How to Become a Successful Writer: Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know

How to Become a Successful Writer: Secrets the Mainstream Publishers Don’t Want You to Know

Published by storiesbydennis.com November of 2017

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

Original Edition Published November of 2017

Second Edition Published March of 2020

Table of Contents

Part 1- Writing

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part 2- Editing

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part 3- Resources

Part 1- Setting up for Success

Let’s be honest, practically everyone writes today. Writing a book is no longer the major accomplishment it used to be, and if you think you want to be a writer because writing a book means you’re automatically going to earn a million bucks, you’ll never earn the first penny. Writers, wage-earning writers, don’t write for the money; they write because it’s the bent of their character. It’s in their nature.

Today, practically everyone writes especially in countries like America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and even the whole of Australia. People write social media posts. They provide questions and answers on sites like reddit, Steemit, and Quora; they even write blogs, journal articles, poems, fanfiction, short stories, novellas, and novels. So many people write today that the market is jam packed with all kinds of writing, and of all qualities, but in order to be successful, a writer must produce a product that stands above the rest. A writer must build an enormous and active fan base.

Just about everybody also thinks that they can make a million dollars by sitting back and doing practically nothing. They’ve read and watched YouTube videos describing how they, too, can write an e-book about raising poodles, publish it to Amazon, and all by itself, the e-book will sell millions of copies from there on out, but that is absolutely not the case. I’m not going to provide you with the numbers either; suffice it to say that if you want to be a successful writer, and earn a living from your writing, you must make sacrifices. It takes a great deal of time and effort to make a presence, write a book, polish it, publish it, and sell. You can’t do this overnight, and you shouldn’t expect to keep your old life either; you’re going to have to make the time to be successful.

This book has been written in order to help start you off on a journey to living the lifestyle of a successful writer, and success is really about the way you live your life. It just so happens that in this particular case, the journey is fraught with words, sentences, paragraphs, punctuation, and chronological accounts of correlated ideas. This book will explain in the simplest terms how to begin your writing career, and how to reap the benefits of being a writer before even writing your first novel.

This book will also explain how to build an online presence in order to sell your first novel. This book will explain the correct way to write your first novel, so that you can self-publish successfully or be taken seriously by literary agents if you prefer the mainstream route. This book will also touch on some of the more popular social writing platforms such as Quotev, Wattpad, Medium, Vocal, Quora, and SteemIt.

The conception of this book came about from my time spent on Quora where it seemed that everyone wanted to know the exact steps required for becoming a successful, wage-earning writer, but the truth is that there are just too many variables for a simple theory of book unification. Some of you will want to write non-fiction. Some of you will want to write fiction, and when it comes to fiction, there are numerous genres, and there are innumerable target audiences for each genre, and each age range, and each particular voice, and no short answer can be given.

Don’t fret, though; there are some simple guidelines that can be followed no matter what kind of content you wish to release. Now, consider one thing before reading this book; every business will eventually become successful and turn a profit if said business consistently and continuously releases quality content. That is an undeniable fact.

What’s required of you to consistently release quality content? The first step is to understand the life of a writer, of a successful writer, and even before you finish this book, you will have that understanding. You will also understand from where ideas come, why creativity is not important, and why competent editors are few and far between. You will have a new perspective on reading, writing, publishing, editing, and branding. You will even be subjected to exercises. You will also come to understand that you must be a successful writer before writing your first novel.

Think that’s crazy? Still want to be a writer? Dive in.

Chapter 1- How can I become a successful writer

Many of you out there ask this question. I have read this question on Quora, Google+, LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter—you name the place, someone has asked this question. It’s one of the highest rated questions on Google. Everyone is asking this question. I have also read the answers to this question. I just can’t help but roll my eyes or shake my head. There is an answer, but it is not a simple answer. The truth is that there are numerous factors to achieving success, just as there are many levels or interpretations of success. Many of the factors are uncontrollable, but the one factor that is completely controllable is the consistent release of quality content.

This goes for any person, business, industry, and product. If a person or a company continuously and consistently releases quality content, that person or company will eventually achieve long term success. If you follow the guidelines presented within this book, you, too, will eventually achieve long term success.

When? How long will it take?

Again, there’s no simple answer; there are too many factors to determine that, but this book isn’t about fluff; it’s about a proven method that will lead to success.

What then is the first step to becoming a successful writer?

Writing a best selling story, right? Wrong. Let’s go back to what has already been stated: while this methodology is in no way a perfect manual, if you follow the advice presented closely, you will eventually become successful.

Why am I so sure? Because the only guaranteed method for achieving long term success is to continuously release quality content, and that’s what I will help you accomplish. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if you write, edit, and release decent stories on a regular and continuous basis, you will eventually be the successful writer you wish to be.

You don’t plan on just writing out the best novel ever on your first attempt, do you? You don’t plan on writing a single novel, do you? You don’t think that being a best seller will pay you immense dividends for the rest of your life, do you?

No. Best sellers come and go. Best sellers can be one-hit wonders, and they certainly sound enticing, but it’s best to release multiple products, all of which sell well. Throughout this book, you will be slowly subjected to the requirements for selling consistently, and if you take off and achieve best seller status, that’s just icing on the pie…’cause cake already has icing, and that wouldn’t be special.

The first step to becoming a successful writer is coming up with an idea. Unfortunately, many people think the following:

I want to be a great writer, and I like to write, but I can’t come up with an interesting or original idea. How do I find a great idea to write about?

It may sound surprising but there are no original ideas, only original presentations. Lord of the Rings? That’s just good versus evil combined with a little the underdog fights against insurmountable odds and a pleasant touch of Germanic folklore. Shawshank Redemption? That’s really just the trial of a man overcoming great obstacles with a shmear of righteous injustice but set in a prison.

You need to consider that mankind has been around for a long, long time, and throughout most of its existence, mankind has passed along stories in one form or another. Did you know that Sumerians had scifi? Well, maybe it wasn’t quite scifi, but there’s a tale of King Gilgamesh, before he was king, and a mechanical man fell from the sky and wrestled with him; that machine became his friend, Enkidu. Together, they journeyed to an island where they fought some other kind of machine that fired off blasts of energy. I don’t recall the lesson behind the tale, nor did I actually see the story cylinder, but according to some anthropologists, such was one of many Sumerian stories.

What does that have to do with anything?

No story today has an original idea, only an original presentation, so relax, pick an idea you like, and go write.

An interesting, complex, consuming, convoluted idea with numerous plot twists and turns isn’t what makes a story great. In fact, such things often ruin a story’s potential and will alienate the target audience. There is an elegance to simplicity, and if you’re a novice writer, or someone who has never completed a story, stick with the simplest idea possible.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was really very simple, wasn’t it? Many great stories, or many successful writers, begin with a simple but relatable idea. There is no doubt that Stephen King is successful, whether you like his work or not, but he did not begin his career with a complex idea. He first practiced by writing short stories—and we’ll get to that—and then moved on to Carrie. He even threw away his first draft and rewrote the whole thing from scratch!

The point is that King started his career with simple ideas that he happened to present very well and in an authentic manner, and we’ll discuss how to become authentic later on. It’s also important to note that King, nor anyone else, wrote their first novel perfectly on their first attempt. Believe that!

Every idea, no matter how small, how seemingly insignificant, can become a story. Numerous stories have been based on people getting sick, based on friendship, based on love, sex, money, inner silence, bullying, the most asinine imagery imaginable. I’ve written stories based on a one-liner I jotted down while watching television, playing video games, watching movies, looking at pictures, or listening to a song.

This leads to the answer—you don’t need to come up with an idea. Ideas are ever-present; they are all around you. An idea is just that, an idea, you must then write everything you can about that idea, and tie that into other related ideas, but perhaps you aren’t imaginative. You aren’t creative; that’s okay. It really doesn’t matter. You only need to present a series of ideas to an audience in an entertaining fashion, but let’s get back to the idea.

Find somewhere quiet. Find a place with few distractions. Close your eyes—after reading this book, obviously—take a deep breath and exhale. Daydream. Do what you used to do when you were a tyke. Play make-believe; pretend that you are a knight, a cowboy, a soldier, a spaceman; that’s all writing is, unless you want to write non-fiction, in which case you don’t need to try to come up with an idea. What you need to do is find a topic about which you care, and then do a great deal of research and experimentation, but we won’t really be dealing with non-fiction too much throughout this book, at least not outside of editing, and we’ll discuss editing later on.

Now, maybe, you want to write poetry, and that’s a little different, but the plus side to poetry is that you never need to worry over the technical aspects of literature and composition; you just write according to cadence, a rhythm, whatever. The important thing to consider when writing poetry is imagery, sound, etc., and that leads us into the next piece of advice.

For now, start watching your favorite movies. Watch television or read books you like. Play some new video games. It doesn’t matter what you do because you’ll find ideas in the things that you enjoy.

Naturally, you don’t want to plagiarize, but that’s not really an issue at this moment. In fact, think about your favorite show; if you know it inside and out, you should be able to imagine what the characters will do, how they’ll solve a problem, how they act, react, and interact. All you have to do is imagine a new problem for them, and think about it day in and day out until you see your idea come to life.

If you want, you can try writing fanfiction. There’s nothing wrong with that. Plenty of successful writers started out writing fanfiction. In fact, most screen writers started their careers by writing an episode of their favorite show, submitting it to the production company, and bang; they became screen writers just by writing fanfiction.

Isn’t that how 50 Shades of Grey got started?

That’s right. The ideas are there. All you need to do is relax, and think about the idea over and over again until it slowly becomes you. Then, start writing pieces of it down. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a beginning. It doesn’t matter if there’s no middle, or characters, or problems, or resolutions; all that comes later.

People today, they want to start writing a novel from the very beginning all the way through to the end on their first attempt, but that isn’t how it works. Imagine building a house. You don’t buy all the supplies and build the house.

First, you have to find a piece of land. Then, you have to level the land. Next comes your foundation, and then, brick-by-brick, you build walls, place the roof, designate rooms, run electricity, pipes, finish the drywall, paint, decorate, and finally, you bring people inside to live out a tale. Writing a novel is the same.

Imagine sculpting a horse from marble. You don’t start chipping away, and sculpt a perfect rendition of a horse on your first attempt. You stare at the horse. You stare at the marble. You stare at the horse again. Then, you chisel a small chunk out from the corner of the marble block; it’s a process with a learning curve, and it starts simply with an idea, an image, a scene, something that fascinates or enthralls you.

Some people, once they have an inkling of an idea, they write an outline or do some kind of brainstorming. We are not all visual people. None of that works for me; time spent on that crap is time better spent writing for me. I can always edit what I worte. I can delete it or rewrite it.

Writing prompts? A waste of time; I can’t pour my heart and soul into a prompt because I don’t care about it. Try out different methods. Something will work for you.

I begin by writing out what I want to write:

There’s a guy named Jake, and he’s tasked with taking soil samples from a polluted lake. When he returns to the lab, he finds something strange; it turns out to be a new life form.

The above sample is literally how I start my stories. I add until I feel I have something worth writing. Sometimes the story peters out. It happens. What does it matter? Move on to something else.

So you want an idea? Close your eyes, and pay attention to the world around you; the scents, the sounds, the feel. Your idea is somewhere amidst the things you do. Jot it down one piece at a time.

Writing is the transfer of thoughts to paper. They don’t have to be perfect, logical, ordered, or anything. There are no rules in writing. There are rules in editing, and we’ll get there, but for now just write down a related series of events. Once your story is down, you can do with it what you want; it isn’t etched in stone; it isn’t a published title out to the public.

Think about a picture, like, drawing a picture. You want to draw a picture of your house, so how do you start it? You sit down, and look at your house. You draw the lines, affect the shading to provide a perspective of depth, and when you mess up, and you will mess up, what do you do? You erase, and fix it over and over again until you’re satisfied with your picture.

Too many people try too hard and are discouraged too easily because they set themselves up for failure, so for now, you are simply going to relax, and think about different ideas. If you find some that interest you, write them down.

I have numerous, an overabundance, of ideas that I will never use. That’s just the way it is. Everything, to me, is interesting and can become a story for a novel, a novella, a short story, a poem. Once you have an idea you like, writing is the easy part, and we’ll pick up there after you take a look at some exercises.

Exercises-

Start a journal. Open up your writing program, and describe your entire day from start to finish as best you can. Relax. It doesn’t matter if you forget events, or if you think your day was boring; that isn’t the point of this exercise. You are feeling out the writing process—the transfer of mental thoughts to written word. Do this for seven days.

Take seven days off. Do not write the events of your days. You can write anything else you want, but do not write down what you have done throughout your day for the next seven days.

During those seven days, read a new book. Don’t skim it. Skimming doesn’t help anyone. Read the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the scenes. Pay close to attention to the choice of words and the imagery and feelings they engender. You are not in a rush to knock another book off your reading list—that’s stupid; you don’t want your audience to skim your book, so they can knock another book off their reading list, do you?

After having taken a week off from writing about your day, go back to your first entry about your first day and read through it. Read it as a reader, and do your best to correct mistakes. Do this only once per journal entry, and do not edit more than one entry per day.

Take another seven days off. Read another book if you finished the first one. You may write down whatever else you please, but you are done jotting down the events of your day. Once four weeks have passed since your original journal entry, go back and re-read that first entry. Then, rewrite it as a short story of any genre you may think you want to write.

Turn your day into a horror short, a fantasy short, a sci-fi short. Just add the elements from the genre. If you went to work and talked with your coworkers, turn them into aliens, monsters, ghosts, or elves. Play with