Excellent article
Excellent article
The Master List of Fictional Characters
Well described.
I recently shared some common (and less common) types of short stories. Like you, I was surprised there were so many. How about a list of characters regularly found in fiction? Surely the list would be relatively short, right?
Well… no. Ken Miyamoto shared no less than 99 archetypes and stock characters found in movies – and fiction writing. Here they are, in alphabetical order.
Archetypes and Stock Characters
Absent-Minded Professor — An absent-minded scientific genius (Doc Brown from Back to the Future)
All Loving Hero — A character that loves everyone and will suffer for the sins of their loved ones.
Anti-Hero — A hero that is driven by the pursuit of power, sex, money, control, or particular vices, and because of this, they are often selfish, anti-social, power-hungry, and materialistic. But they sometimes showcase some heart in the end (Max from The Road Warrior)
Anthropomorphic Personification —…
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Beware Misguided Writing Advice
Excellent advice!
Author Anne R. Allen published yesterday a great post titled, 10 Dangerous Critiques: Beware Misguided Writing Advice. In it, she explains how trying to please everybody who beta-reads or critiques your WIP can turn a novel into a kind of jackalope of unrelated parts.
Sources of the Most Dangerous Critiques
1. The Realism Brigade
These are the folks who want to know when your characters go to the bathroom and point out that it really isn’t all that romantic to have your first kiss in front of everybody at work, the window of a department store, or the middle of a snowstorm.They’ll tell you that gun has too much of a kick for a young woman to handle or that nobody could run that fast in high heels.
The truth is that most fiction is not realistic and is not meant to be.
2. The Detailers
These are…
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Survey: What Readers Really Want
Excellent advice.
A few days ago, Written World Media (WWM) published the results of a survey on what readers really want. The company has five reader-facing brands such as Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, and Red Feather Romance, that allow authors and publishers to reach the right readers, with each of these brands catering to a different reader profile and demographic.
With over 20,000 authors, most self-published, and over one million readers, WWM’s survey offers great insight into what kinds of books readers prefer. Do they like series or standalone? Why do readers stop reading a book mid-way? Are reviews really that important?
Here are some key takeaways.
Do Readers Prefer Books in a Series or Standalone Books?
Authors like writing in series. Marketers like marketing series. But how do readers feel?
The overwhelming majority of readers are indifferent with 60% of respondents saying that they have no preference between…
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10 Effective Ways to Avoid Distraction While You Write
Thanks for this great advice!
As writers, we’ve all struggled with people, thoughts, and objects constantly distracting us while writing. In my case, it’s an energetic 5-year-old who loves interrupting me to show me stuff like the dragon egg she painted as soon as I sit down to write.However, there are plenty of other interruptions in our lives.
Thankfully, there are as many ways through which you can reduce and even eliminate these distractions to make an environment for yourself to maintain a steady focus on the writing task at hand. Here are ten effective ways to ward off any distractions while you write.
Turn off notifications
Screens are distracting. And so are the constant pings from our phones that we’re habituated to respond to. Blocking out any distractions such as your phone or Chrome’s notifications sounds is important whether you’re typing on your laptop or writing on paper. If youturn off Chrome notifications
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Audio Marketing: From Radio to Clubhouse
Again excellent advice fro Nicholas Rossis
With audiobooks gaining in popularity, it makes sense that audio marketing is seeing a surprising resurgence as a means of promoting one’s books. This is a general trend, as Transcription Outsourcing reports. In its article, they explain thataudio still has the ability to emotionally connect with listeners and leave a lasting impression.
Accordingly, audio markets have been steadily increasing over the last decade. Podcasts, audiobooks, and streaming services are becoming increasingly popular as customers explore ways to multitask or access content on the go.
With the advent of fashionable Clubhouse, an invitation-only audio-chat iPhone app, and Twitter’s own voice-focused social, Environments, a flood of social audio quickly took over in the last year.
As both authors and companies become more aware of the power of audio, they can begin to incorporate it into their marketing campaigns, giving their books a voice and allowing them to communicate with consumers…
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ToolRocket: a Free PDF Converter
Tremendous thank you!
I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to look for an online free converter to turn a PDF file into a word.doc. Or an image file into a PDF file. Or any other combination of converting one type of file to another.
The thing is, finding a “free online converter” is not as easy as it sounds. Some are not free, despite their claim. Some don’t have a good conversion quality. Some save your file on the cloud, somewhere somehow, and you need to download it from there—which is hardly ideal if your documents are confidential in any way. And with others, you must download any number of miscellaneous apps before you find the right “download” button to get your converted file, on a screen full of “download” buttons.
That’s why I really appreciated ToolRocket, a free file format converter I discovered a few days ago:
- It allows you…
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