My singular goal is paying off. I know where I need to focus my attention, and my plan for Queen Witch is unfolding before my eyes. Have I said before that I love my brain? Oh, come on. I know I’ve said it before. Trusty smooth engine makes so many decisions while I’m not even focused on my story, that when I come back to it, I know what needs doing.
The hard part of this novel is the timeline. It starts when my witch is 14, because some pivotal stuff happens then that sets up the storyline for the trilogy. But then I’d picked up again when she’s 16 — and I’ve since decided that a LOT of what I wrote in that section just sucks the energy right out of the story, because she’s learning, and there’s not enough action. So, on my three-month break from Queen Witch, I’d decided I would skip the remaining teen years, and pick up again right about her twentieth birthday, when she’s accepted as an adult among her family and really begins to serve, and to rebel.
This week, I went through that entire, painful midsection of my book and decided what to do with the scenes there. Some of that stuff will be rewritten to work in my new timeline, but some of it is just scrap. So this week my project is to dissect my manuscript, moving everything that really doesn’t work to a new file, called “scrap.” So that’s how Queen Witch is going. I’m making progress.
The other reason this turned out to be a fun writing week was a discovery I made as I perused my old writing files in a particularly creative mood. I found two short stories that were pretty much ready to go, and that I remembered only dimly. As I read them, I got more and more excited by this find! I posted the shorter of the two to my blog on Friday, so that’s the post after this. I’d love to hear some ROWer feedback on that short, so please give it a read and let me know what you thought.
I sent the other story to a few writing buddies to get opinions, and they all liked it. So now I’m trying to decide what to do with it, and I’m thinking I may release it as a short, adding in the other story as a bonus in the ebook, for $0.99. So this brings up a question. I’ve heard the short story is back, thanks to ebooks and reader attention spans. What do you think? Do you like short stories, and are you willing to pay $0.99 for them, when you can buy full novels for that price? I will thank you for any insights.
Have a great week, and I wish you luck and fun in your writing tasks!
The title Queen Witch sounds exciting!
glad the restructuring is going well and excitment prevails – minds are wonderful beasts – working best alone – no messing and fussing – get the job done:)
Yay for brains! 🙂 You should definitely put the short stories out of 99cents – or you could put them up as free reads on your website until you’ve accumulated a collection and then release that for $2.99.
Short stories are always in vogue. I don’t know that I’d pay .99 cents for a short story though. Personally, I’ve built a special page on my blogsite for my short stories. My thinking on that is, I’m not here to make money, I’m here to build a fan base first, and the best way to do that is word of mouth and advertising, so the more I can give people to talk about the better right? So I’m in agreement with Stacy, share them for free as a page for short stories or a page with only one featured story until you have enough for a collection then charge for it.
I say experiment and see if the .99 short story with the bonus story will sell. Just make sure you make it clear that it’s very short and include the word count. As I told you, I put my short story on Smashwords for free and tried to get Amazon to make it free by clicking on the button saying I saw a lower price. But it didn’t work. Yet, people are actually buying the story on Amazon for .99 when it clearly states it’s only 5000 words. And no one has really complained of its length. Since so many indies are charging at least 2.99 for their work, .99 for a short isn’t as bad as it used to be.
I’m glad you’re so excited about Queen Witch. I know it’s going to be a great story.
Good for you on the Queen Witch! It’s hard to make those realizations and toss out large chunks, but your WIP will be so much better for it. Sounds like a good week of progress!
As to the 99-cent question, I’d pay that for a small collection of shorts (maybe 3?) or a novella. I don’t know about others.