Marketing A First Novel, Calling Vicki

The job of the modern novelist is not just writing quality work and handing it off to an agent or publisher, but to learn the art of marketing as well. 

There will come a point, if you are extremely lucky, where your readers will take over this job and help to sell your work for you. Once you have reached a certain level of success they will happily tell others about the wonderful new writer that they have found. They will ask any and all that they come in contact with have they read this amazing new book (Calling Vicki, I hope) that they have just finished. 









The problem with this is surviving until that time comes. You are going to need to have upwards of a hundred thousand readers for it to hit the autopilot stage. It is rare that the first novel achieves this.
Usually we have to publish half a dozen books before one and we never know which one will catch fire and people will not only tell others about that book, but take a second look at all of your other work. 

The second look part of being a published author usually requires us to produce books that fit into the same genre. 

Should Plot Do The Driving

 Should the plot be the driving force in your novel? 

 That largely depends upon the type of novel that you are crafting. 

 When sitting down to write a novel you should have some idea of whether it is a character driven story or a plot driven story. If your novel is going to be plot driven then I would strongly suggest that you do an outline. To say plot driven is in a way to say map driven. Your outline is the map of coming events or in other words the plot. While if your novel is going to be character driven you can sit back and write. Trusting the lead character to take you on the long walk from page one until you write the end.



 What type of writing do I prefer? I would have to say that I write the same kind of fiction that I enjoy reading. I lean toward character driven stories however parts of my first novel Calling Vicki had to be plotted. Characters needed to connect up at certain points of the novel and that required plotting. You may believe that you will only depend upon one way to craft your novel or the other, but in the end you will surprise yourself.




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Romance Novel Tips

Romance Novel Tips

 Recently I started work on a series of short romance novels. This was started with very little research on my part. That was a mistake. Only because romance fiction is not my genre. I write fiction and there is great deal of romance included in the stories, but it is not the main theme of my work. If I were to eliminate th subplots in my novel Calling Vicki then the main plot between Vicki and the man in her life would have been almost pure romance, but that is the problem that I have. I tend to include subplots that are not about relationships and the core theme of romance. I had to learn to do this. 

 It has taken me months to figure out how to craft a romantic novel and I believe that I have the hang of it. You many be someone who have read this type of fiction for years, but have never bothered to study the core rules of the genre. Let’s listen to those of have studied this topic.

   


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Beginning Your Novel

Beginning Your Novel

 It was not a dark and stormy night. 

 The dark and stormy night gag is the classic way to open a novel. No one does this unless the novel is actually about the night itself. I approach opening my novels in the middle of something that is either happening to a main character or something he or she is doing at the time. I believe that character rather than description is the best way to jump start a novel and to pull the reader inside. It is sort of like giving the reader a hand to hold and guiding them into the world that you have constructed for them. Again I am only making a suggestion. You are a writer. This is your first chapter. You are going to be the one who will have to make hundreds of choices along the way before your novel is finished. The beginning is just the first of many. Write what makes you comfortable.



 Being a writer is about choices as much as it is about story telling. Learning what works best when opening a novel is going to be trial and error. You may finish a novel. Sit down to edit it and discover that the first few chapters are unnecessary and the book really begins with chapter three or four. This happened to me once and I discovered that removing the first two chapter did not change a thing about the rest of the book. Those chapters had been my way of getting into the story, but were not needed to tell the complete story. Consider this when you sit to edit your work. 




 If you want to see how I open a novel you can check out the first chapter of my novel suspense novel Calling Vicki. The first five chapters are available above for free. Just click a chapter heading. Thank you for visiting. Please take a moment to stumble this post on stumble upon and to add it to your facebook. Good luck with your writing and have a nice day.