Jenn Hanson-dePaula of Mixtus Media provides us with a great article on conversation started for social media. Thank you Jenn!

Have you ever posted something on social media and nothing happens? You might feel like it’s a waste of time because no one ever responds to what you post. Or maybe you feel like you’re just contributing to the noise online and everyone simply tunes you out.

Social media outlets have hundreds of millions of users worldwide, and each outlet wants their users to see posts that they will find interesting. So to make this possible, they use something called algorithms.

An algorithm is like a filter – it keeps the posts that people aren’t responding to out while letting the popular posts through.

So how do you actually get your posts seen and in your audience’s news feed? One effective and simple way to do that is by asking…

We talk a lot about how to write books, about author’s craft and writers’ tips. This post is instead focused on the act of writing — on the recording of words. There are probably as many methods of writing a novel as there are authors — writing longhand with a Montblanc fountain pen in a Moleskine notebook, typing with one finger at an ancient PC à la GRRM, or using the latest gadgets for on-the-fly note-taking. Regardless, there are certain steps and tools that make the steps of recording a manuscript, editing it, and whipping it into book shape easier. This post is about the tools I found are best for each task, and about my process in transforming a manuscript into a novel.

by Lev Raphael

I’m just back from reading from my memoir/travelogue My Germany in Windsor, Ontario.  I was at a fundraising event for BookFest Windsor and people asking me to sign books afterwards said they enjoyed it especially because most authors read from their books so badly.

I tend to avoid author readings myself because I’ve seen too many authors make basic, embarrassing mistakes.

Italics were invented by a famous Renaissance printer called Aldus Manutius. Italicizing passages became much easier after word-processing virtual-paper technology overcame the tedium of typewriter backspacing and underlining in a manuscript. Print-on-demand permits Indie Authors to be their own publishers, which means they assume the role of compositor, too, and must know how to set type to achieve the most visually pleasing and easy-to-read presentation of their works in the Art of Communication. To see how italics can function when typesetting for your own Indie-published book, we’ll discuss the ways I used italics in Irish Firebrands.

I learned about italics in primary and secondary school, in English composition and typewriting classes, but how I chose to italicize parts of my first novel is probably an amalgam of the “house styles” of the many different traditional publishers which put out the books I’ve read over more than fifty years.

I am reblogging Melissa’s excellent post form 2016, it is that good!

Literary Style in Storytelling Posted by Melissa Donovan on December 13, 2016

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https://www.writingforward.com/storytelling/literary-style-in-storytelling

What’s your literary style?Today’s post includes excerpts from What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing, chapter five:

“Narrative Style, Voice, and Tone.” Enjoy! Literary style is the aesthetic quality of a work of literature—the distinct voice that makes each author unique. It’s the way we string words together, the rhythm of our prose, the catchphrases that pepper our language.

Literary style includes every element of writing in which an author can make stylistic choices from syntax and grammar to character and plot development.

Seasoned writers have cultivated a style of writing that can be identified by a snippet of prose alone. For example, a common English literature test gives you excerpts from several authors whose works you’ve studied. The challenge is to identify…

Good morning writers, wanderers and world builders, I hope you’ve all had a brilliant week.

Yesterday, I attended my first ever writing event. It was hosted by the Writers & Artists, and included workshops, a keynote talk from a wonderful author (Rachel Joyce), and panel discussions with publishers and agents. I’ve never attended anything quite like it, and I enjoyed it far more than I thought my little, introverted self would. I learnt so much.

Have you ever been to a writing event? Maybe a workshop, a festival, a talk? I would highly recommend it, for the following reasons;

1. You get to meet other writers
For me, this is what made the day so wonderful. I am a desperately shy person, who rarely socialises, and suddenly I was in a room with a whole bunch of people I’d never met before. But guess what? Most of them were exactly…

I recently shared 7 Reasons for Using Videos in Your Social Marketing Campaigns. Many commented that it’s hard using YouTube effectively–a statement I agree with, as I’m pretty inexperienced in its use myself. Which is why I hope you find today’s guest post by Mahendra Bajiya useful! Mahendra is an entrepreneur and blogger who uses YouTube to promote a variety of products. He is particularly intrigued by its potential to market books, due to its wide reach and demographics.

4 Useful Tips to Promote a Book on YouTube More Effectively

Image: Pixabay

Many authors don’t focus enough on using YouTube to promote their books. That is unfortunate, seeing as it is the second largest search engine on the planet, and there are lots of reasons why you should be publishing videos to promote your book on its platform.

While promoting a book on YouTube effectively can be tricky, there are a…

1. It looks easy from the outside.

2. You spend a lot of time looking at finished, polished products instead of imperfect, incomplete drafts.

3. Some ideas sound great in your head but not as good when you dump them onto paper.

4. Writing is a mental exercise that is more physically draining than it seems.

5. It’s also time-consuming.

6. “Research” is one of a writer’s biggest distractions.

7. It’s fun to plan out a story but not always as fun to put that plan into action.

8. The idea of having written something is more appealing than actually doing the work for most people.

9. You want everything you publish to get praise and recognition. 80% of it won’t.

10. You expect everything to come out of your head already perfect. Not happening.

11. Making money as a new writer is almost impossible, so it’s never your only…