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

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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Alpha Testing Starting Soon

The fantasy genre guide is all done, so we’ve begun recruiting fantasy authors to help us alpha test at the end of this month. If you’re interested, simply fill out the form on the front page and let us know. With the genre guides, essentials, and all the articles, we’re up over 130 articles on the craft and business of writing. I’ve been tracking trends in subgenres all week and adding data and charts to the guides, like this one showing steampunk books on the rise: But that doesn’t tell the whole story, as the outlook in steampunk ebooks is …

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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Making an Amazon Ad

To make it as an independent author, you need to bust out of your own social circle and into the wider world. There are millions of readers for your books out there — you just need to get their attention. Advertising, especially on Amazon, is an excellent way to find your readers. Amazon vs. Facebook The only other site with the reach and effectiveness for advertising comparable to Amazon is Facebook. And though FB ads are useful, especially for direct sales and Kickstarter campaigns, the big difference in converting viewers to purchasers is that people are on Amazon to buy....

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How to Know When Its Done

At some point, after all the writing and revising, your book will be done. Unfortunately, no one knows when that will be. Every author has to figure that out for themselves—and sometimes figure it out anew with each new book. It is more of an art than a science, but I will try to help you with what I know about when to pull the trigger and publish the thing. Most of us know what a first draft looks like. Some are sloppier than others, but most have flaws of some sort in the structure or the prose. Sections might...

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Some Random Writing Tips

Not everything deserves an entire article. Here are a few things I’ve learned from my time in the trade that have helped me. Develop Your Own “Manual of Style” — When writing, you are faced with a lot of choices. From the big choices of plot, setting, and voice, all the way down to whether to put a comma in or not. It can be daunting to face down these questions in every sentence you write. That’s why I made some choices early on to winnow down the list of questions I have to answer. For instance: Save Early, Save...

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Crazy Few Months

Been pounding away on the site for a while now, and we’re finally ready to show it to a select few people. No public showing yet, just a few trusted industry friends to get their opinion. We’ve got three full genre guides done, which is north of 35,000 words on just those few genres. With the essentials guides on novel writing, advertising, and digital tools; and 20+ other articles on a variety of subjects, we’ve already got more than a novel’s worth of material online—and not a short novel. And we’re just getting started. I couldn’t be more excited about …

Why Writing is Different

Good art—of any kind—contains three things at a high level: concept, composition and technique. Writing is unique in all the creative arts in that there is no physical element to the technique part of that equation. Sure, there’s typing—or handwriting if you’re one of those mad folk who write their first draft longhand—but it has nothing to do with the final representation of the work. Probably won’t even be in the same font it was written it in. Dance, painting, sculpture, music—all need good physical technique to complete the triumvirate required for good art. Being entirely cerebral has some weird...

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