Category Archives: Questions and Answers

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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Questions and Answers, Success Stories

Miscellaneous Questions: How did you become a screenplay writer?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

I took a single screenwriting class. It was relatively easy – if you watch movies and understand that every story is the Monomyth. It’s all about structure, showing not telling, and fitting your story into 90-120 pages.

Screenwriting was exactly what I expected it would be.

It wasn’t difficult, and – within three months of the class – I was already selling work and ghosting.

The only thing you have to remember is that this is a business; you’re just the writer. Finish your work, get your check, move on to the next project. If you get so attached to the story or the characters that you have to direct or want to act or believe that you’re going to have ANY input on the film at all, you will fail. Period.

Dead Tree Books, eBook, Questions and Answers, Writer Reference

Indie Publishing: Best software for creating eBooks

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Question:

What Windows application can I use to create beautifully looking e-books, withe possibility to export in both PDF and Kindle?

Answer:

There are a few options.

But first: PDF isn’t an ebook format. Please don’t make the mistake that others have by trying to sell a PDF file. If you want to create an ebook, there are two formats: ePub and Amazon’s format.  That’s it.  PDF is for creating fixed-format documents; eBooks are reflowable files that allow a reader to read them in the most comfortable way possible; larger font, smaller font, font they like to read the most, landscape or portrait, etc.  PDF files don’t play well with eReaders or apps, and they’re – ultimately – a format for making a document look the same on screen as it does if it were printed; it’s a print format, not an ebook format.

To your answer:

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