WEbook Blog: A Writer's Resource

We Have Lift Off!

I first learned that I would be a published author in January of 2010, just a few months after my first post on Webook and after the website helped me find my agent. Now, as I write this, I am just a few days away from seeing the realization of a lifelong dream come true. On May 3, 2011, my debut novel, Where Things Come Back, will hit bookstores all across the country. I pinch myself every morning when I wake up….and I also watch for falling anvils. This last year and a half has been incredible. Indescribable. Crazy. And amazing. Everything I’ve wanted to happen has happened and it seems like I’m living someone else’s life.

Just two weeks ago, the trade reviews started coming in for the novel and I’m happy to say that they are great! First was a wonderful, complimentary review from Kirkus and then was the best thing ever---a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Apparently, people like this book.

With only a few days left until the book is actually available for the public to read, and a few weeks until I officially start my book tour (visit www.johncoreywhaley.com for more information), I am so overwhelmed with excitement and anticipation that it’s getting hard to sleep!  I’ve made the important decision to take the next year or so to promote my book and focus on editing my second novel and getting it ready enough to hopefully land another book deal. I am happy to say that I am leaving my five years of public school teaching, effective June 1^st. It is the right thing to do and the support and encouragement I’ve received over these past eighteen months, from friends and strangers, has assured me that writing is the career I should devote my life to.

 

I’m not going to keep going on about how lucky I am or how happy I am and all of that mess that you’re probably all rolling your eyes at. But I do want to extend an excessive amount of gratitude to all of the writers out there who are working late at night to finish that manuscript they’ve been obsessing over. I want to thank the people at Webook, who started a service that actually works for people like me, who have been rejected so many times in the past. And I want to tell all of my fans and readers and future readers and the like that you all have no idea how extremely grateful and honored I have been to share my story with you all. 

Corey Whaley hails from Shreveport, LA. He signed with Ken Wright, a literary agent at Writers House, last fall using WEbook's AgentInbox query service. His debut novel, Where Things Come Back, was purchased by Simon & Schuster early in 2010 and will be released on May 3, 2011.

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Read more about Corey's amazing story.

 

 

The Dragon Slaying Writing Challenge

Last time around, we asked writers to create a monster. Now, we’re going to have you slay one—a dragon, to be specific. After this challenge, we’ll move away from mythical beasts (probably). 

The Dragon Slaying Challenge

If you’re currently thinking, “There aren’t that many ways to slay a dragon, this is going to be a boring challenge where all the entries are the same,” you're addressing this challenge in a closed-minded fashion. We hypothesize that there are well over a thousand original ways for a dragon to be slain, and that the entries in this challenge, while they will be exceptional, will only begin to scratch at the surface of possibilities. 

There is only one restriction: The scene must involve a human slaying a dragon.

Time period, type of dragon, type of human, situation, method, and motivation for the slaying are all factors left entirely up to the writer, and comprise the meat of the challenge. We want to see some world-building and some deep emotion here. Hate? Sorrow? Guilt? Joy? Guilt caused by Joy? Revenge? Greed? Pride? Sense of duty? These are a few examples you can incorporate into your slaying-scene, but don’t feel limited to just these. We trust you to recognize a deep emotion when you feel one.   

The Prizes

The WEbook editorial staff will pick 6 winners and award them a coupon to PageToFame. We will feature the top three entries on the WEbook blog in successive installments and highlight the stuff we liked about these entries. The #1 dragon-slaying scene-writer will receive an actual dragon in the mail. No joke. We’ll mail you a dragon and probably a really nice note. 

To enter the Dragon Slaying Challenge, START A NEW CHAPTER in this project. Please read all of the project rules before writing and entering your challenge. 

Good luck, Dragon Slayers.

—WEbook

WEbook Update

Hello WEbookers—

WEbook has undergone some important changes in the past few weeks, and we would like to update the community on what’s been happening and the motivation behind our decisions.
 
As many of you have no doubt noticed, we recently launched advertisements on certain areas of the WEbook site. We decided to implement these ads to help cover the costs of and maintaining the WEbook community. Like any business, we require revenue to keep our doors open, and advertisements will be a helpful source of capital as we move forward. 

We made considerable efforts to deliver advertisements that are highly relevant to the majority of our users, and so far believe that we have succeeded. We will intermittently refine and adjust the types of advertisements we serve on our site to ensure we are providing useful information to as many people as possible.
 
Some users may have also noticed a decrease in activity on WEbook—both from users and our blog contributors. A large part of this slow down was caused by the holiday season, when book publishing by and large shuts down, internet activity in general drops, and many people go on vacation. Our blog contributors were in the latter category, but we expect to have them back and plugging away at their keyboards soon. 

PageToFame is also humming along nicely. We’re getting ready to send out the Agent Showcase, featuring Round 3 winners to literary agents. We expect that the extra attention and the endorsement based of the PageToFame results will help authors find representation. There are no plans to build more parts of PageToFame beyond than those that already exist, but it still offers the same promise it did at the start—a large number of readers (100+) rating your first page, some more serious readers and comments in Round 2, and even more feedback in Round 3. 

As always, we encourage all of our users to share PageToFame and WEbook in general with their friends—both through social media and word-of-mouth—to help participation in PageToFame continue to grow. 

We believe that 2011 will be an exciting year for the writing and publishing world, and look forward to events that lay ahead.

—The WEbook Team 

PageToFame Shorts Temporarily Closed to Submissions

In an effort to ensure that each PageToFame submission receives votes as quickly as possible, we are temporarily closing submissions to Shorts. As the final rounds of PageToFame Full-Length have opened, user activity has gravitated towards those areas.

This is great, but it has created a bit of a slow-down in Shorts ratings.

Keeping a Character Schedule: A Writing Contest

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It's time to announce the next bi-weekly writing challenge. If you're new to the challenges (or to WEbook) these are short writing exercises geared towards helping authors improve a specific aspect of their craft and promote a healthy discourse between contestants.  


Submissions to the previous challenge, The Non-Dialogue Challenge are now closed. We'll announce the winners as soon as possible. Onto the next challenge: 

Ben Mezrich: Accidental Billionaires, The Social Network, and Writing Advice

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As you probably know, The Social Network is opening today in movie theaters. The film is inspired by Ben Mezrich's non-fiction book, The Accidental Billionaires. Ben has previously offered some golden nuggets of writing advice on the WEbook blog as part of our Bestselling Author Q&A series, and it's great to see him having continued success.

The Social Network has been generating a lot of buzz and controversy over the past few weeks, as many members of the tech community have claimed the movie inaccurately portrays both Mark Zuckerberg and the circumstances in which he created Facebook.

The Micro-Autobiography Writing Challenge: Winners!

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It's time to announce the winners of the bi-weekly writing challenge. If you're new to the challenges (or to WEbook) these are short writing exercises geared towards helping authors improve a specific aspect of their craft while promoting healthy discourse between contestants.

We received 190 submissions to The Micro-Autobiography Challenge. Thanks for all of the great glimpses into your lives—it was interesting to get such an in-depth (albeit concise) look into the WEbook community. 

The winners:

Bumps, Bruises, Scars and Smiles by Silverwolf21
A Look Inside by WordsAndMusic
Not done yet by Matineeidol

Honorable Mention:

No Miracle Comes in Two's by Klemenkie8

Congratulations to all of the winners, you will receive a coupon code in your inbox soon!

The Latest Writing Challenge

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It's time to announce the next bi-weekly writing challenge. If you're new to the challenges (or to WEbook) these are short writing exercises geared towards helping authors improve a specific aspect of their craft and promote a healthy discourse between contestants.  

Submissions to the previous challenge, The Micro-Autobiography Challenge are now closed. We received 190 submissions in total, which left you just a bit shy of the extra-winner mark, which was set at 250. We'll announce the winners as soon as possible.

Since WEbook is a generous contest organizing entity, we're going to lower the extra-winner mark to 200 for the next writing challenge. Which is.....

The Non-Dialogue Challenge!!!!


Describe an interaction between two characters based solely on body language. (max 200 words)

A few different WEbookers suggested ideas this challenge the forums. A big thanks to M_A_Granse, Adrishya, and Beruthiel! M_A_Granse had an especially good description, so we're running with it:

"Write a scene in which a conversation happens between two characters, but not a word is spoken. The reader should be able to understand what is going on based on the characters’ body language and WITHOUT using first-person POV (as getting into a character’s thoughts is too much like dialogue)."

This will likely be one of the more difficult challenges thus far, so plan your scenes carefully!

TO SUBMIT, START A NEW CHAPTER FOR THIS PROJECT. THE DEADLINE TO ENTER IS FRIDAY OCTOBER 1, 2010 at 4 pm. 

If you need some inspiration, check out the previous winners of the Travel Scene Challenge, The Cheating Challenge, and wayyyyy back there, the Inanimate Object Challenge.

Not a member of WEbook yet? Sign up and get writing! 

911 Writer's Block: Unlocking Creative Writing Ideas

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As anyone who has tried their hand at creative writing knows, inspiration doesn't grow on trees. At times, it can seem like it doesn't grow anywhere.

Sometimes the best cure for writer's block is a healthy barrage of fresh ideas, and that's what we provide with our writing tool, 911 Writer's Block. Any writer who has run into an idea wall can visit 911 WB and immediately find new ideas sorted into nine different categories, including: settings, characters, dialogue, verbs, character deaths, and endings.

To get a better sense of how it works, check out this video preview:

  

Best of all, 911 Writer's Block is constantly growing. If you've got your own great piece of writing inspiration, post it as a chapter in this writing project. If we like it too, we'll add it to the tool.

So, go share the writing wealth!

Writing Challenge Winners: The Travel Scene Challenge

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Thanks to everyone who submitted to the Travel Scene Challenge. We enjoyed reading your entries, which took us everywhere from across a kitchen floor, down an open road, through the time space continuum, and into the next life. 


We didn't quite hit the 250 submission mark, so we'll still be announcing the standard three winners. However, the same offer stands for The Autobiography Challenge, which is sitting cool at 112 submissions right now—if we receive 250 submission, we'll award six authors PageToFame coupons.  

The Winners:

Little Wing by Coll
To a Friend's House by DaisyBug
The Great Escape by KaileyWhite

Honorable Mentions

Bangkok Killing Zone by CM_Swanson
Ima Lake by CJHendricks 

Congratulations, you will receive your PageToFame coupon via direct message. 

If you're new to the challenges, feel free to cruise through some past winner authors here. Once you've gotten  your fill, head over to The Autobiography Challenge to get some non-fiction muscles working. Some details:

Write an EXTREMELY short autobiography, max 75 words.The goal here is to convey the essence of your life in a very short space (yes, Twitter inspired this challenge). 
Full sentences and proper grammar are not required. A long period of inner reflection to determine what life experiences were most important to your formation as a person may be required. 

Start a new chapter on this project to submit. Before you go, give Coll's lyrical travel scene a read:

Little Wing

Stevie Ray Vaughn replaces his guitar for the taught chord of my pickled aorta, strumming relentlessly to "Little Wing." My car's wheels beat a steady tattoo over the yellow reflectors in the road. I wait for my all-seeing, all-knowing headlights to steer me back to plumb. I panic, realizing that's not what they do. I do. I jerk the wheel with a terse, obedient bark of rubber.

Concentrate. Have a point of reference. Something to repeat, to continue. The soothing yellow, undulating  line of the breakdown pulls at me. I list toward it, tickle its underside with my hood ornament. The sharp Pontiac symbol rips the road like a razor, rending it in two behind me like so much dark fabric. Lights against my back. An engine roar mounts, passes, screams gear in my ear, mid-curse. My yellow line splits and fluctuates on a lever. A pair of calm chop sticks plucking something in its own vanishing point.

Has it been raining all along? Lightning conducts a flashcard geography quiz, impatiently pointing out this and that feature of the landscape, flashing its electric pointer against the broad slate of the sky, and thunderously grumbling at the lack of response.