Category Archives: Questions and Answers

Inspiration, Questions and Answers, Writing

Question: When a writer presents their manuscript to an editor or a publisher, what prevents them from just stealing the work and publishing the book under their own names?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Answer: Professionalism. An editor or publisher will only ever get one chance to “steal” someone’s work. After that they’re out of business, sued into oblivion, and Chernobyl when it comes to ever being employable ever again. The only writer who is worried about an editor or publisher stealing their manuscript is the noob who doesn’t understand that their work isn’t worth stealing. The amateur. The wannabe too scared to break in who is looking for a reason – any reason – to ensure they remain anonymous and unpublished.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, indie-publishing, Questions and Answers, Self Publishing, Writing

A Question About Self-Publishing

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question: If you publish your book only in electronic form, is it good or bad?

Answer: If you indie-publish your work as an eBook, whether it’s “good” or “bad” will largely depend on the writing.

If you market it properly, you’ll make some money.

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Questions and Answers, Screenwriting, Writing

A Question About The First Draft

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question: When they say your first draft of a film script is bad, what do they mean, and how many drafts do you need until it is perfect?

Answer: “They” who, exactly?

A first draft is exactly that: bleeding out your idea onto the page to see if it’s worth its weight in pixels. Birthing is not a pretty process.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, indie-publishing, Questions and Answers, Self Publishing, Writing

Why do writers still need publishing companies, when you can self publish?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Writers don’t need publishing companies. They haven’t needed publishing companies for more than a decade.

Writers also shouldn’t self-publish. With the maturation of the indie publishing community, there are professionals (the exact same professionals who work for publishing companies) who can help any anyone with a manuscript go from writer to author.

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Questions and Answers, Writing

Question: Do you think that novelists can write about what they don’t know?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Answer: Nope. If you write what you don’t know it rings false, and that transfers directly to the page, and the reader will always pick up on it.

To correct some misconceptions:

  • How many submarines did Jules Verne ride in? None. But he was intimately familiar with the French submarine experimenters of the time – including the submarine “Le Plongeur” designed and built by Simon Bourgeois and Charles Brun, which (gee, coincidentally enough…) just happened to be around for seven years before 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was published, and which Verne actually saw when he was writing the story.
  • Fiction isn’t about “what you don’t know” at all. It’s about storytelling. Good storytellers write what they know. They always have, they always will.
  • Those who claim you should write what you don’t know – using the “crusading knights” and “dragons” and “space travel” and all the Hogwarts stuff doesn’t exist argument – clearly don’t understand storytelling. A story isn’t about the inner workings of hyperdrive, the quantum physics of a witch’s spell, the anatomy of a dragon or any of that ancillary ‘color.’ A good story is about heroes and villains and love and hate and human emotion. THAT is what good storytellers always write about; they write what they know.

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