Tag: enovels

Serial Fiction – As Old As Printing / As New As Your Smart Phone

Serial Fiction may have begun when the first person telling a story around a camp fire late at night got the idea

Serial Fiction may have begun when the first person telling a story around a camp fire late at night got the idea to leave his or her audience at the edge of their seats until the next night with a cliff hanger ending and a “to be continued.” If we had a time machine we could go back an listen.

Printed serial fiction got started in the 17th Century with the introduction of moveable type. In the 18th Century, Dickens’ Pickwick Papers started an avalanche of serial novels. Wilkie Collins, the so-called father of the detective novel, published serial novels. In France, Alexander Dumas, author of The Count of Monte Cristo, published serial novels. Gustave Flaubert’s, Madame Bovary; Leo Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina, and Dostoevsky’s, Brothers Karamazov were all published as serials.

American authors, Henry James, Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe all published serial fiction. Perhaps America’s most influential novel – Uncle Tom’s Cabin – was published as a serial.

Check out this entry at Wikipedia – Serial (Literature) to find out more.

Reynold

 

 

 

 

 

Who do you follow on Twitter?

Okay, you’re an enovelist. You’ve got novels published on Amazon and Smashwords. You’re social media literate. So who do you follow on Twitter? Can you please share your list?

So maybe you’re not an enovelist, but you’re a creative artist – a musician, a songwriter, a visual artist, a poet, a movie maker, in other words, you make something and often share what you make with others – so who do you follow on Twitter?

Next question: maybe you’re not a creative artist, but you’re active in social media, besides friends and former classmates and workmates, who do you follow and why?

 

You can follow me on Twitter: @ReynoldAkison
Reynold Akison – enovelist
www.reynoldakison.com

Ideas Are Easy; Marketing is Hard

I know it’s a big jump from the idea for your novel to marketing your finished book, but marketing your book once you’re finished writing is something you need to keep in mind – I wish I had. You see, I’ve got three enovels – Insure to Murder, Death of a Guru, and Not Just A Girl – languishing in cyberspace because I didn’t start marketing those novels until after I had written them and published them at Amazon and Smashwords.

My mistake. Experienced enovelists suggest that you think about marketing your books before you finish writing them – as if you didn’t have enough do and to think about. In other words, think about how you’ll market your enovel along with creating your book’s characters, story and plot.

Like I said, I waited until I had published, not one, but three enovels before I’ve really gotten started with my marketing efforts. I wanted to write the novels, and I had the energy, the ideas, characters and time, so I forged ahead.

Yes, I built this Word Press blog site as the home base for my fiction writing and “collected works” and to provide a platform from which to communicate about my books and what I was doing as an enovelist. But I had never blogged before and didn’t have any idea what to write about. So this is a work-in-progress.

Let me clarify my title: finding ideas to use as a basis for a story of whatever length has been easier for me (and maybe for you?) then learning how to be a consistent online marketer of my work.

But now I have embarked on an educational program that I hope will to teach me how to market my books online with your help. My intention is to share what I’m learning about marketing online through this blog. I would hope you will share what you’ve learned too and/or ask questions.

Right now I assume the popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will play the biggest part in my online marketing education. It would be swell if you would like to share what’s worked for you on those sites.

What to do with your idea now?

Now that you’ve got a good idea for your novel, how do you turn it into a book? Some writers might advise you to start writing immediately and see what happens. I’ve tried that, and I’ve found that if my idea, characters and plot are lively enough, I can get off to a good start. I began writing my speculative-fiction novel – Not Just A Girl – that way. The character’s conversations sustained the forward movement of the story for nearly half of the first novel. After that, I outlined the rest of the story. I’ve also written short fiction that way too.

Elmore Leonard says he auditions his characters while he’s writing – giving his approach a Hollywood or theatrical spin.

Other writers might suggest that you research you idea, and find characters who will fit the roles needed to bring the idea to life and then learn everything you can about your characters. Then sketch out your plot and begin writing.

On the other hand, your idea might not be an idea at all, but a cast of characters living and carrying on in a particular place and time. You may see these characters and hear them talk to one another or even to themselves. They might be discussing love or sex or the neighbors or gun control or the band or singer they saw the night before.

If you’ve got characters let them talk all they want. Get out whatever you use to write with and start taking down their talk. After awhile they may help you discover your story and plot.

Whatever approach you try, it all starts with the first word, the first sentence and the first paragraph. Don’t be afraid to start. Just remember that all good writing is usually re-writing. That means once you’ve finished writing for the day, or you’ve reached the end of your story or novel, you can and mostly likely will go back and rewrite what you’ve done and make it better.

So why not make a start now. What do you have to lose? What you write doesn’t have to be “perfect” the first time out. Go for it!