Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

Yes, I'm still on this image promotion gig. And why? Because I see authors using all forms of graphics to promote their books: postcards (for travel themed books) excerpts partnered with a relevant image quotes from the book partnered with a symbol/image book cover side-by-side with author photo The ideas are blossoming as technology allows us to share and view images easily. I will eventually create each of the above to show you examples, but for now, here's the BookBit. The BookBit The BookBit shares a "bit" of your novel with a relevant image. How do you make one? First, select a riveting, action-packed, emotional or otherwise compelling 100-200 words of your novel, and then find a image to increase the impact you hope to have on your reader. Finding images to match your excerpt can be difficult, especially if you cannot create your own and don't know anyone who can create one for you. However, if you search on creativecommons.org you can find ...

The Synopsis Often publishers and agents ask for a synopsis of your novel manuscript. The synopsis functions to provide the barebones information about your plot, character and the stakes of your story. It is usually no longer than one page, which is what makes writing it difficult. The synopsis includes what happens, so it's like a mini-arc of your story. We start here, this happens, we go here and then that happens and we end up there. The SynopSnip Creating a SynopSnip is much more fun, more visually stimulating and is for a different audience--the reader. Consider the SynopSnip to be a very succinct snapshop of your synopsis. It is also in a format that makes it easy to distribute on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Take a look at the one below to see what I mean. The Example: The Fergus She Novel: The Fergus She Characters: Rachel (protagonist) Scarlet (antagonist) Grafen (antagonist) Angus (love interest) Plot: Rachel is the victim of an ancien...

Wordle is a tool that converts a section of your text into a graphic. The graphic will feature words that are used many times in your text in large font, and words that are less often used in smaller fonts. Believe it or not, Wordle will take up to 90,000 words (and possibly more), which means, you could paste in your entire novel manuscript. Once you see your Wordle graphic, you can determine what words you might be overusing in your manuscript. For example: Is the word "back" in the same size font as your protagonist's name? Doing a quick "Edit>replace" using MS word will allow you to take out redundant words, and then recopy the text back into Wordle. However, make sure you do this on a copy of your MS and not your original. Later, you can figure out how to edit your manuscript to reduce the number of times you use those common words. With Wordle, what you're hoping to create is a mini, visual synopsis of your novel. So character names should...

As a new Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) author, I have learned a few formatting points that I would like to pass onto you. KDP requests that your manuscript be formatted in MS Word or HTML. If you are writing or revising your content in Word, like I did, you need to know the following: INDENTS: Don't use spaces or tabs. Use the "Paragraph" feature and "Indent" "First Line" by 0.5" or 1.27cm. Paragraph returns may not hold. Instead go into "Paragraph" again and set "After" "Spacing" to 10. Insert "Page Breaks" between chapters or text may run together on Kindle. Insert "Pictures". Don't cut and paste. Don't use Headers and Footers, or page numbers in either. Do use "Header" font formatting for your chapter titles as Kindle will turn this into easy-to-use navigation. Do insert a "Book Mark" at your Table of Contents and nam...