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Emmi Lawrence

~ MM Fantasy Romance Writer

Emmi  Lawrence

Tag Archives: audience

Coffee & Conversation: What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

22 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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Tags

answer, audience, author, FAQ, Novel, publishing, publishing industry, question, reader, Writing

What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

Last week I chatted about a couple of the more obvious, oft-talked about difficulties that writers have in the industry. This week I want to talk about some of the more hidden, possibly insidious difficulties that writers face.

1) Reader Retention

Reader here can reference anyone from general audience to editors and publishers to even agents.

Most people write on the side rather than as a full-time gig because of spotty payment, lack of health insurance, and inability to pay bills on that level of income. This means that writing can often take a secondary or even backseat to other priorities, which can lead to a less consistent output than in other industries. Couple this with the difficulty in actually selling stories, first to agents or editors, and then to readers, there can be some lengths of time between publications. (Both of which I talked about last week.)

One of indirect results is that readers will forget you. They’ll forget your name, forget the stories, the way those stories made them feel, etc. Editors/publishing houses will then take that into consideration when deciding to buy the next book, because why buy a book that might not make as much as someone else’s?

Example: one author I know of had started a well-selling series, but then had some life difficulties. 11 years later, he tried to sell the next book in the series to the same publisher, who turned him down because of that giant gap in time would lead to less readers.

Now, most authors don’t wait 11 years to write the next book, thus that is a more extreme example. However, in publishing, despite how slow they seem, there’s a high expectation of constant and quick publications. If you’re not publishing at least 1 book a year in traditional publishing, you’re too slow. If you’re not publishing every 3-4 months as an indie author, you’re too slow. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What was your biggest “Ah-ha!” moment?

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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Tags

answers, audience, FAQ, hooking, learning, prose, questions, readers, reading, Writing

I’m going to think about this question as pertaining to my writing journey because I think we all have plenty of Ah-ha! moments in our lives that it would be difficult to talk about just one in particular as being the biggest.

When I first sat down to get serious about my writing, I made all the mistakes every newbie makes: no understanding of point-of-view, lack of consistency in tense, white-walling, stilted dialogue, as-you-know situations, purposeless prose, rambling scenes, tangents galore, zero conflict/tension, inability to differentiate character voices, etc., etc.,

Some of these mistakes are naturally solved merely by the writing of the stories. For instance, you cringe when you read your dialogue out loud, you can’t imagine the world when reading back the scene, your head-hopping becomes confusing even to yourself. However, one problem in particular kept eluding me because I couldn’t understand it: Hooking.

A hook, like in fishing, is that barbed piece that claws into the reader and doesn’t let go. It makes sure the reader turns the page, scrolls down, doesn’t get distracted. And for a long time I thought ‘hook’ was synonymous with ‘interesting.’

You might be thinking, “but shouldn’t a hook be interesting? Wouldn’t I want the story I’m about to read be interesting? Why wouldn’t I keep reading if the story isn’t interesting?” And those are all the questions that I harbored that made me continue to not comprehend hooking for an obscene amount of time. Continue reading →

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CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

A serialized novel begun Jan 29th 2020. Here you can find links to the beginning and the most recent additions.

I: Prologue
II: Present
III: Yesteryears
IV: Yesteryears
V: Present

……….

L: Present
LI: Yesteryears
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LIV: Yesteryears

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  • Canvas Blues – XCV: Present
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  • Coffee & Conversation: How to keep your plots/stories from being repetitive?
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  • Canvas Blues – XCII: Present

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