All posts by Diane Holmes

Marketing yourself

Storytelling Your Author Brand

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June 7, 2011 Marketing yourself No Comments

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the fourth in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)

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Stories at Work

The branding, marketing, and blogging world is all atwitter with the idea of storytelling as a way of communicating brand. This isn’t a new idea.

Look at non-fiction books. Many of these authors have personal stories that directly led to the creation of the content in that book. The passion for the topic has a personal meaning to the author and a place in his or her life-narrative.

That’s story, my friend!

Fiction writers, on the other hand, don’t usually have the same luxury of “my personal story” led to “this story about solving crimes in a New England town.”

What goes into Your Personal Story… if you don’t have one?

We’re used to a “Story that Sells” coming from the facts of someone’s life, the WHAT HAPPENED. But there are some other ways of looking at story that may be even more helpful.

Brand Building Technique #2:Your Story Is More Than Events and Facts

Check out these alternative ways to uncover your story. Click the links for great resources.

In your writing and your life, there is something that speaks to you, and that same thing speaks to your reader. Make that your story.

It already brings you together. Name it. Tell it. Be it.

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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.”

fiction

Scene Magic: Your Character’s Emotional Set Point – Part 2

Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery by Diane Holmes

In Part 1 we discussed how motivation is not the same as emotion, and the character’s emotion in a scene may have little to do with the grand “story goal & motivation” and a lot to do with what just happened in the previous scene.  And now… Part 2.

Is Your Character Emotionally Fickle?

Two places where your ability to create 3D characters intersects with your ability to craft dynamic & powerful scenes are…

  • How your viewpoint character embodies a focused emotion that makes sense in the scene, and
  • What (if anything) causes your viewpoint character to shift her or his emotional focus.

Your character walks onto the “scene stage” with a certain emotion at a certain intensity. I call this the Character’s Emotional Set Point.

emotional intensity

6 Ways to Avoid Fickle Characters

Here are six things you need to know about your character’s emotional set point to avoid fickle characters.  (Oh, no!  Not a fickle character!  The horror of it!)

#1 Probably stating the obvious here, but the emotion/intensity needs to make sense to the reader.

#2 The emotional set point shouldn’t be forgotten or dropped during the scene at any time. “Oops, I forgot to be grief-stricken about that pesky murder of my wife, because my neighbor is at the door, and I really want her recipe for Marshmallow Surprise… so happy!”

#3 A character’s emotional set point can change intensity or change to a different emotion entirely, but never without a reason that makes sense to the character and the reader. “So, happy, wait… now I’m really frustrated so just roll with me on this, wait, I’m so alone…..”

#4 The reason for change usually needs to have heft, otherwise you’re telling the reader that (a) the original emotion wasn’t important, (b) the character is easily swayed by every emotional “wind” that blows through and is, thus, shallow, and (c) the new emotion can’t be trusted.

#5 The emotion needs to be showcased against the character’s scene goal (and what actually happens in the scene). If your character is feeling hopeful, then we need to understand and experience that emotion in the context of the unfolding scene. It is not something that waits in the car, while the character is busy.

#6 If you haven’t specifically looked at your character’s emotional set-point and how it’s impacted throughout each scene, you might have written a fickle character. Time to de-fickle your book.

To Do:

  • Track the emotion throughout the scene, front to back..
  • Compare the emotion in the narrative to the emotion in the dialogue.
  • Look for places where the emotion is missing or not clear.
  • Make sure changes happen in a believable way.

How do you maintain your character’s emotional integrity?  Share your insights with me!

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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.”

Marketing yourself

The Gleam in Your Author Brand

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by Diane Holmes, Marketing Yourself and Your Book

Imagine that a reader sees your new book at the bookstore.  Instantly, there’s a gleam in her eye. 

She’ll reach for your latest book, but in the fraction of a second before she can reach out, extend her arm, press her fingers against the cover, there is just the gleam.  That gleam is your brand.

I love to read

(If you don’t write books, just substitute your type of writing.)

The beauty of thinking about your brand in this way is that it’s obvious that your brand is not one book.  Instead, it’s about a recognition in the reader’s mind, an excitement and delight and opinion about you as an author.

It may be based solely on the previous books you’ve written.  Or it may also include information collected about other “aspects of you.” But whatever the specific details, it has created what Kathryn Lorenzen, Creativity Coach, calls a “Hell, yes!” in the reader’s mind. 

Before the reader can process the thought, “Hey, I’d like to find out more about that book,” her brain made the leap to, “Hell, yes, want that, awesome.”  Or some set of concepts that equaled an immediate gleam in her eye and movement of her hand toward the book.

That’s what you want, right?  Readers whose immediate response is,”I”m so lucky!” because they’ve seen that your next book is out

Brand Building Technique #1:Your Book’s Delight Factor

Step #1:  You are standing in front of the latest book by your favorite author.  There’s a gleam in your eye.  Why?

Run through this exercise for several authors you love.  Get a feel for how you respond to different aspects and different authors with excitement.  Try fiction and non-fiction authors. You get that “Hell, yes,” but for very different reasons.

Step #2: Your reader is standing in front of your book, gleam in her eye, hand extended.  STOP.  Freeze that moment.

A) What is inside your book that has triggered that gleam?  What are the reader’s expectations that have contributed to the gleam? Just make your best guesses and make a list.

B) Compare that list to what captured your imagination about the project and what kept you excited as you wrote the book.  There should be some differences.  The point of doing this step is to make sure you’re not just capturing what appeals to you.

C) Do this exercise for the book you’re currently writing, your previously published books, and any unpublished books you hope will be part of your career.

If you write widely, you’ll want to do a separate round for each project.  But if your books are similar in topic, tone, and sensibility, you can probably capture the Delight Factor by grouping them.

Did you find the gleam?  We’ll build on this exercise next tine. Remember, Brand can be way more than your book, more than all your books combined.

But this is a great starting place.  So start.  Even if an author brand seems a foreign and dubious topic, you have to admit you want that gleam   You know you do.

This is the third in a series on Author Branding.  Previous articles include:
#1 Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
#2 The Author’s Branding Manifesto

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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.”

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.”

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.

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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.”