The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 51 – Top 3 Writing Advice I Wish I Had Received When Starting Out

There are so many things to learn when you're first starting out as an author.

It's not only about the craft of writing, but also marketing, cover design, editing, and so much more.

Where should you start?

In this episode of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, Autumn and Jesper share the top advice they wished someone had told them when they first started out.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy.

For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need in literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self-published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Bert and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I am autumn. This is episode 51 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and we are going to share the three best pieces of advice about writing. I wish somebody had told us when we first started, so that's probably going to be quite good. I think it'd be quite good.

Autumn (50s): And I honestly had a hard time just coming up with three. I came up with five in the end, but we'll see. I will see if I could narrow it down. Wow. Five. Okay, cool. That's good. So how has your week been a, it's been good.

Jesper (1m 10s): I've been good. Uh, we were out am bowling, bowling, bowling last this past weekend. Uh, well, technically my, uh, my oldest son had his birthday like two months ago. I suppose you could say that's a bit late too in my doubt. His classmates better late than never, right?

Autumn (1m 30s): I guess. Well, I guess as long as he doesn't mind, got to celebrate it maybe twice. I

Jesper (1m 39s): but it went well. Uh, I'm, I'm not really very good at bowling to be honest. So yeah, I think all the kids played first for like one and a half hour. And then the last hour we adults joined it and I started throwing the two first. Paul's in the gutter. So I had to, I had to claim that the sun blinded me and the wind stirred me and of course all of this was inside and whatnot. So the kits look quite skeptically or be able to just shook their heads, like my lame excuses. But, uh, but it was fun, uh, although too, well, at the end the youngest got quite upset because he lost.

Uh, but yeah, but you know, he, he's the one who always also plays football and he's very, very competitive. So I had to explain to him, because when we first started, you can get these kid barriers on onto the goddess so that the ball doesn't go into the gutter. Right. And then when we started out, I asked him, I asked him if he wanted that to kids, Barry. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. He didn't absolutely not want a kid, Barry. And I said, okay, fine. So he played half of the first game or first frame or where, I'm not sure what it's called in bowling, but half of the first game basically he played without the kids.

Uh, barrier on which of course some of the balls ended up in the garden while the other ones were playing. It just hit the, and then they always got a bit of pins knocked over. Right. So, but he didn't get that. So, and then halfway through the first game, then we put on the barrier for him as well. And then the kids he was playing against was that they were three years older than him. And by the end of the game he came in two points after number four, something like 15 points after number one, which is pretty amazing in my shoe.

And I tried to explain to him that, you know, you played extremely well. These kids are much older than you and you more or less all those tight, you know, two pins. That's like, it's luck. It's just luck. Nothing else. You could have gotten fourth place against somebody who's three years older than you. That's amazing. But I would say it took quite a while before he felt just a little covid.

Autumn (3m 52s): He sounds like he's quite the competitor. You're going to have fun with him. Yes. Yes. He's very competitive. That is so sweet though. Yeah, and that's actually, so that teaches me something, I never thought about what countries have bowling or even where it originated, but, Oh, I dunno. I dunno either. But Hey, we have both have bowling in common. That's kind of cool. Yeah, I'm really bad at it. It was, there was a bowling alley really close to my high school and so that was literally one of our gym classes.

And it was never my favorite thing. But Hey, it got us out of school and we've got to walk down the road and um, played a love. Oh did you know at least twice a semester. Uh, it's never something, something that I've gone like you know, after school and hung out at the bowling alley, I'd actually rather play pool. I love pool. Yeah, me too. Always. We're, we're in the bowling alley. When I was younger I always convinced somebody to people with means that money we're going to have so much fun when we finally ended up on the same continent, it's going to be past that.

How, how was she a week autumn Oh it's been going well. You know we've been doing so talking and it's funny cause I am driving a bit more commuting and it was funny. I know you dictate your novels, that's how you do your writing and I've never done that before so I'm suddenly thinking I want to try this out. So I know you and I have been sharing some dictation tips and software and things we use. It almost makes me think that maybe this is like a potential podcast issue. I know other people have tackled it, but you know, give me some time to see if this is gonna work for me.

And I think we might have to am see if it changes how fast I can write or find, get my brain to wrap around. Not seeing the words in front of me. Cause I know recently, uh, some of the last novels I'd write, I would hit a snag and I would jump ahead and write that and then I'd come back and write the filler spaces in between. I'm like, that's not gonna work. It's DyKnow. So I've got to wrap my head around it and give it a try, but I'm kind of excited to give it I. Everyone who's does it says that they can get much more written if they did.

Yeah. It goes a lot faster than, than writing of, obviously you can, you can speak a lot faster than you can ever type. So if your mind is organized, yeah, you have to get your mind organized so that it's like, yeah, you know what you're going to say and where it's going and yeah,

Jesper (6m 14s): and funny enough, funny enough, it ties back to the plotting stuff like that. Cause I would not be able to do the dictation. Well okay. I could I guess, but I wouldn't be very efficient at it if I did not, if we did not do all the flooding upfront. So I knew exactly what's going to happen in the chapter before I even start. Um, and then it's, it's of course you need to dictate all the customers and, and all the new paragraph and open quote, close quote, all that you need to get used to saying all of that, which of course you are, you're not used to that when you're typing.

And so that's one thing. And then I think the other thing at least for me is, is to keep the flow going. So, for example, if you, if you, let's say the character comes to a castle or something and then you can't quite just on the fly to make up what the castle looked like, then I usually just like open brackets and then I say,

Autumn (7m 6s): great, cool description of castle, close brackets, and then they just move on because it's so cheating. No works. Right. Because I keep the flow going and, and the, the main point for me at that stage when you're dictating is just to get the story onto the page. And when you're doing the editing, you can always add in nice descriptor

Jesper (7m 24s): and all that, but you don't have to on the fly, dare try to figure out a cool description because even if you did, likelihood is that it's going to be cliche. It's going to be what comes to the top of your mind, which is not going to be the best description you can come up with. So some, yeah, I do. I do that quite a lot sometimes. So just add in that, yeah, sort of placeholder to add this or add that here.

Autumn (7m 47s): Oh, that's at least a good tip. So yeah, that's a good another tip you hadn't given me before. So I will keep that in mind as I get going that even if I have to just be like skip this area, they'd put this in and then put a note, Oh, put this in the area you skipped. Am that is what editing is for. So, but just be neat to see if I can get this rough draft out because it's in my head. I tend to be a little looser in my plotting when I'm on my own, but I have it outlined pretty well and I know what happens at each of the chapters and I think as long as I keep myself organized and it might be good am I organize my brain a little bit better, so I'm going to give it a whirl and see how it works.

And I'm just starting out with some really cheap actually free stuff. Software I already have. So we'll see how it was and it, that's a good place to start. Yeah, free is always a good place to start. If I like it, I'm going to get into what you have suggested. And like I said, maybe there's a podcast in this some point. Yeah, maybe, I mean, uh, for the listener, maybe, you know, dealers know, if, if, if a dictation is something that you're interested in us talking about on a, on a future episode, then let us know, you know, and uh, that we'll certainly consider it on the internet with the amwritingfantasy.

Podcast so I went in this morning autumn into the Facebook group because I thought I better start approving some people because I just over the last week, it's just been crazy. There's so many new people joining all the time, but there was new, uh, notifications popping up for people and it's awesome. But, so I went in there this morning and look at, already beat me to it. Everybody, he does that to me too. And I like, I'm going to go in there and no, well, I guess I'll go read through some comments and see what looks been doing because he's such an awesome moderator.

So I, I honestly, I don't know how we would cope without his assistance. It's amazing. I mean I, well I, well at least people would be waiting quite a long while to be admitted into the group if it wasn't for him. So again, I know we said it before, but huge thank you to very much appreciate his help keeping. It's nice because it's not so much keeping the group wrangled, it's just letting people in the door because happily the group is pretty good as far as not doing posts that they should. So for the most fun, yeah, there's a lot of activity in there.

It feels like it's really picked up. You know what people are posting a lot, which is very nice to see and they are commenting a lot on other people's questions and it's, it's amazing. I really, really like it. It is getting to a good place. I got lost in Jason's post about how many times a Milky male character can cry in a novel and if the gender should really matter. I know is, I figured you would see that one too. Yeah, that was the one I noticed as well. When I looked at it, I had over 27 comments already in us just looking through them and they're good.

They're really funny and they're insightful and I just like some of them, I don't know which ones were your favorites. Um, but I know there was one that, I mean the core that it's it. It's the reason that the person is crying, the main character is crying and not the gender. And I just love seeing that where it's such a good place in fantasy where you can have your male character cry. Yeah. A I was actually also a thinking about that one and I was thinking maybe we should just add our own short reflection here on, on that question.

Uh, autumn but, but may, may, maybe that was your reflection. You, you agree with that comment or did you have do something else to ponder about? No, I just think I'm definitely I. There was an example in there too about a female character who was trying to cook everyone dinner and her pot wasn't big enough and she just sat down and cried into her brother came and fixed it for her and how just that is not right. That is, that is a stereotype and I thought, you know, it had both arguments of this is a stereotype that you should do and these are examples of reasons you should do it.

But I agree it's, I don't want to see personally if I'm reading something, I don't want to see a weepy, weepy character, be it male or female, but I've had female characters cry. I've had male characters cry. And I do think the core is the reason, you know, if it is impactful enough, if it is painful enough or happy enough to stuff, forget there's happy tears, that crying is fine. And you know, we do it as people and emotionally it should be in your novel too.

Jesper (12m 17s): Yeah. Uh, I think so too. Well, if the question is how many times they care to can cry, I don't really think you can answer that question because it all depends on context and why he's crying as, as autumn have just been talking about. Uh, I would say even though if you have good reasons for the character to be crying, if it's like every second chapter, then it's gonna be really annoying, really fast.

Autumn (12m 44s): Male or female, I would be dropping a book probably. Yeah.

Jesper (12m 48s): I mean the Rita does have to like the character and root for them and nobody roots for somebody who cries all the time, even if there's a good reason for it. We do want to see characters take action. We want them to sort of own up to the problems and do something about it. Not sit there and cry about it. He, uh, I mean, so I would say there was a line somewhere and I cannot define that line for you, so you have to do it yourself. But, but there is a line somewhere whereby you could do it too much, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with a male character crying.

If there's a good reason for it, um, as long as it doesn't happen, happen too often, then at the same thing applies to a female character. There was no real difference between the two in this case.

Autumn (13m 31s): No, absolutely. And I agree. It's, it's, to me it's almost, should be not a crying out of frustration because they can't solve a problem but crying because of a loss of something heartfelt. Um, yeah, just crying because you're frustrated at throwing up your hands in the air and you can't handle it. Don't avoid that one.

Jesper (13m 50s): No. Exactly. Yeah. So questions like this one is what you can ask in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group and you will get all of these different, a competent reflections and responses and all that. So I think it is really a really, really awesome group of fellow fantasy authors. So if you have not yet joined the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, just go to Facebook and the search by amwritingfantasy and the group section, then you will find us.

Oh, so autumn you have five different things to share about the best pieces of advice. Uh, I have three, but I was thinking that maybe we should, uh, try to alternate a bit so that we are moving up through the ranks one by one rather than just giving five and three in a row. And I must admit that I'm very excited to hear yours because actually I I don't think we've really talked about this sort of stuff before, even between us. No, and I remember when

Autumn (14m 52s): we came up with the topic for this one, you kind of got excited like, Oh, that's a good idea. So I think so too. And I feel so organized. You know, I usually, you know, I come in with a little bit of background information but kind of wigglies things where you're the most organized one. But I have a list lower than yours this time. So do you want to start with, um, yeah, no, I think we should work from the bottom and okay. If you do your number five and you're number four, then I'll do three and then year number three and two.

Okay. So I will do my first two since I came up with five cheated. I did, I couldn't help it when I start. This is why I started writing courses. I just have so much advice and so much trial by fire that I want to share with other authors. So I just can't contain myself. So I ended up with five. But one of the things, I think one of the first things I saw when I was a new author, I was on Twitter and meeting other authors is everyone was complaining about marketing and marketing takes them away from writing and marketing blog, marketing hub, you know, hate, hate, hate, hate on marketing.

And I wish someone had just pulled me aside at some point and said, you know, marketing is often just sharing what you love about your book. What is it that gets you excited about your book? That is really the essence of marketing. So you should actually love it as well because you're sharing your most passionate parts of the earth story and your storytelling. It's just finding a way of doing that. And you know, whether it's social media and of course there's always buying advertising, but that's, you know, if you hate taking five minutes to buy advertising, I'm so sorry it's only five minutes, but the other marketing be it blog posts or social posts.

It's, it's really just sharing what you love about your story. So don't hate it. You should love it because it's part of what you love about your story and then number. Yeah. But no, but I think that's, it is a good point. Um, I'm just wondering how, how did you, how did you get to that stage? Because one thing is say is to say don't hate it, just love it because it, yeah, fine, but I still hate it, you know? If you're in that frame of mind, how did you transition into actually wrapping your mind around, actually this is something I do like, I think like pairing it down there was just a certain point where, you know, yes, it's not writing but it is 100% something.

Equally, if you're going to be doing this as a business, you're going to be marketing and you should probably never do any I. If you don't love something, people do know it. You, if you're just spamming it, throwing up close that you don't really care about and not crafting something. I'd rather see two really good posts in a week, then two every single day that are crap. And I think that when people start realizing that, you know what, it makes a difference to really put some time and effort and love into making these posts be they blog posts or you know, I love Instagram so we've already been there.

So hanging on an Instagram and seeing something that someone really did love rather than something they threw up really quickly cause I felt like I had to do something for marketing today and their books have to sell more and they just, you just feel that kind of desperate energy and it was standing back and saying, you know, this is, what do you do? How do you make this difference? And I think that's where I adjusted plus I. I wrote a booklet on am 50 blog posts, so topics to get your writing about your story and writing that I realized how many of the ideas I came up with where because I wanted to share something I loved about my story and it started when you start realizing that you love writing and you love these characters and you love everything you do and you know you get a writer talking, you can't get them to shut up.

You should love marketing. It's all about sharing what you love and try to do it in concise soundbites that you don't overwhelm the person you're trying to tell.

Jesper (18m 47s): But it also sounds like you're saying that it's a matter of not, could we call it like being too ambitious about it? You know, like, like you said that now that I have, I have to do some a new blog posts every day. No, but rather try to scale down the ambitions and then say, okay, let me do whatever I can feel that I have to time for I that I can cope, you know, rata one really, really good blog post once a week rather than a shitty one.

Autumn (19m 15s): Yes, I think so too. It definitely comes down to once you realized it, so it should be something you love and you shouldn't be driving yourself crazy trying to get all of them done, you know, make time to do one or two good ones a week rather than something every single day. It's, yeah, that's part of it. Definitely. All right. And so the other one, number four by other add on was uh, just a reminder to tell people to always, right, because you love it. I think as you take on your writing journey, you learned so much.

You learn about how to write, how to run a writing business, you know, tips on how to make sure you're writing a story that people, you know, readers are going to buy that you, so you end up writing stuff that maybe you think it's going to sell. And sometimes you lose the perspective that you actually enjoy writing. And she'd be writing characters you enjoy in a story you enjoy. It's so easy to kind of get lost and start just writing stuff that to do it, to make money. Um, and so it does a business and you have to look at that.

But if you're not loving it, you know, step back and think about it. If you're no longer enjoying it, because most of us come to this because we have a story you want to tell him. We love writing and I've seen writers as they progress and tr even, I've done it a little bit, you start doing it more as a business and you might lose a little bit of that soul. So don't forget to still love what you're writing.

Jesper (20m 40s): Especially nowadays, there is a, a lot of chalk in the author community about releasing more books and read them fast. And I, I, I don't remember actually to be honest, if we've talked about this in more detail in a past episode, maybe we have, but I, I feel that it's, it's, it's like a road to hell that we only, because people are going to get burned out because of it. That they're trying to keep up a pace that is absolutely crazy and you lose your passion and you've got to get stressed out.

And at some point, maybe you can keep up the pace for two years and you're going to release 15 novels in two years or something, but then you're going to burn out. And then what was the point? There was no passion in it either. I mean, I don't know. I would rather say I release, let's say, let's say we release two or three books a year and those books are passion projects. It's because we like it. Um, and it's at a pace where we can sustain it longterm. But of course as autumn set, I think as well that there is a point to be made about that it is a business.

So if what you love to write is something that nobody likes to read, then yeah, I mean, right. Those books once in a while, but you have to then sprinkle in some books that is more like what the market wants to read, right? So you could write like, let's say you write two books for the market and then you write one book for you. You could do it like that, but, but I don't know. I know it's a bit of a tangent here, but, but I just think that it's important to you.

You cannot just write passion if nobody wants to read your passion. Yeah. Unless you want to just doing it for a hobby, then of course it's fine. But, and I think that's the key is that, yeah, if you're going to do it as a business, you have to pay attention to trends and some of the, you know, we've both done research on the top selling books and what are the commonalities? And so you know that data, but hopefully you can weave that into a story you really want to tell. Because if you're just writing something that you know, five years ago, you would've totally cringed if you had read it.

Oh, you think about that? What a little bit before you write it maybe or give it a try but don't tie yourself to it. Yeah. All right, well what's your number three? Yeah, that was a tangent. Okay, so my number three is, I wish somebody had told me when I was done with the first book and I had to create a cover for it and I had to write a book description that creating a cover on writing a book description is just not something you'd just go Willy nilly about.

You know, I mean the book description we talked about last week, so I'll have to labor that point much here, but, but maybe with the cover because, and this is probably something that I'm not in a low alone in Oh, I was not alone in this boat of thinking that when I'm, I need a cover for my book now that it's done and I need something that just looks awesome. Yeah. So I'll get some somebody and then I'll say, I'll tell the, you know, somebody who knows covid the science because I did do that luckily enough to do it on my own, which you should never ever, ever, ever, ever do.

But, uh, I did get somebody who knew what they were doing to do it, but, but I, I dictated to them what sort of cover I wanted and I went for something that I want to look really pretty. And of course the coven D does need to look good. So that's not what I'm trying to say. But the job of the cover is to convey the sugar to the reader. And my cover does not conveyed a younger to the reader. So it's, it's a big mistake. And if, if I just, you know, researched it a bit or try to understand that well covered assign, I guess there must be some sort of logic or idea behind why covers looked at the way they look at me and I could have avoided that.

Um, that mistake I made and I had to, I have to regret Lee admit that I still haven't gone back and corrected it because I've been way, way too busy with all kinds of stuff and I know that's a lame excuse and I know I'm not doing what I preached the people shouldn't be doing. I should go back and correct it, but then I have to update it a million different places and I have so much to do. I still haven't gotten to that point on my to do list and I don't know why as since I made the book book Permafree it, it gets downloaded quite a lot anyway, so it I don't know.

I don't have a burning platform that it hurts me enough that I, I want to spend time on it above something else, but I really wish I had known that when I started out to be on,

Autumn (25m 31s): no, I think that's a good point. A lot of new authors, you know, I see some that come in so market savvy. I just want to be like, where did you learn this? Because even I didn't know that at first, but you know, I started back in 2012 where you could literally just scribble something on a as a cover and toss it up and people would go and buy it and download it because there was just, there were so many less books now on the competition. Whew. It's cutthroat in a good cover and a great description. But like you said, we just covered that the last episode, so that's fine.

But yeah, it's definitely very, very true. And yeah, you, you know, you don't want to get me going on covers and cover design. That's the other hat I wear. And there's a whole psychology and subconscious reading that goes into even the fonts. Um, yeah. And the colors and the mood. And I just had a discussion with someone. I'm doing a cover for, uh, angel wings. Do we want them lifted, which is more positive versus down, which is more dark and yeah, don't get me going on the symbolism that's hidden in covers that you read in just seconds.

Your mind picks it up, makes a judgment based on your, your entire novel in just, just a few seconds. So those covers, there's a reason they're complicated. Yeah, there is a reason why,

Jesper (26m 55s): eh, an Epic fantasy cover looks usually the way it looks. I mean if you for for the listener here, if you go to Amazon for example, there's a top 100 in Epic fantasy for example, and have a look at those covers in the top 100 and you will start to see some patterns there. And it's for a reason and dose out of sort of things that you want to emulate in your own cover now that copying any of it, but you want to pick out what are the common threats throughout these covers in my sub category on Amazon.

And then you want to use those things in your own cover rather than coming up with this amazing, beautiful picture that you think is look so good then nobody has ever seen it before. No, but that's true. But there's a reason why nobody ever saw it before. It's because it's not going to sell it.

Autumn (27m 43s): They're not going to do a genre it is or anything about your story, they'll be like, huh, yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was my number three. I like that. Number three. So my number three, now that I'm up to three, uh, is again sort of on marketing, but it's, I wish someone had pulled me aside and to, when you're trying to figure out how to market and how to sell books, especially as a newbie, I wish someone had just said, don't worry about all this other stuff. Focus on creating a strong interaction with your fans, which you know, mailing lists, good reads is also a fantastic way of like meeting fans and talking to them instead of, you know, do that over posting on social media or Facebook groups or just post that you send out to the world and you hope someone will find.

It's really, it's the comments, it's the interactions, it's your mailing list, building up relationships. They're getting your super fans that I think will end up benefiting you in the long run. So much more than having a great social media platform. So I wish someone had really talked about that. Cause I know there was a point where I had been working on I think book three and I hadn't really started book Fauria and I wasn't even sure I did actually a whole series of between three and four because they're technically two separate chill at is even though the same character, same world, but totally different story arcs.

So I took a break and I didn't even email my mailing lists for a well. I let it kind of languish and I saw a big hit in sales and especially between books four and five. It took me a while. I'd mentioned that the last episode, but five had the most complicated plot that I changed my entire plotting technique when to Scribner. And so it took longer than even my usual to get it out. And I let a lot of things drop and I really saw that hit between book four and five.

The sales weren't quite as there and I really blame that on me taking time as well as me not telling my readers lots going on and not being really communicative.

Jesper (29m 42s): So don't lose your fans, don't lose your super fans. Stay in touch with them somehow. Yeah. Communicating is is important. Um, and I guess especially, I mean, if a PR linking back, a looping back to what we just talked about, if you're one of those people who are putting out a new book every month, which by the way, some people do, um, then it's probably less important because you're going to communicate with them anyway. I sending them a new release every month, but, uh, but if you're like the rest of us human beings are not vampires and uh, or AI secretly.

Yeah. Then, uh, yeah, then I think it's a good point autumn to make sure that you communicate with your readers and keep the interaction going in, in the, in the low times, in between books. Absolutely. What's your number two? Well, I know this one is probably a bit cliche and say one way or another, but still my number two thing that I wish somebody had told me and, uh, it's also something that you and I have said over and over and over again on this podcast.

Autumn so I dunno if you can guess what it is. We've also talked about it on past YouTube videos and the in one of the, some of the older ones. Oh shoot. There's so much we've covered now. Yeah, I know. Just telling me I can hit you a bit that it's, you actually just said that a bit in what you said in your number three just before, uh, so that as long as you do with the series, uh, the email list, the email list. All right. Yeah, I mean, thank God I did create a mean email list as soon as I started out. So I did not make that mistake and I'm really glad about that because I had picked up that much that I needed to have, uh, have a, an email list.

So I did create that from the get go, which, which is good. So I was off to a good start there, but I just did not put very much effort into actually building the list. Uh, I mean I did a little, uh, but the majority of all my focus went to advertising for selling books and not really building the list. So when I, whenever I had some money to spend to reinvest into my business, I usually spent them on a sales ads rather than list-building ads. And, uh, I, I think I, I really wish somebody had told me back then that, uh, you should always prefer a new email subscriber over sale because the email subscriber that gives you a possibility to, to, you know, build a relationship with that person and then make them invested in what you're doing.

And that's a million times more valuable than a $5 sale. And I just did not have that focus back then. And uh, yeah, I really, really regret that. I think am I always appreciated the business model that basically a returning customer, it's so much more important and where are you going to make most of your money rather that one than

Autumn (32m 40s): a onetime sale. And so that's sort of what we're saying is if you have a mailing list and someone you can contact and is excited about what you're writing and is ready to buy the next book where you know, invested in the next series. That means so much more than, you know, the one, you know, doing a sale or a download and sending money to some of the advertisers for that. So I agree. That is actually a really good number two. Yeah. Yeah. We did talk a lot more about email list building back in episode six of this podcast.

So if, uh, if what I just said triggered you in any way than the, I recommend going back and listening to today's episode if you missed it. Yeah. And my number to actually kind of relates to a recent podcast episode as well. Okay. I don't know if you can guess which one, but actually I mentioned that when we were talking earlier. So my number two is that I wish when someone was talking about, you know, the show don't tell and all of those things, if they had just mentioned that, um, just just focus on one emotion or one description, poor paragraph or sentence.

I see a lot of new authors who are told, you know, show emotions, don't tell them and they throw in like facial expressions. Um, so they're like squinting or flailing, you know, they often have ends in there. Like the character brunches, their brows and frowns and you know, all these little suggestions. It's like, okay, you just just focus on one, bring out one emotion. I remember reading one where I was just like, I don't know what's going on here. There are so many emotions listed, so many actions.

And I could not fathom at the, I was at the point where I'm like, I just want the author to tell me what the character is supposed to be feeling cause I don't get it. So I think, yeah, I think when I was really learning and it was so easy to get overwhelmed with how to show emotions and even descriptions, you start layering in this and this and this and becomes an info dump before you realize it and you don't want to do that. So that interview you just had with CS last Lakin is um, fantastic if you yeah.

If you have questions on like how to really convey emotions, uh, well go back and listen to that cause it really helps look at emotional the art, the sources for writers because that is something I think is really being strong with that, especially as a new author is going to do you worlds of wonder. And like I said, I remember just reading someone else's work and just being so confused because they were talking about all these physical symptoms of emotions and I didn't have a clue what this character was supposed to be feeling or thinking or just what right over my head.

So yeah, I don't know. I don't recall the exact episode number, but it's probably something like 49 maybe or something like that around that in any way. So go back and find that episode if you want. But I think

Jesper (35m 39s): the gist of what you're saying in your, in your learning, number two, their guests, it's just writing is hard. It's difficult. And when you're starting out it's incredibly difficult because you don't know if you're doing it well or not. No, it's very true. And I think, I think most authors go through a phase where they learn a lot and it becomes a lot harder that eventually they just kind of have to put some of that aside and just right again and then use it on their rough draft. Because you can also learn so much that you prevent yourself from writing cause you know you should be doing it better.

So don't do that either. No. True. And work with an editor who knows what they're doing on. Feel free to post some writing in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group and ask other people for some comments and what not. But also be careful not to listen too much to what other people are saying when you, especially when you're first starting because it's so easy to get derailed about, Oh, this person told me to do like this and that, but then that person over there told me to do this and do what I really had a lot of benefit from when I first started out.

What I found like a, a what? It's not a writing partner because he did not do any writing, but he was like a sound board for me. So he's like for you really? Yeah, kind of it, you know, he was very experienced with writing. So what I would do is I would send him one chapter at a time and then he would come and on it and I would go back and I would rewrite the chapter and I think I wrote that chapter one like 15 times or something before he said, okay, you're ready to write chapter two now and so forth.

And I went like that for at least six months and made almost no progress. Um, but I, at least for me, I think it worked very well that I had one person I had to listen to because if I had to listen to 15 different writers giving me advice about this and that, I would be immensely confused because when you're first starting out, you don't know what's right or wrong. You don't know if a, if an advice is good or bad. And sometimes I think we've set this before as well. Writing is also an art form, so there is no right or wrong, it's not like math that you can say two plus two is four and if you get five then it's not right.

It's not like that. So there's also some, there's a lot of gray area in this and just because some Arthur tells you that you should be doing it like this, well that might be, he saw Hearst preference and that might be in his or her voice, but it might not align to how you actually doing your storytelling. So yeah. Yeah, it's difficult and you just have to write a lot to be honest. And then find, find a few people you trust and listen to Dan advice, uh, and, and just write and write and write and write and write.

Agreed. We've got to the top of the list. We're at the top of the list. So what is your number one? I know we're on my lumber one, huh? It's my turn. I think so.

Autumn (38m 37s): So my number one piece of advice I wish someone had told me when I first started out was right a series and release it close together. What I read my debut novel, born of water. I just wanted to write the story and I think I kind of had a dangling out there that it was going to be a serious, but I mean, I didn't even have a serious name. I didn't have a name for book two. I didn't really have the character arcs. I mean, it's amazing how much differently I plot now. Now I have not only the book names, I have the overall arcs.

I know what's in each book. I kind of have it all mapped out and I did not do that when I had book one and one. It's it's if you're going to do that, it helps. So that way you can tie your books together. It's a much more interesting series and when you write a series itself cells, I remember what I finally released the last book in the trilogy book. Three sales went through the roof because it was complete at that point and yeah, I wish someone had told me that. I think it's so much more exciting to go ahead and get everything written, get it released to get the whole series out.

People are much more excited. Your much more excited and I just, it didn't, yeah, it didn't realize it when I wrote book one and I had to do a lot of like scratching my head and change my cover cause I didn't have the series title in there anywhere because I just had it up out as a standalone more or less than it. It really isn't a standalone. So if you're going to write a series, if you're going to write a book, you really consider writing a series. It's better for sales, it'll get you excited. And if you're going to do it, just have all that stuff figured out from the get go.

It'll, it'll save you so much headache later.

Jesper (40m 15s): Yeah, we have am we have mentioned this last week as well, but, uh, between Christmas and new years, we have, uh, one of the biggest indie authors in the world coming onto the podcast called Adam Croft. And he's actually going to talk about just what autumn said and why it is so important to, uh, to write in series and what difference it makes. So you're gonna hear a lot more about that in the past. We also had Lindsay Perro onto the pet co asked you also talked about it. So yeah, there is a lot of advice out there and just take the word for it. Uh, you need to write it.

Autumn (40m 45s): Very good. Okay, so that was my top one. What is yours? Oh yeah. So my, it's funny because I think this one actually goes

Jesper (40m 54s): exactly the opposite of one of your past. Yeah. Because when I first started out, I, I, somebody had told me to spend more time writing and less time marketing because that's true. Yeah. My problem is that I I love the marketing part. I think opposite most of the authors, like you said in one of your past one you said that nobody wants to do with the marketing, but I'm one of those, I want to do them.

So it would make me inclined to spend a lot of time learning about the marketing platforms, how to do, make the ads as optimal as possible, split testing and all that stuff, uh, increasing conversion rates and so forth and so forth. So I ended up spending quite a lot of time doing that. Uh, also when I just had one book out, which is pointless, you know, let's wait till you have the series. Yeah, I, yeah, I would say probably when you have like three to five books out, then you can start playing around with advertising.

But until that point, it's really not that much worth of your time. You can do the list building apps and do that. As I said in my, in my number to a lesson, um, I wish I had spent more time list building so you can do that for sure as soon as you have, even before you have one book out. But, but sales ads, it's like it's a waste of time. And if I just focused more time on writing instead of doing ads all the time, I think I could probably have a lot of more books out by now.

Autumn (42m 22s): Yeah. Yeah. I think you are a little unusual as an author that way, but there are other authors who are good with the spreadsheets who are doing this, you know, from the beginning. Um, the sales, if it's not a business, in their minds, at least the sales are a validation. And so it's easy to focus on doing that when you know you're, you're still new and you people are going to discover you and right now it's really hard to get discovered. And so yeah, you could be spending a lot of time and money on something when it might help to get the whole book yet. I think for you know at least the two series one series done, but you know a little bit more under your belt because, Oh my goodness.

I will say one last piece of things to be aware of. I remember once talking to a Twitter, a very author had been doing it for 20 plus years. I can't remember how many books she had. Out and she said she was so happy that her debut novel was under a different pen name because now she doesn't have to even pretend she knows what any, you know what that book is about. And I won't say I feel that way quite that way about my debut novel, but when I see what book one versus my 16th book that I just really use looks like.

Yeah, my writing has changed a lot. So to keep just keep writing and do you remember you will improve and at some point you'll look back going, I was so hung up on advertising book one and marketing book one and just having written one book and now look at everything I have and how much I've changed. And now I want to hide book one a little bit,

Jesper (43m 50s): but that's okay. Yeah. So the next episode is coming out right before Christmas. And uh, we decided we wanted to do something a little different for you. Yeah. So we're gonna we want it to give it a bit of a Christmas feeling to it. So we are going to talk about how you are going to create a holiday for your fantasy worlds. So it's world building time and I'm already looking forward to it.

Yay.

Narrator (44m 23s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join autumn and Yesper on patrion.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.