Category: Uncategorized
The Best and Worst of April 2014
Remember how, back in my January installment of this series I said it would be along time before I broke my monthly views record of 8,228? I broke that record last month in March and then I thought to myself, “Well there’s no way I’m going to break the record again so soon.” Enter April 2014, my best month ever. In April I broke both my daily stats record and my monthly views record. The previous daily record was 861, the new record is 918 views on April 6. My previous monthly record was 8,941 views and my new record is 11,905 views. I was also able to welcome 54 new followers to my blog for a total of 842 followers. Now that is a good month to make up for the stress and general awfulness of my personal life right now.
Now without further ado let’s look at my top 5 articles:
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
5. How Not to Criticize a Book Reviewer
Thanks to Game of Thrones Season 4 premiering on television my statistics on my Game of Thrones article, which have always been high, skyrocketed. Just to give you an idea of how crazy it was I have to say that of the 11,905 views I received this month, 6,895 of them were on my rebuttal article alone (that’s 58%!). The second best article by comparison only received 343 views. That’s insane.
So which articles were the worst this month?
1. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
2. The Goddess Test by Aimée Carter
3. The Mad Reviewer’s 2013 Holiday Book Buying Guide (Part Two)
4. Writing the Popular Novel by Loren D. Estleman
5. The Oracle of Delphi Blog Tour Kick-Off and Giveaway
Meh. I think it’s pretty obvious why all of these are in the bottom 5 list this month. They’re either really old posts or posts that just aren’t relevant anymore because of things like blog tours ending and Christmas being 8 months away. As usual, my 5 worst list doesn’t bother me in the least because I know it’ll be different next month.
Well folks, that was pretty much my April: pretty bad in real life, awesome in the blogosphere. How was your April? When do you experience spikes in blogging traffic?
Discussion: Beta Reading
Beta reading is when an author gives someone their manuscript to look over. Most beta readers don’t get paid and they only critique things like characters, pacing, plot holes, etc. Some beta readers are authors doing it for other authors so they can return the favour. Sometimes fans of authors volunteer to be beta readers so they get a first-hand look at the story before everyone else and have a say in helping it along.
Personally, beta reading for free has never really appealed to me. I’m not so interested in any author that I would volunteer to read their rough manuscript for free. I certainly do read ARCs but those are at least somewhat polished before they get into my hands and I can actually do a review for them so my time is worthwhile. Unless JK Rowling herself asked me to beta read, I don’t see myself doing it for free in the future. If I were paid to do it, that would be another story.
What I want to know now is: would you ever beta read? Why or why not? If you have been a beta reader, why did you do it? Who was it for? Did you like it?
Writing Pitfalls: Dialogue
I don’t claim to be a writer or even an expert on books in general, but I know what I like as a reader and what other people like to read in general. That’s why I’m writing this 10 part series to help writers, especially self-published writers, improve their writing.
I can’t tell you guys how many times I’ve wanted to throw my Kindle or my book at the wall because of bad dialogue. You could say I’m exaggerating but I’m being completely honest when I say that if your book has awesome characters, a fast-paced plot and solid world-building but has bad dialogue I will not be able to finish it. I have had to give up on more books than I care to admit because of wretched dialogue.
All of the mistakes with dialogue basically boil down to three main categories, which I’ll go into detail below.
Pitfall #1: Stiff dialogue.
Example: “Why hello Gerard! What a lovely day it is outside, is it not? I believe the chief meteorologist Jonathon Ziegelgansberger predicted a temperature of 90 degrees, which is 15 degrees above the seasonal average. In our little town of Cosmo our main industry is tourism, therefore I expect all of the businesses will see a 100% increase in sales this financial quarter.”
How to fix it:
I swear the example above is not an exaggeration of some of the dialogue I’ve read in books, both self-published and traditional. Dialogue is a tricky thing but the main problem I seem to see is that authors don’t read their dialogue aloud to themselves. They don’t consider whether the way they write is the way a person would actually speak in the real world. Authors: you need to make your dialogue flow naturally. I have two very simple tips below to help you:
1. Read it aloud to yourself. If you stumble over words or it sounds ridiculous to your ears, that’s a good hint that your dialogue is stiff.
2. Ask yourself if a person with the character’s socioeconomic status, upbringing, education level, etc. would speak that way in the real world.
These are some pretty simple steps to fixing stiff dialogue but very, very few authors even bother to do them and editors don’t seem to catch it. Continue reading
Discussion: Reading Slumps
Sometimes I get in a kind of mood where I don’t want to do any kind of reading. I’ll waste hours on the computer, binge watch Game of Thrones, do 2000 piece puzzles, anything just to keep from reading. Usually these moods come about after reading a particularly bad or difficult book, the kind that makes you feel like reading is work rather than pleasure. As a book blogger who generally writes 4 reviews per week this can present a problem.
When I’m in a reading slump I either do one of two things: wait for it to pass on its own or try to motivate myself by reading a book from my TBR pile that could be really good. Both of these strategies generally work for me but there have been times when they haven’t.
Have you guys ever had reading slumps? If so, what did you do to get out of the slump? And if you’re a book blogger, how do reading slumps affect your blogging?
How Not to Criticize a Book Reviewer
As a book reviewer, I obviously give out a lot of criticism so of course I’m equipped to take a lot of criticism. I keep an open mind and weigh pretty much everyone’s opinion carefully to see whether it has merit or not. I listen to the feedback my readers give me through polls and comments as well as read articles about how to improve my blog. Improving my blog is a constant work in progress, if I’m honest so I do like criticism. However, there are right and wrong ways to go about criticizing a book reviewer and/or their reviews.
Criticism #1: “[A rebuttal of my review saying that my 1 star rating was not deserved.] This was written by an entire class of very exasperated middle schoolers who just finished reading the novel.”
There are a lot of problems with criticizing something this way, but the main logical fallacy is this: [x] group of people liked [y] therefore you should. This is utterly ridiculous and I would have expected better from the teacher (yes, a teacher said this!) who criticized my review of The Outsiders. That’s like saying lots of middle schoolers a couple of years ago loved Justin Bieber therefore I should like Justin Bieber. Anyone with a brain can dispute that logic, believe me.
Quite frankly, I don’t give a crap if an entire class of middle schoolers liked The Outsiders. This is arrogant of me but I think I have slightly more reading experience than they do, considering I have averaged 200 books per year for well over a decade. Is my opinion more valid than theirs? No, but it’s certainly more informed. In the end, what’s wrong with criticizing a review like this is the idea that one group likes something and therefore everyone should like it. It’s ridiculous. Continue reading