New Author Advice: Joining Social Media

What's the Key?

This week, my friend Karen Cote' and I talked about what a new author should do to get started in social media. We feel there are several important places to start. Just who are we to give advice? I'm a multi-published author, founder of Marketing for Romance Writers and Romance Lives Forever (two active Yahoo groups with well over 1200 members each) and owner of nine blogs. Karen is the best selling author of Erotic Deception, creator of a unique talking website, a Twitter maven with over 5k followers, and the Promotions Director for Marketing for Romance Writers.

We recommend that before you jump in and start joining social media everywhere, you take time to read MFRW member Cassandra Carr's guides for Twitter (there are two). You can download them on our resources page. http://marketingforromancewriters.org/resources.htm

Then, do the following things to begin your journey.

To me, the top thing to do is join Marketing for Romance Writers and stay actively involved. After that, start here:

1. Make a Facebook page, and start friending the members of MFRW Authors https://www.facebook.com/groups/mfrwauthors/

2. Get a Twitter account and follow people who use these hashtags: #mywana #mfrworg #amreading That will make more sense after you read the Twitter guides.

3. Create an Amazon Author page https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help

4. Blog at least three times a week. Use Networked Blogs to gain readers, plus, when you post a blog, it will automatically feed to Facebook, saving you time. You can pull your blog post automatically into Goodreads, and other sites as well.

5. Join Goodreads, post your books on your page, and link your blog. http://www.goodreads.com/author/how_to

6. Shelfari is a good spot.  http://www.shelfari.com/help

7. Get social by joining WANA Tribe http://wanatribe.com/  (we are not alone - authors helping authors)

Marketing for Romance Writers

Above all, be open to learning new things. Take them one at a time, and don't try to do everything at once. Have a daily schedule. I start my day by checking email, then check my Facebook account, Twitter page, and jump over to my blog, and then stop by my other accounts. I repeat that round of visits during the day. Sometimes, depending on what else needs to be done, I'll do it again in the evening. We need time for writing, a social life, and family. Social media is important, but if you don't have a new book -- what good is it?

Remember, balance doesn't mean that everything is stable. It means you are always in motion, making the fine adjustments to keep your career and life on track.

When you decided to take the plunge and join a social media site, which one was it? Why that one? Would you recommend it to a newbie?

MORE ABOUT MFRW

Group site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarketingForRomanceWriters/
Facebook https://facebook.com/groups/mfrwauthors/
Twitter https://twitter.com/MFRW_ORG
Newsletter http://issuu.com/MFRW

eZine http://is.gd/mfrwpaperli
Website http://marketingforromancewriters.org

MFRW Summer Camp on BlogTalk Radio

MFRW Promotions Director Karen Cote' shared the Marketing for Romance Writers Summer Camp program on "The Best People We Know" radio program. Deb Scott's show is inspirational and features people who write and market their work. You can enjoy the show in its entirety by clicking below. I was invited to take part as well. I hope you'll give this a listen.

Drop by the site and see other programs Deb has to offer.

Listen to internet radio with Best People We Know on Blog Talk Radio

Focus: An Important Element of Storytelling

Books by Julie Eberhart Painter.

Focus: An Important Element of Storytelling

By Julie Eberhart Painter

Of all the skills I've learned in this last quarter of century’s worth of concentrated writing, it's that three elements are key to a successful piece of writing: point of view, story and focus.

POV is a learned skill. There are many articles around to guide writers through that tunnel. And story tells itself providing we stay true to it and the POV characters living it. The easiest way to accomplish this is to put the POV camera on the shoulder of the character with the most to lose and let that character see and react to the story unfolding.

A Slippery Issue...

Focus is a slippery issue, easily lost when we are distracted by a cute joke or a sidebar kind of addendum. The “let's include this,” mindset will not get a story past the first editor. I find flash fiction, a good place to put those distracting asides.

But truly focusing, “Now there’s the rub.” With focus the writer must stay on point. Characters must speak as themselves, act in their own style and have a clear voice—so clear that very few dialogue tags are needed. The characters must dress and look like the person the writer is portraying. (No tart clothes on a nun.)

Some bit players will not be thoroughly described. The days of a person entering the room, followed by a full bio and inventory of their appearance are gone. Minimalism is in. Get to the point. Elmore Leonard says he leaves out the parts people skip over. That might be extreme, but it's a good measuring stick to apply when you get verbiage in your wordage.

When choosing a way to tell any story, it must come from the most visceral place, the heart of the character. 

Characters...

Focus on how this character is acting and what part of the back story must be included. For instance might he have just gotten out of jail? Is she not wearing a wedding ring but obviously expecting? There might be a physical disability that can only be caused by the back story itself.

How we chose to tell the story means everything. Over all, whose story is it? That will determine the point of view and focus; and what method are you going to use to bring this story from your inner being to haunt your readers.

If all else fails, keep your focus by taking that distracting little gem you're just dying to use and make it the focus of a short-short or flash fiction story.

Application...

Applying the disciplined pen to the focus of your piece will get your readers laughing in the right places and crying as you might have when you first wrote the scene. Weed out the extraneous details cluttering the point of the story. And, never forget writer Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried saying, “When you come to the end stop!”

Julie Eberhart Painter is the Champagne Books author of Mortal Coil, Tangled Web, and CTRR award-winning Kill Fee, also recipient of Champagne’s Best Book for 2011 Award. Web site at www.books-jepainter.com Check out http://bewilderingstories.com to read Julie's latest flash fiction stories and articles and stories in Cocktails, Fiction and Gossip Magazine, an online slick.