to be the ones taking action. The protagonist is the one taking initiative and you always want to do that.

Autumn (24m 17s):
So proactive. Yes. That was a good way. That's a good way of phrasing it. I have something very similar. So I would say there's some overlap on that one, but I didn't phrase that the same way. So I must be able to find one on my list that you don't have. I'm going to keep trying here. Let's see. Let me think. Um, yeah, we'll find something so far. It's maybe I'm stretching my thoughts on it, but will say, alright, so number is six in my list is kind, I don't mean The not the rescue puppies type of kind, but you know, that's fine too, if you want to do that with very Hero, but I mean, thoughtful someone who is we'll do something nice, just because it is a nice thing to do so.

Autumn (24m 56s):
Not every page or every chapter, but once or twice in a book doing an act at a sheer kindness, like leafing, a loaf of bread for a beggar girl, who's been shadowing her since she entered the city, uh, that will totally win my heart. And of course, then you have the bigger girl who wins the bigger girl's heart. And she goes on to save the Hero and later as well. So though, you know, it all works out in the end, but I do like, like that, it's sorta like you're likable. I actually think I was just about to say it's like it, I actually have something a little more similar to likable later, but, um, uh, but definitely kind and not, like I said, it doesn't have to be this overwhelming, you know, saintly kindness, but just every once in a while, just something that shows I've a very good heart.

Autumn (25m 40s):
It's a very nice, okay. All right. Are you ready for my next one? Maybe this one, you don't have one I'm waiting. Alright. So a sense of justice. Oh, we haven't done that yet. I'm not answering then that saying, Oh, okay. Well I think that this is a good trait to use, uh, when you want to show the reader, the protectionist sense of morale. So because it's not that we have to agree with the character and, and the character sense of justice, but it tells a lot about one's personality when you learn what a person perceives as right and wrong.

Autumn (26m 20s):
So that's why I think it's a good one. It was a very excellent one. You wouldn't know how excellent that one is so excellent that you have. That's the next one of my number five is sense of fairness, justice. Oh my God. It's so easy. And I wrote this, One think we have coordinated this stuff. We really, we did not share this at all. It's so funny that they're back to back. So this came from my husband once asked me the question.

Autumn (26m 50s):
If you were a God, what type of God would you be? I love that question. And I chose just, I would be adjust God. I really, I really like a sense of fairness. Um, I love cause and effect. If you do bad things, bad shite should happen to you. Even if you're Hero is the instrument to make the bad people stop doing bad things. So a character that can just let injustices slide just makes me want to shake them or a toss, the book or something. So yes, I totally am in agreement with you.

Autumn (27m 22s):
We have total overlap, but that is a question I'm going to have to ask you at sometime if you were a God, what type of God would you be knowing my chesting a bit about what I do like your answer though. And you're a selection. They about it as well. God of justice. I do like that one, but I would have to think a bit about it. I think I would need to see a list of a domain that think a bit about it. Yes. Because there's probably some choices that I can't think off on top of my head that, that I would like as well. Yeah. That's my husband's ass answer actually made me worry then like, Oh, I don't know if I can like you anymore.

Autumn (27m 59s):
The death wrathful I'm like shit of your personality. I don't want to know. Right. So you all are a number five. All right. So this is actually building off the one I had before, but also its an overlap with Monday the one's that you already said. So this one I have named resourcefulness. So this is more like if the character has a strong sense of justice, then he, or she will feel responsible and also have something that he or she wants to achieve.

Autumn (28m 38s):
And I think resourcefulness is a great trait because if there is something that many readers like, you know, we like when characters can find an ingenious way of solving a problem and that's very few different words, but basically the same thing you said earlier. Yes. That's very true. So that I framed it more as intelligent, but to see a way, way of solving things, we had the exact same kind of meeting underneath of it. That's funny. All right. So Well, you know, I don't think people are going to walk away with a list of 20 what they have different perspectives on some of the same words, I guess though.

Autumn (29m 15s):
That's fair enough. Alright. And this one is sort of similar to one of the one's that you mentioned. Uh, my number four I phrased is, um, you called it proactive, but I kind of called it when the going gets tough. They don't hesitate to dive in. So I like badass hero's that walk around withdrawn swords. And I like the ones that prefer never to fight as well. As long as when the going gets, he gets to that point where something must be done, they haul ass in and they go in and do it.

Autumn (29m 46s):
I like decisive character's that will, Oh, you know, stick to and go for their guns when the need is there. So they don't have to go around swashbuckling all the time. But again, when something needs to be taken care of their are the ones to go and do it and they do it and they don't let them, you know, they don't just sit around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for someone else to fix their problems. Hmm. Yes. I can hear the way I set that, that day. I have something coming up. Probably almost exactly the same thing. Now, if you doesn't overlap this, why is this hilarious?

Autumn (30m 21s):
If you are a number For alright, so that this one is patients. Um, and to be honest, I do quite like impatient characters who just doesn't know how to behave themselves in a social context. I really do like that. But when I thought about it and when I was creating this list, I always also had to settle on the fact that I think as a protagonist, I think it gets tiring, right? What's quite well with an impatient character. If it's a side character, the main character, I feel like patients is a good thing.

Autumn (30m 55s):
Um, and of course patients can be expressed in many different ways. You know, we could be like, the person is just friendly to avoid a conflict or they use humor to diffuse an escalating situation or something like that. So it can mean different things. But, but I do think patients, that's a, that's a good thing. That is a good one. And I have to say you what now you finally have one. I don't think I have patients. I didn't even think about it. There you go. How do you have like totally that's different. So that's yes.

Autumn (31m 25s):
Awesome. All right. Stop making up the last three, just to find something we haven't, you know, just throw out something you don't even care about. Just really, I think they should be evil on the screen. That's not fair to our listeners. No. Okay. Fair enough. That they're probably laughing right now. This is not a competition. Right? My number is three. I wonder if you have anything similar. We're getting down to the nitty gritty now. So I like it when my Hero, it feels like a bit of an outsider.

Autumn (31m 58s):
They never fit in quite with a general populace. So I'm never rooting for, if you have a Hero that's the jock that everyone in this school envies and the girls are throwing themselves at his feet and we will also happens to be a superhero in disguise. I think I described it as barf wants to somebody. I like the nerd in the corner who has a few friends and also they have to happen to have the key to a multidimensional portal and they are always nice.

Autumn (32m 29s):
Yeah. They have the gumption to use it. And I also think, I think it just acknowledges the feeling that so many of the reader, so many of us have that were not a hundred percent because who is a hundred percent normal, what is normal? And so heroes like that kind of take that secret thing that everyone harbors inside of them and brings it out into the light and shows that this person is amazing and valued and unique and awesome. And so I liked that in my heroes when they also have that sense of, I just don't quite belong here and I'm going to find people who accept me for what I AM.

Autumn (33m 6s):
I like that one. But I think that that might be one more. That is not overlapping. Excellent. I think so. Alright.

Jesper (33m 15s):
Alright. But this one, okay, so this is going to sound very familiar. So I call this One resolve, but it's basically characters who are determined to fight to the end. And those are the one's that we love. Yes. So you just said it basically more or less a a moment ago. Right. But I mean, what if Frodo had given up halfway to Mount doom? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't blame him to be honest, make for a good story.

Autumn (33m 46s):
No, no. The one where someone else has to, he gives it to his side. So this is on you. Yeah. I'm done with this. No, that's very true. So yes they follow through.

Jesper (33m 58s):
Yeah. I think that's a good one, but, but also I think it's fair enough. Sometimes if, if they're resolved also comes as a result of their side characters or the way they help her. Because I mean, if Sam had not been there, I'm not sure Frodo would have made it two month. That's true. That is very true. And that's killer as a shield. A great point for a why you have some of these side characters. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So final children,

Autumn (34m 22s):
A final two. We are almost there. So my number two is going to sound a little familiar. I like a Hero who is not perfect. I think flaws are important. Seriously. Sirius. They have to be not good at something, whether it's romance they're in denial about some, hang up a they're a loss for their place in the world. So I like surface flaws. Um, they're like, I don't know. I like food analogies.

Autumn (34m 54s):
If anyone read my Patriot on post, that was out recently. I like food analogy. So there, um, these falls are the seasoning and a good recipe and that just needs that little extra kick. So thats and I think I also, I, I have a kind of a toss up between, I also wanted to say that they were skilled, but not in everything. So that's sort of the same thing. They're just not perfect. They have talent, but it requires focus and work. They just not magically gifted with the kingdom. And there are God in their Demi God in a perfect, so that was my number two.

Autumn (35m 25s):
And I think from yours minor exclamations that we should probably believe out is that you have something similar and I was great. No,

Jesper (35m 34s):
I'm not going to comment on that. I refuse to comment. Nope, no further

Autumn (35m 38s):
Fine, fine Well but I thought that was a very similar to your number 10 where they don't have to be likable because that is sort of, sort of the same idea. They don't have to be a hundred percent perfect or like no comments. Okay. Well what's your number two then.

Jesper (35m 53s):
Alright, so, and I did not make this up just to be, try to find something that you don't have to assess this in my notes. So I don't know if you don't, I don't think you'll have this one because this is totally, you know, we had a strange, okay, this is like a joker I'm throwing in a joke. So this one, I just said, pick something the reader did not expect. And I don't know what that is, but, but the point here is just that once you have developed quite some Traits for your protagonist, you already have a good idea of what the character is already.

Jesper (36m 34s):
And then it's very easy to lead yourself down the path of tropes and just, yeah. And then I'll add this and all that, that, uh, because that goes with the, with the white Knight on the white horse or whatever. Right. Um, and I think throwing in one trait into the mix that people just didn't expect, I think that works really well. So I doubt you have that on your list.

Autumn (36m 59s):
and I love that one though, because your right that is often the little twist that is just so much fun. I there's a comic I've saved from years ago. That is a group of friends playing D and D. And I liked everything about it because it showed the characters. I created all had some weird, unique thing. And the character is the people who were playing the characters were their own unique entities. And it's exactly the same thing. It kind of, I saved it because it was like, this is not what I expected.

Autumn (37m 31s):
And it was hilarious. And yes, it, if anyone has ever read it, it was the one where they're trying to an ogre and I'm sort of swashbuckling Hero. We were trying to fight and all of their roles to fight, roll poorly. So he ends up making a pass. They end up almost like kissing until he makes a pass, enrolls a 10 and they end up getting engaged. And that's how the war ends. And I just crack up whenever I read it. So definitely throw in, throw in the fun ones, but yeah, you in that one too. So that's to that.

Autumn (38m 2s):
I didn't, I didn't think about that one, but it's very true. And I totally agree because that's sort of what goes to my number one, but I don't have it phrased that way. And it wasn't what I was thinking when I said it. So you want to know my number one One is yeah. In a way I feel like it's cheating, but its because we just did this whole list and we just we've got over what 18 different things I want to see, not a list of 18 different things and tropes sorta what you just said.

Autumn (38m 33s):
I don't want to see this list of things that a character should be. I want someone who feels Real a fully developed character who has personality wants desires. Uh, it, it feels like someone who is not created just to fill a role in this story or to hit all the right buttons so that they know rescue puppies and also have a flaw and have to go learn something. And I want something that really feels like an authentic character in person, someone who's going to have has already been through it a thousand stories and it has another thousand to go through assuming they survived the one you're Writing yeah.

Autumn (39m 10s):
Yeah. I think that's a good one. Alright. And then I have to add up how many we had overlap. Yeah. This is probably the most important one of them all I already, yes. It almost pains me. I don't want to say it eventually. I know, but eventually we have to let other, you know, the listeners go back to their lives so they can go create an awesome Hero yeah.

Jesper (39m 39s):
A good protagonist needs floss. Exactly. What's it? Like I put it on number one and you had it on number two. It's just like it's again, Well a two way too close. Yeah. So of course, like you said, it's not a positive trait. A and I know that, but we just couldn't build a list like this without including floss, like you said as well. Yeah. I think that's impossible. A, we need to balance out the positive attributes and also yes, they also have the character arc and the growth, you know, the floss, his what makes the character arch and a growth seems impossible.

Jesper (40m 20s):
That's what we want. So it will make the read a question. Can this type of person even managed to succeed in whatever they're trying to do. And I think that's how legends are made.

Autumn (40m 32s):
Right. I agree. I definitely agree. It's what I like about characters and I think what makes them resinate with us. So it is so funny you that we had them, uh, we til we had two sets, so were back to back. I think we, I think that's why we did not have much, um, of a difficulty creating our Hero for the book we're working on together. Yeah. So you said 50% overlap and I said less than 50 and what did we have? Like 80 make them counting him up. So we had 20 total, um, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 at a sweater.

Jesper (41m 15s):
So I think we got over 50%. Yes we did. You win. Okay. Well, well I think what can be concluded from these list is how character's they must be balanced. Yes. They need to be interesting enough.

Autumn (41m 34s):
So that readers find the characters compelling yet. I think also they need to be ordinary enough that they are relatable. You know, that's why Superman is not a good character. No, I don't really like Superman at all. Yeah, no, I think this was a lot of fun. Autumn a lot of fun. They really got me thinking about heroes even in my own writing and what I've liked about the characters. Just, you know, they could be so different, but there are some SS essences that foil down, they make a great Hero.

Autumn (42m 7s):
Yeah. So now that we have discussed the good Hero goes off your story. What about the villain? So next Monday will be back with two new lists, but this time concerning the antagonist,

Narrator (42m 18s):
If you liked what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/am Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast going stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 75 – How to Build an Author Brand

You've heard mention of author brands, but what is it and how do you create one?

In episode 75 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper explain how important an author brand is.

They also cover how, if you don't create one yourself, others will end up branding you anyway.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (2s):
You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello, I am Jesper and I am Autumn. This is episode 75 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And now you might be thinking that your books are the product and how this is what will make readers familiar with who you are and what you're writing. But the truth is that it's getting increasingly difficult to get noticed in today's internet landscape and a here, the creation of a brand could be helpful. So that's the topic for today, how to develop your author brand and we will also share some more words on that a bit later here.

Autumn (1m 9s):
Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I, I think Author branding, it surprised me the first time I heard about it and thought about it and like I'm not a brand, but it's actually really fun and it kind of creates some consistency and actually kind of helped focus my writing. So I'm looking forward to this one. Yeah, you were saying that because you do all the graphic designs. That's why you like it. That's true. I'm one of those strange people. If you asked what color is Monday, I would probably come up with a color for you.

Autumn (1m 42s):
So I like, I like colors, individual colors. Friday, Friday is an electric blue. Definitely electric. Yes. The last one was the reason for that. It was, it just something random You came up with it. It has an electric blue feel. To me it is, it's like an energizing, exciting kind of color. I like, you know, and that's a good, good energy. They are black or what?

Autumn (2m 11s):
Um, I dunno. I think it depends on the Monday, but you know, Mondays, now that I work full time from a home, they're probably bright yellow and it makes no difference. It's not a bright yellow. I'm happy that I do feel, I still feel like that, you know, get your nose back to the grindstone. It's Monday get work done. It doesn't matter. Right. Okay. So how are things on your side of the ocean? No, it's, it's good. Uh, I was thinking that maybe I could give a a new status update on the whole selling a house.

Jesper (2m 46s):
Yes. Soccer. Yeah. It's like a novel for us. It's a very, very long and very boring nonfiction, but it's a very boring reality show or something. Yeah. Well I talked about last week How we've had a, a couple who was out looking at the house twice now and worse, you're in quite some interest. And then last week I mentioned how the a, what does it cost?

Jesper (3m 21s):
Like the advisor or what the guy who, who is like advising them for the purchase. He was supposed to call it our real estate agent and um, he did that as well. So I talked to our real estate agent the other day and uh, it was a bit a bit weird because, and I think this, I don't know if this, I haven't talked to this advisor guy, so of course I am going off of hearsay and, and feelings here that I don't know if they are true or not, but it feels like he might be a bit of a smart kid, a smart guy, you know, a bit like, yeah, yeah, I'll do some quick deals here and whatnot.

Jesper (3m 59s):
I don't know. Because he was like, he told a, a a real estate agent at a w well we can, we can put in a price and then it was like 150,000 Danish crowns below the price that we have set at four. And keep in mind, we already reduced the price of a hundred K right? This is a 150 below 100 Kay. We already dropped it. A little insulting actually. Yes. So a real estate agent basically told him right away before he even talked to us, he said on the phone, you know what?

Jesper (4m 32s):
I can't, I can't give them this offer. This is ridiculous. Um, it's not a good deal. Right. I mean, and he basically just said, you know, as a, as a professional light, I can't even stand behind that alpha. I'm pretty intense. Yeah. And then the other guy, well he was talking like, well it'll be, it was just like covert 19 situation going on and our real estate and asked him what color would 19 see what do you mean?

Jesper (5m 2s):
Well, do you know the effect on house prices? And when he was saying, well, there is no effect on hush prices, not in this area, or at least I don't know about your area but not here. So, and then he started saying, well Am, well we have to start somewhere, right? Uh, well not 150. K. So he then, yeah, so there is a state and then called me and, and uh, we had a chat and he said, ah, so what do we want to do? And so I instructed him to, uh, after, after talking to my wife as well, I, I instructed him to go back and say, you know, come back with something serious and then we can talk.

Jesper (5m 44s):
I don't even want to come up with the counter off on this. This is just ridiculous. So, but I honestly think, I think they're quite interested. I think this is just playing games to see if we can get something because its been on the for a little while so maybe they were just trying to test the water. Yeah. But don't forget as well that she is six months pregnant. Right. And so either either you basically do something now write and write and our house was the only one that they've been looking at or you say, okay then we don't do anything now.

Jesper (6m 17s):
And then they have, they give birth first and then, but then you know before they get into a house it will, the kid will be a year old write. Do you really want to do that? Yeah. So I think they're quite hungry to be honest. Um, I don't know if you say hungry in, in English in a situation like this, but that was me translating from the concept comes across. I think they're very keen. They're very keen and it sounds that way. Yeah. So, um, so let, let's see what's going to happen. We haven't heard back since, uh, the other day was Sunday, uh, when I talked to him.

Jesper (6m 50s):
Uh, so I, I don't know what's going to happen. Oh, well, a good luck. I would love to hear this story. You don't have a happy ending and she'll be picking her nursery colors and everything else, but I do. Yes, they have to. That's it. Yeah. I would have been a little bit like, really? That's all. Yeah, it wasn't a bit annoying because when they were here looking at the houses there, there was never any talk about pricing or they never mentioned anything. When they will either in the first, the second visit they have about, uh, it didn't say two.

Jesper (7m 24s):
The real estate agent in something like, which would be normal, right. You say, you know, what, are they willing to negotiate or just asked a question. Nobody ever said anything. And then this guy comes in and then he starts doing this playing a game. And I almost have a feeling that maybe it's just him trying to play games. Maybe he just told them like, Hey, I'll get you a good price and blah, blah, blah. Some stupid sales talk. Right. Because this has also the guy who's got to sell their apartment. Right. So he probably liked, I'll get you a good price and then I can tell you the apartment as well.

Jesper (7m 56s):
But yeah, let's get those types are not just in the United States, I guess. No, no, no. I'm sure every nation have those types of people. But uh, and again, he might not be like that. It is, is just, I haven't talked to the guy, but it was just a feeling that I get from it. But I could be wrong. Of course. I needed to be careful what to say on a public Podcast if that's true. But at this time this was an air. It hopefully you have the offerings. Maybe. Let's see, let's see if what is happening.

Jesper (8m 28s):
Um, I also actually just wanted to mention because I posted it on Twitter, I didn't, have you noticed a movie, the platform on a Netflix? No, I have not seen that one. No, because it's quite, it's quite interesting. It was like a, it's a, I think a Spanish scifi kind of movie. Oh, that sounds good. But I want to, I want it to mention it because the premise of that movie is, it's just amazing. I mean I, I don't remember at least ever seeing it before. So it's basically like it's a prison that is in a tower.

Jesper (8m 60s):
So it was like extremely high tower. You learn those hundreds of floss in it. And then the prisoners, they are on a whatever floor number between one and the last one, which is the several hundreds. Um, and then everyday at the top from the top there is a platform lowered which is full with fruit. So it, it's not like, it's like almost like Michilan kind of it, you know, they have cooks preparing it so it's like excellent food and it gets lowered down to level one and they eat for a bit.

Jesper (9m 36s):
And then there's is, it feels like there was a timer on the platform or something, but then after it a little while, it goes down to level two and it goes, it keeps going down. So, and of course the people on the top floor, they just eat everything they can. Now of course, and every time it goes down there is less food on the platform. Oh, that sucks to be on the bottom. Exactly. And then the thing is that every, I don't remember now if it was every, I think it was every month or every week, one of the two, I don't remember anymore.

Jesper (10m 7s):
But they get basically moved around on the different floors. So you will be put to sleep after a week or month, one of the two. And then when you wake up again, you will be on a different floor. Gosh. So if you wake up on a low floor twice in a row, you're basically going to die from starvation. But if you come up to a high level, then you can eat a lot and then hopefully you can survive your next turn on lower level. If you end up down there, but it's just that that whole premise is so interesting.

Jesper (10m 38s):
And if of course it plays off all the, uh, like society will thinks about it, you know, if everybody just only ate what they could and is what it would be, there is enough food on the entire platform for everybody, but it is there. It depends on every one, only taking a plate and then letting it go. And if everyone does that, then there isn't enough for everybody. But of course nobody does that. So they're like, I'm on top now. I'm going to eat whatever I want. So I just, it's, it's so interesting that premise there is the end of the ending quite a lot.

Jesper (11m 11s):
And that was a very interesting, keep that in mind if I go and look it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They speak Spanish of course, but we actually launched a lot of Spanish. I'm learning my Spanish through a Spanish Netflix shows, so that's all right. Right, right. Okay. Yeah. Well here in the air in Denmark, which I also learned from a Twitter, well, he's in Europe in most, not in France, not in Germany, but otherwise it's quite common that we just a watch things with subtitles on us, what we do all the time. So we used to that.

Jesper (11m 41s):
Whereas I learned, I learned often from Twitter that people find it weird and I never understand why because that's since I was a child. That's how we do things. Because when you start tapping things, it's just at the same, no, it's not the same. It isn't.

Autumn (11m 54s):
I think we watched one episode of the rain In dubbed and it was a very different than watching it in Danish, the Danish in having it subtitled, that was fine. You just can't used to reading. I take in things better if I read them anyway. So, yeah. So to me it's fine. It's just bad if you're, if you're really, really tired and your eyes are tired, the last thing you want to do is read. So you watch something else. I, you know,

Jesper (12m 19s):
We do it on, on, on this show. So like the reign for example, I have a top titles on the issues as well because I've just, I'm so used to it, uh, that I just, I absorbed, I absorbed the information better when the subtitle's on. I understand. So how about you?

Autumn (12m 36s):
Oh, things are good. I've continued with my weekly planning and getting my life organized and I'm making progress in all fronts. So I have really nothing to report other than I've been a very good girl and I've gotten a ton of stuff done and I still have a ton more to do it. But yeah, I started to catch up. You watch out.

Jesper (12m 56s):
Well, I started to get emails now this is done. This is done. That's a nice,

Autumn (13m 1s):
So let's see. Hopefully going to continue. I have my week planned out in all my weekly goals and onward and upward is an old coworker used to say. So we are you doing good?

Jesper (13m 13s):
Oh, a week on the internet. Writing Fantasy Podcast we've received a request actually for a future podcast podcast topic from one of our patron supporters. Yes, we did. Yeah, that was pretty good. She wanted us to talk about when the ideal time would be to start working on sequels when your writing in a series. So I did ask her a bit of more details. Um, but that's something we'll put onto the list of future episodes there. Yeah, I was gonna say, I, I hopefully, especially since you've got some extra information, you can copy and paste it into our, our idea list that we keep.

Jesper (13m 51s):
So when we're deciding what to do, we're going to talk about in the future and picking things out. We can look at that one. That was a good one. Yeah. Yeah. I think that was good. So, and of course, uh, you know, by supporting on Patrion, you can also suggest possible topics for future episodes. Uh, but there is a lot more on patron that we do for a, there is, for example, a free access to one of our premium courses. There is a monthly Q and a where you can ask anything you want from Writing to marketing and publishing. And we also offer support as a free workbook, as a Christmas gift.

Jesper (14m 24s):
And also at the top level, there's even the possibility for mentoring sessions. So we try to offer a lot of value in return for your support. In truth recording the podcast episodes every week, quite a lot of the work. So any support we can get, even if it's just a single dollar a month, is really helpful and it keeps us committed to to keep going here. So if you haven't checked out patron or Please,

Autumn (14m 52s):
Follow the link in the show notes and check it out and we would really, really appreciate it. And so yes, especially since one of our goals on there is to have someone go through our new transcripts that come out with each podcast. Oh my goodness. Some of the errors come out of it wasn't what it is. Yes, bro. And I am awesome instead of on the wall. I'm like, wow, I'm just going to go buy. Awesome from now on. Yeah. Well we do do a light edit out of the, of those types of errors on the script that comes out.

Autumn (15m 26s):
So a, I think we talked about last week that we've started adding the entire transcript of the podcast on every episode. So we do a light edit on it, but I can not tell you how funny it is. The what turns out in that light edit of, of what the AI comes up with that it thinks you were saying sometimes. It's just so funny. It's fantastic. Yeah, it at least cracks us up, but it would be so nice to have. So it didn't do it a little bit more in depth at it because you know it just looking at it and it, it was totally skipping one of us talking and other stuff.

Autumn (15m 59s):
I was just very frustrated with it. But anyway, we won't go there and good news. We actually, just before wrapping this up and starting this podcast, we just finished a Q and a session with our new character development students and that was awesome. That was awesome. That was legitimately Oh, lot of fun. And I was a nice way before the, the Q and a session. James' one of the students actually emailed us and just says, you know, he's looking forward to meeting us face to face and thanks for these opportunities. Uh, your work with to help authors of all over the world is appreciated, at least by myself.

Autumn (16m 34s):
And I'm quite certain that with Benny who mirror my sentiments and that's just like, I mean, we don't need to hear back from people, but darn it. That's awesome. It really is why we do it as to those little tidbits to knowing we're making a difference for other authors and eventually other readers. Yeah, it did. It really makes a, it makes a difference obviously. Um, so thank you so much for the kind a note. Thank you James Author brands. I'm still excited about the restaurant.

Jesper (17m 7s):
Yeah. What is now Author Brand uh, I found actually a on the internet of things, I found a, I found a quote earlier today from Jeff Bezos, which I think actually sums it up quite nice. Oh, that's good. So it goes like this quote a brand is what other people say about you when your not in the room and quote. I like that Jeff Bezos with will come up with that one. That is a pretty good definition of what you or your personal brand is otherwise known as gossip right now.

Jesper (17m 47s):
But, I think that the takeaway there that Even if you're not creating your own brand, you still going to have one because people will have an opinion about you. So the alternative as a much better meaning that creating your own brand, well that's preferable over them making the Brand for you.

Autumn (18m 7s):
True. Ahh, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. But it definitely, yeah, you definitely want to be in charge of what people are saying about you and not just reacting to what you know, you know, what are people are saying, you definitely need to consider these things when you're doing, I mean this is why we talk about quality, making sure you have edits and things like that because technically, you know, making sure your writing is clean and quality in a full error, free as part of your brand, but that's not the only a part of your brand.

Autumn (18m 40s):
You want to be a little more in charge of it than that.

Jesper (18m 44s):
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, whether we like it or not, uh, as authors, we are selling ourselves. Right. So that also means that uh, you need a brand.

Autumn (18m 55s):
Yes. And I think, I mean, we're dovetailing this right after an episode, we're talking about pen names with a Kiersten Ollifont and that is, yeah, I mean that's another thing. Your, each of your pen names is also a brand and that would be a reason to change her name is because there is a shift to your brand. You know, you want to be known as something else, whether it's, you know, you're one brand is erotica and your other brand is a children's Christian fiction. You wanna keep those two brands separated.

Autumn (19m 25s):
That's an extreme example. But I would not be surprised actually if there's someone out there doing both.

Jesper (19m 32s):
No. So what do we need when we try to create an author brand? What, what, what things do we need for it? Um, I try to list out a few things that I was thinking about. So basically when you start to think about your brand, um, I think you need to look at your show that you are writing in and you need to think about your target reader and then you need to think about what it is that you making that is making you unique.

Jesper (20m 4s):
So why is it, for example, in our case you were writing Fantasy. So why is it that your target readers should read your Fantasy book instead of another Fantasy book?

Autumn (20m 16s):
Right. I mean, to me it helps if you haven't developed your author brand yet, but you have written a few books. One of the first places to look for ideas on what your author brand might be is actually in your reviews. And if you start saying a common theme of like exciting or a really detailed characters or a fast paced, when you start seeing things like that, that's probably a, a, a good clear cut of maybe what your author brand is.

Autumn (20m 47s):
But you know, you can also think about that from the get go and a control it as your writing and releasing your book's. But there's definitely a, to me, I love mining through my reviews and seeing what people have picked up because sometimes they have an insight that you didn't realize that they were talking about.

Jesper (21m 9s):
Yeah. So I w w actually when preparing for this a session, I try to list out a few different things that Am that I think is important when it comes to your brand and what you could be developing in relation to that. So I don't have a particular audit, uh, audit, Lisa, and I think we can sort of just jump around as a, as we want. Excellent. But, um, I dunno, do you, do you have a place where you would like to start now you go first and Am I will add to it as I usually do.

Jesper (21m 42s):
Okay. So I think as an umbrella thing across all of the things that I'm gonna mention here, we could say like the three inputs that I just mentioned. So the genre, your target reader and what makes you unique. You used your answers to those questions to influence the, your decision on what kind of colors you're gonna use, what fonts you're gonna use, what images you're going to use, and then you use those consistently across the different things that we are going to talk about here.

Jesper (22m 14s):
That's sort of the underlying mentality around this. It is

Autumn (22m 18s):
It really going to inform your marketing because is going to create a consistency in those colors and those fonts. And just the message at this is the type of Fantasy or fiction or whatever your Writing that you stand for it. And if you open up any of your books, it's going to be right there, you know, is going to be for a friend's centered. So it's a, it gives you a whole focus of the theme, which is kind of,

Jesper (22m 46s):
Yes. So the first thing on the list here that I created was a logo. Uh, and well actually we've started developing or talking at least about a logo for our joint fiction as well, haven't we? Yes we have. And yeah, it's on my to do list cause we haven't, well we haven't even started writing there, but I want to have that logo before we get the website get Writing. Yeah. So of course the logo can be used for different things. I mean you could, uh, you could put them on the book cover, uh, like our plan is to do that, to make, to make the Brand and clear to readers that these are the same books because a, you know, as time goes by and there'll be more and more books in this world, then the logo will be the one that joins them all together to show that this is the same.

Jesper (23m 34s):
Um, while at the same world and the same, not the same story. I guess that's wrong to say, but at least to set in the same setting a of course if you are just writing a single trilogy, then you could just make sure that each of the covers are looking similarly enough that people can see that these belongs together. But if you write a lot of different books in the same setting like we plan to do, then a logo could be the one that ties them together.

Jesper (24m 4s):
But otherwise the use of a logo is good for, you know, of course your social media profile

Autumn (24m 10s):
And uh, and on your website, and I mean, cause there's a few different layers there of logos. You can have your series logo, your book logo. And then I have a personal logo for my website, which is under Autumn Writing. So I actually tweaked it over the years cause I realized the original one I had to kind of a book in some kind of like triaged thing. Hey Autumn writer, hello. But I realized I write Fantasy when you look at it, it doesn't say exciting Phil Fantasy and that's what I write.

Autumn (24m 41s):
I mean most of my readers know that, you know, there is the characters, another things, but I write fast paced Fantasy it's pretty much a page Turner. It's more like the thriller version of Fantasy. So I recently like you to think, I mean to me recently, like with in the last two years I tweaked and changed my logo, my personal logo. So that's another place where you use it though. I mean I use it Am it's a logo for who I am. It's an all my books that I published. There is a little circle logo that links to my website and it creates consistency. You land on that website, you know in your honor, one of my books and then each of the series also has individual logos that are also exciting.

Autumn (25m 20s):
But it's a good way of tying your series together.

Jesper (25m 23s):
Yeah, absolutely. In and of course if there is, just as you said that there's some thinking behind what kind of images and fonts and all that, but do you use a Writing Fantasy well that in a medieval setting that will, that that's different imagery and and fonts and colors. Then if you were writing, I don't know, a modern thriller, right. What do those things are different so and that should inform and influence you are a logo design

Autumn (25m 53s):
Definitely.

Jesper (25m 55s):
Okay. And we talked a bit about website down. I feel like that that's sort of your area Autumn too. Maybe you can say a bit about websites.

Autumn (26m 1s):
Absolutely. So you know, having just talked to Kirsten, she feels, she feels that the websites are kind of going by the wayside or at least the, the big ones with blogposts and everything else. But I do think there's still a landing page. Most authors, maybe they're not looking you up, maybe they're looking you up more on Amazon than they are for your own website. But since we do sell books off of our website and if you're going to sell like signed copies, paperbacks or hardbacks off of your website, you want to have a website and so their you create, you take those same colors, you have a color scheme, there is some, usually five colors is what you want for our website.

Autumn (26m 40s):
And there is some great tips and techniques if you do website on how to land on those colors, which is a whole science of itself. But then you use your fonts. Do you use your logo? You keep that. Like I said, my logo, who I am and what kind of books I write is more front and centered. Then the individual books I have because I want it to be under my name because I do write in different genres. As you noticed from the previous podcast, talking to Kiersten, I write in different genres, but I did not choose a pen name.

Autumn (27m 12s):
So I chose that. I chose to stay under myself on a bird because I felt it still fell underneath my Brand. And so that's one of those important questions to ask yourself. And that's why I have just one website that lists all my books.

Jesper (27m 31s):
Yeah. Ideally, uh, because I also previously before Autumn and I started working together, I wrote nonfiction. So ideally I should have had two different, almost, I probably almost two different, um, you know, pen name for it because it's just a real weird mixture. So you have Fantasy fiction and then you have some Author related nonfiction books for example. But that doesn't tie into it at all. Uh, but at that point in time I just felt like a second pen name and, and then a whole second brand and a second um, online presence and all that.

Jesper (28m 5s):
It was too much to manage. So I did it all on my own name a that's what I've done. But it's not ideal for sure.

Autumn (28m 12s):
No, we could have been like Joanna Penn and she has her fiction under JF Penn. I mean it is a tongue in the cheek, just a little indicator saying Hey this is a different version of me and that's sort of what the pen name, you know, some of them you want to keep completely separate like Kiersten has her as you know, its written in her profile. She is honest, these are different ones but she has way different names under her different pen names. So you know, it each happens but each time you choose a pen name you're doing it for a reason.

Autumn (28m 44s):
Whether it's just a nod to the other part of who you are and what you're selling or a totally, you know, making it fit. She has one that really fits the urban fantasy that she is writing. And so you know what it is kinda the fun thing about a pen name. If you don't think your name really fits, it's John Smith and you're trying to write cozy mysteries. Am I want to go do something a little more cozy.

Jesper (29m 9s):
Yeah. And that's it. But it's funny because that she, that you said that she said that about websites because we talked slider, we touched slightly upon it in a past episode as well where we had slight different views. You and I are on websites and a need for them if of course, if we disregard, uh, the need to sell directly because if you need to do that and it's a given that you need a website. But I remember in a past episode that I said that in principle you could just create a landing page if you're, for example, if you use convert kit or something like that, they give you the possibility to, to create a landing page and, and they will host it for you and you could in principle just create that so that you can have a way to collect email addresses.

Jesper (29m 54s):
Yeah, and that's it. Then of course it is. It is a very light approach. I understand it, but I do agree with her thinking that I don't think the websites is a necessity than it used to be. I,

Autumn (30m 10s):
I can, especially if you're running multiple genres and multiple pen names, I think for like her newer one, she literally has a, she bought the URL with the name, the brand name, her Author name, her pen name, and she has a redirect to a landing page and two sign up and see her books. That's it. And so yet you, you really can't do that. But again, she does still have a presence and she did go through the effort of buying the URL to no one could buy it out from under. So there's still some tech savvy, but that is one of those big things.

Autumn (30m 42s):
I mean, and speaking of a website, so your brand, whatever that name is, Am whether it is Author so and so, or just the name that is part of your brand and you should own that. So go buy that URL. It's one of the things she checked before she was creating these pen names as she would Google it and see if the URL is free. You see you. If anyone else was using it, she wanted to make sure it was very, because she was specifically choosing a brand. And those are the things you want to check on as you're settling on a brand.

Autumn (31m 13s):
If you're creating something and not just you know, going with what you were born with.

Jesper (31m 18s):
That's why I'm so happy that we snatched up and writing and reading fantasy.com before we even knew what we were gonna use it for it. It is. It's a very good one. Yeah. And we have a use for it now in the future. So it was good that we snapped up that one.

Autumn (31m 33s):
Yeah. So heck, I still remember, I was so amazed that it was free. I'm still amazed. Am Writing Fantasy was free when I thought of it because I was literally on a three or four day hike on the Appalachian trail and I think I thought of it on day one. I'm like, Oh, there's no way that that one's still available. And four days later it was first thing I did when I got off the trail was Google and going, Oh, that's it. It was

Jesper (31m 56s):
Mine. He bought it. And then we bought Am Writing Fantasy when we were at it as well. So that was good. Very good. Okay. But that's slightly off topic, bringing it back. Uh, the next element to the Author brand is the picture of yourself. Um, and again, here, I would say make sure that a picture of yourself is on Brand, meaning that, uh, there is a difference between, you know, you're looking serious versus someone who writes humor.

Jesper (32m 26s):
Because if you are writing more humoristic novels, perhaps a bit more of a funny picture. I sat that in quotation marks there, but it's a bit more of a funny picture. It might be a better smiling and laughing. And

Autumn (32m 40s):
This is another one where I get in, I remember very clearly from Joanna Penn when she wrote a, um, it was something on her pen name or just she was going to contracting her to different brands and she showed her one image and now I can't remember if it was the fiction or the nonfiction, but one of them is black and white. It's almost the exact same picture. But she actually had one black and white because it just fits the genre and resonated better with readers. And I thought, well that's just interesting to go all the way down to the color of the picture.

Autumn (33m 10s):
But I mean, I totally agree. And this is one where I see a lot of people say, you know, you need a professional Author image. And so I have this picture. You often see the one's that, you know, the clean background in the standing there. And maybe the half smile or as a holding one of your books and it has a post to it. And to me those come off as so standoffish and snotty. I can't help it. And occasionally you need to get some more, you know, the warmth in the eyes and more happy ones. But if you ever look at my Author image, I am holding a four leaf Clover and I'm actually a little out of focus.

Autumn (33m 42s):
It's a four leaf Clover that's InFocus and there's an amazing Alaskan mountain background behind me cause I was traveling when we took it. And by the way, yes, I'm just really good at finding four leaf clovers. That's just me. But um, I, I think some people, I understand the idea of this is professional and we should take it seriously. But I also think if it's part of your brand that you are very open and out there and energetic or whatever that is, there's no problem with that coming through. I mean, you probably don't want one of your like mother kissing you on the cheek or something, but you can choose, you can choose an Author image that's a little more fun than They, you know, went to a studio and took a set PO's.

Autumn (34m 29s):
But that's my opinion. I know some people totally disagree with me.

Jesper (34m 32s):
No, but I think it's important that the picture comes off naturally. Uh, you know what? It looks very natural so that you can build that connection with the reader because pictures are doing that very well. There's a reason why you use pictures is because it builds a connection with people. So it has to look natural. But I would still say, unless you are a very good at it, don't take a selfie. No, that's not true. That's not good. Um, I am a professional photographer should also be able to help you in taking a picture that does not look like you're posting, that they can make it look so to you.

Jesper (35m 9s):
Bring you a natural or whatever it's called. You're on your natural self authentic self to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Autumn (35m 17s):
Marin did it with a professional photographer. So I have some, you know.

Jesper (35m 21s):
Oh you are lucky. I know you got some luck there. So yeah, here's my personal paparazzi, so I'm good. Yeah, that's good. But I do some very quick internet search before this episode. Uh, so it's not very specific here but or scientific at all. But I think you can get a picture taking price for some where between a hundred and $200 wouldn't you agree?

Autumn (35m 44s):
I would agree. I would think if you're going to get a whole series, it might be up to 350 but in general for just a few photos or something. If you go head shots from a local photographer, and especially like I said, some of them are willing to go outside versus being in a studio or something like that. You should be able to find someone who can give you a nice library photo or something. Or maybe even on your own house if you have a nice bookcase or something, it gets a little bit of an author image.

Jesper (36m 13s):
OK. So the next set piece or building block I have here for your author brand is then something that we actually talk about in the self publishing success course, that we're, there's a free course that we are planning to release later this year. But in that course we talk about creating your why. So this is basically a one sentence statement demonstrating why you write what you do. And uh, in autumn in my case, we write Fantasy because we believe that human beings evolve and heal themselves through stories.

Jesper (36m 52s):
So in short, our why we summed it up with the following sentence, quote stories makes the world a better place. Very long quote. No, but that's the point, right? It is to be simple and easy, very short. Uh, and I'm pretty happy with what we came up with there. What am I think that's good.

Autumn (37m 13s):
No, I agree. And I think it really sums up the many layers. There's many, many layers to it. And so that's kind of the fun of it. You can, obviously we're not stuck with one type of image or one type of, you know, reaching reader. We can play with the different ways of why we think it's important. And that's part of the brand though. I mean, it's a multi-tiered approach, but that's always the fun.

Jesper (37m 38s):
Yeah. And it's an easy thing to communicate with a single sentence like that, uh, on, you know, Twitter profile on social media or on also on our website of course. But it's, it's something that you can just glance over a word with your eyes and you already understand what it is. Right? You don't have to read like full paragraphs explaining why I think Fantasy is a great young round, blah, blah, blah. It was just stories makes the world a better place.

Autumn (38m 4s):
Yeah. And it's at the beginning to, in many ways it's the end of your elevator speech. It's wonderful to have that so that when someone asks you, you know, a, why do you write a, what do you write? You could say, this is why I do this and you have confidence in is wonderful.

Jesper (38m 21s):
Yeah. And the other thing is that this ties back to what we talked about in the beginning about what makes you unique. So your Y is unique to you. Umm, so it sets you apart instantly there on why it is that your and

Autumn (38m 36s):
Why, why is Fantasy just younger dead, you're writing for example, right? I mean, you answered to those kinds of questions. Well, nobody else can answer the questions like you can, let's right. And that's why it is sort of the core of your brand. And it's a great tip and a great way to start exploring, you know, why this is going to be your brand and why your writing in this and being in control of it instead of, you know, going in and waiting and seeing what other people say about you. Yeah.

Autumn (39m 6s):
So I have a question here at the end of my list. Uh, but before I asked that question, is there anything else that ties in with Author Author branding that we have missed or I have missed your Autumn in my list. I don't think so. I just want to tell you, let people know that just because you have a brand and maybe have a color scheme, that doesn't mean like all your book covers are going to look alike or things like that. You can obviously use a logo or a series logo, that's all fine, but you're still going to have a unique covers.

Autumn (39m 40s):
You're not pigeonholing yourself. You kind of, you know, creating a theme. You're, you are a certain set and you're going to stay within those bounds, but your books themselves or going to speak for themselves and so the covers should speak for themselves. You're still free to be creative and concepts there. It's just that there is a theme underlying neat all you're writing in why you write and sort of who you are and some people I was talking about authentic self earlier in authenticity has been a huge movement even on Instagram that people want to connect to an authentic person and I get a lot of questions on, well, if you're portraying this Brand, that's not really who you are, but it should be a sliver of who you are.

Autumn (40m 25s):
I've always looked at it like when you're with your mom, your a slightly different person than when we used to do your boss. If you don't play with their siblings versus you know your aunt or uncle there is different. Yeah, it's different versions of you, but you're a brand is still a part of you. It should feel comfortable. You shouldn't be making up something and you should not hate this other brands that you are creating. It should be true to you, but it's just a small, it's just a different aspect. Is the pieces that you put forward and you say, this is who I am as a writer and this is what I stand for.

Autumn (40m 59s):
Not this is this fake person that I'm pretending to be when I'm writing. No, of course not. Okay, so you ready for a question? Autumn well, we just do the character development Q and a for over an hour or so. I can do it. One more question. Okay. How important is an Author Brand really? Oh, that's a good question. How important is it? I would say if you are going to be a professional author that you are going to do this because you want to make it a that you want to maybe make a living off of it and you're really going to go all in.

Autumn (41m 40s):
It is integral. If you are just playing around with Writing, it's a hobby and you, you know, you're not really in love with it. It's just something you're trying out. Yeah, it still took it. I would still ask people to take it seriously. I have recently met someone, I was doing some cover work and I was trying to investigate this author and she had no pen names, but almost every single book she had uploaded was linked to a different Amazon author profile.

Autumn (42m 10s):
Like she created multiple ones and that's just confusing. I I, yeah, it was really, really surprised and it was all just different variations, like a neat her name with a period, her name without a period, her full name or initial knows it was seriously. So I don't do that to take your brand seriously enough that you're like on the same Amazon, Oh, I can't even imagine what her KDP dashboard bustle looked like. Make sure you're on the same dashboard. You've got the same author name a be at least that serious no matter how much of a hobby that you're just doing one book and it's just so you can give it to your nieces and nephews before you die.

Autumn (42m 49s):
You know it still a legacy. It's still a brand. Take it seriously. Yeah. I think the most common objection that I bumped into when I, when we talk about Author brands is like, well Author or brands are things For last corporation's and we were just authors. We don't, we don't need a brand. And I can sort of understand the thinking behind that argument, but you are still selling products as a, as an author, you know in, in this case we're selling books, but it's a product that we're selling and

Jesper (43m 27s):
If we then talking about how important is North of Brand really, I mean it's not like it's going to revolutionize your book sales. All of a sudden that you can earn millions because you created this awesome brand as an immediate is great. If you can create an excellent brand but it's not going to earn you're a ton of money that that's not the point. I think that the main point here is that if you buy your branding can get across to somebody when they first come across you on the internet where there is a million of different books available available to them and they come across you and if they almost at a glance can get an impression of, okay, this has a certain, let's say Fantasy feel to it.

Jesper (44m 12s):
I like the image. Um, maybe there is a dragon crawling between letters or something, I don't know. But you know, it does something that it just leaves a positive impression on the reader's as they just come across you at the first time. I didn't. Of course the idea is that over time it should accumulate so that it brings more and more people in who had an interested in your writing and they'll give you a book, a chance because they lied, lied, like the branding that you have created around it. And they'll give it a chance and then to read your book and some of them will love it and they'll go on to read other books and so forth.

Jesper (44m 46s):
So it's more like, I probably wouldn't even call it a cornerstone. In your publishing a part of, of your business,

Autumn (44m 59s):
What is the foundation stone? Yeah. Maybe for this

Jesper (45m 5s):
It's something like, I would say like you could live without it, but it just makes a difference too. Give a good impression. And when you're running a business like we are when we are

Autumn (45m 13s):
Authors, why wouldn't you want to leave a good impression? I guess that's, that's the best way I could phrase it. So I think, and I think that it works and to me it's if you as an author, R R taking it serious are maybe you are trying to get into marketing and you just feel a little lost. Creating a brand really helps give you a focus in a theme and a message and suddenly all of those things that you're struggling with and trying to put together and what kind of images and what kind of quotes and what am I talking about.

Autumn (45m 44s):
You suddenly go, Oh my theme is fast paced Fantasy so I'm going to find action scenes or my theme is really nuanced characters or a romance or emotions. Some of the, you know what scenes and quotes to go get a, you know, what's important to you know, what your next book you are going to make sure it has those, it kinda makes a lot of stuff that are nebulous and you're kind of don't even realize you're struggling with click into place and you're like, ah, this works. This is what I'm going to do. And if so for that reason I would say, you know, you start a brand.

Autumn (46m 18s):
Just so you can kind of concentrate and figure out some of these little parts of yourself in your marketing, in your, you know, how you, you're reaching the readers you're trying to reach. For

Jesper (46m 31s):
Yeah. So I think Author branding helps you communicate about yourself and make that personal connection with the readers. And a brand will emerge whether you want it or not. You might as well put yourself in the driving seat there and, uh, decide what your branding will be about. So next Monday we will share 10 things that makes for great hero. So what that should prove.

Jesper (47m 2s):
Very interesting.

Narrator (47m 5s):
If you liked what you just heard, there is a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow Author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/am Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 74 – Pen Names & Writing in Muliple Genres with Kirsten Oliphant

Have you thought about writing in a different genre and weighed the option of using a pen name or no? Get the tips to decide if your current author platform will encompass something new or if, and how, you should start a new author platform under a pen name with guest host author Kirsten Oliphant!

Check out Kirsten's other great tips and wonderful podcast at Create if Writing: https://createifwriting.com/

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (0s):
You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast and today's publishing landscape. You can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Autumn (29s):
Hello, I'm Autumn. And we are on episode 74 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And today we have a special guest as a yes for hinted last week, the women have come to take over the Am Writing Fantasy podcasts again, and we've booted Yesper off and given him a pit of a break for today. And I have with me Kirsten, Kirsten Oliphant, who is the author of over 15 books in different genres and the host of the creative Writing podcast, which she started in 2015 way back before podcasting became the cool thing to do.

Autumn (1m 8s):
So her goal is to help authors learn to sell more books without being smarmy. Hi. Kirsten Kiersten as well.

Kirsten (1m 17s):
Yeah, you don't have to. It's totally one of those Names and Hey, we're talking about Names today, which is, I mean it's just a perfect yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I'm glad to be here.

Autumn (1m 29s):
Oh, I'm so happy. And yes, it is amazing. So you have 15 books. I already looked at your profile on Amazon and of course you were going to talk about Pen Names but I love the fact that you, you're not even subtle about it. You can list it right in your bio. Oh, I'm also with this person in Brighton under this name as well. And you have all these wonderful books. So tell us a little bit about your books and how you started writing. It's always fun to hear.

Kirsten (1m 52s):
Sure. Well I've been Writing I mean since forever, you know, I know some people pick up Writing later in some earlier, but I was writing, I mean I wrote my first novel in like third grade. Yes, it was terrible. But like, you know, it had dialogue and stuff like it, you know, it was like a solid, you know, D effort, right.

Autumn (2m 11s):
Dialogue in third grade when you read it.

Kirsten (2m 14s):
Yes. If you read a lot, you just pick things up and I think, you know, it was really instinctive for me. And so, uh, you know I kept writing throughout. I wasn't sure that I was necessarily going to be a writer but I did keep writing throughout. I wrote a bunch of half novel's in junior high or you know, never really finished anything but just did a lot of writing. I went to school Am college, English major, uh, you know, lots of papers. I took creative writing but you know its kind of hard to get into those kinds of classes and they only really have like two, you know, so I took part one in part to have that and loved it and my um, professor really encouraged me to look into MFA programs, which I hadn't thought about.

Kirsten (2m 50s):
And so, um, I didn't, I went and worked at a church doing youth ministry and then um, a couple of years later when I got married I started again about writing and just really how I stopped and I missed it. And so I did apply and got into an MFA program and you know, win. And we moved to across the country were in Texas. Now I grew up in Virginia, Texas. Now we went to North Carolina, uh, for two years, which is amazing. A really small program at UNC Greensboro. Um, and it was, yeah, it was, it was just so much fun and really got, uh, you know, it's a very literary program, which is so funny that I'm, I feel like I'm out.

Kirsten (3m 28s):
I'm on like the total opposite end now. Like the bastard child of my MFA program now writing genre fiction. But, um, it's really given me, I feel like I've had a really broad variety of experiences with writing and can really understand, you know, kinda the traditional perspective, indie perspective. And I just love writing. I love story. And so, you know, I'll probably go back to the literary stuff that's well more literary. I mean, it's not like, I don't know, genre fiction is not this, not literary. It's not that it's not good writing, it's just a totally different kind of craft.

Kirsten (3m 60s):
Um, I think, but anyway, I appreciate both. And so that's kind of, uh, you know, how I got here. I graduated and then started having kids. So for like 10 years, I could not process novel stuff. So I got this degree and then was like, Oh nevermind, let's have a bunch of babies. And I did blogging for a while, um, and professional, you know, like made bunny of blogging. And so I figured out, um, social media and, and uh, was really active in all those kinds of things. And so, uh, when it came to a time to feel like I really wanted to write books again, I had this advantage of sort of knowing the landscape and author platform came pretty easily to me because it was something I was already doing with blogging.

Kirsten (4m 41s):
It was just kinda putting a different hat on. So that's kind of the roundabout way of how I got here and started the podcast teaching other people, cause I think I enjoy the platform and it was something I knew how to do. But I think a lot of authors and creative people don't like it. It feels like icky. And so my goal is to kind of reframe that conversation and make it feel less icky. Like we should Real like writing more, but it's okay to also like Twitter or Facebook or email lists.

Autumn (5m 6s):
Well, I get that because I absolutely, I was gone through your website and I'm one of those folks who I still don't, I still, I mean I understand the voice part and everything else, but I just prefer to read it. I learn better by reading it, not by hearing it. And so I absolutely love your creative writing platform because you have blog posts on everything. And I'm like, Oh, I could freeze this. And it's not that I don't like video or voice or sound, but I just like to read things even. Yeah. So absolutely.

Kirsten (5m 37s):
And I'm going to for podcasts is to have, yeah, all of my podcasts have a full show notes, like a blog post. Um, because I know there are people out there who still want the content, but we all consume content differently. And you know, that actually helps me. Like I kind of, before I sit down to record, I read out the blog post and then I speak sort of conversation. I don't read it or anything, but I kind of have the blogpost in front of me. So it's like helpful to speak conversationally on the podcast and I already know what I'm going to say. But for those people who want to read and also for SEO purposes to get actual traffic on my blog, those meaty blog posts really help.

Autumn (6m 11s):
No, no, no that's great. And you know you have some stuff in there. I noticed that was even like a marketing for authors who don't like marketing. It's a very helpful, friendly things. So those are great tips. And I know you recently, I think it was episode one 69 so very fairly recently. And you talked about Pen Names so it's already kind of covered it a bit. So we're going to go over it a little bit again, but you have, so you are ready in three different names. You have your real name and then to Pen Names and why did you do that?

Kirsten (6m 41s):
Well really it kinda came down to the marketing and, and not being, um, muddy and unclear about what I was writing. So I started out, um, the first books I published were nonfiction. I had a couple of devotional books and then, um, was writing marketing books. I have an email book, which is actually down cause I'm updating it. I'm about to rerelease it, um, on email marketing for authors. And then I have one on collaborating with other people and creative ways. And I had run on a blogging, but I took it down because blogging has changed so much.

Kirsten (7m 11s):
I just was like, I don't want to update this every six months. We'd like something dyes, you know, and the takeaway, a social media platform. Umm, as I just get her to update next, I'll have people email me like this isn't true in the more I'm like, yeah, your right and I don't have time to update those three 99 book over here that sells a couple of copies. Um, but when I started thinking about writing fiction again, it really, um, you know, I hadn't ever really thought about Pen Names but I started, uh, just seeing how for different genres and I really love reading a lot of Genres.

Kirsten (7m 44s):
I'm one of those people that's all over the place. How it might be a really confusing, if you're going to look at an author and you may, you know, that you may of had this experience for anyone listening where you go and check out an author and you see all these different kinds of book covers and you just kind of, it's a, it's like a disquieting feeling because you're not sure what exactly a signaling, like what can I expect? And that's the thing that Pen Names really helped do. Um, when you're separating out the different Genres, it's setting that reader expectations. So it's incredibly clear. And you know, there are people like, you know, a Stephen King, he can do whatever he wants because it's Stephen King, but we're mostly not there yet.

Kirsten (8m 20s):
And there are some people I know who write different genres all under the same name and it works to varying degrees, but especially when you're starting out, which I was putting out fiction, um, you know, it really, it, it really is muddy and it really makes things unclear for readers. And so I didn't necessarily want people to go look and be like, Oh, I love this book. Let's see what I'll show you. Oh, a book on email lists. I don't even know what that is. You know? And so that's just kinda how it started. I know some people do this for, um, you know, like maybe you're writing something, you know, like erotica and your husband's a youth pastor.

Kirsten (8m 55s):
Mine was, which that's not what I write. You know, that would be a reason where you don't want your name attached to it. So for some people it is really about that privacy issue. But for me it was much more about marketing and you know, whichever way you're doing it, it's fine. Um, but yeah, there's a couple different reasons why you might choose a Pen. Names.

Autumn (9m 13s):
Yeah, I've always, I looked at it cause I write in, I was going to say two different genres, but you're right when you throw in the nonfiction, so I write in three Genres as well and mostly I've always put it all my fictional writing under just the name I go by autumn Bert. So that is sort of my brand and I always figured if my brand was true, which is very fast paced kind of action oriented stories, whether it's Fantasy and I also do some post-apocalyptic kind of dystopian. So whether I Writing and one of those, I just figured my audience is technically the age bracket is the same.

Autumn (9m 48s):
It is, I'm still the same kind of really well developed characters in action. So I figured it was all of the same. But you're right. I mean in some ways the covers are very different and my readers I have, it's probably split into thirds. I have a third are like hardcore Fantasy Please I never want to see anything with a gun. I have the other third are like Please if nothing is exploding BI, you know something with tea and tea. I do not ever want to read it. There is no such thing as magic. And then I have a third who just like the way I write and they're there.

Autumn (10m 18s):
But there's definitely some people who are not into the crossover and it's, it's not as clear cut as I was hoping when I did it. And again, but you're right, I have my nonfiction of writing, I do with my husband that's under my married name of autumn, Raven. And I just wanted that clear cut. Like this is something that is totally different. There's the magic is all in your heart and not in, um, you know, blowing things up.

Kirsten (10m 44s):
Yeah. And you'd hope like, I mean, my dream, I think all of us would love for our audience to love our words enough and love our style and our voice enough that they would go anywhere we go. And that's the goal. But at the end, I think you build that over time, that group of super fans, but it's a, it's a smaller subset of the people who read your books, right? People read your books and they may read all of them, but they may not all be super fans and I do have, you know, especially like on day one of launch, you know, if my also bots kind of pop up and I haven't had a long preorder, I might see one of my nonfiction books in the office of the boss or you know, I write clean romance in urban fantasy, young adult.

Kirsten (11m 19s):
I read Fantasy and so sometimes those first couple days in either of those I'll see those pop up and I really don't want that. That's the other thing that kind of can make it Monday as I want. My also bots to show, I mean if Amazon is at that point, they're showing those, which right now for me it's like a mixed bag. Like sometimes you'll go on the Amazon page and you'll see Am customers have also read or also bought. Right now I'm seeing books you may like, which is super annoying because it's showing me all my own books because I'm like checking ranks all of the time. And so I'm like, I know I liked them, I wrote them, but I don't want to buy them, you know?

Kirsten (11m 52s):
Um, but I do want that to be clear for readers as well when they are going up because if they're going and they buy one of my urban fantasy books and then they look and see a clean romance cover, that's, you know, maybe there's some crossover, but those two, especially the two genres I'm running under, there is not a ton of crossover because the clean romance crowd is, there is a variety of their two. But some of them our, there's a heavy influence of like Christian readers and some of them don't want magic at all. And so when you go to the urban Fantasy and I'm like, there's witches and the fan Pires and, and for me, the steam levels kind of the same.

Kirsten (12m 25s):
Like my goal is not, I don't really have sex on the page in any of my books. I tell them I don't really have, um, language in any of my books and which is actually a real struggle in that the young adult orbit. Fantasy because in my head I get that that's here. I'm like, this is what they'd say, but I don't want to put that. And that's just my own personal, there's nothing wrong. I mean, again, I read all over the board write, but for what I want to put out, that's just kinda the line I've drawn into. It makes me happy to work harder. But if you know of my clean room and people come over, I think they'll be pleasantly surprised. And some of them have, and some of them have written me and said like, I never thought I would like a book about this.

Kirsten (12m 59s):
Um, but you know, there's also some romance elements in my urban fantasy as well, which I know is like a, you know, debate, hot debate over in fantasy land. So I will always have, I think, some kind of romance in them, but it's not gonna it's not gonna be the main, a part of the story necessarily.

Autumn (13m 16s):
Yeah. And I think that's definitely, I mean it's your writing style, what you're interested in writing and again, your brand and your platform. So those are things that are going to cross genres no matter what you do. I mean how you develop characters, it's, they're all going to be solid. There's going to be some, I think I read somewhere that someone did it in a review and said the familiar hand of this author. I don't think that's a good, yeah, that's such a good way to say that. Yes. No matter where we stick ourselves, we're probably going to have some kind of resonance and pacing that is very familiar and that's what we're trying to sell our readers on and hopefully bring them across genres.

Autumn (13m 52s):
But that is, it is fun. So when you, you did this very purposely, you knew you were going to start writing it in a different genre and you set up a whole different platform. I mean, do you, you go as far as the websites, if someone was going to do this and they said, I, I write specifically in this, but I'm going to go ahead and write in a different genre, what are the, the things that you would warn them about or tell them at least to think about before they, they jump into something?

Kirsten (14m 17s):
Well, for me, you know, given that none of us have a lot of time, right? And I've got five kids at home, things are going crazy. It's, I didn't have a lot of time to build a lot of platform. But what I found is that, um, you know, I kind of pared it down to the bare basics. Like what for me, what does the cornerstone of an author platform, and for me that's an email list because that is where you're going to sell the most of your books. That's where you're going to the most personally connect with your fans in a way that is more permanent, right? Like, so some authors may be more active on Facebook, whether that's an a group or a page or they might be more active on Instagram or some of their platform, but you don't own those connections, right?

Kirsten (14m 54s):
Instagram and Facebook, do they control how you interact with an email? You actually have their email, you can print it out unless CSV like you know, the spreadsheet thing and hold it in your hand. It's yours. So email is so important. So that's always kind of where I start. Um, and then I do have URLs. Like I do have websites and, but I don't put a lot into it because really they, I think in this day and age, like I, I just don't see a ton of readers caring about your author website. I just don't, and um, you know, I'm not trying for like a traditional platform deal.

Kirsten (15m 28s):
I'm not trying to like impress some publisher somewhere with, with how many page views I get a month in. And really, because I came from the blogging world, a new how I know how to grow a blog and know how to do SCO, all of that. But I also knew how much work it takes. And for me the return is not huge. I would rather just send people to Amazon and have them buy my books. I don't need a middleman. Now, if you were, um, you know, trying to do a lot of affiliate sales with Amazon, you know, you might want to send it to your website or if you're selling direct or you might be selling like literally from your website. But if you're just doing the bare bones basics, you don't need that.

Kirsten (15m 60s):
So I did buy the URL, but I actually, for the first Pen Names I was thinking I might do more blogging, but then I, I really didn't, um, cause who has time for that? Like I don't have the time to do blogging and also write a bunch of books. Um, so when I came and I started the second Pen name under Sullivan gray for the urban Fantasy, I got the URL, um, which, you know, I, I think it's good to look those things up. Write, you don't want to have another author with that name. Um, there is a series I think actually with that name but not an author, but I did get the URL and then have it.

Kirsten (16m 31s):
I had to redirect to a landing page from a mailer light, which was the email that I use. And so if people go to my author website, it's really just a landing page and I think I will build it out a bit, but I've sold a bunch of books without it. So I don't, you know, it's not a priority. The priority to me was growing an email list. I do have a Facebook page, a so I can run ads and uh, I like Facebook groups, although, you know, it is hard to put a lot into the groups, especially to get them off the ground. It takes a lot of you being involved and starting conversations.

Kirsten (17m 3s):
I do believe in Facebook groups. It's a really great way to be close to your audience. And so I have one of those for each, but you know, I'm not, um, I'm not able to really be all of that active cause I also have a, a very active group for my podcasts. So you really have to think about your bandwidth and, and your ultimate, I'm all about the ROI, like your return on investment of time and money. What is going to sell books, what is going to help you connect longterm with readers who are going to stick with you. And for me that's email. And then having books sold on Amazon.

Kirsten (17m 35s):
And again, I do use Facebook ads and so the pages were important but I did not. Um, you know, there's a lot of different schools on how to do Facebook ads, but I've had success with ads, with pages that are tiny so you don't necessarily even have to a big page because you can target other people. I am almost never targeting the people who like my page. I'm targeting other people's pages. So if you have a Facebook page of a couple of hundred people, that's fine. You know, you can still make money with Facebook ads. You can still sell books.

Kirsten (18m 5s):
Um, is Facebook really does make it a lot harder now to grow a page and it's a lot more work. And again, what, what is the least amount of work? I can do on things that don't, you know, bring in a big return. Right. So that's my goal cause I've got too many balls in the air to spend a lot of time blogging if no one's reading it or if it's not selling books. So I think you can absolutely do the bare bones minimum something to run ads on. Um, some kind of like main hub where people can reach you and then your email list is really where I'd put most of the time.

Autumn (18m 40s):
Yeah. And do you, so you have for each of your Genres in each of your Pen Names uh, different mailing lists. So you never find them across them. Okay.

Kirsten (18m 47s):
Yeah I don't and I do, um, you know, because my, my um, there is some crossover again like I do every so often mentioned to my, you know, to frictionless like, Oh by the way, you know I have this idea if you like reading about vampires I get out of here. Or if you really like romance, you know, you might enjoy these books or you know, Hey if you're an author just in case you're out there, cause there are a lot of re uh, you know, authors and readers and you know, I've got this podcast thing going on and so I do mention it every so often. Um, but I even have the, um, I have the two fiction, uh, lists over on mailer light and then I also use convert kit, which I used for my nonfiction cause I'm doing a lot more complicated things with my nonfiction.

Kirsten (19m 29s):
You know, I sell, I used to do a lot more like workshops and webinars and courses and so it matters a lot more if you can use some of the advanced features when you're really trying to separate out and mainly like does a good job with those things for the price. But convert kit is so much smoother and easier for all of that. And so yeah, my nonfiction list hangs out over there and then I've got the two fiction lists and mailer light. Yeah,

Autumn (19m 50s):
We do the exact same thing. I have mailed a Lite for my frictionless and convert kit for the AmWritingFantasy. And I agree it's just, I absolutely adore mailer lights. Um, way of being able to put together a newsletter actually. And I, I keep looking at ConvertKit going Please come to the 21st century. Please

Kirsten (20m 10s):
Oh see I'm the opposite. I don't like the fancy email's and so even in low light I'm doing like the very bare bones cause I don't like when I, when something hits my inbox, I don't care. I don't care what it looks like. It's really about the content, but everybody's really different. And so, you know, I don't think ConvertKit will ever go there. I think that's their whole platform but, but I'm there for the features and you know, not necessarily having a pretty background or whatever.

Autumn (20m 35s):
Yeah. I think I like to do, in my newsletter there's a lot of interactions and questions and polls and convert kit does not, that I've found has, does not make that easy when you're talking to your fiction list and learning to do little poll on, you know, which characters are a favorite. So a light definitely makes that easy. But anyway, we're not talking about how you can easily get a bit lost into the email list because those two, there's so many great platforms though. But those are definitely to me to have the stable ones at the moment.

Autumn (21m 6s):
Who knows what the future holds.

Kirsten (21m 8s):
Yeah, you never know.

Autumn (21m 10s):
That's great. So I love, I do love the Nate like Sullivan grey as an awesome Pen. Names said you did Sue some research, like you said before you went and chose something, you took something that fit the urban fantasy genre and you wanted to make sure no one else was already using it.

Kirsten (21m 25s):
So if you're coming to think about a Pen Names I mean there's personal reasons and then there's like practical reasons and I think it's totally fine to mix them. So when I started with clean romance, I chose a name. My name is Emma st Claire and I feel like Emma is one of those Names. It's like friendly and happy. Like you can't not like Emma. Right. It's just sounds like a little touch of old fashioned. Yes. You've got to Jane Austin. And then st Claire was my maiden name. And really that was a risk because it's one of those names that always gets miscategorized because it has a period in it and it's like STD periods space Clare.

Kirsten (22m 0s):
And so like my whole life I grew up getting like having everything lost cause it would be like some people put it like final in her S a for sale, like spelling it out even though it's not, or they put it under STC or they put it under C for clear anyway. It hasn't caused a problem. But the laughter as I was like, what was I thinking? But it was more sentimental. Like let's put something out with my maiden name, you know, bring the family name on. Um, and then with the, uh, but yeah, I absolutely looked at like, okay, is there someone like on Amazon with this name or one really similar or you know, it is the website available.

Kirsten (22m 34s):
And then with Sullivan gray, um, I did go in and kind of look and I think sometimes with, um, you know, a lot of the white, depending on what John you're writing in sort of a more androgynous name, like whether it, you don't know whether it's a guy or girl. And we actually loved the name of Sullivan. Um, we're going to use it for a girl and we ended up not using it and we're done having kids. We're going to call her Sally. And I just thought that was adorable. So I love, I love strong girl names, I love last names as first names. It's all been great. Just had that ring to it that felt, it felt like kinda cool and powerful and just like a good fit for that.

Kirsten (23m 7s):
But it also was like a name that I totally loved. And the website you are always taken but not by anyone who's actually using it. So I just have authors, all of it in gray.com but everything else is there. And I will say like, you definitely want to search that because this is hilarious. Last night I was on, I'm in some one of those Am, I'm in a ton of Facebook groups, right, for research and promotion and whatever else. But there was one and it was like a um, Christian Kindle reads or something and one popped up and it was about like prophecy and coven 19.

Kirsten (23m 41s):
And I was like, I don't, I'm not really into that at all, just FYI. So, but I clicked on it cause I was like, who is this? Cause the person posting, like I didn't, it was posted under a different name. It's, I think it's the person. And I was like, is this a Pen Names this is a kind of stuff I nerd out about. So do I click through and um, I couldn't really tell this looks like that author's first book. So again, I think it's a pen name from somebody. So I clicked on the pen name itself and that name is really close to two different erotica authors. And so when you click on their name, you see that book prophecy and biblical or whatever.

Kirsten (24m 14s):
And then it's like this giant list of like really raunchy covers that I was like, Oh you really, you really should have done a quick search on Amazon beforehand. Yeah, because it wasn't like it was the same name, but it was to Names close enough that the whole first page, if you go look for the author is all erotica. And I was like, I don't think this is where you want to buy your book to show up. So anyway, a quick search to save you a lot of time. Yeah.

Autumn (24m 42s):
Yeah. I mean I've definitely thought of it like, Oh well if you're going to write like children's literature and erotica, you definitely need a pen name. But that's sort of of the other guy. So if you're writing a children's literature and your choosing a pen name, make sure it isn't close to something that you used to stumble

Kirsten (24m 58s):
And you might not think that, but like you know, you definitely, you don't always know until you search things and then then you know. So it's definitely better to search first

Autumn (25m 7s):
And then the search first or you know, someone else can obviously come along and choose something and totally jumble up the whole thing later. But at least maybe, hopefully you'll be established by then.

Kirsten (25m 17s):
Yeah, hopefully. I mean, yes, people can totally, yes, come along a mess. All of those things up. So

Autumn (25m 23s):
No, they always do. That was the other thing though. I mean thinking of Pen Names when I was choosing you, no, I'm going to write this dystopian post-apocalyptic series and I have this Fantasy platform and I was thinking of my readers and the way I honestly, I think it was the same thing. You know, you're busy, you have a life in a job. I didn't have kids, but I have a husband and hobbies and a dog that is my kid. Cause my fuzzy child and I, we were traveling and doing a whole bunch of things and I thought, Oh my goodness, I do not want to start at square one again.

Autumn (25m 55s):
I don't want to start all over. But do you think it's not so bad because you can tell your other platform, Hey, if you're interested on starting this or did you feel like you really, it took that slow churn and burn to finally build up an audience under a pen name?

Kirsten (26m 11s):
Yeah, it took time and it, and I'm still building like you know, the urban Fantasy doesn't make as much money right now as the clean romance does. Those are the clean romance readers are just voracious. So, you know, and I'd really already been established. That was the advice I kept hearing cause I was ready. I had a book ready to launch, you know, like six to nine months after I started the clean romance Pen Names was at um, the 20 books to 50 K conference. And I think in like four different sessions, I heard people say like, make sure your established before you switch.

Kirsten (26m 43s):
And I'm into a new genre. And I was like, okay, I've got the book done but there's no rush even though I love the book. So we'll just wait. And that was a great choice because even when, I think it was like 18 months later, even when I launched, you know, I took a big income hit because I took a break Writing the clean romance, which was making money and also bad timing took a break on ads cause I was like, I don't know if these are fully working, they were turning off your ads, let's you know, really quick whether they're working or not true. But it does take some time to establish and you know, I think you absolutely can't, you don't have to do a Pen Names absolutely.

Kirsten (27m 18s):
If you know how to do marketing, if you know how to write and you can totally get away, especially if you're, um, you know, if the, the Genres are similar enough in might have some crossover. But if you're doing really different ones, and again, mine really felt pretty different because there are some people who feel really strongly and the clean romance against the whole like paranormal, supernatural stuff. Like they're not just like, I don't like it. They're like, I abhor it, you know, I will not, you know, there was just a pretty strong reaction there. Um, and a lot of my readers who read my a young adult stuff, even though my young adult stuff's clean, I me and my goal is to, I'm not marketing it necessarily as clean.

Kirsten (27m 56s):
That's just my goal in my own, you know, kinda the line that I've dropped. But I want my books to be good enough that they stand up with books that aren't holding back on anything. So that PE and, and what I found is those readers over there are reading all kinds of stuff. They're reading reverse hair on the reading steamy stuff. They're reading all kinds of, and they still like my books, but they're probably not going to cross over either. So I think that's really the thing to consider is do you have the time? I'm, how different are your Genres? Um, but it is, it is pretty hard to start, but if you, again, if you have the background and no, if you've already done at once, you absolutely can do it again.

Kirsten (28m 31s):
Right? If was you just do it for maybe a little bit better. Secondly, and you know, kind of we're not to waste time. Um, you know, so for me, I found some author groups and connected and we were writing, um, you know, started out, I launched with doing like a Am an Academy series. And so that was really hot last year. Um, I was kind of on the tail end, but it still did really well. And there's, there were Facebook groups for Academy readers and so, um, you know, I got in to some like promotions with like book funnel with other authors who are also doing Academy reads and, and things like that.

Kirsten (29m 2s):
And so, um, you know, you already know how to do it. I, uh, took a couple of days in row, like a 12,000 word, a short story that was a prequel to the Academy series. And I use that to build my list. And so, you know, within a couple months I built up a couple thousand people just because there are people out there who want to read things for free. And yes, there's freebie seekers, right? We all with emails, we hate that. But if you grab someone enough with you're writing, if they get it and actually read it, you, you might be hooking reader for a long time. And so I've had good results from, from using that freebie.

Kirsten (29m 36s):
Um, and also it pulls people right into my pain works. And so, um, it is a pain. I was, I was kind of excited to see like, okay, how well could I do this again? Um, cause for me a lot of it's a test because then I go in and share that on the podcast to talk to other authors about it. In some ways, even if I fail, it's like, okay, well now I have something to share like don't do this. And uh, you know, I never shy away from sharing that. You know, I share my big income months and I share with like I totally screwed things on both of them.

Kirsten (30m 8s):
But yeah, you don't have to do it. I just think your struggle is going to be a little harder if your not using a pin name and your Writing into Genres that don't have a ton of crossover or um, or you know, again, like if you haven't written a lot of books, if you were only written three books and two of them are in clean romance and one of them is urban fantasy. So when people go to your author page and they just see those three books, it's a little more money. Whereas if they see like 20 books and there's some differences in their, it's a little bit more, um, of a solid feeling that people can get because they know you're established, you're not just jumping around and they can find a couple of different of this kind and a couple of different of this kind.

Kirsten (30m 45s):
So, um, yeah, you don't have to do a pin name it just for marketing it could be a lot easier to be clear and with those reader expectations.

Autumn (30m 53s):
Yeah, I think that's a, actually a really good tip is, you know, being established in one. So, you know, finish your first series, are a trilogy, have that under your belt, have that platform established before you launch another book. Cause I do see that. I've, I know when I was doing it, I wrote an entire trilogy and then I wrote this dystopian series and then I did another trilogy back in Epic Fantasy. So I felt like I really knew what I was doing, but I have met so many authors who it's like they've started five different series and they have just the first books out. And maybe they were just attempting to a novella to see if it was going to sell.

Autumn (31m 26s):
But if you don't have anything complete yet, it just, it does, it looks confusing and you kind of like, where are you? Are you finishing this? Is it going to continue? It's, it's definitely a little, um, it makes you question what's going on and it takes longer to search through things and see if you can find the next book that your interested in. It's so much prettier to see the whole series.

Kirsten (31m 46s):
Oh, totally. And it's a thing about building trust, right? Like, we want readers who don't just read one book, they read all of our books and I found that it's really easy to break that trust. And so if your, you know, coz I'm a huge reader too, I read probably a book a day. Oh my goodness. It's my escape right now scape. You know when an author like leaves a series forever if or his writing for different at once, like its hard. And then you have a lot of readers who will say things like, well I won't read until the series complete.

Kirsten (32m 17s):
And then on the author side of this author is like, well this series isn't making money, I'm going to drop it. And so it's like working against each other. So I totally understand why some authors write in multiple cause sometimes also just creatively, some people need a break or a palate cleanser or something else. But as a reader like you just want them to finish that series and um, clean romance, it's a little bit easier because often if your having a series, it's a standalone series, right? Because each book has to have a happy ever after. I'm in romance and a, yeah so you have a related series.

Kirsten (32m 49s):
I'll have characters from one book, you know in there and the main then the next year, which people love and, and sometimes I'll make the decision based on like I'll get a bunch of reviews where everybody's asking for this one character and I was like all right great. So we'll, we'll do that. But um, yeah when you're coming into and, and I do have a series like that in, in the young adult where I'm, it's been way too long since I've gone back to the second book but it didn't sell as well and its kind of more of a um, a love series to have people asking about it but they, it didn't sell as well and not as many people are asking.

Kirsten (33m 23s):
So I'm just doing what I can. Right. You have to balance out what are you doing your own life, what are you well you can actually do and, and also um, what the readers want cause you do want to build that trust and establish, you know, a relationship where they know what to expect from you. Cause again, I keep saying expectations and expecting, but like that is, that's kind of the currency for trust. His is the readers have expectations and you give them expectations. Um, whether you mean to or not, whether you outright say, I'm going to publish a book a month.

Kirsten (33m 54s):
If you start publishing a book a month, they start to expect that. And so, you know, we need to kind of communicate that really well. And unfortunately not everybody joins your email list. They may be fans. You know, I had a book that, um, in the clean room and said, I ended up moving from one series to another and renaming it. And when I first put it back up, the note about that was in the book, but I had forgotten to put it on the Amazon sales page and immediately got a one star review from someone who had read it before and then bought it again.

Kirsten (34m 24s):
And you know, I, I was like, they were like, you didn't say it anywhere. And like I had it, but, but Amazon also chooses where the book starts. Right? So it started after the note. And so, um, and, and there were massive changes, but whatever I understand I would be tic to, especially if they're not reading through K you and they actually paid full price for to have these books. So, you know, that was a feeler on my part. We've got to really, you know, meet those expectations and, and try to keep that currency of trust with the readers, uh, to keep them knowing that they could trust us and knowing they're not always gonna be on our email list. They might, and I have a lot of authors I read, but I'm not going to set up for the email list because my inbox is jammed, but I'll read all their books.

Kirsten (35m 2s):
So

Autumn (35m 3s):
Yeah, I remember when I first published and first started email lists back in 2013 and it was back when it was new and you figured the readers were like, kind of like, Oh, I can actually like talk to an author. And now I just, I can't imagine it's like another

Kirsten (35m 16s):
Email list.

Autumn (35m 18s):
No, you just, I know I go through my every month or so. I'm just deleting and unsubscribing from everyone. So I can imagine what poor readers are going through, but it is a great way to get into books and learn more about stories. So you know, I think of that whenever I sit down to write my newsletter is what can I do to make this not to take up too much of their time and show how much I appreciate that they didn't like opt out already.

Kirsten (35m 44s):
Yes, absolutely. You don't want to, yeah, email. I mean yeah, that's the whole bunch of episodes on the South end, you know yet you don't want to like bother them, but you also like that's another way of, of trust. It's another way of building that relationship. And I think in a lot of ways it's, it is more intimate because for some people, like for me, I like you have been doing this forever. So it's obvious like when you hit reply, like you expect that it's going to the author and it's like a weird thing. If you get one of those, if you've ever got the form of emails, so on and so has read your risk and you're like, Oh my gosh, like just turn that autoresponder off cause that makes it feel super impersonal.

Kirsten (36m 18s):
But you know, I'll have people hit reply and then when I replied back, they're like, Oh my gosh, emailing me. And they get so excited. And so it really does have this personal feel to it and um, yeah. But, but yeah, you'll for sure how people who aren't on your list, and that's fine too if they read everything, but you just gotta make sure like, okay, like I, I screwed up. I didn't put that note really clearly on the page. We're

Autumn (36m 42s):
Only human. There's a pandemic. Yeah, totally. As soon as I,

Kirsten (36m 49s):
Oh yeah. As soon as I saw the review I was like, I knew I forgot something and when added it and you know, but too late, that's fine. But hopefully the reader comes back. But hopefully we just do our best. Right. Provide a lot of books, provide information to keep the trust. But,

Autumn (37m 5s):
And I do, I, I am totally a home. Please learn from my failure. I think life as an experiment and I'm happily to be my own Guinea pig so I do the exact same thing. I think we'd get along that way if I was closer to the Texas that it's just kind of like, you know, you do it, you try, you tell people about it, you move on. It is

Kirsten (37m 27s):
As someone else your learning the hard way for somebody else.

Autumn (37m 30s):
Yes. I am fine being the person who jumps into the fire of so far. I'm a Phoenix so we're good.

Kirsten (37m 38s):
We're still going right. We're still Writing so no mistake that was permanent just once we moved on from

Autumn (37m 43s):
That's right. I still, I do love that advice though. Just if you're thinking about writing a new genre, um, to go to like your book page or you know, one of your books and think about what's gonna show up on your also bots and does it fit and if it's not, the cover is not going to look right. If the reader is, would not go pick up a book, that's probably a really good time to think about doing a pen name and starting those steps. Yeah, absolutely. So is there any other takeaways, tips you want to throw out there before we wrap up?

Kirsten (38m 15s):
Well, I would just say, you know, for the people, if we haven't really touched on the privacy issue, if there is anybody out there, if you're trying to do this for privacy and not have your pin name associated, I think that's where it gets a little bit a trickier. But you know, you can, um, I just had somebody asking me about this this morning in my Facebook group. Um, but you know, you can buy a domain and you can add or you definitely wanna add the privacy on because otherwise you're going to be getting, it's a little bit more per year, but I'm going to be getting emails and your email can be publicly associated with it. Um, Facebook, I find a lot of authors doing this, but Facebook Am you really are not allowed to have more than one personal profile.

Kirsten (38m 52s):
And the personal profile is where you add friends, right? The page is where you get likes. So you can have multiple pages but you can only have one profile. So I see a lot of authors trying to add a second profile Am under their Pen Names in it. You know, you might get away with it but if Facebook finds out they can take away your whole account and if your, you know matters, right? Like your advertising and things like that on Facebook like that matters to lose that whole platform. And so, um, but you can have a page and have that be anonymous. You can most groups now if you're using groups' to promote Mmm.

Kirsten (39m 24s):
Most of them allowed to join us at page and say you can do that. But there are ways to do it if you want privacy. But you're, you're going to have to make sure your not like secretly telling a few family and friends because then yeah, your also bots might get jacked up and connect to your other Pen Names so it is, it could be a little bit harder to keep that separate but it's totally possible as well if you're doing it for that reason, not just a marketing reason.

Autumn (39m 48s):
Yeah. I've always considered it's sort of a nightmare there. You should know a little bit about IP and IP security if your doing it because there really is a privacy concern because it's hard. It's amazing how well people can link things if they really want to trace where something is coming from. So you have to be very cautious. Well thank you so much, Kiersten. This was really fantastic and tell I will put links in the show notes, but if you want to tell folks where to find you, that will be fantastic.

Kirsten (40m 21s):
Yeah. Well if you're interested in learning more author stuff and getting another perspective, not just on Fantasy but other things, you can just go to Create if writing.com and you can find links to the podcast and my Facebook community there and yep, I do talk about the Pen Names there as well as you can find those. But yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was great to be on.

Autumn (40m 40s):
Yes, it was so wonderful. I love that. I got a chance to talk to you and so next week, yes, we will be back and will be having a lovely discussion on developing your author brand and what it is. So please stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you stay safe out there.

Narrator (40m 59s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also Join Ottoman Yesper on patrion.com/am Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going, stay safe out there And see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 73 – How to write a GOOD first chapter of a novel

The beginning of a novel - especially the first chapter - is what will decide if the reader goes on to read more or ditches the story right then and there.

The ability to write a first chapter that hooks the reader is massively important.

But how do you accomplish such a feat?

In episode 73 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share the elements that every successful first chapter needs - along with some of the mistakes they have made in their earlier writing career.

Links to materials mentioned in this episode:

The Character Development - Essential Skills - course: https://ultimatefantasywritersguide.com/character-development-sales-page/

The video on how to write awesome prologues: https://youtu.be/CRTiTRWfUeU

The booklet designed to help you with crafting an amazing first chapter: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/product/novel-beginnings-help-booklet/

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (2s):
You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need and literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Bert and Jasper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello, I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 73 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And the topic of today's episode is opening books. So I guess we need to, I don't know if we need to have something clever to say here as well as out of like an opening book for this episode.

Autumn (50s):
Oh shoot. I'm there for a big good or just coming up with great opener on the fly. I'm not a stage show a actor, actress.

Jesper (1m 0s):
No, no. And I get distracted because, uh, when a hour intro narrator, there is a saying the intro, I was a, I got distracted because I was thinking about recently we got a transcription service to do a transcripts of every single podcast episode. Yeah. Well, yeah, but a bit, I got distracted because every time he sees he is now says my name and that intro, I can't help thinking about how the AI is going to get it wrong because I edited an upload it all the past transcripts of all of the past episodes over the last like week or something, or at least half of the actual to get my half.

Jesper (1m 46s):
But I did have a baby. Yeah. Yeah. But every single time the AI comes up with a new variation of how to do my name. That's what's amazing is, is different every time. It's the closest I've seen it. He does a Yesper with a Y, which I thought, okay, that's a pretty close.

Autumn (2m 5s):
But once I was, Hey dude, I was like, that's exactly so weird, so I got distracted about that. You weren't paying attention because you were like, what are you good at saying that about my name now? And it always spells mine incorrectly in lowercase and I was just like, yeah. And then also a Burt with an E every time it's a bit of an eye. Yes. Always a, you know, or at least I guess or at least it comes out a little bit closer than yours. But do you think, I wish we could train it to at least get our names right.

Autumn (2m 38s):
That'd be fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, how are things? Things are going good. I'm, I'm slowly starting to enjoy, um, the cabin now that the major constructions done. I won't say we're not doing anything, but it's, we're an unfinished work. So like today I painted the door is a very exciting, you were building, you know, the whole rooms and I had to paint a door so it was so easy and it was a gorgeous day. We've had beautiful weather in the sixties if your on the Fahrenheit, so you have in the twenties and Celsius.

Autumn (3m 13s):
So it's quite lovely, nice weather. And I'm getting myself, I'm finally organised. A long time ago I took a leadership course and it's funny how many times I actually refer back to this course. It was an 18 month course. Um, I've even written blog posts because I learned so quickly that if you put 13 would be leaders in a room together, you on a quest group or you got 13 people who want to go on a quest together.

Autumn (3m 43s):
It does not work out well. You can't have 13 different heads and one body. But one of the things I learned was time management. And I finally know that I have this mental and physical space to do something other than built an entire building that I'm living in it in a core team, a pandemic. Um, I've, I've started doing some time management and I got out my book and one of my favorite things was writing down your to do list, not just like a massive to do list, but based on your roles.

Autumn (4m 19s):
So I have, I broke up all my to do's into like Am, Writing, Fantasy or Writing or graphic design. And then I have little things under each of them. So that way you keep everything going because you're not just this massive list. You'll want to make sure that you get at least something done on everything. I even have stretch goals. They aren't, the only thing I didn't put in was Am like relaxed goals. I think maybe I want to work on a relaxed skull or a me time. I should add a meal goal tonight. And how much rewards for yourself when you get things done?

Autumn (4m 52s):
That's to me checking it off. I am such a Ferguson that isn't that horrible. Um, no, I, I'm, I'm very similar. I just love it when I can click done on something, then it's just like, yes, we're post to a sad, that way we can have a lot. So you have my, my reward is crossing things off and usually the stretch goal is something fun. Like right now, uh, you and I, we're talking about doing trailers for the last week. Um, and I put on my, my stretch goal is to finally get working on the trailer for my series.

Autumn (5m 24s):
So that's my, that's my, I really want to work on this fine time to work on this project or maybe one after you. It's like, yeah and you got to just push everything aside and say like I'm doing this because I want to do this. So how are things, I know you had a house showing in, you wouldn't tell me before the podcast. How so I'm dying of curiosity. Well yeah so we have the, you know as we talked about before I mentioned before, we are in the process of trying to to shell out easy, that's for sure.

Autumn (5m 57s):
Pandemic does not

Jesper (5m 58s):
help. And well actually that was the funny thing because I talked to the real estate agent and he said and get this, he said it is insanely busy now. You said we're working like 70 hours a week. He said wow, that's crazy. So I think it's because people just have more time on their hands now that they have with the pandemic. So they, they've, they're doing their house shopping now and looking on the internet and say Oh lets go and look at that house in this house. Or maybe this is sitting at their own house going, I hate this place, let's sell it.

Jesper (6m 33s):
No, or maybe it's just been, you know, they've been talking about moving for quite a while and then they think, okay, let's do it now. But um, but yeah, so and so they are pretty basic. So we have the one showing a, what is it, a one and a half or two weeks back. Yeah. We had a, it was like Am slightly, well, younger couple of other sounds. I sound so old when I say that. They don't say that I have a lot of, then you buy a couple of years.

Jesper (7m 4s):
So it's so funny. Yeah. Okay. Let's maybe like 10 years younger than us or something that you could say that's quite yet. Um, they, uh, pregnant with our first child so I can sort of recognize ourself. Um, and uh, they, they have been out How shopping I think for a while because it sounded like they came back. Ah, as I mentioned in the past, I have to show, we dropped the price a hundred thousand Danish crowns recently, so that helped.

Jesper (7m 34s):
Apparently. So they come back and they had a viewing and a half a week back and then a couple of days later the real estate agent called and said, uh, can we get a second viewing? Because they would like to come back and see it again. So of course, yes, of course you can. That's a, that's a good sign. Um, and then at the same time they wanted to see another house on this street that, that real estate In also have an Asian also has for sale.

Jesper (8m 5s):
So they wanted to see both of them because they wanted something to compare with. And a, they went and saw, the other one is like 200,000 things crunch more expensive than ours. It's also slightly bigger. I think it has one more room or something. Then hours, if I remember correctly. And I might be wrong on that, but nevertheless, they went there to get a bit of comparison, uh, or perspective. And uh, they were supposed to come here something like half past two that day or something and he'd called 20 minutes early and say, how can we come over now?

Jesper (8m 38s):
And that was like, what? Well, yeah, will be out of the house in 10 minutes, so then you can come and But. And I said to him, well, that was quick. Once you're suppose to be a bit, spend the least a half an hour over a day or something. Yeah. And they say, yeah, yeah, but they're not that interested in this house or you just want to to see it. So, okay. So they came over to hours and then of course a, we were of course not here. So when I talked to a real estate agent afterwards, he said that the first thing that the lady there said when they entered the house or our house was just like, yeah, let's see what I mean.

Jesper (9m 14s):
You know, you're getting a much, much more, how's for your money here? The other one, this is one of the first things you said. So that was good. Yeah. Uh, and a, they had, they had their mother with them. I don't know if it's the man or woman's mother, I don't know. But one of the two, um, and she was also praising the house and saying, yeah, this is a really good price. You're getting a lot of, a lot for your money here. Of course we did also just drop the prices I mentioned.

Jesper (9m 44s):
So I'm sure that helps. Um, and uh, they were basically just this is the real estate on set. He said that the basic, they were just talking only about the things that they liked. I mean there was no critical questions. There was nothing. There was just saying all the things that they like. Um, so, so that, that was good. Yeah. They have an apartment inside Copenhagen, a two room apartment that do you need to sell? So first, um, so he, and then Mike, who do you, you can buy a house on condition that you sell your own first.

Jesper (10m 18s):
Uh, so basically you do all the papers and all the, you basically sell the house but no money is transferred until they have sold their apartment. And then there was a time limit time limit on a contract. Like that a, so that they will expire at some point if they haven't sold within, normally it's like six months. So if they have them sold their place in six months, then the contract is either you can extend it or you can basically rip it apart then and say, okay, that's it. Um, that's interesting. Yeah. And then the only way around that is still that.

Jesper (10m 51s):
So if somebody comes while you sign the conditional contract, if somebody then comes and say, well we would like to buy the house and if they don't have any condition, they can actually buy it even though the other contract exists. So they basically overwrite that contract and then they just buy it. And then the ones who were supposed to buy it on there, that signed a conditional contract. Well that's just bad luck. Yeah. So that's kind of how it works here. So he was, the real estate didn't was a, he was supposed to talk to them over the weekend, but I haven't heard back from him today.

Jesper (11m 27s):
So now I don't know.

Autumn (11m 30s):
They don't know what they're thinking. Oh no. Okay. Well, you know, you can't make me wait until next Monday to find out if you want to do, if you find out this is what you have to let me know.

Jesper (11m 41s):
Yeah, yeah I will. But we'll see. I mean all in all it sounds like they're very positive and then their parents live down here on, on in the same city here so, and they live in Copenhagen, which is like 50 kilometers away so, and now she's six months pregnant, the lady. So I'm sure that they want to get down here close to the parents. Right. So I bet. Yeah. And then according to what they have told the real estate agent, they are not looking at any other houses or anything in this area is only our house that their looking at it that it should really happen.

Jesper (12m 19s):
I hope. But let's, let's see. Let's get on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.

Autumn (12m 29s):
It's all right. So Autumn we doubled down over these past few weeks and we actually put a shot cost together, didn't we? We did. It was amazing that we've gone from, it seems like we have all these projects that we've been working on for ages and we just decided to throw another project in there and get it done in like two weeks was crazy. I don't know what we're doing sometimes other than making tasks that we can cross off. Well actually now do you say to me that was like such a conscious leader, let's do something where we can tick off because all of the other projects we're having, we have a huge like world-building course that we were moving forward on that.

Autumn (13m 10s):
But it's a big, we have a free course that quite a lot of effort. We have a course on email list building, which is also a lot of effort. So there are so many things. Maybe it's this like subconscious place. You are saying let's do something where we can get it done. Exactly. I think there might have been just like, we've went on a win, so we did a win and it was awesome. So it was good. Yeah. Yeah. So it turned out, uh, I counted the minutes. So there was 86 minutes of guidance on the key methods to create fantastic characters in that course.

Autumn (13m 45s):
It is six modules long until you decided to add a bonus module Autumn in the seven months long that it needed just a little bit more, but it wasn't enough for a whole nother module. So it's just a little short bonus. Yeah. Yeah. So basically it covers eight Character archetypes that every writer need to know. We talk about understanding Character motivation. We also discussed what comes first plodding or character development.

Autumn (14m 16s):
There is guidelines on point of view characters. We go into character arcs and explain how those works. And then you have a bonus module Autumn it's about breathing life into characters. So really bringing out their personality and making, it's a, you know, given that little spice of life that sometimes all of the Character lists and interviews and sheets and bubble charts just seem to lack. Yeah. So that there's a lot of good stuff like their, so as you said, 86 minutes a week.

Autumn (14m 50s):
It's, it's rather quick and easy to go through. So it's not like it won't demand hours and hours and hours from YouTube to, to uh, to, you know, get those key methods, get those key learnings. Its quite, quite easy in undemanding. It is. Yeah. Compact. Yeah, that's a good word. And it's also fairly cheap. Yes we do because it is a short course what we decided to make this one, I mean that came out or something out of the pandemic and quarantine to help writers, uh, you know, R group voted on it and this is what they want to do.

Autumn (15m 24s):
We have a special preregistration at a discount but even at full price we are selling it for only $47 because it is a short course and because it is there, you know, as part of something you can do now to keep your writing and advance your skills while you're sitting at home and waiting for the world to restart at some point soon it sounds like. Yeah. So the course is available right now and I will put a link in the show notes from where you can get access to it.

Jesper (15m 58s):
Um, and there is also a, as we always do Autumn we have a 30 day money back guarantee and a well it's very rare that anybody takes up on, up us up on those guarantees there. But uh, but it has happened once in a while and when it does, we don't ask any questions, we just give you your refund and that's it. Quite easy. Very much.

Autumn (16m 31s):
All right. Opening hooks. Prerecording we will, we actually started debating a bit. What do we mean about opening? There is a, it's what you're saying, there's opening hooks to the book, opening hooks to chapters. There's the opening hook to your blurb. Which hook are we hooking? Yes. Yeah. But I think that is actually a good place to stop just to finding a bit. What are we talking about when we're saying opening hook?

Autumn (17m 2s):
Absolutely. So we decided after a brief, Oh shoot, what are we talking about today on the podcast? Um, that we're so professional podcasts, this is amazing. We can handle the stress as well as our students. We just did a student Q and a before this as well. And we are good at answering questions on the fly so you can not push us off our purchase of what we know, what we're talking about. We said what we decided, we're talking about the opening of books. So this hook is literally hooking readers so that when you have someone to open up se like the sample, read a sample on Amazon to see what's inside that basically you grab them.

Autumn (17m 42s):
So they're like, yeah, I'm buying this. I want to see what happens next. So that's the opening hook we're talking about for today. Yeah. So it's things like when you have a story should take you, it's beginning. It is how to capture a reader's attention. And a, I guess maybe we could also touch a bit on how much detail you should include in the beginning. Uh, absolutely. How it goes. Yeah. And if not right now, as we were talking before, we actually have a booklet on novel beginnings and what should be in there.

Autumn (18m 15s):
So if you don't quite cover everything, they can always go to the AmWritingFantasy website and will have that in the show notes as well. And purchase the booklet is only a few dollars and get anything that we might miss today because you know, Podcast we're not going to try to do what we did last week, which was over an hour because that was the book launch a podcast and it was huge because book launches are a huge, yeah. If it was more than I actually thought initially it was just like there was so much to say, then we could have split into two.

Autumn (18m 49s):
But I sometimes think it's good not to make people wait, get it all over with at once and yeah, all the steps. So whether we start with this, do you think, what were, what is the best place to start? Autumn well, I think, um, I always, I always go with the cliches are the things that you hear thrown about and I like to dissect them. And one of the things you hear when you're writing is start with action. And so that is true. That is a good hook because you kind of grabbed the reader and takes them with you as you're about to do something the way the character should be doing something.

Autumn (19m 26s):
But what does that actually mean to say start with action and also what does it not mean? And that's one of my favorites because I do, especially teaching students, Oh my goodness. I think over 50% of students start their first sentence with something about the weather. And it's that whole, it was a dark and stormy night. So starting with action is not starting with what the weather. Nobody is tricky because starting with action is also not starting to see because there's also the other way where you're starting with, lets say some somebody is chasing somebody's right and when you start reading, if you have no clue who's chasing who is it?

Autumn (20m 10s):
The Character. Yeah. You don't need to get to know which one are you supposed to care about and yeah, where are you in so many questions right there. It reminds me of that awesome scene in the movie memento where, where, where he a, he keeps forgetting. So he's running and then he's like, he looks, I can't remember if he's looking behind. I think he's looking behind himself. Yes. And then there's somebody's running as well. And he was the one he's starting to, to speculate weight.

Jesper (20m 42s):
Am I chasing him on me? And it's just so, it's such an awesome scene. And then he turns and the guy's pulls a gun and shoots at him and he's okay. This isn't me. But it is true. I mean, as a reader you are basic. If it's not, if you were talking about book one, have a series or a standalone book. So we're just going to talk about the opening hooks for something that is brand new to the reader, doesn't know anything except if they took the time to write, read the blurb, which they probably did before picking either purchasing the book or opening it up to see what happens in that first page to see if it's an interesting.

Autumn (21m 15s):
And so yeah, if you're throwing a reader into a situation, and so yes. What kind of action do you want to start with the action where someone is a gunshot or since we're talking about Fantasy you know magic the Dragon's about to eat them wear. Do you want to start with action so that the reader is not overwhelmed going I am so a loss. I do not know what's happening. And I think one of the best ways of keeping things clear is maybe starting with action but not having it to the chase scene.

Autumn (21m 49s):
Having it as a one Character action and I always liked to keep it as something small. It could be as small as being purposeful, you know a drive to go somewhere too. I know in mine is the character has looking for someone my first book and born of water. So the action is she is sneaking out of a place so that she can go find something is very simple one Character something is going on. It's kind of building the curiosity and I think that's really going to be the key that we talk about today is all you want to do with the goal of every sentence is to keep, make the case, the reader want to read the next sentence to see what happens.

Autumn (22m 31s):
And you keep doing that long enough there going to want to read the whole book. Yeah. And I think this will, uh, on a slightly personal note, because there is also, especially when we're dealing with Fantasy here, there is also the Am the thing about sharing a lot about the setting, uh, you, you mentioned the whether before, but in Fantasy especially you can be like, OK, so they entering this Elvyn Citi and then there was like half a page on, you know, why the city looks like this or why people are behaving like this.

Autumn (23m 12s):
And then the history of that building over a year there was demolished and they have left it demolished as a reminder how evil the enemies AR or whatever, you know, all that kind of thing. And it is so easy to do when Writing Fantasy and because if I had to write my first book today or at the beginning of my first book, I think overall it's a good book, but at the beginning of the book does suffer from this. There's to much of setting description in the beginning of it.

Autumn (23m 43s):
And of course again that was my first book. So you live and you, but

Jesper (23m 46s):
uh, but there was too much setting description and they have had some people or readers pointing it out and pointing out How also there was too many names in the beginning. Uh, so yeah, so they are, they should have lost a bit of track on who is important and what, what am I supposed to, who am I supposed to route for? Basically that that's what they need to know in the beginning. They need to clearly understand, okay, this is the character that I'm supposed to root for.

Jesper (24m 17s):
This is a par apparently the hero or the Heron. So and they, they are doing something, you know, and they're not, I think we need to define action in a bit of a broader context. So action just means that they are proactively doing something. It doesn't mean action in terms of their short fights or being shot or anything like that. If you do it right away or if you do it carefully, it could be something like that.

Jesper (24m 47s):
It's, I'm not saying that you cannot never open a book where some sort of fight or what is going on or whatever or you could do that, but it's a bit more difficult. But I think actually it needs to be defined more broadly as it's just a proactive action taking by the protector.

Autumn (25m 5s):
Right. And so it's almost like a purpose. You have something going on and then if it was your day to day life, it is, you're searching for your keys. Something is happening. But yeah, it doesn't have to be a chase scene or fleeing from a dragon. It doesn't have to be huge. And I definitely agree description from the world. I mean in the world, especially in Fantasy is almost like another character. It is so important. It's as important as the magic. It's, it's just these are our two pillars of what Fantasy really is.

Autumn (25m 38s):
That it has magic and it has this amazing setting with amazing creatures, but when it comes to just those, especially that first page, you want to pair it down to just almost like Writing a flash fiction short story. Just the details to make it interesting. Just the details to layer in curiosity that there is more. You get the flavors, the hints that there's a whole world. There's a whole importance of why these things are there. You might mention that there's, I can't mention the tower that have been ruined so that you might mention there's a ruin tower, but not explain why or where it is.

Autumn (26m 14s):
Chickens explain that later. You have a hundred thousand words to explain what you're setting up and these first few paragraphs, but if you can get the reader passes for the first few paragraphs so you won't get the chance to explain it all. So those first ones to me is I had a poetry writing class and this is really almost the essence of poetry writing is you pair it down to just the essence. You need to convey what you're trying to get across and what should be getting across as who is the main Character a little flavor of the world.

Autumn (26m 48s):
Something happening, something curious, intriguing, something that is going to make reader go, what is going on with that? Go with going like, Oh my God, there's so much stuff going on. I don't know what's going on but go, Oh there is something. Why are they doing this? What's going on? Why? As you know, what is the story of this? They want to be curious why their doing things without explaining anything about what they're doing. Anything cause you can explain later. Yeah, about the world building as well. It's, it's, it's such a big part of, of the Shanghai of course.

Autumn (27m 22s):
But I think for a lot of us, a lot of us Fantasy writers, we write Fantasy because we also love the world building. And hence it becomes very easy to say in a way to want in the beginning of the book to share some of that because we feel this need to, well the reader won't really understand why, you know, this elf hae that dwarf over there and less. I also explain that to a hundred years ago they, there was a war between the two racism and, well that might be some truth to that.

Autumn (27m 55s):
But the thing is also as you should, you set that you have an entire book to share those things so you can go quite easily in the beginning and then over time seed In preferably of course in, in, in action or in dialog about what happened. That would be best. But I picked out as an example as well because I think it sort of cements the point that I'm making here in the, uh, I can't remember exactly if the book is the same thing, but this is a, at least from the movie where Gandel first enters the Shire and the Frodo accuses him of being late.

Autumn (28m 35s):
Do you remember what Gandalf replies? Oh shoot, I don't, uh, I need to, I should almost try to have a really good voice, but if I can do a good, that doesn't sound like an assumption. Like an evil wizard. No, but he says a wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means too. And I think that is so excellent because within that one line of dialogue, we now know, aha, okay, this guy's a visit a, a wizard.

Autumn (29m 14s):
And um, he is, he's come to visit for whatever reason, we don't even know why yet. And that's the curiosity part that Autumn was just talking about. Right? Right. Uh, about why is he coming here? What, what's gonna happen. Oh, OK. With it. Oh, that's pretty cool. As a defense as you read it, but you don't need to do more with. The other part could have been to start saying, well Frodo was a Hobbit and there was a wizard called Gandalf and he was really looking forward for Gandalf to arrive later today, blah,

Jesper (29m 42s):
blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. You got to wait to see you now I'm all already into info dumping and then my next impulse could be try to explain how long ago Ghana last there and how he usually brings some fireworks and you know you started and it doesn't matter.

Autumn (29m 60s):
No, no and you're, you're not, you're telling and not showing and I think that's one of the important things. And also I think not only that that line gives a sense of what kind of wizard Gandalf is and you get attitude with that and you want that as well. That is a huge opening hook. If you have a character that is sparks on page one where you get this attitude where you, you get a sense of who they are, that can be so interesting.

Autumn (30m 31s):
You suddenly want to know more about this character or this person and so that's another great hook and by paring things down to really good dialogue, good action. You just in skipping all the description in like you were saying, explaining about the habits in what they are and fireworks and wizards by just not worrying all of that, not to go with them to do it in chapter five, don't do it now or or better yet. Don't say he wizards always bring fireworks, have them show him off.

Autumn (31m 4s):
You know you want to definitely keep to the show, make the character's do things. Don't just sit there and tell the reader about the things that the character's could be doing. Let's just know. Don't do that here. Especially in the first pages key and keep your passive sentences to a minimum. They should be very good, tight verbs and things that are solid and happening.

Jesper (31m 30s):
Yeah, that's true and a lot of this stuff that we're talking about here is of course also about meeting reader expectations and by delivering those young or old tropes that that read is expecting to, to be there. I mean in the, in the plotting book, uh, the, we jokingly set a, so I just picked it up, this quote from in there. So it goes like this quote, imagine a restaurant where the large red sign over the interest reading Chinese restaurant, you go inside and find the menu listing spare ribs and hamburgers with no traditional Chinese dishes on offer.

Jesper (32m 6s):
Such a restaurant would have a hard time satisfying its customers in quote. Right? Very true. That's the same thing here for us. When, when Writing a Fantasy we need to deliver those Fantasy tropes because they opened a fantasy book just like we entered the Chinese restaurant in the hopes that we will find something with magic or fantastical creatures and all those kinds of things that we love from the shore. So we need to deliver some of that, but it doesn't mean that we have to start explaining.

Jesper (32m 40s):
The dragons

Autumn (32m 40s):
came from and How the dragon that actually assists exists in these lands are 1,454 years old and Am it's actually a rather young for her age. I have a dragon and so on. Uh, you know it. No. And then opening Koch, no thanks. No, no. It's a way to much. And even, I mean I look at that, we've had a discussion about prologues because of the book we're writing together and I definitely, I, I, we've pared it down to that we think a sentence or two is okay, but if as soon as you get two a paragraph or two or a prologue as too long, it's should be a good, a little spice.

Autumn (33m 21s):
I love cooking and I've been cooking today. Sorry. So you're getting all the food analogies. Just a hint, a spice, something to get a little bit of seasoning, but you know, you need to keep it going towards the story. You shouldn't be explaining things. I know in the novel beginnings, this is sort of a, a good thing. If you had an opening line as the David possessing zip Brooks as a door, Caitlin grabbed a handful of bless at Mer. It's not explaining why Zeke is now possessed by a demon, which demon as possessing him, why he will more actually do anything or who blessed it.

Autumn (33m 57s):
It's just things are happening. And that's fine. The rest will be revealed later. Those are the questions that the readers should have is like Y is Z possessed. Who is, what's the relationship there? Their just little curiosity things that you kind of want to find out what's going to happen next without getting buried under all the details of well, we got in trouble and what school are was doing an incantation and then think of that actually work and blah, blah blah.

Autumn (34m 28s):
If you don't need to know what needs did you just to make that up. That's actually very from the a novel, um, the big novel beginnings booklet. Oh, right, right, right. Okay. That's my quote. Right, right. Cool. Yeah. There was, somebody is talking on in the Am Writing Fantasy Facebook group as well around a favorite opening lines on, of course, now I can't remember the exact date, but it was something like somebody said that the, what they like the most was some or something along these lines and I'm, I'm going to butcher it a bit, so sorry about that.

Autumn (35m 0s):
But it was something like it's the 1st of June and somebody has to die today. Oh yes. Yes. And I can't, I can't think of the book that that one's from. But yes, God can be very good one. But that's a good start. Do you know, you'll be like, okay, this is interesting. Yes. And that was, and to me, I think we can talk about a good opening and a good hook, but I think if you're writing in your, in your manuscript, do not sit there and go over your chapter one again and again and again trying to get it down to your first perfect hook, write your manuscript and then come back and then start looking for the gem.

Autumn (35m 43s):
I know when I wrote my debut novel, I actually cut three chapters. It took me, I had to write the whole thing out, do some editing, realized, tweak things and a whole bunch of other stuff. And then I started looking at the beginning saying where's this supposed to begin? And I realized I had three chapters of just drivel that I had a right to get out of my head and just cut it and it didn't lose a damn thing. And it actually improves a ton to suddenly just cut out the first bit, the explanation and start there.

Autumn (36m 15s):
And I've read, you know, I've helped other authors, I've read some other things and I know what I think that was like the third paragraph in and it had a great opening line of, Oh I can't even find it now. But it was something like, you know, today Katelyn was going to join the, you know, or something of, Oh shoot, it was something bad too, you know, is she, you know, trader's or something and she was going to become a trader or something and that was just like, Oh, today Caitlin is going to become a trader.

Autumn (36m 48s):
Oh that is, that's interesting. But it was buried like three or four paragraphs down. It's like we'll get rid of the other stuff. Start with that. That is, that's exciting. That is like wow, what's going on? And if you can find that, that's great. And most likely you have it. If you've written your book and you have your manuscript, it's in there. You just have to go and do, you know, sort through the hay. She defined the needle, you'll find it in there. But don't worry about starting your first draft, your manuscript with the perfect talk right first and then come back.

Autumn (37m 22s):
And that's part of the editing is to find out where, where or you put it cause it's in there somewhere. Right.

Jesper (37m 28s):
Yeah. That's a good point. I just want to pick up and do that in a second. But before I forget, I just wanted to mention as well that a, regarding the prologue AM we actually, or I or actually in the past record as a full video where I talk about how to write a killer prologue. So I will also add a link to that video in the show notes. And if anybody is curious about that than you can, it's on YouTube so you can go and check it out. Um, so it's, it's an older one, but a, the points in there is still good so that you can go on.

Jesper (38m 2s):
What's that one if you want. But yeah, just coming back to what you were saying there, I think that there is a really, really important point around the tendency and I think most authors actually have a tendency to set the first chapter or the beginning of the book to early rather than too late. I agree. Um, we often start with all of the buildup. Uh, if I do my own example again, a win with my first book, the, the one, the first one I wrote there that I mentioned earlier and as well,

Autumn (38m 36s):
I could actually have made it worse, but they, the beginning, because initially my plan was to start the book. And so the Character, uh, the, the, the protagonist, she is pregnant and they, uh, she and her husband to be, are going to the city a that they live quite far outside. They, they like this, it kind of ELs in a way, but then not elves, but kind of But. So they live in their own cabin probably like, I can't remember, I think it's like half a day's walk from the city.

Autumn (39m 11s):
OK. In the forest. And they don't quite get along that well with, uh, with the people in the city or the protect. This doesn't, so that why they live out their, but they have to go and visit his parents to tell her to tell them about the fact that she's pregnant. And my initial thinking was because you always hear this, um, advice out there about you should show the Character in their everyday life in the beginning. And when I first started out I thought, Oh, okay. So I'll put them in this cabin out there in the woods.

Autumn (39m 42s):
They can just be cooking some food or breakfast or something before they have to leave to go to the city. And luckily enough, I caught myself there and I thought, but how is that interesting? You know, so, so, okay. So I've got to have an opening chapter with people eating food and saying, okay, how are you ready to go? Yeah, I'll get my things. And it's just so important. Yes, there's definitely a tendency, I agree that um, we want to start, sometimes we need it to get ourselves into the story as authors, but I definitely think it's something that you can go back and cut because it's got to be, it's got to be at least enough of a Mo.

Autumn (40m 21s):
It was going to be an everyday life thing, but its also got to be a movement and something happening is something that's going to tie two like the inciting incident and the plot that's already got to be kind of bubbling up. And like we said, the Character has got to be fully fleshed out. Maybe you don't know your character that well. And so you know, in our Character course we talk about making sure your Character is really solid and vivid and then fully formed so that when you start even that first sentence, that attitude that something comes through that is gripping and really engaging for the reader to say, Oh you know, you're, there is no fuzzy greatness in this character.

Autumn (40m 57s):
This character is pretty much a solid 3d and colored. If it weren't good to go. Yeah. Because that's the other part of it, you and, and that's what you were alluding at them as well you see, you can also start the story or two late. So this stuff is really not that easy. You know, you can start to earlier, you could start too late because if you're starting too late, the problem is that you might be confusing the intro with the inciting incident. Right? And that's not the point either. So you can not start so late that you all may already into the inciting incident because that's sort of skews the entire plot structure of the novel.

Autumn (41m 33s):
So that's not going to work

Jesper (41m 34s):
either. So I think that the way we describe it in our applauding book is basically thing as the introduction, as thought of a mini story on his own. So it's like a bridge that reaches from the first page and towards the inciting incident. So it's this little mini story where something will happen that will then take you towards that inciting incident in an interesting way that peaks the reader's curiosity along the way.

Jesper (42m 9s):
And that's, that's really the trick of it is to make sure that one, you keep the curiosity going, but also that you have a clear goal in mind and with the ministry that gives you that goal. So there, there is something specific happening there. I'm in in just to use that one book again or my first book, this is an example again because now I already started it so I'm just working but a are for example, I actually have a sort of a little mini story in there in that once they get into the city that I mentioned before, I'm there in the city, they all live a day, they have platforms.

Jesper (42m 49s):
I'm in the tree like quite far above the forest bet and they, they are there. Are they having this festival? Well on this point in time they get there and the kids running around up there and whatnot and at some point as a kid actually falls off the platform and the protagonist then jumps off the platform as well and safe the kit. But she's of course pregnant. So that's not a good thing to do. And they fall all the way down to the ground. And ah, there you see there was a little mini story.

Jesper (43m 21s):
They were right,

Autumn (43m 21s):
right? Yeah. I always like to say the, the mini story, the conclusion of the mini story, whatever a plot that is, is basically the inciting incident, whatever the characters trying to do in, in your example, you know, save the kid, it turns out wrong. And that is what basically sparks the inciting incident. So it's all related. It, it builds into the plot. And mine is like I mentioned, the main character is sneaking out to see a girl with magic that she had For, you know, didn't get a chance to grab earlier because that's her job as a priestess.

Autumn (43m 57s):
She's supposed to collect other potentials to be taken in to the elemental church. And so she just didn't do it early. She froze, she's young, she froze, she didn't do it. So she's trying to rectify her mistake and that's all the whole mini story is basically trying to rectify a mistake. But of course when she gets the girl, it all goes to crap. And that sparks the entire 105,000 word novel because her Vinny story goes wrong.

Autumn (44m 27s):
And that's basically, that's a great way of showing the world, showing a full Character, showing a little bit of action without hitting your reader over the head with this plot in this world and all of this big stuff that they should care about it, but you haven't made them care about it yet. You, you shouldn't tell them to care about it. You should show them these are characters are really gonna like it. Show that in that little mini story and by the time their curiosity is hooked, the inciting incident happens and then they just have to know how the Character is going to survive this.

Autumn (44m 60s):
Yeah. So writing the opening hook is a, well, it's much harder than it is. This is really what it is very often. What determines if the reader will dump the book or not? Unfortunately, they will make up their mind within a few pages and that's it. So we will cover this topic in much more detail on how exactly to build this ministry and what to think about, how to introduce the characters and all of that stuff in much more details in our guide book on how to plot a novel when that comes out in probably a few months time, I would say.

Autumn (45m 40s):
Yeah, well we keep saying that will say, but a for now, or at least I hope you got a lot out of today's episode and the next Monday, if all goes according to plan, uh, the women, again, taking over the podcasts as, as autumn has a very awesome guests lined up for you.

Narrator (45m 59s):
If you liked what you just heard, there is a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn in Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 72 – All the Steps to Organize Your Book Launch

Maybe we should have made this two episodes because it is a doozy!

Jesper and Autumn cover a ton of tips and steps to launch your book, starting from 12 weeks out from your book release until 5 weeks after. After? Yes! Discover why there are actually steps to your book launch strategy that take place AFTER the actual release!

Check out Publisher Rocket at https://amwritingfantasy--rocket.thrivecart.com/publisher-rocket/

*Note: This is an affiliate link and using it will help us out, but we're mainly an affiliate because we use and love Publisher Rocket ourselves. ❤️

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (2s):
You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):
Hello, I am Jesper.

Autumn (31s):
And I'm Autumn.

Jesper (31s):
This is episode 72 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast and the topic of today's episode is book launches, and Autumn and I am going to share how we handle the launches of our books. And uh, you can basically feel free to copy as many of the steps that you want so when we go through it.

Autumn (54s):
And definitely some tips on things I think we've tried in the past that you don't know if they're quite worth the effort anymore, but we'll get to those.

Jesper (1m 3s):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, and, and I guess we could also say that there was a ton of ways you can do a book launches. We've put our list together based on all kinds of things that we've done throughout the years and that this is, this is a part of the, the master list that we arrived at. But uh, yeah, I will cover that step by step, uh, you know, in a, in a bit here.

Autumn (1m 28s):
Absolutely. So how are things over on your side of the Atlantic?

Jesper (1m 36s):
Well, well, to be honest, uh, it feels a bit tired today cause this morning was the first morning in quite a while where I had to get up early to take the kids to school.

Autumn (1m 50s):
Oh that's right.

Jesper (1m 52s):
Because why would there have been like everybody else in shelf quarantine for a long while now. Uh, but uh, he, in Denmark, things are slowly starting to return to normal, well, I guess normal in quotation marks, but the, the Corvette 19 pandemic a lot to everything down as we all know by now. But we are, we've started lifting. It's like we hear. So it happens to the stages here in, in, in Denmark. Um, and a, one of the first stages is to get kids back to school so that parents can start working again.

Jesper (2m 25s):
Um, and, well actually our kids were supposed to go back to school a week ago, uh, but we kept them at home last week because we were, first of all, we as parents felt that it was a bit soon that they began opening things up again. And uh, we also had a conversation with the kid's at the lunch table, um, last week and asked them how they felt about, and they both said that they did not quite feel safe, so we decided together with them that they will stay at home another week.

Jesper (3m 0s):
So, so that's what we did. So they started today. While there are friends started a week ago.

Autumn (3m 7s):
That's some peer pressure, so they knew their friends were back in as everything waited a week and that they, you know, life, nothing blew up. I guess it's a good that they decided that they felt safe enough to go back to school.

Jesper (3m 20s):
Well, yeah, we asked them all over the weekend how they felt about it in that they both said it well, the youngest said, yeah, I'm fine, I want to go back. But the oldest, it was more like, yeah, I'm still not quite feel comfortable with it, but on the other hand and you know, we'd talk to him and it's a sort of, I had a conversation around how you probably never feel entirely comfortable because you don't know what's what it is. Right. Right. You don't know what's going to happen when you get there and, and all those things. So, uh, but they went to school today and when I picked them up, they were both really happy, uh, that they went and so everything went well.

Jesper (3m 56s):
But a, but actually also I wanted to misspeaking of Corona virus. Right. Uh, these days I would really, really, really prefer to stay far, far away from hospitals. Uh, but unfortunately actually have to take my youngest son there the other day. Oh, no. Yeah, he was driving his scooter outside. Um, and, uh, well he basically just, he fell, landed with his, uh, entire body with, on, on his elbow.

Jesper (4m 28s):
So we were quite worried at his arm was broken. So we have to go to the hospital in the middle of these Corona virus days, which I really would like not answer to. Yeah. And I guess they were really busy. They're, because we spent the entire evening there, something like three, four hours to get to his shoulder or elbow. I meant, uh, x-rayed and looked over. But luckily enough, it was not broken up this morning. A couple of days later, he, he, you know, as I said, he went to school, he had no pains.

Jesper (5m 2s):
Okay. So everything seems okay now. But yeah, this has been a bit of an interesting week. That's crazy. Well, I'm glad he's fine. That's not there. They keep saying now this is not the time to do something stupid and get yourself hurt. So well, I mean is it really don't want to go to the hospital, but, but what can you do a very true, yeah. And how is a everything on your side?

Jesper (5m 33s):
We are fine. I finished my built in storage benches. We have cushions on order and so the major goals and major building projects of my little cabin are done and you know, I wanted to like finish it up over the weekend and then it was going to be, um, obviously we are working on a character development course is going to do some computers stuff, but it was going to be like I wanted to have that moment where you just stop and the sun shines in the window. Do you have a thought? Oh you know, it looks like it has done two and a half months of building and getting settled and I can finally put stuff away and get rid of the sawdust on the floor where I'm also living in such a filtering in place.

Jesper (6m 17s):
And instead it was probably the more realistic version of two and a half months of building and living and sheltering and pandemic and want to adapt.

Autumn (6m 29s):
So you can see why I think it finally hit me a nice still. I mean I feel very content and kind of calm, which is still lovely. I don't feel like there's this huge pressure to go, I got to do something, the show results. But I definitely still have that kind of like, yeah, I'm not in slow mode but I'm not in like let's get stuffed on it. I'm not, I'm not under a total drive. I'm going to sitting back on my heels going, yeah, I could have a beer. That's where I'm at.

Autumn (6m 59s):
But I think, um, I think as I recover and you know, speaking every time I'd used, you know, we have skill cells and compound miters and all these things we've been using in jigsaw calls and every time I go to cut something, I always had that moment of be careful. Don't do something stupid. You don't want to go to the hospital. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. We'll have those moments. But I've seen, I have, um, my right knuckle has been a little bit sore and I actually have a brace on my left arm cause I've a little bit of a, like a tennis elbow going on from something in my right shoulder hurts.

Autumn (7m 33s):
It's like a joke. I can't open the door with my right arm and I can't pick up my teacup with the left arm and I'm like, that heals because I've been in, I did go through my upper birthday. I'm a year older officially, so I'm not a known for a spring chicken. I'm once my body catches up so she loves me a year younger, once a week once everything catches up and I'm feel a little bit better and I can just enjoy being very physically fit, I will probably just be a little bit happier and then I'll be so excited. I'll have my moment in the sun of Yes.

Autumn (8m 5s):
I'll sit on a picnic table by the stream and the waterfall and I'll be like, this is good, this is good. But right now having a blankie, it's a good that you're going to hold it all the building stuff that, I mean you don't want me in chats of billing anything unless it's like a building, but I can build a world, but I can not build a cabin. We go on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy Podcast.

Autumn (8m 36s):
So that was quite a few good post in the Facebook group over the past few days. I don't know if you noticed that to know. I, my husband recently pointed out, he's like, I do this every day. He has been doing a climate log and actually weather forecasting everyday and observations about the woods. He's like, and you don't even go look at it. I'm like, no, because it's on Facebook. I have been on a Facebook diet, not on purpose, just I had to cut something out for a little bit and I've got that out. Right, right. I appreciate you and taking care of the group because I know it would, it would be a dead plant if I was in my household right now a little bit.

Jesper (9m 15s):
Um, Luke is good at taking care of things as well for you, but there was a quite a few good, but I just picked a few here at just to mention because I thought they were really good. Um, so Linda posted in the Facebook group, uh, a picture of the For heart horseman of procrastination. I thought that was it.

Autumn (9m 37s):
That's great. Uh, and, uh,

Jesper (9m 41s):
there was also Jason, he finished his first draft of it for nearly a 150,000 words.

Autumn (9m 47s):
Oh gosh, yes. We rolled on progress forever. I missed that. I have to go find his post now and say congratulations.

Jesper (9m 55s):
Yeah, it's a so, so, so, so well done. So a, yeah, we just wanted to call you out Jason thing and congratulating you on, on that. Um, and we also have a Tony Join quite recently, I think it was only like two or three days, uh, ago, uh, since I let her in. Uh, well, of course when you listen to this, we were pre recording it at an event. So you have been a part of the group for a while by the time we listen to this town you, but uh, but she, um, she showed some interesting creating a shared world.

Jesper (10m 28s):
Uh, so she was asking if somebody was interested in that, so that, that was pretty cool. That's really cool. Yeah. And at the quite similar as well. Alexandra's uh, he was looking for a coach, author, so that was also quite nice. And I don't know, maybe he should check out Episode 58 of the podcasts because we actually talked about how to find a co author or a writing partner in that Episode. So that was 58 but a lot of good, interesting conversations happening in the Facebook group.

Jesper (10m 60s):
So a Yeti your list know if you haven't checked it are already and how we should show you can so just search for Am Writing Fantasy in the group section of Facebook and uh, you will find us.

Autumn (11m 10s):
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to get back into it because it's always so dynamic and interesting. It's just crazy to hear what's been going on. And like I haven't been on for a few days, I swear it's not in a full week, so that's just fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. I did like the fact though that we are, you know, at least people do track us down. Um, occasionally if there outside of Facebook. But I know Audrey sent us an email, she just recently joined the Writing list to Writing Tim list. And she had said that her biggest hurdle was in finishing a novella.

Autumn (11m 44s):
And she was writing by inspiration where he got into a good conversation emailing back and forth about that, about, you know, how Writing basically I just read this great metaphor. We're writing is a muscle. It's sort of like, you know, it's something that you need to work on every day, not just because it's somebody who should work on everyday and then you build your schedule. It's like muscle memory. It's you build your stamina. So I just thought, yeah, that's my new metaphor and my new kick and the butt to my re my, my physical construction is done.

Autumn (12m 15s):
So now I've got to get back to a word construction. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's important to a, to keep doing it. Um, especially that the part about when you don't really feel like Writing that, but you still put the pot and the chair and go get it done.

Jesper (12m 32s):
Right. Because, uh, you can always edit it later, but, but do the thing about all, because there are some habits stuff and this as well, you know, if you can train yourself into the habit of this is what I do, even if it's just like a 20 minutes or 15 minutes early in the morning before you have to go off to the day job or whatever. But getting into a habit of doing it, that really helps in the long run. Definitely.

Jesper (13m 3s):
So a book launches, Oh this is something that a, a lot of people talk about quite often.

Autumn (13m 12s):
Well, there are important, I know, and it's, I think a lot of people take two views of book launches and the one is that it is a life or death of a Book. You need to launch big and launched loud and get a ton of sales. And that's how you do it. And then I think there's other people who think it's a marathon and you launch the book and it should be celebrated because that was a big deal.

Jesper (13m 34s):
But that is not the,

Autumn (13m 36s):
and by far a finishing a book, you need to do a lot of marketing plans after that. But the book launches kind of like the first big marketing.

Jesper (13m 47s):
Yeah, I agree. Of course its always nice to see if you can get a good book launch going so that you get an influx of cast. So when you release a new book that's so of course nice. But uh, I I I as well will you often hear is all the stories about the amazing book launches have a, I don't know what 50 a hundred K on whatever it is. People, I mean yeah fine. But I really don't think that that's a good way of looking at it. It's, it's, it's good to Launch wants the book well and of course you should put thought into it and do the best that you can but its, it is really not, it's not the end all.

Jesper (14m 27s):
If, if the Launch is in the best one, it could be.

Autumn (14m 30s):
No. But it is exciting if it does well enough and you get on the hot new release list on Amazon or even on the other one's bestseller. Those are exciting goals. But absolutely just because you don't get one, does it mean your book is not going to do well or sell a ton over its life?

Jesper (14m 47s):
No. So basically as I said up at the top of episode, we've put together a Launch process that we basically are more or less use, uh, for launching all of our books. And that's what we want it to share here with the listeners today. Um, we sometimes we tweak a few of the steps here and they are a bit of course a, I think that should be the method of this episode as well so that basically people listening take from it what you can and what you want and ignore it.

Jesper (15m 18s):
A rest. Right. And maybe maybe we are going to mention a few things she ended, it inspires you to do something that you hadn't thought about. And if we do that then I think that's a success enough for this episode. Sounds good to me. And I have a good, good caveat or this is what, how we were sharing. Yeah. So basically the way we do it is that we have an hour process divided into the big book launch starting 12 weeks ahead of launch and stopping five weeks after the launch.

Jesper (15m 51s):
So you got to be the one to explain time Yes it'll be a a, I think this probably a few people are scratching their head saying but its a book launch. What do you have something that you are doing something about your Book lunch five weeks later. So this will be absolutely, but I think it will make sense once we go through all these different faces. Probably the easiest way to do this to also keep some structure in the conversation would be to take them by weeks. So basically saying okay a block first block being 12 weeks ahead of Launch do this and do that 10 weeks ahead of Launch do this and do that and so forth.

Jesper (16m 28s):
And then we moved down the list until we get all the way down to five weeks after the launch. So I think that's the way that will keep some structured in place in a framework around in the conversation today. Sounds good. So Yes all right, 12 weeks prior to Launch you wanna start us off Yes so when we are 12 weeks before the launch, the you still have quite some good, you know, time your, you're willing to advance here.

Jesper (16m 58s):
So this is a good time to reach out to some relevant influences. So this could be maybe bloggers or YouTube burgers or podcasters, but the main thing is that their audience needs to match your readers. So for example, it would make no sense to reach out to us asking to be interviewed on the Am Writing Fantasy podcasts about a thrill, a book that you have coming up, for example. It makes no sense. No, this is not the audience.

Jesper (17m 29s):
Also, the focus of this podcast is to talk about writing and marketing for authors. It's not for readers. So you need to keep that in mind and try to find some sort of blogger or YouTube or a podcast or whatever it may be, who's a normal content is aligned with what your readers are watching or listening to or whatever it may be. Um, but at the same time, it's also not worth trying to get on to a hundred different podcasts Your or something like that.

Jesper (18m 3s):
It was just Yes that stopped by fucking making a list of like 15 mid range influences because the top, the top influencers, it's impossible to get on their podcast without invitations and the very low level once you might be very easy to get on the podcast, but the other hand you're not going to get out of it because the, they are low range, 50 in mid range influence. That's a pretty good to start with. And um, and then you, you go from there.

Jesper (18m 35s):
Um, yeah.

Autumn (18m 37s):
No I think that's pretty good. Yeah, I think so too. I think it's important to remember that even though your reaching out to influencers by 12 weeks prior, you should be, I mean hopefully by now you've got your book cover. I like it in the book cover as well. I'm still writing a lot of authors due now because one is inspirational but you can start sharing social posts, trying to build your audience and keeping it up to date. So you 12 weeks out you should have your book cover and even if you're not sharing it, even you have for doing teasers, you should be doing some posts on social media.

Autumn (19m 9s):
So generating, you know, getting people interested, letting people know about your book, what's coming out. Some of the world building your character is a, if you have a blog, these are the things that you should be doing right now to make sure that they are kind of getting on the vibe. I mean I remember, I know I've recently said this to someone that book launches used to be, you know, publishers would need a year to year and a half to generate all this stuff and the excitement about launching a book. But I think just like reader's are kind of expecting book's to be like coming out every month, which is probably not possible.

Autumn (19m 42s):
But there's also, it's everything's more of a flash in the pan. And I think the lunch strategy, I think that's why we started at 12 weeks out is because if you do it too soon, six months before you publish, people are maybe a little less enthusiastic. It's kind of good to start building up that energy, you know, three months before you launched because that's more the timeframe for us to get enough people in your resources together and get people excited.

Jesper (20m 10s):
Yeah, absolutely. And this is also then at the time where you upload your book to two different, uh, online retailers. So like Amazon and, and wherever else you want to tell you a book. Um, and at this point you are not, uh, which will make sense in, in, in a moment, but at this point you are not uploading the final version of the book. So this is like the, probably the, the edited version, I think at this point. That sort of leads to what we do. And so from our view of it is done but its not gonna be the final version.

Jesper (20m 44s):
We'll get back to that. So you have uploaded there and then there was a whole debate that one can have around should you do pre-orders or should you not do preorders and there are long debates and views about is it better or worse for you, your Amazon author rankings if you do pre-orders or not and all of that. And basically we sort of circled when that whole conversation by saying because we have a 12 week slow burning building anticipation process in place yet we are doing preorders.

Jesper (21m 17s):
Yes. And basically what are we saying is I don't care if it hurts the author ranking doing preorders who cares? Uh, I don't, so we are just building as a low anticipation over 12 weeks and hopefully uh, once we get down to the list, you, you will see how the stepping stones leads to some excitement.

Autumn (21m 37s):
Yes. And a big tip that I never thought about until, I don't know it was probably, it's been a year or so now, but I never thought of it. When you upload this draft version or nearly finished version, you don't have to upload your final cover. So if you are planning something like a cover reveal or something later, you can do a placeholder image of just about, you know it, it should be something I like. I have a couple of, yeah, it should be a, I have a little scrap one that looks like an old antique book cover and so you can just do that with your title and upload that so that if you do have a big cover reveal something later, you can upload your fake version, your holding version on good reads on Amazon and your distributors is drafted digital Smashwords so you know, keep that in mind.

Autumn (22m 25s):
If you want to be clever and do a big reveal later. You don't have to have the final version revealed to the public quite yet. That's such a good point of view just before but also 12 weeks ahead of launch. I wanted

Jesper (22m 40s):
to say a few words about email, newsletter squash, but just before I get there, before I forget, Please if you are reaching out two podcasts as a speaking as a podcaster, could you please listen to a bit to those people's, uh, episodes before you reach out to them to understand what is this kind of show and at least do a bit of your own research to find out why am I a good match for their audience and what they normally do. Because, for example, on our podcast yet, we do not take pictures for people to come onto the podcast.

Jesper (23m 14s):
We only invite people to come on AM. So once in a while, as you know, about once a month we'll have a guest on, but those are the only people that we have contacted because we want it to have a conversation with them. So sending pictures to people like us in a, I'm just using us an example here, but it's not gonna work. If you're trying to find 15 mid range influencers and you want to get on a podcast and you will never listen to it, even a single one of the episodes and you don't understand that this is not how they, they, they maybe they don't even do interviews at all.

Jesper (23m 48s):
Right? So you just wasting your time. Right. So please do that. A bit of research before you start reaching out to people is so annoying and getting emails from people who clearly don't know what they are, what the podcast is about, and then they're making pictures for something that makes absolutely no sense. It's so unhealthy

Autumn (24m 5s):
that I totally agree. Even with audience, somebody might look at ours and like, Oh, Fantasy I'm going to talk about a Fantasy book, but we're targeting Fantasy authors, not readers. So we do make sure you're not wasting your time and effort, um,

Jesper (24m 19s):
bothering someone who you're not even the right target audience. Yeah. Okay. So let me move on to newsletter swaps. This is basically where your reaching out to another author saying, okay, can you feed your, my book in your newsletter? And then I will feature in your book, in my newsletter we talked about that on past Episode as well. Um, here I have to say that for Autumn and myself we don't really use email newsletter swaps. And the reason for that is when we are publishing out our books, you hear that I don't like featuring another author's book in our email unless I've read it and I just don't feel comfortable with doing that.

Jesper (25m 4s):
Um, but if you do do newsletter swaps and if you do like to do that then uh, basically this, uh, 12 weeks prior to Launch is the, its a good time to get that organized. Find out who you want to do newsletter swaps with and a yeah and get yourself organized. Know why you still have a quite a while yet. And there are a lot of good places as a, in my private, my, my Writing individually last, I have done them in the past. So

Autumn (25m 32s):
yeah, there are good Facebook groups. There's a story origins, which has a fantastic newsletter swap area and BookFunnel. It's more for group giveaways but sometimes you can find some swaps through there. So those are the two of them are good places to look. Right.

Jesper (25m 45s):
And keep it John or a specific same as looking at influencers. Right. Good. So I think we can move on to the next Am bracket here. Which system 10 weeks ahead of launch. Absolutely. So,

Autumn (26m 1s):
and I was going to say, so we've already talked about reaching out to people and what are the steps to reaching out and I think we might've might have mentioned, should have mentioned this sooner, but you could mention it here. It's, you should develop a media kit for your book. So it sounds so professional, but this is a great way of AM sending people. So if you are reaching out to influencers, especially instead of sending them a bulk load of material, especially if you happened to have a website, put up media kit and have everything, some blurbs, some excerpts, some images, uh, you know, all of the information, the way that it's going to be released.

Autumn (26m 37s):
Is it going to be on sale? Are you going to have some reviews? Do you have some earlier reviews? Put it, all of that on some websites or a download or something and be able to direct people to it. It will save you so much time and money. Just just do that and have it ready to go by the time you either start contacting people are definitely by 10 weeks out.

Jesper (26m 58s):
Oh yeah. And then this is also a good time once you are updating your website anyway, so put you a book on to your website and make links to those preorders everywhere that you have the book for sale. And of course use affiliate links when you are on your own website. You are well within the terms of service from, for example, Amazon that you allow us to take an Amazon affiliate link and put on your own website to your own Book so that if people buy your book through your own website, you are not only get the royalties For from the book, but you are also getting affiliate income royalties.

Jesper (27m 37s):
So there's no reason not to do that. So make sure that that's what you do on your website.

Autumn (27m 41s):
Yes. And a little tip there. A, Amazon's not the only one with affiliate links. Even Google has affiliate links now. So if you have books on Google play Yes, it will make sure that you get them from each of your places and it really make a difference. And so as you're setting up all of this information, a do a preorder alert for a BookBub anyway, this is a good time. You know, make sure your book is up there in places where people are going to start seeing it in that they know that it's going to be alert. You know, I'm on Smashwords and I can also do alerts.

Autumn (28m 11s):
They're saying, Hey, new book's coming. You could preorder it,

Jesper (28m 15s):
let people know. Yeah. And there's a few more things to set up as well here. 10 weeks ahead of launch. So you should also get it on to, well, I'm saying book funnel now. I guess you could use other things, but honestly BookFunnel is just as a such a cheap, an amazing service that there was no reason not to use it. So you get, you get, the book's set up on AM on BookFunnel. So this is basically going to be your ad copy or the act also means advanced readers copy.

Jesper (28m 46s):
So this is basically the, the, the copy that you are going to ask you, a bunch of readers to read ahead of the actual launch that we're going to come back to that in a minute. But you upload that here, uh, to book funnel. And then you also add the Book on good reads if you have a profile there. Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I would also, at this point in time, I will also start booking promotional sluts on different promotional sites, ah, for the launch week.

Jesper (29m 16s):
Now that you are still ahead of time, so are, you should be able to snatch up those, uh, those times slots.

Autumn (29m 24s):
And to me this is a good reason to do the preorder is because by having a preorder, you have a link and you can go ahead and book those promotions. If you're not doing a preorder, you can't do that until the book is live. Uh, it is just, yeah, you know that you're scrambling to try to get any last minute slots. And there's

Jesper (29m 42s):
only like, there's only so many advertisers who will do something for a book launch. Where do you have no reviews and they're basically standing on other books you have out in your overall review as an author. So you want to show, you want to make sure that you got in with them as soon as you can. So 10 weeks. That was a good time for that. Yeah, indeed. So do we have more on this or should we move on to nine weeks ahead? I think that's a good, that's good.

Jesper (30m 12s):
At 10 weeks, if you, if you said you were in building your media kit, still you've got plenty to do. Yeah. Well that was a, nobody set that book. Launches should be easy. You know, your running a publishing business and you're stinking a home, you're and a half a book launch into three to three months. You're gonna be on your toes. You thought you're a busy writing, wait till you trying to launch something while there is more work. Anything that you might think, at least if in my view if you want to do it right, but that's what we are.

Jesper (30m 42s):
That's what we were going through here. Yes so nine weeks ahead of Launch. So now, um, and this one, this first one that I'm going to mention that this is not vital at all. It's completely optional basically. But if you want, you can create a book trailer at this point or a, some sort of video promoting the book. If it's not directly a book trailer, then it could be something else. It could be a video with some of the world building in it or a something related to the Book. Um, this is optional, but why I have it on here, it's not because book trailers or videos like this is not going to move a lot of book sales at all.

Jesper (31m 20s):
But why I'm mentioning it is because it's quite nice to work with on Facebook ads because you can then retarget a, when you can set for Facebook to say, okay, everybody who watches at least a 50% of this video, I want to retalk it. And then you can use that as an audience once you get down to the day where the book goes live and retarget all of those people with, okay, the book is now out there. That's good to know that that's, that's quite a nice thing to do.

Jesper (31m 52s):
Um, and that, that's more the benefit of the book trailer than anything else. It's not the portrayal itself, but it goes without saying. Obviously if you want to do this, it has to look professional. If it's like a subpar, a video that you upload, nobody's gonna think it's interesting. Okay. So there was that and it's, it's not easy to do. So it's something to consider. It is I still once a book trailer for my own books and have it done it yet because I really want something high end.

Jesper (32m 24s):
No. Ken burns pictures panning to the left or right. I can't do it. So, um, I actually, I actually did one. Yeah, I did it. It's actually, it's on the Am Writing Fantasy YouTube channel. So if anybody's interested, interesting. You can go on there. But this is, so, this is like the do it yourself. The book trailer. Uh, I think it's okay. It's not the best top quality professional stuff, but I think it's okay. But I'll leave it for the listeners two jobs so you, you can let me know, just tweet me or something.

Jesper (32m 56s):
Once you watch it, you know what you think. But, but there was one day that people can look at it, see what it looks like if they want.

Autumn (33m 2s):
Yeah. But okay, so it still it nine weeks prior to the Launch I'm going to go and look at this now cause I don't think I have seen it there. So you have it. I don't think so. I've got to go look anyway, since we were off of that, it was a time if you are going to do cover reveals or a book title review or anything big, it's time to make sure that you're getting those scheduled at nine weeks out. One of the things I will say that you might, you know, book cover reveals are there used to be a big Facebook parties and things like that. And there, there, okay you gather a whole bunch of authors together and you'd maybe all give away free books or you do something and there's still events like that, but they become, instead of like hundreds of people, they've become a lot more cozy.

Autumn (33m 47s):
Often you'll see almost like it's like an author's you invited and just a few readers, even the big ones. So you know, if you can narrow your sites down, you get maybe 20 or 30 readers. That's exciting. It's good enough. But you'll have to decide if it's worth it. And I'd almost say the same thing. Booking blog Torres, this is something that you would do about it now. And as sort of the same thing, blogs are kind of fading. It's video as much more important. So if you had to choose between like a cover reveal party, Book tours or approaching influencers, go for the influencers.

Autumn (34m 21s):
Go for the video of the podcast format over going on Facebook and having something going on there.

Jesper (34m 29s):
Yeah, I would agree with that. Um, and I think as well for the cover reveal indeed, I mean if you go back and read some old blogpost on the internet and whatnot, you will see that it's being hyped a lot and I think it worked quite well as a strategy a while back. But I don't think you can get you get nuts getting much mileage from cover reveals to today. But the reason that we still do the cover reveal and uh, at this point in time, nine weeks out is basically only because it gives you another excuse to email your readers about the book coming out there.

Jesper (35m 7s):
There's a limit to how many times you can email them to say, Hey, the book is coming out now it's nine weeks and now its eight weeks and now it makes, it gets boring after awhile. And so this just gives you an excuse to email them again and remind them that the book is coming out and then you give them the cover as a cover reveal in that email. That's basically all I will. I mean, you can post it on social media as well. Why not? While you were at it, it's another reason to do a good book or a post on social media and Instagram. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so do that. But, but it's not that the cover reveal will assault all of sudden turn it into a load of the pre-orders or something, but not at all.

Jesper (35m 43s):
But, but it's, it's just a small building blood in the building. Anticipation castle that remit creating here. Yes. And don't forget though, if you do the cover reveal and you put up a temporary holding spot for your book on Amazon to go and AM put up your Real cover before it's too long, but it might be a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. But this is also then nine weeks out is also at a time where I will then set up this arch team. So basically you our advanced readers team, and this is pretty simple in the sense that you send out an email to your email list and you explain to them that you are looking for our team members and make sure that they understand what that means in the sense of what is it that you are expecting from them.

Jesper (36m 29s):
So you are going to give them a free book, a of this upcoming novel, um, and you are going to give them the opportunity to read it for free. And it's a, it's, it's been through your editor already. So it's the, from your point of view is the final version or we all know how typos getting past everybody. So they are a job in return for getting to read this book for free. The job is to learn to let you know every time they see a typo or out or if something or as well is unclear in the explanations or in the text or whatever, then they should also let you know.

Jesper (37m 6s):
But make sure that they understand that this is what they need to do. And also let them know by what date you need the feedback. And that is not even their most important role. That's an important role. But really the key wonderful thing about having this arc team comes on lunch day. But that is part of the agreement Yes uh, we can have come back to you exactly. Well save that for the lunch day. Yeah. Okay. So that was nine weeks.

Jesper (37m 37s):
10 so we move into seven weeks ahead of launch. So you can see sometimes we're skipping two weeks. They're, it is not an error, it's on purpose. It's just because then you have enough time to go through all these steps. Right. So it's not because we can't a, we do math while we probably can't do that either. But that's not the reason because we figured you need a break for a week eight and you probably had a bit of homework to catch up on to get ready for week seven. Yeah, exactly. So seven to seven weeks ahead of launch.

Jesper (38m 7s):
There's not too much here. Be honest. It's really going to get in touch with your arch team, making sure that you know everyone is up to speed, that they have gotten the book. If you've sent it out by now, it's always a toss up. It depends on how long your book is. You want it to be pretty close to your Launch day that they are finishing. It is, but you don't want it. You know, if you don't want to have to have finished it a month before and then by a long time launch day comes, they're like, Oh right, I'm supposed to do something else. You want them to be engaged and excited.

Jesper (38m 39s):
So I know when I do mine, AM sent out my Launch team Book it's within the last month or so. It might be a little early to send it out now, but it depends on your book and who you have recruited and also how many people you have recruited. It's good to good to have enough people. You know, there is nothing wrong with having a hundred people who want to read your book and will help you out on lunch day. But you also have to figure is that too many of you have to decide what you need for your group.

Jesper (39m 10s):
Yeah, I think that that part depends a lot on what it is that you are asking for. If your asking for content feedback, then hundreds of people is too much. It's gotta take you forever to go through all of that content. But I mean, I don't mind when we send it out because we're, the only thing we asking for is typos for them to tell us the type of it. So I don't mind giving out 200 fee out copies. I don't mind at all. If 200 people can look through four and try to hunt for typos, they're going to catch probably 90% 99% of of the hours that are still there.

Jesper (39m 44s):
And then you should be pretty clean after that. So, but the other thing as well as I wanted to mention by reaching out to you as a team here is again you were hunting for a bit of content that you can use in emails to read us again so you could, the arc team members probably haven't read the entire book by now, but at least they've been part partly through it at this point. There should at least, and so you can ask them to share some of their favorite quotes from so far with you because those quotes then again gives you an excuse to email your readers.

Jesper (40m 17s):
Again, reminding them that they book is coming and giving them some of the quotes and you can basically tell them that these are the favorite quotes from the advanced reader team that they picked out for you. Just to tell them where it came from, that it's not something that you pulled out and because it also makes it more, well, it humanizes the process, right? It's not like, Oh, I picked the 10 quotes so I could send them to you, but it's rather like, no, I had a conversation with the art team. They liked these. So I just wanted to pass them onto you guys as well.

Jesper (40m 47s):
Right. So that makes sense. And of course made sure to provide the link to the preorder in that email as well. So those who haven't pick up the book yet and do so. And you couldn't repeat the whole process on social media as well. Of course. Absolutely. And also a good tip too is if this is a book on a series a, it doesn't hurt to make sure that you have any of the previous books. You can have those on sale right now as well. So you might probably have one to two already get those scheduled. Maybe do some promotional advertising with those.

Jesper (41m 19s):
But it's also good to, you know, get some funnels, some new readers into your series. If this is going to be another book in the same series. So if you want to get that stuff and make sure that you have that all going okay, so that wasn't much. So now you're not going to get two weeks' break. How are you going to get a one week? Break it down. Yeah, six weeks ahead of Launch. So here, this is the time to do something a bit different as well is that it's not unique in the sense that is not something that you never heard about before, but it's basically like an exclusive bonus.

Jesper (41m 54s):
So you set it up as a release, a contest. Um, there was a million ways you could do this. Um, but basically the, the, the main idea of this is of course that you are going to create a deadline, meaning that people need to take action now because if they don't, they're going to miss out. That's what you were playing on here basically to get people to preorder the Book because if you don't, you are going to miss out on this very awesome bonus that you can't get and you can only get this bonus here and now.

Jesper (42m 25s):
So once the bonus goes away, it's gone forever. So this has to be something that you are creating specifically for this book launch and that you are not going to offer anywhere else afterwards. So you create something and you create an opt in form for it, meaning that people, we'll have to deliver that email address to you so that you can communicate with them. And then of course the idea is that on one hand they should be more than willing to give you their email address because they are showing interest in the a bonus here that you are offering.

Jesper (42m 56s):
But on the other hand, it then gives you the possibility to email them and not only tell them about the bonus and who you want it if it's like a contest or if everybody gets it. Then of course later on your you have to be able to email them with the actual bonus itself. Uh, but it also gives you the possibility to email these people wants to book launches and tell them, okay, it's now available, which is quite nice. Yes, definitely a very good, definitely a good way to have that on your mailing list as well as get some more excitement going.

Jesper (43m 31s):
Yes, and I should also mention in terms of ideas for what can you do as an exclusive bonus later this year, later in 2020 a Autumn and I should be releasing in a free course for you. And in that course that will actually be some ideas about this particular point about how you can run contests, but also what kind of ideas could you tell? What kind of things could you offer as a price? But the main point here for right now that I want you to take away is please, please, please help yourself by making sure it's something that you can deliver electronically.

Jesper (44m 10s):
You don't want to be shipping something now, it's, I mean, maybe if you run one free book somewhere as a grand prize, but you don't want to do that for a whole bunch of people. You, you know, and it's much more exciting if everyone at least skits one thing, even if there was a grand grand prize, and I do, you want to make sure that you make it very clear in your rules that it has nothing to do with reviews. I, Amazon has very strict rules that you cannot buy. Give away is nothing can be done. You can never give a reviewer a prize or a payment.

Jesper (44m 43s):
So make sure it's clear that it is literally for buying the book and supporting you, uh, but never give anyone anything for, I'm actually leaving a review other than the thank you because everything else, if Amazon finds out you were in touch, Oh you're a, you're at the Crick without a paddle. But it does say, yeah, that's correct that, but it even goes further than that because actually you cannot also run an exclusive bonus where your demanding people to buy the book either. That's not a lot.

Jesper (45m 13s):
That's very true. So the only thing you can do is you can, this is what we're going to talk about this free course later in the year. Once we release it, then we're going to talk you through exactly how to do this. But the main idea is that you can say your chances of winning is significantly higher if you buy the book, which means that you can tell them, for example, so two, win this price. You need to tell me the first word in chapter 28 those are the things you can guess, you can say.

Jesper (45m 44s):
I think it's a fine Maybe. Maybe you are wrong, maybe a REIT, but if you buy the book you probably have a better chance of winning. So that's how you can do it. But you cannot force them to buy the book, but it cannot be like you can only enter this contest if you're by the book. That's not allowed right there. Good. So we should be clear about that. But we got to explain that more in the course of that. Yes, yes. Let's move on. Okay. Oh, where, where are we? Where are we still in six weeks? Yes. If you have more for that bracket. Otherwise we can move on to five.

Jesper (46m 15s):
I think we're on five. I think we're good. Cool. All right, so you already added the book to your own website previously. Uh, and what I really like, and this one is not something necessarily that everybody can do, but I can, because I have Autumn. So if you have your own version of Autumn out there that you can do this too but, but it's really a nice, if you could put at this point in time on your own website so the people can purchase directly from you here on the website.

Jesper (46m 50s):
Oh this is such a cool tip because it gets to be so excited. Cause I guess in a computer geek group gurus runs in my family, um, you get to sell the book directly to readers, get a hundred percent of the profit and for the people buying from you, they get to get it early and it's just like win-win. Everyone's winning. I think my only warning is do check with your state laws. You might need a business license if your selling on your own website. So a big tip there. Otherwise you, I just think it's so exciting.

Jesper (47m 20s):
You get, you're your own little book store and readers are getting in early and yes you might lose sales off of Amazon but readers are getting your Book early. So this was a good thing. But yes it is. And, and I think of course, unless you are enrolled in Kindle unlimited and Your on pre-order, then this is a no-go because then you are breaking the terms of service. But if you're not in Kindle unlimited or any exclusive exclusivity programs. So that was hard to say. But if you're not in any way, any such programs, then this is where I will then schedule an email already now to go out 10 days before the release date and here in that email tell you the email subscribers that you can get the Book already.

Jesper (48m 3s):
Now if you buy it directly from this link so then you can point out to them how it actually supports you as Autumn was just explaining because you don't have to give, it gave a cut of the royalties to sites like Amazon. So basically you're telling them, Hey, as a surprise, surprise so you can get the book already now 10 days before everybody else and you are going to help me out by making sure that I get all the royalties, which you're a reader should be interested in. Absolutely. So that's a win win. Yeah.

Autumn (48m 33s):
And it's, like I said, it's fun and it's not too much coating, but you definitely have to check it out. So that's all you have to do it. It can, especially in the first time through, it's a little bit to set up. So that's enough for you. You were five weeks out. Unless you have some spare time and you know you're you, you are closer, you get to Launch you, the more things are going to take your time and the more you want it you're going to get tired. So the more spare time, if you want to make some images, you know, start gathering stuff for a social media posts because you were one of the day you release the day before you release, your going to be willing to put up a whole bunch of different images, different quotes, different reviews as they come in.

Autumn (49m 15s):
You want to make sure you have all of that stuff together. So start, make, you know, make yourself an electronic file and just dump images and ideas and stuff into it so that when you go to grab it, you have a whole bunch of stuff already there and you're not searching the web and getting frustrated because you just want to get it done now.

Jesper (49m 32s):
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So let's move on. Four weeks ahead of launch soon, a month out now. And uh, well this is basically where you can fall once you do your future self a favor. Cause normally it happens so that your past self is an asshole is not right. It's true. Yeah because isn't it a soda? Your past self is always the one who's thinking, yeah, yeah I can do that later. Then your future self is like, Oh why the hell did not take care of this?

Jesper (50m 6s):
That's how it always worked. Right? So now you can flip that around and make you make your future self happy about the past self. And that's right. So schedule in an email again. Now two, go out to your email list. Seven days before the release date. And here you are going to tell them about that exclusive bonus that we just created. And your also going to tell them that this amazing book is available for preorder. Excellent. That's always useful.

Jesper (50m 36s):
And again this is, you still want to make sure you're posting about your book out on social media. And again you don't get things organized to get things together, get quotes together as well. Just make sure you have a whole bunch of stuff to share so that you have it all ready at your fingertips so that you are your future self is so happy with you having it was a good way to put it, your organized because it's so much easier than trying to look for passages. Um, during release week you want to sit there and celebrate really a sweet Necco.

Jesper (51m 11s):
I need to come up with 20 posts today in India. And to clarify, so you, you created the bonus itself six weeks ahead of launch and now we are at four weeks ahead of launch and I'm telling you to schedule an email only seven days before on. So basically why was it that we didn't just email people six weeks ahead of launch as soon as we create the exclusive post, and this is basically the reason for the that we don't email them is that we want to narrow the time window where they actually have the ability to get their hands on this bonus because the way people work and the way this goes and it is every single time without a fault, it is everybody only do what they need to do in the last second before the deadline expires.

Jesper (51m 58s):
And that's just the way it is. It is. If you don't believe me, fine. But that's the way it is. If you don't leave us alone, go on to our Facebook groups and find the four horseman of procrastination. Yes. And so that's why you are only giving them a seven day window and you are saying by the end of this week this is going to go away and a puff of smoke, it's going to be gone forever so they have to take action. Now. It's not like if you email them and say, well sometimes within the next six weeks you need to look at this, they will forget about and not do it.

Jesper (52m 29s):
So that's why that's very, okay. All right, so we're on two to three weeks. Three weeks now? Yes. All right, so that was a good time. You should be getting back, uh, messages from your arc team. Uh, if there were looking, hopefully again, and hopefully they were not doing content edits because that should have been beta reader is probably six months ago. So hopefully there's just some typos. There's going to be, typo is, trust me, there's always typos. You want to make sure that you have gathered those, you fix them and you don't upload every time someone gives you a type out, don't upload at the final version, save the, fix them all and a draft so that as you get closer, I think, what does that, Amazon's, what, three days?

Jesper (53m 9s):
You can't upload anything prior to Launch. So when you were in that window right now, you still have three weeks. Keep gathering. Um, but make sure that you're fixing them on a master a manuscript so that you will be ready to upload it once you have all of them back. Yeah. Amen. That's it. Yeah. So once you have all the information back, are you up to update your files and upload the final version once you are ready? All right, so we can move to two weeks ahead of Launch. So this is where I really like to start collecting keywords for the future Amazon ads that are going to run towards this book.

Jesper (53m 44s):
So basically start building up the list of keywords. Sounds good. And I will prefer tool For this is Publisher Rocket Yes that's an amazing piece of software and a way back when in episode 11 and matching that, that's a long time ago. But back then I talked about Publisher Rocket in that episode and then again in episode 32 we have Dave Chesson, he's the creator of Publisher Rocket. We had him on to talk about what you can do with Publisher Rocket and is one of my favorite tools.

Jesper (54m 16s):
So we will include a link to Publisher Rocket in the show notes so you can check it out. And if you want, we don't, you know, affiliate, we don't, we're not even an affiliate with him but we don't push to me as well. Oh I forgot about that. All right, so we asked, we are, you know these things more than you keep it organized, but as we don't feel to share too many tools. This is a really great one, but Publisher rocket is a really great one. And I will also say a huge shutout shout out. It's not that I think he listens to our show, but Brian Cohen, I just took his five day AMS edge challenge and it was a ton of fun and I learned stuff and he made some great tips for finding keywords and categories and stuff as well.

Jesper (54m 56s):
And he also mentioned publishers Rocket so those are a fun things. If you a join up with one of his challenges, you'll learn some great tips for getting more keywords as well. Yeah. Okay. One week ahead of Launch. Oh, are we getting to know? Yeah. So this is where I'll send another email to our list. And again, the purpose of this email is to build anticipation. Umm, so this could be the time where you and are using it as an extract of the actual book.

Jesper (55m 28s):
Perhaps you could also email the entire first chapter to people with a to be continued at the end of it. Um, and once again, yes, you guessed it, don't forget to include links to the preorder. Absolutely. I always, I do this for my readers. I especially cause a, you know, I'm Writing at least 40 chapter books. I will give away the first three chapters with links at the end of even the three chapters of where to go get a preorder and I get that to all my reader's on my mailing list. Yes. And now that you were inside, you are emailing software and doing email's anyway.

Jesper (56m 2s):
Then schedule and email as well to go out to your list at 6:00 AM am on launch day with the details about the book and all of the purchase links as well. Excellent. That's getting close. And so definitely at this point it's probably looking at where at one week Launch so you, you should have your final manuscript up

Autumn (56m 24s):
and ready to upload your final version two, the channel's because if you wait to close to launch it again, that three day window for Amazon. After that you can't touch her Book file. If you have it uploaded your for a final version, guess what? They are going to get the not final version. So get yourself a few days at a deep breath and get your final book up there. Yeah, hopefully you're already done it by now, but at least at this point it's just the latest yet. This is what you need. The original definition have a deadline is a lion.

Autumn (56m 55s):
You deduct CROs on pain of death. Am this is your deadline and get your book up there.

Jesper (57m 0s):
Yeah. Okay. So we are heading into the final stretch here at a three days ahead of Launch. Uh, there is only a few things that I do here. So basically logging into Amazon author central to basically claim your book there. So there is a co, a tab in author central called Book top and you click on add more books there, find your niche, search for your name, find a book that you're publishing and click at it and then it will be visible on your author page on, on Amazon. So I'll do that. And, and the same thing if you have a book or a profile or a profile on a BookBub, then you go there and claim the book there as well.

Jesper (57m 36s):
Yeah. And if you don't have it by now, make sure that you have good reads. Yes, yes, yes. And with BookBub AM do update all the Stallings on on your profile because that will automatically trick a book bub to send out and a new release alerts to your BookBub followers, which is, there is no reason not to do that.

Autumn (57m 56s):
That's very true. All right, we're really close to Launch. So right before she out, don't forget, this is where you're going to check for reviews. You're going to make sure, make sure that you just create a reminder. So you go in and you're going to check for some reviews coming up so that you can look for them. Oh, you're going to actually use the good ones, the five star Wars and stuff. You wanna use those for two year tips. But I know you have some tips, don't you? For if you get any bad reviews, right?

Jesper (58m 29s):
Well yeah well that the TEP is basically to make sure that you check that the bad reviews is within terms of service. So if somebody starts complaining about things that are not with in terms of service, which to be honest, we are going to cover a much more in the free cost. So maybe that's too much detailed to go in to hear. But make a long story short just to say that there are ways in which you can get Amazon to remove a bad review. Um, but I think there are all the details of that is not really related to launching.

Jesper (59m 0s):
So maybe we can come back to that and in the free course I am going to explain it in detail there. Sounds good. Yeah. So all I will do here one day ahead of launch is just to send out an email to your list to say, Hey, it's coming tomorrow. Uh, and remind them as well that this is now the last chance to get that exclusive preorder a bonus. Excellent. It's Scott, that's a good tip. And this is probably the place where you are going to get most people.

Autumn (59m 27s):
This is pretty and there always wait for the last bit. Yes. Um, but then so that's Launch exciting. All right. First are you going to wake up and you're going to toast yourself with a mimosa to celebrate? Don't forget to celebrate. This is a big, big day. No matter how many books you launch, it's always exciting to lunch a book. So, but also hopefully you already had a schedule, but you know, email your launch team because this is your arc team. This was the reason you gave away all those free copies.

Autumn (59m 59s):
It was helpful to get the typos. Admittedly, they have saved my butt on more than one occasion, including the very careful reader who's did you mean this guy and not that one can. I can I tell you that

Jesper (1h 0m 10s):
by the way, that it was once as well as the one of the arc team members came back to me and said, so why is half of this chapter in this book twice? Oh no. And I went and apparently once I got the edited version back from the editor, for some reason I, I can't remember what I have been doing, but I have been copying, pasting stuff for some reason and I forgot to delete my old original first draft version. So it had my first draft version of half of the chapter in there together with the editors.

Jesper (1h 0m 42s):
Correct it. Luckily this person capture recorded and told me about it so I could delete it. But it was like Jesus. I mean if I hadn't, if the act team hadn't told me, I wouldn't have noticed.

Autumn (1h 0m 55s):
Yeah. Uh, you know how your arch team members, they are lifesavers but the whole of the reason that they're really there and the reason you recruit them in the reason you vet them as well, which is important, you shouldn't just let everyone in it, especially if you've written a few books, is because on today the day you Book Launch you tell them, Hey, it's time for you to do your job and say thank you and leave a review. That's that sort of what the whole deal was.

Autumn (1h 1m 26s):
They get to leave an honest review. That's the important key. You're not asking them for a good review or a bad review. It's

Jesper (1h 1m 33s):
an honest, right. There is even more important key here because you need, this is where you need to be really careful and you also have to be careful how you are a word in your email because according to Amazon's, again in terms of service, you cannot give out an ad copy and demand a review in return. So the only thing you can do when you are wearing your email here is that you can appreciate it. Tell them how much you would appreciate it. If they would want to leave an honest review on a book, then it would really mean a lot to you and then you can of course explain how reviews means a lot to the success of a book and explain why it is important because most people actually even know we are authors.

Jesper (1h 2m 14s):
We know why it's important, but a lot of readers don't. So you explain that to them and you can kindly ask them that. It would be really nice if they would want to do it, but you cannot say, I gave you an art copy. Now you need to give me a review. Because you knew that when you were breaking the terms of service. Absolutely. A very good tip because you don't wanna piss off of Amazon. No, no. It's weird. Most of the book sales come from so be nice to Amazon, follow their rules and Yes.

Jesper (1h 2m 44s):
The reason you got an arc team together was hopefully to get, you know, if you had a hundred member team, if you get over 50 as you can get like 75 reviews, that's been stick a while. That's a little bit, but again, most the time, you know a year not going to get a hundred percent of people leaving reviews. Some people are going to be busy and they're not all gonna happen on the first day. I've most of the time, if they come within the first week, that's, that's great. Yeah. We again, we are going to talk more about this in the, in the free course. So now that's basically all you need to do on launch day.

Jesper (1h 3m 16s):
So thankfully, thankfully, because we've been doing so much work ahead of monsters, so much to do now it's everything has been set up and everything is running. So that's nice. And then one day after launch I would just go in and start activating Amazon ads and if you want to do Facebook ads then this is also at the time where I would get those going. But that's basically it. And if you did do a preorder sale price, you know, you have to think about how many days you want to leave that going. But you might have some people change it after one day.

Jesper (1h 3m 47s):
Some people leave it up for a week. But if you had a preorder, um, a special discount. Yeah. The book's live now that you might wanna think about changing that. Yeah. And of course that exclusive launch bonus thing that you did it, this is also a course of time now where you need to disable all of the signup forms for that and then start giving away the actual price. Absolutely. And now you will be really happy that it was something electronic. Yes. You can just hit send Yes.

Jesper (1h 4m 16s):
Okay. Uh, so one week after launch, I would then send out a thank you email to the art team and you're not asking for anything in this email at all. You're basically just thanking them for us, for their involvement and what they've done for you. Because honestly, as we just said, these people are amazing. It helps so much. So we sent them a sincere thank you message. That's, I think that's a nice touch. Absolutely. I mean the arc team is often a made up of Your super fans are the ones that stick with you. I've been, I've had ones through like six book launches and you can't pay these people enough to know to be there and supportive and often a lot of them are happy to be a part of the team, so thank them.

Jesper (1h 4m 59s):
That's all you can do. Okay. Two weeks after launce a I was just at this point go and check out. You're a good reach account if you have one and just see if the book has accumulated enough reviews on it. And if it has, then you can consider running a good wheat to give it away if you want. And if there's not enough reviews then maybe come back and check again later. Um, the one thing I do like about these good reviews, good reads, giveaways, even though they did crank up the prices for these are a while back to yeah.

Jesper (1h 5m 32s):
But, but what I do like though is that it's, it has this sort of social amplification method in or trigger in it that, so once somebody enter the giveaway, it automatically, it has to Book add a two. They're want to read shells, but it also creates a story in the newsfeed for all their friends and followers to see Yes. So I do think that's quite nice, but of course for you to evaluate if you think it's worth the money and not, but um, it might be,

Autumn (1h 6m 2s):
absolutely. I think there are exciting and fantastic. I was very disappointed when they raised the prices high as that you did, but yeah,

Jesper (1h 6m 8s):
yeah, yeah. We won't go there. No. Okay. Three weeks off the Lance AM it's now too time too for another email to your list and this time it is also a thank you email and I think it's quite good to talk a bit about how the Launch has gone so far. And you could possibly include a screenshot of the Amazon reviews stats or something like that. Maybe the sales ranking, I don't know. Something because it could also be, you know, you could also do a screenshot or a short of a quote from good reviews or something.

Jesper (1h 6m 43s):
But the point is just to give them some sort of social proof because they're will be some people on your list. And I'm also going to talk more about this in the free costs, but for whatever reason, or a third of your list never buys anything. I don't know why, but I don't know why they're on the list, but, but this is just the case. And uh, so by giving some of these people some social proof that other people actually liking the books that sometimes push some of them over the S and then they'll buy the book, uh, so it's good to, to collect those extra sales there.

Autumn (1h 7m 14s):
Yes, very true. And I will say it's amazing how many people who are on your list and they, maybe they just don't read every episode, have read every thing, you know, email that you send them. But there's times that there'll be like six months, almost a year later. Oh, you published a book. So it definitely does not hurt even though you've sent all these emails off, pre-ordering and everything else. Say one more time, but you know, by the way it's live. Thank you for going and buying it. And if you haven't, you know, these are some of the early reviews.

Autumn (1h 7m 45s):
Is it some of the reasons what the things people have said and you can go still pick up a copy.

Jesper (1h 7m 50s):
Yes. Okay. Should we move on here? Four weeks after lunch. So we are almost there now. This is just after lunch. Steps yes. This is just the small little trick that I want to share. Um, so if you sent you our team another short email and you can just thank them once again for all the help that that's never in any harm to thank people a lot. But then while your doing that, also ask them if they read any of your other books and maybe they forgot to leave a review.

Jesper (1h 8m 23s):
That's a good to know that this is the yes, just like a short little smart trick there to maybe collect some more reviews for some of your other books is exciting. Very excellent because yeah, reviews are a wonderful, I've noticed that, you know as my serious goes on as you would think that the reviews should go up, but they seemed to go down at the numbers of them are so good tip. Okay. Five weeks after lunch. This is the final one and this is basically similar to the week before, but this time you are emailing the rest of your list or not the art team, but the rest of the list and basically ask them what they thought about the book and then this gives you an excuse to mentioned the importance of reviews.

Jesper (1h 9m 4s):
Yes. And then see if you can check, you have some additional reviews or this way,

Autumn (1h 9m 8s):
which is excellent. A good tip, and I will say we haven't kind of mentioned it, but throwing all of this lunchtime, you should hopefully have still been using some of those information and images and reviews that you've gathered and you've been posting on social media as well. So make sure that you've done that and also make sure if you happen to have to set your book up with some Book specific hashtags, which has definitely a trick I like doing and I even have a Book hashtag section now in the back of my Book, uh, make sure that you're searching for people to see if they, have you been at all sharing your book hashtags and read picture your re tweeting, reposting, whatever platform you are on the re in front of it and you know, thanking people for sharing some of this stuff about your book.

Jesper (1h 9m 54s):
Yeah, so that was a ton of stuff around book launches and basically this is the process that Autumn and I more or less go through when we launch the book sometimes should we tweak a few Steps here and there, change things around a bit of maybe sometimes, but, but overall this is the framework and uh, I know that that was quite a lot of a, maybe we gave you a few ideas here in there that you took note of, but also it was sort of an overload of information. Then in the free course again that we were going to do later this year for you.

Jesper (1h 10m 27s):
We will also have some information downloads in there where you can basically get the entire process laid out for you and explain so you can look forward to that if, if, but at least in the meantime we just talk you through the entire thing. Yeah,

Autumn (1h 10m 42s):
and so if you're launching books could luck to you this summer. It is an exciting time to start reading and will look forward to seeing what new books are coming out.

Jesper (1h 10m 53s):
All right, so next Monday we are talking about something that could be mistaken for a show about fishing or even boxing, but the, that's the hook.

Narrator (1h 11m 4s):
If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also Join Autumn and Jasper on patrion.com/am Writing Fantasy for as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 71 – Killing off your character doesn't make your story good

Killing characters in a novel is fine, but there is a right way to go about it.

In Episode 71 of The Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper draw their swords and magical wands to discuss how to handle the killing of a fictional character.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (1s): You're listening to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from Writing Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm Autumn. This is episode 71 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast and today we are going to discuss

Narrator (40s): if there's anything to consider when

Jesper (43s): killing off characters in your story or can you just sort of get rid of them like AM if Tom Bombadil appears into your story, can you get just get rid of it, but I know it wasn't the, you know, but my fingers would be itching to get rid of that guy. I really don't like that character.

Autumn (1m 4s): Yeah. And I think we can talk about too, I know in our first series AM you know how we chose how I chose my first time when I had a kill off a character has changed immensely since that time. So I'm going to be fun to revisit what happened the first time I realized I have to kill off a character. What am I beloved characters?

Jesper (1m 27s): Yeah. That's one of the things, you know, sometimes we can get a bit of a text to who to characterize, but uh,

Autumn (1m 33s): Oh yeah. Horrible that way. But Hey, yeah, we will for now. I mean, how are things going on your side of the ocean?

Jesper (1m 44s): Well, a, it's, it's quite good I guess, uh, as good as things can be in the middle of this covert 19 pandemic that is still terrorizing the world. Uh, I mean at the point of us recording this, uh, we're just at the end of Easter right now. Uh, so yeah, as you can imagine, it's been pretty quiet Easter holiday where like everybody else, we've just been staying at home and not much happening too, be honest. But on the other hand, that's a, that's a good thing.

Um, and also in the middle of this crisis, we, we, we've been trying to sell our house. Right.

Autumn (2m 19s): Well I'm going to ask you how that was going to buy a house showings or on hold? No, no, actually they're not.

Jesper (2m 29s): I mean, as long as you don't touch anything and to house us, nothing is going to happen. Right. I mean, as long as you, you keep your distance from the real estate agent, that's also fine. Um, so there's those showing houses. Um, but yeah, we've been trying to sell out of how, well, honestly we've been trying for more than a year now. Um, because the kids aren't going to school in another city like 15 kilometers from here. So we want to a move. They're just to get rid of the daily commute back and forth.

And also because the kids are getting older, so they want to have their own playmate play, the play time, so, or a play date or whatever you call it, with, with the, with their friends. And they actually, at least the older one is, he's old enough to go and see people on his own as long as you can get there. But the problem is that he can, from where we live now as we always have to drive him, which is quite annoying for him and because then we don't have time. So he kept not just go and visit friends as much as he likes.

So that's a big part and why we want to move. So, but we've been trying for more than a year now and uh, we've just agreed here over Easter that a, with a real estate agent that we are going to lower the price with a a hundred thousand Danish grounds. So that's about 15,000 us dollars a year. Yeah. And I think we've reached the limit now to be honest. I mean, if this is the second time, we're reducing the price with that amount.

So if it doesn't sell it now, I think we might end up pulling out of the market at least for a while and then go back to it later. I mean it's not, is not what we want to do because of the reasons I just mentioned. But there is also a limit on how cheap you're going to sell this house. Absolutely. I mean it's gotta be worth it or it's not worth it. Yeah. I mean we like 30,000 us dollars down from where we started right now. So I think, yeah, I don't wanna we don't want to go much, much further than that.

No, that's always hard. So we'll see what happens from a, it has still not a way that the price reduction has still not kicked in on the websites and stuff like that. So we'll see what happens if, if it brings any interest or not. Because again, the covert 19 pandemic is also making while it very difficult to sell a house right now or not. Yeah, I'm not a, not as much, I'm not thinking so much about people viewing houses, but more like there is so much insecurity about finances right now.

So it's a bit like people are holding back a bit. So, and I can't imagine like I know you said your, you would have to go look for a house and you might get an apartment for a while and I can't imagine doing that in a pandemic world. So I yeah, yeah, yeah. Good luck with that on all fronts. It just, it's gone from selling a house. It was already complicated enough to wow, you've got a Rubik's cube worse or a Ruby grew up, Goldstein type machine going just to do one step.

This is crazy. Yeah. But on the other hand to do remember the, you know, once we sell the house, it's probably going to be like six months before we need to leave the house. Right. So it's so it's not like we, it's going to be quite a while before we move out after it's been so good. I usually in the us S it's a very quick, it's a month or two and your,

Autumn (5m 58s): you're out. So six months

Jesper (6m 2s): you can agree anything basically is quite normal for selling a house he in in Denmark at least a one is quite normal that you will agree. Something like a five, six month checkup over time. That's quite normal.

Autumn (6m 15s): That's what that's, that's so much calmer than over here is, that's a good good. That's good. Yeah.

Jesper (6m 20s): Yeah. But you need to usually have time to find something else to live in. You need to pack all of your stuff. I mean, we don't want

Autumn (6m 26s): stress like, you know that it gets done. We're all stressed in America. Are you kidding?

Jesper (6m 34s): Yeah. It will take a nice and slow. So, but how things have been on your side as well?

Autumn (6m 39s): Well, good. As long as you ignore the outside news. I mean the U S just just crossed the threshold to the most deaths in the world. So I try not to, I stopped reading the news and AM just been working on the cabin. We go out and very rarely, but Hey, I actually finished the inside of the room that we'd been building. So I have my little kitchen area. It's all very cute and cozy and getting things, you know, really wrapped up. And now I'm just working on the outside, um, trim and some the clapboard siding and my husband built a picnic table over Easter weekend, which was very exciting.

And we cooked something outside because it was a gorgeous weather. So, and our little R little sphere of the stream and the woods and now you hear Al was at night in the spring. Peepers are out. So it's quite lovely that way. And actually if you hear any weird drumming, it's a rainy day again. And we were having a rainy Monday. So every time we go to the record, I've got this little drum being in the background. Um, but it's, it's, it's quite lovely in its own way. If it was AM not such a terrifying year, it would be just a little blissful heaven.

But I guess the outside world feels like it's burning and, but my little sphere of the woods is quite lovely. So we'll just stay here.

Jesper (7m 53s): No, that's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. And actually speaking of the outside world burning there, there was actually a very quick little tip I thought I could share here upfront because because of the, the whole chaos and the world, all of the big companies has basically scaled back on the advertising. So I'm hearing on almost everywhere that a running Facebook ads at the moment, it's a lot cheaper than normally.

Excellent. Some of our listeners I'm well at depending on when your listening to this of course, and what the status is of the pandemic at that point in time. We could all hope that is better of course, but if it's not, then you might want to dip your toes into some Facebook advertising right now if you have a new book to maybe publish or maybe at the time or maybe running some ads for this building or something like that, it, it's a lot cheaper for right now to the normal.

So that's it. That's a good little tips in a small ship of light in all of the darkness here a week on the internet with the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, so as disgust, a few episodes to go. We were thinking, two, put a short pause together and the Facebook groups voted for it and that it should be about character development. But we also said that we were only going to create the course if we've got at least 20 sign-ups

Autumn (9m 28s): and we ended up with more than 20, so it was so excited that we're actually going to be making this course that kind of came out of nowhere and we never expected to do so we just went to the task and the task list. So we just added more tasks to our individual task lists, which of course we've never ever, ever even gotten close to the bottom of. It'll be good to do the sweating check in with a, you know, we added it and hopefully in a week or two we'll be crossing it right off hand

Jesper (10m 2s): just to get it done. Yeah, well we have the rest of our lives to get to the bottom of that task list for me. They be very long and, and successful and busy. Very, very busy. Yeah, that's true. But yeah. So we'll, we'll stop recording this, uh, this course and AM well, actually this episode will go out on the 4th of May, so we'll be done. Well actually, if everything has gone well and according to plan, those who signed up for the course should already have it in their inbox by the time and listen to this, but we see how that goes.

So it was it

Autumn (10m 41s): time traveling, sending this off into the future where we're done with the course already.

Jesper (10m 49s): Yeah, that's true. But at least we'll do everything we can to make sure that people have it be before the end of April, like we promised. Yes. Um, but maybe just us a quick recap. So in the course we will cover five different topics. Um, the first one being on cast of characters, so understanding what type of archetype characters are available and which ones your story needs. Uh, then we will talk about why you need to start with character creation rather than plot and also understanding character motivation, choosing point of view characters and then character arcs and how to tie them into the story structure.

Excellent. I can't wait a little bit of a great little course. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Anything else we need to share?

Autumn (11m 37s): Oh no, I think that's, well I had a little tip that got me excited about the email marketing course that you're a working on and I'm editing for you before we get around a recording. But I actually had a fellow author who I didn't even know was on my email recently. Am emailed me and said, ah, so I am sitting here in all of your email prowess. As I realized I need to put a little more effort in mind to make them even half as impressive. And I was like, wow, that's me.

Is that it often hear, you know, from readers, I think every author has that where they don't often always hear it from your readers every single time you said on the email. But it's always nice to hear from a compatriot and contemporary who tells you you are doing a good job in, which made me think high working on that email course script, um, for us to get that going.

Jesper (12m 26s): So that's another course on our to do list that we're making progress on and obviously we have some things to teach. So that's exciting. Yeah, that's all excellent. So all it all in due time, I think 2020 will be a good year in some way. And yeah, well at least in terms of putting out a lot of the content for teaching of the authors and helping the author authors out.

Autumn (12m 51s): So all in due time we, we'll make sure to mention it on future episodes as things gets ready. But uh, yeah, uh, Killing characters so hard. It's for it. I have to admit, I've met a few authors who, it was like second nature for them to kill off characters. But I know for me, when I was writing my first trilogy and I had that dawning realization, as the stakes got higher and higher and bad things were happening, that someone's going to die.

Someone who has to die. You can't have this Epic Fantasy quest that all these life threatening situation and no one dies. It, it feels so false. The stakes don't feel real. So someone has to die in who is terrible. I think I wrote a blog post on it that was basically the was titled that someone has to die. It was quite agonizing because I do, I loved all my characters and I went through many gyrations as I was plotting out that final book.

I mean people had died earlier, but not one of the big, big characters. Um, and trying to figure out how to do it and who was going to be that person. Yeah. It was a very tough as a new author and my first Epic Fantasy trilogy to us to figure that one out and to get to a point where I felt comfortable with it. Hmm. Well that's quite interesting because I don't have that problem. You can kill them left and right.

Yeah buddy. But it's still, there is finally a difference we found between us. I mean, I had a horrible time. I, I went through a random number generator. I was pulling names out of hat just to try to figure out which one it had to be. I love for them. It was horrible. So why did you have to kill one of them? It just didn't feel real. I always have complained that, you know, you read about these amazing question and somehow everyone makes it out alive and a third of these horrible life threatening situations.

And that's just to me, unrealistic unfeasible. I just logically somebody has a die silly character. One of the big characters, cause again I, my trilogy really has probably five or six, you know, really top tier the point of view characters and they're kind of all my little heroes and heroines. So I had to choose one of them. And it was, like I said, it was quite how I ended up getting there is funny in its own way, but I knew someone to make the stakes Real somebody's had to die.

It has to be a gut punch at some point. Those final chapters. So you, you roll the dice Indian or what? I did and I settled on a character, but honestly when I was writing the story out, I got to a scene, I'm like, this is it. This is the character that dyes. It came as I was writing it with someone I didn't even expect AM was going to die and it fit the story. And that's sort of even with that old blog post when I was writing, um, about what it was going through it, even when I was going through it, that's sorta what it ended up being is that it has to fit the story.

You, you can't, you can you random if you really need something to tell you, you can random number generated in work it in. But I know since then I've talked to other authors who you just writing and there's a point where you're like, this character dies here. You just know it. And I know, I remember talking to one author and he said, and the funny thing is I had it all plotted out and this character was going to show up in like three or four more chapters. It, it was like a point of view character. And so it was like I have to rework my entire plot to make the death happen when it felt right for it to happen because I, everything else I plotted was good.

And obviously they couldn't come back from the dead to be for their new scenes, so they had to figure that one out. But I do think, um, if your a slight pantser in your writing, there becomes a point where it's, you know, you just get to that life or death moment and usually you have your hero is make it out and just every once in a while and you're like, no, this is, this is the, this is the time that this character doesn't make it.

Jesper (17m 10s): And then you have to do it. The fallout. Yeah, for sure. But, but I agree. I mean, I don't have any problem Killing characters. I'm probably not the kindness to my characters. They would probably don't like me. I won't say my character is like me, how life is hell and my world. So, but, uh, but I do think there's a lot of truth in the fact that Killing characters should not be taken lightly. Um, there needs to be a reason on a purpose for Killing a character.

Uh, and I'm just thinking of an example and I, and I might be mistaken to be honest, because I'm not a hundred percent sure if it's true, but I did hear once that, um, Stephen King had written himself into a corner and at that, in the fact that he had way too many characters and he didn't quite know how to get all the different story arcs merged together. So he decided to blow up the town and a bunch of characters with it. And then while up, you know, you've got wind of a bunch of the storylines, but then everything could work again.

Uh, I don't know if that was him doing that or if it's just like a story about it, but at least I would say, you know, it serves us a good example to me how to not do it, but just because you did you feel like I have to many characters and I don't know what to do. Killing them for that reason is just not good enough.

Autumn (18m 32s): No, no. And I have to say, I mean really if your writing something, I'm a very deep and impactful and you want your readers to love your character as sometimes it's gotta be the one that is, no one wants to see di. And that's the way it always is tough. I think as an author you don't do as a reader to your reading and you don't want that character did I? It's always such a tragedy. I mean that's why I had um, game of Thrones. I know some people love game of Thrones because characters were dying left and right.

Just when you get attached to someone there gone. And I, it was too many for me. I have too many of my favorite characters die. I can easily just put down a book and be like, I just really for game of Thrones, I could go back and read it now because I know which characters I can stay attached to. Uh, reading it through for the first time. I still remember I picked up the first book and the series is back probably when it came out, which is what, a decade and a half ago or something. It was ages ago when I got to the end when Ned died, it was like, and I just put the book away and it took probably eight years for me to be like, I wonder what happened with that princess.

You got married to the, you know, nomadic guy. I couldn't remember names or anything and I finally went back and picked up the book again because I was curious. And then low and behold like six months later it becomes this huge thing. So, but I still never made it actually reading wise, I think past book three because I've just got so sick of it, I got to the red wedding and I was like, I'm done. I'm just done. Yeah,

Jesper (20m 8s): a bit. But this is, I mean, you do run that risk of annoying the reader way. You know it if you kill off a character, especially if it's one of their favorites, unless I mean if there is a really good reason for it, I think it's okay. Um, you, you still going to annoy some people about or some maybe they feel sad about it, but if it's like there was a really good point to this and it serves the story really well, then I think it's okay.

Um, but killing off characters are never easy in that way, but you need to be careful not to do it the wrong way.

Autumn (20m 45s): Exactly. I have received a text message from my niece who reads my books and she was said she was mad at me when she read that final book and let the one character died. So I know I chose the right character. Would I can spark hire from my niece say, how could you, but again, it's, it was important to the story, I think because it did make it more impactful. I made those final scenes and I think that's part of Killing a character. You can't just kill off somebody and the next day everyone jumps up and maybe they're angry.

It's just if they don't process it, if you don't have that, especially when you're doing the wrap up after the climax, if you don't have that tearful time, the one characters mourning that loss or you know what the worlds going to be like without those character, it helps. It helps with the grieving process, with even the reader to actually be able to say, Hey, this is important. It was important to everyone and, and we're so sorry and life's going to be forever different.

Jesper (21m 45s): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean there's, there's purpose behind this topic, right? Because on one hand you could say, uh, if the writer, for example, realized, is that a, well, okay, I don't think that as much of a purpose for this character anyway, so let me kill that character. Right? I mean, what if the character, it didn't have a purpose at the first place, what is he, what is he or she even doing there? But you shouldn't be in the story at all. But on the flip side, I would say, and I'm curious what you think about this, but I would say you can add a story or a character to the story with the purpose that you want to kill them.

Autumn (22m 28s): I think it makes sense. It does. It does. It now that I plot out more, I kind of, no, you know, if the character is not going to make it from the beginning and it's not as much of a surprise anymore because I'm no longer whipped behind the ears. I as an author and I kind of, I've kinda, you know, learned to it was like becoming a manager or you can't be best friends with your employees is doesn't matter how much you like them because you might have to fire them someday. So you always need that little arms distance. Um, no matter how much you want to hug them sometimes.

But it's the same with your characters. Sometimes, you know, they're gonna die, but that's also a problem. I mean, I've talked to a lot of other writers and they've said that if they know that character is going to die ahead of time, there kind of colder and almost crueler to them. And I've said, I've just the opposite. If I know a character is going to die, I actually spend more time like developing them and loving them and you know, there were like the glowing wonderful thing and then I kill him off. So I give them the best life possible before ending it.

But again, that can be actually a challenge for writers if they know the characters is going to die, maybe they don't want to get to attach to them. And so they don't write it quite as well as maybe they need to go.

Jesper (23m 43s): Well that's true. Yeah, I guess so that, that could be a thing actually. Uh, but I just feel like if you add a character to the story, knowing that this person is going to die, you know, if they're destined to die at some point, then it also means that the actual dying part has a role to play in the story. I mean it will tie into the main storyline somehow. Um, and it becomes very meaningful because of that. And I think some of those way it might sound, uh, you know, at face value it might sound a bit a bit weirdly.

Okay. So you add a character just to kill them, but it actually usually ends up with a very, very meaningful death that that actually plays heavy Lee on the emotions as well. So if it might be a lot better than you think to do something like that.

Autumn (24m 37s): Oh, I agree. And I think again, that almost becomes as a writer, uh, you know, we, whether or not you want to read that we create hidden subtext or a symbolic symbolism in stuff in our characters are in our themes of our novels. You know, are we creating just a simple story or is there some underlying message? It's so hard to say, but death has a big, and um, I know even though I am writing for adults and adults often read my books, I have readers as young as 13. So you are giving them tools psychology wise of how to process this.

You know, to me it shouldn't be a a shoot 'em up game type of world where we're doing, Oh what does the one with the car chases? And you know, people jump out and shoot everyone in gangster his and I don't want that type of world. I want the deaths to be um, of a sense of loss too. The other characters, I want the reader to feel that sense of loss and how to grieve, but also that, you know, they died hopefully for a cause because they believed in something not because you know, the bridge collapsed on their head.

You know, life is already crazy enough and we're always looking for a meaning of our own lives. That books where we have a beginning and an end and there is a meaning and a purpose in a storyline that we sometimes can't create a lot of our own lives. We can create that in our novels. And so the life and the depth of a character could have a purpose and that's kind of soothing in this crazy chaotic pentatonic world we live in.

Jesper (26m 10s): Yeah, I think you're right. Absolutely. But I think part of the point your making as well, at least I think it is, is also that the, the death scene itself should be an Epic one is something to me and the, OK. Then, you know, as you said, you know, the Brits fall on their head and, and they die. You know, it's like what?

Autumn (26m 31s): Yeah, the, the giants, you know, trips and squish and it's just no fun that way. No, it's going to be in the sense of loss. I can't imagine you have this incredible character is it just dies because

Jesper (26m 44s): of the giant trips will just be de, you know, so senseless, but no one wants to a senseless, it does sound quite fun for me for a tertiary character. How does that, we'll see that in some way. Yeah. I, did you ever see the a tooth 2004 movie called Troy with Brad Pitt where he played at the kidneys? I think I did. Yes. It was just like, I really, really liked that movie. I mean a Brad Pitt is bad-ass Achilles a especially a remember like there is one, this one seen in the um, in the movie where the two armies, uh, you know, they, they, they need to fight each other, but then the Kings sort of discuss between them and say, well it's a bit of stupid thing that we, all of these people are going to die so why don't we just take our two best fighters and let them fight and then uh, whoever wins wins and, and everybody else have to die.

So there are the two Kings, it greeters and AM there was this huge, like huge guy, the guy, you know who, who is the champion of the one arm and he steps out in front of the army there on his ready to fight. Like he looks like a freaking bad ass, right? So your thinking Oh shit. And then a the, I think it's Agamemnon, the other King and turn it around to the army and he calls it Kellys and then nothing happens. And he's at the way he called slate.

I, it's a bit of quite a while to know what's the movie, but I think he calls it a few times and not nothing happens. And then he tells her, I said, where, where's the Achilles? Uh, well he's probably sleeping. So somebody runs down to the beach and into a right and quite right Achilles, just sleeping in his tent. So they get him and say you need to come and fight. So he just sort of gets up and um, you know, he has, he is a warning here and everything is going in there. So he walked up and a stand in front of their army.

They're in facing this a group guy there. They'll probably like, I don't know, a hundred feet between them or something at that point. So AM this guy, he has a spirit, you're the guy and Achilles has his short sword. So this other guy, Achilles just starts running towards him, like full sprint street for him. And the other guy then takes the spear up and throws it. And just like the most cool attitude bread pit could ever make.

He, you know, he his head slightly to the side and pass us right through, right past him, like an inch past him or something. And he doesn't stop running at all. And you just do it this while in full sprint. And then when he gets to the guy, he, he jumps up and the steps, he's a short sought into the guy down the neck and then, and then he falls off that, you know, it was just like done and, and the guy's done. So yeah. And he has several of these kinds of insane scenes in this movement.

And Achilles is so freaking badass. But then I'm getting to my point now, so I love that movie and I know why Achilles has to die the way he does and all that. But getting an Aero in the heel, it just feels like this is so fricking lame, you know? And this is not an Epic death. So it was a hero that is just like more bad ass than anybody else. And it annoys me so bad.

Autumn (30m 14s): I'm going to go back and rewrite Grecian history and Achilles should die a little bit better.

Jesper (30m 20s): Yeah, I mean if he has to die, it should be in Epic death. Right. I mean this is like the whole time hero. Nobody is more bad as this guy and then he has to die by an arrow in the heel, I mean I know, I understand all of the law and all of the history in why it is so and all that good stuff. But ah,

Autumn (30m 37s): come on. This is annoying. And again, it's one that um, all these actors, all of these directors and actors have struggled with when they get to play this awesome bad-ass character and they know they have, its a written, they have to die this way. And I know there's been one scene where I think you shot a couple times in the chest and they break off. So the only one that's visible is the one who in his heel and to everyone, you know, that starts the legend that he dies because of this. And so they tried so many times. But yeah, it's, it is one of those things.

I mean I can see that with AM. I know I've watched lots of shows and my husband and I will be like, Oh, how could it end that way? And sometimes the only way for me to deal with that is to, it's like the wrap up is too sudden. So in my head I'm, I'm Writing the next scene so that I can then process the death better when it seems so meaningless. And you know, I don't want to do that with you. You go to my readers. And I think that's one reason. I mean, so many writers often fail at the wrap up very well or fail with those emotions afterwards, which are so nuanced.

You meet a lot of readers these days, they don't want the hero like AM Hercules or you know, He-Man. You know, we used to have all these shows where it was like, you know, these brute Conan the barbarian, you know, they'd go and squash people and kill people at a time and there's never any reflection. And that's not the type of Fantasy we're reading and writing right now is people want to have the reflection. They want to feel that sense of loss. And so I think that's important to give that to readers, at least in the Fantasy I write and you know, not everyone's writing that or reading that, but there's definitely a trend to have more side effects of even PTSD and these things that a people are struggling with to make sense in this world.

Jesper (32m 27s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just, it is just important to keep everything aligned with the story that you're telling. Um, at the end of the day, that's, that's the best thing can do.

Autumn (32m 41s): So a random number generator is probably best way for, to have to choose between your favorite character as if you're like me and your way to attach to everyone and a U. So you have to find some way of killing them off. And I do tell people, if you are like me and you just absolutely adore all your characters and you don't want to see any of them die, just to remember, you control the universe and you can control where they go in there dead. And this is magic and Fantasy.

So I do AM am I my one characters? Death actually is what spawned the basis of a second trilogy that goes into the realm of the spirit realm actually in which is ends up being where all magic is from. And it creates a whole nother storyline that might not have happened if I hadn't killed off a character, especially the character I chose. So I do tell him, that's a whole another thing. And I know when we talk about character development and magic and in a lot of our courses we talk about, you know, you should answer that question of what happens when characters die?

Where do they go? It's part of the world's mythos. It's the tired of the part of the world building. So if you have the answers to that question, hopefully as a writer, it, it doesn't hurt so much to kill them off. Unless they go to the ether and just dissolve into a universe, then I guess they're going to,

Jesper (34m 7s): no, not yet. But that's true. Uh, in, in, in my own trilogy as well. Um, there was a, uh, a world For the debt as well, and went to one of the characters die. Um, he goes there, uh, and then another character actually gets to meet her love again, uh, in the realm of the debt. So, um, so, so for sure. Yeah. That's one of the advantages we have in friends to see sometime there is a realm of the debt, right. A little just like in Greek mythology with the underworld and all that stuff.

So there is not a lot,

Autumn (34m 40s): Oh yeah, there is always that other side of the coin where at least when you get to go visit them.

Jesper (34m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, you know, trying to let the story dictate when some, when a character dies rather than you just feeling like, yeah, I need a bit of a tension or drama in this scene, so let me kill somebody. Because that usually don't give a very good result in, at least, at least in my view. That's a bit of a lazy storytelling that stuff. But yeah. Yeah.

Narrator (35m 10s): Okay. So the next Monday we are going to share our thoughts and also a part of our process for how to handle book launches. If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn in Jesper on patreon.com/am Writing Fantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you'll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Going to stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode70 – Setting Writing Goals with author H. B. Lyne

How do productive authors stay on track, even during a crisis (like, um, a global pandemic)? Goals are one tool you can use and in this episode, Autumn talks to author H. B. Lyne about how to set writing goals that are SMART (and what that actually means).

Plus, expect discussions on why you might want to re-cover your books, the importance of mental and physical health for your writing, and a bit about Holly's work as an UnstoppableAuthor with writing partner Angeline Trevena.

Learn more about H. B. Lyne at

Website: www.hblyne.com

Social Media: www.facebook.com/authorhblyne

www.instagram.com/hblyne

Podcast: www.unstoppableauthors.com

www.instagram.com/unstoppableauthors

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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).

Narrator (2s):

You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Autumn (30s):

Hi, this is Autumn and today Jesper is taking a break and instead I am here with British author HB Lyne and we will be talking about her books and some great tips about writing and goal setting and maybe why you might want to recover. So, hi Holly, how are you?

Holly (51s):

I, I'm great. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the show.

Autumn (56s):

Yes, it's so great to, uh, touch base with someone across the ocean again and I love the accent. I do miss it. I, I've mentioned just before we started recording that I'd spent a year in England. I spent a year in Manchester and I just, I did love it over there and I kind of do miss the accident. I have to admit. So welcome. And yeah, please introduce yourself and tell us about a bit about your books. I think I counted was at five or six out. I can't remember.

Holly (1m 25s):

It depends on your definition. So I'm Holly Lyne I write dark hub and fantasy I have a series of the

Autumn (1m 36s):

well nonetheless

Holly (1m 37s):

and then another series of one, but I'm also appearing in some anthologies. So, um, yeah. And I have a couple of novellas and a collection of short stories. So yeah. Um,

Autumn (1m 53s):

I saw that you are a fan, I believe a Stephen King and your, you have hopes to be very prolific. It sounds like you're on.

Holly (1m 59s):

Yeah, I love Stephen King. I love horror. That's where my roots and uh, that would be amazing to be as successful as him.

Autumn (2m 12s):

Well if you ever happen to be covering overseas, because I used to live in Maine, I used to joke that, you know, I was just down the road from Stephen King, so I can definitely give you a tour and host you and take your over to Maine and, and I don't know, we can at least hang out by his gait. So appeal maybe I for ease. Very friendly. Sometimes he does sign books so we can try to stalk him. Oh great. Thank you so much for joining me. And I know you're also part of a team, just like Yesper an eye on stoppable authors.

So you have a partner Angeline and so you guys have been been writing together or at least you've been working together. I know for a few years. So I've known you from Instagram for quite awhile and Angeline from Instagram and I know you used to have the, was the Western building Western foyers building. Yes. So, but that was such a mouthful.

Holly (3m 14s):

We think branded at the start of this year and we're not. We are now unstoppableauthor

Autumn (3m 22s):

I love that. If it's a good, it's a good title. So I really like that. But yeah, you guys have done so much. I know I joined what in your world-building month where every day you, you know, post something on Instagram and that was so much fun. So it was fantastic that you guys organize things like that to get authors, you know, posting more and sharing more about our books and things we wouldn't normally think of maybe to post. So I've definitely been a fan and joining that. So it's so fun. Fun to have you online.

And I know you said you're actually writing a book on goals and goal setting, so you've switched to Lyne

Holly (3m 59s):

my first fiction book. Um, and it's just been a sort of natural evolution of what I've been doing, like with Angeline on the podcast and with my social media. Um, I've been apart of the writing community now for six years and it just feels like the time to start sharing some of the things that I've learned and helping other people. So they'll setting is kind of been my, um, area of expertise, I guess for a little while.

And it just, yeah, it seemed to be a natural fit. So I thought, yeah, I'm going to share some of my tips in a book.

Autumn (4m 41s):

Oh, that's fantastic. I asked, I, I do, I love, that's one thing I do love about the author community. I think we tend to give back so much, uh, compared to a lot of other side things, like in, my husband's into photography and he's done a few other things and they're pretty ruthless online where I think authors tend to be so much more helpful in kind. So it's brilliant to work with other officers, the best communities, but definitely some goals.

Oh no, that's all right. Hands down. It's definitely one of the best communities. I just, I, it's rare to find someone who you want to avoid, so that's a good thing. Well, I think goal setting is a great topic. So of course here we are. This is, we're recording a little bit early, but this will be released at the end of April. And I'm assuming, even though that's a couple of weeks away, that we're still going to be in a pandemic and just undergoing, Oh, I don't know what's going to happen between now and then.

And I sometimes don't want to imagine, but goal setting is a good topic for right now because it's so easy to, if you're not used to being home and you know, maybe having the chance to write all the time, or especially if you're home kids, which I know you have to. So it can be a challenge to suddenly your entire schedule. It has been up ended. You're, our entire world has been upended and we're trying, you know, there's lots of good memes, memes out there saying, you know, keep it up, you know, stay focused now as a chance to, you know, if you ever wanted to be a full time writer, now is your chance to give it a try, assuming you're not remote working, but how yeah.

So what are some good tips? I mean that'd be great to get into some good tips for goals I read at, I do know that. Yeah, I do. I agree. I totally, uh, I'm off the horse, the cart right now and I need to get back on it because I used to be so good at setting goals. I do weekly goals. So yeah, I can add in my tips too, but I've kind of fallen off of that and I need to get back on it because it makes such a huge difference when you have some sort of goals that's how you write. I'm up to book, I think I'm on 16 or 17 and I used to have people say, I am sure you have to.

It's like how do you have find time to write books. And especially when I had a full time job and a husband and you know, joke around and say, I'm a vampire, you don't sleep. I don't need food. Uh, it's not the truth. So what are your best tips? They give us any nuggets that you're putting into,

Holly (7m 16s):

you climbed up this book and kind of the topics I wanted to cover and roughly what was going to happen in each chapter. Uh, a little while. It goes off well before it's pandemic really took off. And I was planning to write it in this gap between fiction projects that I have. And it just, um, I delayed initially I delayed starting it because it felt no, hang on the world just went crazy. Now's not the time for this.

Um, and I was feeling really daunted because one of my early chapters was on, uh, living in crisis mode and it felt, I don't know insensitive maybe to be writing about that while so many of us are living in crisis mode. So, um, I put off, right, I put off starting it for, for a good few weeks, but then something clicked inside and I was like, no, hang on. Now is the perfect time to write about this. Um, and yeah, like you said, there are all these names and stuff and I know that that's negatively affecting some people because they feel this pressure to be their most creative, productive selves and they just can't right now.

Um, so I just want to say if that's how you feel, if you feel like you just can't right now, that's fine. I certainly had days where I'm just like, Nope, I know. I just have to get through the day. Am

Autumn (8m 50s):

yeah, this is incredibly, even if you're a normally a good, like I'm a normal, but this is really hard. And like I, there are times where I am out of breath, worried about, you know, my parents, they're both have immune issues. So it's just, you feel it. And even if you're, like I said, I'm normally a very chipper, dedicated task oriented person, but there's days that I just need to stop and just stare at the stream for a few minutes because it's just hard. This is really hard.

So yeah, if this is okay, if you're having, um, an office,

Holly (9m 26s):

absolutely it will just completely upside down and I, I wouldn't want anyone to feel any kind of pressure to set goals if they can barely shower and feed themselves, you know. Um, so definitely health first and there's going to be quite a lot in your book about looking after your health and, um, setting goals that are realistic so that take your whole life into account. Um, and figuring out what's realistic based on your actual circumstances.

So rather than looking at what other people are doing and what goals they're setting, make sure that what you're setting for yourself is appropriate to your life and your situation.

Autumn (10m 14s):

Oh, that's fantastic. That's a great idea. And a great reality check that. Yeah. Sometimes I know even myself with my productivity, I had a, a friend who lived in London and Oh my goodness, the amount of books he could turn out made me just made my head spin and I didn't know how he did it. And you just can't put that kind of pressure on yourself because it kind of free to me, it almost brings up writer's block or it freezes you from just that looseness, the creativity and the where the where the things sink and click.

And that's a, that's a much looser place than when you start feeling that pressure and the gears are grinding and you're done

Holly (10m 51s):

definitely going to fall apart. Very, what I call comparison itis, uh, where we, we'd look forever, outwards and especially on social media. I know, I said our community is wonderful and it really is, but when there's a little bit of a dangerous zone where you are looking always at what other people are doing and comparing yourself to them. And I don't think that's helpful in, you know, nine out of 10 cases.

So any, no, exactly.

Autumn (11m 27s):

And you also never know what's going on under the hood.

Holly (11m 30s):

Yeah. So you know, always, I think it's good to look up to other people and have aspirations and see, Oh, that really works for them. Maybe it's worth trying, but if it doesn't work for you, don't keep trying to, you know, make it happen. Yeah,

Autumn (11m 54s):

exactly. Yeah. It's always good to be open to learning another technique or another skill or sing us something will work for you. But yeah, when it's word counts and number of books released and everything else that, you know, if people seem to, some people rise to challenges that other people just feel like everything's falling apart. So it's it, it doesn't help to, to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes and someone else's life. You need to be the best you can be in yours. Excellent. I'll do love the fact too that you talk about like whole health because yeah, if you're struggling and just keeping things together that doesn't help if you want.

Holly (12m 31s):

Yeah, that really helps me. Um, you know, I think having other creative outlets can maybe free up your writing as well and give you, you know, creative well to draw from safe. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Autumn (12m 56s):

Great. So I know when I was doing goal setting, uh, you know, some people would go for word counts or everything else, but I would make, and some people have daily goals, monthly goals. I went for a weekly goal progress and I would adjust it based on my work calendar. Like if I had a really busy week that I knew I had a, I had a, you know, spot check coming up or something and it was just going to be a totally stressful week at work, I would reduce my, for me it was a chapter goals so sometimes it was like one chapter a week and then there was times where I knew it was going to be an easy breezy work or are those going to be some half days or something strange like that that I could, uh, I had have a chapter goal of two and a half chapters a week.

So that really, I mean I did really well under that.

Holly (13m 41s):

Yeah. So, and I go really extra and um, I set annual goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals and weekly goals. Yeah. So I have a longterm plan, so I never am going, Oh, I'm going to say I set yearly goals. I actually even have five-year plaques, but that's very, thank you. It's um, it's a loose plan. It's a kind of right now, this is where I think I want to be in five years, but I will regularly, we assess it and see if that's still white 1:00 AM yeah, rightly so.

And I him do that with my yearly and quarterly goals because things can change. Like this pandemic who'd have known this is completely changed my entire year. I was just gonna say that. Yeah. Check in regularly and secure goals is still relevant and if they need to be adapted.

Okay,

Autumn (14m 50s):

fantastic. Oh, that's a great,

Holly (14m 54s):

sorry.

Autumn (14m 54s):

Yeah, but I mean goals should definitely not be a written in stone because if you're not, you know, like we said the pandemic could happen, but just what you want out of life could change.

Holly (15m 5s):

Yeah. Okay. You might have an idea and it doesn't do so well and maybe the, you know, popularity of the genre has waned a little bit and so you need to change direction. So you always need to be flexible in what you're, what you're doing and what you're putting out there and keeping an eye on, you know, other factors outside of your control and responding to them. So having a versatile goal setting system that allows you the chance to do that I think is quite important.

Autumn (15m 46s):

And how do you check in with your goals? So I always saw that it's like, it's easy, I need, and I saw that at work, I would have to do a business plan and there'd be times you wouldn't even look at it until you're like, Oh, I'm going to have my annual or mid year review and I better look at my business plan. So you're looking at it maybe once or twice a year. But the idea with goals, I mean especially in his personal ones, are supposed to be keeping you on track and hopefully inspiring you to meet them, which means putting in some work. So what's your best tip for reminding yourself? What do you actually look at them and you say, yeah,

Holly (16m 18s):

because I have a a day to day bullet journal. It is includes all of my personal and work stuff and then I have a business planner, which is where I do my, my big goal setting I have for the year and the quarter and all of that. And in my day to day bullet journal, I literally keep task lists and I will regularly write down my goals. I'll put them, I do like a monthly spread, which has like a calendar with all of my appointments and everything on looking at an empty the sons and alongside that I always have some goals for the month and I'll write them down in multiple places where I'm going to see them that she every day.

And that helps just to keep them in the forefront of my mind on a regular basis. Okay.

Autumn (17m 11s):

Oh that's excellent. That's a good way. Yeah, definitely keeping them visible is I think important. I know some people put them like right into their calendar and other places. I've, I, I used to have something called ABC notes that was on my iPad that would actually show like unfinished tasks and like the little corner. So I would know to go in and check it and see like what I hadn't done. Of course, if you're good at ignoring things, I don't know what it would work otherwise. But it's definitely helpful to have something. I've gone almost all electronic and I don't, I mean, I wish Scribner actually had like, um, an alarm system or saying like, Hey, you haven't touched me today.

I wonder if there's an app out there for that or I should talk to the company that made it and see like put on like reminders. So it's like eight hours. That would be horrible. But I think I love it. Yes, definitely. Definitely be able to set your reminder time, but that'd be kind of fun. So what are some things that you would put on, like your weekly, your monthly or annual,

Holly (18m 19s):

uh, tasks on working out at the moment? I do, I have a word count goal this month, but most months I wouldn't do a word count go. It would be, I mean, I use smart goals, um, which, uh, do you know what they are? It's okay. So it's a planning system where, um, you have to get really granular with the Prince is, and the research shows that people who set smart goals are more likely to achieve their goals.

So every goal should be specific. So like a word count, that's, that's a really solid, smart goal. Measurable. Again, word count. You can check that every day and see what progress you're making. Um, yeah. Um, uh, yeah, a, a a is for, um, like appropriate to your situation that they actually fit with your, your big goals and what you're striving for.

Um, uh, is for relevant so they have to be yet appropriate to your situation right now. Um, T is time-bound, so put a deadline on them. So, you know, so I, if I don't say a word count goal, it will be something like finish this by the end of the month or, um, you know, I'm giving it to a big relaunch project. So over the coming months I've got goals like get the cover designed for book to get the formatting done for book three and so on and so forth.

So they, they're specific and, um, they're very, you know, concrete things that I know what to do. Um, and for bigger things that are more of a project, I'll break it down and figure out every task that I need to do in order to accomplish everything to do with that project and get it out the door in time. And so again, that's where I use my planner. I'll have like a, a page that I have, you know, for that project and I have everything written down that I need to do for that project and they can cross them off as I do them.

Okay. Oh, that sounds really useful. I like that smart goal. So that's the acronym that's very helpful. And yeah, I can definitely see the difference. I mean, if you do something very loose or if, especially if you said something way too big that you're gonna not be able to check off or you know who you end up with a busy week or you know, you end up in quarantine or something, you're just not going to get it done. I know the one time I forgot my am computer charger in Canada. And so it took them two weeks to ship it to me. I didn't get much writing done during that two weeks because it was paranoid I'd run out of my laptop charger and yeah, I don't know why I didn't just order another one off of Amazon, but you know, you just don't go back and question yourself, but Oh, I'd love to talk a little bit more that you're, so you're doing this relaunch to, not to switch up on goal setting, but I'd love to talk a little bit about your prelaunch and what led you to that market.

Changes the landscape changes, cover conventions change and my beautiful, beautiful colors that I had done in late 2013 2014 there are no longer current, um, you know, yeah, I did. I published in 2012 and yeah, I think I've gone through two or three covers on, yeah, it's changed so much and they've improved what the quality level has come up so much.

But also I gave an early publisher flowery titles that were like clues, you know, to the big story arc. And you know, I thought were very clever, but actually they don't really give the reader the right cues as well as the book is going to be. So I, I had some feedback that my titles and my covers made my books look like they were romance and they're really not.

Um, yeah. So, so I decided that I needed, Oh, new titles, new covers the works. It's something that I've been sitting on for maybe 18 months and was like, one day, you know, one day I'll do this am and then I, I decided to make it a goal and prioritize it. And so now it's actually happening. Um, uh huh. Yeah. Mean it's, it's scary and it's intimidating and it's exciting and all of the things.

Um, but yeah, I've just had the first book back from a cover designer and it's so pretty. I'm so excited. It's gonna be awesome. Oh,

Autumn (23m 47s):

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I partially, my other hat is a graphic designer and I love covers and I love arts. And I love the psychology of covers all the little clues that even fonts, I'm giving you these subconscious clues, the colors give you subconscious clues too. You know, what kind of genre can a book this is going to be. And so yeah, I agree. Oh, I can't wait to see your covers. I'll be watching on Instagram for you to release them that

Holly (24m 13s):

everything. I'm also happy, exciting. We've done even done the most beautiful job on the first one. It's absolutely stunning. And um, yeah, it's the first time I've worked with a for matter before and I've always just done my own and you know, that's fine and absolutely, you know, need writers shouldn't be afraid to boot strap that. And it's a good skill to learn, you know, to know how to format your books.

But I can't make them look really pretty or I don't have the time to invest in learning the skills to make them look really good. So say, yeah, I'm outsourcing that one. And that's, that's been a good experience as well. So,

Autumn (25m 5s):

Oh, that's great. Oh, that's fantastic. Well, that's always a good thing to hear too. And I mean, I just, to me it's a level of professionalism too, is when you are looking even at the formatting, whether you're learning it to do yourself, whether well or buying the software to do it yourself or hiring it out to someone else, it's just am. It shows that you're taking your own level of quality and professionalism and that this is something you, you know, you're going to be serious about this and you're no longer an immature.

So, you know, that's fantastic. I do, I do remember when, you know, the old old days, I think I uploaded my first book in 2012 using word and I was, I think actually I wanted to join a promo and the organizers like, look, your book looks good. You have lots of, you know, reviews. But I opened it up and it's like the font change because it just, Amazon's compression, everything had just kind of broken. The word file, original doc doc I had uploaded and I was like, I was so, um, so that, yeah, that's, I pull it down.

I'm like, I'm formatting. And I happened to have, my family's also very heavy into computer science. So I, I've looked at it, I found a software program and I actually, I use Golan and I ran with that and love it to death. Uh, and it was, I think I got that right. We do. It first came out, it was super cheap. So I feel very fortunate. Um, but yeah, it's, it was definitely kind of like a, you gotta ideal. Say you, you know, you need to go back and look at your previous books every year cause we have a tendency to publish and move on, but you to update your links, you need to make sure everything's working.

You need to make sure that the internet has not broken whatever format you created because it might, and it can and readers will not pick up a book if suddenly you have three spaces between every paragraph and things are offset in the font changes. Oh my gosh, no, you've got to fix that. You, it makes a huge difference.

Holly (27m 6s):

Yeah. So when is your hope to relaunch it? Fine. Are you going to roll them out one by one or you're going to die? Um, and so start a new, any actually like in the same world but set later on and um, the plan and the goal is to just that new book in December this year and rapid release, the full proceeding runs September, October, November, and then December and then into the new ones.

So, yeah, I'm just kind of getting everything lined up now so that I'm ready. Yeah.

Autumn (27m 55s):

Yeah. Well you sound like you'd be, and I know you're just on book ones and you have three more to do and get everything done, but we are only in April, so we have quarantine and pandemics aside. I think you've given yourself lots of space and time to hopefully have everything ready for a,

Holly (28m 12s):

not necessarily easy because there's always last minute schedule. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time because there's nothing, nothing worse, I don't think. Then realizing you've tried to fit too much in, um, you know, that can just really quickly if you feel too stressed to actually accomplish anything. So yeah.

Yes.

Autumn (28m 48s):

Yeah. I, I've definitely always been in my art and in my writing that a high stress does not bring out my productivity. I really, I'd rather do a quick meditation and calm myself down. I, I'm a comfort. I forget am I have looked at the anagrams, um, I forget which one I am, but whichever one is the one that like likes comfort for creativity and stuff, that's me. So I need my cup of hot tea. I might need a cookie and I needed the fireplace and then I'm usually ready to write it.

It's not usually that bad. I have traveled quite a lot and I've been writing, I finished a novel literally in the passenger seat of a land cruiser while driving a highway in Montana. Um, because I was just so desperate to get it done. But that's the, you know, showing up to work. Not the preferred method of work, but definitely especially I'm spent, I was starting am two new series myself and I've kind of did the test like I did two novellas to see which one readers would like and I was going to write whatever series they preferred and it almost ended up being like a 45 55 split, so that always didn't help.

So I'm going with the one I like, uh, but I'm still, it's new, it's a newish storyline, newish world and I, I think I need a couple of rainy comfort days to maybe get into it a little bit more. Maybe it'll start flowing better, but do some goal setting and just get going already and stuffing a wuss about this. I know how to write already put, it goes to show everyone everyone needs at any point in their career. They need to

Holly (30m 26s):

just written this series of short stories. I have stories of very kind of supernatural urban fantasy but very, very dark and they were written in the winter and I really want to give my main character, his own novel series because I just completely fell in love with him. But I'm like, I can't, I can't write that when it's bright blue sky and go to sunshine outside. I need the rain. I need the autumn dark evenings.

Cause that's the atmosphere as those books. Yeah. So he's going to have to wait.

Autumn (31m 10s):

Yeah, I do get, well he'll be waiting for you in the fall of it. Hopefully. Hopefully in other ways the world will be a happier, better place. But yeah, that's, I do get that. I, I definitely had a series that every time the fall, the first book started in the fall. So every time it came around it'd be like, yeah, I could keep going in that. And I will say this, the pandemic was inspiring some dark dystopian ideas, but I've actually kind of reverse course.

I tend to be contrary and I now just have this huge desire to go back to my original Epic fantasy, which is noble, bright and all like the heroes will eventually conquer. They'll go through crap, but they will succeed. I could just totally go for that. How um, however, you know, my book is sort of a dark urban fantasy as well, that my current series and I need to embrace.

Oh yeah.

Holly (32m 24s):

Yes. So is that the one, I mean, create new work? Are you coding in the world? Creates another aspect of the world, and then we're each gonna write our own novellas set in that world. Um, so it says future Britain where the sea levels have risen catastrophic CLI, and so there's, yeah. Yeah. So there's not a lot of funds left, not a lot of resources.

And people live under these domes to protect them from a radioactive atmosphere. I remember those posts stay inside. I'm like propaganda inside the domes. Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. This is perfect for the characters who have to stay inside.

Autumn (33m 27s):

Oh, shoot. Well, if we can't laugh about this, we'll just go and say it. So, Oh you do? I think, well especially British, I think you're very good at the dark humor, the gallows humor. Am there's some people I think in the U S we're not quite as good at it. Uh, we're more sarcastic and so I do appreciate that about the dry British sense of humor. I think you guys can handle this very well. I've always said I was on the wrong continent, but, Oh well where are you go.

I'll come back and visit when I can, when you know, at this point we have to get a sailboat so I can come back. Oh well that's excellent. I love that. Cause I've heard like Gasper and I have been world-building and we're going to write a series together. Um, and so that's, you know, that's more the traditional, but I love the fact that you've kind of created a world together, but you're each gonna write your own novellas. That also sounds like fun. And who knows, maybe I will have to hell, we'll have to see how things go. I might end up branching off one or two short stories on my own then in the world that Yesper and I built that sounds kind of,

Holly (34m 34s):

yeah, I mean part of this world. So it will be very clear that they are a shared universe and you know, even going to sort of look at maybe crossover characters and just, you know, we'll say yeah, exciting times. Yeah.

Excellent. Hold on.

Autumn (35m 8s):

Oh, that's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, it's like I said, very different. So I know like probably a lot of the authors listening are, you know, familiar with like, well there's a lot of collaboration and co, you know, teaming up as writers going on, which I think is fantastic, but this is kind of a different twist on it and I think it's fascinating. So it kind of gives you a little bit of independence, but also a writing partner collaborator at the same time.

Holly (35m 35s):

Yeah, absolutely. Other people who maybe are challenged for control, like the idea of collaborative want to just test the waters, that kind of halfway house where we each have control over our own stories. So yeah, it's a good first. First step two was co-writing something.

Yeah.

Autumn (36m 6s):

Oh, fantastic. Well, I cannot wait to see how this goes and uh, hear updates and Watson, see the releases eventually on Instagram's. It'll be so much fun.

Holly (36m 17s):

Yeah.

Autumn (36m 19s):

Oh, great. Do you have any final

Holly (36m 21s):

yeah. Or announcements. I know what the unstoppableauthor is. You guys have put stuff together, but so many things are on I right now in the world, but I know you guys have some great clients. I can see how that grows as well maybe on hold, but all of our guest office had been fantastically supportive and they're all keen to, you know, still attend when it goes ahead in November. So yeah, it's kind of, we had to just kind of stopped planning because there's nothing else we can do on it right now. But, um, yeah, it'll be good to get back to planning and promoting that in a few months.

Definitely.

Autumn (37m 6s):

Yeah. I've seen so many of the events, the writing events Angeline has attended and um, you know, gone to as an author and signed up for and doesn't signings and things. And I've always admired it and was always joking like, Oh, I want to come across the ocean and do one with you guys. Who knows. Maybe one of these days we can all make that happen because it would be so awesome. I will definitely be paying attention and any excuse to come back at once. The world is slightly in our new normal, whatever that normal ends up being.

It'll be fantastic and hopefully I'll meet some of the other, like I said, I seem to know a lot of Britain, British authors, so that'd be fantastic to meet up with everyone. We're going to have a huge party maybe. Well great. Thank you so much for coming on and for the tips on goal setting and you know why you might want to be looking at your covers and you know, just testing out your books and looking and making sure everything is still up to snuff after a few years. Right now everyone's pretty much at home so it was a good time to recheck your old files.

Holly (38m 14s):

Great.

Autumn (38m 17s):

Yes. Excellent. Well, we'll have to have an update, maybe have out the other half on at one point and uh, see how things are going. Great.

Holly (38m 25s):

Yeah,

Autumn (38m 27s):

and so coming up next we have, we'll be back to Yesper and I will have some writing tips in our next podcast. So please come back

Holly (38m 36s):

and stay tuned.

Narrator (38m 42s):

If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next time.

 

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 69 – My Journey as an Author: The Good & Bad

Becoming an indie author is an amazing opportunity, full of highs and more than a few lows. Jesper and Autumn share their self-publishing journey with a few answers that might surprise you!

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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). 

Narrator (2s):

You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts. Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s):

Hello. I am, Jesper. And I'm Autumn,

Narrator (35s):

this is

Speaker 2 (35s):

episode 69 of the amwritingfantasy podcast. And we thought we would do something a little, I don't know, funny maybe today and share our journey as writers, you know,

Jesper (47s):

good. And the bad stuff. And hopefully that'll be useful to you, your listeners. And, uh, I dunno, maybe, maybe a few laughs along the way. At least say it's a little personal getting to know us in a different way. And you know, the real listic story of two authors and what have been the highs and the lows of her journey. Uh, let's focus on the highest, but yeah, no, there's some lows too. Yeah, there is.

Speaker 2 (1m 18s):

It's so, it's so nice. Nicer and Koshi that I can sort of hear the woods crackling in the background. It sounds so cool.

Jesper (1m 25s):

It is. Well, it's a nice rainy day here in Vermont and I'm in my cabin. I've got the woodstove going. I actually have am of course you don't eat me, but I've got a little brisket of corn beef on the woodstove simmering away and I can look out at the rain and it's falling on the pond and the stream, which has a little trickily waterfalls through stone. So yeah, this is pretty much my quarantine Haven and heaven over here. It doesn't sound too bad. No, it's a tiny, tiny house in a tiny, tiny cabin.

Um, I think ideally if it wasn't a, if we didn't have the support of the main house, which you know, it's about a thousand, 1500 feet through the woods is a main house where we get access to, you know, we can use some, we're doing some storage in the basement, especially now with like, we have extra food supplies and I'm using her freezer. They have a spare freezer, so we've got some space over there. But if it wasn't for that, this is a little bit too small, I'd want another 20 or 50 a hundred square feet to be my minimum ideal size.

But you know what, in many ways it is just quiet and pleasant and especially being almost done. I've done some buildings, shelves and stuff. I'm so close to finishing the insight. I can, I can taste it. So I'm very excited,

Speaker 2 (2m 46s):

but I can't remember. Did you have to go to the house to use the toilet and the showers and stuff you have?

Jesper (2m 51s):

Well, we officially, we only have to go there now for the shower. We have the composting toilet and everything hooked up in the cabin. So we're pretty self-sufficient for showers. Um, unless you want to really call bath, you can jump in the stream wise for going to the sauna and how it was with the shower.

Speaker 2 (3m 11s):

Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. Well at least then because then you don't have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the house to, you know, use the toilet or something. That's horrible. We did that a few times when we am when we rented a summer cabins in Finland, you know, because they fit on this also like huge country. So a lot of the summer cabins state, they don't have like toilets and stuff like that, like running water and stuff. So a lot of the time it's like this outhouse where there's a toilet out there full of mosquitoes and shit.

And then you have to go out there in the middle of the night if you have to go to the toilet is, I hated it. Hate it.

Jesper (3m 49s):

Well it is sad with the modern things like the composting toilets, um, that are available. And this one is one that you could use on a ship. It's like, seriously, this is not that hard to fix things up to am have it all inside and pretty, pretty Steve-O clean and hygienic and usable. It's so nice. Yeah, indeed. So all sorts of things on your side of the ocean.

Speaker 2 (4m 15s):

Well, uh, it's, it's, it's just a bit kind of quiet. I mean, well, it depends. It depends, I guess you could say. If you're looking in the media, everything is going crazy. It's not quiet at all. Right. But a self quarantined at home and you don't see any people, you just sort of sitting in the office most of the day doing writing and work. Um, and then, um, yeah, in the afternoon, sitting and watching Netflix and stuff like that took like, it's when you're out and about like you normally are.

 

It's amazing how, you know, little actually happens. It's just, it just said home. That's it.

Jesper (4m 58s):

I, to me, it's amazingly, I've always been good even at, well, you know, while we're traveling and as a full time author I've always been good about pretty much knowing the days of the week, but there's been a few times the last week that I've been like, is it Thursday? Oh no, it's Monday or Sunday. It's just like, I usually know, but for some reason, not that he entire world is off the normal work week. I don't have a clue what day it is.

Speaker 2 (5m 23s):

No. Yeah. That's, that's what happens. Right. But that's also why yesterday evening, um, I watched the movie on Netflix called wind river. I dunno. How, do you know what, no, it's probably not. I dunno. It's probably not that, uh, main, not mainstream, but it's probably not that well known. I guess I should call it instead. But it's like, it's a, it's a murder mystery from 2017. Um, so it's like a us fish and wildlife service tracker and then an FBI agent who teams up to solve the murder on the wind river Indian reservation in Wyoming.

Interesting. Yeah, it's a, it's actually, it's, it's like, it's a cool setting. Uh, I like it because it, you know, it has all the wintery themed stuff, so it's not easy to get around. They, they can easily get help from the outside and all this. I, I quite like that when you pin the characters into a setting where they can just easily get help. So, so that's pretty cool. Uh, and I also think that the character motivations are pretty good in it. You know, the folks out of there, the murder that, that they're trying to solve is, is of a young Indian woman who was, who was murdered there.

But it then turns out that the fish and wildlife service tracker there, he's, he also lost his own daughter. So there was a good, good character motivation for why he wants to help with it. Um, so he's trying to help the FBI agent salted so it's, it's pretty good. Um, but I would say as well that there is a lesson in there about trying to understand the tropes of the shoulder. Oh no, really?

Because it's like, I mean, I'm not going to spoil anything for anybody who wants to watch it, but to what's the end of the movie, it turns into like a shoot everything up kind of thing where, you know, when you're getting into the last 20 minutes of a, like a murder mystery movie, I'm sort of expecting that there's going to be a big revelation or plot twist or something like that. That's sort of what you normally would expect, uh, in the, in this genre.

But, so it was not a bad movie or anything, but, but the ending just annoyed me somewhat because it was like, all of a sudden it just goes crazy and everybody starts shooting. It's like w what I mean, if you want to do like a or a measurable thing, I think that's absolutely fine, but then you need to start doing it from the beginning. So you sort of understand all the way through the movie that Oak or if if in our case we write in books like, so you make the reader understand from beginning what type of books book this is or what kind of movie it is.

Right. You shouldn't wait until the end and then all of a sudden it turns into something completely different. Yeah. Mashup usually means you know, mixed up from the beginning, not a front end and a backend. That's completely different. Yeah, it was like a one hour, 45 minutes movie and everything along the way was, you know, standard MIS, you know, mystery murder solving stuff. There was nothing weird at all. And then the last 20 minutes it just goes completely crazy. Williams probably shoot him up sort of thing.

Sounds like. Yeah. Everybody starts shooting at each other. And it's not really like any revelation to figure out who the killer is because it just comes out with all the shooting stuff and it's like, okay, yeah, I mean, it's not a bad movie. I make it sound really bad. I mean, it was not bad. It was, it was OK, but, but the, I was just not a fan of the ending there and I, I dunno, I think that was a lesson for us riders to be careful with the expectations after strong run. Uh, if you want to break it, fine, but at least set that expectation from the get go then, Oh, week on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast so autumn you created a Pall on the Facebook group, uh, about a possible short cost that we could create for people now that they could with 19 self quarantine is ongoing.

Uh, and I was thinking we could talk a bit about it.

Jesper (9m 36s):

That sounds great. And that was, yes, we, there's so many people stuck at home and I mean, you can either read the news and just feel more and more paranoid, panicked and depressed or you can do something with all this suddenly available time. And you and I are definitely the more of the do something with it crowds. So we thought we'd help help some other people

Speaker 2 (9m 57s):

adding more tasks to are endless to do lists. That's, I don't know how smart,

Jesper (10m 1s):

I know, I feel the weight it's teetering at add some more supports I think.

Speaker 2 (10m 7s):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was in checking on the result earlier today, um, on that pole that you've created because basically what, what we did was that we made a poll and said, okay, if we're going to write, or no, sorry, not right, but if we're going to teach a very like quick, short course, what would people's favorite topic B and you put in some different, uh, options for people to vote on, but also allowed them to am to add their own topics if they want it. Which I don't think I came in like two days later though.

Yeah. There was somebody who was a parenting, so cheated and said, I want all the above. Yeah. But, uh, I think I came in like two days later and then I added my fantasy map making option. But I think so many boats had already been cast at that point. So we was too late. Yeah.

Jesper (10m 59s):

I thought I had that in there from the beginning of that. It has something about map making, but maybe I was wrong or you have to Wilco shoot. Oh, it's probably, well, you know, you think one thing that adds the other.

Speaker 2 (11m 9s):

Yeah. Well, so we had the character development, we had the plot and story development we'll building and then I added mapmaking and periodic everything. So a chief air, uh, but I, but I was in checking the results today as I said. And there was actually twice as many votes on a course about character development versus number two, which was unplugged and store development.

Jesper (11m 33s):

Interesting. To me, that is very interesting. I don't know if I would've guessed on character development. I just kinda throw that one, I wouldn't have, I don't know. But obviously co authors are interested in that. So that sounds like it's might be one way you have to look into yeah, the people have spoken,

Speaker 2 (11m 51s):

that's a quite decisive result. So, uh, we are of course recording this episode that you're listening to now ahead of time. So this also means that we are going to set up a page from where people can sign up for this course that we're then going to create maybe on character development and why I'm saying maybe it's because we are only going to create it if we get enough sign off. Otherwise we will not spend our time on it.

Um, so by the time you're listening to this episode, all of this has already happened. Most likely let's fold means that the, yeah, which means that you will, you will have seen a short, very short, like a few minutes long bonus episode pop up on the podcast feed where I explained all the details, um, about how to sign up and all that stuff. So you're probably already listened to that and hopefully if you already signed up as well. Uh, so I don't know if we're going to be that fast on up, but that's my assumption for now.

So we'll see. Uh, if we get enough sign ups, we discussed autumn and I that we least, we needed these 20 sign-ups, otherwise we're not going to go ahead. Uh, so, but I guess, you know, these times of self pointing, it's just a good time to, to learn. You know, people have the time at home nowadays. I think it's a great, great thing. I mean, goodness sakes, I have, uh, so many little mini courses I've started, I want to get back to and I just keep building things. So eventually I'm gonna finish this cabinet. I'm just going to enjoy writing and creating on amwritingfantasy and maybe taking a few courses of my own.

Speaker 3 (13m 27s):

Oh yeah. Why not? Why not?

Speaker 2 (13m 31s):

All right. Anything else we need to share before we move on though other than, you know, stay safe out there and you know, let's go learn something about, uh, how we became author as the highs and the lows.

Speaker 3 (13m 43s):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (13m 48s):

Alright. So yeah. Hi alone. I actually tried to prepare like three good items and three bad items, organized truth to final one that became golf. Both a good antibiotic. So it's like a blessing and a curse wrapped in one. Okay, that sounds very fair. I will, since you're organized, I will come up with the same thing, but I will do my usual of winging it, but I'll let you go first. But because I can definitely think of two good things that definitely have inspired me, but maybe one of yours will inspire my third.

Okay. So do you want to alternate? Alternate.

Speaker 3 (14m 26s):

Okay.

Speaker 2 (14m 28s):

Um, so my first, should we start with the good ones? Are we going to go one good one bad one. Good one. Bad we should alternate the whole way through. So good, bad, good, bad. And also between the two of us. Okay. Okay. So just be mindful then. I have two good ones. I have two bad ones. And then the last one is, uh, is a mixture of the two towns fair. That's fair. Well that, that was the only way I, that'd be an interesting, I'm trying to think what will be a mixture so it'll be fun. Um, I guess there is more that you can guess.

You can think about it now and then, and then before I reveal it, I'll ask you, what do you think it is? It'll be tough one. Oh, that's mean it's going to be impossible probably. Thanks. Uh, so, okay. My first good one. Um, I actually talked a bit about this in a, in a past episode, but I think the really good thing I did was that I decided to only listen to one single critique partner when I started out, because I talked about it a bit in the past as well.

I just don't know. I mean maybe everything would have worked out fine anyway, but, but I, I just not sure how things would have ended up if I've done the either the like full critique group kind of a thing where you're getting a ton of other types of people, but maybe five, six people giving you feedback on your manuscript and all the contradictory information that you will be getting from people and trying to take into that into account when they don't even know myself starting out what is right or what is wrong or I think, I think it would have been a bit of a mess and might have ended up making things take a lot longer to get completed because of it.

Uh, and then I guess there's some luck in this one as well because I was lucky that the critique partner actually was, he was good at it. He's good at explaining what it was that was wrong with my writing, what I could do it differently. He gave me some examples once in a while, so not that he wrote anything for me, but sometimes he just wrote a line just saying, what, you know, what if you did like this? And I still distinctly remember some point, especially with the beginning of the novel, I was trying to ride him and he keeps, he kept telling me, well this is telling, not showing.

And he kept saying that we wrote and he said, he sent me back a note and say, is you are still telling. I was like, really? Okay. I wrote again and I think this happened 10 times. I've got the same response every time. And I was like, okay, I'm lost. I don't know what you mean. Um, and then he said, okay, um, what if it went something like this? And he, I think he just wrote a single paragraph or something and then I still remember as soon as I read it, it just sort of clicked in place in my mind.

Oh, that's fantastic. That's like, ah, I got it now. I see. And it was so weird because when I take clicked in, in place for me it always felt a bit stupid as well at the same time because you know, I read tons of books. I mean there, there was nothing in what you sent me that you don't read in any book anyway, but, but there was just something because I was in the middle of the process and he was telling me in, in a reflection directly linked to the story that I was telling that just made it click. Whereas when I was just reading other people's books, it just wasn't as, I don't know, it was just, I, I just couldn't get, I just didn't understand how, how to tell the story without it just being like, here's an infrared dump of text where I'll tell you about the world and whatnot.

Right. The famous fantasy problems. Yes. Um, well I think that's so, yeah,

Jesper (18m 14s):

that's a typical one I think for a lot of new authors too. We could do a whole episode on what the difference of showed up, what that really means. So we won't go there. But that is a, that is a huge step to learn.

Speaker 2 (18m 27s):

Yeah. We actually have a knot on the podcast feed here, but on the amwritingfantasy YouTube channel, there is actually a full interview with Chet. I forgot his last name, but he's a line editor full episode with him where he's talking about show versus a tail. So you can find it on the YouTube channel if you're interested. But, but it's, it's a really good conversation and he explains it in detail, uh, how to avoid it and what to think about and what not. So. So that's pretty good.

That sounds good.

Jesper (18m 59s):

I think for me, when I'm on, the first things that I did that I think made a big difference is, I mean I had spent a few years I think querying agents and actually getting some responses, but never really getting an actual agent, never getting a publishing deal. And it was really my husband who actually found an article on self-publishing. And again, this was 2014 so you know, really eBooks became popular in 2012 so it's only two years in.

It was still pretty much an unknown thing. And it was interesting because the article was actually about someone else who is also a federal employee, just like I was at the time and that she was trying self-publishing and her experience and it was just sort of like what you said, it was so similar to what I'd been doing and what I wanted to do that I think, I think he had even mentioned it in other people had mentioned maybe self-publishing and I have taken to adult ed writing courses, but neither of them had even mentioned self-publishing at the time.

It was completely unheard of. They were completely unhelpful. And so it was the fact that he, you know, he recommended it and I read it and it was so similar to what I was doing. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm doing that. And it was, I think that was December. I remember it being right before Christmas. So that was December at the time. And I said, yeah, I'm going to give this a go. And it took until February to get everything ready and to figure out how to get everything ready. But it was because, um, uh, my husband and him sharing that article that I actually became a self published author in early twenties actually.

So don't really 2012. I'm sorry. That's when I first published born of water. So right at the beginning of the eBooks. Um, yeah, I think that was phenomenal and I think I would have totally waited a couple more years and kept querying agents if he hadn't ever pointed that out to me and got me going.

Speaker 2 (20m 57s):

Yeah. But that's good. Uh, and I guess that was also back when, wow. Yeah. Maybe some people could argue that it's still a bit the case today, but there was a lot more stigma around self puppers.

Jesper (21m 9s):

Oh yes. And we can get into, if we want to switch to the bad side of self-publishing in 2012, um, I will say that as my first bad response. So you go ahead with yours.

Speaker 2 (21m 23s):

Okay. Well, I think my bad one is, it's about expectations because it's again, one of those things where, you know what, but you don't know it because I think I came into the writing journey with not completely unrealistic but slightly unrealistic expectations on how fast I could grow an income from am. I was thinking like, yeah, but you know, two years maybe then everything should be fine.

It's like, yeah, right. You know, you get, you get wiser. Um, and I think this line of thinking actually to just a slight detour here, but, but I think this line of thinking about having realistic expectations actually has heavily influenced the materials that we created for the free course called so popular soup success that we're going to release later this year. I'm going to talk quite a lot about that in the first modules of that course because it's so important in it.

I don't know why for me, I mean, I'm pretty stubborn minded. You know, when I, when I want to do something I'm going to do it. So it's not like it the motivated me, but it could feel times like frustrating when I was looking at the monthly revenue and it was like, what the F this is, I mean if you, if I looked at the per sentence then it was a nice number, right? Yeah. We had a 200% growth in revenue this month compared to last month. But it's like $1. It's like yes, that is the tough one. I could have caused the proceeds to kid myself.

Yeah. But it's, it never demoted, demoted. We my but I think for other people

Jesper (23m 8s):

it could. Um, I think, yeah, I think if you don't fight just other motivations. Um, cause I think that's common for everyone. They're hoping they'll make more money, but hopefully something else lights a fire and makes it worthwhile for you.

Speaker 2 (23m 24s):

Well, yeah, I mean of course there is also the fact around, uh, it's not, I mean, we're not writing books just for money. Right. I mean, as I said in a YouTube video, once, you know, if you're in for this, if you're in this for the money, there is a ton of better and much easier way to earn money then writing books. So if that was the only motivation than I would almost say go and something else and stay. So of course we're writing the books because we want to tell the story, but we also want to earn some money from it. Right. Um, and it was one of those things where I have heard many, many times that you need to think about your writing Korea something long term and you're not gonna own a lot of money very quickly and all that stuff.

And I've heard it a lot of time, but still, I didn't take it to heart until I sort of experienced it. So it was one of those things where logically I knew it, but I didn't quite believe it in my heart. Right.

Jesper (24m 18s):

I understand that totally. And yeah, I guess until you get there, you just don't know. So that is, uh, expectations is a good, um, good example of the lows. I think for mine, definitely coming back to it being 2012, late 2011 and most, like I said, no one was even recommending self-publishing at the time I was up in Maine. So I'm doing this tiny little corner of the United States that I've actually been to other States and people have asked me, Oh, isn't that Canada?

So my it is not a well known state even in the United States, surprisingly. And uh, so no one was really supportive. There was no one in the community who he could ask questions of. And so I did make some of those very typical newbie mistakes. Even though I had my book, I just taking these courses, I knew a bit about editing, I edited, I had someone else look it over. It, published it with still too many errors. It wasn't a good editor, it wasn't a good edit. It was am. Even though I would say a self-made cover, but I keep thinking, I still have self-made covers, but Hey, I'm a graphic artist, but my first cover, I hadn't gotten into Photoshop.

I did kind of put up something, it wasn't the best cover cause again, what were you comparing things to in 2012? Uh, you know the other, there were so few books on books on Amazon at the time, despite all that, you know, you could run a promo and you'd get 10,000 downloads on a drop of a hat. It was so fascinating and so much fun. It was,

Speaker 2 (25m 47s):

yeah. T.H.E. I think back then, actually it didn't matter as much what the cover looks.

Jesper (25m 52s):

No, it really didn't. I, I refer to those days now is the wild West of the indie publishing world because it was anything goes and you could shoot to the top, you could shoot to the bottom. Oh, it was tons of fun and just absolutely crazy, crazy times. But yeah, those were definitely some of my mistakes because I just didn't have the advice. And I, you know, again, that's what's led to some of our classes and courses and everything else or is because the stuff just wasn't available. There was no advice on the web. There was no help at all.

And even some of the publishing companies I talked to, I ended up using a publishing company in Maine. And uh, they helped people, you know, do print books but didn't help people at the time do eBooks. And when I explained what I was doing, they're like, really, you can do that. I mean, when you look, Stephen King in Maine basically started the ebook revelation in 2008 when he published a something that you could only get online. He is the start of this. And yet I had main publishers who are going,

Speaker 2 (26m 53s):

you want to do what? And

Jesper (26m 56s):

I, Oh, I guess I could help you edit it. Who was so unhelpful? So that was definitely my low side is I started so early and in such a little weird corner of the world that even though it was very literary Stephen King, I mean seriously, he was a town away. Um,

Speaker 2 (27m 12s):

just that helps support and writers groups. Uh, we're just not there. And that was really difficult. Yeah. But there there is actually believe it or not, but there are still people today that doesn't know that you can self publish on sites like Amazon and stuff like that though it still exists. There's still some people who just poo poo it and say, no, it doesn't matter unless I end up being published by a big brick and mortar and I'm like, well okay. Yeah. To me that's fine.

I mean each to his own. I don't mind how people publish if to self publish or they think that it's much better to be traditional published Ida. I don't care what whatsoever they can do what they want, but at least they should just be mindful of the decisions that they're making or what it means. To me, I think it's the attitude that it is the only in true and tried way. You know what? No, it's just one way. They're all equally, I don't like people looking down on other people. That's just not right. No, no, I agree with that. I agree with that. And I think the other thing about it is also that it's night, it's not like a, it's a onetime forever decision.

The decision to self-publish or traditional publish. It's also a book by book decision. That's true. It doesn't have to be. So that now I decide that I want to be traditional puppet show from now on, all my books are going to be that or vice versa. Everything is going to be self-published. I mean, you can decide what you want to do per book. So yeah. And I still think hybrid is probably one of the best ways to go. I mean, you get the both the best of both worlds. I think so. But I think so. It's not easy. Of course. No. You've got to find the right platform.

It'd be in the right spot and so many other things must align and the stars. Yeah. And you need an agent that's well to be able to do that. So, but well that's something that, not the story. Oh, something else though. What did you, what was another good experience? Another high of being, uh, your writing journey yeah. So my number two of the good ones is, uh, by far the best one.

Then this one was so easy because, uh, there is nothing coming even close to this. Yeah. Yeah. So that is actually teaming up.

Jesper (29m 35s):

Oh wow. I didn't know I made the list. That's so I have butterflies. That's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (29m 44s):

Well, but, but it's, it's true because I feel like it's, it's just so great working together, uh, on both all the nonfiction stuff and all the author related courses. And I also, you know, the community that we're building on the Facebook group, but also from listeners to this podcast and what all of that is, is really great. But I think above all of that is, it's just the fact that having somebody to work closely together with and sort of share all the ups and downs, but also figuring out how, you know, how we want to do things, coming up with plans for the future and, and all those different things.

I, it's just, it's so much different than if going on, if I was going out of their loan, I, I, I understand that everybody would want to, you know, be coauthor, altering things and doing things together and that's fine. But at least

Jesper (30m 36s):

for me and, and the way that I like to work, I think it's awesome. Oh, it is. I w I definitely concur considering that am one, it's by fault. I reached out to you first, but that, uh, that you're patient with me considering I am truly a high motivated worker, but it seems like since we, uh, started working together, I've been traveling full time building a cabin, um, had a job full time job for a while. I'd be disbanding in just a crazy journey. I've really used to be the steady person in the world, but it seems like it to be fair to yourself.

It's only been the last six months. Yeah, I think so. But it's been a little, little crazy, but we'll catch up and it's going to be very exciting. But no, considering one of my, one of my biggest complaints was that I had been going it alone just to learn indie publishing. I think having a partner and having someone else who, especially you like spreadsheets, I like graphic design. It, it all works out. I do websites. You do advertising. It'd mean we fill in each other's gaps. So, well, I don't know how this worked out.

Yeah, that was, yeah, that was not even planned. That's just us being lucky. I said, I can still say, I think, uh, the hike and Pooka Wasco national park in Canada, it was a 10 mile hike out 10 miles back and your name popped up. And I'm like, that's, I'm kinda sent him an email and see if he wants to work together. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32m 7s):

Just to mention as well, for the listener, uh, back in episode 58, we talked about how to find a writing partner. So if that's something you're interested in,

Jesper (32m 16s):

go and listen to that episode a little bit more of our story as well. Well since you already claimed a working together, which I definitely think has been a highlight. I will say as a personal author journey I think one of the moments that made me, there's, I guess I'll combine it into two, there's two moments, moments that really made me one fall in love with being an author and how credibly awesome and cool it is. And one that made me take it even more seriously than I thought I already was. And the first one was I was doing something on good reads of all places and I saw my name listed under somebody who's favorite authors and I just kind of made me realize I am a published author.

I mean I remember like being a teenager and you know who Tracy, you, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, you know who my favorite authors are. I would list and suddenly my name is listed like in that same spot. And I mean it still gives me tingles. I mean it made me tear up. I, I know I did a screen capture of it and I'm just like, that's, that was it. That was just the moment for me of I'm an author and it's serious and someone actually loves my writing so much. They're saying my I'm their favorite.

So that was so exciting. And yeah, the other was when I got a critical review from Fantasia reviews and they wrote something incredibly glowing about, uh, one of my books, spark of defiance. And I think it was one that said, maybe kind of say, okay, I, I, you know, I've written a lot of books at that point and they were doing okay, but sort of like what you'd said, my expectations had been like, yeah, this is, this is making some money, but it's not going to pay for a lavish lifestyle among the stars or anything. This is not, you know, this is not going to foot everything I want to do with my life.

It's just going to be a part of it. And it kind of made me say, you know, but this is serious and I'm not putting people saying I'm good. People have said, uh, other, you know, other people have written to me and emailed me and said I was good. But to have someone who's a read thousands of books at a critical reviewer say you are good just made me kind of dust off my shoulders, dust off the covers. I ended up redoing all my covers. I redid my blurbs, I got a little bit more professional looking. You know, I did a little revamp cause you know, starting in 2012 in the wild West, you got to kind of take off the desert dust.

So yeah. Um, and so that, I think that really kind of made me take it all a little bit more seriously and say this is, this has gotta be a certain standard to everything I do and I really appreciate that. So understanding that. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34m 51s):

Okay. I have another battery one before the last, uh, mixed. Okay.

Jesper (34m 58s):

Oh, and this one is just like, I could bang my head.

Speaker 2 (35m 5s):

Oh. But it's like, because even when I started, I already knew it and then I did it anyway. Oh no. This was when, uh, I wrote a full book on how to Margaret Margaret books on Twitter. And it's so freaking annoying because I, even when I started writing it, I just knew that writing a book about some sort of social media platform is like the worst plan in the world because the social media platforms change all the time and what you write, we'll be out of date tomorrow.

Um, and uh, I did it anyway. I took all the time that it took to write the books. I, I even created like am there was a lot of like how to set different things up. So I even recorded a screen share videos about click here, click there kind of thing, which was linked to each video inside. It was like a very comprehensive book. I mean it would teach you everything you needed to know step-by-step, showing you videos along the way. It was in that sense, it was great.

Um, and people loved it. I think it was like a month after I published it. Then Twitter changed the terms of service. So the bedrock of the entire strategy that the book was built on disappeared because the service that I was using to make everything work had to close shop. Because Twitter changed the terms of condition there. So that went out the window and then was like, Oh, okay, great. So everything that this, uh, you know, paid for the, for the, uh, editing of the book and all that stuff, all the time that went into is just like out the window in five minutes.

And I was like, this is so fucking stupid because I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Right. Uh, and that it should just, so yeah. I, I feel at least I did the right thing in the end because I actually unpublished it. Um, I do see a lot of books on Amazon that is out of date for sure, that it's still up there and people are still selling them. And I don't know, I just feel like that's cheating the reader leg. It is, it's not fair selling people that book, even if it's just $5 or something. But it's not fair selling a book where USD author already know that the content inside is, is not, it's not possible to follow the strategy anymore.

Right. So I've just felt like that that's not fair. That's certainly not what I want to do. So I actually unpublished it. Um, but it was just so annoying because all the time that went into writing it, recording all those videos, paying for editing and all that stuff.

Jesper (37m 44s):

Cool. I remember you, we were talking at that point we were, I don't know if we were to start working together, but we're at least communicating enough. I remember the struggles you went through with that one and little tweaks cause I was, I w but it's so easy. I mean it seemed like Twitter was stable for, at the time it seemed like tweet Twitter had been stable the way you were using it for a year.

Speaker 2 (38m 10s):

Oh yeah. In time. It worked really well. Yeah. So that's definitely, yeah, it's an easy trap to get yourself sucked into, I guess. Yeah. So for everybody listening, if you have an idea about writing a book about how to do some social media stuff, just save yourself the effort and don't do it. It's, it's so annoying when you end up figuring out that everything you just made, which is out of thing.

Jesper (38m 36s):

Oh, I think for me, and this is actually one, I thought you were going to choose this when your worst, so I don't know if it's your am the next thing you'll say or not, but I was gonna say piracy and

Speaker 2 (38m 48s):

Oh, okay. No, because I don't, I know, well just to give a quick reflection on that before you elaborate on why you picked that one. But because in general, I don't see it as a big problem. Uh, I mean I understand that peop people do pirate books and, and that happens all the time. I do understand that. But my line of thinking for the most part, it's like the people who are powering pirating books and downloading pirated books and are going to buy my books anyway. So honestly, I don't care.

I mean, I will say, I will send a take down notice when I, when I notice it, but I'm not losing any sleep or I'm sorry for that interruption.

Jesper (39m 29s):

My line of thinking. See, I think we've definitely, especially having matured, I think it's become, um, something we both share that view because I mean my biggest joke now, you've got to have a sense of humor about this is that you're pirating a book that sells for like one I'm giving away am and other ones that are like two 99, three 99. You really, if you're forgot to go steal something and try to resell it, there's all, I think my jigsaw is worth more than the book. Of course, the book you can kind of keep reselling and the true costs of piracy I think is a lot of people are doing the, Hey, sign up to get this.

So they're actually stealing the email addresses or possibly trying to get you to log into the site and create an email and then they're getting this password and they're going to try that password and your email address and all these other places. It's going to be on the dark web. So that's why you're supposed to always change your password because once they get ahold of one of your passwords, they're going to try your email. And password combination everywhere. So you gotta be careful and I hate knowing my books are used that way, but I definitely have had a few people who have come to me and said, Oh by the way, did you know your book's available here?

And it's like, you know, you'd go to Google and you say this is not authorize, this is not a real website. Please take it down. And it gets tiring cause I do try to at least stamp it out because it bothers me to no end result of what they're trying to do for sure. But it is crazy and it is funny though. I will say it's not really a piracy but I do actually know that since I published my book, someone else came up with the exact same title and she's a great author and she's doing really well and it's a different book, a different cover. But there is something just kind of like you had a name that I was there first but you don't, we don't have titles.

You've got to get over that one pretty quick.

Speaker 2 (41m 17s):

Yeah, indeed. I was just about to say, even even when we write our fiction, I'm, I don't intend to sit and chill all the books on Amazon to check if somebody has the same time. I mean, it, it can easily happen quintessential, right? So yes,

Jesper (41m 29s):

especially when you're doing elemental magic. I mean eventually someone's going to come up the same title

Speaker 2 (41m 34s):

you are, but Oh well, but definitely a piracy still bothers me. I just wish the world was a different place. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. It's a nice to know, but at least, uh, from those pirated sites, uh, as you, as you said, a lot of the time they actually trick you to show you download malware and stuff like that. So I hope those people who, uh, than stealing by downloading pirate of the stuff are going to learn the lesson one day a computer get corrupted.

So maybe you shouldn't do that again. Support the author please then $2 and support the orthopedics. So that's how to, that's how you should be behaving. But of course that doesn't apply, apply to any of our listeners because they are all author so they get this. All right, so your plus and minus combined. I have one as well. So what is yours? And don't make me be gas it cause I don't have a clue. No. Okay. I won't let you guess it will be here.

The rest of them. This is a blessing and a curse in work. So this is basically when I started out, uh, apart from writing I also spent quite a lot of time focusing on learning how to market books. Uh, so I was listening to podcasts, I was reading nonfiction books. I remember actually I recorded a YouTube video about it years back is still on the YouTube channel somewhere. And I think in that video I listed out like 20 or 30 books or something and that I read on marketing.

Um, I also took Mark Dawson's ads for authors course and I watched you two videos with Brandon Sanderson classes, uh, in it. So just like everything that I could absorb. I did. And on one hand I think it was good because it did help me in the longterm. You know, I, I sort of probably avoided some of the early pitfalls because I, for instance, I learned that I had to set up an email list from the beginning, which I did, which was good.

Um, but at the same time, I also have to say that all the time that I put into learning how to market books when I was still writing my first book was not a quiz. I should, you know, if I spent the same time just writing instead, I probably have probably had had more than one trilogy out now. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's sort of, it's good and bad. It's not like I want to say I want to, I would not do it if I had to do it again.

But I do understand that I spend a lot of time on it that could have been spent on writing and at least when we were starting out, it's better just to write some books and then learn marketing later when you have like at least three or four books. Yeah, that's probably very true and definitely good advice. And I still have to say even as a author with as many books as I have, that there is still

Jesper (44m 32s):

times I'm like, gosh, I'm wasting my time. I'm building a cabinet. Could be writing or I could be if I was more serious on graphic design, I could've learned this, this and this and the snout by now. But there are only so many things in the day and you know what? Life is not all about just my nose to the grindstone. Occasionally I had to go for a walk with my husband and the dog or they might not be there than the morning life keeps getting in the way of what's going on. It's kind of reminds me every once in a while that it's not all about fantasy worlds and characters in my head.

So my plus and minus is going to sound like a total minus, but it actually had a plus even though I would never do it again on purpose was that I was writing I used to write all the time on my iPad and I was writing one time and uh, we went to backup my iPad and I had actually, it was a new software update was went through on my iPad and I had backed up my story before we started it and I lost 10 chapters, 10, 10, 10, 10 and it was my second book.

So I had one post Oh, easily. I mean it was, I think that book, it's rule of fire and it was I think 110,000 words. I don't know how many chapters, but it's at least a third of the book. About a third of the book I lost in one go. And it was, again, I remember it was December. I remember the dates pretty good that way. And it was just gut wrenching because it was book number two. So I was only had published one. I kind of knew I really wanted to do a trilogy.

I'm still all new and wet behind the ears and you lose a third of your book. And that was it. Only, you know, I was about halfway through it. So I lost the major chunk of my book and I, um, it was that moment of am I going to be serious about this? Am I going to be a writer? Am I going to sit down and, and fix this and rewrite it or am I going to just give up and say, well, I tried and it didn't work out in life. Life threw me a curve ball and I just ducked and ran. So no, obviously 16 books later I sucked it up.

Said, you know what, just give me a week. Don't bother me. I am going to take Christmas break and I'm going to rewrite those 10 chapters. And I did ask him to the to him stop, right. Sat down, wrote up and I actually think they came out better, which is really kind of funny. Oh yeah. But I would never do, I would never delete 10 chapters on purpose again. No. Please especially one of our books. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47m 2s):

Okay. Well I think that was some, uh, good and bad things about our author journey. So hopefully the listeners will get something out of that. Hopefully. At least I can see that there are

Jesper (47m 12s):

goods and bads in every journey and hopefully, Hey Sherry, you know, some of yours in the comments, it'd be really great to hear them.

Speaker 2 (47m 19s):

That would be cool. Or in the, in the amwritingfantasy phase. Well, no, that would be nice. So, uh, all of them I'm thinking if I get some music playing then maybe you can

Jesper (47m 30s):

talk us out here from this episode. Absolutely. So next up we are going to have a secret surprise interview on our next episodes of please. Come back and stay tuned. Oh, maybe it'll be the two of us.

Narrator (47m 45s):

If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.

The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 68 – How to Prepare to Write a Novel

Writing a novel is difficult enough, but where do you even begin?

Autumn and Jesper share thoughts on this very topic in episode 68 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, together with some personal horror stories of what went wrong when they first started out writing.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

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)."

Narrator (2s): 

You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): 

Hello. I am Jesper and I'm Autumn, this is episode 68 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we decided to talk about how each of us prepare to write our next book. So this is more about uh, I guess sort of sharing our personal experiences and thoughts, processes rather than a how to episode.

Autumn (53s): 

Yeah. Not to mention the times we did it wrong and why we don't do it that way. You more I guess where we need to think about that too or, yeah, absolutely. There's a reason, especially after so many books and stuff, there's a reason we do things the way we do them now and not that they won't continue to change and grow, but we got here is for a reason and I think that's sort of the conversation itself.

Jesper (1m 19s): 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully people will get a lot out of, uh, just hearing our experiences here and am how we screw things up too. Once in a while

Autumn (1m 30s): 

I thought there would be, it should be a few laughs in this one, hopefully. I hope so. Yeah. So how have you been autumn Oh good. I'm still still working on my little cabin and building and practicing safe distancing and a little bit of self isolation, but mostly be just because I'm a recluse and I really, I could have lived my life as a hermit. I think as long as I have a laptop and a good view and a nice place to go for a walk and probably a construction or a building project.

Um, even if it was rock cards, I think I could probably entertain myself forever. I've always said if you know, they need a volunteer to like go to Mars or something, I probably would be fine with minimal social contact and never just occasional internet, you know, talks home and I'm good. I am fine. So I'm just rolling with the punches and trying to take this weird world that we've found ourselves in and hoping that everyone else is doing well in staying mentally healthy Israel as well as physically healthy.

How are things over in Denmark?

Jesper (2m 37s): 

No, it's uh, well it's fine. As fine as things can get, I guess, you know, all the podcasts I listened to are talking about the Corona virus who really don't want to talk about it anymore. To be honest,

Autumn (2m 51s): 

that's what I use for the first week or two, I think I read like every BBC am news story that I could find it and I was obsessing about it. But now I go and I read any story that doesn't mention the Corona virus. I just read one about, uh, us multimillionaire who bought the first Bordeaux winery. The first, you know, non-French owner of a Bordeaux winery. That's what I went and read because yeah, I'd rather be reading about French.

Why that feels normal there.

Jesper (3m 27s): 

Indeed. But it does come with some, some good things. I mean am because I don't have to drive the kids to school everyday. Uh, you start to get more extra time on your hands, which is quite nice. So I've, I've spent some time thinking about how we could, uh, use artwork for a world of Elysium going forward. Um, so yeah, we, we, uh, well, of course you know that autumn we are in the process of trying to find a graphic artist who can do some am some workforce.

And I think it's, it's quite an interesting process, wouldn't you say?

Autumn (4m 3s): 

Yes, it is. It, it's, it's so much fun too. I mean, Whoa, we have to go and like scroll through dozens of artists and look at some amazing pictures and paintings that they've done. It's, it's horrible. So I had spent a lot of fun looking at others' ideas and worlds. It's, it's, you know, it's, again, this is why book covers are so important is it's distilling these all these ideas and putting it into one image and it's just fascinating and so inspiring to go and look at some of these really top notch artists.

Jesper (4m 35s): 

Yeah. And then there is of course differences in quality between a, and some of them are extremely good and some are like, okay. But yeah, but I think it's, it's also impressive all the different kind of styles that the artists are using because the more we look into this, the more you can sort of see, okay, this is, this looks really good, but it's not quite the style that we're looking for. So, so I think that makes it an interesting process that is not only about, you know, you can find a pretty good looking picture, but it's not quite in the style that you want it, even though there's nothing wrong aesthetically with the picture itself.

But it's just like, yeah, it's just in jail with, with the feeling that we want to get. Um, so I think that's quite interesting. Of course we were trying to find somebody who can do professional grade work. Um, um, we have, uh, quite a lot to that. We've gone through, I put out a few posts on Twitter, uh, asking for, you know, artists to send links to us, uh, with their portfolios if they were interesting, uh, interested in, in becoming one of our artists.

So I just want to mention now here in this episode. So we sold it, we don't add getting up a new slew of a portfolio sent to us that, that we've already received all the submissions that we need. So please don't stop sending us more. Uh, and we are basically going through each of these artists and we're shortlisting them now. So when you listen to this, uh, this is not a call for you to start sending us stuff, so please don't,

Autumn (6m 12s): 

we will let you know if something changes. But yes, right now we have plenty on our plates and we're going through quite a long different rounds of interviewing processes and finding out costs. And it'll take us a little bit of time to get to finally selecting the final one. But I can't wait. It's so much fun.

Jesper (6m 32s): 

Yeah. And the, and the, and because, yeah, as I've said, you know, we're with a bit more time on their hands. Uh, we started thinking about how can we put this to use, of course images we can use in the books. We can also use it on the website, which we haven't created yet. For fiction. But that'll come. That'll come. Um, and then also, you know, we could also be thinking about creating some sort of collector's edition books of our world, you know, filled with amazing colored artwork.

Um, that would be pretty cool.

 

Autumn (7m 4s): 

That would be, and I love, I mean, we, we just had that episode where we talked about publishing on Ingram sparks and hardcover. But I mean, there's a lot of people doing some launch packages that have like note cards and some swag and sometimes even like a whole fancy box. So there's a lot we can do with this artwork. Oh yeah. Yeah.

 

Jesper (7m 25s): 

So we could basically create sort of like a law book with images in it for the world of Alicia would be pretty cool. I've, honestly, I have no idea if anybody would be pretty cool to make.

Autumn (7m 37s): 

It would be really cool to make it if you really cool. Like I said that especially like once we have a trilogy or there actually we were planning six bucks once we have the whole kit caboodle or having like a really fancy package that you could buy that has some of the artwork and some of this and some of that. And then it just be a lot of fun. It'd be be the map. It'll be really exciting.

Jesper (7m 57s): 

Absolutely. And the like in episode 66, so that's a two episodes back. Uh, when I talked to Joanna Penn, uh, we also discussed like multiple streams of income for authors. So, so this is kind of the thing to think about, right? How can you put, for example, artwork into creating other streams of income, which, which prompted me to start thinking about something else as well. And uh, because uh, you know, well back in the day when, when I was still a young person or story time, uh, I love the am, I love to do miniature war gaming.

Back then, uh, and I also did some, I had some sort of a shorter revisit back to miniature war gaming, like I don't know, five, 10 years ago, maybe something like that. And then I haven't tested for a long while, but it's always been something my brother and I, we like to do that together. So it's something we wanted to go back to. But then with more time on my hand again here at these days, I started thinking about, yeah, but this kind of artwork that could come into play if we, if we actually created some, some sort of fantasy war gaming books relating to that and we can use the, you again, reuse some artwork there.

Yeah. So I'm thinking to get back into that happy again and try to create some sort of system agnostic rule books that everybody can use no matter what kind of war game that they play, but then they can set it in the world of Elysium. I think that would be so freaking cool. That does

 

Autumn (9m 31s): 

sounded really cool. So, yeah, there's a lot of, it's always anytime you can find a multiple use for one thing, it's probably a good thing to go. For

Jesper (9m 41s): 

yeah, absolutely. And it would, it would be another stream of income. And I'm really excited about this to be honest. Oh, week on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast so it was, it was quite funny actually. A, and probably most definitely completely by coincidence, but to keep it on topic about the artists, uh, Joe, Joe Malik posted in a picture in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, uh, about, uh, an image of a woman shooting a boat.

Did you see that?

Autumn (10m 13s): 

I did. I was going to say, I just happened to still stumbled upon that earlier and I was like, Oh, you know, we're talking about art and that's the one of course a just popped into my head and it's one of the, one, it's awesome that, you know, people share, not just writing tips on the amwritingfantasy group, but that they're sharing this artwork. And he especially said am, you know, three guests as to what's wrong with the picture. So I like that cause he, his quote was like, do your homework. People don't accept sloppy research from your artists. So yeah, I agree. It didn't take me long to like notice what was there some really horrible stuff with this woman with the bow.

I don't know what happened there. I don't know either. You know, the image itself, at first glance you're like, Oh she looks rad and kick ass and it looks cool. It looks cool until you look at some of the details and you're like, is she just about to whack herself in the face if she actually pulls the quiver? And how was she holding? Is it through her arm anyway? So

Jesper (11m 15s): 

yeah, there was like a five different things. Um, so for the listener here, so, so the image is pretty cool. Uh, you know, this woman with a bow, she's sort of shooting out of the picture to what you as the viewer vented and it looks really cool. Yeah. But of course the various authors in the fantasy amwritingfantasy Facebook group work quite quickly to point out the errors. So just for the listener here. So first of all the quiver is in the front of the woman.

So basically it's obstructing her draw area which makes no um, and then the woman is also drawing the boat horizontal, which is not a good way of doing it. Yeah,

Autumn (12m 1s): 

no, your aim is so far off that way.

Jesper (12m 4s): 

Yeah. And then the arrow is actually resting on the bow a few inches above her hand and usually you would use your hand to help guide the arrow. So that's another slight mistake there. And then the bolstering is strong in such a way that it rests against the inner arm and behind the arm God. So basically if she was going to release that bolstering its just going to catch on the harm God. Yep. And then um, it also looks like the bolstering is actually behind the quiver.

So I guess it's be kind of get caught both in the armed guard and the quiver. That's like quite a lot of issues there.

Autumn (12m 44s): 

It is. I mean to be, especially the bow string and the quiver being in front of her entire, the string. I'm just like, really the quiver and the, it's, this is gonna be a total, she looks angry because man, she is in a bad position. That's how it should be. That's why. Yeah. Please can you shoot that? Yeah. But that's what's fun with the group. I mean they ask questions from, you know, pulling apart, you know, fantasy pictures to which, and making it a really good point that Hey, if you're going to go pay for a picture, make sure you're getting something that, you know, some reader is not going to sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh at.

But there's some great suggestions in there about, I noticed somebody was looking for a cross between a gr a dragon and a vampire and trying to come up with a name. Uh, yeah. So there's so much fun stuff going on in there.

 

Jesper (13m 35s): 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I liked, I liked that one as well. And I also thank you, Joe for sharing that, uh, imaging in the Facebook group because I asked you just said to autumn I think there is a good point to be made there about the fact that you might be hiring an artist to do some work and like we just talked about, we have quite a lot of work that we're going to hire an artist to do, but at the end of the day, it is still, as the authors, it is still our responsibility to make sure that the outcome is what we needed to be.

So if the artist is making mistakes, it is at the end of this day is still your responsibility to check it and make sure that it's okay and there's no mistakes in it. Even though I fully get the argument about saying, well, the artists should do their homework and they shouldn't be. They should know what they're doing it for sure they should, but you're the one putting out the picture afterwards. So you need to quality check stuff.

Autumn (14m 29s): 

Definitely. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think you should both be aware. I mean, even if you're writing the scene, hopefully you know, you should know how to actually hold a sword or hold a bow and arrow. And it's awesome if you get a chance. Of course right now with self isolation, you probably can't go take lessons on sword fighting or archery, but you know, you can watch YouTube and see how it gets to, how it's really done and uh, it'll help make your fighting and everything else that much more authentic, which is fantastic for your writing as well as your artwork

Jesper (15m 5s): 

So where do you want to start? Autumn how are we preparing to write our next book?

Autumn (15m 12s): 

I was gonna say, is that a pun? How are you going? Gonna start your, start your writing well, and it's funny cause I mean we can definitely, we're starting together, um, our own book, which is slightly different from, you know, even how, it's Laura, I think how you plot than how I would normally start off on a book. But I definitely am adapting some of the things we're doing. And I mean, let's say I, let's talk really quickly about how you started your first book and then we're going to see how we got to where we are.

I think that'd be really fun. And so, yeah.

 

Jesper (15m 46s): 

Yeah. And then afterwards we can also just touch slightly on fiction versus nonfiction because of how I prepare for those two things. Also slightly different.

 

Autumn (15m 54s): 

Yeah. You're much better at the nonfiction I being to write nonfiction, but without your help, I don't think I'd ever get there without my husband's help. He's also, we've, I've written nonfiction but only with someone else prodding me on. It's not nearly as much fun for me is fiction.

Jesper (16m 11s): 

No. Well, as long as you edit all my my mistakes, then I can write the content. Yeah, no. Yeah. But uh, yeah, starting out. So I think, I think I might have talked a bit about this on past episodes as well. Um, but when I first started out, I, I probably did what I think most people do in preparing to write the next book. So I just, I came up with something, I thought, well, this sounds like a cool story.

Let me write that. And then I just started writing and that was it. Uh, and I think that's probably what a lot of people do. I don't think so. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but, but it's just, at least I feel like when you're starting out, that's how you end up in the ditch pretty fast. And that's where I ended up as well.

Autumn (17m 0s): 

Yeah, I think am I do the same thing. I had a short story idea in my head about, um, a woman who had elemental magic and I didn't have anywhere I wanted to go with it. It just wasn't, I daydream a lot. And so it wasn't going anywhere in my day in my head. And then I happened upon a painting that was sort of Mediterranean and I thought, wow, I wonder what if she was in that world and an idea took off and yeah, I just started writing it and I think I was in chapter three when I realized I was totally lost and didn't know what it was.

Who was, it just had some gut instinct of they go here, here, and here. I had a world map because I love maps and I love drawling things, but I didn't know what they're gonna do and what was gonna happen. And even then, once I finished the book, I had to rewrite it. I to go back and develop characters. I had to go back and develop the world a lot more. I tore it apart, rewrote it three times. And even once it was published and I realized despite all of that, I really enjoyed it and I wanted to write a sequel and I hadn't even considered where this trilogy ended up going.

So I do things a lot different now.

Jesper (18m 10s): 

Yeah. Yeah. I haven't been of the same problem because first of all, I didn't quite understand how important the characters were. So, you know, I have the overall story. I have some, you know, some godson mind and I want this and that to happen. Uh, you know, they're very like big picture, like fantasy kind of thing. So I have that in mind, but I didn't quite understand how important the characters were. Um, so that, that was definitely missing. Uh, and then also, like you said, I didn't quite know where I wanted to end up with it.

So it was like I have this concept in mind and I just started writing rod really understanding where I was going. Uh, I especially remember the very first raft. I probably wrote like 15 different drafts, but uh, but the very first one I started writing, I thought this is really cool, so, and I will probably also like maybe three, four chapters in or something. Then the main character got hurt and then I was like, ah, how do I then deal with that? Then I came up with, but then they can just go over here and then there will be some healing over there.

And then I started going over there and then I thought, but something needs to happen. So then when they were there, I came up with these kind of a weird like that almost like spirits or something like tree elves or something else like in talking helps. But more like spirit kind of things. Then I thought, what do they then then they can come and do something and then I started writing chapter five with that. Now it's like, where is this going? You know, I've come completely lost her.

Then all of a sudden I have two spirits and what are they are they have no connection to the main story. I wanted to tell that all so it's just like, Oh my gosh. So I did that and then I started over again and I think, I think I did that trick like four or five times before I figured out that maybe I should do a bit of flooding.

Autumn (20m 8s): 

Florida you helps definitely. Yeah, it's a week. Yeah. We've both become plotters. I'm more of a hybrid than you are. I mean now that we're working on a book together, it is. It is not plotted. I've seen people who literally have plotted down to, I think you just need to add some paragraph breaks in some dialogue and it's pretty much done. So it's not quite that bad. It's at a different document and it's probably, I don't know. Some of them. I actually, I know because I copied out of Excel too cause I use a Mac.

So I was copping out of Excel because the shell cells were not working properly on my Mac and I would be putting into pages making edits and adding things and then posting it back into Excel before sending it back to you. So I know like the longest, um, area might've been 2000 words. So that's, that's almost as a for chapter that is almost a full chapter. But you know, on average they were maybe 800 words. So there are still a lot to hash out. But we definitely, we both do that and we have both been using the seven steps of story structure.

And I do know because we built this already together, that one of the things that I did without even intending to before I wrote my first book is I created a map and we both still create maps before we start writing. And I think to me, I just, the visualization of the world, I can't world build, and if I can't world build, I don't know the culture that these characters are from. So there's, I'm like missing half of what makes these characters unique and related only to this world in this story.

So to me, literally when I started novel especially a new world, the first thing I do is I draw a map.

Jesper (21m 56s): 

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I have a few steps before I get that far, to be honest.

Autumn (22m 1s): 

There's a lot of thinking before you get that far and for sure I don't just sit down with a piece of paper and go, Oh, I'm making a world.

Jesper (22m 8s): 

Yeah. Well, it does come quite a, I saw some, I don't remember if it was on Twitter or if it was on Facebook, but I did see, eh, it's been within the last week. I saw some people debating, even if it was in our own Facebook group. I'm not sure, I can't remember where I saw it, but there was some people debating whether or not you were world-building before after you wrote the story. And, uh, and some people were saying, well, I don't understand why you would be well building before because you don't know what story you want to tell. Uh, and, and I think I, in some way I could say it, I, I land somewhere in the middle because the way that, uh, that I prepare for a new story is basically, I mean, of course step number one is basically brainstorming sort of the topics of the book.

What, what is it going to be about women? It's more like high, high level concepts. Like, okay, is it, is it going to be witches is a Dragon's isn't vampires? I don't, I'm just giving you some random things here. Right? But what is sort of the high level concept of it is, is it, is there like a global war going on? Are there guards mingling in the world or whatever it is, trying to come up with that first.

Autumn (23m 16s): 

Yeah. Sort of theme slash you know, they'll concept you're developing the concept and I think that's part of, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Jesper (23m 26s): 

When I have that, then I usually try to think about, okay, how can we do that concept slightly different from what has been seen a million times before because of course a book about witches or book about dragons or vampires. It's just like, yeah, it's, it's been done over and over and over again. I don't, I don't want to do the same thing that has been a million times before, but at the same time I don't want to write something so strange and unique that readers have never seen it before because then it won't take either, so, so we need to sort of find just a new way of doing something that they are familiar with that.

That's that. At least that's what I'm aiming for.

Autumn (24m 4s): 

Yes. Oh yeah. I learned that one from my first one that you know, having a few elements that a reader can just accept you don't have to explain is really kind of nice. Starting off. I'm imagining that you're a Brandon Sanderson and it doesn't matter what you write and people are going to pick it up and read it. It's not as easy when you're not known. If people don't know how it is, it helps to know at least the flavor of the genre and, and know that, you know, you don't have to eat. It's easier to have dragons then to create some kind of really weird monster and never even mentioned a dragon.

Just just go with at least have at least one drag and everyone likes dragons.

Jesper (24m 41s): 

Yeah. Yeah. But, but I think also that, that's probably also where I sort of made a slight mistake with w with my first book, uh, or, or my first trilogy youth. It has, um, it has dragons in it, but those are probably some of the only true peace kind of things. Whereas a lot of the other creatures that are in that trilogy is some that I admitted myself. Um, which of course on one hand you could say that that makes it interesting, which of course I think it does, but at the same time it also makes it makes it a slightly harder sale.

Um, because that's something that most readers I used to write. Uh, if, if, if it was more like, OK, here's, here's Ellis and he, he had dwarfs and um, and then there was one creature here that you've never heard about before that that would be different. But this one is like, almost all the species are something I invented myself with, with their own name for the species that you've never heard about before and stuff like that. So, so some love that and some, some don't, but it, it just makes it a slightly harder sell.

 

Autumn (25m 53s): 

Yeah, I know. I, that's the mistake we both have in common. And I mean, I did the same thing. I have one dragon and besides, I have no nights, no castles, no effected. Most transportation is through sailboats. So I don't even think I mentioned horses. It was, yeah, every race there's no elves, no ogres, no doors, nothing. All the races are endemic to the world. I haven't made up my own fantasy language for the book. And you know, this was my debut novel.

I talk about biting off a lot and it does, you know, people do love that and it's done well, but it's also a lot harder to sell. I usually have to S you know, tell people, Hey, are you sick of the traditional fantasy tropes because this doesn't have anything in it like that. You're just, it's so different. That is, I think in the entire six books, there is one important sword that comes into play and what I added a few more dragons. So that's about it. Yeah, it is. It does make it difficult because there's nothing there for readers to relate to your entering a whole new world.

And that's definitely part of the world building stage that you've got to decide if you want to. We, we both have decided to maybe aim a little, I won't say lower, but a little closer to center.

Jesper (27m 11s): 

Yeah. And I, I can fully accept the fact that there will be those listening who would say, well, it's better to create something unique and interesting like that. And fair enough. Uh, I'm not gonna sit here and argue for against am. I'm just going to say that most readers are not looking for in my view. And you can disagree and that's okay. Um, but in my view, I don't think most readers are looking for a completely new experience that they've never seen before. They like to see stories that are unique in their own right, meaning that it's not like a story that you have read a million times before.

They do love that. They also love fancy readers. Also love work building. They love to see how you can create new like cultures and settings and all that stuff, but they don't necessarily want to recover from cover about all kinds of new things that you have to explain all the time. What the creature, what is this creature and how does it work? And it's great. But if it's just on and on and on about all kinds of new things, I think you're going to get be better off writing just put in your drops in UAL or something, you know, something that you don't have to explain.

And then in between you can sprinkle some new stuff. I mean we created some new stuff for, for our next series. You know, we have underwater dragons for example. I think pretty damn cool, but it's not something new in the sense that we have to start explaining a ton about what is the dragon. People know what a dragon is. These are just living on the water and stuff. So it's, it's, it's a different way of it. Our vampire is actually a dwarf, which is also new. Um, and he doesn't suck blood Ida. So those new elements in there, but, but it's, it's built upon building blocks that you are familiar with us.

So Rita and I think that is probably the better route to take. Again, you can disagree dear listener if you want. That's okay. But that's how I view it.

Autumn (29m 5s): 

Yeah. And those are the building blocks that, I mean these are the decisions that we're going to use these more typical things are built off of these more well known ideas and concepts. That's something we did before we started writing obviously because we haven't started writing the book yet. But even before we started really drafting out the plot. So that's why we're delving into why we chose this. And that's, is this something you do before you start writing? Even my most recent book, solo book, uh, that's something I was looking at beforehand as I was making those decisions.

Am I going to have elves or Fe or what concepts are there I want to use and how do I make them sort of knew with without going so far that they are brand spanking new you. I only have a couple of brand brand, brand new elements in each. Otherwise, you know what on my end is I'm using seven fantasy races and I'm using ones that people would recognize. Elves, gin, dwarves, giants, they're all their centers. Even. I've never done centaurs before. That was kind of fun to like get to throw those in.

But it was something that was had been there before, but there's reasons that they're different and unique to this world and whether it's the magic or other adaptations, you know, I am already, that's at this stage when I'm choosing what I want to use. What kind of characters, what kind of races? I'm already starting to think about the world that they're from and why they would be the way they are. And also thinking about the magic. To me, magic is one of those things where you want to do something new with magic.

But how magic is one of the most complicated things? I started to develop the rules, like at this point, how are, how is magic going to work so that I can start developing the tension and the hurdles are going to happen, the story and how am I going to solve them? Because it's, to me, it's not a fantasy story. If there's not any magic or dragons, the dragons before.

Jesper (31m 2s): 

Well, we don't actually have any dragons at this point in time in omic series. So that might be some, well, we have one note what targets? We're fine. Yeah. So maybe that counts. Um, yeah, so, but, but I, I agree in the sense for me as well, I think that the world building at this stage, you know, so, okay. I've brainstormed some sort of thematic or concepts for the book. We, at this point, we have also created a synopsis, uh, for our book. Um, we actually, we actually have an upcoming book on story ideas that we can release within the next couple of months, which will explain how at least we go about creating a synopsis, but that is extremely high level.

It might be five line of lines of text. That's yes. So, but at least then we know what it is. Um, and then we move into wealth building at that point in time. And to me, I think this is so incredibly important because again, people will have different opinions and that's okay. People have different processes. That's also OK. um, but the doing the world building at this point before we do any sort of plotting or outlining of, of what the story's gonna be about is so beneficial in my mind because as well as, as you've seen a autumn as you've gone through the outline says, I've been sending it to you, to you.

I mean, if we had not done the world building first, Oh, that would be so much, I would not have been able to. Now it's all of it is weaved into all of the chapters and I was only able to do that because we did all the well building upfront. No, I agree. I would have so many inputs, so many inputs that we would be missing there.

Autumn (32m 37s): 

Yeah, it's so much in depth and involved and unique because we did the world building first and I mean I saw that when I wrote my first one without having world build built very well is that that's half the reason I had to rewrite it because it was so boring and there was so much missed opportunities because I didn't know the world until I wrote the book the first time and that's why I had to rewrite the entire 105,000 words again because then I finally knew the world even though I had my map, but it made me realize how much more detail it has to be a living document that you create as you go.

And so that's why, you know, we've world built, we did do a map before we really got into some of the world building. And I think that's partially because having a map and suddenly looking at some of the things like where the deserts are and where the forest are and where there's oceans and where the landscape, then you can kind of, it helps you trigger some things that you might not think about otherwise because you're looking at the real mechanics and physical nature of a world and you know, well the creatures that within evolve there and the customs that would happen after a hundred years of living with a desert that kills you and things like that.

Jesper (33m 50s): 

Yeah. Yeah. That, that's pretty cool as well. I like that. I like our desert quite deadly.

Autumn (33m 56s): 

We were having a little bit too much fun. We're world building. Oh, I got a new one for you. Never go to our desert. If you could be transplant ported anywhere. Never go to our desert.

Jesper (34m 11s): 

Yeah. I don't care how much money you want. Yeah. But I actually, it's funny you said that, uh, around, around not doing world building for your first week because I actually had the opposite problem. Uh, yeah. Because, well, I love the world building stuff, right? And I love it too much. So when I, when I was doing my first book, I went all in on world building and I did at, um, and I thought, you know, S a reflection here later on. I think that helped in the sense that when we put our words building cost together, that was what was able to influence that we'll put in cost because it's like, okay, I think we need to understand what do you need to build and what don't you need to build?

Because when I did the first time around for my first two series, I built everything, everything I could think of was built and the, I have an insane amount of notes for the world. Uh, and I used like 10%.

Autumn (35m 3s): 

Oh, that's painful. But it's typical though. It is very typical. I think. I must've, I was so, I love writing. I think I was just so anxious to get to writing that you know, I, and I wrote it first, so I did minimal world-building and then I realized what you needed to do to world built at least quickly so I could fix it and put it back in my story. So I was, yeah, we're there. We're about the only thing I think we've ever found that we were opposite ends of the spectrum on.

 

Jesper (35m 32s): 

I think, honestly, I think I spent eight or nine month just world building that it was insane. I mean, and there was so much material. I mean, of course I knew every, every inch of that world in detailed when I started writing at the end of it. But it's like, but it wasn't, but again, when you're first starting out, know I, I w I don't know, but I wasn't thinking in the sense that, well, I'm probably not gonna use most of this. I didn't think about that. I just thought that the more I know the better because then I can explain it and I can sort of make it part of the story, which is true enough.

But what do you then figure out once you start writing is like you only need the tip of the iceberg, all of this stuff. Uh, it's, it's good to understand the other, some of the other elements I should correct myself by saying, you know, it's good to understand a bit more in depth because that actually bleeds through into the story even though you don't have to explain it, but you don't need to understand all the way down to the bottom of the sea too much.

 

Autumn (36m 33s): 

I always figure you need to know something pretty detailed about where each of your main characters are from. And you should know some pretty pretty good details, you know, a little bit below surface level. Scratch the surface on any place your characters go. And other than that, you need about three general knowledges about anything else in the world that exists that you're not actually going to go physically see. And then you're pretty much good. You can go right. So that was always my kind of quick world-building. If you really want to get to writing, at least do that much.

 

Jesper (37m 6s): 

Yeah. Well, of course. Uh, the world building costs, which again, it will be really a later this year. Hopefully it'll be out. I know we talked about for a long time, but uh, but, but that will actually lay out step by step exactly what you need to do and what you don't need to do. Analysts will talk you through how to do each of the steps is always, I think it's going to be insanely beneficial. And that was actually, we followed the exact steps that we put into that course ourselves for when we build the, well the volition and, but I guess I cannot quite say how long it actually took to go through the building of the world of Elysium because we were creating the cost at the same time.

So obviously it took a lot more time because we had to explain everything and how we did and why we did it as well. So I don't, if you're just going in, you just following the teachings of the modules and you're doing the world building, I do have a sort of gut feeling about how long would it take autumn do too. I, I'm not quite sure to be honest.

Autumn (38m 5s): 

I think you, if you are determined and you want to get through it, you could do it within a month. But I think if you know, you have a, if you're not self, if you're doing, if you're self quarantine anything at the moment, Oh, you know, you can get this done in like three weeks. But I think, uh, otherwise, you know, two months might be reasonable and maybe a little bit. Yeah.

Jesper (38m 24s): 

I, I don't, I, I think it probably depends on how much time you're putting. I mean, if you're doing full time, you could probably do the world building in a week or something, but you're doing like one hour here, one hour there, then yeah, maybe a month or something to go through the modules. Uh, but yeah, concentrated focus. Yeah. A week. And you probably have the world, all those stuff you need for your world and compared to the nine month.

Autumn (38m 49s): 

But I think that's pretty good. That pretty good, I have to say. And I think I even did longer the first time. But again, the you the first time, you're really just figuring this stuff out. I have to say that you spent all this time building the world. I am so surprised you've only written one trilogy. I figured, I wrote, I created this world. I know it. And I know the character so well that I ended up with six bucks. So there's still sometimes play around with another three. So yeah. You know, we want to develop a world that to me is the benefit is you can just write some books in that world.

And so it's worth putting in the time and developing some stuff. But anyway. Okay, so we've done some building. I agree. But just one more point on that because you just triggered a thought. Oh no,

Jesper (39m 33s): 

no, no. But, but no, it was not, nothing bad, but it was more to say, actually I did not go back and write more books in that world because I was, I felt like I can do something better. I think that's what I felt when you're first starting out. You know, sometimes it's like, eh, I just, once I was done with the trilogy, I liked that trilogy. It was sort of the story I wanted to tell. But at the end of it I felt like I don't want to tell more in this world, even though I know I'm way I wasted a ton of effort and time.

But at the same time I think I took a lot away from it. Um, and of course with the world of volition that we built, now we have, have on purpose build it quite large and expanding so that we can write a ton of things in it. We can also write very different stories in that world. Just taking place in different parts of the worlds. Even have like a interconnected different worlds through a center, which I'm not going to go into all the details here. I guess we can save that for Rita's, but, but there is a lot of different worlds connected inside the world of volition, so to speak.

So it gives us lots of playgrounds and, and um, that's on purpose because the idea for us going forward is that all our books will be set in Elysium. Um, so, so we did the world building once now and we can write a ton of books. We can write 30 books in this world if we want. Oh, no problem. Yeah. Um, so, so there is like an ongoing benefit of it, but at the same time, of course, if you are starting out, I don't know, you might end up in a place where I did, where it feels like, eh, I don't want to go any further with this.

So, so unless you sort of know what you want to do, it might not be a bad thing to just create a smaller world and just write a trilogy and just feel it out.

Autumn (41m 21s): 

Yeah, I do for first start, that's not a bad concept is just start with something small, compact. You can have edges to your map and not worry well what's on the other side and just develop that so you can get to writing. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I interrupted you before. Oh, that's all right. I was just thinking before we, I mean, I can't believe how we were worried we wouldn't make it to a normal time with this one. And we're already like pushing the end and we are only, we haven't even gotten to writing. So after world-building, uh, that's when I think we really developed, you know, our characters more and start doing some character arcs and getting those nuances and after that, the seven steps of story structure.

So we, we really know where our hurdles in laws and what's going to happen and then we can hopefully, yeah,

Jesper (42m 9s): 

yeah. Then it's a full outline. And then after that, uh, I put some new batteries in my dictation recorder and then we're good to go. Excellent.

Autumn (42m 16s): 

So yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we got through all of the steps, but we actually world bill before we do our characters because without knowing, you know, what kind of races and stuff that they're from, we don't know. Some other nuances you could, you could be setting your character up for something totally the wrong type of character for that culture or missing half of what's important about that culture and a lot of tension and really excited things that you only know once you actually develop your world.

Jesper (42m 45s): 

Yeah, I fully understand the respect, respected those counter arguments to that, but at least that's how we see it. I mean I could not create either characters or already outlined without doing the world building for us. I just don't see how you do it later. Uh, not, not if you want a very immersive world. I mean I understand if you're writing urban fantasy or something and there was only a few sort of world building elements that you need to put into a real w real world, you know, modern setting, then I guess I can see how you could do it on the fly a bit here, a bit there and sort of, okay.

There was, there's this one part that is fantastical so I'll just develop that as I get to it. I guess I can understand that, but I still feel like doing the wealth building up front makes a massive difference in the output afterwards. But, but that's, that's how we view it. And it's okay that some people will disagree. Yeah.

Autumn (43m 38s): 

Yeah. So long as we agree with each other since we're writing a book together, that's a good point. But yeah, I mean, since I've written in urban fantasy, um, you know, something that's set in basically modern times, not this modern, I'm not sure if I'm going to add a pandemic to my story yet, but you know, it's just about now, a few years before hopefully. And um, yeah, I didn't have to do much world building, but I had to think about some concepts, some faith things and some historical stuff and throw those kinds of things in. But for that one, I kind of already knew a lot about the characters, but I had to think again how to make it unique.

You still do those concepts in those twists of, okay, I want to write this type of story, but how can I make it mine? Even though it says in this world and it's in the urban fantasy genre, I want to make it, I call it a Fe post-apocalyptic novels, so it's, it's related but it's also uniquely mine. You pick it up and gotta have to learn a few things like how magic works, works and what's happening in the world. Those are important things to make sure you know before you delve into the writing and before I delved into the really developing the characters and figuring out the rest of the plot, which evil when I'm on my own, it might not be as in depth as when we're together, but I still run through the seven steps of story structure.

I have outlined the entire trilogy. They'll actually, for this one, it's a series. I know exactly where all the books are, at least going for at least, you know, a paragraph to two to a full page about each of the seven steps so that I know really what's going to happen before I really sit down and start writing and going for it

Jesper (45m 14s): 

and all this stuff. About seven steps of story structure. Dear listener, I mean w we're going to release a book, uh, in a, in the next month, year, hopefully before supper. And where we, we explain our step by step guide on how we go about outlining. So you can pick that up once we get that far. But there is also a video on the amwritingfantasy YouTube channel about seven steps, so you can go and look that up in the meantime and maybe like in a, in a quick summary,

 

Autumn (45m 42s): 

sorry. Yeah, maybe we'll eventually do a more in depth podcast on it, but for now

Jesper (45m 47s): 

there's a YouTube video. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, I promise to just touch upon nonfiction as well. So it's write I'll just do that before we close out. Um, really quickly here. So when I'm going about preparing to write a new nonfiction book, one of the first things I do is actually to read a lot of books on the topic that I want to cover. Um, and why I do that is, is basically because a lot of the time I have my thoughts on what I want to say.

Uh, and it's not that, that those thoughts at all is going to change and that's not why I'm reading the books, but it's more like those are the authors who wrote books on the same topic often cover the same topic from different angles. So basically what I'm getting out of reading them is my like, ah, okay. Yeah, I haven't thought about this from this point of view or, um, and that just allows me to, when I then sit down to two write, um, I, I sort of know, okay, these are the things that I should probably think about tackling this book, right?

Because otherwise it might be very one dimensional because it's just the way I view it. Whereas if I read a lot of books on the topic, also often end up watching a lot of YouTube videos that tackles that the subject matter that I'm going just to get other perspectives about what are other people's angles onto subject matter. It's not so much about their opinions, but it's more like what are the angles that they're going to tackle this subject? You know where they're coming from so that I can build in those nuances.

Autumn (47m 25s): 

Yeah. And not only just reading those other books, but I'm reading the comments and the reviews about those other books and YouTube channels, because then you see what character, what readers, like what they got out of it, and also where baby they like, Hey, you never said about this, this, and you're like, Oh, I should mention that then because it held, it gives you ideas of topics to put into your nonfiction. Yeah.

Jesper (47m 47s): 

So basically that's what I do first. All right. So I collect all my inputs there and I write up my notes and uh, I put, I usually put the notes into chapters and sub-chapters then where they belong. And once I have that, then it's a pretty messy document, but it's divided into, uh, it's divided into the areas where I want things, so I know where they belong. And then I'll, I'll basically just start writing and that, that's it for nonfiction. So it sounds simple, but it's a lot of work. I can promise you.

Autumn (48m 17s): 

And that's probably why I have yet to do one solo. Maybe one of these days.

Jesper (48m 22s): 

Yeah, maybe. Who knows? You don't have to. Yeah, so I think there is a lot of ways people can prepare for the next writing project, but I guess I w I would actually be quite curious to hear other people how they go about this. So if, if you know, if, if you dear listener could leave a comment on this episode or on YouTube if you're listening to the podcast from there or even in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, I think that would be, I would love to hear other people's comments on how do they prepare for the next to write the next book.

That sounds good.

Jesper (49m 2s): 

So next Monday, Autumn and I will share some personal details as we discussed each of our journeys as writers, good and bad.

Narrator (49m 13s): 

if you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next time.