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I've started watching several British Midsomer Murder Mysteries during the last two weeks while I proofread my latest novel, Where is Lucia. I love the British mysteries as they are famous for having several suspects in the story, all of whom seem guilty. And the real murderer is always a shocking surprise.
I decided to analyze one or two of the stories to see how the script writer handled the suspects and hid clues of the real culprit.
I watched this on YouTube where it's free. I'll have the show below where you can access it on YouTube if you want to watch it too.
I chose a murder mystery that I had already seen. I knew how it ended and I was then able to focus only my author mind on watching for clues, subtext and foreshadowing while I watched the show.
The name of the show I chose was DEATH AND DREAMS. I used my cellphone and an app called "One Note". It has a dictation feature on it. I also had a small notebook that I jotted down a few notes on so I wouldn't forget to mention in my dictation review. I paused the show and dictated my notes. When I opened my laptop, I copied and pasted them into this blog post and cleaned it up.
Many British script writers specialize in murders where everyone is a suspect and there are more than two or three suspects in each drama. And the real culprit is always a surprise.
Below is the analysis I did after watching a Midsomer Murder Show on YouTube. It's free with ads. I'll post the video below in case you want to read my analysis and see what you think.
This show opened with the camera walking through a common middle-income family home. A radio was playing a call in show. The woman speaking was referring to her kids being downstairs and probably laughing at her for calling the show. The announcer had the usual fake enthusiastic voice talking with her.
The camera moved slowly during two minutes of this show talk and then you saw a man sitting in a chair with his head back. His eyes were closed but it was not possible to determine if he was sleeping or dead. The camera then showed an elaborate knotting system of fish wire that was strung around to a shotgun on the other side of the room. Then you heard the explosion and the camera showed you a grizzly scene of a man blown down into a bloody mess against his stove.
The next scene was the usual opening of the Midsomer show, which is an introduction of very sweet music showing various scenes from English village life. Each scene is beautiful, cottages, ducks waddling around, beautiful weather, long windy roads, lots of trees. This opening made the last scene seem even more ghastly.
As an author, I think following up a ghastly scene with a scene of domestic life would have the same effect.
The next scene shows Det. Barnaby and Sgt. Troy show up and discuss what they see. Troy draws a conclusion that it has to be suicide. Det. Barnaby is not so sure. He wonders why the guy didn't just go outside and shoot himself; why the elaborate fish-wire setup.
Barnaby notices a silver trophy that is present on the table. He smells what's inside and he also sees a bottle of wine present in the kitchen. They mention that the housekeeper is the one who found him.
The housekeeper, Mary May, confirms she found him when she showed up at 8:30. Her affect is off, however. This is one way the writer cast some doubt about her. She was too contained, too reserved in her reaction with the cops.
She goes on to say that she and others may have seen this coming. Mr. Martin Roth was a mean man. He hadn't paid her for 4 weeks before he died. She went on to say he owed a lot of people money. She also said a lot of people didn't like him. This too creates the possibility that maybe someone else wanted to murder Mr. Roth.
Barnaby and Troy go to notify his next of kin which is his estranged wife, Sarah Roth. She says he was a miserable drunk, gambler and cheater and also physically abused her. She is shocked however when they say her husband killed himself. She is now living with another guy, Gordon, who is a part time chemist/pharmacist and local musician who leads a small town marching band. They have a small baby that she is taking care of.
The wife does show some guilt when she says she hopes it wasn't over her. It comes out that her husband wanted her back and he kept coming over when he was drunk and shouting things at her from outside. When Barnaby is there, he sees similar trophies to what he found at the murder scene. Silver cups. This casts suspicion on the wife or her new boyfriend. Her ex made all kinds of trouble for her and her new husband who were set to be married as soon as the divorce went through. This, of course, could be a motive as well.
Somewhere in the beginning Barnaby gets a report that Mr. Roth was on a large amount of Tenzine and this is an antidepressant but it would have rendered him incapable of pulling the trigger. He was killed first and then blown apart. The cops know it's murder not suicide.
In the next scene, Mary May, the housecleaner, runs into the pharmacy and tells Gordon -- Sarah's Baby Daddy -- that she found Martin Roth shot dead. He almost rudely escorts her out of his shop without explanation. It makes you wonder if she is just a gossiping troublemaker.
Next we find out that Martin Roth was receiving psychological treatment at a local psych hospital that was run by his old pal, Dr. Jane Moore. Jane runs the institution and is widowed now. Her husband died on a climbing expedition a few months earlier. She is now taking care of her three step children, two of whom witnessed their father's death, but they all appear to be a happy family.
Dr. Moore is referred to as a psychological profiler and she worked a case with Barnaby in the past. He has great respect for her, but Troy resents a chumminess that exists between them -- probably because Barnaby is a married man.
Dr. Moore is shocked to hear her ex-patient killed himself. She admits she used to go there and check in on him. You get the impression it may have been friendship or she is just being a good doctor.
Dr. Moore has a party to celebrate her hospital being open for a year. Barnaby brings his wife and Toby comes with Barnaby's daughter, I think her name is Cilly. This is where the young resident says he would do anything for the doctor and the two daughters are standing next to him. They roll their eyes at him and the younger one giggles at him. They think he's a fool.
Troy still doesn't like the closeness between his boss and Dr. Moore. He decides to leave with Cilly and he wants to go to the obstacle course at the hospital and climb the elaborate rope climbing.
Cilly sees movement in the bushes, but she dismisses it because it was only a second. The viewers know there's someone in the bushes. Troy tries to climb but he's a little tipsy from drinking and he falls down onto the ground and laughs. Cilly says, I'll show you how it's done. She climbs up with no trouble and as she comes to the top, she looks up and the young resident is dead and hanging from a hangman's rope. Cilly tells her father the next day at lunch about seeing the bushes move and thinking someone else was there but she can't be sure.
The medical examiner says that this victim was drowned in the creek behind the climbing equipment and dead first before he was strung up. They also found Tetrine in his pocket, the same pills that Martin Roth had taken. It's starting to look like maybe it was the resident who was the murderer.
Now, in the next scene, the chemist is on the phone and he's whispering to someone that a little something has come in the mail and maybe you'd like to come and see me sometime. You hear his baby in the background which makes him seem even more sleezy.
The two cops are in the hospital looking through a bunch of stuff. Troy tells the doctor that the resident had Tetrine pills in his pocket and she replied that he probably had them to give to the patients. Troy asked here, why did he bring them to the party. You can tell there's a little tension between the doctor and Troy.
Then the older cop shows the doctor that there's a letter he found. He's holding a letter about Dean Honeysette, stating that in light of his recent behavior, he recommends that all of his privileges are suspended. Being a gardener off premises is a big privilege. It was signed by the resident. This makes the viewer believe that this would be a reason for Dean to kill the resident, to protect his privileges.
The cops find Dean in the hospital and he's very guarded and uncooperative -- also still pretty weird too. And they asked him where he was last night when the resident was killed and he claims he has an alibi. He was in the wing of the hospital and there are 4 people who saw him. It was lights out at 9:30 and he claims he was in bed.
They ask him about his criminal record and it comes out that he was a car thief but he did resort to strangling someone then.
Dean tells the cops that he didn't kill the first guy and he said he didn't kill the second guy (the resident), but he thinks the second guy who died was weak. He said this place needs strong people like him and Dr. Moore. He claims that people look up to him and feel that he has been through everything and is still okay.
Dean also tells them that he told the doctor not to put the obstacle/exercise course along the river creek in the back, but the rope guy insisted that's where it should go. He knew it was going to be trouble.
As the cops pull up to see the Rope guy, he is acting weird and says that he loves rope, the feel of it. He asks the cop to smell the rope and reveals it's the best rope in the world. It's from the middle east somewhere.
He goes on to tell them that his family before him were Rope Guys. He had a distant relative who was a hangman. He says this with pride. He comes off like a nutball and he could easily be the culprit. It also comes out that Martin Roth also owed him money. They were supposed to go into business together. He shows the cops a stand that has a few handmade toys or some kind on it. That was the money Roth never gave him.
Then in the next scene, with no explanation to the viewer, you see a woman taking clothing off of a clothesline, an innocent domestic scene. She has her children in the yard with her. After she leaves, someone off camera comes up and cuts the clothesline at both ends and takes the rope away. No explanation.
The cops both go to talk to Gordon the chemist and Sarah his wife but they are out. The Doctor's daughter, Hannah, is babysitting. She gives him a cup of tea and they make pleasant conversation. She tells him she's nervous about what's happening all around them in the village. He tells her not to worry, they are on the case. She tells him she wishes they could all move away from there and go someplace where they could all take care of their mother. She asks Barnaby if he will be going to her mother's second event -- the second party. I can't remember what the occasion is, but it's the second party the doctor has at her place. Barnaby says, oh yes. Barnaby asks Hannah if she likes the marching band music. She says, oh, no, it's so silly with those outfits they wear. She rolls her eyes. She has no interest in it.
They go tot he party but this one is set up like a little town bizarre or carnival. Gordon and his band are all dressed up in their uniforms and they are playing music at the affair.
In the background, the rope guy is present and acting generally weird, but nothing relevant, just weirdo stuff, looking mean and dastardly as he was playing one of the carnival games.
Dean is also there and he is wearing his Nazi look and demeanor. He's eating something and just pushing it into his mouth like a complete nut ball.
Mary Mays husband is a referee and he is organizing them into a tug of war. On one side is Dean the weirdo and his bunch of other guys. On the other side is The Rope Guy and his bunch of other guys. As Mary's husband counts down, the guys begin to pull before he says go and they all wind up falling down. The ref begins to scold them and Dean comes up and starts strangling him. The cops come and wrestle them apart.
Just at that moment, Mary Mays shows up and says what's going on here? And she reports on a terrible crime that just occurred at her house. They go and her clothesline has been put down. Hers and her neighbors. She left the crime scene alone, in other words, the clothing was still on the ground. Troy is about ready to roll his eyes when she refers to it as a crime scene.
Troy also tells Barnaby that he should arrest Dean because he's dangerous and he had the motive and means to be the killer of all of of them. Barnaby doesn't want to act yet. Troy thinks he is allowing his feeling for the doctor to get in the way.
The camera shows Gordon put son a new uniform he bought, adjusts his hat, opens the door and says, "I'm glad you were able to come". Viewer can't see who is at the door. Scene ends.
Mary May's husband throws the garbage out from his business on Main Street. He looks across the street and someone has cut the rope that was holding his English flag up and it's now laying on the ground. He's outraged and like his wife, he considers this a serious crime and call the cops.
As Troy is dealing with Mary's husband, he looks over and sees Sarah with her baby in a carriage knocking on the pharmacy door calling out her husband's name. Troy goes over and finds out Gordon never came home last night.
Two musicians show up to the music room for practice and knock, but no one answers. They think it's odd, but wait. Then they go in and see Gordon has been hung from the back of the door in the music room. He's dead.
When Barnaby and Troy show up, they see scuffle marks and they believe that he too was killed first, and then strung up. It's all about the rope. His wallet and valuables were still present. It wasn't a robbery. They notice a package wrapping that is left on a couch. They trace it and find out it was for a majorette's outfit.
There is another inexplicable scene where you see a farmer riding on his tractor. Off to the side he sees something. The camera shows rows and rows of clotheslines that are holding some kind of brownish muslim sacks. There's no explanation. In the midst of these sack is a the new Major music jacket Gordon bought for himself. The scene ends without any real explanation.
The cops go and tell Dr. Moore and she says it's horrible. She comments that he was harmless. She can't fathom why anyone would kill him. She tells them she has to show them something. She brings them into the back of the hospital and all the ropes have been removed from the obstacle/exercise course.
The two cops go to visit the rope guy and when they arrive, he is walking out of his business. He tells them he was about to come and see them. He shows them that he has been cleaned out. Every rope he owned is gone. All of it. He only left to get something to eat, he couldn't have been gone fore more than an hour or so.
Troy still thinks the killer is Dean. Barnaby is still investigating. He goes to see Sarah Roth, the Chemists grieving girlfriend. She is upset about losing Gordon. Barnaby asks her if she ever noticed the trophy missing. She said, no, she didn't. He asks if her husband every told her it was missing. She said no. Barnaby asks if maybe Hannah the babysitter could have taken it. Sarah scoffs and says, no, she would never do anything like that.
Barnaby asks her if she knows anything about her husband getting a drum majorette's outfit. She said, no, he didn't mention it, but she knew he wanted to get majorettes for his band, but she told him she thought the village was too conservative for that. She wasn't alarmed at all by his behavior. Sarah tells Barnaby that Gordon thought her ex-husband took the trophy and that could be because he was always hanging around, watching them, and starting trouble.
Next scene is Barnaby going to talk to the farmer and there is a cricket game or some other English sport going on with the doctor's step son. The two girls, Hannah and her younger sister are sitting on a blanket with food and tea. They give Barnaby a tea.
The younger sister gets weird and asks Barnaby if he's ever been on a picnic with their mom. He says no, and she says, I bet you would like to. Her sister tells her to be quiet. Barnaby takes it all in. He takes the musician's coat that was hanging on the clothes line and he goes into his car. He puts his head back and closes his eyes like he wanted to take a nap.
When he wakes up, it's dark outside. He looks around and he sees some kind of movement over by the clotheslines. He gets out and goes over to see what is going on. Someone throws a rope around his neck and begins to strangle him.
Just in the nick of time, Troy pulls up and beeps his horn. Whoever was strangling Barnaby is thrown to the ground. He is taken to Dr. Moore's house and given some whiskey or something to settle him down. Her kids are all there with her. Barnaby is nursed back into shape by Dr. Moore and her kids.
After this, the two cops go looking for Dean. He hasn't returned to the hospital. They find all kinds of rope in his closet. Then they go back on the grounds to another area that he used to work in. They open up a shed and there's more rope inside there too.
Dean shows up and tells them that he saw Troy and his girlfriend in the yard that night. He was ready to cut the doctor down, but they showed up. (This resolves who was in the bushes when Cilly saw them moving).
He then says that he had to remove all the ropes so the killing would stop. It was the only thing that would stop the killing. Barnaby asks him how many are we talking about? He doesn't answer. He then refuses to talk.
In the next scene, a white van pulls up and the school kids get off. Dr. Moore's kids are on the bus. They are then taken into custody and separated for questioning. Barnaby starts with the older sister.
She is snotty and scoffing and basically unresponsive for awhile until she figures out they have evidence on her. She finally comes clean and admits that they killed everyone and she ends by saying "no one will ever take our mother from us."
The next scene is when the younger girl comes in for questioning. She asks where her mother is. There is a guardian there for her but not her mother. At first she just looks nervous.
Barnaby asks her a few preliminary questions and she is a little more cooperative than the sister. He asks her if she loved her dad and she said yes but goes on to admit she loves her mother more. Barnaby asks her if her brother and sister witnessed their father's death. She giggles and whispers to him that he didn't fall from the cliff, her brother and sister pushed him. She giggles and giggles. She's weirder than all three previous weirdos in the show. The actress playing the sister had spaces between her teeth and this made her seem crazier and more psycho when she giggled.
In the last scene, the older cops wife pulls up in her car and she seems like she doesn't know what's going on. She asks him why have you asked me to come here? He tells her I may need you for this. They stand together as a couple as Dr. Moore meets them.
The show ends by Barnaby putting his arm around Dr. Moore's shoulder and walking with her and his wife into her hospital. He is telling her that her kids are all psychos and they were the ones who killed all the people.
The only thing that was left out of this narration, to the best of my knowledge, is that when Hannah and Barnaby were talking, it showed Hannah pulling the fish wire to fire the gun. It also showed all three kids holding the Resident underwater to drown him. They also showed the brother strangling Gordon while the two girls taunted him by mimicking drum majorettes.
I found it surprising that they had about three scenes where nothing happens except characters act mean and crazy. Like other viewers, I didn't think twice about it as I watched the show the first time. I just thought these guys looked guilty or crazy and could be a suspect.
Secondly I learned that there was very little if any foreshadowing about the sisters during the entire show. Aside from their connection to the head of the hospital, there was no real connection to them until almost the end when it was time to wrap up the 1.5 hour murder show. I didn't think anything of this when I watched the first time which means the author got away with it!
Thirdly, I learned that bookending grewsome scenes in between two sweet domestic scenes makes the horror worse somehow. This is an important takeaway.
Fourthly, I learned that you don't always have to offer a reason right away for a character acting weirdly. It's okay to have some scenes where something strange happens with no explanation until later on.
Next I learned that there was no mention of the absurdity of having this serial killer on the loose in a small village in England and there's no press around and people seem to just take it in their stride. In the same way that a person agrees to suspend belief in a horror or science fiction movie, they will also suspend belief about the level of murder for the sake of a good murder mystery.
I also noted that the two sisters were not weird at all during the entire show, but in the last scene, for the sake of a little horror, the writer made the girls quite ruthless and horrible. To me, this also relies on the reader/viewer agreeing to suspend belief for the sake of a good mystery.
If you would like to discuss this show, email me at rshannon at readfirstchapter dot com.
I write novels in series and like there to be a personal subplot that takes place over each book, but another longer arc that takes place over the entire book series. In order to pull this off, I need to be very organized and deliberate in how I let the character arc play out not only over time but over the book series as well.
This blog post is about my process in doing that. Now, I don’t claim this to be the only way to go about it, but it is the way I do it and it works for me. This process is not how I started out working on character arcs! I learned the hard way that it’s important to know in the very beginning how you will allow the book arc and the series arc plays out.
I know there are long multi-book series where the main character is more of an action hero and he/she doesn’t change much. Legal thrillers and the Jack Reacher book series comes to mind. This does work as Lee Childs and other successful authors can attest to. They have sold millions of copies with these stock hard-boiled characters who remain generally the same over the entire series.
I prefer there to be more character growth in each book, plus, I like there to be a series arc as well. My series are shorter than Mr. Child’s but each writer has to find their own place. I like shorter series with the main characters participating in more of a family drama and/or a romantic subplot.
Sketch out on a mind map or even a piece of paper the answer to each of the above character development questions. MC stands for Main Character and ANT stands for Antagonist. By sketching them out at the same time in the beginning stages, it will give you a strong direction for your writing right from the get go. Of course, if you have more than one main character, you will want to repeat this process for every main character.
This also allows you to see and create a conflict between the main character and the antagonist. This is particularly helpful to new writers who lean towards making all characters “too nice”. Without some level of conflict, there won’t be enough conflict or drama to move forward in the story. It will simply be an “and-then-this-happened, and-then-this-happened” kind of story.
I use a four-part plot structure, so I break my character arc into four sections. This allows me to keep up with the character development and also don’t resolve the inner conflict too early.
I find this technique also gives me solid writing boundaries and/or writing guideposts. When I’m in Part 2, I know my goal for this section is to make sure the planned character arc for Part 2 is completed before I move to part 3.
Now that I’ve written my third book series, I think in terms of multiple-book character acts. As I start out with new characters in a new series, I make sure that I have many options of where these characters can go over the entire series.
A special note to pantsers: This technique gives guideposts and boundaries, but every story or novel takes on a creative life of it’s own. I find by having the character arc written down and sectioned, it makes it easier to change the story as this creative process takes over. I simply look over the character arc and alter it with the new “better idea” that has come up.
I find it gives me the best of both worlds. I have a strong direction when I am writing, but flexibility and ease are built into the process itself. It’s super easy to change mid-stream by just tweaking the character arc a bit.
I hope this helps new writers!
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Mastering the art of writing captivating mysteries. Unleash your creativity and weave intricate tales of crime and suspense.
This worksheet is geared for those who want to write a mystery or crime novel. It helps with writer’s block too. It breaks down the process into small bite-sized pieces and it will get your motor going without any effort.
Just follow the suggestions, summed up easily below, and you will have at least the start of something within minutes. There is a link below to download the three-page instructional and checklist.
If you are an intermediate novel writer, here is a graphic of the overall process without the instructional questions:
If you are stumped for a main story, or if you are stumped for what happens now, or even if you have written yourself into a bit of a corner, this instructional will help, along with your own creativity and thinking, to bring about new possibilities.
Jump into the series of steps wherever you are in the writing process and it will help you restart your engine. Once you go through the process a time or two, I’m sure it will become your go-to procedure.
Below is a closer look at Page 3 of the Worksheet where it will give you a wide birth of choices for mysteries and/or crimes. It’s hard for one mind to think of all the possibilities without some kind of aid no matter how creative one is.
Let’s talk about how to use this work sheet. Choose a crime or mystery from the list below and make up a potential perpetrator. Don’t waste time on what he or she looks like. Then start asking the following questions:
Once you have a perpetrator and the cast of necessary characters, then it’s time to answer the following questions:
Before you exert too much energy fleshing out any character or story details, be sure to check to make sure you can design a three-prong storyline out of this budding storyline. One prong will be a red herring storyline, someone who may look guilty, but is exonerated in the middle or end of the story. The second prong is a second suspect or a wrong suspect who will look guilty for a large segment of the storyline. And the final prong will be for the real culprit. In order to have a story that works, you will need a believable crime that can meld these three prongs into one suspenseful story.
As you use this worksheet and these techniques, a crime skeleton will emerge. Some attempts at this will go flat in the early stages for any number of reasons. But some storylines will begin to almost shape themselves.
I always make four believable storylines and then choose the best one. Then I know I have the best of my ability at that time in my life. Once you know you have a storyline and a lineup of stick figures and character roles that can technically pull off the mystery, so to speak, then you can begin to build real characters and an actual story.
Once you know what will be needed for the three-pronged storyline and what traits the lead characters will need to play out their parts, the characters will start building themselves into two-dimensional characters. You can take the characters up to deeper, three-dimensional characters as you flesh out your main story and subplots.
I hope this is helpful. Once you know you have a workable storyline, then it’s time to take a look at my Ultimate Character Development Worksheet. This will help you bring the stick figures to three-dimensional with a full character arc.
Pulp Fiction become popular during the depression of the 1920s and 1930s. Publishers at the time used a very cheap “pulp” paper in order to produce these short stories and magazines that cost about a quarter. Yes, twenty-five cents!
During the depression, life was difficult and people didn’t want to struggle to make sense of what authors meant by long run on sentences. They didn’t have the stomach or patience for prose. During a depression, people are lucky they can concentrate at all. They wanted escape and the publishers gave it to them in the form of pulp fiction.
Pulp magazines were filled with adventurous stories with hard-boiled detectives, larger-than-life heroes, space travelers. There was no subtlety. It was all straight-talking dialogue. The plots were fantastical and melodramatic, but easy to follow and easy to read.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, classical literature was popular. I would even refer to it as high-brow fiction. Oscar Wilde, H G Wells, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner. These authors are known not only for their storytelling ability, but their prose, their wordsmithing. This is what I consider ‘high-brow’. Their books are not read-’em and toss-’em books. They are written to read and contemplate, maybe even read again and again.
Agatha Christie was also a part of this list of popular authors at the time, but she may have influenced the pulp fiction genre more than any of the other authors. Her multi-suspect mysteries were extremely popular
Pulp fiction’s prose was everyday tough talk. There were clever phrases to read and re-read. There was no deep concepts to contemplate. It was mostly action, reaction and romance. The plots were sensational, violent and maybe strange, but they were easy to read; perfect for people who are distracted and worried.
Because most of the pulp fiction is short, it can help an author to easily see how the pulp fiction writer handled foreshadowing, passage of time, action scene descriptions, fight scenes, how much and how little back story is needed in a short story. There is much more for a new author to learn from reading pulp fiction.
When I self-published my first novel, I finished it and uploaded it and waited. That’s when I learned how important marketing the book is. I also learned through the next several books how important it is to take advantage of each tiny phase of a book launch for marketing. That’s what this blog post is about.
I have made a checklist for beginners so you can print it out and have it with you when it’s time to launch your first book, or a subsequent book. I believe it will be very helpful to you.
Aside from the checklist, I have made a strategy video where I go over the checklist and give you an overview of how the launch happens, what is involved and how to set yourself up for the best outcome. I consider a good outcome to be a smooth and timely launch, and within a week to 10 days, you have at least four to ten nice reviews. It sounds easy, but for new authors, it’s not — But it is possible.
The following websites are ones where you build a email list and your books will be featured on these websites. Bookfunnel and Siteorigin both offer “author swaps” where you can swap your featured book with another author who has a sizable list.
I’m not a seasoned marketer and don’t even consider myself that good at it, and even I was able to build an email list of 5,076 emails within a two year period. To me, this is amazing!
Bookfunnel.com
Siteoriginapp.com
Instafreebies.com
Amazon ads is a very complicated program to learn. I only touched on the ad strategy in this checklist video. There will be more Amazon ad videos coming in the future.
Below I have left a list of book marketing websites that as a beginner I used. Now that I have built a newsletter, have a website, and post regularly to social media. I rely mostly on purchased ads with FreeBooksy, BargainBooksy, FussyLibrarian and purchased Amazon Ads. But you may find the following links helpful so I’ll leave them for you to try out.
Which font should you use when self-publishing? The more choices we have, the harder it gets to choose.
I always chose Times New Roman as that was the font default in journalism, for books and newspapers for my entire life. However, since Microsoft added hundreds of fonts, I now see any number of fonts show up.
Below are the most common fonts in my opinion:
As you can see from the picture above, even fonts of the same size are heavier and lighter than each other and even the numbers are larger and smaller. My favorites are Times New Roman and Trebuchet MS.
BOOK COVER FONTS – Pretty Fonts:
When it comes to Book Cover fonts, that’s another story. You want something that is attention capturing. I have gone through all of the fonts in Microsoft Word and below I have created a large list of the ones that would be appropriate for book covers.
Often you may want to also have fonts that are heavy and bold. I again went through all the fonts and made a table with those fonts too. I also added some old fashioned and vampire-like fonts.
I remember being new and overwhelmed while planning my first book cover. There were too many choices and I was trying to find the best fonts to “fit in” with other authors. In the beginning, this was very important to me.
I hope this helps.
You can print out this page or you can screen shot and save on your computer. But if you want to download copies of these lists in one download, click below:
Writing a novel is a huge undertaking. There are many things that go into the writing of a fiction story. The best tip I can pass on is this: Break everything down into little bite-sized pieces. By doing this, you can reduce a huge project down to do-able portions that can be done whether you have 2 hours a week to write or two full days! It only requires a little planning and organization.
Regardless of what type of novel you choose to write, all stories require at least a semblance of suspense. Suspense is what hooks the reader into the story, and it is what pulls the reader along the story and keeps them reading. Suspense creates a question the reader desires an answer to. The greater the suspense, the more hooked the reader will be.
It’s important to keep reading as your own journey as a writer continues. Each author has a different style and uses different storytelling techniques. The stories don’t even have to be great. You can learn from the good, the bad and the bland. Just analyzing what made a book bland is a great lesson in itself. Did the story need more action? Did the story get stuck somewhere?
When I read novels now, I can usually tell whether the author is a pantser or a plotter. If the story sags in the third section, I can tell the author got caught in part two of the three-act structure.
The books I read now are twice as enjoyable because I experience them as a reader but as an author too. I get to enjoy the story itself but also watch and learn the author’s storytelling techniques too.
When I am in the process of writing my own novels, I tend to read less because I’m reading and proofreading my own pages. During these times, I like to vegetate by getting lost in a movie. I watch movies specifically to learn from them. Believe me, you can learn a lot about the actual storytelling craft from watching movies. They can also be a source of inspiration for your own stories.
It took me almost a year to come up with my first story for a novel. One full year. I didn’t know where to start. I had ideas, but didn’t know how to brainstorm them into a potential story.
Ideas for stories in the beginning will come from TV movies, Cinema movies 
or other books you read. Reading other authors is crucial no matter where you are on the writing spectrum. However, when you’re new, you can learn a lot from watching mystery or crime noir movies. I like movies from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The movies in these decades didn’t have CGI and the directors had to use the stage to tell the story. They used wider shots and props to assist the storytelling. By watching these older movies, you can learn a lot regarding writing.
The movies of today show the location scenes once and then do close up shots of one character talking and then follow it up with another close-up shot of a character talking. There’s not that much to learn about storytelling from these movies. It’s a shame because the sets are absolutely gorgeous, especially in the fantasy movies.
To the left (or above) is a screenshot of the Wikipedia page that comes up when you search “1940 in film”. This will give you all of the films and a tiny synopsis of what the films are about. You can pick whatever decade appeals to you.
It’s a good idea to read the synopsis before you view the movie. Knowing at least a basic outline of the story will allow you to absorb more as an author. If you go into the movie blindly, you will be “experiencing the movie” as a viewer only. By knowing ahead of time what story will be unfolding, it will allow you to watch specifically for certain scenes to unfold. You can watch what tools are used to move the story along.
For example: Notice in the scenes how much information is passing to the viewer by the setting. Besides the timeline of when the story is taking place, it often will give you shots of recognizable icons from certain cities. There are so many techniques you can learn from watching these older movies about all of the tools used to lay out the facts of the story and how suspense is created. Below is a list of things to watch for in stories:
If you are looking for a suggestion, I would suggest Rebecca for the first movie. This movie was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and it has a lot of gothic atmosphere. There is also a psychological plotline in this story so it is a goldmine for learning storytelling tools.
Most of the synopses on Wikipedia give you an outline of the story but they don’t have spoilers in them. Sometimes I only read about six paragraphs on the really long ones because the purpose is only to know a little bit about what the story will be about so you can watch for how things are handled on film. You can easily translate any of these tools to novel writing.
GOTHIC MOVIES: Gothic movies are great at showing how to introduce fear and suspense into a story. They are also a great place to learn how to use the atmosphere and the location and backdrops to add to the suspense.
FILM NOIR: These movies are great to learn character development. Film Noir is usually about all fallen characters. In other words, they are all sinners, but some characters are bigger sinners than others. This is a great way to learn how to craft a fallen
LONG SERIES: These are great to learn about how the location and things in the room or backdrop help to relay the story. You can learn a lot about the passage of time, how flashbacks are handled, how to introduce new characters in preparation to take the story in a new direction. Miniseries like Downton Abbey and other miniseries are a great place to learn about what is going on.
MELODRAMA: Melodrama has fallen out of favor in recent times, but I personally think it needs a comeback. You can learn about melodrama from old world soap operas. I think the only one I can think of is Dallas. It’s on either Amazon Prime or somewhere else you can watch it. These types of shows are good for showing how to blend romance, cheating, and other emotional scenes into the story.
You don’t have to commit to watching the entire soap opera. You can learn a lot about storytelling tools by watching only a few shows.
Blow is a copy of the entire Brainwashing Sheet I referred to above. You can read the blog post about how to use it here.
And you can sign in to download your copy of the sheets below:
I have advertised with Freebooksy and have had a good experience. The cost to advertise runs approximately $100 to 110. Occasionally, they do have a special, but generally, it is a $100.00 cost. I’ve had over 2,000 downloads with them, so I consider them the best that I have tried.
I have also used The Fussy Librarian and I’ve also had a good result. Their prices range from $49 to $80. They have less of a reach, but I have had 300 or 400 downloads and I still consider that a good result.
I decided to try some of the newer kids on the block to see what kind of results I would get for less of an investment. The first one I’m trying is Manybooks.net.
You can see a snapshot of their website to the left. The website is for readers, of course, and they have a search where the readers can browse through all the books or by genre.
In order to find the author services, you need to scroll all the way to the bottom and look for a link for Author Services. I took a snapshot of it above.
Above you will see the conditions that I took a snapshot of from their website. The book has to be marked down at least 50%. You need a minimum of 5 reviews on Amazon and you need to have a 4-star rating or higher. More on this below.
I tried the $29 package, shown abaove, to see what kind of results I would get. Because they required a 4-star rating, I had to choose Book 4 from my Newport Vampire Series. It’s always harder to market for a Book 4, so I had pretty realistic expectations going into this.
The first book in this series, Darius, A Vampire Story, is permafree on Amazon.
Besides the two permafree books I have, all my other books are in Kindle Select. So I set Distrust to be free on February 26th and February 27th. I only purchased the one promotion on 02/26/24. I signed up and these were my results:
02/26/24 – Distrust – 135 downloads and Darius (Book 1) had 21 downloads
02/27/24 – Distrust – 132 downloads and Darius (Book 1) had 19 downloads
I was very happy with the results. First of all, having 135 downloads for a Book 4 in a series is good. Darius also received 21 downloads. Now, Darius gets downloads everyday on its own, but I attributed all the downloads to the promotion just for ease of keeping the records.
The bigger surprise was that I had the same amount of downloads on the 27th. I only paid for one promotion but I count all of these downloads as results of the paid promotion.
Next time I will try Murder in the Sanctuary which is a Book 1 in a series but not permafree and see what kind of results I get. I will do a follow-up blog and video.
I am also planning to try another book, Groomed for Marriage which is permafree with the second $39 package. I’ll write about that one when I do it. The third package had to do with more of an editorial package. It seemed a little bit involved, an author interview, and working with their staff. I wasn’t interested in that one at this time, but for anyone who is looking for something like that, their price seems very reasonable and their staff, pictured below, seems friendly enough!
Below is a video I made going over the website and showing you where everything is. Sometimes it’s helpful to see it live.
This is the third and last segment to the Personalized Workflow Series. In this post, I'll share my best strategies to find, make and claw back time to make room to write that book you want to write.
Although I'm in retirement now, I wrote the first six of my fiction books while self employed full time. So I know the following strategies work.
In order to find time, you need to analyze your life to find the wasted time and the dripping faucets of time. The last two segments of this series are all about looking at your duties and obligations from a bird's eye view in order to do a proper analyzation. By seeing everything on paper before your own eyes, you can more easily see where the time leaks and losses are happening.
Look for the obvious ways you're losing time. Are you sleeping too late and not getting an early enough start? Are you getting lost in social media or talking too long on personal phone calls? We tend to do this kind of thing when we're not in a time-management frame of mind. We assume we have all the time in the world. First look for obvious wasted time. With two ounces of discipline and a tighter but realistic schedule, you can reclaim all wasted time and direct it to your actual goals.
Learn to break down projects into bite-sized pieces. Instead of scheduling yourself to write for five hours for two days in a row, try scheduling three two-hour writing sessions over the course of a week.
Once you have made the list of obligations and the realistic time frames to complete them, you can more easily juggle a calendar to make time for everything. It's easier to swap out a 2 hour time-frame than a four-hour time frame.
Once you have found all the time leaks and fixed those, now it's time to look at the ways in which we can more efficiently use our time. Most of us develop the bad habit of keeping a mental list of the things we need to accomplish. Then we move from one thing to another based on what we think we should do now or next. This leads to squandering both time and energy.
By looking at all of your weekly or monthly obligations from above, you can be much more efficient with your time. It's possible to categorize tasks and assignments in order to get them done together. With a little foresight, multi-tasking happens naturally. I'll give some examples below.
Multi-task Example 1: If you go to Church once a week, schedule a grocery pickup afterwards. Use Instacart to order the groceries and then simply swing by and pick up the groceries on your way home. That's a two to three hour savings right there.
If you need to pick up mail at a post office or a central location, add that small errand onto the grocery haul. I'm sure you are getting the idea that by grouping errands done with the car together, multi-tasking allows you to clear them all away on one trip. This saves both time, energy -- and gas. This is another huge time savings that can be put towards making time to write or do whatever else you want to do.
Multi-Task Example 2: Schedule doctor appointments on the same day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Schedule research to be done in the waiting room in both doctor offices. Most doctor offices allow you to use at least a general Wi-Fi. Then add lunch with a friend between the visits and keep up friendships as part of your new lifestyle.
I always have a cellphone and ear buds with me. Any time I have to wait, no matter where it is, I watch marketing or writing videos to improve my skills. This is a strategy to squeeze every available minute in a day and make it work for you.
Multi-Task Example 3: Get any Saturday chores out of the way by doing the chores one bite at a time during the week. Washing a floor takes about ten minutes. Dusting one room? Fifteen minutes -- depending upon how many dust-collectors you have displayed! You can get up twenty minutes earlier in the mornings to make time for one housekeeping or bookkeeping chore to clear a full Saturday.
At the end of your day, when you're ready to sit back and relax, put in a load of laundry first. Set an alarm to put it into the dryer. Be sure to transfer it to the dryer and then you're done. If you have enough energy to fold and hang the clothing when done, great. Otherwise, the folding can go on to tomorrow's list of things to do. Just tumble dry the clothes for five minutes before folding. You have just found two more hours to write.
Reduce All House Cleaning Down to Bite-Sized Pieces: Many people save all the cleaning for Saturday or Sunday. By doing mini-cleanings, as I've described above, you won't need a cleaning day. I haven't set aside a full day to clean in years. My cleaning is all done in little bite-sized pieces and my house is always neat.
The Kitchen: To sweep up the kitchen floor and do a quick mop -- that takes about 10 minutes. Do this ten minutes before going to bed.
Pick up the living room: If your living room is a mess -- and if you have kids it probably will be -- do the following: Before sitting down for the night or before leaving for work in the morning, put four things away. Then put another four things away. By about the fourth run of putting four things away, the living room will be tidied up. You will be amazed at how this four-things technique can clean up a room in no time!
Analyze the rest of your home-cleaning and house-maintenance routines and see how many of them you can reduce down to a five to ten minute quick routine before leaving for work or leaving for an appointment. My home is orderly as I do these 10 minute clean ups about twice a day. That's enough to keep it neat. I literally don't have a cleaning day. It's all done in these 10 to 15 minute sessions that I sneak into my days.
So now that you have the strategies to find at least a full day to write, let's talk about making it a more formal endeavor. This requires an announcement to the people around you. Creating an actual workspace will also formalize this goal.
Tell your family and close friends that you are setting aside a few hours on Saturday or whatever day works for you where you will need them to allow you to have this time uninterrupted. Tell them straight out you will need their cooperation. Children often think parents' only job in the world is to wait on them. Be sure to explain to your children that you are adding a personal goal into your life and you need their help and cooperation.
This formal announcement will let them all know you're not taking time away from anyone. You're not abandoning them. You have simply cleaned up your life in order to put the found time towards meeting your new writing goals.
Infants: If you have small babies, this announcement won't work, of course, but you can make good use of their nap time. That can be your time to write. Toddlers can be a handful and you may need to schedule your free time to write after their bedtime. If that is your only time, let your spouse know you want to set aside a few hours to write and you need his or her cooperation.
Clawing back time and energy from your job is a different strategy. This can only be done in some jobs. Realigning and redistributing your energy, however, can be done in any job or career. Let's talk about the differences below.
First of all, not all jobs are careers. Sometimes we have jobs because we're in a phase of life where we can't devote ourselves wholeheartedly to an outside career. Women raising children or caretaking a parent are perfect examples of needing a paycheck with not too much responsibility. Sometimes it's more beneficial to have a job with kids because your life changes every five years based on how their lives change. Being able to redesign a job or get a different job based on your needs can be worth more than a career during the years you raise children or caretake a loved one. Remember, after you're 45 years old, you still have time for a career that can span 25 years or more.
Some jobs are career tracks. If you are pursuing a career and are in a good position where there is growth built into the company you're with, that's great. You may not be able to claw back too much time, but you will be able to claw back some energy with the efficiency I cover later in this blog post. Keep reading.
For those of you who have a job that is disguised as a career path, the first order of business is to decide if this is the type of job you really have. If there are no supervisory positions to move into, you have a job. If there are no corporate positions available, you have a job. If everyone in management is from the same family or closely-knit cultural group, and you're not one of them, then you have a job. You can claw back both time and energy from a position like this.
If there's no career growth in a business, people generally max out salary-wise and it's only a matter of time before the bosses are too tempted to hire a younger person for less money. There is no loyalty from employers today. So just know that.
There are still what I would call good jobs that are not career paths. If you are pursuing a greater goal and have a good job with no career path, it's fine. If you are raising kids or pursuing a masters or a doctorate, a good job without a career path is okay. Even a dead-end job can work as long as you are being paid fairly.
During the years you are pursuing other higher goals, going from good job to dead-end job to an okay job works well because your need at this time is only a paycheck. You can recover both time and energy from all of these jobs.
Once you know you are not in a career tract, you can recalibrate both time and energy output on your job. First of all, good people tend to give too much to these jobs because they tend to give a lot of themselves all the time. You must realign your energy output according to the following rule: You agreed to work a full shift with certain responsibilities in exchange for a specific amount of money. Shift into that mindset. Don't volunteer to do extras. Don't arrive twenty minutes early -- take care of some chore at home if you're ready earlier. Don't feel it's your job to entertain the people at work. You want to shift into a state of mind where you are doing the job you agreed to do but with a slightly reduced amount of energy output. Your goal is to hold up your end of the bargain. Do the shift you agreed upon, but don't exhaust yourself in the process.
You will be shocked how a shift in your mindset will allow you to leave the job after a shift with a reserve of energy that you can put towards your writing goals.
If you have a great job but it's in a toxic environment, the amount of energy that you are expending psychically, mentally and emotionally is very high. Working with horrid people and/or in a toxic environment is very draining. A good job is better than a toxic career, especially if you have a goal to write or pursue a different occupation. So just be aware of this. You may want to employ some of the strategies for taking back time and energy from a dead-end job so you can gather your energies for other pursuits.
Shift into a lower energy output in these dead-end jobs. Continue to hold up your end of the deal. Do an honest day's work in exchange for your paycheck. That doesn't mean working to the point of exhaustion. It means a fair day's labor.
Make checklists and cheat sheets for most of the things you do at your job. If you are following a boss' list of how to do things, just lower your pace and energy output. This will allow you to continue to work, but stay away from exhaustion.
Analyze all of your job duties and using web flow charts, checklists, procedure lists and information sheets, which we learned about in parts 1 and 2 of this series, you can reduce the amount of mental energy applied to all of these tasks. This will enable you to save a huge amount of mental energy at work too.
All jobs, no matter what it is, can be robotized. Example: Think of all the doctors' offices you've been to where they have it set up like an assembly line. They move you along the conveyor belt from one waiting area to the next, all preparing you for a four-minute visit with the doctor. They have robotized even that profession to be an assembly line job. This is for efficiency.
Claw back lunchtime for yourself. Too many employees wind up eating lunch with co-workers that they barely have anything in common with. Because we now live in a global society, we barely have anything in common with each other -- except knowing the other people we work with. So very often the conversations at work descend into gossip. And there is NOTHING more energy robbing than making idle gossip.
So if this is how you are spending your lunch hour making idle chitchat or gossiping with coworkers, you need to start leaving your job to sit in your car and write, do research, run errands, or whatever. Just use the lunch hour constructively.
Try to limit the mindless chit chat that also goes on in most workplaces. Co-workers are not friends. You won't know most of them five years from today. Don't allow them to talk and talk and talk until you're punch drunk. Under the best of circumstances, they can be an occasional lunch buddy.
Lunch buddies are people in the third circle of influence in your life. Our spouses and families are in our first circle of influence. Church or private club friends, lifelong friends, more distant relatives, and neighborhood friends are in our second circle of influence. The third circle of influence is for co-workers, doctors, business connections, old acquaintances, etc. So don't allow co-workers to drain your mental, emotional or psychic energy during the day by making idle, mindless chatter.
By applying all of these strategies, you will recover a lot of time and energy from each day. Now you have everything you need to set up your new goal of writing that book!