<span class="vcard">Adam Stemple</span>
Adam Stemple

Signaling Your Genre from the Start

If you’re an independent author, you’ve probably done a lot of work on your title, blurb, and cover. Don’t screw it all up with the first line of your book. When a person picks up your book, or uses the look inside feature on Amazon or other sites, they’re going to read the first few lines of your book. It’s likely the final thing they’ll look at before buying your book. So, not only does it have to be a good intro into your book, it also has to not screw up the sale. But how do you do that?...

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Writing Action

I am going to get right to the point and tell you the secret of writing action scenes: It’s not about the action. Like everything else in writing, it’s about character. A lot of people think reading action scenes is boring. And done poorly, it is. It’s not a movie. We can’t add camera angles and sound effects and a chaotic score that all drive the excitement; we have only words. But with those words—and clever choices of what words they are—we can do something that movie action scenes have a much harder time doing. We can illustrate character. Who...

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Genre Guides

We began work on the Genre Guides a few weeks ago. It’s tough work because these things are HUGE. But it’s rewarding work, too. Codifying information in a way that others can digest forces me to examine my own processes. Whenever I do this, those processes improve. Anything you do, even if you do it well and a lot, can experience drift. I think sometimes that the more common the activity is, the less you notice the drift. And you’re hardly motivated to examine things you’ve been doing successfully for years. But whenever I do, I find many ways to …

Simplicity

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” Walt Whitman Way back when I was a poker player and coach, there was a thing I liked to point out to my students. “Poker is a simple game,” I said. “You want to put a lot of money in the pot when you’re winning, and put as little in the pot as possible when you’re not. And absent compelling reasons not to, that’s exactly what you should do.” I point this out, not because I think a ton of you are...

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Speculative Fiction — The Big “If” Umbrella

More and more, books and publications that were once exclusively science fiction or fantasy or horror are calling themselves “speculative fiction.” But what is speculative fiction and why does it matter? Though the term “speculative fiction” has been around for a long time, it really came into vogue within the last few decades. And whereas at its inception, it was purely a replacement term for science fiction, it has come to mean most any genre that falls into the category that I call the “What If?” genres. These genres ask the “what if?” questions, where the supposition is definitely not...

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20BooksVegas 2022

I had to take a break from working on the site to finish up my book due on Dec. 31. But I’m back now, in Vegas for the 20BooksVegas conference. If you haven’t heard of this conference, you should. It’s entirely focused on the business of independent publishing. vendors, panels, presentations—the amount of information disseminated during this conference is astounding. It’s a little expensive, but it is well worth the money. A lot of the vendors there are featured on this site, as well. I stopped at the Vellum table and looked at all the beautiful books that had been …

Food for Thought?

We talk a lot about how to write better and the tools you need to do that, but we don’t talk a lot about the main tool you use when writing: Your brain. Writing is entirely a cerebral activity. Without a healthy brain, it is very difficult to write. So, how do you keep your brain healthy. The answers probably won’t surprise you, but they do bear repeating. Water is Life Staying hydrated is probably the biggest key to keeping your brain in a good place for creating. And you have to hydrate before you get thirsty. The brain is...

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Writing That Resonates

Resonate. It’s the word I use most often when talking about writing. But what does it really mean? Take the word home. The dictionary definition is “The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” But that’s not what anyone thinks when they hear the word. They think of their home. What it looks like, what it sounds and smells like, how it feels to be there. They think of the people who occupy it and the often complex emotions they engender. They think about history and family and legacy and…well, you get the...

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What to Do When the Writing Won’t Work

Sometimes the writing just won’t work. The words won’t come, or they’re all wrong when they do. Even if you manage to type something, you delete it seconds later. You’re blocked. We’ve all been there. Don’t panic. It will come back. Meanwhile, I have some ideas to get it back sooner rather than later. Though it’s important to match the techniques with what you’re trying to write and where you are in the process — you’re going to need different techniques when you’re starting a short story than when you’re in the middle of a novel — no matter where...

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Using Short Stories to Grow Your Business

You’re probably not going to make a lot of money writing short stories. Not by directly selling them, anyway. But they are quite useful in a number of other ways, and if used—and written—well, they can help grow your writing business. Reader Magnets A lead magnet is a sales term for something you give away to get contact details so you sell to the person later. When that thing is a piece of writing, we call it a reader magnet. Why is it so important to gather contact details? So you can have an email list to send your newsletter...

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