Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

New Surroundings, New Ideas

Recently my family dragged me back in the U.K. Not that I'm complaining, but I was finally getting used to America. Now that I'm in Glasgow, maybe ideas will start flowing for my new story. I'm still working on the title, because to me, that is the most important part. You know, something that catches the attention.
I've also made a couple of changes to the story I told you about earlier. Firstly, Todd's name was changed to Maksim (the Russian form of Maximilian). Not that there was anything wrong with the name Todd, but coming from a Russian family, the name just didn't fit.
Another change would be the name of Zack's character. I'm a person who loves unusual names, or at least names that nobody uses anymore. I apologize to anyone out there named Zack, but admit it, there are just too many of you. So now the main character list is Audrey Heart, Damian Harris (previously Zack), the twin brothers Alexei and Maksim Leinov, and Hannah White (i know, not unusual, but she's going to be my normal character).
I'm currently in search of a place where I can post my story, because this site seems to be a writer's support group (not that I don't appreciate that, I love it!), but I don't really want to post the whole thing as blogs. I don't see anywhere else on this site that I can post things. So if anyone has ideas or can help me out here, I'd be eternally grateful

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Comment by Dairenna VonRavenstone on May 16, 2010 at 12:51am: For posting online: There's a site I know called writers.com where you can post your story. You get, I think, ten spaces for being a free member, more if you decide to pay for membership. Over all the site is...lacking, I find. It's a good place to post things, and the community is great but the forums are difficult to read and things can be somewhat difficult to find. And if you want to find a story you read before, it can be diffult to track down if you didn't favorite it. And favoriting an author is out, it's hard to get to their page. BUT, good place to post stuff online.

Also, you could create your own blog (outside of this one) to post things in (blogger.com). Though, I would suggest not to post an entire novel online. If you ever want to publish it, you'd have to take it all down and make sure no one copy/pasted it. And there's plenty of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type websites that are really easy to put together and get going, so you could technically create your own author website. (vodahost for one, godaddy I believe has one).

Title: I am currently on chapter five of a novel that has no title...lol. Well it does, but not a title I'd like it to have. Sometimes, it's better to just get the story down and worry about the title later. You may get inspired by something you write and title it with that.

Characters: I agree, there are a lot of Zacks out there. But there's also a lot of Audreys and various Damians. Names are names, as long as the suit the character and the character's personality, that's all that matters. I pick names for characters based on personality traits, whether the name is well used or not. A good site to find rare and unusal names: behindthename.com.

...sorry for the long comment, I tend to ramble...

Comment by Dairenna VonRavenstone on May 16, 2010 at 1:03am: Pardon, writing.com is the website to post your story on.

Comment by scribbler on May 20, 2010 at 2:25am: That site has a dreadful setup imho and is not user friendly at all. If you hide all the writers' work behind closed doors, how is anyone that matters going to discover them? And they expect you to pay for hiding you away? LOL. It's crazy. I went there before and didn't like it at all.

Comment by Dairenna VonRavenstone on May 20, 2010 at 3:12am: I have an account there, I'm basically using it for free newsletters and the ability to post something here and there online. But yes, not very user friendly but good if you want to direct someone to a piece of your work (via link).

Comment by Kay Elizabeth on May 20, 2010 at 4:55am: Lora, you can post it right here no problem and for free.

Didn't you see the forum? There's no reason not to post it there. You can add a file attachment to your post containing it. I'm not sure why you would want to post it all anyway. It's a lot to ask anyone to read a full book. I don't think it's wise to share so much.

And by the way, the minute you create something and put it down, it's already copyrighted in most cases. No one can steal it. You can learn about copyrighting myths here. If you intend to sell it later, it's better not to make the whole book freely available online for obvious reasons. Some publishers would consider that previously published. What you could do is post a request for a critique, show a small sample and get those interested to PM you for more.

Comment by Kay Elizabeth on May 22, 2010 at 8:05am: I can't get that name right in my head: Maksim. When I read it I stumble mentally because I think it should be spelled Maxim. I feel it's too close in sound to Damian too, Lora. How about Dimitri or Gregori?

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