Check out this article for a few peaks at the future and our brand new teaser video…

Project Anatole – iWriteReadRate v2.0

It almost goes without saying how much the publishing industry is in flux. It’s a cluttered and confusing time for writers and readers, as well as the publishers themselves.

For Writers reaching readers and breaking through the noise is a challenge. Creators of stories have never had so much control or power to own their own destiny.

For Readers there has never been so much choice and different formats to navigate before discovering and enjoying their next story.

For Publishers of all sizes technology continues to radically change their business models, route to market, and how they engage with their customers.

We’re here to help and with Project Anatole, a completely renewed, refocused and refreshed iWriteReadRate.com we will do so by being the social place to discover new stories.

It shouldn’t matter what technology you use. It shouldn’t matter how much time or money you have to spend on marketing. It shouldn’t difficult to get feedback or build a team of experts to help. Stories are personal, discovering them shouldn’t be a transactional and lonely experience.

Creating, consuming and selling stories should be fun, personal and social. It should be easy to discover, share and discuss stories. It should be easy to find new stories based on your tastes and moods. It should be easy to publish, promote and sell.

Literature of all kinds inspires, entertains and engages. The tools used to discover stories should reflect this.

Now, we’ll get off our soapbox and let you have a look at our brand new intro video…

iWriteReadRate.com v2.0 – intro video

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Oh, and in case you wondered, Anatole was the ancient Greek goddess for the sunrise hour.

Did you like this blog? What about these:

Reaching Readers and Breaking Through the Indie Noise

Writers & Readers of the World Unite!

4 Quick Reasons Article Series

The Social Experience of Reading

The eBook Revolution

Oh, and we’re working hard on some great new ideas for iWriteReadRate.com in 2013. Register today to join us on the exciting journey to come!

VoteForMyeBook.com November 2012 Mini-Critique Winner

Cornerstones professional mini-critique of the opening of Perking The Pansies by Jack Scott:

This opening introduces us to two sympathetic and witty characters whose interactions feel very natural and realistic. The setting – the special birthday meal; the big announcement one of them has to make – give us a good taste of the human drama that’s (presumably) to come. The writing is solid and confident, with few of the copy-editing and proofreading errors we often see in self-published material – the author has obviously revised carefully and this gives it a professional feel. The dialogue flows smoothly and there are enough touches of descriptive colour to root us in the scene and allow us to picture it.

The scene falters slightly when the narrator steps outside the action of the present moment to fill us in on exposition and background. At these points the reader’s attention is likely to wander because the information feels less immediate and engaging; indeed, the opening paragraph (which is nevertheless sharp, witty and well written) seems to pre-empt the meat of what the scene is about, hinting at what’s going to happen, whilst explicitly introducing the thematic content (the all-consuming and all-powerful nature of Work). As a result, it feels authorial rather than being a natural part of the narrator’s thought-processes at this specific moment.

This is particularly noticeable here, because it’s the first piece of writing we encounter and it’s all telling or summary; the kind of writing that is designed to deliver information, but tends to keep the reader at arm’s length from the characters. However, there are later examples which have a similarly explicatory, distancing effect, as with the paragraph about Liam and Jack’s relationship and marriage, and the one which outlines the cut-and-thrust nature of Liam’s job. The love between them is something the reader ought to be able to gauge from the two characters’ interactions, and the info about the job feels repetitious, returning to the analysis of Liam’s career that the opening paragraph began.

This is really a problem of telling rather than showing, a broad writing concept that at its very simplest boils down to the need to reveal through scene – action, gesture, and dialogue – rather than summary. This comes into play in all aspects of writing including scene-setting (so, here, it might be good to show the gossiping workers, perhaps allowing the reader to hear some snatches of their dialogue); prose style (avoiding passive writing like [the] brasserie was illuminated or the restaurant was swollen and using strong verbs as opposed to weaker verbs plus adverbs, of which there are a number here); and, perhaps most importantly, characterization, emotion, and relationships.

Because this is a human, character-led drama, it is the nuances of the relationship between these two characters that will really hook in the reader. We want to see for ourselves what draws them together – and what pushes them apart – played out in real time, rather than explained to us.

The tensions and conflicts between the characters are particularly important to get across dramatically, and here we have some good seeds of discord: the fact that Jack obviously feels Liam’s job is bad for him, and the fact that Liam has some sort of bombshell to drop. We assume Liam’s news must be bad because of his body-language (fiddling with his tie, massaging his temples – all great in terms of showing how he’s feeling). Meanwhile, Jack is – albeit glibly – worried for Liam’s mental health, and thinks his boss, if not his whole job, is bad news. However, these two potential areas of tension are defused as quickly as they arise. With Liam’s announcement, delivered almost before we’ve had a chance to wonder what it might be, Jack’s concerns are immediately resolved: Liam’s revelation is actually good news. It’s not that Liam’s unhappy in their relationship and indeed, the one factor that’s making him unhappy, and Jack unsettled by proxy, has just been eliminated. It’s as though the two have solved their biggest problems within their very first conversation, and the reader is likely to be left wondering what’s really at stake, what they’re trying to achieve, and where the conflict is going to come from.

Since conflict and tension are the lifeblood of fiction, it would be worth giving some thought to how a few changes in the scene might maintain tension for longer and give the characters bigger crises to work through. The best tension tends to arise when characters’ desires or needs are set against one another. For instance, perhaps Liam’s news is not that he’s quit, but that he’s had a promotion or agreed to work longer hours. He knows Jack will be disappointed, and this would explain his nerves about telling him the news. But at the same time, it’s great news for his career; shouldn’t Jack be happy for him? Immediately you’ve shifted from a scene in which both characters are basically happy and supportive of each other’s choices to one in which, through no fault of their own and despite the fact they’re deeply in love, they’re in conflict with each other.

If this would mean too much of a change to the plot, an alternative would be to play around with Jack’s perceptions or expectations a little more. Perhaps one of the things that draws Jack to Liam is his success and ambition; the fact that he’s not afraid to work hard. Perhaps Jack even has a bit of a fondness for being the kept man, and values Liam’s income. When Liam announces that he has some news, at the moment Jack’s immediate assumptions are not very revealing: he thinks that either Liam doesn’t like the restaurant (so trivial as to be meaningless) or that he’s unhappy (which simply shows us how nice Jack is, if this is the worst thing he can imagine). But what if he started imagining all sorts of scenarios which tell us a little more about both the characters: perhaps he thinks Liam’s cheated (revealing his own guilty conscience?) or that Liam’s missed the big promotion he was going for at work and won’t be able to take them on holiday this year after all. Then, when Liam announces he’s quit, Jack might be angry, not just because of the fact that this seems like a failure on Liam’s part, but also because he feels bad for thinking such selfish and faithless thoughts. Immediately you have both an external and an internal conflict – just the sort of grit that readers like to get their teeth into.

There’s much about this opening that’s already working very well, so putting in some extra thought about what’s going to give it that page-turning quality that readers really look for would pay dividends. It’s not enough to have good writing and likeable characters: readers want conflict which forces characters to act, change, and push themselves beyond their limits. With this, a good book becomes unputdownable.

Good luck with the revisions and remember that we’re here to help – whether this is with simpler tasks like copy-editing and proofreading or to provide an alternative professional viewpoint on involved structural issues like the above.

Jack fed back in response to his mini-critique:

Thank you to Cornerstones for such an interesting, informative and incisive mini-critique. The sequel to my Turkish tales is on the story drawing board so the review is timely. In particular, the feedback has made me seriously consider the issues of narration versus illustration. This will, I’m sure, help make the second and final installment more complex, absorbing and compelling for the reader.

Check out the February 2013 shortlist and cast your votes on our competition micro-site here: VoteForMyeBook.com

An idea: you could follow this months shortlisted writers and DM them on your iStream once you’ve voted for them. Remember, your ebook could be shortlisted next month.

Don’t forget that about our competition to win a fantastic Nexus 7 by reading ebooks.

New to iWriteReadRate? Read our User Guide ebook to get started quickly.

Find out more about Cornerstones.

Cast your vote in our exciting monthly competition for our writers to win a fantastic professional mini-critique of their ebook from a leading Literary Consultancy, Cornerstones.

Simply visit our micro-site and pick the ebooks you’d like to win. You can vote for more than one ebook, if you wish.

This month’s shortlisted ebooks, in no particular order, are:

In The Shadows by Steve Smy - a Horror short story

Wolf by Harriet Jean Evans – a Fantasy novelette

Perspective by Marc Hopkins - a Literary Fiction novel

Little Gods by Caitlin McColl - a Fantasy short story

The Forerunner by Jed Hirst – a Sci-Fi short story

Cast your votes now!

Five new shortlisted ebooks will be available for the March VoteForMyeBook competition – we’ll let you know when they’re live for you to vote and rate. Your ebook could be one of them.

Winners so far: Martin Hyde, Pip Morgan, Caitlin McColl, Jack Scott, David Biddle and David Burton. Keep an eye on our blog for posts about the advice they’ve received from Cornerstones.

Happy writing, reading and rating.

The iWriteReadRate Team

Further details of our VoteForMyeBook competition are on our blog here.

Like discovering undiscovered stories? Join our social fiction ebook community & ecommerce platform for writers and readers, iWriteReadRate.

Did you know that ebooks uploaded from now will be available in Kindle format and samples will be readable on our online eReader? More info here.

PS – Have questions? Read/download our ebook User Guide and visit our About Us.

Without further ado, the winner is…

An Accidental Vampire by David Burton

Congratulations to David and we hope that he will find the critique helpful to support his writing journey, and continue to inspire his creativity and dedication for literature.

Check out this and other ebooks by David on his iWRR Profile.

His winning ebook will be the featured one on the iWRR homepage during the current month. David joins our previous winners – to discover who they are, click here.

Our February shortlisted VoteForMyeBook.com ebooks are now available for you to vote for. We have five varied ebooks for you to consider…check them out.

Remember: Next month your iWRR ebook could be one of them. Upload your stories to be in win a chance to be shortlisted.

Happy writing, reading and rating.

We have exciting plans for 2013. Register on our main site to keep informed. We’re here to support and delight both writers and readers! iWriteReadRate.com

The iWriteReadRate Team

Did you know that by reading iWRR ebooks you could win a fantastic Google Nexus 7? Discover how.

Like this? Join our social fiction ebook community & ecommerce community for writers and readers of fiction, iWriteReadRate here. Discover undiscovered stories today!

Did you know that ebooks uploaded from now will be available in Kindle format and samples will be readable on our online eReader? More info here.

PS – Have questions? Read/download our free ebook User Guide and visit our About Us.

It was a close run race last month, with the most total votes yet – great stuff! Without further ado, the winner is…

Beyond the Will of God: A Psychedelic Mystery by David Biddle

Congratulations to David and we hope that he will find the critique helpful to support his writing journey, and continue to inspire his creativity and dedication for literature.

His winning ebook will be the featured one on the iWRR homepage during the current month. David joins our previous winners – to discover who they were, click here.

Our January shortlisted VoteForMyeBook.com ebooks are now available for you to vote for.

Remember: Next month your iWRR ebook could be one of them. Upload your stories to be in win a chance to be shortlisted.

Happy writing, reading and rating.

All the best for 2013!

The iWriteReadRate Team

Did you know that by reading iWRR ebooks you could win a fantastic Google Nexus 7? Discover how.

Like this? Join our social fiction ebook community & ecommerce community for writers and readers of fiction, iWriteReadRate here.

Did you know that ebooks uploaded from now will be available in Kindle format and samples will be readable on our online eReader? More info here.

PS – Have questions? Read/download our free ebook User Guide and visit our About Us.

So Many Books, So Little Time
by Melissa Foster

If there’s such thing as the perfect way to spend a few morning hours, it would be with a good book, a comfy chair, and a warm cup of hot chocolate. Reading carries my mind away from my own tasks or troubles and into someone else’s dilemma, which, strangely, I find relaxing. Odd, right? Finding pleasure in someone else’s suspenseful drama? Yup, that’s the mind of this reader. Give me the chase of tracking down a killer or suspenseful family drama, and I’m a happy girl. Put that same action into my real life, and all sorts of unhappiness would occur.

The trouble with reading is that there are so many books out there—new books every day. How do you choose what to read? Recommendations of friends? Literary communities such as GoodReads?  Or do you sign up for every free ebook newsletter that you can find and download until you have too many books to read?

The avenues for finding books have changed dramatically. I’m a “cover girl”. The cover has to grab me and draw me in enough to read the back of the book, which then must compel me to read the first three pages. That works for me, though now even my path has changed. The cover brings me to the electronic sample rather than the back cover, making it even easier to purchase with one click. There’s never a need to leave my house (I’m not sure this is a good thing for my pants size).

I recently queried readers and found that many no longer look at covers at all. I can’t imagine this. It would be like looking at society naked! But alas, to each his own. With ereaders on board, choosing a book is as easy as receiving an email, clicking twice, and voila! You’re ready to read; ebook downloaded, ereader in hand.

As a writer, I still—and am sure I will always—suffer over every image on my covers and every word in the blurb on the back cover. I’ll list my books in several locations so readers can find me no matter which path they choose in their quest for the perfect afternoon read.

Clue us in, dear readers. How do you find and choose your books? What can authors do to make it easier for you to find them?

Article written by Melissa Foster, founder of Fostering Success, where she helps authors navigate publishing and book marketing, the World Literary Café, and The Women’s Nest, a social and support site for women. Melissa is also a bestselling, award-winning author.

Like this? Check out Reaching Readers & Breaking Through the Indie Noise by Adam Charles on the World Literary Cafe blog.

iWriteReadRate.com is the social place to discover undiscovered stories. A fiction ebook community & ecommerce platform for writers and readers. We’re presently busy building version 2.0 to better enable writers and readers to discover each other and great undiscovered stories.

Writers: A monthly competition in collaboration with a leading UK literary consultancy, Cornerstones, to win a professional mini-critique on your ebook. Discover more here.

Readers: A competition that offers readers an opportunity to win a Nexus 7 tablet simply for reading ebooks. Discover more here.

Reaching Readers & Breaking Through The Indie Noise

by Adam Charles

It almost goes without saying what a brave and innovative new world the enablement of writers to own their destiny has become through the ascension of ebooks. Indie Publishing is exciting and evolving. As an aspiring author, avid reader, and co-founder of iWriteReadRate.com I am enthralled and inspired by the groundswell we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

Whilst the publishing industry has long been called to account about the commercial nature of the industry, they do have a focused eye on giving the people what they think they want. As Indie writers there may be something we can learn from this approach to better connect and reach our own audiences.

We hear so much about platform building – the act of writers building their own profiles with audiences through blogging, social media and other promotional activities – however, with so many doing the same things, it is a significant challenge to stand out and be heard in the melee.

In the more social world we now inhabit, the answer – perhaps – is more dynamic connections between content creators and consumers. Closer, more personal, more intimate. When have readers ever had a better chance of really getting a feel for the writer, being involved in our writing journey, an opportunity to co-encourage and almost co-create? It seems an opportunity too interesting to miss from both a writer and reader perspective.

- Be more discoverable – blogging and social networking are important tools for us, without a doubt. However, are they enough and what else could we do to be easier to discover?

- Push out of your comfort zone – whether this is breaking out of our safe social media circles, going to in-person events, or doing something differently than you have before to increase your exposure and increase the personal touch with potential readers.

I encourage Indie writers to explore and act on what else could you be doing to reach and engage your audience. Now the rabbit is out of the hat, in the dynamic, crowded and evolving publishing world, it is our imperative to do so. Readers, as they always have been, are the only people that can make us successful; it is our job as Indie writers to do everything we can to be discovered – and then a little more.

Adam is an aspiring author and co-founder of iWriteReadRate. He’s been squeezing out stories for as long as he can remember. Find him on Twitter & his iWriteReadRate Profile.

iWriteReadRate.com is the social place to discover undiscovered stories. A social fiction ebook community & ecommerce platform for writers and readers. We’re presently busy building version 2.0 to better enable writers and readers to discover each other and great undiscovered stories.

Writers: A monthly competition in collaboration with a leading UK literary consultancy, Cornerstones, to win a professional mini-critique on your ebook. Discover more here.

Readers: A competition that offers readers an opportunity to win a Nexus 7 tablet simply for reading ebooks. Discover more here.

It was a close run race this month, with the most total votes yet. With a final flourish in the last few days pushing the winner out in front by a small margin. The winner is…

Perking The Pansies by Jack Scott

Congratulations to Jack and we hope that he will find the critique helpful to support his writing journey, and continue to inspire his creativity and dedication for literature.

His winning ebook will be the featured one on the iWRR homepage during the current month.

Our December shortlisted VoteForMyeBook.com ebooks are now available for you to vote for. Remember: Next month your ebook could be one of them.

Happy writing, reading and rating.

The iWriteReadRate Team

Did you know that by reading iWRR ebooks you could win a fantastic Google Nexus 7? Discover how.

Like this? Join our independent social ebook community & ecommerce community for writers and readers of fiction, iWriteReadRate here.

Did you know that ebooks uploaded from now will be available in Kindle format and samples will be readable on our online eReader? More info here.

PS – Have questions? Read/download our ebook User Guide and visit our About Us.

VoteForMyeBook.com October 2012 Mini-Critique Winner

Cornerstones professional mini-critique of the opening of The Jade Dragonfly by Caitlin McColl:

This is an engaging opening to what promises to be a relatively light murder mystery, probably falling broadly into the ‘cosy crime’ genre rather than anything grittier or more urban. The relationship between the young Constable Lattley and the older, more cynical McCloud provides the focus of the emotion and conflict in the scene, and allows us to get to know both characters in a different way than we would if they were interacting as equals.
Even cosy crime needs tension and suspense, and that’s one area in which this extract could be sharpened and given a little more punch. There’s a danger that with the focus on the minutiae of the crime scene and the harmless misunderstandings between the characters – Lattley’s error over the nickname and his obvious inexperience at interpreting evidence – the tone will remain too light to really grab the reader and keep them turning the pages. In some ways it feels as though the most dramatic moment – the actual discovery of the body – is already over by the time we join the scene.

Might it be possible to start this story earlier, either with the neighbour discovering the body or with the police, called by Adara, who’s worried that she hasn’t seen Mrs O’Reilly for a while, breaking down the door to make the discovery for themselves? As well as providing a really dramatic opening gambit, this would also have the benefit of allowing the author to cut the rather dry exposition (where McCloud explains to Lattley how and why the body was discovered). And the descriptions of the house, which are currently quite factual and functional, would be coloured by the atmosphere of tension and suspense; of the police not knowing exactly what they’re going to find.

Of course, that’s just one suggestion and it may be that the author prefers to keep this opening scene as it is. If that’s the case, then there are various ways in which it could be given more dynamism and definition. For instance, more descriptive detail would be useful, irrespective of where the story starts. From the very first sentence, which feels like quite an abrupt opening, there’s a slight lack of clarity around the setting – are we in the kitchen or outside it? – and the details we do get are fairly unspecific: a ‘pantry door’, a ‘carpet’, a ‘little table’. These details don’t tell us much about the house or the victim; nor do they create much atmosphere. Is the pantry door peeling or scrubbed clean? Is the carpet brown with orange swirls or neutral, minimalist white? Is the little table Formica, glass, or a grubby antique?

This need for more description also extends to the coppers and their relationship. The reader can’t really picture either of them: is Lattley red-faced and shy, or is he a bit cocky and sure of himself (as suggested by his use of McCloud’s nickname)? And McCloud – does he stoop when he walks, does his back ache, or is he a Cracker-esque giant of a man who’s looked crime in the face all his life and hasn’t been bowed down by it? We get various combinations of names for each policeman; it might feel more consistent to hear their full names once, when we’re first introduced to them, and then simply refer to them by their surnames, as is conventional in this sort of professional, masculine relationship (and in the police procedural genre).

The piece is roughly from McCloud’s POV but it would be good to work into this viewpoint a little deeper, showing us more of his reactions and thoughts. How does he feel about visiting this particular crime scene; does it bring back any personal associations or is he completely hardened to the job; is he sympathetic to Lattley’s naivety or does it irritate him? Ideally these reactions should be shown, through McCloud’s own thoughts, words and gestures, rather than told (as when we hear that he was starting to regret having asked [Johnny] to help him with the case.) Emotional engagement is created by encouraging the reader to bond and empathise with your main character, and share in his/her experience of events; to do this we need to get closer to McCloud.

Stylistically, the writing could be tightened by pruning out unnecessary adverbs and adjectives and aiming to replace them either with dramatic showing (e.g. how does McCloud know that Lattley is speaking ‘excitedly’ or that he is ‘disappointed’) or with a strong verb (so, replacing ‘said excitedly’ with something like ‘whispered’ or ‘hissed’ depending on what sort of person Lattley is). Try to avoid repetition, too – here, we have a few repeated words and phrases in quick succession, including ‘was starting to’, ‘small’, and ‘slightly’.

Generally, aiming for precision in the descriptive detail and an intimate use of POV should help to iron out some of the above problems; for instance, if the prose is really focused on showing us the setting vividly and with sensory accuracy, descriptions like ‘small kitchen’ and ‘small round table’ will start to feel insufficient and the author will naturally want to replace them with something fresher and more revealing, thus avoiding the repetition. Similarly, with the slightly tautological description of the ‘beautiful, ornate’ letter opener; more specifics here would avoid both the tautology and the vagueness. Is it brass, carved wooden, pewter?

At the same time, if we’re inhabiting McCloud’s POV more closely, it will start to be automatic for the author to bring the scene to life through his eyes and his way of phrasing things, thus utilising a more distinctive, fresh lexicon and focusing on his actions and responses: how does he know the cup of coffee is still slightly warm? Is it by touching it, and what does this make him think? (Is it likely, given the timescale, that the drink would still be warm, by the way?)

Finally, watch out for typos, some awkward phrasing and missing punctuation – see the rough copy-edit above for these kinds of things. Remember that in a crowded self-publishing marketplace the best way to stand out is to ensure your work is edited to the highest professional standards, and Cornerstones is here to help if you need us.

Good luck with bringing this scene, and this two promising characters, to vivid, dramatic life in the next draft.

Caitlin fed back in response to her mini-critique:

I’d like to thank you and everyone at iWriteReadRate.com and also thanks to Cornerstones for this critique of my story!  Please feel free to share the critique with readers on your blog – I think we can all learn things from the insights given into my story.

I think it’s great when you can get a perspective on your story from someone else’s fresh eyes and point of view – and by a professional editor as well! The critique has greatly helped me and I can’t wait to spruce up, tighten and improve my story with all the advice that Cornerstones me with this mini-critique. It’s amazing how much can be learned even with such a small amount of manuscript edited. If anyone has ever thought that their story is ‘good enough’ just being edited by themselves (and even with some friends who are willing to be beta-readers) this just shows the importance of how much of a difference a professional editor can make to a story!

How can you win a pro mini-critique? Simply upload your ebook(s) to iWRR and you could be shortlisted for next months competition.

Check out the November shortlist and cast your votes on our competition micro-site here: VoteForMyeBook.com – cast your votes now!

Take a look at the previous pro mini-critiques here.

Don’t forget that about our competition to win a fantastic Nexus 7 by reading ebooks.

New to iWriteReadRate? Read our User Guide ebook to get started quickly.

Find out more about Cornerstones.