Writing Wednesday: Needs Must

As I'm sure you already know, we here at Team Aaron/Bach are all about the reals. We constantly look at all manner of numbers to figure out what works and what doesn't work for us in the business of writing, including sales, newsletter sign ups, and website traffic. We also keep an eye on the production side of the equation, mostly by analyzing how I, the source of new words, spend my work time.

This is nothing new. Measuring my time was a huge part how I got my writing from 2k to 10k words a day. But as Travis proved in his Novel Project Management post, actually getting solid, quality time to write is a constant challenge even after you go pro. There are just so many other things you could be doing that fall under the umbrella of "work"--blogging, Tweeting, planning, etc--that sometimes the writing gets shoved around a bit. A foolish mistake, because ultimately, the writing is the only work that really matters.

Over the last year, Trav and I have been involved in a grand experiment to see if we could grow our social media presence in both fiction and non-fiction. The experiment has now concluded, and having run the post-mortem, we've discovered a lot of things we never expected. I'll leave it to my Travis-of-business to go over what we learned about Facebook ads and so forth in another post, but from my perspective, the single biggest discovery in all of this was how much of my work time each week I was spending blogging.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy. I only write one post a week at best. It can't take that much time, right?

XKCD is the truth-sayer of my life.

This is what I always assumed, but the numbers say otherwise. As much as I love talking shop here on the blog, non-fiction is not my happy place. I'm a fiction girl first and forever. Writing books gives me energy. A good day of fiction will often leave me feeling ready to take on the world. Writing essays, on the other hand, takes energy. Energy and time. Four to five hours on average for each post, to be specific. It also interrupts my work flow. I won't go so far as to admit I call off early every blogging day, but let's just that Wednesdays are not 10k days. Too often, they aren't even 5k days.

This has been a persistent problem since we started the Writing Wednesday posts. At the beginning, I assumed I'd just get better, blogs would go faster, and everything would be great. Remember: I love writing these things! I love writing about writing, I love talking shop, and I love paying it forward. With all of that positive energy, I was sure I could get the time price down to something more reasonable. But a year later, the numbers are in, and I have to face the truth: I haven't gotten faster, and I can't keep losing a day out of every week.

To say I am not happy about this would be like saying "Bethesda likes power," but as always, the most important rule of being a good writer is being honest with yourself. The reals must come before the feels if I am to have any sort of accountability, and the reals are that if I want to get back to putting out more than one book a year, novel word counts have to come down, and the weekly time cost of blogging has to be cut. I'm still working on the former, but the latter begins today.

Wait, does this mean the blog going away?!

Not at all! Pretentious Title will still be updated regularly with fiction updates, publishing numbers, and business posts as new information comes in. The free sharing of information is my favorite aspect of the indie author community and a big factor in why I decided to go self pub in the first place. Everyone wins when we share, and Travis and I are still dedicated to experimenting and posting what we've learned about the new frontiers of self publishing so that we can all move forward together into a brighter, more profitable future.

But while you will still see regular posts on the blog, the weekly Writing Wednesday feature is being retired so that I can focus on what I should have been focusing on all along: writing books.

Bummer. So are you done writing about writing forever?

Absolutely not. I might be shifting my time focus back to fiction exclusively, but you can't stop me from talking shop. DO YOU HEAR ME, WORLD? I WILL NOT BE STOPPED! 

Can't stop the rock!

Ahem.

So yes, there will undoubtedly still be writing posts, they just won't be on weekly schedule. I'll still update Facebook and Twitter when I post, though, so if you follow me on Social Media, you shouldn't miss anything even if the flow is no longer reliable. Also, all my previous Writing Wednesday posts will stay up, and I very much hope you continue to find them useful.

Is there a good side to all this?

YES! If you're a fan of my work, you've probably noticed the books are coming out mighty slowly for someone who gets 10k a day. We're talking one a year, which is the same pace I was at when I was traditionally published. Not so great for a nimble indie. -_-

Part of this slowness is because the Heartstrikers books have been way more complicated than I anticipated (And longer. Good Lord, those things are bricks), and part of it is because I've been dividing my writing time among too many side projects like this blog. But the great part about constantly analyzing your workflow is that you can see problems like this and fix them, which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

So readers, rejoice! If things go according to plan, you should have not one, but two new Heartstriker novels to read in the next twelve months, finishing out the series in Summer of 2017. Can I pull it off? Well, only Brohomir knows for sure, but it should be very possible. So keep your eyes open for that, and thank you all so so much as always for being my readers. I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get these books out, but as you see, I'm doing my darnedest to fix the problem, and the waits should be much shorter from here out. 

Finally, a huge thank you to all my Writing Wednesday readers. I'm sorry I couldn't pull it off, but I hope the posts I did get out helped you with your writing. I might be biased, but I think writing fiction is the most noble, worthy, and rewarding of all the arts, and I can't encourage you enough to keep practicing and honing your craft. Even if you never get published, you will still have built a creative skill very few people can boast, and that is a worthy goal in and of itself.

Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best best of luck in all your writing endeavors.

❤s always,

Rachel

Writing Wednesday: Tips for Great World Building

Hi folks,

Rachel refused to come out of her writing cave this morning. Something about Dragons, interruptions, and tasty with ketchup. So it looks like I'm going to be doing the blog post today. Mwahahaha! Last week was a business post, so this week I'm going to try to keep it writerly with a post on settings and world building.

Writing Wednesday: Tips for Great World Building

I've been making my own settings since sixth grade. Not for books, but for the table top RPGs that I run for my friends. Surprisingly to me, this experience has been invaluable when I help Rachel world build for her series. In fact, one of the most crucial contributions I make to Rachel's books have to do with her settings. She's even written a post about my world-building help called My Husband, the World Wrecker. 

(RACHEL NOTE: This is true. All of my settings were either blatantly stolen from or enormously improved by Travis. Also, YOU GUYS, he is the best GM ever! Seriously. I learned so much of what I know about stories from being a player character in his games over these last 14 years. Just goes to show that you really do pick up novel writing skills from everywhere!)

I'm not a writer like Rachel, but this is something I've done a lot both together with her and on my own, so today I want to share with you some of the things I've picked up over my two decades and countless worlds worth of experience into what makes for really good world building. Now, this will be less "how to world build" and more "how I world build", but I hope that you all find this interesting none the less.

Starting Out, the Big Hook

All my best worlds start with a hook. The setting itself needs to have a core component that invokes curiosity, "OMG factor," an exciting twist, has implications, or invokes a sense of irony/dread.

However, I'm not a fan of every type of world hook. I definitely feel like some are better than others. Specifically, I'm a big big believer in the power of,

The contradiction. Aka, the mystery, the thing-that-doesn't-add-up, the glaring exception...

All the coolest settings I know of (including Eli, Devi, and Dragons ^_~) have the contradiction deep within them. Our brains are desperate for order. We instinctively crave for everything to make logical, or at least explainable, sense. When we see something that doesn't make sense, say a broken rule of the universe or society, the urge to know why it doesn't drives us nuts.

In story, just add on the fact that not-knowing might have deadly consequences and you'll get some great baked-in tension.

For example,

Writing Wednesday: Creating Settings Readers Can't Forget (And You Can't Mess Up)

What ho, loyal readers! Rachel back again from the word mines where I have been slaving under dragons (very nice ones, but dragons nonetheless) to talk about...settings!

{Insert Cool Stuff Here}

Settings are one of those writing necessities that too often gets overlooked. If you've done any writing research, you've already read dozens of articles about crafting characters and worldbuilding and plotting. But while these elements are all very important, surprisingly little ink, digital or otherwise, is spent on how to craft and imagine the actual physical space your characters, world, and plot inhabit.

This is especially weird when you consider how important set design is to other story telling mediums. Theatre, movies, television, and video games all have professionals who've made careers out of set design. Likewise, comics--both American and manga--spend an enormous amount of time on backgrounds.

In all of these, what the space where the action takes place looks (and sounds) like is clearly a huge part of the experience of the story. So why do we as authors, who have the entire reader imagination at our disposal, who spend months to years perfecting our characters and plots, so often delegate our setting to cliches like "dark forest" or "big stone castle"?

The obvious answer here is that, unlike all the things I mentioned above, writing is not a visual medium. Other than our covers and the very occasional illustrated edition, we don't deal in pictures. Quite the opposite. Saying accurately what something looks like is one of the hardest things to do in writing. "A picture is worth 1000 words" can be a literal statement when you're writing a book, and who wants to waste that kind of narrative space on what's basically a long, info-dumpy description? No one, which is why one of the most common pieces of writing advice I see in Fantasy circles is "don't stop to describe the scenery."

Make no mistake, this is good advice! We've all read (and most likely put down) books that stop the action completely to spend 5 paragraphs describing a castle on a bluff or the crowds in a city market. These are both setting-establishing elements that a movie director could establish in one camera pan, but would take us writers pages of tension-breaking description text to achieve the same effect, which is why you don't see them much in good fiction. They simply take way too long to do.

At the same time, though, creating an interesting, memorable, atmospheric world is a huge part of writing memorable fiction, especially in genre. However interesting your characters, plot, and world are, if you set them in a very generic Fantasy setting that relies on cliches to fill in your backgrounds, you are setting yourself up to be at least partially forgettable.

So how do you strike a balance? How do you create and then describe a setting that's unique enough to be memorable without spending a thousand extra words and killing your tension in the process?

It's a tricky balance, but there are definitely a few best practices I've learned over the years to make it easier. So, without further ado, let's talk about...

Writing Wednesday: Creating Settings Readers Can't Forget (And You Can't Mess Up)

"Sci-fi City" by JadrienC on DeviantArt

Unless you have a very strong image of a place or scene in your head already (or you're actively writing one right now), chances are you haven't given much thought to your settings yet. To be clear, I'm not talking about World Building. I've gone over that whole other kettle of fish in detail already. This post is all about actual, physical location. The places where your characters live and your action takes place.

If we were working on movies or video games or any of the visual mediums, we would call this set design, and it would be a huge freaking deal. How many movies have you watched where just looking at the set was enough to create strong expectations of what was coming before any characters spoke or any plot had been laid down?

Hobbiton, I'm looking at you.

Oh yeah, that's powerful mojo. Of course, we writers don't have these visual elements to work with, but that's no excuse not to have creative and interesting locations. We are still storytellers and entertainers. It is our job to be as interesting as possible, and creating really cool settings is a huge part of that, so let's talk about how to do it.

The Foolproof Guide to Settings #1: Matching Your Emotions

Writing Wednesday: Know Thy (Publishing) Self

The other day on Twitter, I posted

So many authors make it out like self pub is the only smart way, but if you don't love business, you're going to have a bad time as an indie.

— Rachel Aaron/Bach (@Rachel_Aaron) August 29, 2016

I originally wrote this as the second part of a response to someone replying to Trav's (awesome) business post about the mechanics of a commercially successful series. The commenter in question had mentioned that business posts were basically intimidating, and I absolutely agree. Big pages of numbers and math can be very intimidating if you're unfamiliar with them, but part of self publishing is getting familiar with stuff like this. This is the business part of the self-publishing business, and if you hate it, then maybe self publishing isn't for you, and that's cool. There's tons of other ways to get your book out there! No big deal.

That's all I was trying to stay. I didn't think it was anything special or incendiary, just the facts as I saw them, and yet this tweet got a lot more attention than I expected. At first, I wasn't sure why. It's hardly my most eloquent statement. But then I realized what I saying--that it's okay to choose not to self publish if that's not what works for you--was actually kind of radical in its own weird, publishing politics way.

So (since I didn't have anything else to talk about today) I thought I'd take a look at why that is, and what it means for all of us as individual writers. Onward!

Writing Wednesday: Know Thy (Publishing) Self

If you've spent any time (and I do mean any time) researching your publishing choices on the internet, you've probably seen someone telling you that there is only one smart way to go, and if you choose anything else, you're wasting your writing, your money, and your time. Sometimes this is said very politely with lots of excellent case studies showing exactly why one publishing path is better than the other. Other times you're flat out told you're a moron who's being swindled if you don't do as the author in question suggests.

No matter how it's said, though, there is always an opinion one way or the other. Pretty much every writer you ask, whether they're a multiply published veteran or someone who's only one chapter into their first book, has very definite ideas about which is better: trad or self.

Whenever you have a topic this divisive, there's going to be conflict. Even though most authors (with a few loud exceptions) are extremely polite, reasonable, and eloquent about their thoughts on the subject, picking a side for yourself can still feel like an emotional decision rather than one based in fact. This is especially true if one of your favorite authors is an outspoken supporter of one camp or another. When that happens, choosing anything else can feel like a betrayal. Even if the one choice makes sense for your situation, if someone you respect and like so much is constantly calling what you're considering stupid, it's only natural to think "am I being dumb? Am I actually throwing my writing future away if I do this?"

This is the part of the self pub vs. trad pub debate that I hate the most. Not the discussion--that's very good, very necessary, and a great tool for bringing to light the pros and cons of each path--but the absolute division. The constant refrain--sometimes boldly shouted, sometimes tacitly implied--that the other side isn't just wrong, they're dangerously, career wreckingly wrong. That if you sign with a traditional publisher, they'll hit you with an abusive contract to take all your money and keep your rights forever. Or if you self publish your first novel and it flops, no traditional publisher will ever look at you again.

To be clear, this isn't fear mongering. Both of the examples above can and do happen, but they're also both worst case scenarios, and that's what makes the question of what you should do with your novel so difficult. Because the truth is that both trad and self publishing have horrible pitfalls and incredible heights. Neither of them is easy and nothing is guaranteed. So how do you know which is right for you?

This is the point where pretty much every respectable publishing advice blog will say some version of "the right choice depends on you and what you want from your career." I've actually said that exact thing in my own post about self publishing and money. But what does that actually mean? If you've never published a book and never had a publishing contract and never worked with a publishing house, how do you know what's actually right for you? After all, whatever you choose, you're going to be locked into that decision for that title for years, maybe even forever.

That's not a choice to be made lightly! But while there are plenty of blogs that talk about the practical differences between the two (including mine! Click here for my Authors & Money posts on trad vs self), in my experience, the real difference between the two isn't actually in the business, but in what each one expects from you, the author.

That's what this blog post is really about. Every publishing blog under the sun (again, including this one) has posts about the practical, business differences between trad and self like royalty rates, contracts, marketing, and so forth. But while all that stuff is really important, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how great the numbers are if you, the author, are unhappy with your choice. You could succeed beyond your wildest dreams in either self publishing or trad, but if that path's version of success doesn't match yours, then it doesn't matter.

In the end, this isn't a really choice of which publishing road is better. It's about which one is better for YOU, and the only way to figure that out is to figure yourself out.

Again, no small feat! "Know thyself" is a life long journey. But as someone who's seen the ups and downs of both the self pub and traditional publishing paths, maybe I can help put this old, bitterly contested question into a more personal light.

Writing Wednesday: The Rule of Cool

I've been on a bit of a film critic kick lately. This isn't because I'm some kind of huge movie buff, but because I really enjoy listening to intelligent deconstruction of story, and movies are a lot simpler to deconstruct that novels. This is because movies and television--being vastly shorter and more limited in scope than novels, which are hemmed in only by the author's imagination--can't afford to waste story time.

Script writing is famously unforgiving. There is simply no room for anything but the most efficient and deft strokes of plot and character. Scripts are storytelling condensed down to its purest form, which means that when mistakes happen, and they happen a lot, the way the story fails tells us a lot about what is really important in narrative and why.

I just wanted an excuse to use this picture.

If you're interested, I highly recommend Every Frame a Painting for super insightful classic film criticism about why good movies are so good. Movie Bob for a funnier, more topical criticism on current releases, how they came to be, and why they succeed or fail. And finally DigiBro for an incredibly insightful and thoughtful look at the unique storytelling and directorial work that goes on in anime.

All of these channels are really good in their own areas, and while I have zero interest in ever writing a screen play or getting behind a camera, I've learned a lot from all of them. Writers have a bad habit of thinking our art form is unique, but at the end of the day, on screen or on the page, stories are still just stories. They have the same rules, same tricks, and same pitfalls regardless of medium. Tropes that appear in film and TV often appear in books. This is especially true as our modern generations grows up and starts writing stories that draw inspiration not just from our childhood novels, but also from the movies, TV, anime, comics, and video games we grew up with. My own stories are just as inspired by those shows as they are by the books I've read, and as I keep digging for new ways to become a better writer, it only make sense to turn to analysis of these other mediums to find my new tricks.

So now that I've written 200 words about how I got here, I'm going to get to the good stuff and talk about my latest favorite story concept I've gleaned from watching all these critic videos, and that is the Rule of Cool.

Writing Wednesday: The Rule of Cool

Writing Wednesday: Keeping the Ball Rolling

First, the usual stuff! Heartstrikers 3 is still out and the reviews are great!! Thank you so so SO much if you've read and reviewed my book! Reviews, good or bad, are one of the best things you can give to an author. Thank you all for yours!

(And if you've read the book and haven't reviewed it yet, I'd love it if you'd leave your two cents on Amazon. Even a single sentence helps. Thank you a ton!)

Now, blog time!

Writing Wednesday: Keeping the Ball Rolling

I've talked a lot on this blog about what to do when the writing is going badly. I've talked about what to do when you think your writing sucks, how to pump yourself up when you're not writing as much as you think you should, how to shut up your inner editor, how to shut up everyone else and just write. Lots of troubleshooting! 

But what about the other side of the coin? What do you do when the writing is going really well? How do you keep that going?

The writing is never ending.

Good writing days can feel like perfect summer afternoons. They appear seemingly out of nowhere, are fantastically amazing, and then they're gone, and you're right back to normal. I always thought this was just part of the mercurial nature of writing. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, and sometimes you're in the middle, but no matter what happens, the writing has to get done.

This was my writing philosophy for years, and just from what I've read on other writing blogs, I'm pretty sure it's a lot of other writers' too. But after I discovered the incredible results that come from being more analytical about my writing, I've been a lot less accepting of the idea that things just "happen" in writing. After all, if bad writing days happen for a reason, like if your plot is broken or you're forcing yourself to write in the wrong direction, then good writing days must happen for a reason as well.

Sometimes it's really obvious. When I'm rolling on the climax of a book and everything that's going to happen is already right there in my head, that's pretty much a guaranteed good writing day streak. Or if I'm finally getting to write a scene I've been waiting to write FOREVER. That's a good day! 

Now, obviously, you can try to generate more of these situations by making sure you're always excited about what you're writing. I do this so much, it's one of the three tricks I used to go from 2,000 words a day to 10,000. But being while excited about what you're writing is pretty much the base for all good writing days, it's not the be-all-end-all one shot solution.

In a perfect world, just being excited about what you're writing would be enough to guarantee great, productive, happy writing days every time. But, no spoiler, this isn't a perfect world. You can be over the moon about what you're going to write today and still have a shitty writing day for a whole host of other reasons that have nothing to do with your story. 

This is grossly unfair. If I do the work of setting up a phenomenal story, I should be rewarded with words pouring from my fingertips, dammit! But, as we all know, that doesn't always happen. Sometimes, that's because the planning wasn't actually as phenomenal as I thought, but just as often, the book itself is fine. I'm the one the one with the problem. Maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm hungry, maybe I'm in a bad mood over stuff that has nothing to do with writing. 

There's a whole world of reasons out there that can stomp on even the best writing days, and part of the challenge of writing professionally--which is to say, writing well every day--is learning to sail over these toughs and peaks with an even keel. We have to figure out how to keep the ball rolling on the good writing days even when we're not having great days ourselves, so (since no Rachel Aaron blog post would be complete without a list) let's talk about how to do that!

How to Get and Keep Good Writing Days

Writing Wednesday: The Addictive Power of Emotional Investment (Part 2)

Now that Heartstrikers 3 is out in the wild, I can FINALLY get back to real blog posts! Today's is the long promised conclusion to The Addictive Power of Emotional Investment from two weeks ago.

Last time, we focused on creating characters people can't help but fall in love with and then making them climb impossible walls to keep your audience on the edge of their seat. This time we're going to look at the plotting side of how to make readers hopelessly addicted to your work.

But first, I was on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast hosted by the amazing SFF author Lindsay Buroker! We talked Heartstrikers, what kind of marketing/promo we did for the launch, and all sorts of fun writing business stuff. It was an absolute blast and the recording is already up for free on line, so I really hope you guys will give it a listen!

Now, on with the blogging!

Writing Wednesday: The Addictive Power of Emotional Investment (Part 2)

In part one , we talked about how to build reader addiction for your work by giving them characters they have to care about and then making those characters suffer. Why suffering? Because suffering, pain, crisis, and all those other tortures authors inflict on their characters is what creates the tension and conflict that make stories interesting.

This is nothing new. I actually wrote an entire post about how the formula for writing character driven stories is Motivation + Conflict + Setting = Plot. But while creating lovable people and then forcing them to lead lives of intense drama is a guaranteed winning formula for addictive books, forcing your people to climb impossible walls to reach their goals is just the first step.

If you want your books to be truly memorable, stay-up-all-night, force-my-friends-to-read experiences, you have to go a step further. Creating lovable characters and putting them in danger is quite frankly just a basics of good writing, one of those fundamentals you'll find in pretty much every book worth reading.

There's nothing wrong with that! Creating a book worth reading is a giant accomplishment for any writer, new or established. But this post is all about reaching beyond that. It's about finding what's necessary to hit that next level and turn a good book into a favorite book.

First though, a disclaimer.

What I'm about to say is just my opinion. You may very well disagree with, or even flat out hate, what I'm about to say, and that's fine. The best thing about writing books is that there's no one right way. Every author approaches their art differently. This is how I do it. Will it work for you? I certainly hope so, but if it doesn't resonate, that's okay. It doesn't mean one of us is wrong, it just means we're different writers, and that's great! The world takes all kinds.

My aim today isn't to dictate, but to illustrate. I hope that by explaining how I approach these problems, I can help you understand more about your own books. That's always my goal here at Pretentious Title: to shine whatever light I've made for myself into the murky, sometimes blind art we call fiction in the hopes of making the path easier on someone else.

So without further ado, let's dig into the specifics and talk about how, exactly, we can go from good characters in tough situations to great characters in terrifying situations.

Writing Wednesday: The Addictive Power of Emotional Investment

Hello and welcome back to another Writing Wednesday! After the non-stop rhetorical thrills of Prose Summer Camp, I thought we'd ease back into the bigger writing picture with a look at that classic writer pass time: how to break a reader's heart and have them beg you to do it again.

That's right! Today's post is all about how you as an author can build characters and structure plots that will make total strangers stay up all night feeling real feels for made up people. So without further ado, let's dive into...

Writing Wednesday: The Addictive Power of Emotional Investment

I've talked about the importance of building reader investment before on the blog, but that article mostly focused on the mechanical plot tricks behind getting readers on board with your story. Today, we're going to go for the heart and talk about how to create, build, and manipulate your reader's emotions to create a story they'll never forget.

Writing Wednesday: 4 Quick and Easy Ways to Make Your Writing More Interesting

Hello everyone. Happy Canada Day/4th of July/random week in July, and welcome back to Prose Summer Camp!

This is going to be our last Prose Summer Camp post for the year. We've had a really good run these last two months, but I've covered just about everything I wanted to cover about prose level writing, and I'm ready to get back to my true love: obnoxiously over-detailed analysis of big-picture writing issues! Hooray!

No such thing as too much organization!

Before we go, though, I wanted to talk about the part of prose level I probably think about the most, and that's how to make my actual writing clearer, more readable, and more interesting for my audience.

This is something every writer strives to do. Who doesn't want to make their words more interesting? But while I obviously can't tell you what words to write because I don't know your story or you're style, I have learned a lot of tricks over the years. Some of these have come from editors, some from reading and studying better authors than myself, and a few from my own trial and error.

Big or small, these are all tricks I use in my own novels to get and keep reader attention (or at least keep eyeballs from glazing over). As you'll see, they're all pretty simple. So simple that you might already know them, actually, but fingers crossed that I can deliver something new!

But first, as always, this disclaimer:

**This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. If you don't like my writing style, knowing how I dress up my paragraphs might not be useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you.**

Now that's clear, let's get to the list!

Writing Wednesday: 4 Quick, Easy Ways to Make Your Writing More Interesting

Writing Wednesday: Anatomy of a Scene

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Prose Summer Camp!

Today, we're going to be taking a look at the workhorse of fiction, the scene. But first, announcements!

First, on Monday, Trav had a great post about why you shouldn't price your novel at $0.99. For the record, I absolutely agree with everything he says, but (as we always say around here), our way is not the only way. Case in point, after we posted the article, the awesome and very successful Annie Bellet contacted me on Twitter to tell me that she and several other authors have had fantastic success pricing at $0.99! This lead to a great discussion which I begged her to put into a post, and she gracious obliged. So, next Monday we'll have a guest post from Annie about why you should price your novel at $0.99! I've already read it, and it's going to be awesome.

Secondly, we've added a ton of new posters to the shop! Including this little beauty...

Squeeee!!!

Folks, I've got one in my hands right now, and it is gorgeous! The colors are so much more vibrant than on screen. We've also got posters for the covers and art for One Good Dragon Deserves Another (finally) and No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished as well, and they look just as good. You need more dragons in your life, right? Head on over to the swag shop to take a look and get some special Heartstrikers art for your walls!

Now that's out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks, with...

Prose Summer Camp: Anatomy of a Scene

So far in this series, we've talked about the small, technical details of good writing like improving sentence structure and how to write good sentence level description. We even had Bob come in to help us with dialogue! 

Now we're going to zoom out a bit and take a look at a larger, but still fundamental, aspect of good novel writing: the scene. As always, though, a disclaimer:

**This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. If you don't like my writing style, knowing how I plan my scenes might not be useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you.**

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about what a scene can do.

Writing Wednesday GUEST POST! with the amazing Kameron Hurley

Hello from COLORADO!

Yes, I'm standing by a frozen lake. Yes, I am wearing shorts. 10,000 feet, baby!

As you've probably surmised from the pictures, we're on vacation this week. Fortunately, this works out in your favor because we've got the amazing (and Hugo award winning!) essayist, author, feminist, and all around whipsmart lady Kameron Hurly here on the blog to talk about making the jump from trad to self-pub and back again!

(FANGIRLING!)

I've read many of the essays from Geek Feminist Revolution and I love them. She has a ton of essays featuring deep, critical thought on geeky topics up for free all over the internet. It's a type of deep introspection genre that's very hard to find in genre fiction especially, and as a member of the SFF community, I absolutely love what she does with and for my genre. I'd be super stoked to get her on the blog for any reason, but she is especially perfect for today's topic, and let me just say, we are ALL in for a treat.

So, without further ado, here's Kameron to talk about the business of taking an indie project to NY!

How to Repackage a Self-Pub Project for Traditional Publication

Hello, everyone! And thanks to Rachel for hosting me. Today I’m going to talk about my recently-released essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution, and how my agent and I worked to repackage and pitch content which had already appeared around the web into a traditional publishing deal.

As a general rule, unless a self-publishing project sells a lot of copies, it’s difficult to get traditional publishers interested in them. I know! It sucks, but you’ll hear this a lot from agents and publishers. It really has to be a legit phenomenon to stir up interest, especially now that there are so many more self-pub success stories. Even essay collections like the one I pitched can be a difficult sell if more than 20% of the content you propose for the collection has been previously published online.

So how did we do it?

Writing Wednesday: Simple Strategies to Vastly Improve Your Sentences

Another summer Wednesday, another Prose Summer Camp! Hooray!

Don't sue me, Forest Service!

Before we get going, though, for all you Heartstrikers readers who might have missed last Monday's post, I'm going to be writing a special Heartstrikers short story in which (not to be too spoiler-tastic) Bethesda is going to be asked many questions. Rather than make up all these questions myself though, I thought it would be fun to open up the floor to you, the readers!

So if you have any questions you'd like the Great and Terrible Bethesda to answer, head on over and leave them in the comments! The best ones (that won't be answered in upcoming books) will be posed to the Heartstriker matriarch herself, so ask away! (And wear flame retardant clothing!)

Now that's covered, back to the post!

Writing Wednesday: Simple Strategies to Vastly Improve Your Sentences

*Disclaimer: This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. Some of the rules I lay out below are universal, others are stylistic choices. Either way, if you don't like my writing style, seeing how I write my sentences might not be very useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you. Enjoy responsibly!**

So far in Prose Summer Camp, we've talked about how to write better sentence level description and how to write properly formatted, compelling dialogue (with help from everyone's favorite seer!). This week, we're getting even more fundamental with a detailed look at how to buff up actual sentence level writing.

Surprisingly complete. Thanks, internet!

The ability to write a good sentence or paragraph is something that gets brushed over way too often in the genre community. This isn't to say there aren't amazing lyrical writers in genre, there absolutely are, but all too often I see genre writers focusing all of their improvement efforts on the big picture elements--plot, character, world building, all the things that make genre fiction amazing--while ignoring the most basic aspect of good writing: the sentence. It's as though we think that, just because we're not writing literature, bad prose is somehow okay.

Now I'm not saying your paragraphs have to be a staggering works of heartbreaking genius to be good (Lord knows mine aren't), but bad prose is like a dirty bathroom. Sure, the sink might be amazing and the showers might use waterflow methods hither-to unknown to mankind, but if the mirror has toothpaste spit marks on it and there's hairballs on the floor, that fancy stuff doesn't matter. If it looks a mess, no one is going to want to spend any time inside.

This is such a shame, because--like everything else we've covered in this series--bad sentence level writing is one of the easiest problems to fix. I can't tell you how to have better ideas, but I can show you how to write a sentence that reads well, clearly communicates what you're trying to say, and (most importantly) don't distract your reader from all the stuff you wrote this book to talk about in the first place.

Ready? Let's get started!

Writing Wednesday: "Hey, Rachel!" the readers cried. "Can you do a post about dialogue?"

Ah, summer. The sun's out, the heat is oppressive, and there are UNINVINTED GUESTS in my house. Clearly, the only thing to do is to break out the swimwear and dive into the nitty gritty details of writing at the prose level. It's,

A badly photoshopped sign using stolen Park Service fonts! No, wait, I mean it's...

Prose Summer Camp!

Yaaay! Today we're going to be focusing on dialogue. Not how to come up with good dialogue (for that, see this post), but how to actually write the stuff in a way that reads well and makes sense on the page. 

Now this might not sound like a big deal, but I can't tell you how many books have been ruined for me by, shall we say, unwise dialogue and dialogue tag choices. Even if the dialogue itself is decent, it's hard to appreciate witty banter when you're trying to figure out how someone can gesticulate a word (are they using Sign Language?). I know that sounds nit picky, but when you're talking about your book, these are your nits to pick. Voice in a book is made up of thousands of nit picky choices just like this. 

Choose well, and no one will notice because they'll be too busy paying attention to your characters and plot. Choose poorly, and the little bad decisions will be all your readers notice. It's like a big old scratch in the paint job of a brand new car. Sure it might not actually change how the car runs, but no one wants to buy a new car with a scratch on it. If you're going to sell that thing, it has to look its best, and this kind of attention to detail is one of the ways we get there.

It should also be noted that these sort of decisions are often considered a stylistic writing choice, which means unless you're really murdering the grammar, no copy editor is going to fix them for you. (And if you are murdering the grammar, you shouldn't be depending on a copy editor to fix that in the first place.) You're the writer here. It's up to you to write well, so let's dig into how we do that.

But first, a disclaimer:

**This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. Some of the rules I lay out below are universal, others are stylistic choices. Either way, if you don't like my writing style, seeing how I make my dialogue choices might not be very useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you. Enjoy responsibly! **

Now that's out of the way, onward to...

Writing Wednesday: How to (Actually) Write Dialogue

Rachel clapped her hands and looked around the virtual room. "Okay," she said, positively vibrating with grammatical excitement. "Let's talk about writing and talking, my two favorite things! Dialogue in text is one of those writing things we assume everyone just knows. After all, we've all read books before, which means we've seen proper dialogue in action. But seeing isn't always understanding. To truly get what's going on, we have to understand why these authors made the dialogue choices they did."

"And I suppose you're going to tell us?"

Rachel looked up in confusion to see Brohomir, Great Seer of the Heartstrikers, sitting at the back of the room, feeding his pigeon from the tray of complementary snack crackers. "What are you doing here?"

"Shameless self-promotion," Bob said with a grin. "The third volume of my adventures comes out August fifth, and I wanted to make sure everyone in your audience knew they could preorder No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished."

"I don't see how they could have missed it," Rachel said, pointing at the long line of announcement posts, tweets, and other various public declarations. "But since you're already here, how would you like to be my example?"

Bob sighed. "Why are you even asking? You're the writer, and I've already foreseen the end of this little mise en scène. Even if I say no, we both know you're going to make me do it anyway."

"But of course," Rachel said with a cruel grin. "That's the price of being a fan favorite. When the author needs people to pay attention, you get pressed into service." Her smirk widened. "Characters exist to be used."

The dragon seer arched an eyebrow. "Careful," he warned. "Your Bethesda is showing."

Writing Wednesday: Five Steps to Writing Better Sentence Level Description

Over the last few weeks I've noticed my Writing Wednesday posts have been getting a bit broad of topic. This is fun for me, I love nothing more than a good wax poetic, but these WW posts are supposed to be about the craft of writing. So, for the next few weeks, I want to get back to basics and really dig into the nitty-gritty, nuts and bolts issues of putting together a good piece of fiction on the sentence and paragraph level.

Why go so small? Well, because there's already tons of information out there on how to do the macro stuff. Just on my blog I have multiple posts about character creation, plotting, tension and pacing, hooking your reader, and so forth.

But despite the obvious importance of these big issues, the problems I see most in books by new authors are not the big ones. It's the little stuff--dull prose, uninspired description, mediocre dialogue--that puts me off first. The book may have major character issues further on, or it may be a work of perfection, but if the sentence level writing is bad, then I'll never get far enough to find out. Life is simply too short to read a badly written book, especially when I have so many other excellent choices as a reader.

Fortunately, these little problems, though book killers if ignored, are some of the easiest to solve in our profession. Motivation, dramatic timing, proper pacing, imaginative plotting, great characters--this stuff is hard. This stuff is art. Learning to writing a nicely put together, functional paragraph? Easy peasy!

This isn't to say writing deathless prose is easy. Quite the opposite. Prose composition is one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" kind of things, which is why you hear stories about literary writers spending years on one paragraph. That said, this level of artistic effort is most definitely not the standard, nor should it be. Some readers love that deep, prose-as-poetry stuff, but there's a vast audience out there that just to read a story told competently and interestingly in a style that doesn't distract from the words are there to say, and that's what we're going to be focusing on in this blog series, which I'm calling Prose Summer Camp!

 'Cause summer. And I love naming things. :)

Ready? Let's tackle the first and perhaps biggest bear on the docket: sentence level description.

Writing Wednesday Prose Summer Camp: Five Steps to Writing Better Sentence Level Description

I've talked about description twice on the blog before: once in a broad "what does description actually do for you?" sort of way, and once with a specific focus on how to describe things in your text without resorting to the dreaded info dump. Everything I said in those posts still applies, but today we're going to look at the fundamentals of writing good description (ie, telling your reader what stuff looks like/feels like/does in an interesting and concise way) as they function on the sentence and paragraph level.

First though, a disclaimer:

**This is how I write. All of the tips below are drawn from my taste and experience as a writer. If you don't like my writing style, knowing how I craft sentences might not be useful. This is fine! Everyone writes in their own voice. I hope, of course, that you will still find some it helpful, but please don't take any of this as me setting down the One True Path of Writing. I'm just telling you what works for me in the hopes that it might also work for you.**

Now that's out of the way, let's talk details.

Writing Wednesday: Three Strategies to Creating a Better (Fictional) World

I've had a bit more downtime than usual lately (waiting on a book to come back from the editor, the writer's vacation!), so I've been using it to be responsible and take care of non-writing writing business chores like updating my website and cleaning out my email box. (If you wrote me, I swear I'll get to you! I'm almost there!) 

But as I go through my question box, one topic keeps coming up over and over again: world building. Specifically, people want to know what my system is for building my worlds. It's a great question. I have a system for daily fast writing, plotting a novel, plotting a series, fixing a broken plot, writing a prologue, editing, planning your edit and estimating timelines, even how to sell the book once I'm done.

CLEARLY, I am a woman of systems, and yet I've never written a post about how I build my worlds. This is a massive oversight on my part, because of all novel-related activities, world building is the one I probably spend the most time on. I'm not sitting down every day and drawing up family trees for my characters or anything like that, but I am constantly thinking and daydreaming about my worlds and people That's all world building really is: structured imagining. 

But while this freedom to play God can be amazingly fun and powerful, it can also be enough rope to hang yourself. I can't tell you how many authors I've seen go down (or how many of my own books I've killed) thanks to badly thought out world building. 

With that and mind, let's take a look at the system I use to keep my own acts of fictional godhood on track.

Writing Wednesday: Three Steps to Creating a Better (Fictional) World

Pretty picture, but they forgot all the X-ed out continents and scrapped civilizations!

Before we go into how I build my worlds, let's talk about the ultimate goal of world building, which is to create a fictional setting that 1) makes internal sense, 2) is a new and exciting (or at least interesting) place to be, and 3) feels real when you read about it.  If any of these three requirements are lacking, you're going to have a bad time. It doesn't matter how amazing your characters or intense your plot, if your world makes no sense, is cliched or boring, or just doesn't feel like a real place, readers aren't going to want to go there. 

Part of the allure of fiction (and not just genre. Contemporary lit authors don't get to skip out on world building just because they're writing about real places) is the chance to go somewhere new and cool. When people talk about reading to escape, your world is the place they're escaping to. It might just be background, but if that background is shoddy and poorly thought out, the work as a whole will suffer. 

So we can all agree WORLD BUILDING = VERY IMPORTANT. Easily as important as writing good characters, plot, or tension. So how do I do it? 

Well, that's kind of the rub, because the specific system of how I build each of my worlds varies according to the needs of that world and story. Sometimes, if the world and its secrets are a very important part of the metaplot like they was in my Eli Monpress books, I have to world build freaking everything. Other times, when the world is just a stage for other dramas, as it is in my Heartstrikers books, I...still world build a ton, but as a percent of total work, setting building pales in comparison to the time I spend on the characters and their histories. 

That said, while the actual process of world building will always vary from world to world and book to book, there are three general methods I always follow to keep my settings solid and myself sane. But first, a disclaimer. 

As always, I'm not saying this is the one true way. This is just how I world build. Obviously I hope my tactics will work for you like they do for me, but every writer works and thinks differently. There is no right or wrong way to imagine your worlds. Take with a grain of salt and always remember that you are your own writer. Do what works for you!!

All good? Great! Let's get to it!

Writing Wednesday: How Important is Experience?

If you've ever Googled "how to be a writer," chances are you've read something about using life experiences in your writing. There is, in fact, an entire school of thought that writers shouldn't write things they haven't personally experienced because if they haven't lived what they're writing, they don't know what they're talking about.

As a genre writer, I obviously disagree with this. If I only wrote about things I'd personally experienced, there'd be no dragons or wizards or sword fights to the death. No one get shot or stabbed or blasted with magic. If all writers followed this advice, the whole world would be trapped in realistic contemporary fiction forever, which I'm pretty sure is one of the levels of hell.  (No offense to realistic contemporary writers, but come on. The world needs variety!)

But while I may never have actually been an ancient, future seeing dragon (I know, I know, I'm sorry to dash your hopes), I do know what it's like to lay careful plans that depend on the whims of other people. I know what it feels like to try very very hard and still fail. I also know what it feels like to win, to hate, to be head over heels in love, all that breadth of human emotion stuff. And this is what I think writers are really talking about when they say you have to live something before you write it.

Now, obviously, there are extremes. No matter how well I understand fear, my life has never really been in danger. I've never been a hostage or been mortally injured (at least not outside of a hospital without morphine). I can only speculate what it feels like to truly fear for my life. Likewise, I've never killed anyone, or even wanted to kill someone. As a very safe and privileged white woman in America, I've thankfully never had to experience any of these terrifying, extreme emotions, which means I can only imagine how my characters feel when I put them in these horrible situations. 

But that's what writers do, isn't it? We imagine. We ask "what if?" and play pretend on paper for an audience, some of whom may actually have experienced the horrors I'm describing that I've been fortunate enough in my real life to avoid. But even though I've never actually lived what I'm describing, it's my job as an author to make it feel real, even for the people who've actually been there. 

That's the challenge these writers are trying to conquer when they say you have to have experience to write. Again, though, I don't agree, because I believe that the power of the writing imagination trumps all. Obviously it's easier if you've lived the emotions you're trying to describe, but that's all it is: easier. Life experience is an aide, not a requirement for good fiction. After all, if we allowed our stories to be limited only to our own experiences, what kind of dull, unimaginative writers would we be?

So now that I've cleared that up, how do we actually do it? How do we imagine situations and feelings we've never experienced accurately and sincerely enough to convince readers that these things are real? 

Unless you're writing your autobiography, this is a challenge all writers, and since it wouldn't be a Rachel Aaron post without a list, let's look at some solutions to this problem.

Writing Wednesday: Mastering Your Author Persona

And I'm back because I FINISHED MY EDITS FOR HEARTSTRIKERS 3!

You're all in for it now!

Travis is reading it now, and given that he knocked out half the book in a single evening, I'm feeling pretty stoked about the finished product. I got to pack so many secrets into this book I've been waiting to reveal since the series started. The whole thing was author catnip, and I really really hope you enjoy it when it comes out in August! (And for those of you who are audio fans, I'm getting Audible the manuscript early this time, so the audio version should be out close to the ebook/print release date this time! Yay!)

Happy I was writing this book, though, I am very glad to finally be done with this project so I can move on to all the other stuff I have to do, such as writing blog posts! So, without further ado, let's talk about crafting an author persona.

Writing Wednesday: Mastering Your Author Persona

In the spirit of Travis's amazing posts on building your author brand and reaching your audience I wanted to talk about the part of all this book selling/marketing mojo that I actually think about as a writer.

To be perfectly honest, I don't even worry about sales/marketing/whatever until whatever book I'm going to be selling is almost done. Before that stage, my focus is entirely on telling the best story I can, because that's what really matters here. All the marketing in the world only makes a bad book fail faster, so clearly the Good Book is always our number one priority.

Even when the book is nearly done and it actually is time to market, I only really think about marketing in short bursts as necessary. This is partially because, important as marketing and promoting yourself is, nothing sells books like another book. Writing more is almost always the best thing you can do for your career.

That's great news for me, because by the time I'm done with one book, my brain is already miles ahead thinking about the next one. For me right now, that's Heartstrikers 4, which will probably be the final book in the series (I was planning on 5, but I covered a lot more of the meta plot than I was expecting in book 4, and I firmly feel that a series should end where it needs to, not where I want it to). When I do start a new series, though, I keep my brand in mind when sorting through all the new shiny ideas to find the new story I feel my audience will enjoy the most. I'm still writing what I want, just with an eye towards pleasing my fans and keeping my established brand strong.

So that's marketing, too. Really, though, there's only author promotion I think about at all stages of book creation and even in between novels, and that is my author persona.

Writing Wednesday: GMC - A Stupidly Simple System for Great Character Creation

As I promised yesterday, I am back with the first of the many many new writing tricks I picked up at RT 2016!

One of the things I love most about writing is that no matter how much you know or how experienced you are, there is always something new and awesome to learn. This year, the piece of writing advice that I put to immediate use was Linnea Sinclair's GMC character creation method. Now I'm not sure if Linnea actually invented this, but she's the first person I'd heard it from, so I'm going to give her credit because she's awesome and a super smart writer. Totally go check out her stuff if you like action packed romantic SF (like my Devi books!)

UPDATE! The creator of the GMC method emailed me! This amazing system was created by Debora Dixon who actually has an entire book about the GMC method! Thank you SO SO SO much to Debora for bringing this amazing thing into my life. Seriously, I don't know how I wrote so long without it.

So what is GMC? Let's find out!

Writing Wednesday: GMC - A Stupidly Simple System for Great Character Creation

Historically, my character creation process has happened in one of two ways: either a character came into my head fully formed and I just jotted down details (this is often how my main characters begin), or I created a character specifically to fill a need in the story (everyone else). For example, when I wrote my Paradox series, Devi was a character I'd had fully formed in my head for a long time. She just walked into my brain one day and was like "Get in, loser. We're writing a book." Eli was exactly the same, though far nicer about it.

Point is, I've never had to think very much about my characters because, for me, they just happen. I always make sure to get down the basics like what they want out of life, their histories, what they look like, etc. When it comes to their personalities, though, I usually just know.

Serendipitous as that might sound, this has actually been a huge weakness for me as an author. Because my characters come to me from the void of creation largely intact, I've never needed to make any kind of system to keep them in line, which means when things do go wrong with my characters, they go catastrophically wrong, and I have no idea how to fix them.

This is a problem I've been pecking at for a long time as a writer, but while I love granular systems in all other aspects of my writing (see how I plot or how I edit for examples of the too organized author in action), I've shied away from doing the same for characters because I didn't have a system of my own, and none of the ones I found ever felt right.

And then I discovered GMC, or Goal, Motivation, Conflict.

Writing Wednesday: Are Conventions Worth It?

Hello everyone! So just in case my gratuitous selfie posting on Twitter hasn't tipped you off, I'm going to the Romantic Times Book Lover's Convention in Las Vegas next week!!! That's right, we're going to party with a bunch of Romance Authors in Vegas.

If it happens in Vegas, it has to stay in Vegas, right? I mean, that's a Nevada state law now, right?!?

Take it from me, no one parties like Romance Authors. Those ladies be crazy!

(Also, if you're going to #RT2016 and want to hang out, I TOTALLY WANT TO! DM me on Twitter or send me an email and we will make plans to be nerds together! It will be awesome!!!)

So why am I going to a Romance Convention when I don't actually write Romance? Well, as you might remember from last year's con report, I went to the con knowing nothing about it purely because it sounded like fun and Ilona Andrews invited me to be on a panel...and I LOVED it!! I met a ton of amazing people, had a marvelous time, and learned more about both the craft and business sides of writing than I'd known was left to be learned. It was hands down one of the best writing education and networking experiences of my life...and did I mention fun? SO MUCH FUN! More fun than should be legal to write off on your taxes.

I also won an award this year, but I was already planning on going to the con, so that was the delicious, delicious icing on top of an already perfect cake!

With all that, it's no wonder that I'm back again in 2016 and bringing my husband along for the ride because A) I need someone to help me divide and conquer because RT has more good panels than any one person can physically attend, and B) because I want to make him take pictures with the cover models have him with me while we learn more about what is now our family business! Yeah, that's what I meant!

Thankfully for me, he's pretty excited about it, too! Everyone's excited!! And that actually brings me to the actual, non-Rachel-squeeing-about-her-fun-trip part of this post. Because fun as they are, conventions are stupid expensive. This goes double for a major industry con like RT where all guests have to pay ~$400 to attend in addition to travel and hotel. Add in the time a convention takes out of your schedule, and you're looking at a serious investment. We already know it's going to be fun because conventions are always fun. (Seriously, even bad conventions are usually still pretty awesome). But all fun aside, is a convention worth it from a business case perspective?

This is an equation I've wrestled with personally for many years now, and the answer I've found is that, like everything in writing, whether attending a particular convention is "worth it" or not depends on you, your situation, and what you want from the experience. If you've yet to finish a book, then you don't have to worry about this stuff. Just treat a convention like a vacation that might also be good for your writing and have fun! But if you do have a book out or if you're looking to publish one soon, conventions are something you're probably already thinking about.

So let's break it down!

Writing Wednesday: Are Conventions Worth It?

Giant book signing from RT 2015. Believe it or not, I'm in this picture somewhere!

First up, a universal truth: conventions are absolutely not necessary for a successful writing career. As stated above, they're a ton of fun and a huge perk of the author gig (especially if you get invited as a guest!), but you do not have to attend a single one to have a long and successful writing career. But the fact that they are not necessary is what makes the financial decision of whether or not X convention will be worth your time/money that much more important.

Every convention you attend is an investment of your time and money. If you're a writer on a budget, rushing into any random convention just because that's what you think writers should do is a bad business decision. Like all investments, you need to do your research first, so let's take a look at the types of conventions out there for writers and what you can expect from them.

There are three major types of conventions writers attend/get invited to: craft conventions, reader conventions, and industry conventions.