It’s spoooooky season, so let’s have some tricks (of the trade) and some treats! I’m sharing some of my best tips on writing, editing, grammar, marketing, mindset—a whole mixed bag of treats to sweeten your author life. In no particular order, here they are.
Writing: Create Cliffhanger Moments for Yourself
Do you find it hard to get the momentum back the next day after a really good writing session? Make sure you leave yourself hanging—at the end of your session, jot down some notes in your doc about where you want to go next or even leave your words mid-sentence (if you feel you won't lose your train of thought there!). That way, you can jump back in the next day without hemming and hawing and procrastinating and trying to figure out how to pick up where you left off.
Editing: How to Punctuate Interrupting Dialogue
An error I see all the time in manuscripts is how to punctuate an interruption in a line of dialogue—i.e. when you break into the dialogue to show the character doing something to animate that line for the reader. There are em-dashes and open and closed quotations marks, but where do they all go?
E.g. “How dare you”—she pointed at him angrily—“you, of all people, judge me for that?”
When you break off in the middle of the speech, immediately close the quotation, then put an em-dash (no space in between on either side) and explain the action. When you want to return to the dialogue, put another em-dash after the action (no space on either side again) and re-start the speech with an open quotation mark to continue on as normal.
Marketing: Universal Links
If you're sharing links to your book, I beg you from the bottom of my Canadian heart to use universal links!
Most authors link directly to the American Amazon store, but for us non-Americans, it's quite frustrating because we need to then go to our own country's store to find your book. And frankly, most people aren't going to take the time to do that—you're creating so many extra clicks for them, and with each click, the possibility of them getting to the page to complete the sale goes down. Unless I'm desperate for that book at that price, I probably won't bother to jump over to the Canadian store, search your name or book title, click into the page, and hit Buy Now.
So make it as easy as possible for your non-American readers, and for your non-Amazon readers if your books are wide, to buy your book by reducing the number of links they have to click to get to the Buy page. There are lots of way to do this—by getting an Amazon affiliate account and creating universal links from there, Booklinker, books2read, etc. Search "universal amazon link" to find the way that works best for you so you can get more sales!
Grammar: Lay vs Lie
One day, friends, ONE DAY I will not have to check which one I should use, lay or lie. I still have to check literally every. single. time. I see it in a manuscript. (VERY important for a romance editor to get this distinction right.)
So, here is the main difference between the two: lay is transitive and lie is intransitive.
What does this mean if you're not a grammar nerd?
Transitive means that the verb takes a direct object, the thing that the verb is being done to—so you lay your head on your pillow (“your head” is the direct object here). Intransitive means it doesn’t take a direct object, so you lie down on the bed. If you're confused, ask yourself “lay WHAT?’’—if you can answer that with a noun, then you have a direct object and you need to use lay in present tense.
The REAL tricky bit about lay vs lie is that lay is the past tense of lie. Make sure you know what tense you're using to decide if it should be lay or lie!
Marketing: The Rule of 7
The Rule of 7 is a marketing concept that says that your prospective customer has to see your stuff seven times before they're ready to buy. And look, I know that as a writer, all you want to do is write and not do the boring, tedious marketing stuff, but it's so, so important that you put yourself and your book(s) out there and market them.
Just posting about your book once on release day isn't nearly enough. Remember, you're building an author brand here. You need to show your followers who you are so they care about you and get invested in your success and become fans for life—and buy your books. So build up to your book launch with ongoing posts, and make sure people see and hear about it a bunch of times to get them intrigued and excited to read.
Writing: Offset Important Moments
You know when you have a defining moment in a romance story—the first meeting of the love interests where their eyes lock, or the moment when all of the tension and anticipation releases when they get together for the first time, or when one runs away from the other in a bleak moment?
You need to signal to your reader that these are important times where they should be paying attention. To do this, make sure these moments aren't buried in the middle of a paragraph where the eye might skip over them and miss their significance.
Instead, put them on their own line/paragraph so it's offset from a big chunk of text.
(See? Like that.)
Here's an example all chunked together:
She paced back and forth, trying to figure out what to say so she could leave this place behind forever. "I never loved you," she blurted out. She knew she'd hit her mark. In a split second, his face went from shock to anger to something she couldn't read before settling into a blank expression. With that, she walked out the door, never turning back to see if his face would change again.
I'm not a writer (as you can tell by this terribly cliche paragraph), but watch how it changes when we offset the big moment:
She paced back and forth, trying to figure out what to say so she could leave this place behind forever.
"I never loved you," she blurted out.
She knew she'd hit her mark. In a split second, his face went from shock to anger to something she couldn't read before settling into a blank expression. With that, she walked out the door, never turning back to see if his face would change again.
Mindset: Show Yourself Some Love
Writers tend to give themselves a lot of negative self-talk (if you’ve been procrastinating, if you read a shitty review, if you just didn’t get as much done as you wanted, etc. etc.), so let’s make sure you’re balancing that out with some positivity.
Open up a new file and make notes in there whenever something good happens. It could be really wonderful feedback that you got from a beta reader, a five-star review, a breakthrough that you had in plotting, or your brain translating your thoughts perfectly onto paper into a truly excellent sentence. Go read this file on the days when things don't come quite so easily to remind yourself that yes, you can do this writing thing and do it well. Future You will thank Past You on those not-so-easy days.
Marketing: Hook ’Em
There's this author who I see posting often about her book. Nice cover, apparently great reviews, posting consistently—sounds awesome, right? Except...I have no idea what her book is about. None. No clue about the plot or the expectations or anything. And sure, I could go track down the blurb if I was really interested, but because there's nothing really for me to grab on to and get excited about, I just scroll past.
If you're doing promo, you've gotta give your reader enough information to intrigue them—so great promo picture, an enticing quote (from the book or from reviews), and some kind of indication what the story's about, whether it’s tropes or a one-line elevator pitch or something else that will grab their attention. Make them stop scrolling and pique their curiosity.
Mindset: Monsters
Do you get defeated by the procrastination monster, or the imposter syndrome monster, or the this-is-too-hard monster some days, and throw up your hands and quit?
Don't beat yourself up about this. Just because it happened once (okay, maybe it's happened a lot—but we've all been there, honestly), it doesn’t mean that monster will ALWAYS defeat you. And it doesn't mean the battle is over.
Nurse those wounds, take stock and analyze what went wrong, and strategize to avoid it in the future. Then dust yourself up and try again.
Monsters feels like an appropriate place to end! Happy spooky season!