Timothy West’s satirical radio play “This gun in my right hand is loaded” is a wonderful demonstration of what happens when writers who are used to one particular medium (in this case the screen) adapt their idea for another (in this case radio) and fail to account for the affordances and limitations of the form.

At one point early on, the protagonist says (adopt posh 1960s BBC radio voice) “Whiskey eh? That’s a strange drink for an attractive, auburn-haired girl of 29”, hilariously exposing one of the singularities of radio, which might be more subtly manoeuvred by a writer with the right expertise. 

Every medium requires a different approach and set of skills in order to really make it sing and virtual reality is no different. But VR is still evolving its form and even its terminology. What one person means by virtual reality may not correspond to what another does, so let’s start by trying to pin down what we mean by VR. 

For many, VR is any computer-simulated environment that you can access via a VR headset. However, purists say that 360 video, though it conforms to this definition, is not ‘true’ VR. If you try to move forward inside a 360 video, the world’s edges move with you. It’s a bit like having a fishbowl on your head (stay with me).You can look at the fish to the left or the right, up and down, or behind you, but if you try to get a closer look and take a step forward, the whole bowl comes with you – a very disorientating feeling when you first experience it.

 VR that uses a gaming engine like Unity or Unreal, whether that world is created using CGI, photogrammetry, volumetric capture or a combination of all three, does not have this ‘depth’ problem and is generally more interactive. You can choose whether to approach certain things or move away from them just as you can in the real world.

Writing for so-called ‘true’ VR is different from writing for 360 video because the former generally entails branching narratives and interactions and is a more complex process. Writing for 360 video tends to involve a straightforward linear narrative, but whether you are writing for one or the other there is something very important to bear in mind with both – the non-traditional point of view of the user. 

Again, terminology is tricksy here. ‘User’ is a gaming term and for less gamesy experiences, many still use the word ‘audience’ (originally from latin meaning listening or hearing). Others talk about ‘participants’ or ‘viewers’ or even ‘viewsers’ – a useful hybrid coined by media theorist Dan Harries.

When writing for VR, it’s important to realise that the viewser’s POV is self-directed, omnidirectional and present. The viewser is not being told where to look and what to concentrate on by the framing of a shot. There are no shots or cuts and they can (and will) look in any direction around them. This needs to be accounted for by the writer.

It’s wonderful that in VR the viewser has such freedom to choose where to focus her attention. Gone are the slow from-the-legs-up lingering shots on women’s bodies, for example. If you want to, you can turn your back on the leading lady and just take in the sky or the floor. But it’s very likely that some of your viewsers will completely miss something important that is unfolding in ‘front’ of them and check out the skirting boards at precisely the wrong time. If something in the story is crucial and should not be missed, it needs to be signposted with sound design or some other sleight of hand, for example with a “Coooey! Over here!”, just before it happens.

By saying that the viewser’s POV is ‘present’, I’m referring to the immersive nature of VR. Writers who are used to writing for film or TV will need to take into consideration the fact that viewsers are not outside of a frame looking in. They are inhabiting the world – not necessarily acting or participating in it (though they may be), but always taking up space in that world and experiencing themselves as part of it, which entails a completely different mindset from traditional writing for frames. There is no hard and fast rule, but the viewser should probably be acknowledged in some way and it should make sense for her to be there. 

Story Studio, Oculus’ explorative VR studio, pinpointed this need to have the viewser’s presence acknowledged with what they called The ‘Swayze’ Effect (after Patrick Swayze’s character’s feeling of dislocation in the film Ghost). Viewsers are not just observers; they are experiencers, embodied in a world and they should be accounted for and considered as such throughout the writing process.

VR is a rapidly evolving art form that is still finding its feet so it’s pretty hard to predict exactly what kind of writing it might entail in a year or even a few months’ time. Until fairly recently, there were no consumer headsets, let alone hand tracking, haptics or wireless rigs. Things are shifting quickly, but we can hazard a guess that VR will become increasingly social and increasingly interactive with writers needing to be able to come up with complex branching narratives, which means a lot of writing!

With the pandemic leading to increased headset sales and with the market for VR growing, now may be the time to try out some VR for yourself, see what works and what doesn’t and to have a go thinking outside the frame. 

When The Writing Platform asked me if I would be so kind as to write something about how you lovely writers out there could approach bloggers I was really honoured. Yet after I had written down my initial ‘top tips’ I started to worry. You see in this article you may see the word ‘don’t’ quite a lot however I wanted to give as honest a response as I could so that those of you who have spent a year or five writing, which I commend you for having the determined drive and belief to do, don’t end up either getting a ‘no thank you’ or simply silence. The publishing industry is tough enough as it is (sorry, you probably don’t want that thrown in your face again) so I wanted to do something that might prove bluntly helpful. With that in mind here are my top ten tips on how to approach a blogger…

Do your research/read some blogs. This is probably THE most important tip, though the others will help too I hope so don’t just run off as soon as you have read this. The amount of times I have received books (from authors and publicists) about/or set on boats or featuring talking animals (or horses in general) when I frequently document how much those things turn me off a book, is amazing. Find the bloggers which firstly read the books in the genre that you are writing and secondly seem to like books in the style you write. There is no point sending your multi-generational spaceship odyssey to a blogger who never reads sci-fi, just as there would be no point sending your epic Man Booker worthy tale of Henry the talking WWII horse and his voyage on a submarine to the front line to me.

The easiest way to do this is check their ‘about’ page, if they have one. This is normally addressed to publishers but will give you details of their personal review/submission policy. Every blog is different and every blogger has their own code of conduct. Here you will also find out two other very important things: do they accept books from authors directly and if so by what medium. For example I don’t like e-readers, so I am not going to read anyone’s e-book yet I get sent free e-copies daily.

Once you have done your research contact the bloggers. Please don’t tell me you are the next Daphne Du Maurier/Margaret Atwood/Ian McEwan. Yes, you have found out my favourite authors yet to claim to be as good as them before I have even read a word is sure to put me off, just like if you tell me you have written the new Rebecca. True it is my favourite book but I really, really love it and don’t want a new version. However, if your book is gothic and/or has a feel of a psychological thriller and/or is written in the style of some of my favourite writers and/or types of books then tell me that and get me intrigued.

Keep it succinct. I know you really want someone to read your book, I know you have spent years on it but I don’t want to spend years reading your email about it. Nor do I want an email that is longer than your book. Say hello, say why you think we might like your book (in a paragraph max) and leave it at that. Keep it simple – and this comes from someone who loves to waffle.

Please do not attach your book in the email. I don’t speak for all bloggers but I get at least ten emails a day from authors and most attach their work to it. Firstly it looks presumptuous before we have even said hello; secondly it fills my inbox; thirdly you know I don’t have an e-reader. Seems like a minor quibble yet when they are arriving regularly it’s the little things that will end you up in spam.

Speaking of spam … don’t mass email or spam us with email. Emails that simply say ‘Hi’, ‘Dear Savidge Reads’, ‘Dear Blogger’, etc don’t show that you have interacted with us at all and that you are simply sending a mass email. At work I loathe sending a mass email and always apologise because they are really impersonal and whilst I don’t want to think you have been outside my house every night peering between my curtains, I would like to feel that you have done some research and this instantly shows you haven’t. Speaking of work, if you don’t get an answer straight away remember bloggers do this for free and for the love, they have jobs elsewhere and so they might not answer you the week they get your email, or indeed the second they get it. If you don’t hear anything for a month and they are a blogger you really want to connect with email them again then, not every day until they respond or until the end of time.

Don’t beg or bribe, or to put it another way please don’t tell me that I am killing children in Africa by not reading your book. Oh you may be laughing at your computer screen but one author, who will remain nameless, hounded me to review their book – after getting a polite ‘no thank you’ email back – before telling me that their books proceeds were going to children in Africa and I was killing them. It was extreme but highlights what I mean.

Expect us to be honest. If a blogger loves your book they will literally not shut up about it. They will tell everyone until we have just bought a copy to shut them up. However, if they don’t like it that is fair enough too. I know bloggers who hate some of my favourite books and vice versa, it is one of the joys of discussing books! If they don’t like yours then they might not review it, if they do and are critical but constructive take it on the chin, no matter how hard. Don’t ask for them to send you a pristine copy of their book, leave horrid comments on their blog or start a spat on Twitter. All these have happened and all of them are really unnecessary.

Just be nice. People say that it doesn’t matter if an author is nice or not but it does really. An open, funny, warm and friendly author is far more likely to get read by me than an arrogant, cold and self important/promoting one. You can see this all the more on social media. Just chat and say ‘hi’, engage in bookish conversations or correspondence but don’t be all friendly and then suddenly say ‘oh could you read my book now’ or ‘I am writing something can you tweet all your followers and see if they might be interested’. Firstly, maybe go for the line of ‘I was wondering if I could email you …’ and await the response. Secondly, no blogger can get you a book deal and they will just think you have been really smarmy and false and will avoid you like the plague.

Finally from me a positive don’t, as I am worried you all think I am a right Negative Nelly. In the words of Kate Bush – don’t give up. You have written a book, which is no easy task, I or whichever blogger you approach just might not be the right reader, and remember we are reader’s first bloggers second, for you or your book at the moment. Reading is so subjective and all about timing, so persevere. If you have done all the above who knows, they might put you in the direction of just the reader/blogger for you. Keep at it as without authors there would be no lovely books for us all to read.

The book publishing industry is going through a huge transition. It’s easier than ever to get a book out into the world. All the resources you need to publish a book are available you and you no longer need to go through the traditional gatekeepers (publishers) to publish a quality book.

Because it’s so easy to publish a book and get it out to market, authors sometimes skip critical steps. Below are some of the most common mistakes I’ve seen.

1) Having Vague Goals

You need to define your goals. Are you looking to get more readers? Or looking to sell books? It’s easy to get more readers if you’re a first-time author, but it’s harder to sell books.

2) Not Getting Your Work Professionally Edited

Once you’ve written your book, an editor is important. If your book needs a lot of work a developmental editor will evaluate and critique your manuscript, suggest and provide revisions and shape it into a smooth, workable piece. Next you might want to get a copy editor to catch any typos. Not getting your work professionally edited is like not testing a drug before it goes out into market.

3) Not Hiring A Professional Cover Designer

People judge a book by a cover. They will judge how it looks on a black and white Kindle and how it looks on Smartphones. It’s important that your cover design catch the reader at first sight. Before you hire a designer check out the designer’s portfolio to make sure your vision and your designer’s vision are the same.

4) Not Doing Your Research On Vendors Or Vanity Presses

I’ve come across way too many authors who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on vanity presses who prey on authors. A vanity press is a publishing house in which authors pay to have their books published (Author House, Balboa Press, etc). Before you choose a vendor or press make sure you Google “[Name of Press/Vendor] Reviews.” That will tell you what you need to know about the press or vendor before you sign up.

5) Not Proofreading Your Book

Once you have the final digital or print version of your book, you should give it a thorough read to make sure it’s free of errors. Vendors do make mistakes. At this stage, you won’t catch too many errors, but you do want to catch them pre-publication.

6) Pre-printing Books Without A Distribution Deal

I had an author come to me who spent most of his money on print runs for his poorly designed and poorly edited book. Currently, he has 1000 copies of his book sitting in his garage. Unless you have already found someone to distribute your books for you, you might want to opt for a print-on-demand service like Createspace or Lightning Source where the book is printed and sent to the reader when they buy it.

7) Lack Of A Marketing Plan

It’s essential to having a marketing plan around your book. Books don’t just sell themselves. This is probably where you’ll spend most of your time and a good chunk of your money.

As an indie or self-published author it’s really important to do your research before making any vendor, retail, or editorial services decisions. It’s a lot of work, but thinking through all the pieces will prevent you from wasting money, time and effort.

A version of this article was originally published here, at SelfPublishedAuthor.com, a Bowker website offering tools and advice to self-published authors. Bowker is the official ISBN agency in the US.

The first time someone mentioned the term transmedia to me I was already collaborating with four project teams. We were working to produce a comic anthology centered on my urban fantasy novel Fallen Heroes. I was also co-writing the first episode of an audio drama spin off. The name I gave to this transmedia project was Unseen Shadows, which referred to the trilogy I was working on, of which Fallen Heroes was the first.

My goal in using transmedia was to create stories in other mediums that could be enjoyed as stand alone adventures. However, when those stories were combined with the novel they would expand the world established within its pages. This meant that a single line of prose within the novel could be transformed into a 22 page comic or a supporting character could take the lead in a five part audio drama.

An Unseen Shadows project begins when someone, usually a writer, reads the novel and wants to become involved. I start by asking them what character they want to work on rather than choose one for them. This has led to some interesting choices, including both main and very minor characters being given the transmedia treatment.

The next stage is for the writer to give me a brief overview of their idea. Once I’m on board they will work up a full pitch, including any suggestions I may have made, before moving onto the scripting stage. At the same time the artist begins work on the main character sketches.

In my goal to create stand-alone routes into the novel I am involved in every stage of the process. I approve each story pitch, comic or audio script, character design and every line of dialogue spoken by a voice actor.

There are currently around forty writers, artists, letterers, colourists, graphic designers and voice actors working within the Unseen Shadows team. Their talent and experience are as diverse as their backgrounds and locale. Members can be found in the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa and the US.

Overseeing a team spread across the world is definitely a challenge. I quickly found that email, cloud storage and social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype were the greatest weapons in my communication arsenal.

All the past and future Unseen Shadows projects are stored using cloud storage. The projects are divided into folders with each one containing scripts, artwork, sound files and more, with access provided for relevant team members. This helps avoid any time zone issues as folders can be accessed 24/7.

I created an Unseen Shadows Facebook group where team members could share developments, discuss ideas, welcome new members and anything else they wanted to use it for. I also use the group to feedback on the progress of future novels or anything else of importance.

One of the main issues a writer working in collaborative fiction must face is the time demands. Projects have to be managed, timescales set and monitored. In some cases I have been the main reason that progress on a project has stalled. This can be because a team is waiting for me to read a script, approve a character or respond to an urgent email before they can continue.

A significant amount of my own writing time is spent overseeing the transmedia and collaborative elements of Unseen Shadows and that can be hard. However knowing the amount of work the team members are putting into their projects and seeing the end results spurs me on to manage my time better, which can only be a good thing for my writing in the long run.

Working within these different mediums has meant that to effectively manage the teams I had to develop, at least, a basic understanding of the terminology within each medium be it comics, audio or more recently film. It also pays to know some of the advantages and disadvantages of working within in each one. I have been lucky to find a lot of people along the way willing to offer me help and advice on that front.

The positives with working on collaborative fiction are many but overall it is the feeling of never being alone. In the dark days when the fear of a blank screen comes calling, a piece of art, a new script or question is not far behind. The light never goes off in the world of Unseen Shadows and knowing there is always someone at work is a great motivator.

These extremely talented people work on these projects not for the money, as all profits go back into the development of new projects, but because they love the source material. They constantly challenge me with their ideas, questions and suggestions for new ways to expand this world they have had a hand in developing.

I have found over the years that these new stories and characters have influenced me in unexpected ways. I have already referenced several of the events and characters created in the comics and audio drama in the second novel.

Working with the teams has taught me how to express to a writer why a particular line of dialogue does not work or to an artist why a character sketch does not feel right. This has helped me with my own self editing when I write.

The last two years has been a great training ground for learning when to step in and when to step back and trust these talented people with my world. The collaboration aspects of the various projects have given me a deeper understanding of my own characters as I watch them written, drawn and spoken by others.

10 tips for collaborative fiction

• Your story may be at the heart of everything but in the realm of collaborative fiction you need the creative lifeblood of your team to keep that heart beating. Respect them and their opinions.
• Ensure your team has a clear idea of what you expect of them before they join the project. I have a statement of intent document, which every member of the team receives, which must be read and its terms agreed to before they can join the project.
• Never dismiss ideas out of hand.
• Used wisely, social media can be a great aid to team communication. Used poorly it can a massive time drain.
• No one knows your world better than you but always be prepared to back up your decisions with reasons that don’t start with ‘It’s my book so…’
• Never be scared to get your hands dirty in another medium yourself. (I had never seen an audio script before Unseen Shadows much less co-written one.)
• Try to gain an understanding of the terminology used within the mediums you will be working in.
• Collaborative fiction can be a huge time commitment. Keep that in mind when deciding which projects to undertake.
• Keep yourself included in every stage of the project.
• Communication is the key. Keep your teams up to date and ensure they do the same. So many problems can be avoided with regular communication.

If you’re a writer interested in finding out more about immersive entertainment – discovering how your audiences can be immersed and play an active part in your story – then we have a great series of specialist immersive writing guides made available to The Writing Platform by Portal Entertainment and the Immersive Writing Lab team.

The guides, created by Mike Jones, Portal Entertainment’s Head of Story, will help writers who want to write ‘immersive entertainment’: writers who want their audiences to be immersed and play an active part in their story. This second guide explains how to create characters.

Characters – Goals, Obstacles, Communities and Points-of-View

It is somewhat stating the obvious to suggest that character is crucial to storytelling. Yet the idea of character is more complex than it might appear. And in the case of writing immersive interactive and multi-platform storyworlds, the notion of how to construct characters is extended with new considerations.

A story may be described in terms of its plot (this happens, then that happens then this happens…. etc) but it’s characters that provide us with point-of-view, empathy, metaphor, subtext and drama within that plot chain of events. More specifically, it is characters that give us a reason to care about the plot and make the plot events meaningful.

Writing a storyworld, as opposed to a singular narrative, requires some broader ideas about characters, what they represent, how they work and how they relate to each other in ongoing ways. We’ll break this down into 4 useful elements as a tool kit for thinking about the characters in your storyworld.

– Goals and Obstacles

– Role-Play

– Communities

– Points of view

Goals and Obstacles

In the previous guide we looked at the dramatic pressures of your storyworld, asking what forces in opposition pressurise and make dramatic (or comedic) your world? This is to say, what macro-level problems effect every character in your world? This is the central energy source that will both generate and motivate your characters who will not only struggle against or with these problems, but who will also be a product of them. Characters born in a particular world are a direct result of the world; their attitudes, behaviours, personality and – in particular – their goals and objectives, are a response to the problems of the world.

In the TV series Breaking Bad for example, the storyworld is one where there are two big problems; the first is a broken and dysfunctional health system that doesn’t cover peoples medical bills and the second is a huge demand for the drug crystal meth. These two big problems – health care and drugs – are the forces that beset every character in the Storyworld and which every character is responding to in some way. Characters are then made interesting, dramatic and compelling when they have specific goals and obstacles that are in opposition to the problem. Hence the storyworld of Breaking Bad naturally generates the character of an under-insured school teacher who has the goal of selling crystal meth to make enough money for his family before he dies and the obstacle of avoiding both the police and the other drug dealers. The problems of health care and drugs are so big they are unsolvable and so the dramatic pressure is sustainable over a very long-form narrative.

These same principles of a character’s goals and obstacles being a direct result of the problems of the storyworld are as applicable in an interactive multi-platform experience as they are in a TV series. The question is how do those storyworld pressures and problems manifest characters with clear goals and obstacles across different platforms and also how the audience can be compelled to respond interactively to the same goals and obstacles. What is crucial for the writing of your storyworld bible is to ensure that the very specific, personal, individual goals and obstacles of your characters are intrinsically linked to the problems of the world. In this way any character dropped into your world should be immediately pressurised and compelled to respond or act.

Role-Play

The idea of a motivated character with clear goals and defined obstacles is as applicable to interactive storytelling as it is with film, TV and books. In traditional narrative media we call such a motivated character an active protagonist with the idea that watching a character actively doing things is better than watching a passive character having things happen to them. In an interactive narrative experience the audience or user is most often asked to be the active protagonist – to play the role of a character with goals and obstacles.

Sometimes the audience will be asked to play the role of a pre-defined character, where the story tells the user who they are and the type of character they represent. In other cases the audience ‘plays themselves’, a tabula rasa onto which the audience are free to assign their own behaviours. In either case creating an active role-playing experience requires an extended idea of a character’s goals and obstacles.

The first is to clearly define the role for the audience in active terms; does an interactive narrative in your storyworld ask the user to be the fighter, finder, solver, rescuer, detective, strategist, organiser, chaser, escapee, etc…. What active roles does your storyworld naturally embody? By understanding the active verbs that describe what the user will ‘do’ in your storyworld you can define the three core things that make for a satisfying interactive experience: motivation, action and reward.

It’s a mistake to expect or assume your audience will or even want to interact. It’s your job – the job of your storyworld – to motivate them to do so. Ask yourself ‘what compels my audience to interact’? What is at stake? What is at risk? What will be lost or gained by their actions?

Once motivated the audience will then have specific actions and tasks to perform. What are those actions? Be specific not abstract. What are you asking them to do and how will they do it? These actions come directly out of the role you have asked them to play and the actions should be a direct consequence of the storyworld’s pressures. The audience’s actions should be specific to achieving a clear goal and be made dramatic by the obstacles that prevent them from achieving those goals.

The last crucial element for engaging interactive story experiences is reward. If you’re going to ask your audience to take part in your storyworld, to role play and take action, then you will need to reward them for doing so and thus motivate them to continue to interact and role play. How are your audience rewarded? is the story advanced? New knowledge unlocked? New spaces opened to explore? New mysteries revealed or questions answered? Of course reward systems can also involve traditional ‘game’ ideas of points, leveling-up, or any combination of the above.

Communities

The dominant mistake writers often make when developing and submitting their storyworld project is to focus on a single character with a single goal and subsequently a singular plot. But we’re not looking for ‘a’ story, we’re looking for a whole world of stories. In terms of character this often means shifting the emphasis away from an individual character and onto communities of characters.

Any storyworld – whether it’s real-world, intimate and contained, or other-worldly, fantastical and huge – will be home to groups of character that share common goals and obstacles; in other words communities.

Communities of characters can often be described and articulated in much the same terms we might use to describe an individual. What are the goals of that group of characters? What are the obstacles they face together? Communities will even share a personality, an attitude and a perspective. The group will collectively believe certain things and be in opposition to others.

This goes the same for antagonists as much as for protagonists in your world. Storyworld antagonists are often institutions, collective entities or forces that may comprise numerous individual characters but who all reflect a consistent set of traits. Take the much loved ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ – a project spanning TV, video games, comic books and more. The Buffy storyworld is rich and full of near countless demons, ghosts, monsters and vampires. Yet the antagonist is a singular entity – the Hell Mouth that spawns an ongoing ‘community’ of antagonistic characters for Buffy and her own ‘community’ of friends, family and comrades to face, fight and overcome. The Hell Mouth has collective goals, obstacles and perspective that is opposition the collective goals, obstacles and perspectives of the Slayers.

Within such communities of characters there are of course tensions, disputes and a mix of character archetypes. But identifying the collected traits of the different groups that exist in your storyworld is a crucial step in being able to define a world with the potential for numerous, varying and ongoing storylines and characters that can be experienced across platforms and technologies.

Points of View

The last element of points-of-view is about the different perspectives that exist for the characters and the audience in your world. Where a feature film generally offers just one point-of-view, the vibrancy of a storyworld can often be measured by the range of possible points-of-view that may be experienced. This speaks to the different platforms the world may be presented on, the different paths audiences may take through the world, the ability for the storyworld to generate multiple points of entry and audience revisitation.

Compelling points-of-view stem from compelling characters and this should prompt you to ask questions of your storyworld – What different points of view exist in your storyworld? Are they balanced and equally compelling? Does each POV effect the experience of the world and change audiences perceptions of it? Do different POV’s challenge, contradict or confound each other? Do certain points of view lend themselves more to one platform or another? Are certain points of view more conducive to being experienced interactively?

Summary

A storyworld may be full of great conceptual ideas, intrigues and fascinations, it may be visually beautiful, terrible or sublime, but it will often fail to be compelling for an audience until it is richly populated characters; characters we can care about, empathise with, cheer for or be in fear of.

Doing this of course aint easy! But the ideas here should help guide you towards the particular demands of characters in a storyworld as opposed to a character in a plot.

Goals & Obstacles

Audience Role-Play

Motivation Action and Reward

Communities

Points of View

—

For further reading please see Mike’s Immersive Writing Guides to:

#1 How To Create A Storyworld here
#3 How to Create Plot, here.
#4 Audience – User Journeys. Paths of how an audience could enter your world – highly involved and reluectant users
#5 Memories, Rituals and Emotional States – what memories will the audience take away from the storyworld and how will it make them feel?

Photo © Christopher Hauke

What the hell happened with social media? We were told that the fierce publishing-industry lion wouldst lay down with the fragile disenfranchised-author lamb and share the cool bounty of the literary watering hole. They promised that we’d be able to get all warm and snuggly with readers across the world while just happening to shift millions of copies of our noir circus thriller on the side. We were assured that from now on, becoming a global writing success would be easier, quicker, cheaper, and much more amenable to the uninterrupted wearing of Marmite-stained pyjamas.

So how did our glorious peer-to-peer revolution turn into a riot of BDSM fan fiction trilogies, ‘15% OFF MY NEW SCIFI EBOOK @GREATDISMAL LOVES IT BUY NOW’ tweets, and £250 workshops from seven year olds offering to gift us the secrets of social self-promotion success?

The truth is, it’s our fault. Most writers persist in labouring under a series of illusions about what social media is and isn’t, can and can’t do; illusions that generate huge frustration and anxiety. Weeding out these pervasive myths can be painful at first, but the sooner you identify exactly if, and how, these channels fit with your skills and aims, the sooner you can get back to that draft. So let’s go.

1.     Social media is a great marketing tool

Social media is a rubbish marketing tool. This set of technologies was designed to help us build relationships and share passions, not become the delighted recipients of targeted messages from strangers trying to steal our attention and our money. Attempting to establish yourself online once you have completed your manuscript, for the sole purpose of flogging said manuscript, will feel like bashing your head against a brick wall. Wrong hammer, crooked nail.

Example: Frankie Sachs outs the book spammers in fabulous style.

2. It’s the perfect place to talk about you and your book

Ah yes! Just like how people love it when you corner them at a party and bend their ear about your brilliant opus, right? Wrong. If you focus on connecting with likeminded people on their own terms, garnering inspiration, reading others’ work and having interesting debates, your online community probably will develop curiosity about your own work and evolve into readers somewhere along the line. But you need to give in order to receive.

Example: @chuckpalahniuk and @neilhimself are generous, witty, eclectic and useful tweeters.

3. It’s quick

Getting someone who likes expressing themselves in 140 characters to commit to 80,000 words – let alone Vols II and III of your Downton/alien trilogy – requires a reader relationship more akin to a marriage than a one night stand. Building large-scale engagement in social media that really will drive sales takes serious man-hours, and requires a hefty emotional investment, too.

Example: Self-epublishing specialists Joanna Penn and Louise Voss both recommend spending 20% of your time writing and 80% of your time networking through social media to get results. That’s as quick as treacle.

4. It’s cheap

See above. Your time is money. It may well be better spent making your book really good. This is historically the reason why authors have preferred to pay agents and publishers to have ego-stroking lunches with influential people in Soho House, so you can have Marmite on toast and write, instead.

Example: Rob Eager writes eloquently on the hidden costs of social networking.

5. You can keep your personal and professional selves separate

Because we all love getting close and personal with Author: The Brand? You can’t treat social as a PR project.  You have to find what you love about this way of communicating, and bring an authentic sense of your own self to the playground. If you really hate that idea, if you think it’s all so much timewasting, you simply shouldn’t be there. We can tell.

Example: @lindasgrant is a self-confessed one-time sceptic who learned to love the Twitter beast – and Twitter loves her back.

6. You just need to be yourself

This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t don a sexy and efficient business hat. Be strategic. Understand what you want to achieve. What proportion of your time will you spend talking about yourself, versus asking others questions or sharing their content? Figure out who your target audience is, where they are talking, and be as helpful, interesting and relevant as you can. Sure, look at shoes on Pinterest, but don’t pretend it’s work.

Example: Michael Hyatt used social media to get his book on the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists, but it took some serious tactical planning.

7. You need to be on every new platform

Whether it’s Path or Soci or MySpace (again), there will always be a box-fresh platform promising to be the next best thing, so you need to keep your head and choose the tools that most suit your personality and target audience. A witty satirist who loves peddling opinions about breaking news? Twitter’s your tool. A lengthy pontificator penning an epic historical drama? You may do better with a blog. Your protagonist is a photographer? May I suggest Instagram?

Example: Dennis Cass used video to brilliant effect with his ‘Book Launch 2.0’.

8. Facebook is the holy grail

It is very difficult to gain any kind of meaningful professional traction on Facebook. Liking a page or post involves minimal effort, but also minimal passion. Facebook a good place to spread the word amongst your family and friends, but they’re probably in your corner already; and self-promotional messages grate in the midst of the intimate chat and photos. Sure, use Facebook, but don’t depend on it.

Example: Some sobering examples of the meaninglessness of Facebook Likes.

9. You can always pay someone else to do it for you

It might seem easier, but this is a big fat waste of time. The whole joy of social media is that it cuts out the middle man between you and your readers. Why on earth would you put the middle man back in? Again, if you really hate this stuff, don’t do it. There are more than one way to skin a cat. If this blade doesn’t fit your hand snugly, go back to the drawer.

Example: If the thought of this doesn’t make you die a little inside, you’re already a corpse.

10. It’s the best place to generate word of mouth

No, it’s the best place to easily see word of mouth. US researchers Keller Fay consistently report that 90% of WOM still occurs face to face. So if you’re only thinking about how to be conversational online, you’re ignoring the iceberg beneath the tip. Team up with local bookshops, cafes and reading groups. Seed some copies on trains and planes with personalised notes. Focus less on the venues for where the conversation will happen; focus more on creating the sparks that will ignite it.

Example: Keller Fay’s The Face To Face Book is mandatory further reading.

Simon Appleby, director of digital agency Bookswarm, highlights ten websites that do their authors justice on the web.

Hopefully there’s not a writer alive who doesn’t believe they need a website – there are so many good reasons for having one that even if you don’t agree with all of them, you ought to agree with one or two. Whether you’re raising your profile, interacting directly with readers or providing a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, you really do need a decent home on the web.
Of course, some author websites are better than others. Here are ten that we think really do their authors proud.

John le Carré

Why we like it:
The design is really appropriate for the subject matter of the books: espionage, subterfuge and murky dealings. The way that Twitter is presented (tweets from le Carré’s feed are ‘transmitted’ and tweets from others are ‘intercepted’) is very clever and in keeping with the genre too. Beyond the home page there’s loads of content, and the site recognises both the global nature of the publishing, and the interest in films based on the author’s books.

Black marks:
The author photo in the bottom corner of the home page is squashed and distorted – a basic error that needlessly lets down a lovely looking site.

www.johnlecarre.com

E.L. James

Why we like it:
The woman who made BDSM a socially-acceptable topic of conversation has a slick website that nicely defines her work as ‘provocative romance’. The Gallery section contains wine lists and play lists that collate all the gastronomic and cultural references of the books, which is a neat touch for fans who really want to immerse themselves in the author’s world, and the Fan Sites section offers a lovely acknowledgement of fan sites from around the world. Few big name authors would be so generous.

Black marks:
Dare we say it, we were expecting more handcuffs!

www.eljamesauthor.com

Joe Abercombie

Why we like it:
Joe is a writer with lots to say – not just about his books – and he uses his website to say it (he blogged seven times in January 2013). Judging by the level of interaction in the comments, his many fans appreciate this kind of access and the opportunity to interact that it presents. Not all writers will feel that they can sustain this level of interaction and still focus on their writing, but if you are someone who can, this is a good example of how to do it well.

Black marks:
The design is perhaps a little dated, but with content this good that’s a minor point indeed. Remember, content is king!

www.joeabercrombie.com

J.K. Rowling

Why we like it:
Admittedly few authors will ever have the resources to create and run a site that are available to the author of Harry Potter. It’s one thing to have those resources, though, and another to use them well – which this site does. The central timeline idea is a clever one – news stories are laid out horizontally and the user can scroll sideways to go back in time. News segues in to brief biographical posts about key events in the author’s life before she was published, going all the way back to 1965. There’s even a special mobile version.

Black marks:
The design is perhaps a little sterile for our taste – though you can see why they would steer clear of an overtly Potteresque look and feel.

www.jkrowling.co.uk

Anthony Horowitz

Why we like it:
Horowitz writes for young adults and grown-ups too – and striking a balance of tone and look for different audiences is often tricky. In this case, his YA series Alex Rider and The Power of Five have their own branded sections with a strong call to action, with plenty of downloadable goodies. The Messageboard shows that discussion forums can still be a valid idea, if you have enough engaged fans and the time to manage them.

Black marks:
At the screen size we were using, much of the text is too small, a definite accessibility black mark. We know that the youth have better eyesight, but still…

www.anthonyhorowitz.com

Bernard Cornwell

Why we like it:
When you’ve written as many books as Bernard Cornwell, you need to give your fans a hand to keep everything straight – and this organises all the titles by series, as well as giving a brief word from the author on each (many sites just repeat the book blurb that can be found on every book retailer’s site). The ‘Your Questions’ page is well-used and current, and the alternating masthead images lend an appropriate historical atmosphere to everything.

Black marks:
This is a very difficult site to fault – we wish we’d done it.

www.bernardcornwell.net

Anthony Beevor

Why we like it:
Non-fiction authors need websites too, and this is a good one. The site has a ‘skin’ that reflects the design of the author’s latest tome, but that will surely change when there is a new book to promote. The events feed is prominent (and nice and full) and the blog a good insight in to the writer’s activities. The bibliography from The Second World War will be appreciated by students and researchers.

Black marks:
A very minor quibble, but the line length of the body text is uncomfortably long – it pays to understand ways to make reading on the web as comfortable as possible.

www.antonybeevor.com

Will Self

Why we like it:
Because it proves, if any proof were needed, that if you have good content you don’t necessarily need fancy design. This site uses a very simple WordPress theme – but within seconds of arriving, you can be reading Self’s cutting restaurant reviews for the New Statesman or finding out more about his books.

Black marks:
The way information about the books is presented could confuse some users – the links on the left of the page and the links on the Books menu do two different things.

www.will-self.com

Gillian Flynn
Why we like it:
The site for the author of Gone Girl is just a lovely piece of design – it creates an atmosphere and a tone that’s in keeping with both the look and the subject matter of the books, through well-judged use of colour, texture, imagery and typography.

Black marks:
Hard to fault – a good example of uncluttered thinking and uncluttered design that works well for both the UK and US markets.

www.gillian-flynn.com

Marcel Theroux
Why we like it:
Well, partly because we made it! And because it proves that for a writer who does not want to flaunt themselves on the Internet, there are still ways you can put something of yourself in to your website. In this case, the hand-drawn illustrations that adorn the pages show views of Marcel’s study and objects in it that have meaning to him. They prevent a simple, direct site becoming sterile and impersonal.

Black marks:
We think this is small but perfectly formed (but we admit we’re biased!).

www.thisworldofdew.com

As the web continues to evolve, no doubt our ideas of ‘what good looks like’ will too – but remember, making a good author website is less about how it looks than it is about what you have to say, who you have to say it to and how often you expect to say it. Give that some serious thought, and the rest should fall in to place. Good luck!