Sooner or later, every professional writer accepts one fundamental truth: craft is everything.
A great cover is important, as is a solid marketing plan, but they won’t save you from a story that bores people.
Sure, your friends and family will buy your book, but will they actually read it? Will they tell others about it? If you want to earn a living as a writer then you must develop a fan base. You’ve got to give people a reason to buy (and talk about) your current novel, and anticipate your next one.
So, what makes them do that? The answer is simple: it’s your mastery of the craft. It’s how well you can tell a story. It's not about how pretty your sentences are.
Fine line writing is part of the craft, of course, but it's not the most important part. Being a professional novelist isn't about writing great sentences. It's about telling great stories. This is a tough pill to swallow for most of us (it was for me, anyway) because we were taught to focus on sentences (verb choice, metaphors and the like); no one even mentioned that stories have structure.
Most books sell about 250 copies (that's to your friends and family who buy but don't read, and don't recommend). Because I've applied the principles of storytelling to my last novel, Masquerade, it has sold more than 20,000 copies in 46 countries (and counting). That's almost entirely word-of-mouth sales. (My total marketing spend is less than $3,000 during one promotional blitz.)
The best news is that there aren't that many storytelling principles to learn. Yes, the craft can seem daunting but when you have an experienced writer and editor showing you the ropes, what once seemed overwhelming is suddenly quite manageable.
It doesn’t matter where you are in your creative journey, or how much you already know (or don’t know) about story theory. The only thing that matters is that you make a decision to improve your craft so that you can write better stories in less time.
If that sounds good to you, click one of the options below to learn more.
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