 I once made a claim to the effect that there were only seven basic plots for books. It appears that I was right. Experts think that there are seven basic plots for books. I would throw in an 8th, but I’ll get to that later. The idea was developed by someone called Christopher Booker, who carried out research across a wide selection of books and then published his results in a book (what else) entitled “The Seven Basic Plots: Why We tell Stories”, published in 2004. This was no passing fancy. It took him 34 years to write. Amongst his other credits is that he was one of the founders of Private Eye magazine. He has nothing to do with the Man-Booker Prize which is awarded for literature. As well as the 7 basic plots, Booker came up with the idea of the meta plot, that is the basic structure which the majority of books follow. This breaks down into four distinct phases.  Phase one is the call to action, in which the protagonist is drawn into the adventure to come. Some go willingly, like James Bond, while others, like both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, go less willingly. Phase two is the frustration stage, where the protagonist struggles against the forces arrayed against him (or her) in order to resolve the problems he is faced with and win the day. During this stage they discover their weaknesses, which they must overcome and also, usually, unexpected strengths. In the nightmare phase all hope is lost and all seems to be doomed. The protagonist may come close to death and is certainly in despair, though quite how this works for plot type 5 (see below) I’m not sure. Finally, we reach the resolution stage, where the protagonist, against all odds, wins the day and earns the title of hero. Again I’m not so sure that this works for plot type 6 (also see below). Readers of Jessica Brodie’s “Save The Cat Writes A Novel” (recommended) may recognise those four phases, though she breaks them down into 15 “beats”.  It doesn’t matter how many other characters there are in the book, it is with the protagonist that the reader’s thoughts and emotions ride. If he or she doesn’t succeed, then the story doesn’t succeed. Even if the protagonist dies at the end, their death must be a sacrifice to gain their success. Do you recognise those four phases (or 15 beats) from the books you read or write? I must admit that I find it hard to think of any book that doesn’t conform to that pattern So, what are the 7 basic plots that Booker identified?  Plot 1. Overcoming the monster. This might be a real monster, such as the Minotaur favoured in Ancient Greek literature, or it may be a figurative one: Big Business, Corrupt Government, Rogue CIA agent, etc. It can also include internal demons. A lot of Greek literature focuses on battling monsters, but it has stood the test of time. H G Wells used it in War Of The Worlds and Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park. And British readers can't overlook the story of St George and the Dragon. The ‘monster’ is also present in stories such as George Orwell’s 1984 and the Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher books. Just because it doesn’t have horns or a tail it doesn’t prevent it being a monster. Plot type 1 is, of course, a staple of the horror story genre: Frankenstein, Dracula, Halloween, Friday The Thirteenth. However, our author Robert Cubitt uses it in his World War II series, Carter’s Commandos, where the monster is the Nazi regime in Germany.  Plot 2. Rags to riches. The most obvious (for me) examples are Cinderella, Dicken’s Great Expectations. Aladdin, The Prince And The Pauper etc. First of all, the protagonist comes into great wealth before losing it all and then having their fortunes restored after they have learnt a significant lesson. Plot 3. The quest. This is much loved by the writers of fantasy novels, and Robert Cubitt used it in his Sci-Fi series. With the search for the magic sword, or whatever, also comes personal growth. The protagonist never comes out of a quest unchanged in some way. Its origins are as distant as Homer’s Iliad and progress through history with A Pilgrim’s Progress, Lord Of The Rings, Watership Down, etc.  Plot 4. Voyage and Return. Similar, in some ways, to the quest, the protagonist must leave his home (or comfort zone) in order to achieve something and, again, returns changed in some way. One of oldest versions of this is Homer’s Odyssey, but perhaps the best known of these is the Lord Of The Rings prequel The Hobbit. Other examples include Gulliver’s Travels and The Wizard of Oz. It is the principal feature of this genre that the protagonist isn’t (necessarily) financially enriched by the journey but is spiritually enriched.  Plot 5. Comedy. Is this really a plot in its own right, I wonder? Comedy can be inserted into almost any plot, even a tragedy if it’s handled correctly. That’s why we refer to “black comedies”. The protagonist is usually a light, cheerful character to whom life frequently hands the dirty end of the stick: a good person to whom bad things happen. However, they stumble along and emerge triumphant at the end, often through luck rather than judgement. Mr Bean or any Norman Wisdom film provides examples. Plot 6. Tragedy. In Ancient Greek theatre this was the partner of comedy as the Greeks only did two types of theatre. Again, I would dispute this being a plot in its own right. Most stories can include a tragedy or two. The protagonist either has a major character flaw which they are unable to identify in themselves or they commit an act for personal gain which has unforeseen consequences, and which spirals out of control. Either way it doesn’t end happily. There are many stories that fit this genre: King Lear, Macbeth, Bonnie and Clyde, Anna Karenina. This isn’t so popular in modern fiction and film as the public prefers a happy ending, so nowadays the inherent tragedy turns to success in the final chapter. While it was always normal for the protagonist to die at the end of a tragedy it is far more normal, now, for them to live. Not only will they live, they will also get the girl (or boy).  Plot 7. Rebirth. This is the plot for any story in which a villain or an unlikeable character ends up as the hero. It involves the protagonist going through an experience that changes them radically in some way, making them a “new” person. There can also be an element of this in some of the other plots, particularly 3 and 4. Here we find A Christmas Carol (not our alternative version), Beauty And The Beast and Despicable Me. Now we come to my additional plot, Plot 8: Romance. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl for some reason (OK, girl can also lose boy), boy and girl either struggle to get back together, or fight against the inevitable attraction, and finally get back together again at the end of the book (and, of course, there are LGBTQ+ equivalents). This is the territory of Mills and Boon and Barbara Cartland, but has been used by many other authors. In which other genre would Pride And Prejudice fit?  Here is the challenge. Can you think of any book that doesn’t fit into one of those 7 (or 8) categories? I have tried and I can’t think of any. If you are an author, have you ever written a book that doesn’t fit into any one of those categories? Would you even try? An interesting thought is that we might each be living our lives in one of those ways. In other words, there are only 8 life stories. That sounds a bit scary, as we all consider ourselves to be unique in some way. However, much as that idea both scares and appeals to me, I have no evidence to back it up so I’ll leave it there. What is of considerable interest to me is this idea of change. All those plot lines require some form of change to be undergone, in order for there to be a happy ending. This is where the story and real life part company. As a species we aren’t good at changing. If we were we wouldn’t keep repeating the mistakes of the past that lead us into all sorts of messes, up to and including war.  So, if there are only 7 (or 8) basic plots for books, why do we keep buying books? After all, once we have read one book from each plot type we have read them all, haven’t we?
This is where the skill of the author comes in. He or she makes us believe that their story is both unique and original. Firstly, they will mix and match the plot types to give variation to them. As I suggest above, a quest can also be a journey, and frequently is. Sling in a romance and a bit of personal growth and you tick the boxes of another two types. However, that still limits the number of stories available (Just over 40,000 by my calculation). Yet literally millions of books have been written. It is the author that makes the difference. The skilful author makes you believe, through his or her mix of character and plot, that their story is unique. All the great authors have done this. It is called “finding one’s voice”, in other words saying something different. It is hard to say which authors will find their voice and which will never be heard, because this is down to the reader to judge. But what is clear is that if the reader wishes to find a new voice to listen to they won’t find it by reading what everyone else is reading. A new voice can only come from a new author. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
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This week we are delighted to post another guest blog by Gene Ramsey. This time he takes a look at how to refresh your creative juices when they are flagging a little. All images courtesy of Pexels.  As a writer, the ability to tap into your creative wellspring is indispensable, yet there are times when the muse seems elusive, and your imagination feels as barren as a desert. In these moments, the need to recharge and revitalize your creative spirit becomes paramount. This article explores practical strategies tailored to help writers and authors break free from creative stagnation, ensuring a vibrant and fruitful engagement with your craft.  Disconnect to reconnect In this digital era, it's essential to consciously detach from the ever-present screens of your smartphone, computer, and tablet. Allow your mind the freedom to meander through thoughts without the interruption of incessant notifications and the relentless influx of information. In the tranquillity of this newfound mental space, as you gaze out the window or simply let your thoughts roam, your next ground-breaking idea might subtly make its presence known.  Establish a Sanctuary for Creativity As a writer, your craft demands undivided attention. Designate a sanctuary where you can isolate yourself from the world's distractions. This dedicated space should invite tranquillity and allow for uninterrupted flow of thoughts. Whether it’s a quiet corner of your home or a secluded part of a local park, make this space your own. Regularly spending time in this creative haven can help you establish a routine that, over time, will signal to your brain that it’s time to engage creatively.  Play Your Way to Innovation Remember, creativity is not all about stern expressions and furrowed brows; it's also about play and exploration. Reconnect with activities that light up your spirit and make you feel alive. Whether it's sketching, playing board games, or crafting, these playful acts can subconsciously stir up ideas and inspire innovative thinking. Allow yourself regular playtime; it’s not frivolous but a fundamental part of nurturing a creative mind.  Harness the Power of Video Creation Venture into the dynamic world of digital storytelling by creating your own videos, opening up a vibrant avenue to communicate your narratives. With a free video creator online, you can experiment and enhance your projects without any financial strain, providing a cost-effective way to bring your visions to life. This tool not only allows you to add audio and animate elements but also enables you to manipulate video speed, enriching your storytelling with a professional flair that captivates your audience.  Revisit Childhood Joys Reengage with the activities you loved as a child to tap into pure, unadulterated creativity. Childhood is a treasure trove of imagination and wonder—qualities that are often muted in adulthood. By revisiting these past joys, whether it’s reading comic books, doodling, or building model airplanes, you can reignite the imaginative spark that once came so naturally and infuse your writing with renewed passion and enthusiasm.  Art as a Pathway to Creativity Use art as a therapeutic way to explore tools to unlock new creative realms. Artistic expression transcends words, allowing emotions and ideas that might be difficult to articulate through writing alone. Engage in painting, sculpting, or drawing to visually express what lies beneath your conscious mind. This not only provides a therapeutic release but also deepens the well of creativity from which you can draw as a writer.  Write Freely and Fluidly Dive into the realm of free writing; unleash your inner stream of consciousness directly onto paper without the constraints of perfect syntax or punctuation. As you write without stopping, you'll navigate past the barriers of writer's block and discover hidden ideas that lurk beneath your structured thinking. This technique not only refreshes your mind but also enriches your narrative skills by revealing unexpected insights and themes.  Dream a Little Dream
Your dreams are a direct line to your subconscious, where much of your creativity is housed. Make a habit of keeping a dream journal by your bedside. Upon waking, jot down as much as you can recall about your dreams. Over time, you may find that these abstract and often bizarre dreamscapes serve as excellent fodder for creative projects, offering unique imagery and plot twists that can set your work apart. Recharging your creative batteries as a writer involves a blend of structured solitude and unstructured play. By adopting these practices, you not only enhance your creativity but also enrich your life, making each written word a reflection of a fully lived experience. Rediscover your creative spirit and watch as your writing transforms from mere words to vivid worlds that captivate and inspire. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  This week’s blog owes its origins to Facebook writers’ groups once more. A common question for consideration is “How do you writers find time to do a full time job, look after your family AND write?” Well, the simple answer is “time management”. When I still worked in business, time management was identified as a skill that some colleagues didn’t possess. They got behind with their work, missed deadlines, suffered with stress and a whole lot of other issues that degraded their performance. When this was discussed at reviews, the answer those colleagues gave was always “I just don’t have enough time!”. However, when the discussion was opened up to discover why the colleague didn’t have enough time, it wasn’t that they were overloaded with work, it was more that they managed their time poorly, which meant that a lot of time in the day was wasted. And this is the difference between writers who manage their time so that they can write, and people who want to write but can’t find the time to do it. We are all the same in many respects – we all have things going on in our lives other than just writing. The difference is how we manage our time so that everything gets done, including our writing. Because the time management issues that act as a barrier in the workplace, can also act as a barrier in the rest of a person’s life. The reasons for this break down to some common areas and I’ll address them under their headings.  Time Bandits At work, Time Bandits are the people who steal time from your working day so that you don’t have enough to do whatever it is that you want (or need) to do. It is the colleague who comes and perches on the corner of your desk and starts to talk about what was on TV last night, or who wants to talk about their troubled love life, or whatever it is they want to unload onto you. It is also the colleague who comes to you looking for a favour, because “they haven’t got time to do it themselves”. We’ve all met these people in the workplace. The key to getting rid of them is to remember that THEIR problems are not YOUR problems. You don’t have to sit there and listen to them. You don’t have to do their work for them. You can ask them to go away. You can even insist by pointing out that you have work to do, even if they don’t seem to have any, and you want to get on with it.  Translating that into home life, it may be the neighbour who stops you outside your house and, instead of just exchanging polite hellos, they start to unburden themselves on you and before you know it, half the day has slipped away. Or maybe the neighbour that pops by “just for a coffee and a chin-wag”. I’m not suggesting that you should be rude to these people. After all, we all have to live side by side, but you do have to find a way to extricate yourself from the situation without causing offence. The easiest way is to invent an urgent engagement. “Sorry, I’d love to stay and listen to your problem, but I have to be at the (whatever) in ten minutes and I’m running late.” Or you can invent something happening inside your home, such as a running tap that needs to be turned off, or a casserole that needs to be attended to. Whatever it is, put a smile on your face and suggest that you really would like to stay and listen to the story about how their bunion operation went, but you really do have to go and turn that tap off. And it isn’t just the people in the street. It’s the phone calls, emails and social media that suck you in to lengthy conversations that you just don’t need to get sucked into. Just don’t allow it. Take control and prevent the Time Bandits from robbing you of valuable writing time.  Distractions Distractions take many forms. Social media is perhaps the greatest distraction of our age, with FOMO dragging us in to make sure we don’t miss the latest video of a cat playing a piano. I am guilty of this one myself. Many’s the time I’ve logged on to social media with the intention of taking a “quick look” only to find myself, 3 hours later, trying to win an argument over which actor was the best James Bond (Sean Connery, obvs). But there are other distractions in our lives, and we have to learn how to deal with them and prevent them from taking up our valuable time. For social media I now set a countdown timer on my phone for the amount of time I can afford to allow myself to be on there. Typically, that is 15 minutes in a day, per social media channel that I use (mainly Facebook and X), so for me that is 30 minutes a day. When the timer runs out and plays its little tune, I then stop whatever I’m doing on social media and get back to doing something more important. Other distractions include TV, YouTube, streaming services (Netflix et al), gaming and more. But here’s the great thing about these distractions – they are inanimate. If you stop doing them abruptly, no one is going to be offended. I now use these sorts of things as rewards for hitting a word count or editing target and similar. That way I can justify my half hour of TV soaps without feeling guilty. But it is only half an hour!  Task Overload This is all about working out what is actually important in your life and what you can get rid of. A lot of the things we do, we do out of habit. If we thought about them we could cut some of them out of our lives completely, or at least reduce the amount of time we spend doing them. A “time management journal” is great to help you sort this out. At the end of each day, take 10 minutes to write down all the things you did that day, and how long you spent doing it. And I do mean everything. Yes, even that 5 minutes you spent making coffee (multiplied by however many cups of coffee you drink each day) and the ten minutes you spent completing your time management journal.. You don’t have to be 100% accurate in your time keeping. If you can approximate to the nearest 15 minutes that is fine. Do that for about a month, then open a spreadsheet on your PC or laptop and create 6 columns. Head 3 of the columns “Essential”, “Desirable” and “Could Live Without” The adjacent column to each of those headings is where you insert the amount of time you spent on each activity each day, and you can total that up at the bottom to show you how much time you spent doing each activity each month..  The aim from here is to move activities out of the “Essential” column and into the “Desirable” column, and from “Desirable” into “Could Live Without”. Now, when it comes to essentials, everyone’s lives are different. Some people have frail family members to look after. Some have children to raise. Some people have to do 2 jobs just to live. Some people are in relationships and others aren’t and have no desire to be. So, what is essential to one person is not necessarily going to be essential to another. You have to decide what is really essential to your life and therefore can’t be moved out of that column. But you don’t have to move an item out of the “Essential” column to benefit. You can reduce the amount of time spent on an activity. My wife assures me that doing the laundry is essential, and I’m not going to risk my life by arguing with her. But ironing sheets is not essential. Nor is ironing towels, socks, underwear and some other types of laundry. By taking my approach to ironing I was able to save nearly 30 minutes a week (2 hours a month) on the laundry task the last time I undertook it. My wife didn’t approve, of course, but she was unable to come up with a valid reason for ironing towels (I think she went back and ironed them later, when I wasn’t around – but that was her time, not mine). The same applies to the “Desirable” column.  I can agree that it is desirable to meet up with friends, but it doesn’t have to be every day (or 2 days, or each week). It also doesn’t have to be with “friends” you don’t actually like that much. Evaluate these activities objectively and ask yourself what you would lose if you were to move them to the “Can Live Without” column, or if you were to reduce the amount of time you spend doing them.. You will be surprised what you can actually live without when you start to take a critical look at your life. I’m not suggesting that you should cut all entertainment out of your life. As we all know, all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a dull boy (or girl). Everyone needs to relax and let off steam from time to time. But you may not need quite as much time as you take. That “quick drink” after work that ends up 3 hours later really can be just a quick drink. That trip to the shopping mall with a friend to buy new shoes doesn’t have to take all day. So, at the end of the exercise you have to look at the “Can Live Without” column and, in particular, the total number of minutes that you spend on those activities. That is the amount of time you can free up to do your writing because if you can live without them, you can cut them out without losing anything from your life. Get rid of those things from your life and you WILL have time to write as well as to do the essentials and the desirables. The last time I undertook this exercise (I do it about once every 2 years, because new habits develop without us noticing them) I was able to free up around 10 hours a month from my life. That’s about the time I need to write 10,000 words of a novel.  Dead Time Not all the time we save is in nice chunks like 1 hour. Some of them are a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Those few minutes are “dead time” because they are too little to use productively. Or are they? At the same time there are things we do that have “dead time” included in them. Dead time is also time we spend waiting for something else to happen. Typically, this is things like waiting for buses or trains or waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. But that is time that can be used for something else. So, there is one final thing we have to do and that is to plan our lives a little bit better, so we can make use of dead time, or so that we can add those odd minutes of time together to make longer periods.  I discussed laundry a few paras ago, but our washing machine takes about an hour to run the cycle we use, so that’s an hour I could be using to clean the bathroom, for example. Or maybe I could use that hour to work out the plan for the next chapter I’m going to write, Or maybe I can research deadly poisons for use in the murder mystery I’m going to write. You get the idea. The same applies to the time spent waiting for the bus or sitting on the bus. In fact, the only commuting time that can’t be used is if you have to drive yourself. That’s where car shares come in handy, if you can arrange one. It’s also better for the environment. Doing the school run? Maybe you could arrange to take turns with another parent, so they do it one week, and you do it the next. How much more time would that add to your day?  Whatever remains in your “essential” and “desirable” column needs to be planned out and scheduled in, so that you can maximise the “free” time you need to write. Fail to plan – plan to fail!
This is not rocket science. Lots of people have learnt how to do this and, while I can’t claim to have covered every time management technique you may need, I have given you some basics to work with. But the most valuable technique by far is that time management journal. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Is it worth Indie authors entering book award contests? If I tell you that none of the book marketing gurus suggest it as a way of marketing books, then you can probably guess the answer. If book awards/contests sold books, then the marketing gurus would be all over them. The biggest awards, eg The Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize, sell a lot of books but we’re talking about Indie authors here and none of us are going to get close to a nomination for those levels of awards! But even those levels of awards don’t sell more books for many of their nominees. We can probably all name a Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner, but how many people can name the runners up? Even fewer people can name any nominees? At the most basic level, book contests appeal to the vanity of authors. They say “you know your book is good, so why not come and claim your prize, because winning is a foregone conclusion.” Well, get over yourself. It is readers who decide if a book is any good, not authors.  But I guess all Indies feel tempted to enter book contests from time to time, on the basis that being able to claim that your book is a prize winner will sell you more books. However, sales data doesn’t back that up. Data suggests that being able to put “Winner of the (whatever) Book Award” in your book blurb has very little impact on sales. Being able to put a good quote from a reader’s review in the blurb is far more effective., OK. Maybe winning an award might sell you a few more copies, but what are your chances of winning? The websites that run these awards are businesses and they make money from them, so they want as many entrants as possible. Entry fees can range from as low as $20 (£18 approx) up to several hundred dollars. So, it can be a big money earner for the websites. Let’s say that they manage to attract 1,000 entries. The only books that the readers may be interested in are the winners – or at least the top three. So, you have something like a 999 to one chance of your book winning.  I wouldn’t back a horse at those odds – would you? All the other entrants remain unknown to readers, even if they get a place on the website. They just get lost amongst the other 1,000 entrants that the website attracted to enter the contest. OK, some contests award prizes for the best books in a range of genres. This makes it more likely that an author can win a prize, especially in a niche genre. There are generally recognised to be around 50 genres* (publishers disagree on how many exactly). If you rule out non-fiction, the number of genres shrinks considerably to around 30. But let’s stick with 50. So, 50 winners, and another 100 in second and third places. Add in the overall winners and runners up and that gives you 153 prize winners. But that still leaves 847 entrants without anything to say on their blurb despite having paid their entry fee. And a lot of book contests are considerably bigger than 1,000 entrants, so the probability of winning a prize gets even more remote.  There are book “contests” which, if you pay a large enough entry fee, you are guaranteed to win a prize. You are buying the prize, not winning it.
But readers generally aren’t fooled by those. If they haven’t heard of the prize, they won’t be suckered in by a fake like that. OK, at the end of the day it’s your money. If you want to spend it on entry fees for a book awards, real or phoney, that’s your business. But in terms of increasing sales, you would be better off putting that money towards an advertising campaign. The probability of increasing sales is considerably higher. * Genres are different from book categories. Amazon has thousands of book categories which are created by slicing and dicing the main genres until they are so niche that some have hardly any books in them.. Genres can often be subdivided, eg Fantasy alone subdivides into a dozen different sub-genres, but the overall genre is still fantasy and that is the level at which book contests award prizes. After all, they want to hang onto the entry fees, not pay them out by awarding lots of prizes. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Are you familiar with SMART objectives? They were a big thing back in the 80s and 90s and emerged from the bad habits of bosses, who set their staff objectives without making sure that the objectives were actually achievable. For example, if you were my employee and I were to set you an objective of painting a wall, you would expect me to provide you with paint, brushes, maybe a ladder and possibly even training in how to paint walls. Sad to say, back then not all bosses saw things that way. They would just say “paint that wall” and expect the employee to do it without further input from them. Consequently, objective setting had a very bad name, and a lot of objectives were never achieved. This had a very poor outcome for businesses that were relying on the achievement of those objectives to make them profitable. The reason you don’t hear about SMART objectives anymore isn’t because they are no longer set, it’s because the setting of them is so routine that no one bothers to call them by that name anymore. Now it is just called objective setting (or goal setting). Why should you, as an Indie author, be interested in SMART objectives? Well, if you are one of those people who think in terms of the process of either writing a book or marketing it, then setting SMART objectives is very much a part of that process.  Because if you don’t set them for yourself, you could end up in the same position as the person who has been told to paint a wall but hasn’t been given the paint and brushes. So, what does the acronym mean? S = Specific. M = Measurable A = Achievable (or attainable) R = Relevant T = Time based (or bound). So, let’s unpack those in terms of what you need to do as an author. I’ll be addressing this from a book marketing perspective, but exactly the same principles apply to setting yourself objectives as an author who is about to start writing a book.  SPECIFIC This means that the objective describes exactly what you are expected to achieve. So, you wouldn’t say “sell some books” because that is too vague. Instead, you would say “Sell 100 books”. But we can probably make the objective even more specific when we start to include the other elements from the acronym.  MEASURABLE In essence I’ve already included a measurement in there by saying “100 books” – but that is the end goal. To make sure that you are on the right track and making progress, you might want to break that measurement down into smaller chunks. Perhaps measuring once a week to see how sales are progressing. There may also be other measurements to be carried out, such as the amount of budget that is spent each day, week or month to achieve the objective. That is very important if you happen to be short of cash. Failing to set measurements of success mean that the objective becomes vague and open to interpretation. You can actually let yourself off the hook. As you are doing this for yourself that may not seem important, but it can mean you don’t achieve what you set out to do because you weren’t sure what you expected the outcome to be. Your measurements also need to have targets that are comparable to what others are achieving. So, as a first time author, how many books can a first time author expect to sell? There is no point setting a target of 1,000 books, if first time authors almost never achieve that level of sales. You will just end up feeling frustrated because you failed to hit the target.  ACHIEVABLE This is where we get into the allocation of resources to achieve the goal. If you have been trying to sell books for a long time and made no progress, then you will have to do something different and that means learning what to do. So, you may need training in order to make your objective achievable. That may mean that you need a budget, because training can cost money (yes, I know there is free training available, but we’ll assume that isn’t going to be sufficient). But you may also need a budget to pay for things such as new book covers. You may also need to advertise, which also requires a budget. So, this “achievable” word is probably the one that is most important in setting goals and objectives, because without the right resources to back the objective up, it isn’t going to be achievable..  RELEVANT This also harks back to the bad old days when some bosses would set an objective that the person carrying out the work didn’t think was relevant to their job. Now, if you are a painter and decorator, then telling you to paint a wall is obviously relevant. But if you are an accountant then it has nothing to do with your job. Studies found that people who were given objectives that they didn’t consider to be relevant to them, didn’t put much effort into achieving them. If they did consider they were relevant, however, they would put in a lot of effort. As an author you might have to consider what is relevant to you. Maybe you don’t think that marketing your book is relevant. But if you aren’t going to market it – who is? So, if you don’t think that marketing is relevant to your job as an author, how are you going to achieve that objective of selling 100 books? It can be done, but you would have to pay someone else to do it for you – which takes us back to “achievable” and the allocation of resources to pay someone else to do the work.  TIMEBASED Again, harking back to the bad old days, some bosses would set an objective and not set any date by which it had to be achieved. Was it high priority and had to be completed by the end of the day/week/month? Or was it low priority and didn’t need to be completed until the end of the year? So it is with your objective to sell 100 books. Do you want to reach that figure by the end of the month, in 3 months’ time, 6 months, a year? This ties in very much with measurability, because the longer the timescale you set for yourself the more measurement you will have to put in to make sure you are making progress. It also ties in with resources, because if you have set the target for your objective to be completed in a year, then the budget has to be capable of lasting a year too. There is also the question of achievability. Just because you set your objective to sell 100 books by the end of the month, it doesn’t mean it will be achievable by then – especially if you don’t have other essential resources such as knowledge and budget.  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER I think I have demonstrated that all the elements of a SMART objective have to be integrated, so that they all work in harmony with each other. It doesn’t matter how relevant the objective is, if it doesn’t have the resources that are necessary it won’t be achievable, for example. If it doesn’t have the right measurements taken at the right time, you won’t know if you are succeeding or failing and if you are failing, you may not know why you are failing. Going back to that original objective of “sell 100 books” we would now re-write it as: “Complete an on-line book marketing training course then sell 100 books within a period of 30 days, commencing immediately on completion of the course but before 31st December 2024, while remaining within a budget of £100.” OK, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but it does contain all the elements of a SMART objective. It doesn’t make the relevancy of the objective clear, but as you are an Indie author responsible for marketing your own books, I think we can agree that relevance is implied.  Now, you may wonder why I have gone to the trouble of explaining all this in a blog dedicated to writing and book marketing. The answer is simple. Many of the questions I see on social media about people floundering around with their writing or their marketing, come down to the fact that the person hasn’t followed the SMART principles. Because SMART objectives feed into SMART planning. All that means is that once you have set your objective, you can create a plan for how to achieve it. And a SMART Plan takes into account all the elements of the SMART objective. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t know what you should be doing, or when you should be doing it. The number of people I see posting questions on Facebook writers’ groups that start by asking “When should I start doing … (whatever)?”
Sadly, the answer is often “3 months ago mate!” By starting with your SMART objective and creating a plan to achieve it, you can then measure progress towards completion. As has been said many times before “Fail to plan – plan to fail”. Just creating a plan is an objective in itself, because some people have never planned a single thing in their entire lives. Someone else has always created the plan for them and they have just done what they were told, when they were told. I’m not ashamed to admit that the first time I was asked to plan something, I had absolutely no idea how to go about it. It was a hard learnt lesson and one I have never forgotten. I’m not going to pretend that all my plans worked seamlessly, but in general they have a high success rate because I have had to consider all the things that make the plan achievable. And if I am unsure about achievability, I can ask myself what I need in order to make it more achievable so that I include those in the plan too. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  I don’t know if authors are targeted by scammers more than any other profession, but sometimes it feels that way. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, many writers are “Newbies” who are ignorant of how the publishing industry works, That means that they don’t have the knowledge to identify a scam when they see it, which makes them easier targets. The second reason is that the publishing industry has always used a lot of freelancers to provide services: editors, proofreaders, graphic designers et al. The arrival of easy to access self-publishing, back when Lulu was founded in 1998, gave those freelancers a whole new market for their skills. It also provided employees with those skills the opportunity to establish “side hustles” to earn more money outside of their normal workplace. That made it very easy for scammers to use those sorts of services to disguise their scams.  I must emphasise at this point that there are a lot of hard working people out there offering their professional skills, who do a good job at reasonable rates. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to differentiate between them and the scammers. The scams tend to fall into two types. There are the ones that rely on vanity to draw in the victim and there are those that offer a service which they either don’t provide, or which is such poor quality that it is as good as a scam. Let’s start with the vanity scams.  Let’s face it, as authors, we often think that our work doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. This is especially true for self-published authors who are struggling to sell even a few copies of their book, let alone rise to the dizzy heights of “best seller” status. And that is the feeling that the scammers play on to draw you in. It will often start as a DM or an email, saying how the sender works for a publishing company, or is a representative (perhaps “talent spotter”) for an agent, producer or someone else who can turn the author into the next “big thing”.. The DM or email will tell you that whoever sent it really liked your book and thinks it has a real chance of success and they will help you to get it into the hands of whoever they say they represent. There will be no mention of money – yet. They will often want to speak to you on the phone, because it is much harder to resist a scammer on the phone because they can be so charming and persuasive. OK, let’s unpack that a little bit. Firstly, it is a direct appeal to the author’s vanity (we all suffer from it, even if the amount of vanity varies). It has the author punching the air and saying “Yes, I always knew my book was good.” Essentially, most of the scammer’s work has been done just because of that reaction.  Agents, trad publishers, TV and film companies don’t need to “reach out” to authors to find work to publish., They are inundated with authors and script writers sending them work. Most of it is good work, too. The publishers and producers are spoiled for choice. Simply knowing that can save you from the scammer. There is a variation on that theme, which is the offer to get your book into one of the well-known mainstream bookstores. Barnes & Noble tends to be the bookstore of choice, probably because it is the largest chain in the USA. Again, it’s not how those businesses work. The trad publishing houses are sending them a constant stream of new books, with the added advantage that the publisher is doing the marketing, so the bookstore doesn’t have to. So why would the bookstores need to go through a “middleman” to put a book on their shelves that won’t have that marketing effort behind it? It would just be taking up shelf space that could be used for books that will sell because they are being marketed properly  One of the most common things that is seen in writing groups on social media is the appeal “does anyone know anything about (insert name of business)? They have approached me offering to (insert scam)”. Simply asking the question means the author is suspicious But they aren’t making the post in order to confirm their suspicions. They are making the post in the hope that someone will say “It’s OK, they’re legit. Go with them” Sadly, the responses almost never say that. Remember the main way of identifying a scam is that if it sounds too good to be true – then it’s too good to be true. The next type of scam is the vanity or “hybrid” publishers. Now, I’m not having a go at hybrid publishing as a legitimate industry sector. If you are happy to pay for someone to print a whole load of copies of your book for them to end up in your shed while you try to find some way of selling them, that’s your business not mine.  But there are a lot of scammers describing themselves as hybrid publishers with the sole intention of getting their hands on your money. The best you can hope for is a whole load of badly printed copies of your book, the worst is an empty wallet and no books at all. Do some research. Find out what others have to say about the company. Not on Facebook, but by doing real research. If they are scammers, there will be “red flag” posts on the internet warning about them. If they are genuine, there will also be articles about them describing their business – and I don’t mean on their own website. Someone somewhere will have posted a review saying how well they serve their customers. Two new scams that have appeared recently are the “foreign rights” scam, and the “translation” scam.  The foreign rights scam offers to find publishers overseas who will buy the rights to publish your book in another country. You pay a fee to an “agent” and they will do the work for you. Needless to say, once they have got your money that will be the last you will see of it. They might send you an email from time to time to report “progress” but it will always say “nothing to report yet” or, perhaps, “I have a publisher interested but nothing definite at the moment.” They may even come back to you and ask for more money because they just need to make “one last push” to close the deal. The translation scam is different because there may be a product at the end of it. The problem is that the author of the book won’t own the copyright on the product – the scammer will. Under EU law, and in some other countries, if a translator makes a translation of someone’s work then they own the copyright on the translated version. The author has to give permission, but that just means saying yes in an email. In practical terms the “translator” (the actual work could be done by AI) can sell their version on Amazon and the author can’t do a thing about it and will certainly never see a penny of the royalties.. There is one exception and that is in Germany. There the author retains their copyright even on the translation. So, the first thing to do if someone emails to ask if they can translate your book isn’t to say yes, It’s to say “How much will you pay me for the right to translate my book?”  Scammers try to get around this by posing as a student who wants to use your book as a course work assignment, but don’t fall for that! Finally, we get to the “service” scams, These are often the hardest to spot because there are so many freelancers plying their trade these days. The first question any author should ask is “can I do this for myself, for free?” In many cases you can. Websites such as KDP and Draft2Digital offer a lot of helpful articles on their sites to assist with the self-publishing process. For audiobooks there are similar helpful services on ACX.  For those things where the author would benefit from professional assistance, such as editing, proofreading and cover design, then the warning is “buyer beware”. Use trusted sites such as Fiverr to find the services you need. The reason that you can trust them is that they hold onto the money you pay until you sign off to say you are happy with the product that is provided. That means it is much harder for scammers to operate. If you don’t want to use Fiverr or similar sites, then seek out recommendations from people on social media. DO NOT respond to the sorts of message that say “DM me” or “Give me your phone number”. You have no idea who you are dealing with. If someone says “I used so-and-so and they were good.” then that is different.  Perhaps the biggest area for scams, however, is in marketing services. You just have no idea if the person you are dealing with is actually doing anything. They may promise to send out a gazillion emails to their lists or put out a post on X that will be seen by a gazillion followers, but you have no idea if it is true. Even if you find their pages on X (or wherever) you have no idea if their followers are genuine or not. It is very easy to buy “followers” (fake accounts) and, of course, we all know about the bots that make up so much of social media these days. And, having paid your money and your sales haven’t improved, you have no recourse simply because they won’t guarantee their services. Which means they can keep committing the same scams because they are fireproof.  As we have said many times on this blog before, when it comes to marketing, learning how to do it yourself is always going to be the cheapest (and safest) option. It will also be the best one because no one will market your book with the same passion for it as you have. If you really want to know if what you are seeing, or being offered, is a scam, then check it out on “Writer Beware” which is a website that exposes scams targeting writers. Scams Aimed At Advertisers For those authors who advertise using Meta/Facebook look out for comments on your ads, DMs and emails that tell you that you have infringed Facebook’s advertising rules in some way. They are quite common, especially for new advertisers.  They will usually say that your account is about to be closed or blocked or that your ad will be suspended or deleted if you don’t take action.
There will be a link, and it can be confused with genuine Meta URLs. Some of the communications are accompanied by the Meta logo, so it is easy to be fooled. But, as you can see here, anyone can get hold of the Meta logo. Meta does communicate with advertisers using DMs, but if the message relates to payments don’t click on links, Log in to your FB account and check your account settings. Any issues with payments will be flagged there. For ads, it is easy to check if they are active or suspended in your ads dashboard and then query the issue directly with Meta. If in doubt, contact Meta direct, DON’T CLICK ON ANY LINKS. And please do your fellow authors a favour by reporting the scammer’s account and then blocking it. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  When it comes to book marketing, it is never possible to do too much - but it is very easy to do too little. I was reminded of this on a couple of occasions recently, for different reasons. The first was when I attended a local writers’ group for the first time. I had wanted to join them for some time, but the meeting day always clashed with something else I do on the same evening. However, that week my normal activity was cancelled, so I went along. It was the sort of thing I had expected, with the writers reading out bits of their work and being given constructive feedback. All very pleasant and friendly. It was at the end of the evening when I found that nobody there was really thinking about basic marketing. I was asked for my contact details, so that I could be added to the email group. Everyone seemed surprised when I produced a business card with the Selfishgenie Publishing contact details printed on it. I expected to be handed cards in return but wasn’t. None of the dozen or so people present had that most basic marketing tool to hand. Not even the organiser! I commented on it and the attendees seemed bemused by the possibility that anyone outside the group would want to make contact. “What do you do when people ask about your books?” I asked. “How will they know what name to search for on Amazon or wherever?” I could see from the puzzled faces that they didn’t get it. “Well, I tell them my name and my book title, and they remember, I suppose.” Someone replied. I wanted to say “But 30 seconds after you part, they will have forgotten both. But if they find your business card in their pocket, or purse, they will be reminded of you and may look you up then.” But I didn’t say that. I let the matter drop. I just hope that the expression on my face said enough to make the people think about investing a few pounds in the purchase of some business cards for future use. I have found that in the past many people have introduced themselves as “I’m a nurse/plumber/whatever” first and author or writer only as an afterthought.  But if you want to be taken seriously as an author you must first take yourself seriously. You are an author first and whatever else you do second. You are only doing that to pay the bills until you can give up being a plumber/nurse/whatever and write full time. And that means having a business card that says “author”, with the relevant contact details on it so that people remember who you are and look up you and your books, OK, not everybody will do that. Hand out 50 business cards and maybe only 4 or 5 of the recipients will actually look you and your books up. But that is 4 or 5 that wouldn’t have looked you up if they have forgotten your name 30 seconds after you have parted.  The second incident (two actually) was almost as bad, but this time the offender wasn’t standing in front of me at the time. I had just finished reading a book by an author I hadn’t read before. It was by an Indie author, as most of my reading is these days as I try to support Indie authors as much as possible and the best way to do that is to buy their books. The book was pretty good, and I was sorry it had finished. I knew the book was part of a series and I was keen to buy the next title. I was even more keen after I had read the preview chapter the author had inserted at the back of the book.  But when I went to click on the link to take me straight to the book’s page on Amazon …. it wasn’t there. Another simple marketing tool overlooked. The best time to sell one of your books to a reader is when they have just finished reading one of your books. There are a lot of psychological factors at work at that moment and it is important that the author makes them work in their favour. When a reader finishes a book that they have enjoyed they feel a sense of loss. It isn’t as severe as grief, but it is from the same source. They want to ease that feeling of loss and you, the author, can make that happen. It’s why we put sample chapters of our other books after the end of the story.  Strike while the iron is hot – get the reader when they are wanting more. But if you don’t include a link to where they can buy the next book, they’ll just say “I’ll look it up tomorrow.” The problem is that by tomorrow the feeling of loss has gone and they may already have started to read the next book in their TBR list, whether it is a paperback or an ebook. The moment has passed, and the sale may have been lost forever. Obviously, you can’t put a link in a paperback (but you can include the URL as ordinary text), but there is no excuse for not putting one in the ebook version. OK, if the next book hasn’t yet been published and isn’t even on pre-order, then you can’t put a link in. But you can go back and put the link in the moment the book does go on pre-order or is published. If you don’t write series, that’s OK. You just insert the link for the next book you published. Finally, there was the second sin that the same author committed.  There was no request for a review. We all know how important reviews are for authors when it comes to selling books. Some people always post them, some people never post them, but some people will post them if you give them a nudge in the right direction. Just a simple request along the lines of “Reviews are important to authors, so if you have enjoyed this book please post a review wherever you normally review the books you read”. You can even post a link to the sales page on Amazon (if that’s where you sell your books) just to be helpful. That’s all it takes.  We use a publication and marketing checklist when we prepare books for launch, just to make sure that we don’t overlook such simple things. We would recommend that you develop your own checklist so that you don’t forget the same little things.
My takeaways from this blog are: 1. Everybody you meet is a potential new reader of your book(s). 2. Everybody you meet needs a way of remembering who you are, what your book is called and how to find out about your books, and 3. If someone has read your book, that is the time to persuade them to review it and to buy another of your books, so make it easy for them. And if you have forgotten, it isn’t too late to do it now. You may have lost sales in the past but that is no excuse to lose more in the future. As a well-known supermarket used to say in its adverts “Every little helps”. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  We launched a new book, “Operation Chariot”, at the beginning of June this year. Given the popularity of our “Carter’s Commandos” series of books, we expected this new title to fly off the shelf, as fans of the earlier series came back to read this new offering. We were disappointed, The new book did sell, but not in the volumes we had expected. This puzzled us because we had put a lot of time and effort into marketing the book in advance of its launch. We were sure that the thousands of readers who had enjoyed Carter’s Commandos would be thrilled by this new book. So why wasn’t it selling as well as the Carter’s Commandos series, which is continuing to do well?  We checked the data from our marketing campaign and found that we were getting plenty of link clicks to the sales page. But the clicks weren’t converting to sales. Well, not as many sales as the number of clicks suggested we should be getting. If you are familiar with our previous blogs on marketing, you will know that we have always said that if you are getting link clicks but not getting sales, it means that there is something wrong with your book’s sales page. It might be your cover, it might be your blurb, it might be the reviews, or it might be the “free sample” as Amazon now call their “look inside” feature.  We analysed each of those four things in turn to see what might be putting readers off. We quickly ruled out a problem with the cover. The cover image has been used in all our marketing, so people have seen it already and clicked on the link. That is “social proof” (as it is known) that readers aren’t being put off by the cover, so seeing it again on the sales page is hardly going to put them off buying. This applies to the blurb too. The blurb is the primary text we use in our advertising, so if people have seen the cover image, read the blurb and then clicked the link, it means that the two things have encouraged the link click, not discouraged it. Reviews are a tricky one. This is a new book. It hadn’t been read before, so it doesn’t have any reviews. We’ll have to wait for the jury to return on that but at the time of writing this blog the book has garnered 5 "ratings", all of which are 4 or 5 star. So that just left the free sample.  We clicked on it and saw immediately what the problem was. The free sample opened up on the book’s “foreword”. This was a few paragraphs intended to introduce the reader to the new series, why it had been written and the differences in writing style that might be seen by readers of the “Carter’s Commandos” series. What it didn’t do, however, was get the reader engaged with the story. To get to that the reader had to scroll through the whole thing before they got to the proper opening of the book. Why was the free sample opening on the foreword and not on the first chapter? Because KDP and Amazon’s formatting engine interpreted the foreword as a chapter. So as far as Amazon was concerned, it was displaying the start of the story. Readers, however, could see that it wasn’t the start of the story and some of them were deciding not to scroll through to find the actual start. They just went back to scrolling through whatever platform they had been on before they clicked the link.  We had lost a potential sale. Worse than that, we had paid for a link click before we lost the sale! So, what could we do about that? The answer was simple, if a little unconventional. We moved the foreword from the start of the book to after the end. We even added a short explanation to it, to say why it was at the end and not the beginning. This only affects the Kindle version, of course. The paperback version still has the foreword at the beginning where it should be. But by the time the reader has discovered that, the book is in their hands, and they can flick past it if they don’t want to read it. But the free sample is always taken from the ebook version, so paperback readers will also be taken straight into the story when they read that.  Did it change anything?
Yes it did. The sales graph for the book, which had been consistent but low, suddenly took a step upwards. More copies were sold each day from that point onwards. And it cost us nothing but a little bit of time and effort to find the reasons for the disappointingly low sales and to make the changes to the manuscript. So, if your sales aren’t doing as well as the link clicks from your marketing say they should be doing, why not take a look at the book’s free sample to see if the reader is being excited by what they see on the first page, or being bored by the non-essentials that are put into the opening pages of books. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  It is a worrying trend being seen on social media, for people to ask questions about how motivation to write is achieved, or how people make time for writing. Part of the reason it is worrying is that it is obvious that the person asking the question hasn’t done the slightest bit of research into what being a writer actually involves. They seem to think that you just sit down, start to write and a short while later you have a finished book to sell. Which means they are really looking for a quick way to make a buck and think that writing may be that way. Poor deluded fools. However, it is the questions around motivation that really puzzle me. The questioner seems to think that motivation comes from without and not from within.  Now, we know that part of the job of a leader is to motivate their team. Having attended (and tutored) numerous leadership courses in my time, I’m quite familiar with the concepts of leadership in terms of motivation within a workplace. For writers, however, there is no leader to provide motivation. It appears to me that the concept of people motivating themselves to do things is an idea that is dying out. Not completely, of course. Talk to any sports star and you will find self-motivation very high on their list of personal qualities. But in the wider world, where people work for vast corporations, it seems to be expected that motivation is something that will be provided by the company, just like they provide toilet facilities. But that is where the world of the Indie author is so different from so many other professions.  There are many types of writer and, for some of them, if they don’t write they don’t get paid. That is probably motivation enough. Some may also lose their jobs if they don’t produce high enough quality writing. Again, it’s a strong motivation to perform well. But for the Indie author, if they don’t write then nothing happens. They don’t get paid, but they weren’t getting paid anyway, at least, not for writing. They can’t be sacked because no one employs them as an author. But the one sure sign that you are an author is that you can’t NOT write. You have to tell the story. You don’t need any other motivation. A real author would never ask on social media “I write a couple of hundred words, then I run out of motivation. How do you keep going?” If you have ever said that, or thought that, then you are not an author. At best you are a wannabe who wants the “glory” of being an author but doesn’t want to actually do any writing.  The same applies to the question of time management, which is really a sub-set of motivation. A real writer always finds time to write, be it formally at a desk, or on the fly while waiting for a bus. They could plan their time better, so they could get more writing done, but they find the time anyway. But the most fundamental thing about time management for Indie authors is being prepared to sacrifice something else in order to make time for writing. Let me use an analogy. If someone wants to be a footballer, their coach will expect them to put in a number of hours each week at practice, honing and developing their skills. If they aren’t prepared to put in the time, their coach will be very blunt with them and tell them they’ll never make it as a footballer because they aren’t prepared to put in the time.  If the footballer says they don’t have time to attend practice, their coach will tell they have to make time, otherwise they are out of the team. And any real footballer would understand that. If you want to make it big, you have to be prepared to focus your whole life around what you want to do. But writers don’t have coaches, in that sense. No one is standing over them telling them they have to practice their writing for the next two hours or they’re going to be dropped from the writing team. But if they are really a writer, they don’t need to be told that anyway, because there is nothing they would rather be doing than writing. So, if you can’t think of a single thing that you would be prepared to drop from your life so that you have more time to write, then you probably aren’t a writer. And yes, that may mean not seeing friends so often, or not watching so much TV or not going to the movies. It may even mean not playing football. But a real writer won’t notice the sacrifice they are making because what they really want to do is write.  So, to summarise. If you have to ask “How do you make time for writing?” you may not be a writer. If you have to ask “How do you maintain your motivation for writing?” you almost certainly aren’t really a writer. But, if you are sat at a bus stop hoping that the bus will be delayed for a few more minutes so you can complete the paragraph you are working on, then you may be a writer, because you are both motivated and you have made time for your writing. However, for those of you that may still be having doubts, I’ve devised this short Q & A to help you decide.  Q1. You are working on a tricky bit of dialogue for your book and your baby starts crying. Do you
a. Stop what you are doing and go and see to the baby, or b. Go to the coffee shop so you can work undisturbed? Q2. You have had a long hard day at work, when you get home do you a. Open a bottle of wine/beer/whisky, and sit down in front of the TV while you drink a glass, or b. Sit down and start working on your book? Q3. Your favourite music act is appearing in town, and you have been offered tickets to their show. Do you a. Take the tickets and go to see the show, or b. Turn down the tickets because you want to get started on the next chapter of your book? Q4. Your grandmother’s funeral has been scheduled for the only day that week when you can devote some time to your writing. Do you a. Go to the funeral, or b. Go to the funeral but take your laptop and hope you can sit at the back and do some writing at the same time? Q5. Your partner has won a holiday for 2 at your dream destination, but the dates are for the same week that you were going to attend a writers’ retreat. Do you a. Go on holiday with your partner, or b. Go on the writers’ retreat? ANSWERS 5 b’s. There is no point in fighting it, you are a writer. 4 b’s. You are probably a writer, but you are easily distracted. 3 b’s or less. Sorry, you’re just a wannabe writer. Note: The above questions and answers are not to be taken too seriously, but if you found yourself seriously considering answering b to all the questions, then you really are a writer. We certainly don’t advocate leaving your baby to cry while you go to the coffee shop to write. No, really, that is not a good thing to do. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are those of our guest blogger, author Chris Graham, and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing. Making a Name for Yourself… from a novelist’s point of view  Names, where do we get them from? They usually come from our families, both the surnames we get automatically, and the forenames that can be reliant on a number of factors. Sometimes a kid gets lucky, and is given a nice normal everyday name, often from the annals of his or her family’s history. “Oh look… she’s got old uncle Samuel’s eyes. Let’s call her Samantha.” Of course this can backfire. We can all think of a celebrity cook whose father was a famous politician. Doubling the ‘l’ and bunging an ‘a’ on the end of her dad’s name could have gone so badly wrong, but our favourite middle aged man’s fantasy kitchen goddess seems to have done OK out of it (Yes, I do know that ‘Nigella’ is also the name of a herb - case of nominative determination perhaps?).  The Emperor Justinian - who gave his name to all the little Justins in the world. Sometimes it’s the time of the kid’s birth that lumbers them with a name. How many little girls born in the eighties answer to ‘Kylie’, or from more recent years, ‘Beyonce’? I’m sure there are young Bieber fans pushing buggies carrying little ‘Justins’ around the supermarket aisles too, although Justin has been a forename for many centuries. There was a Roman Emperor called Justinian back in 527 AD. Of course, there’s those who simply want to be different, whether famous or not, just for the sake of being being different. Those who, without a thought about when their offspring goes to school and gets the mickey taken out of them, give their little ones names more suited to a pet, a dessert recipe, or an address in downtown New York.  ‘Fifi Trixibelle’ or ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ are not what a strapping thirteen year old lad wants to be known as. Even for a girl they’re a bit on the bizarre side. ‘Brooklyn’ doesn’t sound too bad, though like ‘Lourdes’, and ’Chelsea’, it sounds more at home on a girl. I worry that this is setting a trend. Are we going to see classrooms filled with young ‘Shepherds Bushes’ or ‘Neasdens’ in the future? Perhaps for a transatlantic equivalent they’d be ‘Yonkers’, “Bronxes’ or ‘Haight Ashburys’. But I’m not really talking about our own names, or our children’s names. I’m talking about the names we writers choose for our characters. Where do we get those from? Do they work? Can our readers identify with them? Can our readers even remember which one is which as they make their way through our novels? I was reminded of this when a former publisher asked me to look at a few pages of a submitted manuscript. There were a number of characters introduced within the first couple of pages, of which there were several with the same forename, and others who, because they were related, had the same surname.  Now I know that in the potluck world that we live our real lives in, this kind of thing isn’t uncommon. The crowd I hung around with (and still know most of) had a surfeit of ‘Ians’ at one point. Fortunately, as was the spirit of the time, they all acquired nicknames, and so became ‘Ahmed’, ‘Abdul’, ‘Fang’, ‘Screwy Lewie’, ‘Mr Magoo’ and ‘Ian Mac’. However, to help our readers, we need to have ‘real’ names for our characters that define them. During the narrative, and particularly as markers in dialogue, we may call a character by his forename - full or shortened - his surname, his nickname, his rank - as in ‘the Sergeant said’ - or some other descriptive title, such as ‘the older man’ or something similar. One of my police characters, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Wilson, is known as ‘Nick’, ‘Wilson’, ‘The Guvnor’, ‘Guv’, ‘the DCI’, ‘The Chief Inspector’, (or just plain ‘Inspector’) throughout periods of dialogue and narrative to avoid too much word repetition. Others have similar selections to identify them. So… How do we deal with this? How do we populate our novels with names which are individual?  Every writer needs to compile a list, and keep topping it up: a pool of names for their characters, but how do we come up with these characters’ names in the first place? Where do we find them? Do they grow on trees for us to just go out and pick? Well the answer to that is ‘almost’. In fact trees are as good a place as any to start, as are any other interests that you might have. Trees? Well there’s ‘Beech’ and ‘Birch’, ‘Sycamore’, ‘Redwood’, ‘Ash’, ‘Pine’, ‘Maple’, just for a start. All of them perfectly believable surnames, or they can be with suitable modification like ‘Ashwood’, ‘Oakley’, ‘Elmsleigh’, etc.  I’m into motorcycles, so I’ve gleaned names from that world like ‘James Villiers’ - most post war James motorcycles used Villiers engines - ‘Frances (Frankie) Barnett’ (though she prefers ‘B’ as a nickname) - my first bike was a Francis-Barnett, or ‘Fanny B’ as they were known. Another is ‘Lucas Bright’, and I’ve used ‘Plug Champion’, ‘Tillotson’, ’Douglas’, ‘Benelli’, ‘Blackburn’, ’Henderson’, and ‘Ancilotti’ with appropriate forenames. If these aren’t familiar words to you, Google them. It’ll be a fun game looking for the motorcycle connections. From an interest in pioneer aviation comes names like ‘Saulnier’, ‘Anson’, ‘Guynemer’, ‘Voisin’ and ‘Fonck’. Then there’s towns and counties, with ‘Georgia Didcot’, ‘Noel Caversham’, and ‘Adrian Kent’… more Googling games for you to play. A fellow author published by Selfishgenie litters his books with the names of well-known rugby players from both the present and the past. They say, ‘Write what you know’ ...  Turn your friends into characters Most productive of all, though, is that rich vein of people we know, or have met, that we can mine for suitable character names, though when putting these in my pool, I have a certain convention that I try to follow. I’ll almost always mix the names up, rarely using both forename and surname from the same person as a character’s name. Usually I’ll only use full matches in the case of people who were either long deceased acquaintances, family, or friends, of my late parents’ generation, or are just names I’ve heard. There’s no point in upsetting your mates by using their names in print, then describing 'them’ as someone they may not like to be, though there is one old friend who actually asked me to use his name and physical description as a character in a novel. It was on his bucket list. As he’s a cat lover, and tireless worker for local animal charities he, of course, became a corrupt vet in one of my novels. Sometimes it’s particularly satisfying to name a nasty piece of work as an old boss or other bad memory from your past, but there’s one thing to beware of. When you do choose a name for a really nasty villain, it’s a good idea to Google that name to make sure that he or she isn’t someone really famous, even if you’ve never heard of them, and particularly if your character falls within a similar field. It might not look too good if your mad wheelchair bound evil genius was called Stephen Hawking, would it? Remember history  A lot of names fall out of favour over time (You won’t find many Germans called Adolf born after 1945), so you can add a flavour of authenticity to your historical work by including period names. Archibald isn’t a name you hear much these days (If at all), but right up until the 1960s there were plenty of them about. One was even a ventriloquist’s dummy on a radio show (No, I kid you not). Similarly, Ernest, Stanley, Norman, and others all had their day in the Sun then fell out of favour. A friend of mine said she could tell the age of a woman by her name, with gemstones (Beryl, Pearl, Amethyst and others) all denoting pre-war births, alongside Mavis, Agnes, Agatha, Cecilia and a whole lot more. Flowers were also popular as names until the late 60s but now are hardly used at all (Though I do know a Primrose who is under 30 and there's also the singer Lily Allen). After World War II, many boys were given the name Winston in honour of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, but you won’t find many with that name these days. Helpfully, there are lists of names popular in different decades available on websites. The “Gender Construction Kit” website provides popular names for decades between the 1950s and the 2000s, for example. And, of course, the national census provides lots of historical names for you to conjure with and you can access that in the UK through the Office of National Statistics website. Get it right… Do the research, then save for a rainy day  Even fictional character names have to be believable, so for foreign characters, or those from different ethnic backgrounds, it’s worthwhile to Google ‘common names’ for a nationality or culture for names, or to mix and match the names of well known people from that nation’s culture or history. But be aware that some cultures alter names to suit a gender, even surnames. For example, in Icelandic culture, a surname ending in ‘son’ may denote its bearer to be the son of the first part of the name… e.g. Erikson as ‘son of Erik’… However the female offspring of ‘Erik’ in Iceland won’t take her father’s surname, but instead will have the surname ‘Eriksdóttir’ (Erik’s daughter). Thanks to a change in Icelandic law, parents can now use the mother's name instead and children can switch to their preferred parent's name when they grow up, if they wish. Yes, I found this confusing too. Likewise, even in English speaking cultures, some forenames that are considered female in one country will be more commonly male in another. In the UK, ‘Tracy’ is usually a girl’s name and ‘Robin’ a boy’s name, but in the US these are more likely to be the other way around. Keep your ears and eyes open. If something comes into your sights, whether in the local curry house, or on the TV news, remember to put it into the pool, even if you’ve no use in your current work in progress. These things will always be useful one day. Add all these names into your list. Don’t bother with putting them in any order as they’re as random as the opportunities to use them but keep adding to the list as new ones come to mind. Don’t forget that there are forenames that can be surnames, and vice-versa. In Scotland the likes of Fraser, Cameron, Donald and others can be either a forename or a surname.  Finally, if you are really stuck, there are lists of gender appropriate baby names published for almost every country in the world.
Many of those lists also provide a “meaning” (real or imagined) for the name, so if you want to indicate that a character has the strength of a lion, you can find which name might be appropriate; Leona for a girl, perhaps, or Leonard for a boy, but there’s also Aerial, Braylen, Dillon and others. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. |
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