By: RachelM,
on 2/6/2016
How is human freedom really possible in the natural world as correctly described by modern physics, chemistry, biology, and cognitive neuroscience? Or, given the truth of modern science, are you really free? By 'real freedom,' I mean 'real free will and real rational agency'.
The post Are you really free? Yes: a new argument for freedom appeared first on OUPblog.
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By: Heather Dyer,
on 2/2/2015
One reason that new writers have their books rejected is because their writing style doesn't match the content: either the language is too sophisticated for such a simple storyline - or the story is too long or complicated for the target readership.
Admittedly, it's difficult to categorize books into specific age categories. Children are individuals, after all. Some advanced readers might not be very worldly-wise, and won't yet be ready for 'grittier' stories. Meanwhile, some of their peers may be ready for 'older' content but can't handle more sophisticated language.
But to give your story the best chance of publication, the content needs to match the writing style for that particular age category.
Picture books Age 0-5 | Early readers 5-7 | Middle grade 7-11 | YA fiction 12+ |
0 - 200 words 24,32 or 40 pages. | 500-1,500 | 10-20,000 | 50,000+ |
Full colour illustrations | Black and white line drawings every other page | Black and white line drawings every few pages. | No illustrations |
Domestic or fantasy settings | Usually domestic settings. | Domestic magic and high fantasy. Realistic settings with parental supervision unless there’s a good reason (fantasy) | The wider world. High fantasy. |
Larger font size, restricted vocabulary. Dialogue. | Large proportion of dialogue, more complex. | ||
Shorter sentences | More sophisticated sentences. | Lots of interior monologue, reflection, longer speeches. | |
Text works with illustrations. | Very short paragraphs. | Paragraphs a bit longer. | |
Nearly no description | Minimal description, but a few sparkling details true to a young reader’s perception of the world. | Detailed setting and character description. | Detailed setting and character description. |
Usually in third person | Usually in third person. Some character development possible. | Usually in third person. Rounded characters. Character development more obvious. | Often in first person, and present tense. It’s all about me. |
Anthropomorphism, inanimate objects made animate. Familiar roles, settings, objects. | A talking animal almost always points to an early reader. Children in comic or adventure situations, usually having a good time, nothing too awful happens. | Children in danger, frightening situations, facing fears and fighting good and evil. But the real world isn’t too real. | Can be very dark and realistic. Dystopian futures, tragedy, abuse, drugs, etc. Also comedy sex/romance. |
No sex or romance. | Romance is light and about friendships. Or subliminal. | Anything goes. | |
For the youngest bracket, not necessarily stories with problems solved, but simply an exploration of the world. | Often deal with smaller problems resolved in a shorter time frame. Stakes are lower. | Children with flaws, interactions with peers. Children save the day or resolve things themselves. Growing understanding of the world and their place in it. | Young adults dealing with finding their own way in the world, changing the world or making a name for themselves; asserting themselves; finding own values. |
Can be present tense. | Past tense, no leaping around in time or flashbacks. | Still rarely using flashbacks unless short recollections by a character. | Can play with chronology; transitions, flashbacks etc. |
Happy endings or comforting closure. | Happy endings. | Happy or at least hopeful endings. | Usually at least hopeful, but recently have been a few with bleak endings. |
By: Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
on 7/30/2014
Originally published in Writer Unboxed.
By: Darcy Pattison,
on 10/18/2013
Last week, I wrote a post about author websites and decided this week that I and better take my own advice! First, I updated the theme of this blog and added a homepage and a homepage for the blog. There are other behind-the-scenes improvements, mostly improving the way the site displays on mobile devices. (If you notice any problems with the website update, I’d appreciate an email!)
Second, last week, I quoted a study that said fans come looking for certain things on an author’s website. I am working on a draft of my new story this week and that study keeps haunting me. Am I providing any of these things on a regular basis? Is there any reason for a fan of my writing to keep coming back to my website?
These thoughts are starting to change how I write. Now, I also have open a second file that is a list of things to put on the website to go with this book.
Specifically, let’s go through the list of what fans want on an author website and see how you might plan for this as you write.
Overall, then, it is the extra writing and the insider information that needs to run parallel to my writing process. By the time this next book is written, I’ll have plenty of material for the website. Only time will tell if the fans come.
By: Phil Sexton,
on 4/5/2012
By Rob Eagar, author of Sell Your Book Like Wildfire
Did you know that Amazon lets authors see who is highlighting notes in their books and tweeting content to friends? When someone reads a book using a Kindle device or app, Amazon stores the information they highlight. Plus, Amazon displays who used Twitter to spread word of mouth to their friends. How does it work?
1. Go to: https://kindle.amazon.com
2. Type in the title of your book in the “Search” box at the top right-hand corner.
3. Click on your title when it appears in the search listing.
4. You will see a picture of your book cover, a list that says “Posts from this book,” and a section called “Highlights,” which shows content that people notated while reading your book on their Kindle.
It may seem a little creepy that Amazon tracks all of this reader information. But, keep in mind that Amazon only displays information that readers agree to make public. There’s no blatant invasion of privacy. Kindle readers can turn off this sharing feature if they desire.
Amazon’s slogan for their Kindle service is “Read. Review. Remember.” I like that tagline, and I think their new service offers some innovative promotional opportunities for authors. Here’s why:
1. Authors get an unprecedented opportunity to peek into the minds of their readers. You can see what parts of a book resonate with readers the most, because you can literally see the passages that people highlighted. This ability allows the author to focus future blog posts, free resources, interview topics, or social media conversations on content that they know people already find intriguing.
2. Authors can identify and thank readers who share word of mouth via Twitter. By seeing who tweets your material, you can leave a message at that individual’s Twitter account to show your appreciation for telling their friends. How cool is that?
3. If your book doesn’t have many highlighted portions or shared posts, it could indicate that your book isn’t being discovered or the content isn’t capturing reader interest. Knowing that information can serve as a wake-up call to improve your marketing or strengthen the manuscript for your next book.
Even though this service from Amazon is unique, I would urge you to take it with a grain of salt. Don’t base your book’s marketing plan or primary promotional activities on the comments you see posted or the passages highlighted. Those comments listed only represent a small fraction of your total reader base. Instead, stay focused on marketing your book based on its overall value. Use the benefit of this service to gauge what kind of conversation is happening around your books.
I’m excited to see Amazon offer another ground-breaking service that brings readers and authors closer together. At times, they seem like one of the few organizations dedicated to helping authors break the down the walls of publishing.
About the Author
Rob Eagar is the founder of WildFire Marketing, a consulting practice that helps authors and publishers sell more books and spread their message like wildfire. He has assisted numerous New York Times bestselling authors and his new book, Sell Your Book Like Wildfire, will be published by Writer’s Digest in June, 2012. Find out more about Rob’s advice, products, and coaching services for authors at: www.startawildfire.com
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By: Carmela Martino and 5 other authors,
on 7/27/2011
Growing up, Allan Woodrow was cursed with a boring, happy, and loving family, giving him nothing interesting to write about. He resented it for years. Allan eventually harnessed his feelings into his new children’s series, The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless (HarperCollins, ages 7-12) about the world’s most evil kid. Allan is also an advertising writer and Creative Director, and has written for TV and the stage. He currently works at the Chicago Tribune. Learn more at his website, and be sure to also check out his blog.
By: Jessamyn West,
on 11/20/2008
A few links that have been keeping me from inbox zero for the past few weeks.
By: Rebecca,
on 3/21/2008
I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently meeting with my fellow press bloggers and talking about how exciting it is to be harnessing the internet to stimulate conversation about books. But the OUPblog isn’t the only place to find interesting content. I thought it would be nice to share some of the great blogging going up on other press sites. So please, take some time this Friday to explore the fascinating world of press blogs.
How does a writer make his own story into a screenplay?
Just how do culture and ethnic identity-making work in tandem? Ask Jonathan Freedman author of Klezmer America.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 2/10/2008
One of the best new essay collections I have read in a long time is Reginald Shepherd's Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry
I've just written and submitted a review of Orpheus in the Bronx, and will offer more details on that once I know its fate. I think this is a book with broad appeal, a book that should be read by writers and readers of all sorts, not just those who are particularly interested in poetry and its various factions and fascinations. To persuade you toward this idea, here's a tiny and more-or-less random selection from some of the many interesting passages in the book...
From the introduction:
History, politics, economics, authorial biography, all contribute to the matter of poetry and even condition its modes of being, but they don't determine its shape, its meaning, or its value. Similarly, it's not that a poet's social position and background don't matter and shouldn't be discussed -- they obviously condition (but do not wholly determine) who he or she is and what she or he writes -- but that they don't define the work or its aesthetic value. They should not be used to put the writer into a box or to expect him or her to write in a certain way or on certain topics, to obligate him or her to "represent" or speak for his or her social identity (as if anyone had only one, or even two or three).From "The Other's Other: Against Identity Poetry, For Possibility":
I have never looked to literature merely to mirror myself back to me, to confirm my identity to myself or to others. I already have a self, even if one often at odds with itself, and if anything I have felt burdened, even trapped, by that self and its demands, by the demands made upon it by the world. Many minority writers have spoken of feeling invisible: I have always felt entirely too visible, the object of scrutiny, labeling, and categorization. Literature offered a way out of being a social problem or statistic, a way not to be what everyone had decided I was, not to be subject to what that meant about me and for me. But even if one has a more sanguine relation to selfhood, Picasso's admonition should always be kept in mind: art is called art because it is not life. Otherwise, why would art exist? Life already is, and hardly needs confirmation.From "Shadows and Light Moving on Water: On Samuel R. Delany":
There is a convergence between the position of poetry and the position of science fiction in contemporary American culture. Both are highly marginal discourses. Poetry has a great deal of residual cultural cachet (as attested by its use as an all-purpose honorific: a good quarterback is "poetry in motion"), but few people read it (there are many times more would-be poets than readers of poetry); science fiction lacks prestige but is widely read (often somewhat abashedly, as if one shouldn't admit to such an adolescent habit).From "Why I Write":
At their best, science fiction and poetry have in common the production and presentation of alternative worlds in which the rules, restrictions, and categories of our world don't apply; it was this freedom from the tyranny of what is, the domination of the actually existing, that attracted me to both, first science fiction and then poetry.
To attempt something new and fail is much more interesting than to attempt something that's already been done and fail. I don't want to write something just because I know I can, just to reaffirm what I already know. Of course, to say that I don't want to do the same thing twice is to assume that I've done something in the first place. I not only don't know what I can do, I don't know what I've done. How could one, not having access to the vantage point of posterity? With every poem I'm trying to do something that I can't achieve, to get somewhere I'll never get. If I were able to do it, if I were able to get there, I'd have no reason to continue writing.
Posted on 9/9/2007
My new favorite blog is by Librarian Extraordinaire, KT Horning, and it is all about Queer YA: Worth The Trip.
I promise if you read it, you'll discover at least one book that you don't know about, and that you need. Plus, it is Smart! Well written! Useful! Love it!
Add it on LJ. ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
worth_the_trip
By: medinger,
on 8/26/2007
I was delighted to learn from Roger Sutton that the brilliant KT Horning has started a blog. Worth the Trip is definitely going to be just that with a focus on “queer books for kids and teens.”
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 8/17/2007
Regarding my "Born to Choose" post, a friend gently suggested the whole discussion gets more complex, thorny, and controversial if you include discussion of transgender issues. This is very true, and though I had considered adding something about the controversy over Gender Identity Disorder (GID), my knowledge of that subject is superficial, and I figured I was going out on enough of a limb already that I probably shouldn't risk inadvertently simplifying a subject so vital to people's lives and livelihoods.
My friend made the useful distinction (which she says may have come from Julia Serano) between de-pathologization of transgenderism and de-medicalization of it, with the former being desirable and the latter not so much, given how much distress trans people can be in before they can get support or therapy, or before they are able to transition.
Though I can't offer an informed opinion on this topic, what I can do is provide some links to discussions of GID by people more knowledgeable than I. Please add others in the comments if you know of any.
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 8/16/2007
While I was away, I lost some hours of my life by watching CNN, something I don't normally do, because I don't have a TV (not because I'm a TV-hater, though I do think TV news gets more awful every time I watch it, but because I would never get anything done if I had a TV -- I find it completely addictive, regardless of quality). There was a story in rotation about the HRC/Logo forum where the various Democrats in the presidential primary were invited to talk about same-sex marriage and occasional other topics. The CNN report made it seem that candidate Bill Richardson was a troglodyte for his response to a question posed by Melissa Etheridge: "Do you think homosexuality is a choice or is it biological?" Richardson responded, "It's a choice, it's, it's..." and then there was back and forth and eventually Richardson's campaign issued a statement and Barney Frank testified to Richardson's record.
I found the whole thing cringe-inducing, mostly because Etheridge asked, with complete moral certainty, an absurd question and then Richardson got beat up for it. Marriage has become, as the pundits at The Nation pointed out, the litmus-test, but the word "choice" has, strangely, come to be The Word That Shall Not Be Uttered.
What is going on here? Certainly, the HRC and Logo do not stand for all that is queer in America, but they do represent a certain visible and politically active segment of the queer community, and it looks like that segment is growing ever more narrowly defined, intolerant, and boring.
I could get all semantic on the question "Is it a choice?" and ask, "What is this it of which you speak?" because I hate the tendency some people have of defining the vast range of human pleasures and intimacies by a couple of labels. Or I could point out that the nature/nurture dichotomy is at best naive. But I'd rather just say, "What's so bad about choice?"
In The Nation's discussion of the forum, Lisa Duggan said what happened to Richardson next: "Margaret Carlson followed up and explained to him that saying you are born gay is the ground on which equality can be claimed." Why is equality about how you're born? It's never stopped biologically-minded traditionalists from saying that anything deviating from some narrowly-defined norm ought to be cured.
If there's an "it", choice is what's it's all about. It doesn't matter whether I'm choosing at the moment to live my life with a man or a woman or no-one; the freedom to choose any of those options and not be harrassed, marginalized, or attacked for it is the freedom I want. It's why I don't have much interest in the search for "gay genes" -- sure, there are genetic components, but so what? Let's be very speculative for a moment and say a definition of non-heterosexuality can be dreamed up, and a gene or two can be attributed to it, and a test can be created to see whether a person possesses such a gene -- if they don't, and still behave in a non-hetero way, should their citizenship in the queer nation be revoked so they are forced to live in the doldrums of the choiceless land where the "I'm-entirely-heterosexual" creatures trod through their dreary days?
"It's not a choice" sounds to my ears like the proclamation of somebody drowning in heterosexism and self-hatred. "I can't help myself! I was born this way! Waaaaaa!!!" Why are these gays so afraid of choice? I suspect it's because we're terrified of the idea of being "unnatural", but the terror has nothing to do with nature (all sorts of things happen in nature!) so much as an idea of normality. The norm-obsessed gays want to be "just like everybody else" and everybody else is, apparently, inherently hetero. It's like they really want to proclaim, "We're not 100% hetero only because we were born this way -- we didn't choose to be like this, honest!"
I'm all for people who choose to get married and have kids doing so, regardless of their gender or whatever, but I doubt it's anything I'll ever choose, and so I don't have a lot of patience for the idea that that is the ultimate sort of life to live, the sine qua non, the one true path to happiness, the normal thing, the thing we were all born to do. It's a position that replaces a compulsory heterosexuality with a compulsory homosexuality for those born to it, a Procrustean bed made up by people who think everybody should live and feel only the way they themselves do. I don't like their idea of normality, I don't like their fear of choice, and that bed looks damned uncomfortable to me.
Carmela -
Thanks for sharing your interview with Allan! It was great reading about his process.
Jessica Wisniewski (aka: The Dorktastic DragonLady)
wisniewskijb (at) vvsd (dot) org
Thanks for your entry, Dorktastic DragonLady. Your supervillain name makes me smile. :-)
Thanks also to our first two email entrants--The Demasculator (now that's scary!) and Master-Mind.
I am entering for my 9-year-old who tells me her evil name is Burp Girl. God help me. ;)
Thanks!!!
Hi! Love the interview and my kids LOVE the book. Would like to enter my 8 year old son Shawn, we like to, lovingly, refer to him as TalkYourEarsOff Boy! :)
Thanks, Anastasia Ely
What a great idea, to enter for your kids, Megg and Anastasia. Good luck to Burp Girl and TalkYourEarsOff Boy!
Fantastic interview! I just picked up a copy from Barnes & Noble and read it to my son, Nate (who has declared his evil-bad-guy name to be Sir Kowski, possibly as a nod to his Polish grandparents???). Sir Kowski gobbled the book up faster than a plate of kielbasa on Casmir Pulaski Day. Crossing my fingers that we're the randomly selected winners! Sincerely, Christine Wolf aka tinywolf at aol dot com
This interview is a great reminder that the best books come after the best editing. So many of my students either think their words have been inscribed in cement or that editing is a total waste of time. It is often the most important part of writing. Thanks for letting an author explain that editors don't rewrite your book - they just help make it better. And I would love to have a copy of this book. I have been told that my evil name is Beastly Beverly (I'm not sure why some of my students call me this when I'm working with their writing, but it's better than some things I've been called!). My email address is [email protected]
Beverly Herrera
Nice article, thanks for the information.
Congrats on your book deal Allan! Great interview, Carmella.
My 7-YO son and I are reading through the long list of Dan Gutman's My Weird School series and loving them. Interested to begin reading your series, as well.
I guess my villian name would be Mini Mayhem (I'm small but fiesty!) and my side kick, Silly Sam (because he is a riot!)
mjcwriter"at"comcast"dot"net
Wonderful success and insights to marketing, Allan. You seemed to be a writer all along, but have now landed in your sweet spot!.
I'd love to win an autographed copy of Zachary.
The initials of my actual name (Sandy Brehl) are code for my alter-ego: StubbornlyBossy. Scares folks right off.
sbrehlhceatyahoodotcom.
Some pretty frightening names here, and that many of them are kids is even more terrifying. Thanks for the interview, Carmela!
Thank YOU, Allan. And I agree--some of these villains have pretty scary names!
Great and inspiring interview.
Susan J. Berger
Momster.
(I have a picture of me as Momster on my fridge.)