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Is it worth entering writing competitions?

29 March 2012

Last year, I heard about a competition organised by an independent theatre group that was looking for new writers. The prize was to work with a director on refining the script and then to have your play staged. A representative from the theatre company spoke to a group of writers, including me, and told us there were no preconceived ideas about what kind of play they were looking for. We should let our imaginations run free.

Recently, I saw the two winning plays and they were brilliantly staged. But they were also something of a let-down: they covered religious conflict, teen pregnancy, and knife crime. They’re difficult issues, but they’re very easy from the point of view of commissioning theatre. Nobody is going to complain if someone invests money in those kind of productions because it’s just what theatre groups are expected to do. It would have been truly daring to commission a farce, a sci-fi play, or anything else that felt a bit fresher. That would have really helped to discover new voices.

I hadn’t submitted anything for this particular competition (I didn’t have a strong enough idea, and I was working on promoting Web Design in Easy Steps, and writing iPad for the Older and Wiser at the time). Watching this play made me realise that I’m highly unlikely to ever write the kind of play that could win, though. I ended up quite pleased that I hadn’t found the time to submit an entry because I’m just not the kind of writer they’re looking for.

I’ve entered a few writing competitions over the last couple of years when publishers have been looking for someone to write stories for their characters or plot outlines. I was a close runner-up twice in competitions organised by one publisher, which is a frustrating place to be, although it’s possible I might be lucky third time around if I give it another go.

Seeing this theatre production and thinking about my recent competition entries made me question whether it’s worth entering writing competitions. The upside is that the prizes can be hugely beneficial: they can raise your profile and give you new creative opportunities to find an audience and tell it a story. If a competition prize helps you to create a new work, you’ll learn a lot along the way, usually from people with much more experience than you. Competitions are often the most approachable way to break into a new style of writing too, because they welcome all-comers.

But the downside is that you’re writing to somebody else’s agenda, and sometimes you don’t even know what that agenda is. There will nearly always be safer options for the judges to choose than your work. There might be entrants with a stronger track record, or stories that tick more boxes.

You’re also going where the competition is fiercest. There might be hundreds or thousands of writers who are writing something to the same brief as you are. When the judges are choosing from similar submissions, how can you make your work stand out? Minor differences between the submissions become hugely important, in a way that they wouldn’t in most other contexts.

Whenever you write, you’re in competition, of course. You’re vying with other writers to win an agent’s representation, a publisher’s budget, and a reader’s attention. But when you come up with your own projects, you can use your ideas and style to differentiate yourself and stand out. You might be the only person who’s writing fiction about how technology is affecting the music industry, or at least you’ll be within a select niche. When you enter formal writing competitions, you have to run with the herd.

Not all competitions are the same. Some give you a lot of freedom to shape the story to your own vision, and to take the characters in new directions. Some give you detailed feedback, which might be valuable, depending on who’s giving it. And some have prizes that, even with the odds stacked against you, are well worth the gamble. Many will push you outside your comfort zone, and teach you something about writing, purely through the experience of creating your submission. You only become a better writer by practising, and I don’t regret spending time on anything I’ve written.

Writers should remember, though, that their time is precious and they can only write one thing in any given moment. It’s easy to get seduced into entering competitions, instead of cracking chapter one of your new novel, which perhaps begins a more difficult journey.

What do you think? Are writing competitions worth the time?

Labels: books, journalism, writing

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BBC launches search for new comedy writers

03 February 2012

The BBC has announced that it is running a new talent search to discover comedy writing talent (link now offline). If you have an idea for a comedy that 'reflects modern Britain', and that will have a studio audience roaring with laughter, then you have until 21st March 2012 to submit your entry. You need to put together a 30 minute script (roughly 30 pages), together with an outline of how you see the series developing. Since it's recorded in front of a studio audience and there's talk of catchphrases, I expect they're looking for something fairly mainstream.

The competition will be judged by Dawn French among others, and the prize is a week-long intensive course polishing your script with BBC producers, and the opportunity to have your sitcom staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in the BBC's new home of Salford.

Last year, I attended the Comedy Writers' Festival in London, and shared some of the key things I learned about how to write comedy.

Labels: comedy, writing

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Apple releases free multimedia ebook authoring tool for iBooks

26 January 2012

Last month, I wrote about The Beatles' Yellow Submarine ebook, which is like a modern pop-up book, with animated illustrations, interactive pictures, embedded videos, and text that reads itself aloud. Since that was published, there have been some educational interactive books appearing in the iBooks store. It's clearly something that Apple is putting a lot of weight behind, and it represents a new class of content that is ideal for the iPad.

Now Apple has released the software for creating these books, iBooks Author, for free on the Mac app store. It's only for the Mac (obviously), but it enables authors and self-publishers to lay out their books and embed video, images with pop-up captions, custom HTML (web page code), photo galleries, Keynote presentations and 3D objects.

This will make it much easier for anyone (with a Mac) to publish their own interactive ebooks, which has an upside and a downside. The upside is that authors can express themselves in more interesting and creative ways, and readers can benefit from a richer catalogue of original content, unfiltered by major publishers. The downside is that not everyone is brilliant at video, layout, writing, design and all the other skills that are required, so there's bound to be some rubbish content that undermines faith in the format as a whole. We've seen the same phenomenon in website publishing and print-on-demand publishing. I'd much rather that people have the opportunity to use these tools, but the best way to exploit them might be for writers to team with other creatives who can help to bring their ideas to life. For now, before the masses adopt the tool, there's clearly an advantage for authors who can move quickly to publish compelling interactive content.

You can find a short guide to iBooks in my book iPad for the Older and Wiser, and my articles for writers and publishers here.

Labels: iPad, iPad 2, journalism, webdesign, writing

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Five short pieces of book news

15 January 2012

I just wanted to write a short blog post to round up a few snippets of news about my books:

Lulu is running two special offers applicable to my novel University of Death. You can pay no shipping using the code WHOASHIPPINGUK305 or you can save 25% of the book price using the code LULUBOOKUK305. I believe these offer codes work on all books in Lulu's store. My novel takes a comical look at the music industry and has had rave reviews from magazines including Record Collector, Music Tech and Metal Hammer. Find out more and download the free sample here, but don't delay! Both offers expire 31 January 2012 and only apply to books bought through Lulu's website. The novel is also available as an ebook on iBooks, but I can't create a link for that so you'll need to search in the store (sorry!).
Web Design in Easy Steps is following in the footsteps of iPad for the Older and Wiser, and is an Amazon bestseller. It's currently #1 in the categories for website design; web graphics and animation; and books published by In Easy Steps.
Tata McGraw-Hill has published an edition of Web Design in Easy Steps for sale in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. It's wonderful to know the book is helping people in all these countries to create their websites!
Saga Magazine has published a review of iPad for the Older and Wiser. It says the book "will have you set up on your new device in no time". See a scan of the review here.
If you got iPad for the Older and Wiser recently (thank you!), you might have missed that there is a free supplement available for it here, to explain the latest software updates available for the iPad.

Labels: books, iOS5, iPad, university of death, webdesign, writing

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Sharpen your proofreading skills with a short test

06 January 2012

Proofreading is all about quality control, making sure that an article is accurate and consistent. Often, it will involve picking up factual errors (such as names that have been spelled incorrectly) and layout problems, but the focus is usually on grammar and consistency of style. The art of proofreading interests me greatly. I have written an interview with the Guardian's style guide editors and created a proofreading exercise, and have some more ideas for content I can share on this subject.

I've also spent a lot of time on quality control in agencies and publishing houses I've worked with, and one of the key things I've noticed is that you can get better at proofreading. It's tempting to think you've either got an eye for it or you haven't, but I've seen people improve markedly by practising it and focusing their attention on getting their copy right. That's why I encourage writers to work on their proofreading skills. You can do it almost anywhere: simply pick up a newspaper and see if you can spot the errors the subs missed.

WM Group, which runs training courses on writing among other things, has put a short proofreading test online. In some ways it's easier than my test: it's shorter, and there are fewer errors in it. But in other ways it's harder, because the errors are quite subtle and easy to miss. The company says that only 31% of people who sent in a response were able to get full marks. People often queried accurate punctuation but missed some significant mistakes which made them cringe when they were told the answers afterwards. I've seen the results breakdown for 49 people who tried the test. I don't want to give the game away, but one mistake was only picked up by three people, even though there's a heavy hint in the article itself. WM Group has revealed that there are eight errors, but the two top scorers only found five of them. Can you do better? You can try the test here.

Labels: journalism, proofreading, writing

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Five questions journalists should ask themselves following the Internet Explorer IQ hoax

04 August 2011

Yesterday, the BBC was among many news outlets that was fooled by a press announcement made by an organisation calling itself "Aptiquant", which claimed that people using the Internet Explorer web browser had lower IQs than those using other browsers. The announcement claimed the result was based on administering IQ tests online and then looking at the browser the test participant used. It was all utter cobblers.

As the developer behind it confessed, it was just a prank he set up to raise awareness of the problems Internet Explorer causes web developers. In that sense, it's not really a particularly well set-up prank, because the story attacks the users instead of the browser designers. And it doesn't make much logical sense either: I'd actually expect the average IQ of IE users to be lower than that of other browser users because IE is installed by default on most computers, and other browsers must be installed by a reasonably clued-up user. There's not necessarily a link between IQ and computer literacy, but a mass market browser that's installed by default is bound to represent the average web population, which would have an average IQ. I wouldn't be surprised if people using Safari, Chrome and so on had a higher average IQ between them, because they aren't representative of the general population, and are skewed towards those with more intellectually demanding jobs (IT, web design and so on).

Anyway, the BBC published a story announcing it was all a hoax. When putting together its story, the BBC consulted Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University's Statistical Laboratory, who said: "I believe these figures are implausibly low - and an insult to IE users." The implication in the BBC's follow-up story is that they did their job because they included his alternative view in the write-up.

But is that good enough? They had two sources: an unknown company that issued a press release claiming IE users are dim; and a respected statistical scientist who said he thought the data was "implausible". Instead of believing the scientist and spiking the story, the BBC believed the press release from a company it had never heard of. The company didn't even really exist, it turns out.

So here are some questions journalists and bloggers should be asking themselves following this hoax:

Does everyone have an equal right to coverage in my publication, or does the credibility of the source matter?
Is it more important to publish the truth, or to publish a balanced report?
What do I take responsibility for when I attach my byline to a story?
Does my publication have to cover everything, or can I spike stories I don't believe are substantiated?
Is this really news?

Feel free to leave your thoughts on this below. For tips on handling (legitimate) press releases, see my article Don't Believe the Hype. For tips on designing websites for a whole range of browsers, including the love-it-hate-it Internet Explorer, see my book Web Design in Easy Steps.

Labels: journalism, webdesign, writing

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Key lessons on writing games from GameCamp

19 May 2011

Last weekend, I attended GameCamp in London, a one-day event where gamers come together to discuss and play games. I took away quite a few new ideas about game writing, as well as confirming a few of my previously held beliefs.

I attended sessions about writing game shows, game mechanics, why characters suck, creating role playing games (RPGs) from public domain novels, and more.

To see the key lessons I took away, read my article: What I learned about writing games at GameCamp.

Labels: events, games, writing

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How to write comedy

23 April 2011

The weekend before last, I went to the London Comedy Writers Festival, which brought together hundreds of writers hungry for advice, and dozens of industry insiders happy to share their experiences. As always with events like this, it's good to meet other writers who are facing similar challenges, even if I'm not writing comedy myself at the moment.

There was lots of practical advice in the sessions, so I've written up a series of articles based on how to write comedy, encapsulating the key advice from people such as Griff Rhys Jones, Jessica Hynes, Stephen Mangan, Dan Mazer (Borat, Ali G), and many working writer-performers, comedians and editors. Here are the articles:

11 Tips for New Comedy Film Writers by Dan Mazer. Mazer works with Sascha Baron Cohen and has co-written Ali G, Borat and Bruno.
Top tips on writing comedy from Griff Rhys Jones. What's the difference between a pizza and a comedy writer?
How to write radio comedy. Advice on breaking into writing for radio from an expert panel including writers and editors from BBC and commercial radio programmes.
How can gold envelopes get you a gig as a comedy writer? A short piece pulling out a key theme in the talk by Robert Popper, bestselling author and producer/writer for shows including South Park, The Inbetweeners and Peep Show.
How to write comedy scripts actors want to perform. What draws an actor or performer to a script? Find out what Jessica Hynes and Stephen Mangan look for in a script. Also includes expert advice from a panel of comedians and writer-performers.

I hope that you find the advice in these articles as interesting and useful as I did. I found there were quite a few parallels with non-comedy writing too, although I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions there. Feel free to leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts.

Labels: comedy, writing

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Photos from the iPad 2 launch today

25 March 2011

As you've probably read, today was the launch of Apple's iPad 2. I went along to a PC World shop in a sleepy town near me to check it out and was surprised to see a queue of 30 or 40 people there. I can't imagine how long the queues must have been at Apple's own stores, especially in central London. The shop sold out of about 30-40 units fairly quickly, which was surprising for a run-of-the-mill PC store. Don't forget that represents at least £16,000 worth of sales in half an hour. I expect that scene has been repeated across the country, too. Here are some pictures I took...

The marketing materials, waiting to be unveiled

You can look, but don't touch. The shiny new cases were defended by shop staff until 5pm, and then only available to those who bought the iPad.

The queue. I got there at about 4.30, which is half an hour before the official on-sale time, and they had nearly allocated all the units they had. Congratulations to the idiot near the front who changed his mind when it came time to buy later, and so messed up the allocations for those behind him in the queue. When they say 'think different', they don't mean that.

And there it is, on display at last. Those who were buying one couldn't leave the queue to try it out first, which was sort-of funny. Everyone was relieved when they were finally put on display and plugged in, if only because it stopped the table's security alarm whining.

And here it is! Ta-da! I didn't think the physical dimensions would make much difference, but it felt quite a bit lighter than my 3G iPad 1, although that might be partly because I was holding a Wi-Fi demo unit. I don't think the unit's noticeably heavier than my SLR camera, so it might be okay for shooting HD video, although it's still a bit clumsy to point. Still waiting for that tripod!

Here's the Photo Booth software, which enables you to shoot photos with weird effects applied. It's interesting, but feels more like something for a Nintendo handheld than the iPad. I expect we'll tire of seeing photos featuring that Dr Who title sequence tunnel effect, but it's a nice way to have a bit of fun with the camera, even in a PC shop, which isn't the most photogenic place to shoot.

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the iPad 2 for a proper play with it. The main difference is the camera and video conferencing app FaceTime, plus a couple of minor things in the apps.

By the way, I passed the half-way point in writing the first draft of my book iPad for the Older and Wiser today. Cheers!

Labels: iPad, iPad 2, writing

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Some thoughts on Apple's iPad 2

04 March 2011

Apple yesterday announced the iPad 2, an enhanced version of its iPad tablet computer. This is of particular interest to me because I'm now writing a book about the iPad, called iPad for the Older and Wiser. I'll add more details to this site in due course, but you can already pre-order iPad for the Older and Wiser at Amazon.

So what's new with the iPad 2? Firstly, there are two cameras. One is on the same side as the screen, so it can film you while you're using the iPad. This is useful for video calling, something for which the iPad is a natural fit. The other camera faces away from the device, so that you can take pictures using it, and see what you're photographing on the iPad's screen. That will be a helpful addition, although probably not as useful as it is on the iPhone because the iPad is a bit big to hold up in the air as you try to frame the perfect picture. Perhaps we'll see specialist iPad tripods emerge though, which will make it easier to use this camera, especially for shooting HD video.

two iPads running Facetime to show video conferencing

Two iPads showing the Facetime video conferencing app. Photo courtesy of Apple.

Apple's proud that the new iPad is thinner. While it is remarkable how much computing power they've squeezed into a device that thin, I don't think this really matters to most people. The original iPad was remarkably thin, and there comes a point at which it doesn't really matter how much thinner it gets. We probably don't want the iPad to get too thin, anyway, otherwise it'll start to feel insubstantial and fragile.

The new iPad can also process faster than what we will now start calling iPad 1. It has a multicore chip, which means its processor can do two things at once. That doesn't necessarily mean it will do, though. Depending on the apps you use, they might need to be rewritten (by their creators) to take advantage of the extra processing capability. Combined with the reported improvement in graphics speed on iPad 2, we might start to see richer and more immersive games as a result of this. We should also expect to see operations like search, bulk calculations (if you use it for work) and PDF processing speed up over time as the apps we use catch up with the technology.

Although Apple has often had a gap of several months between a press announcement and its product release, the iPad 2 will be in the shops in the US next week and is scheduled to follow in the UK shortly afterwards. The iPad 1 will continue to be sold, and its price has been reduced. This seems like a smart move: the iPad 1 remains a great device, and will satisfy many people who don't want to pay the extra for the video cameras.

The iPad 2, though, opens up a whole new realm of possibilities. The video filming could work well, if a tripod becomes available, and the video conferencing will, I'm sure be a hit. The Nintendo DSi never really made the most of its built-in cameras, but with Apple's open ecosystem of thousands of developers, I'm sure we'll see some innovative and fun apps taking full advantage of them before too long.

What do you think about the iPad and iPad 2? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Labels: books, iPad, iPad 2, writing

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Why The Expendables feels expendable

22 December 2010

How does a great film become disappointing? When the cameos are bigger than the plot.

I saw The Expendables in the summer, seduced by the trailer which made a big deal of the fact that it was the first film to feature Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I enjoy a good action pic, and you couldn’t do better than a cast like that. The trailer was bombastic with those three names appearing on screen in massive text, followed by a flurry of all the top-class co-stars.

The problem is that the trailer didn’t reflect the truth of the film. Willis and Arnie are in the film for about three minutes. Bruce Willis doesn’t actually appear on screen with anyone else, creating the impression that his scenes were shot separately and he didn’t even meet his co-stars. The scene itself has one good joke, but is otherwise completely pointless.

Had this scene been unannounced, it might have been a nice surprise. But when it was the whole focus of the marketing, it becomes the reason people are there to see the film, and this mostly unfunny sketch is not good enough to carry the whole film. I ended up feeling a bit ripped off, even though the film itself is a fine tribute to 80s action movies. I notice that Schwarzenegger isn’t credited on the iTunes release and the trailer I saw isn’t available online, but Willis does feature on the DVD packaging and iTunes store banner image.

Apart from the marketing, there are also structural problems with the story caused by these cameos. The film reminded me of some advice for writers I read some time ago: if there is a gun on the mantlepiece in act one, it must have been fired by the end of the final act, otherwise readers or viewers are left feeling unsatisfied. Everything in the story is put there deliberately, so don’t include things that create unfulfilled expectations. You can’t have a story where Arnie is offered a chance to take part in a guns-blazing action fest and he walks away from the opportunity, because it creates the expectation he’ll pop up again later. It’s unthinkable that Arnie’s character would appear in a film for a few minutes just to say he didn’t want to work with Stallone’s character. You can’t put Bruce Willis in an action film, and only use him to deliver a few lines of dialogue, either. Writers need to take care with the expectations they create from the characters, actors, and props that they use. If they’re not handled with care, the end result can end up feeling somewhat expendable.

Labels: fiction, film, plotting, writing

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How many editors does it take to create a book?

03 September 2010

I've just finished working on my second book for John Wiley's Older & Wiser series, Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser. As I've been talking to people about it, I've realised that a lot of people don't understand the process behind a computer book. I thought I'd explain the different people who are involved in working on a book project.

Every book project is different, and sometimes there are more people involved and sometimes there are fewer people. Some of the people I've worked with have fulfilled several of these roles at different times in the project. I've worked on some projects with some publishers where I've been pretty much left alone to write, and then just checked the laid out pages at the end. John Wiley has offered me a much greater level of support with these books, which has been extremely valuable. In particular, the level of quality control has been excellent.

Here's an overview of some of the people who might make a contribution to a book coming into being (editorially - lots of people help with other things too):

The acquisitions editor: This person is responsible for signing the project in the first place. Much of what they do is hidden from the author, but it includes winning support internally for the project from the marketing and sales departments.
The author: His job is to research and write the content and source the images (including creating screenshots). He has to deliver his copy in the publisher's template so that everybody is working to the same standards.
Development editor: This person is responsible for keeping the project on track. They'll keep an eye on deadlines and make sure that the content meets the standards required. They'll offer guidance to the author on the project overall.
Technical editor/reviewer: This person checks that everything works in the book as it should. In the case of the social networking book and Microsoft Office book, that meant following the instructions to check that they led to the expected results.
Copy editor: This person edits the draft of the book to ensure it flows smoothly and is consistently written. They will also fix any typos or grammar issues. They will work to a style guide, and will keep a record of significant new terms that arise for that project, to ensure that they are used consistently throughout.
U3A reviewer: The Older & Wiser books are published in partnership with the U3A, so a reviewer was assigned to provide feedback from the point of view of the target readership.
Composition team: This team works with the edited copy and screenshots to create the book layout.
Proofreader: The proofreader checks the content for any grammatical or typographical errors. Sometimes they check the draft copy before it goes to layout, and sometimes they check it once it's laid out on the page. They can also check layout issues (such as missing page numbers).
Indexer: The indexer uses the laid-out book files as the basis for creating the index.

I hope I didn't leave anyone out! What this process means is that at least three people (plus the author) are looking out for the quality of the end result to make sure that it's well-written, accurate and easy to read.

Labels: publishing, writing

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Sign the petition to support libraries and authors

The Society of Authors has created a petition urging the government not to cut the public lending right budget. The public lending right (PLR) is a legal right that authors have to be paid when their books are borrowed from libraries. The amount has been about 6p per loan, and the total per author is capped at £6,000 to stop JK Rowling from getting all the money in the pot.

For many people, especially if you're a business and computer book author, library sales represent the bulk of the potential market, and PLR is an important factor in enabling those authors to create the books they do. If the authors can't afford to create the books, then publishers can't publish them and libraries can't lend them.

There are big budget cuts on the way to help tackle the deficit, but PLR has already been cut for some years. While public spending has been relatively healthy in the last three years, the PLR budget has fallen by 3%, which is a 10% cut in real terms. The Society of Authors notes that the PLR Office has already cut its administrative costs significantly too, which means any cut in the PLR budget will have an immediate impact on authors.

Please support authors and libraries by taking a moment to sign the petition (no longer online), which is hosted by the ALCS.

Labels: politics, publishing, writing

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How to make ebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

23 June 2010

I've just published an article about how you can make ebook apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It's based on interviews with about 20 industry insiders, including bestselling app creators, authors and publishers.

A much shorter version of the feature appeared in the June 2010 issue of Writers' Forum magazine, but I've extended it online with lots of content there wasn't room for in the magazine.

It was an interesting time to be writing the article, because I think it captured a moment in time when it was easy for authors to build apps. It's already become much more difficult, even in the few months since I wrote the story. Firstly, the companies that enabled people to make apps based on RSS feeds have massively increased prices. The entry price used to be $25 and now it's many hundreds of dollars. That probably reflects the demand they've seen from big brands, and might not be a price that the market can sustain in the longer term, at least not without some consolidation in the companies offering those services. For now, with prices that high, you might as well commission a bespoke design (which the article also covers). Secondly, Apple has responded to the number of apps being created by setting much higher standards for approval.

For this project, I did try to create an iPhone app using RSS feeds, but it was unfortunately rejected by Apple for reasons unknown. It might have been a victim of a crackdown on the service I was using, or they might have visited on a day when I hadn't updated the blog for a week or two. With Apple, who knows? The process of making and submitting the app was easy from a technical point of view, but every support query took a week to get a response, and the admin was hard to navigate.

The new iPhone OS and the iPad support the iBook store, so this might create new opportunities for authors to get their content into Apple's handhelds, if they're happy to publish static ebooks. It will be interesting to see what kinds of content Apple decides to approve and reject, and how this changes over time. I suspect that once the catalogue of books is looking reasonably healthy, we'll see a lot of self-published content get deleted and new rules come into play.

To read some success stories from authors who have created apps and find out how you can create your own, see my article. (If you make audiobooks, check out my tutorial on how to get your music into iTunes and Amazon MP3 too. The same concepts apply for audiobooks).

Labels: apps, ebooks, iPad, iPhone, iPod, publishing, writing

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A question about copyright permissions

10 June 2010

Michael MacMahon, author of a guide to personal debt called 'Back To The Black: how to become debt-free and stay that way', emailed me with a question about copyright.

He says: "The last job [in writing my book] is inserting external resources, especially case studies. Most of the latter I have clipped from newspapers (or the online world) over the last couple of years. I have about 25 of them and the majority are short(maybe 150-200 words on average). For these short ones I really don't want to get into writing to loads of different newspapers / websites and waiting for permissions. (plus in some cases I don't even have a record of who published the story originally)."

He asks: "In these circs do you think I might be vulnerable to legal challenge if I insert these shorter case studies in full and without permission?"

Absolutely. That's a clear copyright infringement. Even if you can get away with it, authors should ask whether they really want to be getting away with copyright infringement at all, given their income depends on copyright.

Permissions are a massive hassle, but they're unavoidable. Getting someone to sign a permissions form is a small price to pay for all the work they've done on your behalf (finding interviewees, interviewing them, writing up the case studies, etc).

Book contracts will often make the author responsible for ensuring all the content in the book is copyright-cleared, although I was fortunate to have fantastic support from my publisher for my social networking book. The terms of the contract usually make the author financially liable for any infringement suit that follows, so it's important to get this right.

A few things to look out for:

Make sure you're getting permission from the copyright holder. That's not necessarily the publication, and is almost never the interviewee.
Take care with layered permissions. For example, if you want to quote from a story in The Times which includes research from Gartner, there might be two copyright interests in that text. If you want to use a photo of a Coke can, you might need permission from the fizzy drinks manufacturer for its branding, and from the photographer for the shot.
It often takes companies a long time to respond to permissions requests, so don't leave them to the end. Get started on them as soon as you know what you'll need.
Be organised. If you've got a lot of permissions in your project, then use Excel or something similar to track the status of each one. Make sure you find out what credit the copyright owner requires.
Even short phrases can be protected by copyright if they are distinctive. Take particular care with song lyrics and poetry.

Michael's question throws up two other interesting points. Firstly, the interviewee might also have rights to privacy in this particular case, because of the sensitive nature of the subject, so it might be good to get it cleared with them too or at least to check the legal position on this properly. Secondly, there's the issue of trust when using content from other publications. Can you be certain it's accurate?

In this case, the best approach is probably to use fictional case studies, which Michael suggested might be a solution in his email.

Labels: copyright, writing

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London Book Fair: Writing for teenagers

22 April 2010

London Book Fair: Earls Court from the outside

The seminar on writing for teenagers at this week's London Book Fair was so packed there were people sitting on the floor. This was despite the level of exhibition visitors apparently being lower because of the flight ban (about 10-15% of the stands were empty too).

Barry Cunningham, founder of Chickenhouse publishers which is now part of Scholastic, had some good advice for writers: he said it was important that teenage fiction was told from the teenage experience, and wasn't viewed from an adult experience. He cautioned against writing adult books in disguise ("in animal suits"). There's a difference between books for teenagers and books that have teenagers in them. "It's an important definition," he said. "If we get it wrong, we might as well say all books are for everybody."

The lines are becoming increasingly blurred at a time when Cunningham says booksellers have moved teenage books from the children's section into the adult section, and we've seen so many crossover books which are read by both teenagers and adults (starting with Harry Potter, but also including the Golden Compass among others).

Sophia Bennett, author of the Chickenhouse novel Threads, said that she wrote her book for herself as an 11 year old, but had her own daughters (aged 11 and 13) in mind too. She believes her title is more for 14 year olds, but gets most fan mail from 10-12 year olds who are reading ahead of their age group. She said she has been inspired as much by movies and the internet as literature, and writes short, snappy chapters for "people with attention spans as short as mine".

There was some discussion about the degree to which the authors self-censor their work. Rachel Ward, author of Numbers which was shortlisted for the Waterstones prize in 2009, said that she didn't censor and her book includes bad language, sex, and drugs. The first draft had over 100 F--- words, but during the editing process she took advice on what would be acceptable to teachers, parents and librarians. The swearing was taken down to about 20 occurences, but she says reviewers still say it's in every paragraph. "In real life, the characters would use bad language," she said. Although she described the book as a "neutered version", she also said she was "very comfortable with anything that will get [her] published". For the sequel, she was more self-conscious about who would read the book, and after receiving emails from readers realised that many of them were 12 and not 14. The bad language is still there, but not as strong.

Bennett said that she created a problem for herself in the way her series was structured. In each book, the characters age by two years but the readers are not growing up so quickly. She tried using words like "Drat!" but it seemed too artificial. She found that it took two paragraphs to replace expressions like that without using swearwords, but she said that afterwards she couldn't tell where the edit was, and it felt like she was cheating when she was relying on bursts of dialogue. She also said that booksellers she's spoken to were particularly concerned about sex in teenage books because they want to be able to recommend them to younger girls.

One key idea to emerge in the session was the importance of following your own muse. Bennett warned that if you think about it too much and try to study the market, you'll be two years behind everyone else because that's where the market is today. "Write from the heart," she said.

Labels: publishing, writing

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Cameras have clocks too

02 April 2010

If you're out and about taking photos this long weekend, don't forget to change the time on your camera. Last weekend, the clocks went forward, and some devices will have recognised this automatically. The internal clock on your camera probably hasn't updated itself, though.

It's worth keeping an eye on the camera time when you travel abroad too: I have lots of photos taken in America which have a UK timestamp on them. When the PC downloads these pictures, it divides them into folders by day. But midnight in the UK falls in the early evening in the US, so a single photo shoot in one location can end up split across different folders on my PC. That makes it harder to find pictures later on.

I recommend that writers learn to take good photographs. It helps to sell stories if you have some images to go with them, and it is in itself a rewarding creative pursuit. It's also a useful research tool. If you want your pics to be published, though, don't let the camera stamp the time and date in the picture itself. It's in the file metadata, so you don't need it to be on the visible part of the image. You can get some fantastic professional-quality results with affordable digital cameras today, but a picture with a timestamp in the corner will always look like a cheap holiday snap.

* With thanks to my friend Mark for suggesting the idea for this blog post

Labels: photography, writing

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Using templates to make book writing easier

31 March 2010

I've just started work on a new book (more news on that later), and one technique I've used which saves a lot of time is to create a basic template that I can use for each chapter.

In this book, as in many practical non-fiction books, there are highly formatted sections (introduction, summary etc) that are the same in each chapter. Each of these sections needs to be formatted using the right styles in the publisher's Word template.

So I've created an empty chapter. It has placeholder copy for the chapter title and all the headings and styles that occur in the same place in every chapter. It doesn't cover the body of the chapter and all its subheadings - it just covers the regular features that are always there in the same place.

This has two advantages: firstly, it saves time. I don't have to worry about formatting the chapter title ten times because I've already done it. Although that in itself doesn't take long, the template I've created uses nine different styles and has fifteeen different content elements that require formatting, so the time does add up. All these bits are guaranteed to be in every chapter, so it's work I have to do anyway. I've just chosen to do it once, rather than doing it 10 times.

The second advantage is that it means I can get up and running with a new chapter straight away. I don't have to mess around with styles because that's already done - I can just start writing. Given that one of the challenges is to create momentum on a new chapter, having these templates makes the whole project run much more smoothly.

Labels: books, Microsoft Office, writing

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Should music journalists accept payment to listen to new bands?

25 March 2010

I had an approach recently from a new PR service called The Men From The Press, which was offering to pay me to write short reviews of new bands. The idea was that they'd send me an MP3, I'd listen to the track and provide feedback using an online form, and then they would pay me £5.

I can see where the idea came from: it's hard for new bands to get feedback from journalists, let alone coverage. One reason is that it takes time to review music. I know bands think it's only a 3 minute song, but it takes time to download, cue up, play, think about, and then write any kind of meaningful email response. It's probably a 20 minute job to provide any useful feedback. It takes much longer to write a review good enough for publication. I'm not reviewing music for magazines at the moment, so I ask bands not to send me stuff and ignore people who send me stuff anyway.

Getting paid to review music from new bands isn't something I'd be keen to do at the moment. But I don't think there's a problem with music journalists who work independently providing feedback to bands that are just starting out. And I don't think there's a problem with them being paid for their time when they do that.

Where it gets murky is if those journalists have an association with a publication, because the scheme could be seen a bribing journalists to take an interest in one band over another. Even if it didn't consciously influence them, the fact they've been paid to even listen to one band must improve its chances of coverage. Indeed, The Men From The Press seem to be using the publication's reputation (rather than the journalist's) as the basis for their pricing and publications have come out to deny they have any relationship.

Drowned in Sound (link no longer available) refuted any implication that payments might influence their editorial coverage, and the NME wrote a blog post (link no longer available) saying that what bands (and readers) need is journalists driven by passion to discover new music, not someone taking a few hard-earned pounds off new bands.

Ethically, it's all a bit grey. Nearly all journalism has been touched by PR at some stage. Many successful bands employ PR teams, and pay them much more than The Men in the Press were asking. Journalists routinely get higher value freebies in CDs, promotional merchandise and gig tickets. And some new bands do need feedback from experienced music journalists who understand what gets coverage and what's likely to succeed.

When new ideas like this come up, journalists need to ask whether it creates a conflict of interest for them. In my case this idea wouldn't create any conflict, because I'm not writing for music magazines. For someone who was, it would create a conflict because they're being paid by the editor to discover and write about new music purely on its merit, and paid by the band to discover them first. You can't work both sides of the deal at the same time.

The Men From the Press has now closed down as a result of the criticism it's received. A statement on its homepage says: "The whole point of themenfromthepress.com was to provide PR in a 'brand new way' so bands, artists and small labels who simply haven't got the funds would be given a chance! Certain publications and some traditional PR companies (who I will not name) have made it impossible for us to carry on through their constant slanderous remarks and activities which have damaged our reputation to the point where we have lost all heart with the project. I tried to make a difference but sorry guys... they wont let us."

Labels: journalism, music promotion, writing

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3 Things writers can learn from programmers

23 March 2010

At DevWeek last Tuesday, I saw Kevlin Henney deliver a talk based on the O'Reilly book '97 Things Every Programmer Should Know', which Henney edited.

He spoke about how the book came about: it's 97 things (and not 98 or 96) because that's the title of the series, but it's also consistent with how the book was crowdsourced, with leading programmers writing short essays on ideas. "If you want to get people to propose something, you want something that works on a page count basis,” said Henney. "If the page count [for each contribution] is too high, you exclude certain people from writing. A lot of people are happy writing blog length pieces of 400 words. Once you're talking about 1500 words, the blank page scares people off and you just get the professionals. You don't get a genuine cross-section of people.” He said 100 pages would be a pamphlet, 300 would be too much, but 200 is just right, which would be about 100 ideas covered in about 2 pages each.

If you're thinking about a similar crowd-sourced project, it's worth working from the book length back to the contribution length, considering who you want to involve and how much they can write.

What I really wanted to share from his talk, though, were a few ideas that I thought were as applicable to writers as they are to programmers.

His first thing programmers (and writers?) should know, is to do lots of deliberate practice. "You might meet someone and they say they have 15 years' experience,” said Henney. "That's impressive. But then you realise that what they have is one year's experience fifteen times, or six months thirty times. They've flatlined.” He said that he can juggle and play guitar, but that he hasn't improved much in 20 years because he doesn't spend time practising. How do you know when you're practising? Henney defined practice as being when the sole goal is to master the task, rather than to complete the task itself. Writing exercises can clearly play a key role here.

The second piece of advice he shared was to step away from the keyboard, so that you can let the ideas form properly. This is always worth remembering. Who has all their best ideas sat at a keyboard? Few people, I'd guess. Those writing in a corporate environment especially struggle with this, I believe, because taking time out to think is indistinguishable from skiving to the untrained eye, so people often feel they can't actually step away from the keyboard, even when they need a break to crack a writing problem.

The third piece of advice was to know the difference between a time estimate, a target and a commitment. In corporate writing environments, there is often negotiation around these when the writer says how long something will take (the estimate), the client or manager tells him or her to halve it (the target) and they agree a date somewhere in the middle (the commitment). The problem with this is that the estimate of how long the work will take hasn't changed, which means something has to give in the content or quality in order to meet the commitment. Trouble results when people confuse estimates and commitments.

The rest of the talk was more technical, and it would be too much of a stretch to relate it to writing. If you are interested in programming, the book content is available online here. Some of the contributions are superbly well written as well. If you can understand programmer speak, the book is worth dipping into just to appreciate the clarity of thought. If you prefer print, the book is also available at Amazon.

Labels: creativity, editing, time management, writing

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