Have a problem? Here's the best way to find a solution

No matter the problem, the answer can be found by asking questions. 

When I run into a problem, I ask myself several questions that almost always help me find a solution. 

1) Why did I start this thing?

2) What did I expect to get out of this thing?

3) Am I getting that with this thing? If not, am I getting something else out of this thing?

4) What is this thing costing me (time, emotionally, etc)? Is the reward for this thing (see 3) worth the cost?

5) What are alternative ways to get what I wanted to get out of this thing and what are their costs? Out of the alternatives, which one offers the greatest reward for the lowest cost?

6) When weighing the rewards and costs of what I'm currently doing versus the rewards and costs of the best alternative, which one offers the greatest reward for the lowest cost?

I've done this analysis with classes, jobs, and all kinds of big life decisions, and it's never steered me wrong.

Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge—Q is for Questions (Do you need them?)

Yes, a writer needs questions. You simply can't do without them. 

But why? 

Keep reading, and I’ll tell you.

I once worked under an arts-and-entertainment editor who gave me this classic piece of newspaper advice: “Tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em again!”

I knew what she meant. I had already learned about the journalism pyramid. You start with maybe one sentence that says what your article is about. Your second paragraph says what it’s about, but says more about it. Your final paragraphs go into more detail about the topic of your article. You tell ‘em about the topic of your article. Then you tell ‘em. Then you tell ‘em again. The reader gets the gist of the entire article in that first sentence. The rest is just the same thing in greater and greater depth. If you just want the headline, you’ll stop reading there. And if the headline grabs you, you’ll continue reading until you’ve reached the depth you’re looking for.

A classic piece of journalism advice, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that format that worked so well for news didn’t quite work for feature stories.

People read the first pages of the newspaper to be informed, but when they read the magazine or the features section, they read less to be informed and more to be entertained. If you tell ‘em once at the very start what the feature piece is about, readers have no real reason to read the rest of the article. No, I decided. I need to find some other way to get readers to keep reading.

So I came up with my own rule: hook ‘em. Then hook ‘em. Then hook ‘em again!”

And it worked! Readers liked my feature articles, and I won praise and respect from my editors. In a short time I worked my way up from being a freelance arts-and-entertainment writer to the newspaper’s consumer columnist. I had two pages in the magazine, and another half a page in the middle of the week. Readers like to be hooked. I guess you could say we’re hooked on it.

But what exactly is a hook? And how do you hook ‘em again and again?

A hook is something in your story that grabs your reader and makes that reader want to keep reading. For example, if I start a book with the main character lying in bed wondering if he’s going to die by morning—and if that’s not the worst thing that could happen to him over the next few hours—that’s a pretty good hook. 

In the beginning of Why My Love Life Sucks(The Legend of Gilbert the Fixer,book one) the reader has to keep reading to find out what’s going to happen next. And that is a hook.

Basically, a hook is a question the writer plants in the reader’s mind, a question the reader won’t know the answer to unless the reader keeps reading. It can be written as a question. The first words of Toren theTeller’s Tale are “Who are you?” It takes the rest of the book to get a complete answer, and it is a doozy. But it doesn’t have to be spelled out like that. In most novels and short stories, the hook is a conflict or problem the audience wants to see resolved. Will Cinderella escape life with her cruel stepmother and stepsisters? Will the Light Side defeat the Dark Side? Will Gilbert get turned into a vampire, and why did a gorgeous girl who could have any guy she wants pick this extreme geek, anyway? You won't know the answer unless you keep reading. 

Some writer once said that every novel is a mystery, and that’s true. The writer plants a question in the reader’s mind on the first page, and the reader has to keep reading to discover the answer to the question and solve the mystery. If the mystery isn’t solved by the end, the writer has broken the unwritten author-reader contract, a contract that basically says that if the writer plants a question in the reader’s mind at the start, the writer will provide the answer to that question by the book’s end. All important questions will be answered. All important matters will be resolved. It might not be a happy ending, but it will be a resolution. It's vital that the author fulfil his or her part of the contract. 

Hook ‘em. Then hook ‘em. Then hook ‘em again works with pretty much any piece of writing that isn’t news and isn’t meant to be boring. Just plant those questions in your reader’s mind, and watch how your reader gets hooked.

So why does a writer need questions? Are you still here?

Well, I guess that's your answer.  

Interview with Simon Rose for the Children's Authors and Illustrators Facebook group

Simon Rose interviewed me for his Facebook group: Children's Authors and Illustrators. Hope you'll check it out:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/childrensauthorsandillustrators/permalink/484056924957178/

How do you get anything done when you have too many things to do?

I have so many things on my to-do list, I can't choose what to do first. What do you do in situations like this?

Here it is:

TO-DO LIST


1. Edit Ride of Your Life--keep notes of where everything is in the Amazing Lands Theme Park so you can draw a map of it.

2. Outline Dream. Write. Publish. in three sections of 10,000 words each. The first section should be about the dream to write. Why do people want to write a book? What are the right reasons? What are the wrong reasons? The wrong reasons--like wanting to achieve the kind of financial success that J.K. Rowling has had or because you think writing is easy--will prevent you from realizing your dream before you've even begun. But the right reasons--to educate, inspire, entertain or help readers in some way--will motivate you more. We're used to not giving ourselves what we want, but it's harder to let someone else down. And you have to give yourself little dreams along the way. You should also choose dreams that depend only on you, not others. NaNoWriMo is a good example. The second section about writing would be about letting go of your internal editor, different ways to find time to write, ways to motivate and reward yourself, editing, and recommended books on writing. And the last section will be about the different options writers have when it comes to publishing, how these apply to your dream, and how to make that dream come true.This will be followed with a list of resources about making your dreams come true, writing, publishing, and marketing. 

3. The best books for author visits are hardcover picture books, so pick one of mine to turn into both a paperback and a hardcover book. Make sure the hardcover isn't priced higher than $17.95 retail. Which book should it be? Alphabetical Disorder, Click the Dog, Fay Fairy's Very Big Problem or one I haven't illustrated yet, like The Glass Butterfly, Green Dreams, Can You Talk Like the Animals? or Princess Lucy, the Fairies & the Goblins? It might be better to work out which one in reverse--work out what would make a good author visit, and then create a book around that. Then create a lesson plan for an author visit.

4. Design swag for Toren the Teller's Tale, like t-shirts expressing the magic of stories. What about your other books? You want to be able to give out stuff like that during author visits or contests.

5. Write a story for Purim and come up with a lunch menu that fits the theme I've chosen. (Purim is a Jewish holiday where people give food to their friends. Every year I try to come up with a fun theme. This year I'm doing a garden theme, and I have an idea for a story involving Esther and a bee, which would tie the theme together.)

6. Reread We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media, and try to figure out how to utilize social media better. Create a plan and put it into action.

7. Write a three-part series on my blog on Amazon's future brick-and-mortar store. Part one: collect all the rumors and my ideas of the reason for these rumors. Part two: explain all the pitfalls Amazon would encounter in a brick-and-mortar store, and how I think Amazon can overcome them. Part three: a design of an Amazon store I think could work (possibly with drawings to illustrate my ideas).

8. Finish reading Class Act, and make a plan of action based on it so you can start making money from author visits.

9. Create a Geek Stuff section on my blog.

10. Take the lessons I've been teaching my daughter on how to make a comic book and turn them into blog posts. Also consider turning them into a book.