Writing the Right Way

By Jim Magwood

Have you decided to write a book? It doesn't matter what kind - romance, history, children's story, mystery. There is simply so much you need to know as you begin this solitary, almost painful, adventure.
This book was written to give you some idea of what readers want and how to provide for those wants. What you really need to know, and remember. How to make your cover and the interior of your book attractive. And, how to make your book enjoyable for your readers, and for your agents and publishers.
Especially, how to market and sell your book.
So may things you will need to know, so let's get started.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Magwood
• Release date: May 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463767542

Jim Magwood

I was born too many years ago in Vancouver, Canada, and was dragged south across the border by my parents when I was too young to protest. I've lived in California the rest of my life.I entered the military right after high school, then attended college and began a career in business. My military work and years in various business management positions had me traveling to many parts of the world and I remember well the beauty (as well as the poverty and unrest) of so many places.I am happily married to Gayle.I retired early and moved from the city to our quiet country place in Twin Oaks, California. The loudest noises now are the few barking dogs, some howling coyotes, the wandering cattle and a million raucous birds. The rabbits, quail, coyotes and mountain lions have come to recognize that Shiloh (the ranch) is a sanctuary for them, so they hang around every day looking for handouts.I just hang around the ranch trying to be a hermit (at least that's what a lot of people think.) I do still manage to get shaved once in a while and can look half-way presentable when someone comes up the driveway (if given enough warning.)My work now appears to be writing. SANCTION took about ten years to finish, as it was written in bits and pieces. However, right after it was finished and sent to the publisher, what was left of the old mind began churning and there may be another few novels coming out in the future. Don't hold your breath, but... THE LESSER EVIL, COP, NIGHTMARE, JACOB, ONLY THE WATCHMEN WEEP and THEREFORE I AM are now out in the reading world waiting for you. More coming? We'll see...I'd love to hear from you, especially if you've bought a dozen or so of the books and passed them out to all your friends and neighbors. Give me a write some day, ask questions and swap stories. After all, I don't have anything else to do. You can catch me at [e-mail]. (And I do answer my mail.)

Book preview

An Introduction

This book will NOT guarantee you placement in a bookstore, or great sales, or wonderful reviews by readers. It’s really just a collection of my own thoughts gleaned from my years writing and publishing my own books. It’s written in my own words, with ideas from my own mind, and thoughts from me, but you might get something from them in regard to your own writing. There is much that might inspire you to try something. If you get an idea of something you might do, do it. Go for it. The worst you can do is use time you might otherwise spend Facebooking. And do you really want to keep doing that?

What we’re going to be looking at, in general, is writing general fiction. Mysteries; romances; children’s stories; science fiction; etc. If you want to consider non-fiction, textbooks, or picture books, you should look them up in the Internet. There are Style Guides that will tell you how to format that kind of book. In general, though, we won’t be going there. We will be sticking to basic general fiction.

So many things are involved in this writing thing, and I had to learn them the hard way because I didn’t learn them before I wrote my books.

What this will do, though, is give you a lot of ideas to work out and to learn before you start this process we call authoring. It might just give you some ideas of what you should look up or study. If something here inspires you or challenges you to learn more, to think, wonderful. However, there are many more books written, college writing classes to take, even local writing groups that will help you. Here’s a place to start, though. Okay?

So, let’s go.

What’s you’re biggest problem as a writer? No time? No inspiration? Lack of knowledge about this process? No help, especially from those who have gone before you? All of the above?

Yeah, that’s the one. All of it. Everything.

And that scream heard ‘round the world?

Yeah; that’s me. Help. Pulease.

Perhaps, then, your biggest problem is actually answering this question:

How Much Do You Want To Do This?

Yes, you have this dream of putting out a book, but what’s it going to take to get it done? What are you going to have to sacrifice to get the time to write your book? You have a family. A job. Church, club and friend commitments. So many things to do, and somewhere in there you have to decide what to commit toward your writing.

Think of those things you have to prioritize when you start writing. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to get your book written, even to begin the process? How important is it to you? What are your priorities? Not just the writing. All your life priorities?

I am NOT trying to scare you off. You have a story to tell, a Baby to get into print. It may be the most important thing you’ve come up with in years. Maybe your life has evolved to the point where you can finally commit to this writing thing. But, what are your priorities? Have you really thought this whole thing through?

William Forstchen wrote a wonderful novel entitled One Second After in which he told of what happens right after an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) hits, encouraged by his good friend, Newt Gingrich. You can ask why our politicians and elites don’t do something about this instead of what they waste their time on, but a quote was included at the end of the story by General Eugene Habiger, USAF (Ret.) that is powerful: "It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when."

So, Forstchen wrote a novel of what was so important to him and when it might happen.

So can you.

One of your biggest problems is likely time. Do you have the time to do this? Can you set aside the time in the midst of family, job and all that? Can you find the time? And the answer is probably NO.

You likely aren’t going to be able to find the time; you’ll have to make the time. Out of the little of it you have available, you’re going to have to juggle things around, balance them. If you’ve got kids, a job, friends who are going to come asking for help, and so on, you’re going to have to set even more priorities. Time is something that isn’t just going to appear. Your book is not going to write itself. YOU are going to have to do it, and that will require you deciding to make the time necessary.

If you’re retired with no family around, you’re still going to have to make that time in order to write. What time of the day? What day(s) of the week? You’ll have to make the time, and that’s just the beginning. There’s so much more to do; so much to learn.

This book was written partly because of all the changes that have taken place in the writing and publishing industry since I wrote the first writing help book in 2012 (So You’ve Written A Book. Now What?) It used to be that books were brought to a reader’s attention because an author found someone in the publishing world who was interested, or they had already developed a name for themselves and the publishers were willing to consider authors who came in to them direct. There weren’t so many books. Publishers were actually looking for new or upcoming authors. But mainly the publishers were looking for authors whom they could sell, with whom the publishers could make profit.

However, many early writers (Hemingway, Twain, Steinbeck, etc.) worked at various jobs to support themselves while they tried to develop sources who were interested in their writing. They worked as boat pilots; they worked in mines; they wrote for newspapers; and on. Several had many of their first works ignored or refused by the publishers for years. Ayn Rand, famously known for her works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, had a couple of early novels be unsuccessful (although, in my opinion, they are great). Most literary critics received her works with mixed reviews, and academia generally ignored or rejected her. It was many years before the reading public caught up with her.

Writers in the modern era do the same; they’ve begun as accountants, lawyers, copywriters, soldiers, policemen, housewives, and students. Writing, submitting, and having a first novel accepted easily takes four or five years to a decade and more. Many well-respected novelists submit their works for years before finally being accepted and published.

(And yes, I’m still trying to be patient.)

Today, (according to Nick Morgan — communication theorist, coach, speaker on storytelling, body language, persuasion and influence), There are somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books published every year in the US alone, depending on which stats you believe. Many of those — perhaps as many as half or even more — are self-published. On average, they sell less than 250 copies each.

Now, in reality, some of those books are only ten to fifty pages long. Many are short stories (very short); many are erotic fantasy; some are complete science fiction; some are textbooks; a very few are regular book-length fiction. But, the numbers are huge — and YOU are going to have to compete with them. This book has been written to help you do that.

In the past few years, four tremendous trends in the book industry have developed, and all writers should be aware of them. Self-publishing, subsidiary publishing, vanity publishing, and e-books are all fairly new to the book industry and must be noticed, studied and, perhaps, put into practice by today’s authors.

That first trend is the movement to self-publishing from what was known as traditional publishing. Traditional publishers used to do all the work of putting books together and then printing them, and basically got them out into the marketplace. Today, many authors self-publish their works and do all the work of the editing through the marketing of the books themselves. (More on that later.)

A second trend has become known as participation or subsidy publishing, where the authors pay a portion of the costs of the publishing work. (We’ll get into the full definitions and descriptions of all these later in this book.)

A third trend has become known as vanity publishing (a little bit different from subsidy publishing), where an author takes on all the chores of getting their book into print, pays all the costs (usually much lower than traditional publishers charge), and the publisher then prints whatever the author presents to them. It is the vanity of the author to get their work published that the name comes from.

And the fourth trend has been named e-books, or electronic books. With these, the author puts their book together in the normal manner, then submits it to a publisher who puts it into an electronic format that can be purchased, usually at a much reduced rate, by anyone with a reading device. That can be a Kindle, a Nook, even a TV. The author might do all the publishing work themselves

As you can see, there’s a lot to learn as you enter this book publishing business, and you really do need to learn it. I made the mistake of thinking I knew most of what this was about when I started and learned, the hard way, how much I didn’t know. I still don’t know everything. I’m certainly not the all-knowing guru. I learned everything I know over several years of writing my own books. But...

This book, Writing the Right Way, a follow-up to my first writing help-book, So You’ve Written A Book. Now What? was written to help others on the journey of writing to learn and get ahead of some pitfalls that are on the horizon. Also, to note some of the changes and additions that have taken place in the writing industry in the past years.

As we pick up our pens and begin writing, we usually just think of the story we have in mind and figure that when the story is written we’ve been successful. That may partly be true. As I note later on, some day you will be able to say, I did it, and feel that surge of success — completion. But as the earlier book title said, Now What? And, how do I get there in the first place? What am I facing as I begin this process?

I wrote this from my experiences over more than fifteen years of writing my books and publishing and marketing them. It’s not expert material; it’s just what I’ve learned. When I started, I had no idea what it was all about. But, I thought I did. Then I came to the realization that this writing business was a lot more than I envisioned. So I’ve learned things over the years and I simply want to share them with you.

This book is written from my viewpoint as an author — generally, a writer of novels. However, the basic principles in it are adaptable to many other people doing creative work; writing non-fiction, poets, musicians, artists, filmmakers, even those building widgets. If you are doing something other than writing, then you can simply adjust the ideas and principles in here to your own work. Principles such as write the very best book you can or how are you going to get someone to actually look with interest at YOUR work are just as valid for someone painting a landscape or building a new mousetrap as someone writing a novel?

So, I hope this will be of value to you. As you read it, if you have any comments, suggestions or ideas, I’d love to hear from you. Write me at:

[e-mail]

any time and we can talk

(and I WILL answer all your messages).

Best wishes to all of you and

Keep On Writing.

Part 1: Writing

Chapter 1

What’s It All About?

I’ve written some books, some suspense novels.

What do you mean, who cares?

Big Deal?

Well, it was a big deal to me. I’m famous now, right? I’m a real live author. Okay, my name isn’t Grisham, or Roberts, but I’m pretty close, aren’t I? Once you’ve written a book, the world sits up and cheers, right? You get famous? Rich?

Well, something?

However, probably the main thing you get after you’ve written your life’s work is depressed and discouraged. Here you’ve spent all this time — years maybe — creating your Baby and the big question becomes, Now What? There are all those pages sitting there. Just sitting there. They’re supposed to be on library shelves, coming out of bookstores in fancy wrappers, lying beside easy chairs everywhere — and they’re just sitting there in front of you. Now what?

(I’m not going to try to tell you everything you need to know in order to get your novel written. There’s far too much. However, you can find a wealth more material simply by diving into the Internet and looking up various words and titles. There are literally hundreds of books and articles written telling you how to analyze things and how to get them written. How to make them look right. Check them out. A great one for how-to guides of good writing is Grammar Girl — quickanddirtytips.com. Another is thepunctuationguide.com.)

I’ve been an avid reader since early childhood and have read everything from newspapers, Reader’s Digest and National Geographic, to mysteries and biographies. One day a book popped into my mind and, lo and behold, a novel (SANCTION) was born. But, as I’m sure you are all aware, that was just the beginning of a long process that ended up, years later, with a real novel being published. Years of writing, then throwing the papers across the room, then trying to find some more to write about, then just about deleting the whole thing, then... Sound familiar?

I believe most of us have stories to tell: from our own lives and experiences; from things we’ve seen and heard; from dreams and ideas that just pop in on dark nights and lazy afternoons. Probably nothing starts a story quite as well as actually being awake when the storm hits and the lightning is flashing or on a quiet morning with a cup of coffee while taking the time to simply see life around us.

Writing takes the courage to put ourselves down on paper where others can criticize and poke fun. It also takes the desire to reach and inspire others with word pictures; pictures that will enable them to see beyond the moment, to go beyond their own space, and to dream. Sometimes, the only thing that keeps us going on the project is that this story, this work of art, is coming from our heart and it simply has to come out and be laid gently, lovingly, even tearfully, on paper where at least we can see it. But, we’ve kept at it and it’s now sitting there, and the question again is, Now What?

I’m not the expert on writing books. I’ve managed to get seven novels written (SANCTION, THE LESSER EVIL, COP, NIGHTMARE, JACOB, ONLY THE WATCHMEN WEEP, and THEREFORE I AM) and have gotten them published. But, what I want to do now is just put my thoughts down here on paper — my experiences over the past fifteen-plus years of writing and publishing and marketing — for those of you who’ve perhaps started this journey yourself and might be wondering just what’s facing you. How are you going to take this brainchild of yours and get it into the hands of people you know will love it and benefit from it as much as you have? What are you going to experience along this journey and how will you get through the experience with your heart and mind and soul still relatively intact?

So, perhaps the first questions become, How do I write this thing? Is what I’ve written even readable, any good? (I wrote to a publisher who advertised on my own website, asking them if they had someone who could just read my first several chapters and tell me if it was any good. Was it worth continuing? They said, Sure, so I sent my first chapters off. A few weeks later, without my knowledge, a delivery service drove up my driveway with a contract for me. They wanted my book. Wow.) How can I make this something that readers will accept and enjoy? And, I believe the answer to that question is pretty simplistic:

Write the very best book you can.

(And, you can always enlist me to read it

with/for you and make suggestions.

Write me — [e-mail])

Chapter 2

What Is Writing?

Oxford’s Dictionary describes writing as the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text and the activity or occupation of composing text for publication. But, does that really describe what this writing thing is all about? It’s technical and valid, but, as the song asks, Is that all there is?

Wikipedia says this about writing: Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language, but a tool used to make languages be read. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar, and semantics... The result of writing is called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader.

Before we go on, let me clarify something. We’ll come back to this later, but for now, a short explanation.

Whenever I say something about writing and use the phrase or words, putting it on paper, or using your pen or pencil, what I really mean is your computer. If you have to write your manuscript (as it will now be called) by hand, please — you must — get it on a computer. Only when it’s on a computer will you feel comfortable deleting and adding text, making copies, and correcting the whole thing. Okay? A computer is an absolute must. (More later, but enough for now.)

Consider the subject of creative writing for a moment. Creative writing is any writing that goes beyond the framework of normal writing such as professional treatises, letters to friends, etc. It’s usually identified by its emphasis on narrative, character development, and the use of figurative language. Fictional writing almost always falls into this definition.

Fictional writing, generally, is produced as a story that is meant to entertain. The Oxford Dictionary defines entertain as to provide (someone) with amusement or enjoyment. Maybe to inform. Maybe to scare. But, generally, to entertain. To give them something to enjoy.

The category a writer uses is called a genre, such as romance, or chick lit, or mystery, and is chosen to move a writer’s work into readership groups such as women, men, young, old, history buffs and others, because the people reading those genres are searching for that kind of writing.

As you can see, there is much to consider as you take up your pen and begin writing. Questions include, Who am I writing this for? What era am I trying to describe? Am I writing a modern, suspenseful mystery or a historical romance from the Elizabethan era? These are all subjects that must be decided before the first pages or chapters are completed.

One of the first things any writer must consider is what group of people he or she is writing for. Today’s market is entirely different than that of people who read in earlier days, and those today who actually want to read books of those days.

L. P. Hartley wrote and published a great novel, The Go-Between, about 1953, when he was 58. The story was of the period of the 1900s and showed the feelings and teachings of that time, 50 or so years before the time in which he was writing. It was set in England and before World War One. The average mind of the day had been taught to accept the (British) world the way it was portrayed. His writing was of a time in which he had grown up and was of subjects that were completely normal for that time. It was simply material people had learned in those days and what some readers today want to read and know.

Today, the average reader cannot, and does not, think of the past, dwell on it, ponder it, and certainly does not usually read of it. Hartley writes, in his personal Introduction to the novel, written in 1962, well after the novel had first been published, and after he had been asked what gave him the idea for The Go-Between, I was able to set my little private tragedy against a general background of security and happiness. No novelist can do that now; he has to remember that in most people’s lives [today] tragedy has been the rule, not the exception.

Today, the average reader wants tragedies or triumphs set in today’s world, resolved in hourly segments, in which he or she can simply lose themself. They aren’t interested in things they have to study and learn from.

You must consider that and truly take it to heart if you want your novel, written today, to be accepted. Who are the people you are writing for, and, as the next chapters ask, how do they read, etc.? A writer can, and many do, write of times past and lessons learned, but the writings are not of today’s world and almost certainly will not be accepted (read) by today’s average reader.

You must understand this, and accept it, and comply with modern rules and wants, as you write your novel of today.

We’re going to go into the parts, or elements, of a book shortly, but before that I’d like to introduce you to another concept, a word I’ve borrowed. To me, it’s one of the most important elements of a book because it will ultimately be what keeps a reader reading. Without this, a book will be disjointed or ragged in its design and many readers will just put it away. Things will interrupt your readers. Any kind of book: children’s, romance, mystery, even non-fiction. There will likely be no recommendations from a reader because the book simply loses them.

The word?

FLOW

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines flow as going from one place to another in a steady stream, or the action or fact of moving along in a steady, continuous stream. My own definition involves certain questions. Does the story move from one idea to the next without glaring distractions? Does it get from the beginning to the end smoothly? Does one idea or chapter move into the next one without causing a reader to simply zone out and put the book down? Maybe it’s time for a good nap (???) Does the writing keep the reader wanting more, actively looking for the next thought?

I’ve read a few books where I’ve asked, Doesn’t this guy ever take a break? I want to get a sandwich. I want to turn out the light. Usually, that was because of long, long chapters, or descriptions of people or materials that became far too wordy and uninteresting. The flow was broken. Sometimes, though, it was because the story was so riveting I couldn’t put it down. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a writer needs to consider his reader when he’s writing, and, if the reader simply can’t put the book down, maybe the writer needs to consider the overall flow. Never a break in the flow? Sometimes it was because the story was disjointed and I kept getting lost. It became tedious and tiresome. Sometimes it was because the story was so intense I had to get to the next part and see what was going to happen. Either way, there was no flow or the flow never gave me a break. The author should have considered those things.

Many books will jump from one idea or plot to another and will become hard to keep up with. Flashbacks will often produce this. Jumping from one hero or plot completely over to another one, and then trying to jump back to the original idea, will do it. Nothing says that’s wrong, but a writer needs to be very careful if doing those things. One way to get past those kinds of errors, or to fix them, is to have someone else read your book and give you their honest opinion on how it all holds together. Do you have someone who will help you like that?

Always keep the FLOW of your book in mind.

It’s a simple little word, but, to me, it means so much in writing. So, let’s take a closer look at it. I think flow is one of the most important parts of writing.

It’s a small word, but it brings many parts of writing together. Overall, it makes it easier for the reader to get through the writing and to understand where the story is going. Ultimately, the writer needs to be able to look back and ask, Did the book do what it purported to do? Did it get from here to there without leaving the reader behind? Was the book overall interesting and did it continue pulling the reader into it?

If I write so my reader has to pause to understand where I’m going, I may be interrupting the flow. The flow can be looked at like a drive through the country. If my words don’t keep the driver on the road, if he has to take the time to find a way around the trip I’m painting and to get back to the scenery he’s there for, my writing is blocking his progress. If, though, I remove the roadblocks, if I clean up my writing, that driver (reader) can get back to what he was really there for — enjoying the scenery (or the story).

First sentences of a paragraph or page, even a chapter, should tell a reader where he is going. Editors and publishers will call this a hook, and it’s designed to get the