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wpwhiteboard · 2 years

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WordPress 6.1 “Misha” has landed: Fluid Typography, Major Performance Improvements, An All New Default Theme, and More!

WordPress 6.1 — the final installment of WordPress is here (for this year folks, relax!). Great features, massive updates (believe me, they are!), and the much-awaited Twenty-Twenty-Three theme (Yes, this version is shipped with a default theme)!

Say hello to WordPress 6.1, “Misha” 👋. Inspired from the life and works of Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin. Misha played a key role in introducing jazz globally, especially in USSR. He is also celebrated as a founding member of the Moscow Art Trio.

WordPress 6.1 is a part of phase 2 of the Gutenberg project which introduces a lot of improvements to full site editing, block editor, and block-based patterns.

“Misha” takes refinement of site-building and the overall WordPress experience to a higher note. Find enhancements that make website creation intuitive while enabling you to push your creative boundaries. While you’re at it, here are some of Misha’s jazz piano as you learn about all WordPress 6.1 has to offer!

Index

Twenty-twenty Three Theme

Performance Improvements

Block Editor Improvements

Editor Screen Enhancements

Customization Enhancements

Conclusion

New Default Theme: Twenty Twenty-Three

Following in with the WordPress tradition, the last release of the year comes with a brand new default theme. This version is also keeping the tradition alive with the theme: Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3). Looks like the future is here early, with massive features, and functionality.

The theme features a minimalist style, with 10 variations (Creativity unleashed 🚀). Don’t worry, the theme is a block theme with full-site editing capabilities. Get your inner designer out and pick a variation of your choice. About adding more design, the limit is you!

Being a content guy myself, I always think about fonts, readability, letter spacing, etc. If you too have those lingering thoughts, well, the TT3 theme also houses 4 fonts that are used in different styles. Hey, you can choose them when crafting your posts and pages!

All in all, the TT3 theme has everything you need to build the website you want, with no restrictions or limitations. It’s an open playing field and the only thing that can stop the possibilities is – You!

Performance Improvements

There are major performance improvements packed with WordPress 6.1. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting and major ones.

Fluid Typography

WordPress 6.1 comes with fluid typography support via the theme.json file. This feature takes responsiveness to the next level, allowing text to automatically adjust its size based on the user’s viewport.

This feature now comes built-in with this WordPress version update. You can change the fluid typography settings in the theme.json file.

WP_Query Performance

A great improvement to the WordPress experience is a change in how database queries are handled in WP_Query. The concerned ticket on WordPress.org was opened 6 years ago and was finally closed after inclusion in the WordPress 6.1 release.

Improvements to WP_Query performance in 6.1

In a nutshell, this change results in caching of database queries, so if the same database query is run more than once, the result(s) will be loaded from cache. It is worth noting that by default, all calls to WP_Query will be cached going forward.

Kudos to the team of WordPress and contributors who worked on this major improvement. In the latest tweet by a core contributor:

In WordPress 6.1, there is a massive improvement to database performance. Database queries in WP_Query are now cached. A ticket I have been working on for 5+ years was merged.

This should result in billions of less repeated database queries.

Improvement to REST API

When a webpage is requested, many different requests for various components of the page are made. The improvements in REST API not only streamline the process but also reduces the number of database queries.

Thus, what we get as end-user and visitors is an optimized website experience, that is fast and optimized for maximum performance.

WordPress explains:

When running profiling tools against the responses of REST API requests, it was discovered that post controllers request a lot of linked data to each post. For example, when returning a post in a REST API response, linked data such as author (user), featured image, and parent post were all requested. As these linked items were not primed in caches, it could mean that for each post in the REST API response there would be 3 separate database queries: one for the user, one for the featured image, and another for the parent post. In WordPress 6.1 all the caches are primed in a single database query

Improvements to Cache API

There are many improvements in the Cache API. One of them is called “Check cache key types” which addresses a problem created by plugins.

This fix enables developers to notice a failure that resulted in a weird website behavior or complete failure.

The developer notes on this fix state:

This commit introduces a quick type check on the given cache keys and adds a _doing_it_wrong() message that should help plugin developers to notice these issues quicker.

The second improvement is called, Remove @access private from cache priming functions.

This fix provides theme and plugin developers to access and use certain functions that result in fewer database queries, resulting in an increased website speed performance.

Media Handling Improvement

This improvement boosts how images are shelved to keep them from slowing webpage requests and display. Thus, again adding to website optimization and performance.

What team Wp.org says about this:

Recently I have been playing around with another special attribute to the img tag which is basically decoding=”async”. After implementing async decoding to the images in a page, the page load became, even more, faster and images are decoded asynchronously by the browser, loading the contents almost instantly and also reducing page render time. This is a huge performance booster to any webpages which has a lot of images (so basically most sites).

Improved PHP performance for Core Blocks Registration

Improvement in ‘block registration’. This improvement enables a much better identification and handling of blocks.

Thoughts from team WP.org:

…reduce filesystem reads and processing of block.json files, which should benefit all WordPress sites and improve performance…

New Site Health Checks

WordPress 6.1 comes with two new site health checks. Well, this is not a major performance improvement, but it does help developers to identify the scope for improving their website performance with the use of a Persistent Object Cache and/or a Full Page Cache.

Persistent Object Cache

The Persistent Object Cache holds a cache of frequently requested webpage parts. This reduces server load and speeds up the display of a webpage.

Cron API

It is more of a bug fix, but also an improvement to wp-cron.php, which is a task scheduler for things like backups, scheduled posts, or updates. This update will speed up the performance, making it compatible (again) with LiteSpeed Web Server plus LSAPI. Find the technical details here.

Block Editor Improvements

Well, of course, there are tons of improvements to our beloved block editor. Well, most people like to call it Gutenberg (PS. it’s the project name of Block Editor). Gutenberg updates were released one after another, starting from version 13.1 to 14.1. Read more about the latest release Gutenberg version 14.4.

There were a lot of conversations, rumors, and cues laid out around the block editor, its scope, use, flexibility, etc. If you felt the same, well the major focus during these Gutenberg releases was to bring a consistent experience and design flexibility for different blocks.

Well, this is just the start. Let’s look at some of the most awesome changes!

Dimensions Controls in Blocks

WordPress 6.1 comes with dimension controls for many more blocks like List, Columns, Paragraph, Table, and more.

This will allow you to set padding and margin to these blocks. A refined and greater control of the minute design and layout elements, here we come!

Visualize the changes and have the design you want!

Enhanced Border Options

WordPress 6.1 comes with more border control options. Take the creativity in you to the next level with the options to adjust the top, right, bottom, and left borders separately.

Also, border options extend to the Image block. Earlier, you could only select border-radius, but now, you can add actual borders.

Featured Image and Cover Block

Well, it’s no hidden fact, there are always discussions around Featured Images and Cover Block, their difference, etc. Many users wanted to use the Cover block as the Featured Image.

WordPress 6.1 gives you the power to choose a Featured image for a Cover Block. You just need to set the Featured image and it will start appearing inside the Cover block. Also, this allows you to showcase the Featured image anywhere on your page.

Note: Hey, this option should be used correctly. Else, your featured image will appear twice on the screen.

Quote and List Blocks with Inner Blocks

Now, move an item up or down in a bullet list. WordPress 6.1 introduces inner blocks that give items in a list, a block of their own. Cool, right?

Also, the Quote block gets style updates, all thanks to inner blocks. Now, style quote and cite blocks separately.

Editor Screen Enhancements

WordPress 6.1 also brings many changes to the Editor screen. A more immersive and intuitive experience awaits you! Following are some of those enhancements:

The preview Button is View Button

The Preview button is renamed, taking the name View. Also, the View button now includes a link to view your website!

Information Panel Improved

The information panel is a great improvement for all the content creators. Now get word count, characters, blocks, time to read, etc.!

The WordPress Logo Replaced!

You can see your website’s icon on the top left corner of the screen of your WordPress dashboard. It will be used as the View posts button, make sure you’ve set your site icon!

New Preferences Options

We have two new preference options to choose from:

‘Always open list view’ allows you to display a list view when editing posts.

‘Show button text labels’ allows you to show text instead of icons on buttons.

Customization Enhancements

There are many customization options to your website building journey. Let’s look what WordPress 6.1 has in store for us:

Create More Templates in Site Editor

In classic WordPress themes, you could create templates using template hierarchy and extend your WordPress theme. With WordPress 6.1, you can now achieve the same with the block editor. The best thing, you can do this without writing any code.

The following templates will unlock with WordPress 6.1. Hey, these are all available, irrespective of the block theme you’re using:

Single page

Single post

Individual term in a taxonomy

Individual category

Custom template (can be used for any post or page)

Go to Appearance » Editor and select templates from the left sidebar. Click on the Add New button to see the available options.

To apply a template to an individual item, you can choose a template, and a popup will appear. Here you can select the item where you want the new template to be used.

Let’s say you pick the Category template, a popup will appear. Select it to apply your new template for all categories or a specific category. It’s as intuitive as that!

Quickly Search and Use Template Parts

Searching for template parts becomes swift and easy with WordPress 6.1. For instance, if your theme has multiple header template parts, then you can quickly find and apply one of them.

Click on the template part options and select Replace. This allows you to choose from a wide variety of available template parts, all yours to use.

Improved Template Options

The template creation process is now easier. A new template will automatically add relevant patterns, saving you time and effort. You can also add a new template to specific item(s). For example, adding an author template, you can apply it for all authors or just one, the choice is yours!

Two new template options are here: page and single item: post. If these options are not enough, you can always create custom templates for any page or post!

Block Spacing Presets

Currently, block spacing tools require users to specify the spacing pixels. While this offers accurate customization options, it has some limitations when using the same spacing on multiple blocks.

WordPress 6.1 comes with seven spacing presets to choose from to speed up the process. This will help you remember the preset applied and apply it to the blocks you wish to customize, If you prefer using the old way, you can switch to that with a click of a button!

Improved Block Locking

WordPress 6.0 introduced a block-locking feature, enabling you to customize your site’s safely. By locking important blocks, users won’t be able to move or change the design of these blocks.

WordPress 6.1 takes this feature to the next level by applying block locking to inner blocks inside a group block. So now, all you need to do is get everything under a Group block and apply block locking to avoid manual locking of each block!

Find Block Themes Faster

The Themes Directory now hosts a filter for block themes, Now, search for block themes faster, with a pattern preview to give you a better view of how the theme might look like.

Keep Site Editor Settings

Site Editor settings are now persistent for each user. All your settings will remain consistent across browsers and devices. Amazing, right?

A Streamlined Style System

The CSS rules for margin, padding, typography, colors, and borders within the styles engine are now all in one place, reducing time spent on layout-specific tasks and helping to generate semantic class names.

Content-only Editing Support for Container Blocks

Now, different people can work on WordPress at the same time, focusing on their respective tasks. All praises to content-only editing settings, allowing layouts to be locked within container blocks. In a content-only block, its children are invisible to the List View and entirely un-editable.

So, developers control the layout while writers can focus on the content. Combine it with block-locking options for complete control over blocks!

Conclusion

Overall, WordPress 6.1 beta contains more than 350 enhancements and 350 bug fixes for the block editor, this also includes 250+ tickets for the core.

Performance improvements for websites with a large number of custom taxonomies (like tags and categories), reduced database queries in multi-site environments, etc. There are also many other cache-related improvements that speed up the delivery of webpages.

Hey, there’s no denying that most WordPress users spend the maximum of their time creating posts and pages. Well, yes the performance improvements in WordPress 6.1 are massive, the features and customization additions are at par, making WordPress 6.1 a complete package for all your website building and editing needs!

A big shout out to team WordPress for making this possible. Thanks to all contributors for making this amazing feat happen!

Signing off for now, subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates, slingshot to your inbox. Take Care!

#WordPress

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poptod · 4 years

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The Dead Heed No Lies (Ch. 3)

Description: Things get started.

Notes: I forgot to mention this but there are certain things I took the liberty of defining about you, but it shouldn’t disturb your reading. Here they are: you don’t have a gender, you’re Jewish (not really religiously though), and you’re vegetarian. Word Count: 2.8k

Chapter Three: Anubis’ Crime

On a bright, sunny day like any other in New York, you wandered through the streets. This day was like any other, as you had gotten up near dawn, eaten a healthy vegetarian breakfast, and wandered through the city for a while. You needn’t go to the florist, as you had already gone that week to replace the molted flowers from last week, so you stopped for a drink at a local coffee shop.

The only thing that was any different about this day was a terrible, nagging feeling you had that something awful had, or would, occur. You wondered, in your own negative mindset, if some people had felt this during the morning of 9/11. You hoped this terrible feeling wasn’t an omen of something so cruel.

During midday you took your nap, tossing and turning in bed, embroiled in the conflict of your heavy mind overthinking this Terrible Feeling. Eventually, tightened into a prison of blankets you fell asleep, a few odd nightmares spotting your otherwise eventless dreams.

“I’ll feel better,” you told yourself after waking up with the same terrible feeling as before, “if I sleep some more.”

That you did, taking three melatonin pills before collapsing once more on your bed, an alarm set for your job just in case you didn’t wake up in time. This time, your sleep was deeper, dark and blank, devoid of thought and movement. The only thing you felt was hot - curled in cloth that overheated your system, boiling your skin off and eating away at your bones.

This time, when you awoke, you found you’d left the heater on too high.

Also, you still had the Terrible Feeling.

You groaned to yourself, flopping back onto your pillow when you looked at the time. You’d awoken three minutes before your alarm, something that would usually delight you but instead made you feel as though you hadn’t slept enough.

“My God,” you said aloud to yourself, your voice hoarse. “I wish I was dead.”

Of course, this was a hyperbole. All you wished was that you didn’t have to get up and go sort through more papers. Even though this was probably your last day sorting through papers (you’d reached the letter ‘Y’ yesterday), you felt dread simply at the thought of having to work.

With a heavy grunt you hoisted yourself out of bed, untangling from the mess you’d gotten yourself into. After a quick shower and a small meal you expected the Terrible Feeling in your gut to go away, but it didn’t lingering on even as you reached the steps of the museum. Sighing deeply you went round the back, entering through the smaller, much less grand steps into the basement full of records.

You sat at the end, pulling out the first Y box, going through and making sure they were in order and still relevant, with all the correct information.

A few minutes later, steps, loud and many resounded upstairs, and you knew the tablet had gone to work. In a few minutes the King would be coming downstairs, perhaps along with Tilly, to try and distract you from your work. Most days, you’d laugh to yourself at the thought. Most people ignored you, not bothering to try and be friends with you. It was a nice change.

Today however, following the path of your Terrible Feeling, your stomach stirred in sickness, leaking out in the form of a light sweat that anxiously painted the palms of your hands.

Maybe I’m just sick, you thought to yourself, flexing your fingers against your palm. Maybe I should just go home.

Thirty minutes had passed until you heard the footsteps of someone coming down. You didn’t turn to greet them, keeping focus on your work despite the sick feeling growing into your chest like insidious weeds overtaking fields of flowers.

No cloak dragged on the floor, but there was the clack of heeled boots.

“Hey Tilly,” you said, your voice noticeably weaker than usual.

“Hi… how’re you feeling?” She asked, sounding just as bad as you.

“Not great. Had a weird feeling all day,” you told her, sighing. She stood beside you, leaning against the wall.

“Same here. Hey, have you seen Ahk down here yet?” She asked, crossing her arms and looking at you with a concerned look.

“Uh, no. Hasn’t visited,” you said, looking up at her.

“Hm. I haven’t seen him. Want to come look with me?”

You paused, your eye twitching involuntarily before you stood.

“Alright,” you shrugged, knowing you’d have time. There was only one Z box and it was small.

Following her the two of you walked up into the brightness of the museum lights, blaring the 80’s music that most all exhibits could agree on. Ever the one better with socialization Tilly asked around, while you left to his exhibit. Ahkmenrah had decided to keep his tablet there, mostly for safety reasons, and considering how much he loathed to part with it, it wouldn’t be surprising to find him there.

Up the stairs you walked, leaving behind the calamity and chaos that eons of history brought. From your vantage point upon the balcony you could see at least three people doing something that would most definitely kill them if they were real people.

People have always been stupid, you laughed to yourself, turning back around to find his room.

You continued this line of thought as you wandered the halls, mostly thinking about the age old graffiti. Sometimes, historians would mistake the words for having religious impact, when most times it was something pornographic or stupid. A metaphor for humanity, really.

Upon entering the room the main difference was blazingly obvious - the centerpiece, hanging in its’ eternal, ancient glory, painted gold in intricate patterns of Egyptian hieroglyphs was so glaringly not there.

Confused, you walked closer, eyebrows furrowed as you took slow steps. The guards towering over you in black majesty paid you little mind - Ahkmenrah had explained to them that they shouldn’t hurt anyone. Still, with such careful, near suspicious steps their eyes watched you, careful to jump at any sign of your treason.

Before you could fully circle round the sarcophagus lying as the centerpiece of the room, you saw a hand on the floor, the rest of the body obscured by the coffin. Your eyes widened, breath picking up as your feet skidded, knees falling to the ground as you fell to see who it was.

The golden robes had fallen in waves around his body, almost ornamenting his unconsciousness. His crown that he wore so adamantly, so much so that you hadn’t ever seen it off of him, was now cast aside, lying a few feet away from him.

Hands only shaking a little you attempted to wake him, feeling your legs go numb till his eyes slowly opened.

“Ahkmenrah! What happened?” You asked immediately, helping him to sit up as he knelt on his knees. He groaned, holding his head in his hands as you assisted him.

“I - the tablet, it’s…”

“Gone, I know, did someone take it?” You asked your queries hurriedly, hoping that if you did so you’d be able to call the police sooner. At that moment, it didn’t occur to you that you’d have to wait till morning either way.

“I saw him, I… I did not think he would show his face to mortals,” he mumbled, voice groggy and unclear as his weight fell into you. You supported him, trying to get him to lift his head.

“Who was it? Ahk,” you put your hand on his cheek, making him look up at you.

“Anubis.”

“I - I’m sorry?”

“Big dog head, hot body,” Ahkmenrah groaned, his head falling back onto your shoulder as he grunted in pain.

“Uh, yeah, no, right,” you fumbled, still holding him against you. Your eyes shifted around the room. As though it’d give you answers, like God would send you a sign.

“Gotta… gotta catch him, he’s got my tablet.”

“I know. Let’s go find your parents, maybe they’ll have an inkling as to what the hell is happening?” You suggested, not waiting for his answer before you pulled yourself to your feet, his arm slung around your shoulder as the two of you made your way out of the room and into the hallway.

When you finally found his parents most of the place had realized something was wrong. Apparently, if stories were to be true, the last time Ahkmenrah had been weak was when the tablet was dying.

“Your son says he saw Anubis steal his tablet?” You said immediately, not bothering with the niceties and thinking it wouldn’t bother them either. They glanced at each other, then back at you, their expression unchanging from the shock.

“Yes, I, uh, that makes sense,” his mother stammered, blinking rapidly. Ahkmenrah, no longer leaning against you, quickly added in his own input.

“I need to get it back,” he said, determination written in his tone and face.

“Hold on, you just got a concussion,” you stopped, holding your hands out in front of you.

“(Y/N), I’m dead.”

“That’s half the problem. What are you gonna do if it takes more than a night to find him? It’s almost dawn already! Everyone here is going to fall asleep and never wake up and what are we going to do? Call the police?” You began spiraling, tugging at your hair. “What are they gonna do? Can’t exactly shoot a god, right? Besides, Anubis is practically the Egyptian version of the god of death, you can’t kill death, right?”

“(Y/N)?” His father got your attention, seemingly now more solemn. You looked up, trying to regulate your breathing as you listened. “Shut up,” he said. Frowning, you obeyed.

“My son, you wish to go after it yourself?” Shepseheret asked, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. In an almost meek way he nodded, but his stone cold expression remained.

“There is a way you could stay alive during the day, but it takes getting used to. It’s,” Merenkahre glanced at his wife, “unpleasant. And you’ll need to take someone alive with you.”

“I’ll go with him,” you volunteered yourself. Sure, a week ago you were freaking out about museum exhibits and ranting about how you weren’t ever supposed to be part of a fantastical story, but here you stayed calm. Besides, you were probably the best fit - you knew a lot about Anubis and you were, as needed, alive.

“I’ll explain the… ritual, to you,” his mother said, taking you both aside as the room began to fill with chatter of the events to come.

All in all, when she finished speaking, you sort of understood. She would use a specific paint to paint a symbol onto his forehead. It’d turn him to moveable stone during the day, and at night, he would become flesh and bone again. However, every night, you would need to make a blood sacrifice to repaint the symbol.

The young King did not seem to like that.

“Couldn’t we use the blood of a different creature?”

“It’s easier to use (Y/N)’s. Otherwise you’d have to be killing animals everywhere and you’d leave a blood trail,” his mother said.

“I’m fine with it. I just won’t cut my palm. Most nerve endings are there,” you agreed, remembering a stupid post online about explorers in movies.

“See? The child is fine with it.”

“Mother.”

“Come, I will get you ready,” she said, ignoring her sons’ berating and taking him to the side. You watched in interest as she pulled a purple bottle out of one of the glass cases. Assuming it was the special paint she’d spoke of, you sat down across, paying close attention as she drew the eye of horus upon his forehead.

“Oh, Eye of Horus. That’ll be easy enough I think,” you said when they’d finished. “Why is Anubis stealing the tablet? And now of all times? It’s pretty late in the game to do so.”

“He’s the oldest god of death. I suppose he doesn’t like my family coming alive every night,” Ahkmenrah sighed, standing up once his mother put the paint back.

“Right, but the role was taken over by Osiris, a long time ago. Isn’t Anubis supposed to be with the scales now? Deciding who’s good and bad?”

“Actually he’s the god of embalming,” his mother clarified.

“Also protector of tombs,” Ahkmenrah added.

“I know the stories.”

Osiris took over as Ruler of the Earth, then was killed by his brother Seth, who murdered him by putting him in a coffin, sealing it, and pushing it into the Nile. Osiris’ wife, and sister (you shivered, never one for incest) retrieved his body, but Seth cut up Osiris and scattered him through Egypt. It was Anubis himself, along with Isis and Nepthys who retrieved all of him back, except his penis, which was apparently very important, but either way Anubis wrapped the body up in the first process of embalming.

“It’s a disgusting story but yes, I know it. He’s a lot of things but it doesn’t answer my question, why is he interested now?”

“Probably some god drama made him king of the underworld again,” Ahk rolled his eyes, earning a chiding elbowing from his mother.

“Don’t disrespect them. Still, we need the tablet back. It was a gift from Khonshu.”

“My father says he insisted we never lose it.”

“Let’s go find it then.”

The three of you left back into the larger room, where the exhibits had grown louder, only calmed as Tilly frantically made her way through the crowd.

“The tablet was stolen?!” She asked, panting.

“Yes, we need to go get it, Ahkmenrah will be safe if he stays with me. Anubis stole it and I think I may have an idea as to where he might be going,” you explained quickly.

“You do?” Ahkmenrah asked, obviously impressed.

“Yep, let’s go.” You tugged his arm, pulling him off to the side to pull up a map on your phone.

“These are ley lines. Ancient magnetic lines that connect spiritual sites. There’s a major one in Canada near us, and the distance between the two worlds, ours and Duat, is smaller there. I think Anubis needs to go there. Thank God he doesn’t have wings, so he’s on foot like us, but we need to get your tablet back before he goes to the underworld. I don’t think we’d survive a journey there.”

“Probably not,” he agreed easily.

“We should head out that way then. Anubis can turn into a dog, right?”

“Jackal.”

“Right. He’ll probably want to cut through the woods so we’ll follow that way. Thank god for snow, so he’ll be leaving tracks,” you said, pocketing your phone and turning to him.

“Do you think we should take Sacagawea along?”

You paused, ready to leave at a moments notice but stopped by his suggestion. It’d be smart, certainly, but that’d also mean more blood from you. Still… she was the best tracker in the whole museum and you had no idea what you were doing.

“Ask. I’ll get some more information from your parents,” you said, and he nodded, the two of you splitting off from your space next to the wall.

Finding his parents, they immediately pulled you aside before you could ask any questions.

“Ahkmenrah will turn to stone whence the day arrives. Immoveable stone,” Merenkahre said to you, his eyes stern.

“Shouldn’t you tell him that?”

“I believe it’s best not to. Remind him that it’s natural and after a few days he should be able to move his full body.”

Slowly, you nodded.

“Okay.”

A few minutes and he found you again, Sacagawea by his side. A few minutes more, she had the symbol upon the back of her hand. In just one more minute, the three of you had bid your good byes, and though Tilly had requested to come with, she rescinded her request when you explained the trek you had to make.

As you left the doors, reality sunk into you - you didn’t exactly have the right supplies for a journey in the middle of winter. You had a jacket, but it wasn’t a winter jacket, and what were you going to eat? Then you patted the cellphone in your pocket, remembering there were charging stations at every Starbucks, and that you had Apple pay. How modernly convenient.

The King had a stern yet worried look on his face as Sacagawea led you, and in a moment of comfort, you held his hand, squeezing once to assure him it’d be alright.

“We’ll get it back,” you told him quietly as she led you down alleyways and backstreets. His eyes glanced to you, burning with determination.

“I know.”

#ahkmenrah x reader #Ahkmenrah #Night at the Museum #rami malek #rami malek character #ahkmenrah x male reader #ahkmenrah x female reader #gender neutral reader

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bookishdiplodocus · 5 years

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What happens after you get accepted by a publisher?

As some of you may know, I’m a professional editor who used to work as an in-house editor. I see many posts about how to query and stuff, but very little describing what happens after you sign the contract. Of course, this varies between publishing houses, but I’ve worked as an in-house editor in three publishing houses, and I will relate my experience with them.

I’m your primary contact person. I will send you the contract, signed by the publisher (my boss), and answer any questions you have before signing it and sending it back to me.

Then you probably won’t hear from me for a few weeks. I’m thoroughly reading through your manuscript, and usually simultaneously a few others as well. When I’m done, I will get back at you, to let you know if there’s any rewriting work to be done on your book. There usually is. In fact, over the years, I’ve only had one author whose book could be sent to the text editor straight away. So don’t take it as a bad sign.

Major rewritings can also happen before you sign your contract. This means we see your potential, and it’s big enough for me to invest my time in you (my salary costs money too), but you have to prove that you can rewrite it. See my other post on “What if your publisher asks for a complete rewrite” and some nuance and other nuance for more information on, well, complete rewrites.

I will never put you to work without helping you, and you can always call or email me if you’re stuck or if you don’t know what I want. In fact, I’d rather have you contact me than you trying to hide the fact that you will most probably miss your deadline.

After the rewrites have been done, what happens then? In the bigger publishing houses I worked at, a freelance editor corrects your grammar and spelling and stuff. They work on a sentence and word level. In the small publishing house, that was also done by me. That doesn’t change anything for you.

I will send you the manuscript with the corrections for you to approve. Usually, authors agree. If you don’t understand or don’t agree, just let me know and I can either explain it to you or see if you have a point.

Meanwhile, I will put the cover designer to work. I will tell them what kind of a book it is, which genre, which target audience. If I have ideas for similar covers they can use, I tell them as well, but usually I trust the designer to do their work. I think in words, they think in images. To each their strenght. If you have ideas for a cover, we will look at them. (But usually cover ideas by the author are not commercially interesting, and they end up liking the cover we designed better.)

I will send you some unfinished cover ideas, or sometimes the one cover we all agreed on. You usually have veto power, but authors rarely veto a cover (”It looks so real now!”) because our cover designers know their job ^-^ The cover needs to be approved by a lot of people: you, me, the publisher, the people from marketing, the salespeople... Negotiation about 14 conflicting opinions is part my job.

By now, you’re probably done with approving the corrections in your manuscript. I check it one last time and send it to the lay-out people.

The publisher decides on the format of your book (softcover/hardcover/fancy edition...), based on what is financially possible and commercially interesting.

The lay-out person sends me a sample, usually the first five pages. I print it to see if the font, margins, interline, readability... are okay. They usually are, and I give the lay-out person a “go!” to lay-out the entire book. A few hours later they send me your book in pdf.

I will now send it to a second freelance editor, whose job it is to check for typos and weird line breaks etc. They will send me their corrections and the lay-out person will take care of it.

I will send you your final, clean manuscript and you will beam with pride to see your book as a “real book”! ^-^ (Similar feelings as when I send you the first cover.)

I will have written a blurb, sometimes based on your query letter. Everyone who had to have an opinion on the cover will be consulted again for the blurb. I will send you the definitive version, but to be honest, in practice, you can’t change much about it, unless you have Good Reasons, because this is the version the 14-headed monster - I mean, committee of colleagues - agreed on.

The cover designer now makes a back and spine cover.

Now there is nothing else for you to approve, you’ve seen everything. I’ll send the covers and the text pdf to the printing house, confirm the publishing date and then we play the waiting game!

Next, my colleagues of the marketing devision can take over, or sometimes they take over earlier in the process, or sometimes they don’t consult you at all.

When your physical books arrive on my desk, you can be sure that I am as proud of you and your book as you are. After some happy unboxing and bothering my colleagues - “just LOOOK at this BABYYY!” - I will send you a few copies through the snail mail for you to unbox and bother people with. (At least, if this is stated in your contract. At the publishing houses I worked at, usually it said that an author gets 5 copies of each edition.)

We usually don’t organize and pay for a launch party, but if you want to have one, go ahead. For debutants, a launch party doesn’t help selling copies that wouldn’t have been sold anyway. Journalists don’t scour book launch parties, it’s usually the author’s friends and family who attend, and they were going to buy a copy anyway.

And then it’s time to keep your fingers crossed, hope for good sales, and start writing on your next book!

***

I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing!

Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing advice here. New topics to write advice about are also always welcome.

Tag list below the cut. If you like to be added to or removed from the list, let me know.

@writingwordsanddrawingpictures @thewordsweneversaid @writingwhithotchocolate @i-rove-rock-n-roll @maskedlady @no-time-like-write-now @timefire25 @black-lakritz-dragon @nzmayart @fandomrandomness-stuff @dangertoozmanykids101 @anaestheticdisaster @storytellingofravens @purpleshadows1989 @mathematicpony @i-don-t-know-words

#writing advice #writing tips #writing #publishing #publisher #writeblr #sanne #how to tell me a story #traditional publishing

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years

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THE CHRISTMAS CARDS

December 16, 1950

“The Christmas Cards” (aka “Christmas Card Pictures”) is episode #110 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on December 16, 1950.

This was the 12th episode of the third season of MY FAVORITE HUSBAND. There were 31 new episodes, with the season ending on March 31, 1951.

Synopsis ~ Liz and George have their pictures taken for their Christmas cards, but then can't agree on which shot to use.

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz, a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury) and Bea Benadaret (Iris Atterbury) do not appear in this episode, although Liz does have a phone conversation with Iris where her voice is not heard by the listeners.

GUEST CAST

Jay Novello (Professor Sergei Pagolovsy) would appear on “I Love Lucy” as superstitious Mr. Merriweather in “The Seance” (ILL S1;E7), nervous Mr. Beecher in “The Sublease” (ILL S3;E31), and Mario the gondolier in “The Visitor from Italy” (ILL S6;E5). He also appeared on two episodes of “The Lucy Show,” but dapper Novello is probably best remembered for playing Mayor Lugatto on “McHale’s Navy” in 1965.

Professor Sergei Pagolovsky is a professional photographer, who also goes door to door selling his services. Novello generally plays Mr. Nagy, the Sheridan Falls Postman in love with Katie.

EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers this evening, George is sitting in the living room reading the paper, when Liz makes an announcement.”

Liz announces that this is the night they must pick our their Christmas cards. Turns out, Liz is selling Kris Kringle Christmas Cards this year. So far, she only has three orders - including theirs. Card #14 reads...

LIZ: “This is the season of holly and spruce, So Merry Christmas to you, Uncle Bruce!”

Or, if you don’t have an Uncle Bruce, #14A...

LIZ: “This is the season of spruce and holly, So Merry Christmas to you, Uncle Jolly!”

George says his only Uncle’s name is Uncle Gilhooley.

LIZ: “This is the season that we know as Yule-y, so Merry Christmas to you, Uncle Gilhooley.”

When George finds out he has to pay retail, and doesn’t get a discount from his own wife, he insists they be printed from “George Cooper and Friend.” To get her name on the card she foregoes her commission.

She tries to sell cards to Katie, the Maid. But it turns out Katie is also working for Kris Kringle Christmas Card Company. Katie’s only sale was to herself. Liz quickly phones Iris Atterbury to make a sale, but same thing.Iris is a Kris Kringle Card vendor, too!

The doorbell rings and it is a special delivery letter from George’s mother. It says that she can’t come for Christmas this year, but would like a photo of them. Liz reads where her mother-in-law tells George to stand apart from Liz so that she can cut her out later! Liz decides to make their Christmas Cards themselves!

Announcer Bob LeMond does a Jell-O commercial, giving a quick holiday recipe.

ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers once again it is two days later. Two days that Liz has spent diligently carving a linoleum block to hand-print their Christmas cards.”

Liz reveals the finished product but Katie can’t read the message because Liz didn’t carve the letters backward so that they come out the right way. As it is it says “REPOOC EGROEG dna ZIL morf SAMTSIRHC YRREM”!

Linocut (also known as lino print, lino printing, or linoleum art) is a printmaking technique, a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for a relief surface. The linoleum sheet is then inked with a roller and then impressed onto paper or fabric.

The doorbell rings and it is a salesman (Jay Novello). His product? Personalized photo Christmas cards from the Pagolovsky Studio of Photographic Arts. Liz orders before the salesman has even finished his spiel. Professor Sergei Pagolovsky himself will take the photos this afternoon. Liz immediately realizes that her mother-in-law will get a photo after all.

That afternoon George and Liz report to the photo studio. Turns out the salesman is Professor Pagolovsky himself! Liz does everything to make sure she is as close to George as possible. They take a photo with their heads together.

Later, George brings home the developed photographs for Liz to see. They cannot decide on which one to use. The photos that Liz likes, George doesn’t. The photos the George likes, Liz doesn’t! They go back and forth until they settle on one where they both look lousy!

Lucy Ricardo also had trouble picking a good photo of herself when applying for a passport in “Staten Island Ferry” (ILL S5;E12) in 1956.

Liz goes down to the photographic studio to change the photo. Reviewing the proofs, she chooses one she says will make George look good - but actually favors her. A short time later, George also visits the studio to make a change. He picks a photo that he says will flatter Liz, but actually favors himself!

When the cards arrive, Liz warns George that the Professor may have printed the wrong photo on their card - knowing she has changed it. Opening the cards, she is surprised to see the photo that favors George! She cries, refusing to send the cards. She throws them in the fireplace.

George tells her to go right out in the snow and buy some replacement cards. When he goes to the closet to get her coat, he comes back with some surprising news. She doesn’t have to go out and get new cards because they have three boxes of fully stamped and addressed cards in the closet. He forgot to mail last year’s cards!

In the live Jell-O commercial, Lucille Ball is Professor Dorothea Theodora, a famous lady archeologist in Egypt. LeMond is interviewing her for the Scientific Gazette.

LEMOND / INTERVIEWER: “I’d like to ask you a question.” LUCY / DOROTHEA: “Well, shoot the query, dearie.”

He asks her to read Egyptian hieroglyphics, which she translates into a description of Jell-O desserts.

Ooops! LeMond also translates the hieroglyphics and trips over the word ‘delectable’ at first saying ‘detectable’. Lucy, as Dorothea Theodora, ad libs “You can’t even read English”!

END OF EPISODE

#My Favorite Husband #Lucille Ball #Richard Denning #Christmas Cards #1950 #CBS Radio #Jay Novello #Jell-O #Ruth Perrott #Bob LeMond #I Love Lucy

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prettylittlelyres · 4 years

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My Year in Writing (2020)

Hello and Happy New Year! I thought it might be nice to share with you all an overview of what I've written in 2020.

First of all, let me say that I haven't written nearly as much as I wanted to, but that's OK, and it's OK if the amount you've written feels or looks pretty similar. The point is, it looks some way (I daresay pretty) because you've taken up the pen and put some words on a page.

I don't want to gloss over how bad aspects of my 2020 Writing Year have disappointed me, because that would be as silly as casting a damper on the whole thing by focusing only on the trickier bits. What I'm aiming for here is a balanced review - even if it's a rather informal one - of my achievements, and my feelings about my writing this year. In the interest of balance, let's start with something GOOD!

Right at the beginning of the year - around January - I started redrafting a rather fabulously dark fantasy romance, of which you've probably seen a little bit on this blog: Songs from the Crypt Forest, which I dropped after 9,800 words, because I wanted - and needed to work on my first dedicated book, and on my Year Abroad Research Project.

I managed to write about 17,000 words of the dedicated book in its original form before I realised that it wasn't quite working, and that I ought to try a different tack. The story I was telling there is a story I still want to tell, but I just wasn't ready to write it at the time. I'm hoping to pick it up properly in 2021.

I realised I needed to try getting back into the world I wrote in 'Violins and Violets', by writing something set around the same time and involving some of the same characters. In March, I started writing 'Book J', for which I didn’t have a proper title until I was nearly done with its first draft! I gave it the working title 'Book J', because I was writing it for my friend Jenny. By the time summer came round I had 52,000 words, and a first draft that was as complete as I think it ever will be.

Lockdown hit my life quite hard in Spring 2020, and I lost my language assistant job in France when all schools closed, and I had to come back to the UK to live out the academic year with my parents. Nevertheless I had to carry on working with my Year Abroad Research Project, Which I was able to hand in by 18th May, having squeezed all my findings into a dissertation of 6,000 words.

Now that my YARP was out of my way, and I had no more work to do for university, I started redrafting Jenny's book, now called 'Vogeltje', and cut it down to 44,000 words, which I polished until August... when I had copies printed for Jenny, so that she could read a book written especially for her. I would have given it to her in person in France, but lockdown happened, and I ended up posting her copies from one part of South England to another. A rather typical outcome for a meetup planned in 2019 for 2020, I suspect!

During lockdown, I also trained as a proof-reader and copyeditor, and did some volunteer work for a company that needed translators. Online training courses have been a godsend, and I've particularly enjoyed a novel writing course and a travel writing course that I've been following. The novel writing course has pushed me to flesh out plans for a number of books, including more detailed and cohesive outlines for 'Songs from the Crypt Forest' and 'The Night Has Teeth' (two books I want to write in a similar universe), along with my on-again-off-again WIP 'The Manylove Quarter' - and the plans for these three alone come to 7,850+ words!

I moved back to Southampton in July, and took August to start drafting 'The Manylove Quarter ', but that ended up petering out with about 19,200 words of prose on the page. Still, I spent a lot of time querying, and got plenty of reading done, so - especially considering the heatwaves in my area and a pretty enormous academic crisis in my record (fixed in November, after writing a LOT of letters and reports!!! So, this is where I send a million hugs to my lecturers and tutors for all the help they've given me, thank you, thank you, thank you all SO MUCH!!!) - I still felt fairly well-accomplished at the end of the month. I also did quite a bit of painting.

In August and September, I started typing up the journal I've been keeping since the beginning of April, once I'd settled back into life in the UK, to keep track of my feelings about the pandemic and my reactions to what I've seen or heard in the news. I write an average of 6,000 words per month, so I'm coming up to 50,000 words on the whole thing (but have yet to type up November or December). One day, I'll use it to write some extremely illustrious memoirs about how much fun, I had stamping up and down the stairs in my parents' house in order to get my steps in! (I really did get quite fit, though, and I want to get back to it in the New Year!)

At the start of September, I published a 2,500-word travel log my university's "study abroad" blog, all about how much I came to love the French city of La Rochelle, where I spent my 3rd year working. I think I will polish it at least a little before I post it here, but I would love to post a redrafted version on this blog!

My final year of university (BA Modern Languages, French and German) started in October, so all my reading and writing that month - or so it felt - was linked to my course. However. I've lost count of how many pieces I've translated between English, French and German, just to prepare for each class. I love my course, but it doesn't leave much energy for anything else!

Welcome to November, when all my graded assignments were due at once, and the associated stress started taking its toll. Luckily, my tutors were there to help me get extensions for work I couldn't hand in on time because my brain had turned into mashed potato. By the middle of December, I ended up with a 300-word translation and 300-word scripted scene for French, a 1,000-word commentary on a translation into English, a 2,500-word essay for French History, and a 2,000-word short story for German, which I've translated into English, and will post here any day.

This has really been a big year for letter-writing, especially since I came back from France. My cousin and I love writing longhand letters to each other, as I love writing them to my grandmothers, and, as such, I've written about one hundred letters this year! My cousin and I have kept every letter we've ever sent each other, and these collections have approximately doubled in size since the start of 2020.

I keep trying to redraft the first chapters of 'The Manylove Quarter', but never seem to get very far. With about 3 redrafts started since Autumn, I'd say l have about 1,000 words typed up. I can probably say the same of the story I'm trying to write as a kind of Standalone, kind of Sequel to 'This Still Happens' and 'Curls of Smoke', except that I'd put those around the 2,000-word mark.

If my Mathematic capabilities still stand up, I estimate I've written about 210,000 words in total this year (not including text messages, letters, emails and entries in my regular diary (which I keep separately to my pandemic journal)), which. honestly, makes me feel a little like I've failed myself.

That's why l'm making this post, actually, to address that feeling - because | know it's not rational, so I'm not going to call it "that fact" - and to tot all my work up in one place, so that I can see my achievements as one big hulk. Looking at my 2020 in terms of projects l've actually finished, it's disappointing! But to look at 2020 as a final wordcount makes me feel an awful lot better. My sister just pointed out that "210,000 words" is "nearly a quarter of a million words", and, put in that way, it's much easier to feel like I've accomplished something of which I can - and Should - feel proud. I've written a lot this year!

Now l'm asking all of you who feel like you've "not done enough work in 2020" to reassess the way you're looking at it all, and to see that:

Productivity shouldn't define how much you feel you're worth, no matter how productive you've been. Please don't fall into the capitalist trap of thinking you're only "doing the right thing" if you're working! You're worth a huge amount and you deserve to be proud of yourself!

You've achieved a lot more than you first thought, whether in the projects you've finished, the number of words you're written, the ideas you've had, the research and planning you've done, the time you've put in, the skills you've honed... OR THE FUN YOU'VE HAD! It all counts, and it's all important, and you can be proud of all of it, just like you can be proud of yourself.

If you don't feel like you've done enough, find a new angle from which to look at what you have done. I'm willing to bet someone out there can see how brilliantly you're doing already. Try to see yourself through that someone's eyes!

#writeblr #blog #writer's life #writing about writing #2020 in writing #motivation #positivity

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coalitiongirl · 5 years

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I’m so happy congrats on the agent. As someone who is trying to get published what advice would you give? For so long I have been told I need to share my gift but don’t know how it works and I guess I let that put me off but I really would like to get one of my books published and not forever wonder what if you know?

Well, I’m not published now, just agented! We’re working on two of my manuscripts to start but it’ll still be a long road to publication.

If you have a completed manuscript, you’ve done the hardest part already! Just getting to the point where you can finish writing a book is WORK and impressive in its own right.

i know most Swen writers like to skip traditional publishing and go straight to indie romance publishers like Ylva, who specialize in adult F/F content. That’s a much quicker and easier process! I wanted to write YA, so I knew that I’d have to do it via traditional publishing. But it isn’t for everyone! If you’re planning on writing adult romance, you probably won’t need an agent and can just go straight to a publisher with your manuscript. (Many of the mainstream YA publishers won’t take unagented submissions, so it wasn’t a consideration for me.)

So for traditional publishing, here’s what I did:

QueryTracker was invaluable to me. I wound up getting the paid version (a reasonable $25 a year) for little perks like seeing agent timelines, but the free version will give you all the same tools. You can find agents who represent authors who write similar works or sort by genre. It’ll let you log who you query as well, so you can keep track of all your queries easily and see your timeline and stats. It was the thing that made me realize how easy querying was!

When you’re querying an agent/publisher, you might need each of these things:

A query letter in which you introduce the book, yourself, and try to hook the agent/publisher. (Read a bunch of these first! Post them to forums where people will help you streamline yours! A bad query letter doesn’t mean that the agent won’t read your pages, but a good one will always help your odds.)

A short synopsis, usually about 1-2 pages double-spaced

A longer synopsis that’s 3-5 pages in case they want to see more

The first few pages of your manuscript. Some agents want 5, some want 10, some want 30. But you want to make sure that those first few pages are enough to hook them! Many won’t read on if they aren’t interested.

QueryTracker will link you to each agent’s website, where you can find their specific requirements for submission. You’ll usually paste your query, the first ten pages, or whatever it is that you need in an email and send it to them.

And then.........the worst part.

WAITING.

Literally......I hated it more than anything, lol. And try not to give into the urge to query fifty agents in one shot because you’re impatient! Sometimes you’ll get new feedback on your query/pages and regret that you queried all your first choices early on and missed your chance to give them your best work. Try querying in threes or fives, and send out a few more whenever you get a rejection.

And you will get rejections!! Lots of them!! Agents aren’t going to click with every query they read, and they get hundreds of queries a day. The rejection is never personal or necessarily about your writing or the story, only just a failure to connect with that particular person.

For the book I got offered on, I had sent out 43 queries. 20 were rejections, and I never got a response to 15 of them. (Many agents have a ‘no response means no’ policy, which can be its own whole kind of frustrating!!) But eight of them were full requests, and one of those requests turned into an offer!

I also received an offer from a different, also amazing, agent on a book that had only had a 5% rate of request by the time I shelved it. You only need one agent to bite to get the agent you need!!

If an agent is interested, they’ll send you a partial or a full request on your story- either more of your manuscript or the whole thing. You’ll send that over and then.......sigh, wait again. In my case, my future agent got back to me about two months later and asked me to do some revisions. About two months after that, she offered me representation. And that’s where I’m at now!

The process sounds really intimidating at first, but it’s not nearly as bad as it seems. It was a turning point for me to see how easy it was to query agents. i wasn’t doing it well at first, but I was doing it, at least! And eventually i learned how to do better. I think that you just gotta start the process, and if you can sit through rejections and persevere through it, you have a good chance of finding an agent eventually. I’ve seen people query for 5-10 years before finding an agent!

Sometimes it’s not the right time for your book, or it’s just not cut out to be a debut. I spent a long time on one book, only to realize that it was much too long to ever attract an agent for a debut. I worked on my second one soon after and got my first offer on that one! I think that if this is something that you want to do, you should stick with it and keep trying, even if it’s a rough road at first.

#writeblogging #Anonymous

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mimzy-writing-online · 5 years

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I'm incredibly sorry for this ask , but I'd like the opinion of different writers. I have this story I have finished. It's has been re-read, edited, polished. It's technically done. The story is consistent, the pacing is okay. But what I don't like is how the characters are portrayed. They lack life, and I think it may be because during the years I improved my writing, and now I'm sure I'd be able to do better. What would you do? Would you rewrite the story from scratch? Thanks in advance.

First, no worries about asking for advice. That’s legit what I’m here for. And having been in the same position you are now, (twice) I know how impossible it feels.

Off the bat, advice I would recommend:

Beta Reading: Get some fresh eyes to look at it, ideally someone who 1) reads books in that genre and that age range, and 2) has no obligation to worry about your feelings.

Thoroughly consider why you want to rewrite it: make an actual pros and cons list. It sounds silly, but it helps because you realize what decision you’re arguing for, what your instinct says.

Give yourself a shot at attempting a rewrite. Give yourself a set time limit to try it out. Your current book isn’t going anywhere and publishing takes forever anyway, so what’s another month or another three months?

At the end of this trial run you can ask yourself: Did a rewrite make it better? Do the characters and their world feel more alive? Even if it looks like a mess, given more time to finish and edit, would it look better than the original?

If you find you like the characters better, if you feel like you know them better, then you can consider going through the book and highlighting where they feel out of character compared to your new understanding of the characters

Watch Whispers of the Heart. I mean it! It’s a Studio Ghibli movie, and I swear to god it will inspire you and make this decision a little easier. The whole movie is about developing your creative craft. Its overall analogy is that of a geode. Your craft looks rough and sloppy on the outside, but with time, practice, and love you’ll find the beauty hidden underneath and make it shine. Amazing movie, it will change how you think about writing.

Now, finally, ask yourself: Is this the story I want to debut with? Is this the story I want to begin my writing career with?

This will be when you make your decision.

That’s the most objective advice I can give you. Since you’re asking a lot of writers for their stance, you’ll probably have a few different opinions, but I think running through this troubleshoot method will give you a chance to see for yourself.

My biased opinion?

It comes from my own experience with A Witch’s Memory.

This is about to be a very long story, fair warning, but it’s my entire thought process over 7-8 years of working on and off with the same project. A big part of the reason why I’m going in depth about the experience is because I keep going back to what you said:

“I think it may be because during the years I improved my writing, and now I'm sure I'd be able to do better. What would you do?”

The same thing happened to be. I started the series when I was much younger, but in the 7.5 years since then I’ve changed a lot as both a person (not adult/not teenager) and as a writer (who’s had several projects since then). I’m gonna walk you through 7.5 years of personal development and how it affected the project.

I joke that A Witch’s Memory has three universes, and those universes are all different rewrites. I first started the series I was seventeen. I finished the rough drafts of three books in the series and got down to full on editing the first book after I graduated high school. Within a year I had a finished novel that wasn’t necessarily polished (not by my standards today) but at the time I was ready to move forward and publish. I sent query letters out to lit agents but didn’t get any bites back. I didn’t get to work at it for long due to health issues, my whole body kind of just crashed so for six months I was too sick to do much of anything, let alone stress myself out over query letters. I started community college the next semester and got more involved in school than in writing.

17 when I started, 18 when I started editing, 19 when I queried and got sick, almost turning 20 when I started college.

I put the book on hold for another year and focused on school. During that time I had a lot of personal development as a person. I got more experience being myself, being an adult who can make decisions for themself.

And I realized that at age 19 I’d developed a lot of insecurities about my book.

In my case, it was the world building. I love my characters, and at their heart they’re still the same, albeit a bit more realistic. I re-examined what about the world building I didn’t like.

It felt too much like Twilight to start, with the way vampires and werewolves were supposed to hate each other, and witches and fairies hated each other, because that just made sense to a 17 year old who had never read paranormal before Twilight changed the direction of the genre.

I didn’t like magic being a secret that no human could know about, so I changed that. I didn’t like my character’s backstories too much, so I tweaked that too. For the best.

At age 20/21 (it was right around my birthday) I rewrote the entire first book. After finishing the rough draft I looked at editing it, looked at starting the rough draft of the second book, and I realized I didn’t like this version either.

So I put it on hold for anther two years. I worked on two different projects, experimented with writing style, got to know myself as a person better.

At 23 I reexamined what I didn’t like about “Universe 2″ and I realized-

I wasn’t comfortable with the way the book was written now. Too many main characters meant to many pov changes and too many personal plot lines to plan. I could see from the beginning how much I favored Anna and Ulric and Felix over my other main characters, so I cut my cast of six main characters down to three, focusing on my favorites. I also saw that the setting wasn’t working for me and it would be a lot less stress for me to chance the setting to somewhere I was more familiar with, setting it mostly in America instead of the U.K.

And I decided to stop worrying about what my past beta readers would think if the book didn’t look the same in “Universe 3″ and to just run with my heart.

(For any wondering, the beta reader in question is my mum, who has been the biggest supporter of my writing since I was 14 and believed I would be published even when I was ready to give up writing and work at a different career. She’s very attached to “Universe 1″ but it’s not where I want to go, and I know she’ll love this new direction when she reads it)

I started the rough draft for Universe 3 in January of 2019 (almost a year ago to the day I’m writing this). I did it on a whim. I had a dream of Anna and Ulric flying to safety from a villain on a broomstick and I asked myself why witches never had broomsticks in my old world, and I was like “why not, let’s add it”

And I just messed with world building. I aimed it for a more whimsical feel than my older angsty versions. I’m gonna blame all the Studio Ghibli movies I saw that year. Some of my local theatres have been doing special weekends where they show the movies, and I’ve gone to see four in the last year or so. I saw Kiki’s Delivery Service a few months earlier with my best friend (A) and then a month after starting the new draft I saw Howls Moving Castle and Spirited Away (same week, I think, all in theatre) and then as I was finishing the rough draft I saw Whispers of the Heart for the first time.

(this was the moment I realized that specific movie would help A LOT on this decision making process, so I included it above)

Anyway, I just gave myself permission to go in a completely different direction with my book.

I should note, that at 23 I had been visually impaired/blind for some 3 years, although it wasn’t medically official until I was 22. I’d also fallen in love for the first time and broken my own heart. I’d also spent the last two years struggling with gender and sexual identity and really starting to understand that part of myself.

So in general, the whole experience with those last two years of my life really changed the direction I took the book.

I focused more on internal struggle as well as the outside “main bad guy” I’d always been planning to work with. It

I kept the heart of my characters the same. Anna is still the kindest person you’ll ever meet, as well as sarcastic and brilliant and studious. Ulric is an anxious mess who is crazy loyal to his friends and who wants to gain his own independence. Felix is still a brat, but a loving one with the dryest sarcasm and a penchant for mischief.

Anna’s more cautious than her original incarnation. Ulric wasn’t disabled in previous versions (but at 23 I was disabled and I wanted to write a blind character, but I didn’t want blindness to be their only trait, so I took my most developed character and made him blind). Some of the characters are POC instead of white, I let myself have multiple LGBTQ characters (because 17 year old me thought the token queer was the norm because I only had one queer friend before that and we weren’t that close) and I changed some origin stories. It’s much better for that.

Growing up taught me how to put more life in my books, how to write more realistically less melodramatically, and what it feels like to have friends. Seventeen year old me didn’t have many friends in life, but 24 year old me has some wonderful friends.

Summary in Short?? (can I even do that?)

This advice post is getting long and I’m feeling bad, so okay, here I am: I’m almost 25 (in March). 17 and 23 year old me were very different people with different priorities and different levels of experience. And if I had to choose which book I would go with?

I’d stay with Universe 3 (and Universe 1 will just be a thing my mum and I know and keep to ourselves, mostly)

I’m nearly done with the 1st edit. I still have days of self doubt, but they’re nothing like what I had years ago. I’m closer to publishing than I was before, mostly because I have a solid plan now and I’ll be self-publishing, allowing me to publish on my own.

In my case, rewriting was the best decision I could have made. I’m not everyone else though, nor am I you. You know yourself and your story better than anyone, and I know you are the most qualified person to make that decision. I have confidence in your ability.

#writing community #writeblr #writing advice #writing tips #anon #ask #Mimzy answers an ask #dear god I hope this helped #Anonymous

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buyapprovedadwordsaccounts-blog · 4 years

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How you can Set up Your Google AdWords Account?

google ads account for sale

While you could or not know, Google AdWords is currently certainly one of the quickest rising promotion formats that you will come across. Irrespective of whether your a small nearby enterprise or even a earth trader, You are just ways away from building a huge amount of visitors to your internet site. First of all, let me just swiftly make clear what Google AdWords is - for people of you that do not know.

google ads account for sale

AdWords is Googles model of an advertising campaign. Essentially set, Google is allowing for you to definitely promote on their own site. This implies that you will have access to several of the multi many site visitors that happen to be looking on Google with a each day foundation. Which could indicate thousand of hits to your website.

Why Google AdWords?

Certainly one of the principle rationale that Google AdWords is so common is very simply the way it is structured. In place of conventional advertising and marketing, where you fork out for your personal advert no matter what. Google AdWords permits you to ONLY Pay back every time a visitor clicks on the advertisement and involves your web site. This is actually the exact same as your advertising and marketing journal only charging you each time a reader gets in contact along with you. This can be pretty powerful things. It is actually know as Pay out For each Click Promotion.

How you can Established up Your Google AdWords Account.

Ok, Very first of all you need to go to Google internet site. The moment you have loaded the display, glance for just a button that claims - Enroll Now or Check out AdWords Now. As soon as clicked you will be taken to some page that asks you regardless of whether you would like to established up a 'Starter Edition' or possibly a 'Standard Edition', I personally haven't utilised the Starter Version. Mainly, the Starter Edition is just for complete novices. You have got to upgrade on the Typical Edition sooner or afterwards, so why not sign up now. I'm going to get you thru the Normal Version signup.

At the time within, you'll be requested to pick out your language, this will decide the language on the textual content that you'll be reading. Then you is going to be prompted to settle on your target site. This area goes to depend on your enterprise. Lets split these down.

Nations around the world and territories

- Your ads will surface for lookups created anywhere inside the selected places.

Locations and metropolitan areas

- Your adverts will show up for queries manufactured from the locations and cities you end up picking. (Not out there in all areas.)

Customised

- Your adverts will surface for searches designed in just a unique distance from the small business or other site you end up picking.

So, except if you desire to target your, you'll pick Nations around the world & territories. Other wise, decide on an option that will only show your ad in targeted area. I normally select Nations & territories as this may get me the most amount of explosure.

The following web page will ask you which nations you desire your advertisement to show up in. This is quite important, as it allows you to chose which targeted countries you desire to promote to. For most of my products, I always pick - UK, America, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. You can find which ever countries are best suited to you. Simple high light the country that you simply want, simply click the 'Add' button. As soon as you may have selected all of your nations around the world, basically click on 'Continue'.

Writing Your Advert:

Okay, now we start getting into the heart on the campaign, we can start writing our ads. This part is so easy to do, yet is has among the biggest impacts in your marketing campaign. Do this right, and you are going to gain massive rewards, Do this wrong, and it will cost you dig time!

Headline:

Make you headline stand out from the other adds. It must get the readers attention.

Description Line 1:

This line normally works best as a benefit line. What are the benefits of your products or service?

Description Line 2:

Create a sense of urgency! this should be a call to action line. Get them to click on onto your advert.

Display URL:

This is the URL of your web site. How ever, you do not ought to add the www. And you can also add capitalization to your first letter of each word.

EXAMPLE:

http://www.sample.com - can become - Sample.com

Destination URL:

This is actually the full URL of your website address.

EXAMPLE:

http://www.sample.com

Adding Your Keywords:

Your Keywords are the word which you want your ad to on show up when typed in. So, for example: If I am promoting a free ebook give away, then I would want to bid on Keyphrase such as:

- eBook

- Free eBook Giveaway

- E- Book

- E book

When you can see, I'm bidding on different variation of your similar word. That is because, you you should not know exactly what a user is going to type in towards the search engines. There four, you wish to cover all related keywords.

This site also offer you a chance to find more keywords. Merely type your most important key phrase into the 'Want More' text field, click search and hey presto, You might have a new list of keyphrase that you just can use. Your keyphrase should be targeted for your product or service.

Choosing Your Price:

One last part to entire then were done. There are three sections to this area, each of which are all based around the amount and currency of your advertising and marketing.

Decide on a currency:

That is straight forward - only find the currency of your country from the drop down menu.

Average Spend a day:

How much would you like to spend on a every day basis? I always established this to �1,000. Will not worry, you can in no way spend this much. But by setting a high daily spend, it will ensure that your advertisement is show by means of out the day. You then control the cost via the keyword bid amount.

Keyword Bid Amount:

Find how much you need to shell out. Essentially, what may be the maximum that you just need to shell out for a person click? This amount should be worked out based on the profit margins. The more profit that you have, the more you can afford to pay. However, a good starting point for most people is between �0.50 & �1.00. This however, will decrease if you can create a high Click on By Rate in your AdGroups. Check out my resource box below for more on CTR, and the way to master your marketing campaign.

Well Done!

Thats it, the next step just asks you to definitely confirm your details, then give your account information over. Remember, you may be charged �5.00 to set you account, so have your credit card ready.

Good Luck! :-)

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theouterdark · 5 years

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Tag: 3 Goals for 2020

Thanks for the tag, @zmlorenz. Your goals are admirable, I hope you find them done by the time we loop around the sun again.

Rules: Write three goals for 2020 and then tag 10 people.

1. Treat my writing like it’s my job, starting with finishing the first draft of Topiary Black. I finished the first draft of The Devil from the Outer Dark in 2018, then a few weeks later, finished the first draft of Coldwater Sound. Then in 2019, I sat on my hands while trying to pat myself on the back. Didn’t work. Also, turns out you need your hands to write new things. 2020 is something of a fresh start for me, and I want to start taking my future a little more seriously. Starting tomorrow. NaNo opened my eyes to new things regarding Topiary Black, and I’m excited to give it the attention it deserves.

2. Finish the final draft of Coldwater Sound and The Devil from the Outer Dark. I’ve sunk a lot of time into these novels. I’m stalling on Coldwater Sound for two reasons. First, and most annoyingly, I’m torn between two different versions of the story. One is a polished version of the current draft, and the other would be a total rewrite, and I don’t know if I have the hear to butcher it. The worst part is that I like both ideas, and I’ve been sitting on this project like I’m waiting for someone else to tell me what to do. Someone tell me what to do. Second, I know the step after that is seeking representation, and that terrifies me. The Devil from the Outer Dark just needs readers before I’m ready to edit. Any volunteers?

3. Receive 100 rejections for Coldwater Sound. Either I succeed and move on to other pursuits, or I fail and someone wants to sell it. A lot of work for either, it seems. A more modest version of this goal would be to actually send a query letter to an agent, maybe let's just go with that.

Tagging: @dotr-rose-love, @sassypandacandy, @els-writes, @midnightstreetwanderings, and @wolvesofarcadia.

What are your goals, everyone?

#tag game #goals #2020goals #writeblr #3 goals #dylan speaks #coldwater sound #the devil from the outer dark #topiary black

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ysalamiri-queen · 5 years

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More Than Just a Treat

It’s late but... I had an idea.

Luke and Beru bake cookies for Obi Wan: A Star Wars Story.

Up on AO3 by JessKo HERE.

Beru Lars had many talents, one of which that earned her the most praise being her skills in the kitchen. Seemingly a lifetime ago, she had wanted to open her own cafe, but life had other plans for her, and that was alright.

One of her favorite customers, however, was one who never gave feedback aside from an empty tray, not a single crumb remaining. This she considered the highest praise. So, every now and then, when testing a new recipe or simply baking more muffins than she knew Owen and her young adopted son Luke could eat, she loaded a platter with food and sent it out in the arms of a rusted old astromech droid.

Traveling across great expanses of uninhabited desert sand, it was a miracle the droid even returned at all. Yet Beru knew it was worth the risk of loss, especially to the recipient. She was not sure why he stuck around on Tatooine, but was surely not in a position to judge, also carving out a living in this place.

Later that evening, a low hum prompted Luke to burst from his place at the dinner table to the front door, snatching up the platter, once again empty.

“Look! All gone!” He announced, setting sunlight reflecting in youthful eyes.

Beru could only smile. “Yes, he must have been very hungry.”

Owen rolled his eyes. He wished Beru would just leave the old hermit be, but she’d not given him an inch on the topic, so he let it rest. If it made her happy, well, he supposed it was worth risking the rusted out droid.

Sitting back down to supper, Luke rolled and pushed his food around the plate. “You know…” he began, flashing Tooka-eyes up at his aunt.

She crossed her arms with a sly grin. “What?”

“Next time, maybe I can help deliver the plate with TeeNine?” Luke asked quickly, as if his aunt would say yes on merit of not understanding the query.

But, Beru was far sharper than that. “No way, kid. But I tell you what. I just got some fresh eggs that we can use to bake cookies. Want to help decorate?”

A short lived pout upturned into a smile. “Yeah! We can make a bantha, and a landspeeder, and sandcrawler…” Luke began listing ideas for cookies at a mile a minute, and the adults took the time to quickly finish their meals and contentedly nod along.

Obi Wan heard a familiar knock at his door. Or rather, a familiar banging of metal against wood. Owen ought to give this little droid a tune up, poor thing barely has any sense of depth anymore, rolling right into its destination, he thought to himself as he admitted the visitor.

Greeting Obi Wan with a generic binary buzz, the droid thrust a covered plate into Obi Wan’s arms.

“Yes, yes. I will take this from you, little one.” Obi Wan said softly, uncovering the plate to see something a bit… unorthodox. Beru was, above all else, a perfectionist with her baking. Yet, here were three incredibly crude cookies, unevenly iced and hard to even decipher their shape. Setting them down on his table, Obi Wan returned the plate with a message of thanks he was sure the astromech would forget half way back to the Lars moisture farm.

After watching the droid roll away, Obi Wan turned back to the cookies. There were three, the first in the shape of a bantha but iced in bright purple with haphazard yellow squiggles. The second was a red and orange square with a grey blob set at the meeting of the colors. Perhaps it was a sandcrawler, Obi Wan considered. Then he reached the third cookie. A simple blue circle on which the letter ‘L’ had been emblazoned in green.

Of course. These were the work of a child. Of Luke. A decently large part of Obi Wan didn’t even want to eat these. But then again, it would be wasteful to just let them rot. By sundown, he’d eaten all but the third. The ‘L’ was shaky, but not nearly as so as the lines on the bantha and Obi Wan considered Beru’s steady hands wrapped over Luke’s much smaller pair, guiding him in forming the letter. The thought made him smile as he finally bit into the sweet treat.

Pulling her sweet bread loaves from the oven, Beru smiled, inhaling the pleasant aroma. Luke lingered nearby, setting his crayons aside to inspect his aunt’s latest creation.

“Looks great!” He commented with a clap. Beru set them on the counter to cool and ruffled his long, golden blonde hair. It was nearly time for a trim, or for her to give Luke some of her hair ties.

“Thank you, dear.” She said, kicking the oven door shut.

“Beru!” Owen called down from the front. “I need your help repairing number three!”

Beru sighed, knowing this could be an all afternoon affair. “Luke, while I’m helping your uncle, can you give one of these loaves to TeeNine?”

The young boy nodded vigorously, and Beru had confidence it would be done. Pulling a wide brimmed hat on, she joined her husband in attending to the shoddy evaporator.

Usually, Obi Wan did not quite know when one of Beru’s deliveries would arrive. But after the recent cookies, he was anticipating the next time TE-9 would come crashing over. However, today there was a warning, and not the kind he expected.

Luke was nearby, as well as a whole lot more life than the old Jedi was used to.

Straining to not curse under his breath, Obi Wan hesitantly hooked his lightsaber to his belt and rushed out. He would be sure to be unseen, but keep the young Skywalker from getting himself into a whole world of trouble.

“There you are!” Owen shouted out, running over to scoop Luke into his arms. “You had us scared half to death!”

Beru came next, kicking TE-9 with a scowl before peppering Luke’s face with kisses. “We thought the sand people might have taken you away! Don’t ever run off like that again!”

“I just wanted to see Old Ben!” Luke protested. “He never even gets to say thank you… Thought he might want to know who cooks for him.”

Owen and Beru exchanged a worried look. “What happened, Luke?” Beru then asked.

“He wasn’t even home!” Luke cried out, squirming until Owen placed him back on his feet. TE-9 blurted out a protest before barreling into the house, exclaiming none of this was his fault.

“Maybe he moved.” Owen said flatly.

It was several weeks before Beru finally broke down and let Luke convince her to make cookies for Old Ben. She wasn’t sure where he’d learned that name, maybe from the kids at Tosche Station, but it had stuck. On top of slightly improved versions of the cookies they made last time, Beru added a fourth. A diamond shape frosted pale blue with a brown ‘O’ iced on in Luke’s wiggly penmanship.

The young boy giggled. “O is for old!”

Beru did not correct him.

It was much later than usual that TE-9 returned, Luke taking a lot of coaxing before finally passing out mid exclamation on the couch that he should go searching for the droid. Rolling in much slower than usual, TE-9 dumped the plate of cookies, untouched, back into Beru’s arms before powering down.

No matter how much she and Owen tinkered with the thing, it would not restart.

“Must have been the Sand People.” Owen muttered.

“Owen, I think you’re right.” Beru replied solemnly. “Maybe he did finally leave.”

It had pained him to sabotage the droid, even more so to send back the sweets, but Obi Wan knew it had to be done. Last time was just too close a call, and his purpose here was to protect Luke. He’d get on fine without sweets, he tried to tell himself.

But it was not the sweets that had mattered to him.

It was the acknowledgement that he was alive.

#ysalamiri queen writes #obi wan kenobi #luke skywalker #beru whitesun #star wars

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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All of the info in that last reblog about writing a synopses is really useful and worth the read, but I wanted to echo what Raven said in her addition to it and add on a couple points of emphasis for querying writers to focus on when writing their initial query letters.

If you take away nothing else, based off of the almost unanimous agreement of every agent and every other author I’ve ever known or compared notes with in over a decade in and around the publishing industry, here are three of the most common mistakes querying writers make. If you even just avoid doing these three things, you can improve your chances of making it through an agent or editor’s slush pile IMMEASURABLY.

1) What Raven said, because this one is such, SUCH a biggie and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t done this at least once, or when starting out - DO NOT PLAY COY WITH YOUR ENDING. When querying agents or editors, forget about every impulse instilled by spoiler culture. You are not trying to tell them a story. You are trying to get them to represent your story or buy your story. They are not your audience, nor are they trying to be. They are industry professionals whose entire job is to be how writers GET in front of their actual audiences.

Most writers’ natural instinct is to leave a query or a synopsis on a cliffhanger in the hopes that an agent and editor will be intrigued enough they’ll request a partial read of your manuscript, or a full read. Don’t fall into the trap of viewing ‘getting an agent/editor to read my manuscript based off my query’ as your end goal. Its not. Your end goal is to get an agent/editor to buy or rep your manuscript. You have one shot to make a first impression. Its simply not in your best interests to hold back ANY cards. Put your best foot forward. Always. Always. Always. You do not have a guarantee of a chance at making a second impression, so there is literally no point in ‘saving your best for last.’ Plus, anyone can write a cliffhanger, pose questions that have someone interested in learning the answer. But that’s not a story, and its not a guarantee an author knows how to tell a full, complete story. A query letter is you pitching an agent or editor on your whole story, the beginning, middle AND end. They don’t want to see just your premise at a glance, they want and expect to see your premise and where its going, the point of it. Not just that you can set up an engaging conflict, but that you can resolve it too.

You want an agent or editor to enjoy reading your manuscript should you get it in front of them, obviously. Just be careful not to forget that doesn’t mean they’re reading manuscripts FOR enjoyment. Its their job. They’re looking for a work they can represent or sell, not just a satisfying read that they enjoy on a personal level. Tell them right there in your query letter just what exactly your story is and where it goes....THAT’S what gets them to request a full manuscript read. Not to satisfy their own curiosity and any questions your query brought up for them, so they can decide then if they even like the answers you crafted to those questions. But because the summation of your WHOLE novel already gave them the answers to those questions, they already decided they liked the sound of those answers, and now they want to read your whole manuscript so they can decide whether they also like how you take readers from Point A to Point B.

The quicker you can get an agent or editor any and all information they might need or want, the more you can pack into each step of the process and make the most of it, the fewer steps required for the agent/editor to get everything they need to make a decision on you - the better your chances.

2) Along related lines, another thing to be wary of is thinking that all of what I just said means more is better. Because this is another extremely common mistake so many authors make. Trying to cram everything possible into short query letters and synopses that can’t actually be expected to ever do the job of conveying EVERYTHING that you needed 90K words of actual story in order to convey in your actual manuscript.

No, all that will actually accomplish is to confuse agents/editors as to what in all of that they’re actually supposed to focus on as the most important, and usually just overwhelm them with minutiae that doesn’t actually contain any vital information so much as it just stands out as significant to you and thus you hope it’ll make an impression on them. Nine out of ten times it won’t, because the things that make it significant are the pages and scenes and chapters worth of context that lend those things weight.

Your query and/or synopses needs to be as streamlined as possible. Focus on essentials, and facts. Specific events in the story that advance the plot. What is your inciting conflict, what is your protag’s intended or proposed solution, what obstacles arise to get in the way of that, how do they adjust or compensate for that, how are things ultimately resolved. Bam, bam, bam. Rapid fire. Don’t waste time setting up your stakes and moving through that list, get to the point of each as quickly as possible. You don’t have a ton of room to waste in a query letter, be economical. You don’t need DETAILS. You don’t need an extensive breakdown of who, what, where, when, why and how for each step along the way. Boil your story down to its most significant highs and lows, and then boil each of those things down to their ultimate heart, the things that make those moments critical to the story.

If you’re having trouble packing everything into a query letter, you’ve condensed your story down as much as you possibly can and it still doesn’t seem to fit everything....stop. Take a step back. Look at the big picture: does your story simply have too many moving parts to boil it down any further while still containing the essential elements of each of those moving parts? This happens a lot with stories with ensemble casts or multi-POV novels. In situations like this, the best thing you can do is to aim for conveying the whole story...but through a more narrow focus. Pick ONE protag, even if you have five main characters and your novel cycles through each one of their POVs in alternating chapters. Make it clear in your query letter that it is in fact a multi-POV novel with five different main characters who are each equally crucial to the overall novel, with their own complete storylines with each having their own version of a beginning, middle and end to their personal stories-within-the-story....and then do every thing I just said above....but for just one of your main characters, and one only.

It might seem counter-intuitive, given that the point of the query letter is as I’ve said: to tell your whole story as concisely as possible and give an agent or editor all the information they need to decide whether or not it has all the ingredients/elements they’re looking for in a story, and now they want to see your full manuscript to see how well you combined all those things and used them to their best potential.

But here’s the thing - if each of your main characters is just as crucial to the story as the next, then each main character should in effect be a whole story unto themselves. Their beginning, middle and end might not give an agent/editor all the information or context needed to see how you resolved the entire conflict for the whole book, across all your multiple protagonists. BUT it will tell them everything they need in order to see how you resolved A story, that your plot has clear direction and where that is, that these individual characters’ arcs are equally essential to the big picture and where this one at least slots into that. This is essentially the cliffhanger version of querying, without ever actually resorting to using a cliffhanger.

Because here you’re using one focus as a sample of what they can expect for the others, selling them on this one character’s individual story as fully and thoroughly as you would sell them on your whole story were it a single POV, single protagonist story. And while its true that they’re only getting one fifth of the whole picture here, and they’ll need your whole manuscript in order to evaluate whether the other protagonists are just as essential to that big picture and you’re just as effective in telling their stories....you’re still giving them A complete picture, you’re showcasing your plotting and ability to craft a resolution as well as an inciting premise, etc.

They won’t be annoyed by an unnecessary cliffhanger here as you’re not teasing ‘if you want to know what happens next, you’ll just have to read the whole story.’ Rather, what you’ve actually provided them is ‘here’s what I did with one protag using this premise and faced with this conflict, and if you found that compelling enough on its own, my manuscript has four more protags with their own stories of comparative stakes, that I think are equally compelling.’

The bottom line here is even if your novel has multiple leads and follows several different characters and their POVs, any one of those characters and their personal journey needs to be able to hold a reader’s interest - otherwise it begs the question of whether that character’s POV is actually as crucial to telling a full complete story as you thought, and that’s something you might need to consider before moving forward. But as long as you affirm that each POV is equally worth telling, then any single one of them is in and of themselves an effective display of your ability to tell a complete and engaging story with a beginning, middle and end - which is exactly what an agent or editor is looking for in a query letter.

3) The third most common mistake - although perhaps not so much a mistake as just a lack - is the trickiest to address, and by that same token potentially the most important.

With all of the above having been said, its easy to see how many writers end up viewing their query letters as wholly set in the ‘professional’ side of writing-as-actual-job, and not at all in the ‘creative’ side. There’s a tendency upon whittling a story down to its bare essentials, to then basically ‘report’ those things in a query letter. Being dry and clinical about it, like a glorified series of bullet points. As easy it is to end up with something that’s more laundry list than story by the end of your query letter, that would be a mistake. Because an agent or editor needs the facts in your query letter, they need the bones, the framework, the aerial view of the big picture.....but there’s one last, equally fundamental element to every novel, and they need that in your query every bit as much.

That’s your voice.

The ‘know it when you see it’ part of a book, a narration, that turns a story into more than just a dry recitation of ‘then this happened and then this happened and this, and after that, Protag was very sad.’ The ‘I don’t know what’ that makes a story actually feel like a story, like whether its in 1st person POV or 3rd person POV, the reader isn’t just distantly viewing events with no emotional connection to them, but rather feels immersed in whatever the POV narrator is thinking and feeling, like they’re right there beside them or only a step removed from the action.

Voice is an extremely tricky thing to define, and even trickier to capture....and finding ways to instill it into your query letter itself, even with as little room as you have to work with, that’s easily the trickiest part of all. But that’s also what makes it arguably the single best indicator to an agent or editor that this writer is worth taking a closer look at, this is a story they need to read. And so the mere fact that so many query letters make the mistake of not even TRYING to include a sense of their main character’s voice while giving the agent/editor the facts of the story.....that’s why more than anything else probably, a lack of voice is what keeps 90% of query letters from ever advancing beyond the slush pile.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean write your query letter in the POV and voice of your main character. I’m pretty sure I’ve never met an agent or editor that didn’t find that gimmicky and annoying as hell - it definitely does happen, and they almost all give the same advice about it: Don’t.

It just means....don’t waste time in jumping right into the meat of your story in your query letter, in delivering all the essential facts....but try and write it in the same style you wrote your actual manuscript, make it a kind of preview of your novel’s stylistic voice and feel. Obviously pacing is a large part of what makes each voice distinct, and there’s simply no way the pacing of a query letter is ever going to be a reliable indicator of how your novel is paced and how that carries over into its voice, the rhythm and flow of your words and the rise and fall of action just page by page or in single scenes. But aside from pacing, to whatever degree you can possibly manage, try and carry as much of your novel’s voice as possible over into its query letter. Aim for being able to insert your query letter into the middle of your manuscript at the start of any random chapter, and see how jarring or not it is to read the end of the previous chapter and then segue straight into reading that query letter, see how seamless or not of a transition there is, how much the latter still ‘feels’ and ‘sounds’ like the chapter you just finished reading.

It’s much easier said than done, but when you can and do manage it, it really can make all the difference.

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tesbloodline · 5 years

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Interview #4 - Lucien Lachance

Here we go again. Bear in mind that the Lucien being interviewed is the murder ghost version from Skyrim, not the alive version from Oblivion. (Or the not-alive version from Oblivion, either, I guess, but that would be unreasonably difficult, so it’s never gonna happen.) I swear all of these were randomly generated, even question 3, it just happened to be amazingly fitting. Also he got super talkative near the end.

Warning: Lucien is a murder cultist. We have been over this. There is discussion/romanticization of death and murder.

1. What do you dislike in other people? (#8)

L: A great many things. Impatience. Foolishness. Intolerance. Ignorance. But above all, laziness - it is an endless source of frustration that many cannot be bothered to put in the work to reach their full potential.

2. What is your most impressive talent? (#100)

L: I suppose that depends on whom you ask. Some would say my stealth, others my skill with a blade, yet others my awareness of secrets that many would prefer stayed that way. According to T- to someone special, however, it is my ability to wear a cold smile when my heart is breaking and I would rather be crying.

3. What is your favorite fruit? (#119)

L: (smiles wistfully) When I was alive, I was always partial to apples. They are one of the few pleasures of mortal life that I miss to this day.

4. Do you believe in love at first sight? (#185)

L: I do not. Lust and infatuation, perhaps, but falling in love is like the birth of a river. It takes time and consistency to carve out a deep and meaningful connection, and there are no shortcuts. Nor, I have found, can you control which direction it flows or what turns it takes - only whether or not you will step off the bank and submerge yourself in the current.

5. How do you normally deal with confrontation? (#50)

L: I have found that a knife between one’s ribs in the dead of night will solve almost any issue, provided you do not care for the prolonged life of your opponent.

6. Have you ever gotten into a fight on the streets? (#35)

L: I daresay I have not! You converse with a former Speaker of the Black Hand - I have rather more finesse and cunning than that. I do not participate in street brawls, but slip in and out of private spaces in the cover of darkness to eliminate my prey.

7. Are you honest? (#138)

L: (amused) What questions you ask of me, child. Tell me, how would you know if I were to answer you untruthfully? Would you simply take my answer as truth, with no evidence to suggest one answer or another?

8. Do you follow rules? (#133)

L: Well now, that depends on the rule in question, and especially the matter of its source. For example, you are aware of my primary occupation, yes? Then you no doubt recognize that I break some rules every day, as most societies frown on pre-meditated murder. However, the rules of Sithis, the commands of the Night Mother - those I follow to the letter.

9. What is your biggest fear? What in general scares you? How do you act when you’re scared? (#228)

L: Hmm. That is quite a few questions at once. Let us answer them in order, shall we? For the first... my greatest fear has already come true. You see, I knew that so long as I was loyal, Sithis and the Night Mother would have no cause to revoke me, so why would I fear it? As such, my greatest fear was loss. I end lives every day - I am intimately acquainted with the fragility of mortals. And before my own death, I had already lost them all - my children, the closest to a father I ever had on Nirn, her... what was there to fear, after that? What more shall I mourn? My family are with me in the void, but she is beyond my reach, forever lost to me.

L: As to your second question, I am uncertain if fear is an accurate term, but let us say wary. Alarmed. Unsettled. The typical set of the stealth-inclined, I suppose; sudden sounds, discovery, the potential of capture and confinement. On a less generic note, I have always kept my dislike of heights well-hidden, but what more need have I of secrets? Finally, for your third question - a frightened or startled assassin is liable to respond with a weapon first and a query second, should you survive the first three seconds.

10. What would you change about yourself? (#92)

L: About myself?

(L trails into silence for several minutes. A myriad of emotion plays out across his face: contemplation, fondness, despair, grief, agony, misery, resignation. The haze lifts from his eyes.)

L: I suppose... if I could change anything, anything at all, I would not have been so slow to admit to myself that I loved her for more than her beauty. Even the name I gave her in my thoughts should have been indication - I called her my Tamriel, for she was my world. But I was wary of how strong the current ran; I was frightened, I suppose, of how deep a channel the river carved in so little time, and for a time I wondered if she would not cut through me in full and split me in two if I were to accept her and give her a full place in my heart. For so long, I clung stubbornly to the bank, denying that my love for her was more than simple lust; if I could change any one thing, I would let go of that bank at the first opportunity and surrender myself to her.

#the elder scrolls #oblivion #skyrim #bloodline!verse #interview #lucien lachance #character asks

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halliescofield-blog · 5 years

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theotherpages · 6 years

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Ethos has been Published!

Book 5 of The Republic of Dreams is now available in electronic form from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N1D3MWP

This is my personal favorite, of all the books I have written. The characters are as three-dimensional as I can make them, the plot twists were definitely fun to write, and even if you have read the later books in the series, this one will surprise you.

One of the things that surprised me was that this turned out to be a rather violent book. Nevertheless, the interwoven stories are true to their characters. This book can be read as a stand-alone, without any prior knowledge of the series.

From the Query Letter (and the Amazon book summary):

There would come a time when she would be considered the most dangerous woman in the world, and that is a part of this story, but all lives, and all stories must begin somewhere. This story, in turn, is part of a larger narrative, for one day she will meet Wisdom, and everything will change. Her story begins in Patra, a Greek shipping port, and one of so many cities that changed dramatically when the seas rose seventy years ago and sparked The Last War.

Her parents gave her three of the most valuable gifts any parent can give to a child: a sense of purpose, an appetite for learning, and unwavering self-confidence. When they were found dead after a protest against the owner of the local cement company, her entire world vanished overnight. She was devastated, but where other children would have been thrown into shock and depression, her life would follow a very different arc.

She vowed that they would have justice and methodically plotted revenge. “For you,” she whispered. Even at age nine, Admete Christidou was not a person to trifle with. The same brilliance and determination that made her an exceptional student also made her a fearless and formidable enemy – a fact that her first victim, the owner of the cement company, would never know. -------------------------------------- Set in the mid-22nd Century, Ethos tells the story of Admete Christidou, and how, with the help of a reformed alcoholic, a small bird, and Solon Metro - a statistics professor who is much more than he seems, she battles to silence a tyrant and inspire a nation. Her efforts become convolved with the Metro family, and she becomes part of the larger struggle that surrounds them - a surreal conflict between Life and Death that is epic in scale, with consequences that ripple across time, and across the planet.

Welcome to the Republic of Dreams, where unseen combatants wage a proxy war in a world that is equal parts science, history, metaphor and mystery. Ethos, book five in the series, unlocks the backstories of its intriguing characters. We learn their unspoken secrets and glimpse the hidden forces that cause their lives to collide in ever more unpredictable ways as the dangers that follow them escalate in scale and fury, until it becomes clear that the battles they are fighting, and the forces arrayed for and against them, transcend reality itself.

I’m currently working on the final draft of the print version of the book. For technical reasons, the print version is always harder to format, and the cover art is more complicated. Stay tuned.

--Steve

#the republic of dreams #the other pages #theotherpages.org #mettle #ethos #explorers #defender #myth #science #adventure #history #metaphor #mystery

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