Armchair BEA 2015 – Day 3: Character Chatter and Blogging Q&A

 

Character Chatter-It’s time to give your favorite characters some love! Characters are essential to a story, and they can make or break a book for some readers. Now’s your chance to shine the spotlight on your favorite characters, or maybe your least favorite. Who’s your favorite couple? What are the components of a well-written character? What are you favorite or least favorite cliches associated with characters?

Dear Bad Guy,

Yeah, I know you’ve got an evil plan. I know you’ve spent months, possibly years, of your fictional life plotting, scheming, and scheduling countless nefarious activities, but let’s be honest with each other, shall we? I ALREADY KNOW. I’ve been reading your story now for a couple hundred pages, and I’m not a moron. I’ve picked up on your motivations, your deep-seated emotional scars, your wounded childhood. I know you’re complicated. But listen. I’ve got about ten minutes to sit and read your story before I’ve got to rescue the baby from drowning himself in the toilet, make sure dinner’s on the table, drive the toddler to gymnastics, and make sure my husband’s lucky boxers are clean for his business trip in the morning. I don’t have time for you to rehash your entire evil scheme ten pages before the end of the book. I don’t know for certain, but I’m fairly sure you’re only delaying the inevitable: the hero is going to sneakily untie his restraints and blast you with his ultrasonic save-the-day gun while you’re talking. You’re going to lose, and I’ve got STUFF to do, okay?  So just SHUSH. Please?

Love, Melissa

Blogging Q&A-Blogging 101. All kinds of tips and tricks to get you started or keep you going. Talk about ARCs, reviewing in general, web design, etc.  What blogging platform do you use? How do you network? What are some of your favorite web designs?  Or maybe you want to talk about your own blogging journey, and how you got to where you are now. Either way, we want you to share your knowledge with the rest of the community!

I will not tell you “how to blog” or “the rules of blogging” because there is no right or wrong way to blog, and there are no rules set in stone concerning blogging. (And, yes, there are a few exceptions–don’t plagiarize, and if you use affiliate links or have received a book or product from free in exchange for a review, tell everyone that.) I’ve read a lot of posts over the years that say you must do this, you must do that, you can’t do this, you should never do that. You know what? Your blog is your space. Do what works best for you. (I’ve seen quite a few posts that say that as well.) I can only tell you what worked for us here at EFC.

When I decided to start blogging, I spent a month or so reading other blogs. I read mainly book blogs because I knew I wanted to start a book blog, but I also read mommy blogs, food blogs, life blogs–you get the point. I saw how other blogs were designed, their layouts, the content, you name it. I took it all in and then developed “my” blog and how I wanted it. I started on Blogger because it was free and because I didn’t want to completely commit until I knew I was going to take the blog somewhere. Now, I’m with WordPress, self-hosted, and I haven’t looked back. Over the years, we have added reviewers, features, blog tours, etc., and we have backed away from features, tours, etc. You learn and change as you go. You have to do what works best for you and go for it.

If you have any questions about blogging, or if you want to know more about what we do (or have done) here at EFC, please comment or email or find me on Facebook or Twitter. I would be happy to chat with you about it. I will help in any way I can. That’s one thing I love about this community, most bloggers and authors will help each other out, give advice, or just be there for one another. It’s fantastic.