A Little Note Regarding This Blog

Let's be honest in the first line, this post isn't about writing. It's more about the nature of this blog itself. If you're looking for writing tips, please click on another link to a post that's relevant to that.

But anyway, if you still want to read this, this is a bit of an odd post, a bit different from what's been normally up on here. Now, I know for one that my blog is getting next to zero traffic. I'm not here to complain about that, I know that I'll need to touch at least one hundred blog posts after posting day by day to get some attention.

But the thing is that I'm not doing one-twentieth of what I could do to promote my blog. Why? Because I don't want to work on Search Engine Optimisation at this point of time.

Actually, in a way, this blog is a sort of experiment. I want to see if, by simply posting day by day, I can get some notice around here. If we want to notice a plant, we see that it starts growing steadily day by day bigger and bigger, until we finally actually see it. Can a page be like that? Can a page eventually grow so large on its own that search engines and others just have to see it?

That's what I want to see. And that's why I'm not going around posting on teen writing sites about my blog. It might be partly because this blog hasn't even started out properly yet, but it's more of this experimental reason than not.

So anyway, thanks for reading this.

On Fanfiction and Fictionpress

If you are a teen writer, you've probably come across both Fictionpress and Fanfiction. But if you haven't had a first hand experience of either of them, well, this post is mainly about them.

First of all, the two sites are sisters. Fictionpress deals with original fiction while Fanfiction with, well, fan fiction. Both of the sites have pretty much the exact same layout and rules, and also an option for other users to review on your story.

What you've got to remember though is that there are no rules for posting anything. So, as a result, a lot of the stories posted are bad (more so on Fanfiction than not) and the sites are sort of dying right now. You don't get a whole lot of reviewers unless you post on the popular threads. For Fanfiction, almost all of the stories and traffic belong to the top, most popular franchises like Percy Jackson and the Olympians. If you write something else, you probably won't get that many readers.

And some of the stories are good, but a whole lot of them are too short, filled with cliches, and ridden with grammatical errors. Kind of like books from the self publishing industry where there's no one to regulate them.

You can also ask for Beta Readers, but do realize that many of them might simply not respond or be too busy to respond. You might want to try a short story or two, but do remember that most stories don't get too many reviews anyway.

When to Quit Working on Your Query Letter

I won't try to give advice on how to write a query letter. There's already much more than enough on that out there. But, the thing is that I see a lot of people who get far too much worked up over a query letter. Now, sure, a query letter is very important, but your project is way more important than that. If you find yourself spending more time on your query than on editing, then you know you've got a problem.

Nowadays, most agents also ask for the first three chapters or something along those lines in addition to a query, so they'll also be seeing that. Provided of course, your query letter isn't absolute trash.

I would say that once you finish your first draft, you should leave it aside for around two weeks. For a few days, do something and don't even think regarding the project. Then, start writing the synopsis. Write a one line synopsis, and then a full page one. Then move on to your query letter. You'll probably need to do a few drafts to get it right, usually around four, but the effort is well worth it. If you end up making ten drafts, then you're probably putting way too much thought into it. It's not necessary to have the query finished before you go to editing, but you should have a rough idea of how it is.

And, though what makes a good query varies from agent to agent, the following guidelines are things that you should definitely follow:

1. The query letter should tell you everything important about the book, genre, word count, title, etc. in the very first paragraph. Start with an interesting line (most people would advise against using a question in the first line) and explain your book in one or two lines, and then continue and give all the information above. Don't bury in in the last paragraph like it's some sort of secret.

2. Research your agent. I can't stress this fact enough. Remember, agents receive around one hundred queries a day, and for starters, get the salutation right. If your letter begins with 'Dear Agent' they might not even read it and go to the other 99 emails that they've received. And make sure that the font of the entire letter matches so it doesn't look like you've copied and pasted everything into it.
Also, make sure that you put at least one line (not more than two) about the agent. Mention a book that's similar to the one that you're pitching that the agent has represented, and how it is similar. If no books match your book, then that agent is not worth querying. If you've met the agent before, you might want to mention it, but don't go overboard with this. One or two lines and getting the salutation right are all that you need.

3. Make sure that your query is interesting. Sure, it is a business letter, but check to see if your mini-synopsis sounds interesting. It should sound like the blurb that you see at the back of a book. If your query is just average and very engaging, then some agents might pass it off and not bother with reading the sample that you've sent.

There are a whole lot more rules, but they're sometimes broken. But these three things are what your query letter should have, no matter what. And like I've said before, don't sweat over your query letter too much. Make it good, and take some time to let some other people proofread it, but don't go overboard with it.

Is Nothing Original?

You might remember my post on copyrights (it's mainly regarding laws in the United States, but from what I've seen from digging up on other countries, most have similar laws).

But a rather interesting thing is the notion among some writers that nothing can be original. A lot of writers have found that some of their lines that they've written are strikingly similar to books that they've never read.

There are a lot of explanations for this. Some people say that while we're reading, we're subconsciously picking up on various things, and by accident we might be including them in our writing without even realizing it. An example is a rather famous book and you can read about it here on Wikipedia.

But at the same time, what about passages which are strikingly similar between books that you've never read, or even heard of before? Well, think about all of the millions of books, films, television shows, comics, etc. that are out there. Chances are that no matter how much you try to make an original idea, by pure chance, there will be several things out there that will have the similar idea, or an idea that you can relate to your book.

Well, the thing is that accidental plagiarism still counts as plagiarism, and all publishing houses make sure that you sign a contract which makes you state that the work is all yours. The book I mentioned earlier won a movie deal and a half million dollar advance, but it could never sell since the whole incident. And for some reason, ever since that book has been accused of plagiarism, even more authors have found similarities between their works.

But a whole lot of those things might just be tropes and archetypes that everyone uses, right? After all, almost all writers try to do something different, but also want to do something that sticks with the genre. No one can really be sure.

So, if it ever happens that you find a line in your book is similar to one in another's, don't overly panic. It happens sometimes, and your best bet is to to change it.

Standard Manuscript Format

Today we're going to talk about something that almost all writers despise: formatting your manuscript. Yes, that's right, it's not just enough to write out a whole book, when you send it to an editor, you have to format it as well.

Now, what really drives me crazy is that all kinds of different publishers have all kinds of different formatting rules. For that, you'll just have to check their guidelines. But, a lot of them still ask for 'standard format', so that's what we'll be covering here. To convert a manuscript to standard format, the following should be noted.

1. Make all of the margins one inch.

2. Make the font 'Courier' or 'Courier New' and make the size 12. Also, select all of your text, right click, go to paragraph, and make line spacing double.

3. Indent the paragraphs half an inch using the indent tool on top of the page.

4. Make sure new chapters start on a new page.

5. Remove any special text except for italics.

6. What you should put on your first page varies from publisher to publisher. Most will agree that you should put the title at the top ( all of the things in this sentence should be centered), below it the genre and the expected word count. Then, change the alignment to left and type in your name, pseudonym if any, and any relevant contact details. If your publisher demands a summary or query letter as part of the manuscript, make sure that they start on different pages and you should be fine.

Most of this is with reference to Microsoft Word, the most commonly asked for format by publishers. If they ask for a pdf, you can just follow the above procedures and convert it later on.