The Final 10 Writing Tips From J A Konrath

 

Here are the final 10 writing tips in my writing quiver - for now. I hope you find them all helpful. The ebook I got them from, The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (Everything A Writer Needs To Know), is well worth the time it takes to read it, and it only costs a couple of dollars.

Here are the final 10 tips:

31. Read what’s currently selling, and come up with comparable ideas.

32. Show, don't tell. This means you don't need a one-paragraph description of a bedroom, a character's thoughts on everything, and for god's sake, don't put any backstory in the first chapter.

33. Always ask: “Does the story pull the reader in right away and then hold their interest?” In other words, does your story hook the reader?

34. Short stories pay poorly, but they’re extremely important for getting your name out there. Try to send out a few every month.

35. Talking about writing, reading about writing, taking writing classes, joining writing groups, discussing writing online, and attending writing conventions, are not substitutes for sitting down and actually writing. "Writers write."

36. Don’t be the writer who has ten projects going at once but never finishes any of them. Complete a project to the end.

37. Don’t be the writer who has a drawer full of finished manuscripts but no rejection slips because you never sent them to agents or editors. If you want to sell, you have to query.

38. Never listen to praise. Praise is like chocolate —we love to eat it up, but it isn't good for us. Being told something is good doesn't help you get better.

39. Know when to stop writing. There is ALWAYS something that can be fixed, edited, or told in a better way. To paraphrase Hemingway, writing is never completed, it is simply due.

40. Writing is a craft, and craft can be taught.

AND...

Because Joe Konrath is a funny as well as a helpful guy, here is a bit of bonus writing and publishing advice from him:

How to Become A Successful Crime Writer In Just Six Easy Steps:

Step #1: Read. 

Step #2: Outline.

Step #3: Write.

Step #4: Keep Writing.

Step #5: Edit.

Step #6: Sell It For A Lot Of Money.

And, as a famous cartoon pig once (actually way more than once) said:

That's all folks.

Another 10 More Writing Tips From J A Konrath

 

As promised last time, here are the penultimate 10 writing tips from J A Konrath.

21. If you feel blocked, pause and connect with your characters to determine what they are feeling, what they want, and what they should do next. This is known as how to "write from" emotion rather than "write for" emotion.

22. If you’re stuck, read what you wrote the day before. This can give you a launching point for the next scene.

23. Give yourself permission to write crap. “Spend too much time thinking, questioning, judging, dismissing, and second-guessing, and you’ll never get anything finished.” You can always fix things in the edit.

24. Questions keep the pages turning. The obvious question, ‘What happens next?’ is what both your characters and your readers should be thinking.

25. When you finish, put the writing away. A week is good. Two weeks is better. The longer you can stay away from it, the more you can forget what you wrote and approach it with fresh eyes.

26. We’re not writers. We’re rewriters. Nobody gets it right the first time. And even when you do sell it, you’ll be required to make even more changes. This is a business. Leave the ego at the door . . .  and be prepared to work hard if you want to make some money in this biz.

27. Research shouldn’t take the place of writing, but it is certainly required if you want to paint an accurate picture in your reader’s mind.

28. Read like a writer. Re-read passages from books you love and ask yourself, what is the author doing here that’s working so well? And if you see something that you think is bad, ask yourself, why is this bad? What could the author have done differently to make it work?

29. Ask, “What if?” Here’s one example. “What if someone cloned dinosaurs and planned to open a dinosaur theme park on a remote island?” (Jurassic Park).

30. Seek criticism, not praise. Knowing what’s wrong will help you improve.

More advice coming next time.

10 More Writing Tips from J A Konrath

As promised in my last post, here are 10 more writing and publishing tips from J A Konrath's amazing book, "The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (Everything A Writer Needs To Know)." 

11. Give your character flaws. Ask the following: “What personal, internal problem will get in the way of the hero reaching his/her goals? Addiction? Illness? Disability? Neuroses? Readers don't want characters to be happy. They want them to be tortured for 90,000 words, and then happy at the end. Maybe. That's the essence of a page-turner."

12. Ask yourself: “Who will make a worthy opponent for your protagonist?”

13.  Create a strong adversary. “Good vs. Evil is conflict in its purest form, and any sports fan can tell you that competition is a lot of fun.”

14.  “Conflict is the main ingredient for successful fiction. The question of ‘What happens next?’ is what keeps your audience glued to the page. Not pretty description. Not clever phrasing. Not cute dialogue. The motor that drives the story is conflict. The central plot of any story should be centred around a conflict. The sub plots should introduce more conflict. There should be conflict on every page, and even in every paragraph.”

15. Write what you like to read.

16. If you want to be a writer you have to make writing a priority.

17. Rewriting and editing is where you take a good book and make it great by cutting out all of the fat, exposition, and unnecessary action and dialogue.

18. When writing dialogue, make it sound natural. “People talk differently than they write. Writing is slower, more deliberate, and more thought goes into it. Speaking is looser, freer, less constricting, and less precise. Record some dialogue in natural settings—at the mall, on the phone, on the radio. Then transcribe what you heard. You’ll notice a big difference between the spoken word and the written word.”

19. Read everything out loud. You can find a lot of errors when reading using your voice, rather than your mind, because your mind tends to see things as you wrote them, not as they appear on the page.

20.  Get the scissors. Sometimes the words are there, but in the wrong order. Don't be afraid to switch sentences, paragraphs, and even chapters.

I'll be back next time with 10 more writing tips from J A Konrath.

10 Writing Tips from J A Konrath

I recently downloaded a Kindle ebook written by mystery, thriller, and horror writer J.A. Konrath. It’s titled, “The Newbie´s Guide to Publishing." It's a huge book with over 370,000 words of writing advice, tips, tricks, and observations. That's more than 1100 pages. It's the biggest book on writing and publishing ever put together.

Joe Konrath has written over 100 books, and he says he earns most of his income from ebooks that are read on Kindle Unlimited, and he’s sold more than 25,000 copies of his self-published ebooks.

I've been reading this ebook and have come across some worthwhile advice about writing fiction that I thought every writer would find valuable.

I made a list of 40 tips and tricks about writing that I thought would be the most helpful. I've divided the list into 4 sets of 10 tips, and I'll publish each set over the next four weeks.

So here are the first 10 writing tips from J A Konrath:

1. When writing a book, have a set daily word count to reach (he aims to write between 3,500 and 4,000 words a day). Don't turn on the internet until you've written your first 1,000 words, while you have a short break. Reach your word count no matter what, even if you're tired, it's late, and you want to go to bed.

2. Be entertaining.

3. If you’re paralysed with fear that your book sucks, do the following:

▪ When in doubt, keep writing anyway.

▪ Tell your internal editor to shut up until you’ve reached the end.

▪ Remember that you’re often a poor judge of your own work.

4. “I’m an advocate of cutting everything non-essential to the story. It’s the Kill Your Darlings School of Writing. If it ain’t needed, trim it.”

5. “Make each chapter, each paragraph, each word essential.”

6. “Well-drawn characters are important in fiction. If a reader doesn’t care about the protagonist and antagonist, it doesn’t matter how many roller-coaster twists the plot has. As writers, it’s our duty to make our characters memorable.”

7. One of the best ways to motivate yourself to write is by preparing an outline. “Here's the thing;  if you already have a template, you don't need motivation, and you don't get blocked. It's like painting by numbers. What an outline does is offer you a template. You simply need to fill in the colour.”

8. “In my books, I try to keep raising the stakes, constantly introduce conflict (both internal and external) . . . . Each scene has to have a point, a reason for existing. It has to fulfil some kind of purpose—reveal clues, enhance character, add suspense, raise tension, ratchet up the conflict.”

9. Your protagonist has to have a goal (or goals); that is, a dream or something that they desperately want. The plot centres on your protagonist’s attempts to achieve those goals. However, you need to make sure that your protagonist doesn’t achieve his or her goals until the very end, and maybe add a surprise twist in the end by thinking, "What would no one expect could happen next?"

In the meantime, torture your protagonist as much as you can. At every turn, ask yourself: “How can I make things worse for the protagonist?” (As another writer put it, chase your protagonist up a tree and then throw rocks at them.)

10. “Make sure the first chapter starts with action.”

... And there you have it. 10 ideas to make your writing great and the whole process simple.

I'll have 10 more for you next week.