As a writer, we are expected to always have ideas to jumpstart our stories. Sometimes the muse just isn't there and we have to look other places for those story ideas. Last year when I was thinking of possibly writing another in the Kelly Watson mysteries, I printed out a bunch of the mysterynet.net stories from contests they held for kids to write as well as some other mystery writers advice and story starters. One of the pages I printed out was "Mystery Story Starter Ideas - DIY Guide for Children and Adults" by Marillisa Sachteleben. She states there are 25 story starters but apparently I only found 10 on the first page.
Here are her starters:
THE WISHING WELL HORROR: I hated drawing water from the dank, bug-infested well house to begin with. When the bucket came up heavier and more slowly than usual, I sensed that something was wrong. But I was totally unprepared for the horror that followed.
THE BOOK SELLER'S ENIGMA: I hadn't remembered the musty old book shop on that street before, but the old peddler beckoned me. When I returned the next day with my brother, shop and shopkeeper had gone. We asked an old-timer passing by, "That shop?" he declared, "why it ain't been around for 50 years."
THE SMELL IN THE CELLAR: We kept the cellar locked. No one went down ther. One day when I went by I smelled an odd, familiar smell, like something I hadn't smelled since I was little. The odor got stronger, until finally I opened the door and went down the rickety steps.
THE MISSING PHOTO: I loved to look through our old family photos. One day, I noticed that a certain picture had been removed. I asked the whole family and no one seemed to have taken it. Was someone hiding something?
THE SECRET ROOM: Tearing down a wall to build an addition to our home, I discovered a small narrow room hidden between the walls for decades and what was in it gave me the shock of my life.
THE THING IN THE POND: For years, I've visited a pond in the woods near our house. Recently, I saw something more than sand, rocks and a few fish and turtles. Something much, much more.
THE PRANK CALLER: We thought the odd phone calls were just pranks by some local kids. Until the caller asked me something really scary. "Did anybody ever find where you buried the body?"
THE LETTER FROM YESTERDAY: The envelope that came in the mail looked really elegant and I was hoping that it was an invitation to a party. It was an invitation. For a party dated July 30, 1927.
THE SILENT BOY: We were all playing in our fort by the creek. A tall thin boy with dark eyes and long hair appeared silently from the woods. He came out every day for two weeks but he never said a word. Until one day...
THE CREATURE: My cat likes to bring home an odd assortment of creatures. Not that he kills them. I think they are his friends. One day, the cat brought home something I have never seen before in my life and I doubt that I ever will again.
I've looked at this page many times over the past 6 months but nothing really jumped off the page or screamed "new Kelly adventure/mystery" A couple of weeks back, I looked over the sheet again and decided that the Book Seller's Enigma would work. I started a new Kelly Watson story - but have only written a page and a half, which amounts to about an incomplete scene or could be a full scene. I feel there is something I need to write before this particular scene, perhaps filling in what has happened in Kelly's life during the 6 months from finding out the house she investigated was her father's to the time she finds this missing bookstore or mysterious bookshoppe. One of my editor writer friends said forget the Prologue and just write the story. If I had a direction to take the story, I think I would have written more than a page and a half, although there have been some niggles about the bookstore and the present given to Kelly. Maybe ther eis a story, I just wish it would hurry up and get out so I can get a second Kelly story under my belt.
What about you, how do you jumpstart your stories? What if the muse isn't being cooperative and you really feel the need to write a story? What all do you do to get the muse to cooperate and how do you keep the ideas flowing? Leave a message with your ideas and thoughts and be entered for a an ebook copy of Finally Home the first of Kelly's mysteries. E :)
Elysabeth Eldering
Author of Finally Home, a Kelly Watson middle grade/YA mystery
http://elysabethsstories.blogspot.com
http://eeldering.weebly.com
How to be an instant grammar maven: a review of Grammarly
Let’s face it, none of us are perfect when it comes to
spelling and grammar. Although many word
processing programs such as MS Word come with built in grammar and spell-checkers,
they tend to be pretty simple and often hilariously wrong. In an ideal world, you’d always write with a
partner, checking each other’s spelling and grammar errors. Many people do just
that, but it’s not a practical option for frequent postings like blogs,
proposals, or even short stories if you’re writing these regularly. Grammarly isn’t meant to substitute for a
full-on edit, and certainly won’t suffice for a big piece of writing like a
novel, which requires a professional proofreader, line and copy editor, but
it’s perfect for blog posts, book reviews, emails and other quick pieces of
writing, and is also a good first pass for anything longer and more complex.
Using it couldn’t be simpler. You just go to the Grammarly website, drop your text
into the box and click on “check your text”.
Within a few minutes (really!), the system goes through your text for a
whole range of common grammatical errors including such things as sentence
fragments, double negatives, mis-use of subordinate clauses, mis-matched
tenses, run-on sentences (my personal issue), and lots more that you’ve
probably forgotten since you studied grammar at school. Of course, it also picks up spelling errors
and does other clever things like checking your work for originality. It will
even show you where the original is from if you’ve inadvertently lifted someone else’s work. I can think of a few infamous
authors who should have used that feature.
Some of the corrections are quite subtle and instead of just
finding errors, Grammarly provides suggested solutions. For example, in the first draft of this blog
post, Grammarly found an instance where I’d used ‘and’ twice, and there were a
number of suggestions for enhancing the work with better words and synonym
suggestions, one of which was to change “it’s excellent and quite perfect” to
just “quite perfect”. Some of my sentences were tagged as ‘wordy’ and
suggestions were made for removing extraneous words like “really”.
You can choose from a range of checking options including general,
business, academic, Technical Creative, and Casual, each of which changes the
overall heuristics, the synonyms suggested and the amount of rigour
applied. You can paste in your text online, or download
a version for MS Office, which allows
you to check through a document with a single click on the “Check” box. As someone who tends to write quickly and
rather sloppily, and then mentally fix my own errors when I proofread,
Grammarly is a reputation saver. I use
it now for almost everything I write, and the result is a lot less embarrassing
errors, and better copy. Best of all,
Grammarly keeps track of your errors and creates a personal writing handbook
that you can use to become a better writer.
Just review your handbook to see the errors you tend to keep repeating
and you can make a conscious effort to eliminate them, learn about the parts of
grammar usage that keep tripping you up, and improve your overall skills.
As the premium version of Grammarly is a subscription based product, it’s not particularly cheap. Annual subscriptions run around $140, or $30 a month, but if you use it to check everything you write, the per unit price is pretty reasonable. Saving your reputation from embarrassing grammar mistakes (I’ve certainly made a few doozies) especially in such things as query letters, and ultimately improving your English is priceless. You can take a free trial of the premium version at the Grammarlysite and can also get hold of Grammarly Lite, which will check anything you write on the internet (including your social media posts) for free.
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Magdalena Ball is the author of the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Sublime Planet, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at www.magdalenaball.com.
British Professor Suggests Standard Spellings
Gasps of shock at Hay Literary Festival as professor asks for grammar pedants to relax
A lecturer at the Hay Literary Festival shocked his audience as he called on the “grammar police” to relax over misspellings and the incorrect use of apostrophes.Simon Horobin, a professor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, prompted an audible gasp from the crowd as he suggested that the spellings of “they’re”, “their” and “there” could be standardised, and insisted that “spelling is not a reliable indication of intelligence”.
The academic, who wrote the book Does Spelling Matter?, said standard spellings were a comparatively recent phenomenon, with hundreds of different spellings for words such as “through” in the Middle Ages. He said: “People like to artificially constrain language change. For some reason we think spelling should be entirely fixed and never changed. I am not saying we should just spell freely. But sometimes we have to accept spellings change.”
Prof Horobin called on George Bernard Shaw for support as he asked: “Is the apostrophe so crucial to the preservation of our society?” The Irish playwright argued that the apostrophe was redundant, saying there was not “the faintest reason for persisting in the ugly and silly trick of peppering pages with these uncouth bacilli”. Prof Horobin has a high-profile ally in Stephen Fry, who called the grammar police “semi-educated losers” in 2011.
But vehemently in opposition is Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, who said that people who mixed up “its” and “it’s” deserved “to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave”.
The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, recently proposed a new English curriculum which included 162 words every child should know how to spell. A group of academics attacked the move as “dumbing down” teaching. But the group was, in turn, criticised in the Idler Academy Bad Grammar awards for its poorly written letter to Mr. Gove.
***
What do you think of this? Should we “standardize” our American English spellings? --------------------------
 |
A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series. |
Authors Need Discoverability More Than Findability
What is this "discoverability" and "findability" stuff? A new language?
As ugly as some think of them, it seems essential to use these two words to show authors (and other business people) how important discoverability is.
Most of us authors (or our publishers) use "findability" well when they put all a book's metadata on the Web and on specific sites so readers can locate exactly what they're looking for…" even [when they don't have] complete information about the book. In this instance "metadata" includes all the stuff like categories, ISBNs, titles,—the specifics about your book.
"Discoverability" is the kind of access a reader might have when she isn't looking for a specific title, author, or even a specific category but something related to her search pops up. We authors hope that will be our book! Categories can help with this exposure but things like keywords, great pitches and loglines, benefits, etc. that appear on your Amazon page, your social networks, your online bookstore profile and buy pages work even better.
Chances are—your title isn't as well known as you'd like, so you're after "discoverability."
I'm thinking most authors would get more out of the concept if we call it "serendipity." In other words, we have to work everything we can on the Web so that even those who aren't looking for us find us and that our "brand" (the Frugal Book Promoter is full of information on great branding for books!) will be clear to him or her immediately. That includes learning to play to the search engines using the dreaded "keyword concept" in all of our content.
Of course, some use Search Engine Optimization experts to do this for them. But I think you probably know more about what your book (and your career) is about than many SEO guys or gals. And there is plenty you can do to be discovered serendipitously that SEO doesn't fit into the job description of SEO professionals. In this article, we'll concentrate on online bookstores, but you can generally apply these ideas to your Web site, your social network profiles, and anything else you do online.
1. Get your book categorized in three different categories on Amazon and other online bookstores that offer this categorization feature to organize books. The online bookstore's search engine is a little like the library's catalog—only faster. You want to be associated with genres and categories that people search for. But you want each category to be refined down to the category with the least competition in it—as long as it applies to your book. This is what my categories for The Frugal Book Promoter look like on Amazon. I'm not too happy with the last one, but I really, really needed a subset with fewer books in it than I could get with the obvious:
Look for Similar Items by Category
· Books > Education & Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides >Publishing & Books > Authorship
Keep in mind that the people who might be looking for your book (or not know they are looking for your book) may very well not use the same jargon you use. Example: For my book they may think of the word "advertising" before they think of the word "publicity" or even "promotion."
2. When possible use keywords in your title, in your subtitle, on the back of your cover and in your book description. And, yes, in the endorsements and blurbs you use.
3. Use as many of the little benefits that online bookstores offer as you can. There is lots of Amazon-specific information on doing this in The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo) like reader reviews, Listmanias, the add-an-image function, and the like button (which appears to be disappearing these days!). Even a few "Add to Wish List" entries can help the logarithms on Amazon.
4. Participate in Amazon comments when it is pertinent, but not in a negative way. You'll find those at the end of each review. Add helpful information and compliments to related books when you can. They link back to your Amazon profile page.
5. And, about that profile page! Check it every so often to see if it needs updating. And be sure to feed your blog to it! That keeps it active.
6. A rarely used function on each Amazon buypage is the "Start a discussion" section. Try to get someone to start one. Warn them that one must scroll down to find it.
7. Vote on reviews that you like best on your own buypage and get others to do so. This could push that review (along with all of its keywords) to the top of the review offerings.
Now you know what to do with Amazon, apply your new skills to other things you are doing on the Web. And then here's another little tip directly from The Frugal Book Promoter. You don't have to be actively engaged in a social network to have a very nice profile on the site with lots of links back to your other networks and your Website. Make it your business to add a profile to something new every so often.
----- Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .
Guest Blogging - Writers on the Move is Looking for Guest Posts
Every now and then we make the call for guest posts, and today is one of those 'now and then' days.
Guest blogging is one of the top article marketing strategies. If the site is a 'quality' site that's in your niche, it can be more effective than using article directories. Why not check out our Guidelines page and submit an article today.
Remember: Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
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P.S. To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).
Karen Cioffi
Award-Winning Author, Freelancer/Ghostwriter
Build an Online Platform That Works
Online Marketing - Commenting on Blogs is an Effective Marketing Strategy
Contributed by Karen Cioffi
You may be an author or writer who takes the time to comment on other websites. This is an effective online marketing strategy. It builds bridges to other blogging neighborhoods, it forms connections, and it helps increase your visibility.
But, after using this strategy for a short while, what if you don’t seem to see any difference in the traffic to your site or the comments on your posts?
Should you continue commenting on blogs?
YES, absolutely. Commenting on blogs is still an effective marketing strategy, in fact, even more so than before. Getting a ‘post conversation’ going and sharing content is high on Google’s list of what bloggers and marketers should be doing. Today, it’s all about creating optimized content that readers find valuable enough to share to their social networks.
Knowing the effectiveness of this marketing tool, I try to use it as often as I can. And, recently I left a blog post comment on a high-traffic, high-quality site. When I comment on a site, time allowing, I usually browse the other comments. On this particular blog CommentLuv is used and one of the post comments in particular seemed to be informative, so I clicked on the author’s latest post link. Doing this, it brought me to a site with great content and I actually tried to subscribe to the email post feed. Unfortunately, it seems the feed wasn’t enabled, even though the site owner had the opt-in for it. But, that’s another story.
Commenting on sites that offer the commenter’s last post link is an excellent way to broaden your reach and easily bring visitors back to your site. Just like I clicked on that commenter’s link, based on an effective post title, the same can happen to you.
CommentLuv is a commenting system plugin for WordPress. Simply click on ‘Plugins’ in your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘Add New,’ search for the plugin, and install and activate it. That’s it.
This is a WordPress plugin; I'm not sure if it can be used on Blogger. When this post was originally written, it could be. But 10 years later, I couldn't find any information on it.
Hopefully, Blogger will add CommentLuv to its gadgets to make blogging with a blogger site more effective.
In addition to the obvious benefits of commenting, such as broadening your marketing reach and making connections, the activity you create online is picked up by search engines. This includes comments.
Make commenting on blogs an important element of your online marketing strategy.
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MORE ON ONLINE MARKETING
Keyword Search and Article Marketing – Tips for More Effective Book Marketing
Memes and Themes
Being Social can Bring Extra Promotion
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P.S. To keep up with writing and marketing information, along with Free webinars, join us in The Writing World (top right top sidebar).
Karen Cioffi, Children's Ghostwriter, Rewrite, Coach, and Author Online Platform Instructor
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Behind the Scenes with Deborah Heiligman
Last October I attended the workshop "Books that Rise Above," presented by the Highlights Foundation in Honesdale, PA. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming being under the same roof (in the cozy yet spacious "barn") with the esteemed presenters, Patricia Lee Gauch, Linda Sue Park, Leonard Marcus, Betsy Bird and
Deborah Heiligman. Also in attendance were some of the editors of Highlights for Children magazine; Kent Brown visited often, and the staff and other attendees were inspirational. Tours of the magazine headquarters and Boyds Mill Press were fun and enlightening.
Sign up for a Highlights Foundation Workshop
This series is drawing to a close this month with only a few posts left. Before I delve into this month's topic, "Behind the Scenes with Deborah Heiligman," I'd like to encourage readers to attend any Highlights Foundation workshop possible. It will be well worth it. Prior, ample information was sent by staff members on details of our stay. The warm welcome, delicious food, comfy private cabin and more, were second to none. Included were biosketches of the presenters with some of their book titles. I read as many as I could before attending. That was a big help in understanding the topics they discussed. I have continued to read their work long after the workshop, now for pure enjoyment.
Window into the Life of a Biographer
Deborah Heiligman's award-winning book, Charles and Emma: Darwins' Leap of Faith, is one of my all-time favorite books. First, I couldn't put it down. I loved it so much, perhaps because of the love Deb infused in each word, that I identified my own special relationship in Charles and Emma's story. Though a children's book, oddly I found Charles and Emma in the Adult Biography section of my local library.
Having dabbled in biography myself from biosketches I wrote for the library journal Biography Today, I had an inkling of Deb's monumental task. Her research was based on personal journals and letters and two versions of Darwin's autobiography; in addition to databases, websites, and reference and secondary books. Also, she gathered information while visiting the Darwins' home in England. Deborah's feat, in my mind, is how seamlessly she wove dialogue together with explanation. It is as if her book was written from modern-day interviews, not from passages written during a bygone era.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Anyone who has approached such a big topic as Charles Darwin might find the sheer bulk of material overwhelming. Indeed, all of the material was so fascinating Deb wanted to include it all. Focusing on one guiding principle or theme helped to narrow the subject down. Once she decided to make her book a love story her job became clear. Thus, the weaving began of piecing Charles and Emma's stories together.
Deborah's take-away: Every writer has a theme, Deborah quoted Tom Wolfe as saying. His is status. Mine is love. Charles and Emma is a love story. Write a book from your heart, about the particular person you are. Mine: I feel fortunate and privileged to have had the opportunity to hear the behind-the-scenes approach on how Deborah writes her biographies. After what I learned I have nothing but admiration for the great amounts of love, devotion, tenaciousness, effort, attention-to-detail--have I forgotten anything?-- Deb goes through to arrive at her incredible works.
If you would like to read past posts in this series, please visit:
Part One: Two Ways to Hook and Keep Your Reader
Deborah Heiligman's Blog
Next month: Part Seven: Deborah Heiligman's Casual Scream
In future posts: A link to the complete list of "Books that Rise Above" will appear at the end of this series.
Linda Wilson, a former elementary teacher and ICL graduate,
has published over 40 articles for children and adults, six short stories for
children, and is in the final editing stages of her first book, a mystery story
for 7-9 year olds. Publishing credits include seven biosketches for the library
journal, Biography Today, which
include Troy Aikman, Stephen King, and William Shatner; Pockets; Hopscotch; and
true stories told to her by police officers about children in distress
receiving teddy bears, which she fictionalized for her column, "Teddy Bear
Corner," for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office Crime Prevention
Newsletter, Dayton, Ohio. Follow Linda on Facebook.
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