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Articles

Fantasy Trends and Opportunities, February ’24

Across all fantasy genres, and most of the other genres I've looked into, YA is growing, sometimes very rapidly. I think YA has finally taken hold in the indie ebook market, and I see great opportunity for growth. I think it might have taken a long time because despite YA having the biggest percentage of ebook readers in it compared to other genres...

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Sexuality in Science Fiction

I’m going to approach this topic from two directions, so bear with me. The US and a bunch of other places have inherited British legal systems that dates back a Very Long Time™. A lot of places inherited Christianity as a “State Religion.” Both have a strong emphasis on heterosexual marriage (One Man, One Woman) as the basis for a lot of other things, including most of your rights as a person. In the old days, people had more freedom to be non-cissexual. Scientific research these days suggests that roughly ten percent of the population is definitively homosexual (a 6...

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Breaking Down a Book Cover

If you've read any of the genre guides, you've seen my cover breakdowns. I take six covers off the bestseller list and break down their commonalities in elements, fonts, and overall structure. But I don't do it randomly. There's a system, and I'm going to outline it below so you can do it yourself in whatever subgenre you're writing in...

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YA Predicted to Trend in 2024

In researching the nonfiction market, I came upon this excellent article from Blurb.com. It's an in-depth look into the stats of the last year, both from numerical data as well as surveys. And while everything in the article is interesting, I want to highlight their predictions for popular genres in the coming year. Blurb predicts that "young adult, romance, fantasy, mystery and thriller,

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Let’s Talk About AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the current hot button issue in the world of writing. Some people say it’s the greatest thing for writer productivity since the word processor. Others say it will destroy the entire field. As a writer, web designer, and someone who was coding before he hit puberty, I can assure you that it’s not the former and probably won’t do the latter. It’s not even actually artificial intelligence, which is something I am not going to get into in this article, as the semantics of what we call it is less important than what we use it...

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Scams and How to Avoid Them

My father defined a shortcut as "the longest distance between two points." Keep this in mind whenever someone offers you an easy way to become a successful writer. Because there is no easy way. But any time there is a group of people willing to work hard to achieve their goal, there will be people offering them a shortcut — a shortcut that will not work. This is the general rule of writing, publishing, and well, everything. If someone offers you a guarantee of success predicated on how much you pay them, the only guarantee is that you are being scammed. That's the general idea; now let's talk specifics.

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Three Act Description Structure

If you’re looking for an easy way to write blurbs, why not use the structure most writers use — whether they know it or not. It’s based on the three act story structure, as featured in this portal fantasy blueprint. The structure is three acts split into three sections each like this: Act I — Set Up Exposition — The setup. Show your protagonist in their ordinary life. Inciting Incident — The thing that happens to start the protagonist on their journey through the plot. Plot Point One — The thing that solidifies the protagonist going on their journey (despite...

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Analyzing Story Beats

Whether it’s on your own stories or someone else’s, learning how to analyze the beats of a story can be an important tool in a writer’s toolbox. First of all, what do I mean by story beats? Story beats are not the plot. In fact, you can map out the beats of a story without talking about the plot at all. Story beats are shifts in tone, in action, in emotion. They are the highs and lows and the movement between those points that make a story enjoyable or tragic or comedic or whatever it is determined to be by...

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Finding Your Niche

Finding your niche is writing to market for people who aren’t comfortable in just writing anything. Which, frankly, is most writers. It’s hard to write in a genre you don’t love. We all have our favorites, our go-tos. And reading widely within the genre you write in is a near essential skill for writing successfully in that genre. If you don’t understand the genre, and at least like it or hopefully love it, most times the readers can tell. And in the end, it’s the readers who decide whether your books will be successful or not. Ignore them at your...

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Simple Guide To Social Media Promotion

This isn’t as tough as you might think, we promise. Listed below are the basics to any social media campaign and the specifics to the major ones. Study them, find the ones that suit you, and become a social media maven. Two Steps to Social Media Success If you want to successfully use social media to promote your books, you must begin to use it as a tool — not for fun, not to troll, not to find someone who is wrong on the internet and scold them, but as a tool for finding readers and turning them into fans....

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