{"id":1304,"date":"2015-09-09T20:33:07","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T00:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beydeckard.com\/blog\/?p=1304"},"modified":"2015-09-09T20:33:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T00:33:07","slug":"writing-the-story-your-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/writing-the-story-your-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing the story your way"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've had a busy summer, what with the rain of plot-bunnies and falling ill no less than three times. As such, I haven't written a blog post with any real meat in a while. Looking at my drafts, I've started six posts but none with anything more than a starting sentence. I've already gotten past that with this post... let's see if I can actually finish it, shall we?<\/p>\n

We've all read or probably written reviews of books that say something like \"I wish this<\/em> had happened instead\" or \"that's not the way it should<\/em> have gone\". Everyone's reading experience is different, and that is the fun of being unique creatures. Life just wouldn't be as interesting if everyone thought or felt the same way. Hell, I don't even watch the endings to some of my favourite movies because I disagree with how it ended (*cougharmageddoncough*).\u00a0 That's perfectly fine and I can't fault anyone for it.<\/p>\n

We live in an interesting time where authors (and other artists, public figures, rock stars... the pope) are that<\/em> much more accessible to their fans. We authors are encouraged to interact with folks on social media... and I've seen discussions between readers about how an author's failure to engage their fans is a detriment to their career in the long run (now, I don't know if I believe that. Certainly having an online presence helps the indie author, but I'm not sure if not<\/em> being there is a detriment. Personally, I just like hanging out. And... well... the enthusiasm I encounter is rather heartening. [love you guys])<\/p>\n

The other side to this, of course, is that fans and readers in general are more accessible to the author. Once upon a time, you only got feedback about your book through professional reviewers, or people you knew, or from readers writing to you. Now, without a lick of effort, I can just skip on over to somewhere like Goodreads and see that one hundred and thirty four people (as of today) have written something about Caged<\/em>. The vast<\/em> majority of those are good reviews (woo!) but there are some bad ones among the bunch (and yes, I read them all).\u00a0<\/p>\n

I find that negative reviews, in general, fall into two broad (and sometimes overlapping) categories.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. They didn't like the writing style, weren't invested in the story, don't like the characters, thought the book was about something else, etc.<\/li>\n
  2. Or, there were grammar problems, typos, obvious plot holes, structural issues, formatting, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The important thing is this: as an author, you should tell the story you<\/em> want to tell.\u00a0 All those things in #1? You'd do best to ignore them. Those are just the opinions of others, and if you find yourself altering your words to fit the opinions of others at the cost of your story's \"authentic voice\", you're doing yourself a disservice. It is your story, your writing. If you want to kill off all the main characters half-way through the book? So be it. If you want to write something in first person POV, go for it! You want to end on a cliffhanger... bully for you! Hell, if you WANT to write stuff based on other people's opinions of what<\/em> and how<\/em> you should write... you are free to do that too. Seriously. Be the writer you want to be. Tell the stories you want to tell.<\/p>\n

    The criticisms in category 1 are there for other readers, not you. It's frustrating when they're based on misunderstandings or biases, yes, but not everyone is going to come to the same conclusion. As much as folks seem to be swayed by popular opinion, I'd like to believe that most can and do make up their own minds about something (like the time everyone and their dog was telling me that Jupiter Ascending<\/em> was a stupid, shitty movie but I watched it anyway... twice now... and thought that it was a really fucking fun movie. Don't judge.) If someone thinks your book is shitty because it didn't go the way it \"should\" or because there are historical inaccuracies in your fictional world (hehe)... that's their problem, not yours (and for god's sake... don't reply to reviews. Stay out of reviews. I've seen some really crazy shit happen in the year and a half I've been doing this author thing, and it almost always resulted from someone correcting someone else in a review. Don't do it. Walk away.)<\/p>\n

    Now... you'd be a fool not to pay attention to the second category. Heh - when I first published Caged<\/em>, it hadn't been professionally edited. I basically waited until it had made enough sales to pay for editing before getting it done. Not recommended, but hey, everything worked out in the end, right?<\/p>\n

    What I'm trying to say with all this is: you should concentrate on telling your <\/strong><\/em>story. No one else can tell your story. If you let all the complaints in the first category get to you, it's going to stymie your writing. It's going to choke you... and that's bad. You can't be a writer and not write, can you? Have confidence in your story. Have pride in it. Embrace the fact that your story is going to make some people really uncomfortable\/upset\/bored\/horrified\/disgusted\/disappointed. No one knows and loves your story the way you do.<\/p>\n

    Write the story your way and fuck the rest. :)<\/p>\n

    At least that's how I feel about my own writing. I love my stories, and no one's opinion can diminish them but my own. I write them the way they're meant to be written. Point finale. <\/em><\/p>\n

    (Now - I didn't write all of this to have comments about the whole Author vs Reviewer thing... let's stay away from that, hm?)<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Anyway - in other news:<\/p>\n

    Three books in less than two months (woo!), if you're not up to date on the happenings over here at Bey's Funhouse Emporium of Doom<\/em> (shit... that's what I should have called my blog) here is some information. A big, huge thank you to everyone who has read and left reviews!<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \"T-final-1200\"
    <\/a>Published August 20, 2015
    A bite-sized trans* love story.
    Amazon<\/a>
    Smashwords<\/a><\/td>\n    		\"frangipani-2000x3000\"
    <\/a>Coming September 12, 2015
    Love story in the Caribbean
    Amazon<\/a>
    Smashwords<\/a><\/td>\n    		\u00a0\"BTDYK-cover-final-2800\"
    <\/a>Coming October 1, 2015
    A dark, demonic read. (    info here<\/a>)
    Will not be available at Amazon
    Will be available at Smashwords<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Next... well, I'll keep y'all posted. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve had a busy summer, what with the rain of plot-bunnies and falling ill no less than three times. As such, I haven’t written a blog post with any real meat in a while. Looking at my drafts, I’ve started six posts but none with anything more than a starting sentence. I’ve already gotten past that with this post… let’s see if I can actually finish it, shall we? We’ve all read or probably written reviews of books that say something like “I wish this had happened instead” or “that’s not the way it should have gone”. Everyone’s reading experience … <\/p>\n

    Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[331,5,334,342,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-better-the-devil-you-know","category-my-life","category-the-complications-of-t","category-the-last-nights-of-the-frangipani-hotel","category-writing-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/image7.jpg?fit=2448%2C2448&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4sexs-l2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/writing-and-drawing\/","url_meta":{"origin":1304,"position":0},"title":"Writing and Drawing","author":"Bey","date":"April 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm taking a little break from writing today. 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A little late, but I've been dealing with a weird situation at home that involved my landlord's sister and cops and installing extra security, etc. All good now. Then I had some big formatting jobs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/category\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":156,"url":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/im-an-author\/","url_meta":{"origin":1304,"position":2},"title":"I’m an… Author?","author":"Bey","date":"May 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Every once in a while, when I have time to stop and just think, I start\u00a0running around in circles in my head making an eeeeeeeee sound. I'm an author. I am. I really am. People refer to me as such every day. My name is up on sites where the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/category\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1965,"url":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/what-goes-into-a-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":1304,"position":3},"title":"What goes into a story?","author":"Bey","date":"July 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One thing that I get asked a lot, vis-\u00e0-vis my writing, is \"how do you come up with everything?\" So, I thought I'd write a blog post about what goes into my stories.The short answer is: everything.I like to write things I know, so I tend to borrow heavily from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/category\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"WhatGoesIn","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/WhatGoesIn.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/WhatGoesIn.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/WhatGoesIn.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2516,"url":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/exposed-by-bey-deckard-now-live\/","url_meta":{"origin":1304,"position":4},"title":"Exposed by Bey Deckard – Now Live!","author":"Bey","date":"March 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"*throws confetti* Happy release day to me! Buy it here The Author's Note reads: This book took far longer to write than anything else I\u2019ve written. Why? Well, I was about half-way through when the US elections happened, and the result of the elections really took the wind out of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Exposed"","block_context":{"text":"Exposed","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/category\/book-updates\/exposed\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Exposed-cover-temp-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":399,"url":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/these-books-i-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":1304,"position":5},"title":"These books I read","author":"Bey","date":"July 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to read a lot, back before the writing bug bit me last summer. I would devour books, one after the other in quick succession. Sometimes up to 200 or so books a year. This year, I think I've read three books so far. \u00a0I'm currently reading Existence by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "My Life"","block_context":{"text":"My Life","link":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/category\/my-life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Photo-2014-07-08-10-39-48-AM.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Photo-2014-07-08-10-39-48-AM.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Photo-2014-07-08-10-39-48-AM.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Photo-2014-07-08-10-39-48-AM.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Photo-2014-07-08-10-39-48-AM.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1309,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304\/revisions\/1309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beydeckard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}