I'm close enough to the end of Cinder Ugly now that I'm wondering what I'm going to do next. Sure, there won't be much of AuGoWriMo left, but who's to say I have to stop when September 1st hits? September Write Your Ass Off... SeWriYoAO? ROFL... or something.
Earlier this morning, I opened my untitled YA fantasy and posted a snippet to Silver's blog for her Wednesday words post. And I got to thinking that I should probably finish that one of these days.
Then I've got this modern day, urban/dark thing with Arthurian mythology I was working on years ago.
And of course, there's always a third Dennis Haggarty book and a fourth SCIU book I could work on.
Or that genie Christmas short I started.
Too many choices.
Ever throw more than one toy up in the air for the dog to catch? The utter chaos of them trying to decide which one to go after... that's where I could easily find myself.
Probably when it comes time, I'll pluck one out of the air. Right this second, I'm leaning toward the YA fantasy thing. We'll see what I come up with when the time comes. Who knows, I could still be working on Cinder Ugly right up to the end of August. It keeps throwing twists at me.
What do you do when it comes time to decide what project to work on next? Especially when you have a lot of things you could choose from?
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Monday, December 16, 2019
Whatever You Do, Make it New
I've seen three different books marketed as 'retellings' of Beauty and the Beast on FB and/or book newsletters this past week. Which is kind of sad for the authors who put all that work into their books only to have them all marketed around the same time.
It's possible they were all published at different times and just ended up being marketed at the same time. Maybe when each of them came out there weren't that many retellings of that tale... Except people have been retelling that tale in one way or another since the tale came out.
So, how does one differentiate oneself in the marketplace when the stories are all so similar?
Perhaps the answer there is to NOT market your book as a retelling of BatB. It doesn't change the story, but perhaps it changes the readers' perceptions of the story. Tell readers what your story is about instead of falling back on the 'this is a retelling' thing.
John is a beast of a man--rude, belligerent, and definitely in need of a shave--who has learned to stay the hell away from other people. Mary's a beauty whose looks could launch a thousand selfies. During a hike in the Rockies, Mary gets lost and winds up on John's property. She'd leave, but he's holding her until the cops arrive to arrest her for trespassing. A snowstorm forces them together and love ensues...
That sort of thing. Yeah, the blurb sucks, but it ain't my story to tell. Still, you get the drift. It's BatB retelling, but it doesn't wave a big banner in your face telling you, it shows it to you.
Show vs tell... just as important in your blurbs as it is in your writing. Imagine that.
I mean, look at You've Got Mail. It's a retelling. It's Shop Around the Corner for the 1990s. (By the way, SatC was also retold as In the Good Old Summertime.) And all of it was apparently a retelling of a Hungarian play, which makes sense if you've seen SatC because it's set in Hungary. Imagine if YGM was marketed as a retelling instead of a whole new story. It probably wouldn't have done as well as it did. No one is as excited about a regurgitation as they are about a new thing.
Imagine if West Side Story had been marketed as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. The common moviegoer would've been all "Shakespeare? :yawn:"
Whatever you do, make it new. Find something to set it apart. Maybe then, readers will be encouraged to buy your book instead of yawning and passing on yet another retelling.
Just a thought.
It's possible they were all published at different times and just ended up being marketed at the same time. Maybe when each of them came out there weren't that many retellings of that tale... Except people have been retelling that tale in one way or another since the tale came out.
So, how does one differentiate oneself in the marketplace when the stories are all so similar?
Perhaps the answer there is to NOT market your book as a retelling of BatB. It doesn't change the story, but perhaps it changes the readers' perceptions of the story. Tell readers what your story is about instead of falling back on the 'this is a retelling' thing.
John is a beast of a man--rude, belligerent, and definitely in need of a shave--who has learned to stay the hell away from other people. Mary's a beauty whose looks could launch a thousand selfies. During a hike in the Rockies, Mary gets lost and winds up on John's property. She'd leave, but he's holding her until the cops arrive to arrest her for trespassing. A snowstorm forces them together and love ensues...
That sort of thing. Yeah, the blurb sucks, but it ain't my story to tell. Still, you get the drift. It's BatB retelling, but it doesn't wave a big banner in your face telling you, it shows it to you.
Show vs tell... just as important in your blurbs as it is in your writing. Imagine that.
I mean, look at You've Got Mail. It's a retelling. It's Shop Around the Corner for the 1990s. (By the way, SatC was also retold as In the Good Old Summertime.) And all of it was apparently a retelling of a Hungarian play, which makes sense if you've seen SatC because it's set in Hungary. Imagine if YGM was marketed as a retelling instead of a whole new story. It probably wouldn't have done as well as it did. No one is as excited about a regurgitation as they are about a new thing.
Imagine if West Side Story had been marketed as a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. The common moviegoer would've been all "Shakespeare? :yawn:"
Whatever you do, make it new. Find something to set it apart. Maybe then, readers will be encouraged to buy your book instead of yawning and passing on yet another retelling.
Just a thought.
Friday, January 25, 2019
Bored Bored Bored
The other day, I was reading a post over at The Mad Genius Club. The writer was talking about being bored with his writing. And I recognized the symptoms.
Yeah, it's not something we talk about. Because, ya know, readers might get the wrong impression - like we're bored so our books must be boring. But we writers know that's not the case. What we're talking about when we mention being bored refers to being bored with what we're currently writing. (Ages away from publication here, folks.)
And I'm saying 'we' because, yeah, I'm bored, too.
As y'all know, my creativity well's been pretty damn dry lately. And I've been stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out why. This may be the answer.
Every time I think about any book I've got on my writing schedule - the books that NEED to be completed because they're in a series, etc. - I totally don't want to write them. I feel like I've been there, done that. And I can't think of anything new to write. SCIU? DH? OUAD? SU? :yawn: It's all been done. :breaks into the refrain from a Bare Naked Ladies song:
Bored bored bored. Garfield hanging on a screen door bored.
So, I'm been trying to shift my thinking over to something that won't bore the shit out of me. Maybe it's time to hit that Arthurian UF I've been thinking about. Or maybe, just maybe, it's time to revisit that SF with the evil space bunnies. Neither of those would be boring.
The Arthurian UF is about the knights and villains of the myth coming to life inside various people of today and the heroes have to find Excaliber before the villains do or bad things will happen. (You now, like apocalyptic bad.) It's gonna be a lot of work, which might be why I left it after the opening scene. Loads of research into the myths, etc.to get the characters right. I mean, I inhaled everything Arthurian I could get my hands on once upon a time, but that was ages ago.
The bunny thing is about cute, fluffy - but totally evil - bunnies coming to conquer Earth and the farmer who fights them. It'll be funny and quirky and crazy things will happen. Writing that might be easier, even though I've never done SF. It started out as a short story I was fiddling with years ago, but it's morphed into something larger in my head.
Either way, it can't hurt to try writing something different for a while. Maybe it'll shake something loose and I can go back to writing the things I need to write. :shrug: Time will tell.
Hopefully, sometime soon, you'll see me talking about progress on something. It's been like 6 weeks since I did anything major in the writing/editing sphere and I'm starting to get the DTs.
Are you bored? What can you do to shake yourself out of it?
Update: I sat down last night and wrote almost 1600 new words. I only stopped because it's been so long since I wrote that my hands needed a break. Then I went to bed and couldn't stop thinking about where the story was going to go and what would happen next. Yeah, baby. I'm cautiously optimistic. Here's hoping this keeps up.
Yeah, it's not something we talk about. Because, ya know, readers might get the wrong impression - like we're bored so our books must be boring. But we writers know that's not the case. What we're talking about when we mention being bored refers to being bored with what we're currently writing. (Ages away from publication here, folks.)
And I'm saying 'we' because, yeah, I'm bored, too.
As y'all know, my creativity well's been pretty damn dry lately. And I've been stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out why. This may be the answer.
Every time I think about any book I've got on my writing schedule - the books that NEED to be completed because they're in a series, etc. - I totally don't want to write them. I feel like I've been there, done that. And I can't think of anything new to write. SCIU? DH? OUAD? SU? :yawn: It's all been done. :breaks into the refrain from a Bare Naked Ladies song:
Bored bored bored. Garfield hanging on a screen door bored.
So, I'm been trying to shift my thinking over to something that won't bore the shit out of me. Maybe it's time to hit that Arthurian UF I've been thinking about. Or maybe, just maybe, it's time to revisit that SF with the evil space bunnies. Neither of those would be boring.
The Arthurian UF is about the knights and villains of the myth coming to life inside various people of today and the heroes have to find Excaliber before the villains do or bad things will happen. (You now, like apocalyptic bad.) It's gonna be a lot of work, which might be why I left it after the opening scene. Loads of research into the myths, etc.to get the characters right. I mean, I inhaled everything Arthurian I could get my hands on once upon a time, but that was ages ago.
The bunny thing is about cute, fluffy - but totally evil - bunnies coming to conquer Earth and the farmer who fights them. It'll be funny and quirky and crazy things will happen. Writing that might be easier, even though I've never done SF. It started out as a short story I was fiddling with years ago, but it's morphed into something larger in my head.
Either way, it can't hurt to try writing something different for a while. Maybe it'll shake something loose and I can go back to writing the things I need to write. :shrug: Time will tell.
Hopefully, sometime soon, you'll see me talking about progress on something. It's been like 6 weeks since I did anything major in the writing/editing sphere and I'm starting to get the DTs.
Are you bored? What can you do to shake yourself out of it?
Update: I sat down last night and wrote almost 1600 new words. I only stopped because it's been so long since I wrote that my hands needed a break. Then I went to bed and couldn't stop thinking about where the story was going to go and what would happen next. Yeah, baby. I'm cautiously optimistic. Here's hoping this keeps up.
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