Only a purple cow

I recently listened to an excellent presentation on idea diffusion given by the American entrepreneur Seth Godin.  In it, Godin asserts that mass marketing is dead and, as he puts it, if you continue to attempt to market average ideas to average people then you are unlikely to achieve the success you crave.
 
He espouses the notion that promoting ideas, products, music or books to the broad, average middle of society will see your work lose beneath the tidal wave of marketing information, opportunities and choices most of which none of these people want and will ignore. It’s hard to argue with him.
 
Most tellingly, though, Godin says producing something merely very good may no longer be enough. The challenge for all of us is to produce something remarkable, not only in its quality but also in its literal meaning, worthy of remark. He likens it to driving past a cow on a roadside. Everyone, he says, will pay little attention to the cow because we all know what a cow looks like. But if the cow was purple - now that would be worthy of remark. The key is to make our work stand out and to identify groups of people, however niche, who will share a passion for what we are saying, selling or writing, enough to not only try it for themselves but also to spread the word to those they know.
 
As writers, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. It is difficult to be remarkable in an industry that wants you, for sound and obvious reasons, to conform to certain genres. But how to be remarkable in an over-crowded genre like crime? Aren't you far more likely, however competent your work to just become wallpaper in a genre like that? Perhaps that's why I keep on being told to write fantasy or erotica - not that I know anything about either!
 
Taking Godin's thoughts on board, I am convinced that the starting point must still be the quality of the writing, the depth of the plot and the quality of the characters. Thereafter it must be about identifying and finding a community of people who may be interested in enough in what has been written. I need to create a piece that is sufficiently mainstream that it is not too much of a challenge for people to consider, but stand-out enough to be worthy of remark. More importantly, Godin assets, once you have found your community, don’t bother targeting those who aren’t going to be advocates. Then I just have to hope that my community feels passionate enough to become ambassadors for my work. For this to happen, there has to be something in it for them - not financially, but emotionally. It has to be work that holds a mirror up to their world and the world of those with whom they interact.
Godin's right. For an author who isn't or isn't yet well known, chasing the mainstream may be a fool's game. Better to build our own communities so that our work can be discovered and enjoyed and the word spread organically or, at best, virally. Well, a boy can hope!
 
To see if you want to be in my community you can read my new short story, "A Time To Mourn & A Time To Dance" for just £1 by clicking here http://amzn.to/16gOODN or $1.50 by clicking here http://amzn.to/Zihh55 . All author's download royalties are being donated to cancer charities.

Alternatively, you could treat yourself to my first novel "The Bitterest Pill" for download by clicking here or in paperback by clicking here http://amzn.to/10pdWjp .

If you want to hear Seth Godin for yourself, click here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIVlM435Zg
 
And finally you can find me on Twitter @howardprobinson, on Pinterest and online at www.howard-robinson.com

The best characters, like their creators, are flawed

What do we strive to achieve when we write? Some may want to convey excitement, others tension, others emotion. The key to getting those right, I suggest, is plausibility. And that means creating characters that are flawed; not in a black and white, cartoon kind of manner but in the shades of grey that mark out us all.

Character development for me is usually done on the train. I will go into a journey with one particular character and their broad involvement with the plot in my mind. I will know their gender, their approximate age and their general build, whether they are short or tall, athletic or stocky, clean shaven or bearded. And then I will look for somebody on the carriage who comes close to my mental picture. Once I've found them, the task is then all about creating their personality. This can be from the mundane but important -what newspaper they read, what car they might drive, what music they are listening to on their iPod - to more specific information: what is going through their mind? What is exciting them at the moment? What is worrying them? Where are the tensions in their relationships? What happens when they get home in the evening and they shut their door on the world? And how might these factors influence the way they react to a given set of circumstances. By now I'm beginning to feel as if I know them. I will know in my mind how they will take their coffee, what snack they will grab on their way into work and, most importantly, how they might react to the circumstances in which I intend to place them. There may be specifics relevant to the plot - their politics or issues in their private life - that also need to be explored, though the extent of these will differ from character to character.

Building this picture is essential for me; it's the only way I have found that works for me. It helps me develop characters I believe  are as recognisable as anyone you might come across in your everyday life. It's the only way i have found to create characters that hold up a mirror to the readers' own lives. Nobody is wholly good and nobody wholly evil. Nobody is totally devoid of emotion or untouched by fear or regret. Revealing these frailties, slowly and subtly, is what makes both their character and the situation in which they are operating things with which most readers should be able to identify.

Ultimately, of course, the proof is in the reading. Other writers will work in different ways and I'm always looking for new directions in which to travel. But next time you find yourself reading a book and then looking at your fellow commuters in the context of its characters, spare a thought for how well the author has done his job.

To read the first few chapters of my new book "Micah Seven Five" click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/123464996/Micah-Seven-Five

Creating audience participation in the writing process

There's nothing better than happening upon a novel that so thoroughly absorbs you that you feel part and parcel of the world that the writer has created. Not only do you empthasise with the characters he has created but your senses work overtime as you can almost see, smell, touch, hear and even taste the environment which they inhabit.

How more involving would it be if you, as the putative reader, could have input into the lives of those characters at an earlier stage in their development; a chance to work with the writer to shape the way they act and feel. Of course, writing will always be a largely solitary process and the plot and characterisation could not become the work of a committee, but if a writer is able to involve his readers at an earlier stage then the ability to create a community for his work could become a real possibility as well as delivering a finished piece that already tapped into the interests of a reading group.

I have just pressed the button on a crowd funding project for the publication of my new novel, Micah Seven Five. The process intrigues me; not just for the obvious reason of helping to support the costs of bringing the novel to publication and, therefore, a wider audience but because, hopefully, it will make anyone who becomes involved feel they have a sense of stake in its success. But there's more to it than that. My hope is that anyone interested enough to pledge to this project could form part of a community to feed into and feedback on future projects. I don't anticipate a stage where we have "writing on demand" - where the community suggests plot ideas and I merely get on with them because as a writer there needs to be an emotional attachment to the subject if the end piece is going to be authentic. But there has to be a way of utilising this digital world to bring writer and reader closer together. 

If you would like to take a look at the crowd funding page for my new novel, click here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2051400933/micah-seven-five-a-new-novel

Let the reader be the arbiter of quality

Most writers, if the truth be told, continue to pursue acceptance of their work by the world's literary agents because being published in the traditional way continues to infer some suggestion of quality and legitimacy upon the work. The reality, of course, having read as many disappointing books as I have inspiring ones - all published conventionally- is that there is little that guarantees quality purely because of the way the novel has been brought to market.

Indeed so diverse are our collective tastes for art, culture, music and literature, it is an odd notion that we should leave those decisions in the hands of a comparative few, albeit very well qualified individuals, around the world. Not only that, it stifles creativity which, by any measure, we should be encouraging to flourish. As many an agent's email or letter has said to me, their decisions are subjective. This being the case, surely the only arbiter of quality must be the reader and our work, as writers, should live or die according to how well we please, thrill, amuse, inspire or otherwise engage our readers.

Terri Giuliani recently wrote a really interesting piece in The Huffington Post on the explosion in self-publishing and the rise of the ebook, sales of which most expect to overtake the printed form this year. She speaks, rightly, of how self publishing has come of age,of how independent authors take more seriously their responsibility to deliver work of a certain standard and quality. She speaks also of how the infrastructure of the self-publishing sector has developed at a faster pace than traditional publishing and threatens its position of hegemony. In what is becoming in all aspects of life a rapidly changing, digitally-led world, the notion of working through the agent process, the majority of whom still won't accept submissions by email, suggests that publishing could go the way of roll-film cameras that didn't see, or didn't want to see, the advent of digital cameras staring them in the face. Too many authors have now established themselves through the independent sector to believe that its rise will continue to be relentless. 

Traditional publishing needs to find a way of embracing and encouraging the many very talented independent authors across many many genres if it is to remain relevant. As soon as the marketing infrastructure available to independent authors has greater reach and becomes more accessible, it will be difficult to see the appeal of the traditional route.

And to those who would argue that the market would be flooded with sub-standard work, I say this: at the end of the day, the reader will be the arbiter of quality. If we produce work that appeals and entertains and deserves to be read - however it has been published - it will be so, and if it doesn't then the market will quickly find it out and it will fade quietly away. All we need is for the stigma of self publishing - which is propagated by a minority in the conventional sector seeking to preserve a vested interest and retain a sense of superiority - to be lifted and the opportunities open to both writers and readers would be truly transformed.

'Tis the season to buy a book

It’s that time of year again. You start with a list of people and you try to come up with an imaginative gift for each; something that they’ll really cherish and enjoy rather than stick in the back of the cupboard or worse put straight onto Ebay on Christmas afternoon.

And yet books are so old fashioned, aren’t they?  How can books possibly compete with the sexiness of a games console or some other representative of the consumer tech explosion; how, in this day and age, can a book be a gift that somebody will be genuinely happy to receive?

It’s simple. Few other gifts have such a breadth of subjects and genres that enable you to match them so precisely to the person you are buying for, especially when you can look across everything from fiction to non-fiction, biography and autobiography, instructive and even self-help. It is the gift that says more than any other that you have really thought about the person you are buying for and have matched their personalities and interest to the gift you have bought.

Books can fire the imagination like little else. They are the gift that can transport you away from your everyday woes and into a world where anything is possible; a gift that can be so life-affirming that they can make you feel better about yourself and those around you; a gift that can challenge or inspire, entertain or inform, and in the case of Fifty Shades of Grey, do all sorts of other things for you as well.

But a book is also the gift that can bind you to the recipient. Years from now, the message you leave inside the cover will inspire memories of your relationship, perhaps even after you have gone. It is a gift that you may read only once or many times. But few of us could bring ourselves to discard a book given to us with thought and care by somebody whose friendship and love we value. And those of us that write would give anything to know that the words we commit to paper have contributed to any of this for just one person.

So whatever is your genre of choice – whether it’s Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals, Rod Stewart’s autobiography or groundbreaking literature like Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies – the pleasure you will be giving will be far less transient than many other gifts options that may have strayed onto your list.

The other point, of course, is they’re the easiest thing in the world to wrap!

What does it take to be a great storyteller?

I have a theory that I first applied to music some years ago. And that is there are only two types of music – good and bad. It doesn’t matter if it is rock, pop, soul or classical, there is good and bad in every genre. The same is true of fiction. No one genre is better than another; what we must look for and strive to achieve is not only good writing but also great storytelling. 

From talking to people who read as well as write, I have been looking at the traits that make up the most effective storytellers. These are the people who write with energy, who create light and shade in their writing, who surprise themselves as well as the reader and avoid the perils of monotony.

Great storytellers remember that, whether it is the writer’s desire to provoke, shock, amuse or scare, he must also entertain. They must have fun with their readers as they carry them through the story; with them, not at their expense.

The great storytellers are emotive in their writing. They pose questions for us as readers to ponder, they create characters and scenarios with which their readers will identify and care about, and are engaging enough to draw their readers into the story and the worlds which they create. They make us hang on their every word. They build suspense as they write; are consistently unpredictable in the ways in which their stories unfold, and they reflect the way life is as well as we might wish it to be. After all, how predictable is every twist and turn in life?

“To Kill A Mockingbird” is a classic example; it addresses important issues but carries us with it because we care about the injustice being served on Tom Robinson and we invest emotionally in Finch’s morality and determination to provide him with a defence against the odds. It is written with sensitivity, humour and with warmth; it entertains yet it also asks questions our priorities and values. It is as relevant today as it was when it was written. It is a pattern that was used to equally great effect more recently in John Boyne’s “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas”. Another story of global proportions personified in the simplistic eyes of two small boys, we begin to sense what may be about to happen to both characters. Yet what reader cannot sense the heartbreak rising within them for both Bruno and Shmuel as the story’s denouement leaves them both as victims.

Of course, knowing this is no guarantee of being able to carry it off. As writers all we can do is strive to do our best; to write with honesty and with humanity and, of course, the most beautiful aspect of it all, is that only our readers can ever say whether we have achieved it or not.

You don’t have to be mad to be a writer, but maybe it helps!

A study published this week by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden reported that creativity is often part of a mental illness and that writers are particularly susceptible. Apparently, those of us who write are at higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, depression and even substance abuse. We are almost twice as likely as the general population to kill ourselves.  Sobering but unsurprising stuff.

Indeed there are ample examples from our literary past to support this. Virginia Woolf, Hans Christian Andersen, Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene all suffered from mental illness, though whether, if you take the universe of writers as opposed to a few well known examples, the premise stands up remains open to question.

But if the findings are correct, why should that be? What is it in the make-up of a writer that makes them prone to mental illness or, to be more accurate, what is it in the make-up of a depressive that makes them likely to be a good writer?  Certainly we can all identify with the moment when we convince ourselves that everything we have written is terrible and that we’re not really good enough to be a writer at all. Self-doubt and writing go hand in hand.

Perhaps it is because writers need to see the world from a different point of view. They need to take themselves out of the mix and view the world from a separate place. Maybe it’s not in the writer’s nature to take every incident, relationship or new person at face value but to turn our inquisitive minds instead to where each fits in to the patchwork of life. It’s the writer’s pre-occupation to see whatever happens to them or around them as the potential starting point of a new story. It’s the writer’s pre-occupation to be more aware of human frailties and human mortality in setting our behaviours and our values in context. And for awareness of human frailties and mortality, you can read awareness of our own individual frailties and mortality. This means we ask ourselves the challenging, difficult questions of life that we want our characters to confront and answer, which in turn means we must confront and answer them for ourselves. And it is this that can make us prone to introspection and depression.

How many of us have found the things we say or feel being out of kilter with the views of our friends? Perhaps our thought processes are genuinely different. I remember observing that if this was essentially as good as life was going to get and then we die, why not cut to the chase sooner and kill yourself? To me this was a legitimate question. Why put up with the crap that life throws at you and struggle when you can just go straight to the end game? I was genuinely shocked how many people found this a shocking question to even ask, let alone a shocking position to adopt. I still am.

Writing instead can become an escape from this depression. Writers can create the world and the characters that help them work through the self-doubt, to find the answers that our inner voice or inner critic poses of us and, as Edgar Allen Poe famously said, use our ability to write as a “desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”