Stealing Plots

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! I hope you all had a fantastic week and are looking forward to the long weekend. Perhaps you want to use that time to craft new book ideas. Well, you've come to the right place! Today, I'm going over how you can steal plots from real life to craft novels. Intrigued? Then grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

If you remember the posts I did on plot ideas (part one and part two), you'll know I'm a huge advocate of using things you see/read/hear to inspire you. Well, let's look at life for some inspiration and see exactly how that works.

Situation one: You're sitting, watching the news, and a story comes on about terrorists on a train and three heroes who leap in and save the day (anyone remember this?). That's an awesome story, right? Those men have been talked about often since that day.

Situation two: Friend one calls you, sobbing. Her husband was part of the Ashley Madison scandal, and your friend has discovered he's had multiple affairs. Her life is ruined, and she tells you all the warning signs she saw but ignored as you try to make her feel better.

Let's break down and re-work both situations for awesome plot ideas, shall we?

Situation one: What if the terrorists were vampires and the heroes were slayers? Or, what if they were all women instead of men? What would've happened if it were some kind of plot to get rid of a different terrorist who was planning to bomb the train, and the men sent to stop it were thwarted by the "heroes" who thought they were doing something good?

Situation two: What if the husband wasn't cheating, but he'd been doing some kind of recon mission for the CIA or some secret organization? All the "warning" signs weren't what they seemed, but the wife has no way of knowing because she doesn't know he's a spy/assassin. That's a whole different story.

It's not the situation that matters; it's the details you want to store away in your brain for the book you can write with these ideas that are important.

What caused those men to react? What were they thinking? What did they see?

What were those "warning" signs your friend is talking about? How did her husband act? What excuses did he use to get out of the house and meet up with those women?

All these questions can be answered by watching interviews or asking questions. Be the sleuth. Be creative. Bend the world to fit the story you want to read, and write it.

Whether you're a paranormal, contemporary, fantasy, dystopian, contemporary, murder mystery, or other genre author, you can make your story and characters feel more real to your reader when you use real-life situations as the basis.

So, this weekend, my challenge to you is to take something you see on television or hear on the news and turn it into a plot for a novel in your genre.

Post them below! Let's see how creative you can be!

Well, that's all for today, folks. Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Publishing News Hubs

Happy Tuesday, good people of the blogosphere! I'm stepping outside the box a little today and giving you all some insight to where people go to find their publishing news. Perhaps you'll want to check them out! Grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

I got the following numbers by running a little poll on Facebook. Sixteen people answered (myself included), so the data isn't great, but it's something to go on. These results might surprise you.

First and foremost, with a whopping twelve votes:

Now, this isn't limited to the newsfeed, though that was specified by one person. It's author groups, pages, and whatnot that top the list.

Second, we have printed or digital publications such as:

InD'tale Magazine (1)
Publisher's Weekly (2)
USA Today BOOKS section/Thursday edition (1)
Writer's Digest (2)
The Writer magazine (1)
Digital Book World (1)

Amazon Newsletter (1)
Galleycat (1)

Coming in third, there's blog subscriptions.

Five people said they get their publishing news from blogs they found on Google, subscriptions, or the ones on popular sites like Writer's Digest.com.

With two votes each, e-mail and Twitter come in fourth.

Lastly, there were three items with singular votes:

word-of-mouth
forums like Absolutewrite
Createspace's page

So, what does this tell you?

For me, it says I might be marketing wrong. I do plenty on Facebook, but I need to branch out into printed publications.

Where do you get your publishing news? Are these numbers a surprise?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

The Writer's Voice - On Book Banning and Failed Opportunities

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm calling out some folks for some crazy stuff that happened back in October. If you all remember, there was a huge upset with Kobo taking down a bunch of self-pubbed titles when an outcry arose over a few books that were pointed out as being completely inappropriate. Remember, these are my opinions. You have a right to your own. But grab your fiery temper and read along. See if you agree with a lot of these points. Let's get going!

Now, from what I understand, a couple of books were called out as being inappropriate and this caused a ripple of fear to spread through the publishing world.

I'm not going to judge if any book is appropriate or not in this post, but I will say that anything involving child pornography in any form is not something that should be encouraged. On the same token, I'd rather have someone reading about committing those acts than actually taking part in them. But where's the line? I'm positive I'm not the right person to draw one. If we take the books away, do those people then seek to act on their desires in other ways? As a mother, that scares the ever-loving shit out of me.

For all else, to each his or her own. Judge not lest ye be judged is something I live by.

Those business had every right to pull whatever they felt they needed to in order to protect themselves. However, here in the good old U.S. of A, we have a little thing called freedom of speech. Many men and women of our armed forces have died to give us that right (and to maintain it) throughout the years. It's not something to be sneered at. A huge shoutout to those who protect my freedoms; without which I couldn't write this blog post.

While I understand the move on the part of the businesses involved in the massive removal of self-published books, I can't help but wonder at their thought process.

Why? Because, not only did they manage to remove the offending titles (which, again, I'm not 100% sure was right or wrong), they also removed books that were and are "safe" as far as the restrictions on age go. I hobnob with authors of children's books that were taken down. Those folks were outraged (and rightly so) because they felt the bond between them and their publisher was fractured.

Trust was lost.

Booksellers that are brick and mortar have long been in a precarious position where falling sales have caused the closing of a ton of bookstores. That's not an opinion; it's a fact.

An opportunity was lost by those bookstores by watching and not saying a word.

Truth be told, Indie authors are now nervous. If their books can be pulled down without rhyme or reason, how can they be expected to keep publishing with the same companies, never knowing if their revenue stream will be cut off tomorrow?

Why oh why didn't someone jump forward (even Mark Coker of Smashwords) and reassure Indies or give them something they can put their trust in? If a brick and mortar bookstore approached me tomorrow and told me they'd carry my books (even if just digitally) with a seal of approval that guaranteed I'd never be removed from their platform, I'd jump on it. Even if it meant removal of my titles everywhere else.

I'm human. I want security.

Now, it remains to be seen what titles will be banned from booksellers. In my opinion, Smashwords was so on top of it, it's crazy. They had a system to keep age 18+ books out of the hands of kids. But Smashwords also dropped the ball when it came time to offer reassurances to their authors. Get on it already!

But the biggest loss, in my opinion, is by the brick and mortar stores. They need a healthy author/reader/customer base that keeps growing.

What do you think of the recent actions by Kobo, Amazon, and some others? Were you one of the authors? How did it impact you?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo