Time to Write

Readers, does Lance Armstrong owe you money?

Two readers in California are suing Lance Armstrong and his publishers on the basis that representing his memoirs as true and honest constituted false advertising. This could become a class action suit that would result in compensation for anybody who bought the two books in question (“It’s Not About the Bike,” and “Every Second Counts”).

As the  Writer Beware blog points out, similar lawsuits have had varied outcomes.

A suit against Greg Mortenson, who has been accused of serious misrepresentations in “Three Cups of Tea,” was dismissed. Sadly, David Oliver Relin, his co-author,  committed in November of last year. His lawyer said that the lawsuit had a negative effect on his livelihood as an author.

Random House and James Frey, whose memoir “A Million Little Pieces” turned out to contain some fictional little pieces, settled out of court.

Hyperion gave readers of the five “Beardstown Ladies’ Common-Sense Investment Guides” their choice of a free Hyperion book after it was shown that the rate of return of the Ladies’ investments was misrepresented.

It seems to me that it’s only in the latter case that there was a basis for a legal complaint, given that readers might have made investments based on their belief that the Ladies’ rate of return was higher than it was. If they had a big loss as a result, a free book wasn't much of a consolation.

For the others, including Armstrong, while it may be disappointing to find out that someone you trusted lied to you, isn’t that part of life? If such lawsuits are allowed, let’s start with the false claims and promises candidates make when they run for office. That would really keep the courts busy.

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Scared of your tech devices? Me, too, but here's a tip.

I have a love-hate relationship with all the tech devices that surround us these days. I love that they make a lot of writing-related tasks much easier, I hate how sometimes it’s obvious they're smarter than I am and have managed to make me their slave.

One time I hate them is when something goes wrong and I have to try to find an instruction manual (remember when these used to come with the thing you bought?). Often you can find them on the web, but if the device is older it can be a challenge.

That’s why I love this advice from the newsletter of Steve Robbins, the Get-It-Done Guy:

• Create a folder on your computer that you call “Tech Devices” or “Equipment” or another name you’ll remember.
• When you buy a new electronic device (I think these days this includes toasters), create a sub-folder, the title of which is the name of the device and the date you bought it.
• Go to the web site of the manufacturer and download any manuals, warranties, etc.
• Jot down the serial number on your receipt and scan it and put the scan in the folder. 
• You’ll still want to keep the physical receipt so also create a physical file with the same name.

I know this sounds like a lot of work and maybe you won’t want to do it for a very cheap appliance. But when the equipment in question is a computer or printer or anything else expensive and important for your work, it’s definitely a good idea.

You can find lots of tips for managing your life better at Steve Robbins’ website: http://getitdone.quickanddirtytips.com

(There are also many useful methods for getting more done in my aptly-named book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

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How to get organized: seven steps writers and others can use to reach goals

Do you get distracted while writing? Try this!

I had a real Homer Simpson “d'oh!” moment relating to writing and time management the other day. You may already be using the method I’m about to describe, to stay focused when you’re doing your administrative or writing tasks, but just in case you’re not, here’s the deal:

When I’m working on a writing project and I have an idea for a different one I jot down those thoughts but don’t act on them. That allows me to keep focus on what I’m supposed to be doing, but also makes sure I don’t lose a possibly good idea.

When I’m going through emails or doing research and I come across something unrelated that could be useful, however, I often wander off track and discover many minutes later that I’ve allowed myself to get distracted…again.

For some reason it has taken me a long time to put two and two together. Obviously the answer to the second problem is the same: open a text or Word window on the computer. If you notice something—a link to a web site, an article, etc.—that may be useful, copy and paste it into the open file and return to the thing you’re supposed to be working on.

I’ve been doing this for a few days now and it works. High five, Homer!

(There are many more tips on time management for writers and other creative people in my book, “Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done.” It’s published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

A great example of a slick book website

Sometimes people ask me what should an author's website should look like and what its content should be. There are several functions an author's website can serve:

* to tell about the author - you could have a general, interesting bio for readers who are curious, and a more comprehensive media page with a downloadable photo, some interviews with you (even if you have to make them up yourself), press clippings if you have any, an extended bio (with emphasis on anything unusual reporters can use as a hook), your availability for interviews or events, any positive reviews, and of course contact information. 

* to whet readers' appetite for a forthcoming book. You could include relevant images (e.g., if you did research somewhere and took photos), some character bios, an intriguing paragraph or two about the plot, etc.)

* to provide an experience to supplement the reading of the book. This might include character biographies, "deleted scenes" from your novel, articles about how and why you chose to write this story, an audio or video interview with you, games, puzzles, contests, etc.

An excellent--but not cheap--example of a site that does this is http://www.finishingschoolbooks.com/

It's the site for a new series of books with the umbrella title "Finishing School," aimed at a Young Adult audience. Here's a a screen shot of part of the home page:

As you'll see if you go to the site, it took some skill and expense to create. My guess is the publisher was willing to foot the bill because this site will service a series of books, not just one, and the author, Gail Carriger, is already well established. Here is her whimsical bio from the site:

New York Times Bestselling author Gail Carriger writes to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She survived her early years by reading most of her local library and memorizing Greek battles. Eventually, she escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. In pursuit of further finishing, Ms. Carriger traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by fantastic shoes, where she insists on tea imported from London.

This is a good example of a bio that has the same tone as the books the site promotes. Matching the style of your book (funny bio if your book is amusing, for instance) creates a more enjoyable experience for the visitor.

Unless you have a fair amount of money at your disposal, probably you won't be able to come up with a site with this many bells and whistles. However, it can still serve as a good model for a light-hearted approach. If you can find a student interested in practicing his or her After Effects skills, even the limited animations on this site wouldn't be difficult to emulate.

Take a close look at the sites of a variety of authors so you can discover for yourself what works, what doesn't, and what you can take them them in order to construct your own. If you're curious about how they achieved a particular effect, don't be afraid to write to them; most authors are glad to help.

(Do you need ideas for how to market your book? You'll find chapters on both traditional and guerrilla marketing for writers in my book, "Your Writing Coach." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

The writer who went on the road to promote his book (part 2)

In the previous post I told the story of Ron Tanner, who did a forty-state, sixty-city book tour to promote his book, ““From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story,” about the refurbishment of an old fraternity house.

 Did he make any profit?

 How many books did he sell? In the article he says he’s still trying to figure that out. I’m not sure why he doesn’t have at least an educated guess, so I’m going to risk making one.

 He made 60 appearances. Let’s say the average attendance was 15. That’s 900 people, let’s round that up to 1000. How many of those bought? My guess would be ten percent, or 100.

 The book costs $25, so if he bought them at the author’s rate he probably made $5 on each one. That would make his take a total of $500, which would have been less than he spent on gas and other expenses.

So, net profit: zero or possibly minus a few hundred dollars. He did get exposure via his media appearances, and now via the article I’m quoting. It’s possible that the effort will stimulate some follow-on sales. That might just put him into the black if you don’t count the cost of his time for four months.

Other benefits

 However, money is not the only way to measure something like this. In an article In Poets and Writers Magazine, Tanner writes, “If you think that a book tour should make money and/or you should easily recoup your expenses, then stay home and query book bloggers. If, on the other hand, you believe that by putting yourself in motion, by meeting as many people as you can, you will be better off as a writer, then the DIY book tour is for you.” He mentions that it can be done on weekends if you don’t want to commit four months the way he did.

The book tour that made Wayne Dyer rich

In 1976 Wayne Dyer wrote a self-help book called Your Erroneous Zones (a play on the title of a sex book popular at the time, Your Erogenous Zones). The book was going nowhere and the publisher was not promoting it so Dyer took matters into his own hands.  

Dyer quit his teaching job and for six months drove his station wagon across the United States. He went onto local radio and TV stations and did interviews with local and regional newspapers. He took a load of books with him and convinced book store owners to put it in their windows ahead of his media appearances. When he ran out of books his wife shipped more ahead to the next town.

It worked. The publisher realized that they were getting a lot of orders for this book and decided to back it with publicity and promotion as well.

The book has sold an estimated 35 million copies and is still in print. It was on the New York Times best-seller list for 64 weeks and paved the way for Dyer to write many more self-help books and become one of the top personal development speakers in the world.

What’s the difference?

Why was Dyer’s tour such a spectacular success compared to Tanner’s?

Book publishing and sales have changed. There are fewer book stores and, as Tanner points out, many independents are struggling and don’t have the time or money to promote speakers. Also when books don’t sell right away they tend to return them to the publishers to get their money back, so the books doesn’t stay on display or on the shelves for as long as they used to.

Dyer’s book had a wider appeal, Tanner’s is more of a niche interest. Most people are interested in improving themselves and their relationships. Compared to that, relatively few want to pay $25 to read about house being refurbished. Niche books do break out from time to time, but it’s a long shot.

There are fewer newspapers and people’s attention is more fragmented. Back in 1976 if you were interviewed in a local newspaper or appeared on a local television show probably you reached a majority of the adults in that community. Now a lot of those newspapers are gone and TV viewership is down.  A panellist at the recent Digital Book World conference in New York said these days only 10% of book awareness comes from traditional media.

What’s the lesson for authors?

A cross-country tour sounds like quite an adventure and may not be without potential payoffs for certain kinds of books. However, as Tanner says, if your goal is to sell the most copies, it’s not the way to go. These days the internet is where to find readers, even though four months in a room working on Facebook and Twitter doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as a road trip with a basset hound.

(These days it requires guerrilla marketing to make an impact. You’ll find a chapter on that, as well as a chapter on traditional marketing, in my book, “Your Writing Coach.” It’s published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The writer who went on the road to promote his book (part 1)

When Ron Tanner decided to promote his book, he really went for it. He didn’t go for Twitter and Facebook like everybody else. He outfitted a camper van and did a self-funded forty-state, sixty-city book tour .

He was promoting From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. It was about how he and his then-girlfriend (later his wife) restored an old fraternity house to its former Victorian grandeur. His girlfriend didn’t want to go on the tour so his only company was his basset hound, Cleo.

In the recent issue of “Poets and Writers” magazine Tanner recounted some of his experiences and what he learned about face-to-face book marketing. Here are some of his key findings and advice.

Find local partners

 At least six months in advance, for each city you are visiting find and contact an organization that connects to your topic or theme in some way. Offer to speak at a meeting of their members or some other event. Make no demands (in other words, don’t expect to get paid).

There are friends and there are “friends”

Don’t count on your Facebook friends for help; only your real friends and relatives are likely to come through.

The sad truth about book stores

Some book stores now charge non-famous writers to do a signing or a talk. Some ask for a co-op fee, meaning they want you to split the cost of publicising the event. Tanner's publisher took this on in some cases.

Although you’d expect independent book stores to be welcoming, many are feeling the strain and can’t be bothered with events that don’t result in much benefit to them. Tanner says bookstore appearances were the least beneficial of his activities. Instead, he suggests, hold your own event at a friend’s house or library.

Help get the word out

Offer to help with the publicity for each appearance on your tour. This means contacting newspapers, online events calendars, radio and TV stations. Have an online press kit they can access. Mention your local partners.

Don't just read

Instead of a reading, make a presentation. Tanner used a slide show with lots of humor. Use graphics, props, artefacts , anything relevant that keeps the audience entertained.

A tour is hard work

Tanner had assistance from an intern provided by the publisher, but he says he really needed at least two helpers to manage the bookings, confirm appearances, etc.

Touring the country by yourself, even with a basset hound, gets old pretty fast. Tanner called his girlfriend every day and met lots of people but it still was lonely work at times.

 Did he make any money? Was it worth it? The answers will be in the next post. There I’ll also tell you the story of another author. This one did something similar and managed to turn his book into a best-seller that made him rich.

(You’ll find a chapter on traditional marketing and another on guerrilla marketing, in my book, “Your Writing Coach.” It’s published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

How to get your novel or screenplay character deeper into trouble

Whether your're writing a novel or a screenplay the heart of story-telling is conflict. When it's hero vs. villain that's easy, but not every story has those. In the more realistic plots, as in life, the biggest enemy we have tends to be ourself. 

On her blog, Janice Hardy listed some of the main ways characters make bad decisions:

being impulsive

making a poor decision under pressure

over analyzing

assuming they know it all - arrogance

not considering all the options

not asking for advice

not having alternative plans

Another way to come up with choices is to consider the ways your character might respond depending on what emotion they're experiencing. Here are some that typically lead to conflict:

• anger
• jealousy
• envy
• greed
• neediness
• fear
• lust
• desperation

Use your knowledge of the character to decide which of these (or another emotion) your character would experience in the situation you've created, and then what behaviour might come from that emotion.

(For more information about how to create characters and plots, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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When you get stuck in plotting your novel or screenplay, zoom out!

When you get stuck as to what a character should do next it can be hard to come up with alternatives because you immediately say, he wouldn’t do that, or that wouldn’t work because her husband would object, etc.

Instead, zoom out: step back and consider the situation in more general terms. Instead of thinking, what should Helen do when she’s just found out that Jeff has been fired but hasn’t told her yet, state it more theoretically:

What might a woman do when she finds out that her husband was fired but he hasn’t told her about it?

Make a list of every response you can think of, even the ones you know are totally wrong for your story. Don’t censor or judge, just generate as many as possible. Giving your imagination free rein often is enough to get rid of the frustrating feeling that comes with being stuck.

Put the list aside for a day or two, then come back to it. Now, knowing what you do about your character, go through and see which ones might fit. You may find that some new options come up as you do this--and that you're no longer stuck.

(For more help working out your plot and making sure your characters are three-dimensional, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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Go BIG with your characters for your novel or screenplay

If you're writing a novel or a screenplay, think about the characters that have stuck in your mind from the books you've read and the movies you've seen. Would you say they are average people? Most likely, no. Probably they're bigger than life. The ones I think of include the Godfather, Hannibal Lector, and Ellen Ripley (Aliens).

Obviously this is influenced by the kind of story you are writing, but at the idea stage it’s good to make your characters big. If someone is stingy, make them REALLY stingy.

A great example from real life is Hetty Green, a woman who came to be called the Witch of Wall Street. She was born in 1834. When her father died she inherited $7.5 million (equivalent to about $110 million today). She made her fiancé sign a prenup contract renouncing all rights to her money.

When her Aunt left $2 million to charity, Hetty challenged it and produced a will that left all the money to her. The courts judged it to be a forgery.

Hetty Green developed an investment strategy that made her another million dollars one year but she remained an outrageous miser. She never used hot water or heating. She did her business at the offices of the bank she used because she didn’t want to pay to rent an office. When her young son Ned broke his leg she tried to get him treated at a clinic for the poor. The people there recognized her and chased her out. 

Her son survived but eventually became as big a spendthrift as his mother was a miser. One of his prize possessions was a diamnd-encrusted chamberpot. 

Of course you don’t want to make your characters grotesques, but it’s easier to go big with them at the start and then pull back, than it is to make them more interesting  after you’ve drawn them as boring.

(Do you want to know how Dickens, Austen, Hemingway and many other great authors created their memorable characters? You'll find the answer in my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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How to create vivid characters for your novel or screenplay

The heart of a good novel or film is a strong character (or several). How can you create characters that come alive on the page and engage the reader or viewer? 

Recently I read an article in Computer Arts magazine about creating cartoon characters and was struck by how similar it is to creating characters for a novel or script:

* Figure out their psychology. A basic approach is to think about the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

* Give them some contradictions. Real people always have some, if you look deeply enough. It separates stereotypes from real people.

 * Doodle. Artists often doodle in order to get inspired. You can also do what I call Mental Doodling. Example: The other night there was a little preview clip of a comedian and TV presenter going down a river in Africa. He looks through large binoculars at a monkey in a tree. My mental doodle was the monkey holding a pair of binoculars and looking back at him. There doesn’t have to be any practical application, it’s about freeing up your imagination.

* Think about how the character moves. It might be in line with what we’d expect or it might be a contradiction. For instance, we normally might not expect a bulky man to be a nimble dancer, but it might be that your characters is a star on the dance floor. 

Thinking about these elements before you start writing is helpful. So is coming back to it when you're ready to write a second draft. If a character seems flat, considering one or more of the factors above will give you ideas for how to fix that.

(There are many tips for creating great characters, in my book "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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If you're a writer having problems with your Inner Critic...

If your Inner Critic is stopping you from writing or from marketing what you have written, here are three tips for overcoming writer's block--to control, rather than be controlled by, your Inner Critic:

1. Give your Inner Critic a name and image. Make it a bit goofy, that takes away some of its power to intimidate. I suggested something like this (Fudd): 

2. If giving your IC the entire day off is too hard, give it an hour off at a time. Visualize your IC as an entity you can talk to (easier to do if you close your eyes). Ask it what concerns it has. If it's the same old "what if you're not good enough, what if nobody wants to read your book, who are you to be a writer anyway?" stuff, tell your IC you've heard it before and you aren't going to concern yourself with it right now.

3. Keep it busy with something else, a less important matter that involves some kind of decision. For instance, suggest it debate with itself about what you should eat for dinner. 

If it comes back while you're working, send it packing again for at least another hour. 

(You'll find lots more right-brain methods in my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.) 

What does the Lance Armstrong tell writers about subtext?

Writers strive to reveal their fictional characters in a lot of ways including dialogue. I think how Lance Armstrong expressed himself in his interview with Oprah makes a fascinating lesson in subtext—what people are saying, or what attitude they have, that is different from the surface meaning. For instance, Armstrong said:

“And I mean that, as I try to take myself out of the situation and I look at it. You overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times. You have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean, it's just this mythic perfect story, and it wasn't true.”

If you take yourself out of the situation you create a distance—which can be useful for analysis but it can also be a way of disconnecting from it.

Talking about yourself in the third person (which is called llleisim) can also reflect an inflated view of oneself, as though even you are so in awe of yourself that you have to speak of yourself as someone you regard with wonder. Salvador Dali did this at times, including the statement, “Dali is immortal and will not die.” Wrestler "The Rock" was fond of the practice as well.

A similar effect comes from passive phrases like “mistakes were made” (instead of  “I made mistakes”). Politicians going back to Ulysses S. Grant have been fond of this phrase. Ronald Reagan said it in his State of the Union Address (regarding the Iran-Contra Affair), and so did Richard Nixon (Watergate), Henry Kissinger (supporting assassinations in South America),  and Bill Clinton (fund-raising scandals). William Schneider called it the “past exonerative” tense.

Your readers won’t analyze effects like this in the dialogue you write, but they’ll get the message nonetheless.

(There's a lot more about creating vivid characters in my book, "Your Writing Coach" and also about how the great classic and modern writers do it, in my other writing book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," both published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

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Catching up: a screenwriting workshop (last chance), my blog surge & more

If you're in London and want to learn screenwriting on the cheap, there's a great deal going from Groupon. You get a full day of instruction, including an optional chance to pitch and get feedback on your own idea and a networking session, for a mere £29. Here's the link (which is only active for another day):

http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/london/raindance-film-school/16169543

It's usually taught by Elliot Grove of Raindance but this time the instructor is Jurgen Wolff...oh, that's me.

If you come, be sure to say hello during a break or at the networking session. 

***

It's kind of annoying when writers get wrong things like using "literally" when they mean "figuratively" ("I literally screamed my head off"), but one I rather enjoyed the other day was an article advising that you could do two things in "one foul swoop." We've all had a foul swoop or two.

***

The other day this blog had 16,265 page views. Since this is considerably above the average, I was curious about the reason. Did some nugget of my wisdom about writing stimulate this frenzy?

Er, no. It turns out that reddit, which lists unusual facts, had linked to a post I did about how in the days of silent films one producer stimulated his writers by bringing in someone from the local insane asylum to throw in his or her ideas. I don't think that happens anymore, although some recent films seemed like they might have had that kind of input to their storylines...

There, we've caught up a little! Back to the usual format tomorrow.

best regards,

Jurgen

Writing work at home real offers or scams - what about workfromhomewizards.com?

One of the most popular posts I've written is the one warning people about writing scams and alerting them that there were many unhappy users of realwritingjobs.com. In reply to that post someone recently suggested that workfromhomewizards.com may be a better option, so I decided to have a look. 

The dozen or so first pages of Google search results are dominated by one site, genuineinternetjobs.com, which is a sales page for workfromhomewizards. What they are selling is a membership that supposedly shows you how to get jobs you can do from home, not only writing but also translating, secretarial, data entry, etc.

As for writing, here's an excerpt from the home page of genuineinternetjobs: 

"You can get paid to learn as you go in this field. Even for someone who’s never wrote a single line in their entire life can start at the bottom and still get paid."

I'd say that anybody who writes, "someone who's never wrote a single line" (rather than "someone who's never written a single line") and didn't re-read their sentence and take out the "for" isn't likely to earn much money from writing. 

The site points out that some writers earn $1000 or more for writing articles--which is true if you're a name writer who sells a long feature article to one of a handful of top magazines like Playboy.

They also say that the owners of blogs and websites are willing to pay big money for writers. Again, true if you're a copywriter with an impressive track record. Most bloggers and website owners don't pay for guest posts. Those who are looking for someone to write posts for them usually are willing to pay a dollar or two, not big money. 

I was unable to find any independent reviews of workfromhomewizards, and I'm not suggesting they are doing anything illegal. I am just advising that you proceed with caution about all work from home offers. Here, courtesy of fraud.org, are some tips:

• Know who you’re dealing with. The company may not be offering to employ you directly, only to sell you training and materials and to find customers for your work.
• Don’t believe that you can make big profits easily. Operating a home-based business is just like any other business – it requires hard work, skill, good products or services, and time to make a profit.
• Be cautious about emails offering work-at-home opportunities. Many unsolicited emails are fraudulent.
• Get all the details before you pay. A legitimate company will be happy to give you information about exactly what you will be doing and for whom.
• Find out if there is really a market for your work. Claims that there are customers for work such as medical billing and craft making may not be true. If the company says it has customers waiting, ask who they are and contact them to confirm. You can also ask likely customers in your area (such as doctors for medical billing services) if they actually employ people to do that work from home.
• Get references for other people who are doing the work. Ask them if the company kept its promises.
• Be aware of legal requirements. To do some types of work, such as medical billing, you may need a license or certificate. Check with your state attorney general’s office. Ask your local zoning board if there are any restrictions on operating a business from your home. Some types of work cannot be done at home under federal law. Look for the nearest U.S. Department of Labor in the government listings of your phone book.
• Know the refund policy. If you have to buy equipment or supplies, ask whether and under what circumstances you can return them for a refund.
• Beware of the old “envelope stuffing” scheme. In this classic scam, instead of getting materials to send out on behalf of a company, you get instructions to place an ad like the one you saw, asking people to send you money for information about working at home. This is an illegal pyramid scheme because there is no real product or service being offered. You won’t get rich, and you could be prosecuted for fraud.
• Be wary of offers to send you an “advance” on your “pay.” Some con artists use this ploy to build trust and get money from your bank. They send you a check for part of your first month’s “pay.” You deposit it, and the bank tells you the check has cleared because the normal time has passed to be notified that checks have bounced. Then the crook contacts you to say that you were mistakenly paid the wrong amount or that you need to return a portion of the payment for some other reason. After you send the money back, the check that you deposited finally bounces because it turned out to be an elaborate fake. Now the crooks have your payment, and you’re left owing your bank the amount that you withdrew.
• Do your own research about work-at-home opportunities. The “Work-At-Home Sourcebook” and other resources that may be available in your local library provide good advice and lists of legitimate companies that hire people to work for them at home. You may discover that these companies hire only local people and that there is nothing available in your area.

I know that many people these days desperately need to earn some money and if you're looking for a genuine opportunity I hope you find one. Just be sure that instead of earning money you don't lose some.

(Writing a book isn't easy and it's not a guaranteed path to big money. But if you have a passion for writing and want friendly guidance you'll find it in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

How much information do you need to give your readers?

One big debate among novelist and scriptwriters, editors, producers, and network executives is how much we should trust the reader or the audience. Should we assume they’re paying attention and will figure things out themselves, or should we spell everything out for them? This could be about plot points, motivation, or a character’s history.

I come from a background of writing for TV, where the network executives tend to assume the audience isn’t paying attention and doesn’t want to do any of the work. That’s why a lot of television writing is so on the nose. I’ve heard more than one network executive say, “I get it, but the audience won’t.”

I think the audience generally is pretty smart about story telling, and they’ll enjoy doing a little of the work. It’s kind of “interaction light.” You don’t have to click on any buttons, the work is done in your head.

The implication for writers is that you don’t have to spell everything out, certainly not in one big lump, you just have to give the readers clues they can use to figure it out themselves. My shorthand for this:

Instead of giving the readers 4, give them 2 here and 2 there, and trust them to do the arithmetic. 

(For writing advice from the greatest writers of all time, including Dickens, Austen, Stevenson, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway--read "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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