The Best of Twitter?

Did you know Lord Voldemort (from Harry Potter) is on Twitter? Yep, that’s right, he’s slamming celebrities and recommending Lindsay Lohan be locked up in Azakaban.

How many followers does someone like Voldemort have? Over 827, 000. So, okay, that’s no Martha Stewart who has over 2,171,000, but he does beat the pants off the master writer of child horror, R.L. Stine (21,000). And even his creator, JK Rowling  (366,000).

If you are looking for 140 of the best tweeters on Twitter, be sure to check out this Time Magazine list which includes everything from Margaret Atwood to coupons to pundits to Shaquille O’Neil.

Enjoy!

Author Morality

You are probably thinking I’m going to talk about being moral in your writing… but I’m not. Book publisher Harper has begun adding a little something in their book publishing deals with authors. Basically, if you act like a famous person, you are going to get your wallet whacked.

“Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work’s reputation or sales, Publisher may terminate this Agreement and, in addition to Publisher’s other legal remedies.” Source

Um, okay. But this is SO vague. What is considered public convention and moral here in cowboy country will differ from what is public convention in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Alaska, or New York City. Now of course, being ‘different’ isn’t a crime and they aren’t saying that. They are protecting their income. In other words, if you turn into an awful person, they don’t want to be left holding the financial bag. And I understand that.

Here’s the wallet kicker:

“Author will promptly repay the portion of the Advance previously paid to Author, or, if such breach occurred following publication of the Work, Author will promptly repay the portion of the Advance which has not yet been recouped by Publisher.” Source

The tricky part, I would imagine, would be determining whether the work’s sales have been affected. For example, if you are caught getting out of a limo sans underwear, sales might actually spike for a week or two. Darn public–so curious. However, after that initial spike, they may go into a natural downward sales slide–as do many published books after their release and first sales. So… how do you pin that on the author’s behaviour? Do you compare sales against projections? Against similar books?

What if that immoral behaviour set against public convention actually increases sales? Then what? Do you get a bonus for that? Because then authors might become a whole lot more interesting….

When the ‘Social’ Drops Out of Social Media

“The more followers and friends you have, the more awesome and important you are.”
–Clive Thompson (In Praise of Obscurity WIRED Magazine, Feb 2010, page 30.)

This begs the question: Is it true? (Sure!) Or more importantly, what is the impact of being that Pied Piper of Social Networking Awesomeness?

According to Thompson (quoted above), somewhere beyond having a few hundred/few thousand (depends on various factors) Twitter followers the social aspect of social networking breaks down. When you have a small gathering, like any social event, conversations happen and the group becomes a bit of a community with regulars throwing out ‘crazy’ ideas, bantering, and the building upon the thoughts of others. But once the event reaches a certain size, it becomes difficult for conversations to happen over the din and for those who know each other to meet up and converse. The example he uses in his article involves a Twitter maven who lost her small town feel around 13,000 followers (which is quite impressive actually–how she managed to keep that feel among so many followers makes her a rock star!). For her Twitterverse things went from a social event to dead silence.

To bring it down to a more personal level, when you see a blog with a ton of comments, are you likely to leave a comment? Or do you feel as I do–there is nothing left to comment upon and that you will simply get lost in the shuffle? As Thompson says of big audiences, “Not only do audiences feel estranged, the participants also start self-censoring. People who suddenly find themselves with really huge audiences often start writing more cautiously, like politicians.”

I’m not saying that amassing followers, friends, or blog commenters is a bad thing, however it is an interesting idea that the social aspect can reach its limits and fade away. I suppose there are limits to everything.

Chapter Book Formula

So, the other day I was dappling with a new story that I figured was a chapter book. It turns out it wants to be a middle grade novel. But while I was toying with the idea of a chapter book, I thought about how to convey a whole novel in approximately 4,000 words. There must be a formula I mused to myself. How else can you quickly and easily keep yourself on track with the story arc and things like establishing characters, setting up conflict, bringing in action, building to the climax, resolution, etc.

Being a bit of a research nerd (or just plain old nerd if you prefer) I turned to a few chapter books and created a formula. So, if you are thinking of writing a short chapter book, this formula might help you out.

Here’s what I found:

Chapter 1: Introduction to backstory, setting and main characters established along with their goal.

Chapter 2: Introduction of story problem

Chapter 3-4: Conflict introduced and builds

Chapter 5: Final build up of conflict leading to story’s climax

Chapter 6: Resolution

To come up with this formula, I took three chapter books from the Rainbow Magic series by Daisy Meadows and ran them through the formula wringer (me). In this case, the book reading levels ranged from 4.3 to 4.9. The books are aimed at ages 6-9. Word counts vary from 4059-4254. Pages range from 65-67. 6 Chapters per book. Chapters tend to be about 8-10 pages long.

There you go. Zero to sixty and back to zero again in sixty pages. How sweet it is. I suppose I could also apply this to middle grade novels, but stretch it out a bit more, taking more time to establish details and deepen the conflict.

P.S. If you are looking at writing a chapter book, this link with tips might help you out. As well, this site, while a commercial site for teachers, is great for finding the word counts of published books.