Tag Archives: diane holmes

fiction

Scene Magic: Your Character’s Emotional Set Point – Part 1

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Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery by Diane Holmes

Character Meets Scene

“A character walks into a scene…”  not with a priest or rabbi, but with a goal and an emotion. 

mood-swings1

That’s not usually how it’s taught.  We writers tend to discuss a character’s goal, or a scene goal, or story goal in a rather factual, stand-alone way. (Or in an excited way that reflects our writing excitement and not the character’s excitement.)

But every character starts with an emotion in place.

Motivation is Not the Same as Emotion

I hear ya.  You’re thinking, “You mean motivation!” 

Actually. not at all, and that’s why this is important to talk about as writers. 

#1  Motivation is not required to be emotional in nature, although it often is. 

#2  Having chosen a motivation that is related to emotion doesn’t automatically mean the emotion is showing up on the page like it should.  (Sometimes authors have powerful motivation, but they forget to demonstrate the emotion, because it seems obvious to them.)

#3 Most motivations don’t have a 1-to-1 correlation to a single emotion that never changes over the course of the story.  

(You may be motivated, for example, to get a college degree because your parents invested all their hopes in you, and you never want to struggle the way they did, but in this scene… are you happy, frustrated, joyful, nervous?)

#4 The motivation that generates a specific emotion, may not have much to do with the dominant emotion in the present scene. Characters (same as you and I) have emotions all the time that have nothing to do with the motivations that propel our goals.

For example, maybe today you’re frustrated because your car wouldn’t start and had to be jumped.  This isn’t how you wanted your morning to go.   Now you’re in class, listening to the lecture, and you’re still frustrated. 

But this doesn’t have anything to do with your goal to get a college degree.  You didn’t fail a class because of this.  The school didn’t kick you out.  But you are under emotional stress.

So, when you think of emotion…

Think of the emotion your character is actually feeling right now, based on what has happened, what  is happening, and what your character fears will happen, plus your character’s personality, his or her stress level, fears, hopes, etc.

<To be continued….>

–> Have you spotted an emotionally fickle character?  Report your sighting here.

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Diane Holmes Crop 1Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone:

  • Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and
  • Marketing-Zone: Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s also the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”

advice, Business, client relationships, editorial, featured, Marketing yourself, Sales

7 Negative Responses To Your Book Pitch & How To Avoid Them: Part 7

A warm welcome back for Diane Holmes, with the last entry on her 7 part series about pitching…and for today we have…

#7 “Listening to you is like Herding Cats.”

Translation: “What?  Wait,  No, over there and there and there.  Yeah–   But–  I don’t under–  Un-huh.  I think–  Okay, start over from–  Wha–?”

Reality:  While books are complex and unfold over many pages, pitches are elegant and illuminate the unique aspect that makes you want to dive into those pages.  1,000 cats vs. 1 cat.

It’s good to be passionate about your book, but you still need to present your book’s hook with logical links from one idea to another.  And ultimately, you need to demonstrate that your book can be matched to an audience beyond you (aka interest the person you’re pitching to).

Solution:  Think of the editor or agent as your audience.  Bring your audience with you as you pitch by understanding what he or she already knows, thinks, and feels about your book’s subject and genre. Start there, then talk them through your book’s hook, building information logically.

If your novel is about a world in which magical beings named Linkers are tied to human souls, don’t start with, “Linker Mai-su just loves what she does and she loves all mankind and she’s their only hope.  Souls are really these vortexes and everyone has one except for a few.  And they’re really world-makers and really powerful, but that’s not Mai-su.  And….” Continue reading 7 Negative Responses To Your Book Pitch & How To Avoid Them: Part 7 →

Marketing yourself

The Author’s Branding Manifesto

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by Diane Holmes

Last we spoke on Author Branding, the conversation included Zombies and we hashed over whether “brand” is actually a curse word in disguise.

Brand ourselves?  (All together now….)  Like products?!  You mean come up with a way to sum up our uniqueness?

Brand Heaven and Hell Picture by David Armano

And yet if I ask you if all writers are alike and can all write the same thing,  there’s not a writer reading this column who won’t argue that we’re each original, have individual voices, and are not in any way interchangeable.  (I think there’s a marketing word for pointing out unique qualities…. )

Wait.  I’m pausing to see if anyone saying, “Oh noes, I’m not original at all.  I strive to be a generic author, and I’m hoping that if another writer comes along, they’ll cast me aside because (all together now), it’s not like I bring anything unique to the table.”

Crickets.  (And they’re snickering.)

A Class On Branding Just for U

Today, I want to share Dan Amano’s  video on the topic of people and brands.  He founded Brand U.0 (“you point zero”), and I have a marketing crush on him.

This talk, given at the Chicago New Media Summit in 2008, is the best 20 minutes you’ll ever spend on building a personal brand.

First minute and a half showing the difference between a logo and a brand. J And just gets better and better!

Go watch RIGHT NOW. Then come back here.

Bottom Line Takeaway:

  • Brand is not the product.
  • Having a brand does not make you a product, because brand is about your gut.
  • There’s a brand heaven and a brand hell based on how  other people experience your brand. Your brand and influence exists whether you care or not.
  • Online, personal brands happen in an organic way, celebrating niches.
  • You know you’re a web-lebrity if you have an action figure in your own image.
  • David has 5 aspects of building a personal brand.  My favorite is “Be Remarkable.” That is the essence of every writer I know. we have remarkable things to say.  We arrived remarkable, and we have a remarkable dream that doubles as a career.  Pretty darn… remarkable.
  • People who don’t create a personal brand still have them. They just don’t control them.

The Author’s Branding Manifesto

So, here’s what I want you to take away from this column on Author Branding.

  1. Writers create meaning.
  2. Branding creates meaning.
  3. This is your chance to bring meaning to your personal brand (how others see you), instead of letting someone else do it.
  4. It’s a creative act.
  5. It’s not our enemy or a curse.  It’s our finest work brought to life.
  6. And it’s the most creative thing we’ll ever do for our careers.

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Note: In the video, David mentions presentations on Slide Share.  You can find them here.

This is the second in a series on Author Branding.  Previous articles include:

#1 Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers

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Diane Holmes Crop 1Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone:

  • Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and
  • Marketing-Zone: Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book. She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”
advice, fiction

How to Write Captivating Fiction– 3 Lessons from Dick Francis

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Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery by Diane Holmes

“Be Original.”

Most writers have heard that advice. And most writers think they’re original, but they’re not. The words are rearranged, but everything is just one or two degrees off exactly what we’ve read before. The expected. The usual. The awful ordinary.

samesame11

Why aren’t we original if we’re trying so hard to BE original? Maybe it’s because our love for the story archetypes or forms is too great and we hold on way too tight, confusing the minute details of the story with the love we feel.

There is a delicious goodness, a savory warmth to all our different novel forms. Some forms become genres or types, because we revel in their goodness so much. We say, “More of that!” And in our desire to give and receive “more of that,” we recite familiar terrain.

  • Characters say the same things in the same situations.
  • Settings are delivered with expected bows and wrapping.
  • Plot twists come and go like dancers on a wind-up music box.

Always the same dancers, same song.

And all of that comes from attempts to be original. (“Hey, these are MY characters in My story! He didn’t say, ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you!’ He said, ‘Don’t make me cause your death!’ It’s original.”)

Yeah. So forget original. All that comes of that is we’re original in the same ways. And frankly, original does not mean interesting. You can be original and boring. No one wants that.

This is your call to be something more. Be captivating.

It turns out that the greatest originality is not what’s in YOUR writerly mind, but in what happens in the mind of the reader.

When you’re trying to be original, the focus is on you, the writer. The reader is unmoved, because the reader isn’t being “original-ed.” But when we talk “captivating,” now the reader’s involved. Because it’s the reader who is captivated. The reader is caught up breathless, suspended over the lexicon of imagination on paper and busy story-making in her own mind.

How to Be Captivating – A Lesson from Dick Francis

Opening sentence of Decider by Dick Francis

OK, so here I am, Lee Morris, opening doors and windows to gusts of life and early death.

#1 Take the readers into unchartered waters.

Holy cow. What an opening. Is it original? Yes. But more than that, it’s captivating, fanciful, poetic, and full of Lee’s point of view. And better yet, I don’t know where this will go. I’m off balance, in uncharted story-waters and eager to find out more.

They looked pretty harmless on my doorstep: two middle-aged civil Englishmen in country-gent tweeds and flat caps, their eyebrows in unison raised inquiringly, their shared expression of embarrassed anxiety.

“Lee Morris?” one of them said, his diction clipped, secure, expensive. “Could we speak to him?”

“Selling insurance?” I asked dryly.

Their embarrassment deepened.

“No, actually. . .”

Late March evening, sun low and strong, gold light falling sideways onto their benign faces, their eyes achingly narrowed against the glare. They stood a pace or two from me, careful not to crowd. Good manners all around.

I realized that I knew one of them by sight, and I spent a few extended seconds wondering why on earth he’d sought me out on a Sunday a long way from his normal habitat.

During this pause three small boys padded up the flagstoned passage from the depths of the house behind me, concentratedly threaded a way around me and one through the pair beyond and silently climbed like cats up into the fuzzy bursting-leaf-bud embrace of an ancient spreading oak nearby on the lawn. There the three figures rested, becoming immobile, lying on their stomachs along the old boughs, half seen, intent secretive, deep in an espionage game.

The visitors watched in bemusement.

“You’d better come in,” I said. “They’re expecting pirates.”

#2 Follow Hidden Logic

There is so much that is captivating here! There is a logic that comes from Lee’s mind, and yet I cannot guess it in advance. I’m entertained in the best way; I’m busy learning the character, experiencing the unfolding of (yes, original) situation, and caught off-guard by character’s unusual wit.

#3 Infuse the scene with your genre’s tone, attitude, and sensibilities; don’t swing genre props at the reader like a mallet.

And yet, this fits well within an established genre: mystery/suspense. The story opens as the protagonist opens the door to death. Something is out of place (the two men) and therefore not quite right. His boys are playing an espionage game (the game of lies), and soon there will be pirates (the game of villains and violence).

And it has all intruded on this unsuspecting, innocent day.

How wicked.

How terribly… captivating.

  • Evil villain laughing maniacally = 0
  • Tortured victims of serial killers = 0
  • Burned out ex-cops = 0
  • Jack-ass boss/politician/reporter/ex-spouse = 0

So, today, is your writing captivating? Tell me what you did to captivate your reader.

—

Diane Holmes Crop 1Diane is Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University.

“Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”

advice, Business, client relationships, editorial, featured, Marketing yourself, Sales

7 Negative Responses To Your Book Pitch & How To Avoid Them: Part 6

It’s time for more on book pitching with Diane Holmes….her latest is titled–

#6 “There’s a term for this encounter:  Death by Meeting.”

Translation: “This is the longest 5 minutes of my life, and it’ll never end.  The details in monotone just keep coming, and eventually someone will find my cold, dead body, because I’ll have died of boredom.”

Reality: You’re so focused on sharing every fact, every bullet point, and every footnote, you haven’t been watching the response you’re getting.  If you were, you could adjust what you’re saying, know when to stop talking, or try saying something more interesting.

Not everyone succeeds in the first sentence.  Some start out rough, adjust, and then win ‘em over!

Solution:  We’re not always the best judge of what’s interesting to others.  If you can’t get a sense all by yourself about the “excitement” factor of your pitch, you need to use your critique group, writing friend, and others to help you out.

When you practice pitching to another person, have them hold their arm parallel to the ground (in front or to the side, doesn’t matter), and then raise and lower their arm as they become more and less interested.   It’s a really simple way to understand how your message is coming across.

And it can be very encouraging to try to raise your friend’s arm.  Try out different approaches.  Tweak what you’re saying.

Diane Holmes
Diane Holmes

Diane Holmes is the Founder and Chief Alchemist behind Pitch University, an online website where writers learn to pitch from the literary agents and editors (and maybe even sell their book in the process).  http://www.pitch-university.com/

And yes, she was born in Texas.

advice, Marketing yourself

Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers

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By Diane Holmes

I’m thinking a lot about author branding these days, you know, like a hobby for my brain. Frankly, there are a whole lotta people talking about it. Writer people.

It’s like an army of writer-zombies have developed a plague-like obsession with branding and platform and promotion. Symptoms are fever, chills, cranky attitude, reanimation, and jerky dance moves.

The typical zombie.

Most writers use branding, platform, and promo interchangeably. And they believe the answer is held hostage somewhere on the Internet, in the form of websites, blogs, and Twitter. Author Branding has become the go-to-term that says everything, the buzz word of publishing 2.0. If we could only swear with it, author branding would be seriously perfect.

Wait. I think we can.

Writer A (exasperated sigh): “We’ll, you’ve simply got to Titter your Platform if you want your Author-Brand to get out in the Blogosphere and ever hope to Link-In with your Marketing on Amazon!”

Writer B (royally pissed-off): “Fine, I’ll do it, but I’ll hate every minute of it.”

Writer C: “Pfft. Author-brand that!”

Writer B: “It’s all just an Author-branding Royale with Cheese.” <–Pulp Fiction reference.

Writer C: “Brand.”

Writer A: “Fine, But you can’t swear like that on FaceBook or your Amazon Rank will go down.”

Felt good didn’t it? Okay, let’s talk about the real author branding.

You already have a brand. You probably have several.

Here’s my definition of your personal brand. A brand is how you put yourself “out there” to another human. It’s all the things people know, feel, think, and experience about you. In fact, when someone defends you to another person, they are defending your BRAND.

And just as different people have different experiences of/with you in various environments, you can have more than one brand.

People who know you at work, know your work brand. People who know you through dog rescue, know your dog-rescue brand. And people who know you through a column you write for Freelance-Zone…. You get the idea.

Here’s what I want to point out: you are actively shaping your brand in each instance. You’re doing it authentically and organically, and always with an awareness of (a) who you’re around and (b) what the rules are for the culture, as well as (c) with an “eye” on who you’d like to become and (d) how you’d like to be seen by others in the future.

Basically, you always know where you are and that there are consequences to how you act.  You show up accordingly, but with the unique spin of YOU.

Yeah, I hear ya. You want to argue that some people just act like jerks, don’t care who they are in the future, and don’t care about any rules. This is true. And it becomes their brand. But these people aren’t you.

You’re here because you write and want to be seen as a writer. You want readers. And you want your readers to love you.

Great. So how do you want them to see you, think of you, experience you, and feel about you?

Simply stated, we call it author branding when we think about all this in advance and make clever decisions designed to attract the type of readers who will “get” us and our writing.

Over the next few Marketing-Zone columns (every other week), I’m going to explore exactly how we authors can come up with a brand that…

  • focuses our conversation with readers,
  • enhances our career vision,
  • becomes the rally-cry for our dreams,
  • inspires us in the present, and
  • creates a map for us to follow into the future.

Who knew? Author branding might be something that doesn’t make you cranky.

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Diane Holmes Crop 1Diane is Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University.

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