Saturday, April 29, 2017

The Fear of Bad Reviews


The closer I get to finishing Iridescent, the more nervous I get about publishing it. What if I’m not able to sell any copies of it? Or even worse, what if everyone hates it and I get flooded with bad reviews?

Bad reviews are a funny fear to have, because it’s likely that a writer will get one at some point in their career. And it shouldn’t be a surprise. We know that not everyone will love our works, even if we do wish that they could. So why is there a fear of them? Well, when you put so much time and effort into something, you want it to succeed. In a way, our characters and our stories are like our children. We created them, developed them, and watched them grow and change. The last thing we want is to see them torn to shreds.

The thing is, bad reviews really shouldn’t matter. One bad review isn’t the end of the world, and it’s extremely rare that a book is universally hated to the point where it only has negative reviews. There’s always someone who will enjoy your story.

I mean look at Twilight. Seriously, raise your hand if you’ve ever heard, thought, or said that Twilight isn’t a good novel.


Well, you’re not alone. On Amazon, Twilight has 1,774 critical reviews. The majority of said critical reviews are also one stars. That’s a lot of negativity, and frankly those critical reviews are probably more review than many of us will ever receive on one novel. And yet, overall, Twilight has a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on Amazon. Why? Because 5,984 people gave the novel a positive review and the majority of those were five stars.

Now Twilight is probably an extreme case, but it’s the book I’ve seen torn apart more than any other. The way some people act, you’d think that there wasn’t a soul on Earth who liked the series. And yet, as we all know, that simply isn’t true.

Writing a novel is hard. We put so much time and effort into them, and we want to see our stories succeed. And yet, it is so easy to get caught up in the what ifs. The thing is, we can’t just let the negatives overtake us, otherwise we’re going to take the fun out of something we love doing. We need to think positively too.


So yes, maybe someone will hate my story and yours, but there’s going to be someone who loves it too. 

Saturday, April 8, 2017

The Tenseness of Tenses

AKA, changing the tense of my novel made a big difference.



It probably should seem obvious that tense can make a big impact on a story, but I didn’t realize it until after I finished Iridescent’s first draft. I always knew that I wanted the story to be told through first person point of view, primarily because Aly wanted to be the one to tell her story. The tense hadn’t seemed as important at the time. I had been reading some first person, present tense stories and I had really enjoyed them, so I thought that I would give it a try. Interestingly enough, I hadn’t realized that a lot of people seem to dislike present tense until after I finished draft one.

Please note, I am not saying that you should avoid a tense just because some people don’t like it. I mean I know some people aren’t a fan of first person POV either, but that’s what works for my story. You should always go with the POV and tense that works best for a story. In the case of Iridescent, present tense wasn’t the best idea.

I had thought that present tense would make the story more suspenseful. The reader would be seeing and learning everything right as Aly did. However, when reading the first draft I noticed that the story really wasn’t flowing well. There was something off about it. So I decided that for the second draft, I would change the story to past tense and see how things worked then.

Turns out it made a pretty big difference.

I’m halfway through my second draft and the story is flowing so much better now. It also feels more natural to write. I discovered that there were some elements in the story that were a lot easier to convey once I switched to past tense.

I’m hoping that once this draft is finished, I’ll find that the flow of the story is overall a lot better than it was when I wrote the story in present tense.


So if you ever find yourself having trouble with your story’s flow, try telling it a different way. A change in tense may just be the fix you’re looking for.