It is my honor to re-introduce professional ghostwriter and editor, Victory Crayne, as a guest blogger.

What to Add in Drafts

to Make Your Story Sell Better
By Victory Crayne (c) 2010

Ah, that sweet spot when you’ve completed the first draft of a new story. In your excitement, you may want to show others your creation. After all, if you had so much fun writing it, it MUST be good, right?
Hold it right there!
First drafts can always use some revisions and, in some cases, SERIOUS rewriting. You wouldn’t want people to read your half-baked draft and think that it is your BEST work, would you?

First, let your draft sit for a few days. You’ll ALWAYS come up with improvements that you can’t see in the excitement of just finishing the first writing. Your first draft is to get your intention about the story out. Your subsequent versions are to refine your execution of the story.

Here are some ideas on what you can do in your subsequent drafts to “dress up” your writing.

1. Add descriptions of your settings to help the reader feel he/she is “in the scene” with your characters. You may picture the scene in your mind, but unless you give your readers enough clues about that scene, you won’t transport them into your story. Avoid the “white room” syndrome. Use all of the senses, not just visual: smell, taste, feel, sound, colors, shapes, etc.

2. Genre: Add enough clues to satisfy readers that this story fits the genre. Do this on the first page or they may return the book to the shelves with “no sale” for you.

3. Add physical descriptions of your characters, just enough to help the reader feel they are “in the presence” of each person. The first thing we do when we meet someone is evaluate their gender, size, shape, hair, colors, clothing, etc. Introduce each character so your reader feels they have met this person.

4. Add enough dialogue, action, and description to show what their personalities are like. Stories are about people. Make your people come alive. For examples: (1) Jack looked up and slammed his palm down on his desk. “Hey! Did you hear me?” Jack was more effervescent, easily able to express his moods. He claimed it helped him come up with more ideas outside of the box. At an even six feet, Jack was built lean and wiry. He kept in shape with a three-mile jog almost every morning. (2) Don took off his dark-rimmed glasses, frowned at them, and picked up a tissue. “You’re always so darned eager to jump ahead.” He sighed as he wiped his lens.

5. Change how you relay some information by using dialogue instead of narrative. Readers love dialogue, the lifeblood of every story.

6. Add facial expressions, body language, and perhaps some internal dialogue to show the emotions of your characters. Dialogue is easy to write, but we humans learned to show emotion on our faces and bodies long before we had language. Even babies do it. If you appeal to the part of your reader’s brain that processes visual clues of emotion, you’ll be adding depth to your characterization.

7. Add likes and dislikes for your characters to endear them to readers. To discover what that might be, ask yourself: My character wants ____ but is blocked by ____. For examples: (1) John loves playing his piano in the evenings but is blocked by his wife’s insistence on watching sitcoms so loud. She says she needs the break from her stressful job as a commodities stock broker. Is it any wonder he drinks too much and argues a lot? He hates himself for doing that, so he drinks even more. (2) Serena loves to garden but finds it hard to do when there is so much damned housework left.

8. Add author’s or character’s voice to the settings, emotions, etc. This can be as simple as an observation or a comparison, for example, (1) “He kept expecting her to call him from the next room. Without her, the house seemed like an Egyptian museum after hours--cold and lifeless.” or (2) “He lifted one arm and took a sniff of his armpit. Who let a dead chipmunk in here?”

Victory Crayne, Ghostwriter and Editor, victory@crayne.com, http://www.crayne.com/
I help people who want to write books achieve their dreams.

How do Celebrity Books hurts real authors.

How do Celebrity Junk Books hurt real authors.

I took part in a radio broadcast in October of this year where one caller asked me why is it that some of the most hated celebrities get book deals through the back door whereas real writers constantly get overlooked. I told her that although thousands of people may not like a particular person that may have gotten a book deal, publishers would take an interest in that person simply because the individual has a platform. In other words, the individual has a large enough fan base. And regardless of the person’s talent and credibility—or lack of in most cases—publishers stand to profit more on their investment than if they were to publish a novel from a lesser-known but more deserving author. Is this fair? No it isn’t. However in this day in age it has become a necessary evil in the publishing world to put money before talent. Bestselling author, John Irving (pictured on the right), said in an interview that he worries for new writers and admitted that his first novel would never have been published had it been written today. Why has this trend evolved? Is it because of the economy? Is it because of the rising popularity of digital over print media? Those may be the answers. However one fact that is overlooked is that readers also control the publishing industry. That’s right. It all comes down to the ones that choose to buy Celebrity Books. And I specify Celebrity Books and not books written by celebrities because almost all of them are ghostwritten. The only way that this unfortunate trend will change is if book lovers boycotted Celebrity Books just because they are celebrities and focus on writers with credibility.

A very good online acquaintance of mine and fellow author, Donna Carrick, said that when she approached agents with her book, she was turned down by all of them. Many of them gave her the same excuse: that Americans would not be interested in a story that takes place in China. I laughed when I read this, considering that The Bourne Supremacy (the novel, not the movie) took place in China and is a bestseller. The truth is that agents are gatekeepers for publishers and have established relationships with acquisition editors. Agents know what publishers are looking for, and it’s what’s hot at the moment. Take for instance, Sarah Palin. She’s had so much bad press in the past several months—mainly due to the fact that she could never back up her quotes (Remember the Katie Couric interview? ‘Nuff said). Yet, her book outsold Dan Brown’s latest thriller. Rupert Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, wrote in his column that Palin’s publisher, HarperCollins, “Does not really believe Sarah Palin has written a valuable book—or even that it is really a book, not in the way that HarperCollins has historically understood books, or in the way that people have counted on HarperCollins to have understood a book.” Add insult to injury, Palin did not even write her own book. This illustrates how publishers are so desperate that they will peddle celebrity junk to bookstores before effectively marketing quality books that are written by real authors.

The literary world is continuously going through major changes. Publishers are desperate to recover the millions that they’ve lost in books that either broke even on their initial investment or haven't sold well. Remember Joe The Plumber’s book? Yeah, he had a book too. At a book signing at Borders in Washington, DC in February, 2009, only eleven people attended, fewer remained behind to buy his book. Oh yeah. It crashed and burned, which serves his publisher right. This is the type of message that readers need to send to publishers more often. If more people exercised proper judgement, publishers would have no choice but to drop the fake Celebrity Books and invest more in quality fiction and non-fiction that are written by real authors. As for Palin’s book, all I’ll say is this. I already watched her numerous times on television make an ass of herself—for free. I won’t spend money reading about her doing it.

Russell Brooks is the author of the upcoming action/thriller, Pandora's Succession. Visit here to join the mailinglist to hear excerpts and receive updates.