Monthly Archives: November 2016

Uncategorized

A different type of writing

Right now, I’m going through a bit of a rough writing spot.  I fulfill a requirement for my Kickstarter, I need to write a number of segments of mechanical (think social studies) styled articles. Which, let me tell you, is a different type of writing.

As a reward in my crowdfunding campaign, backers are slated to receive the ‘Backer Booklet’, a small book that rounds out the world of Renaissance Calling.  The topics chosen for the book were selected by four polls run during the campaign, and they all turned out to be pretty similar in their scope:

  • From State to Kingdom: History of Minnesota
  • Life in Walker County: How the Protagonist grew up
  • The Kingdom of North Mississippi: The setting of the story
  • Countries of Atlantic America: A survey of foreign powers

Some of them could easily be Wikipedia articles, and the rest could be found in some scholastic journal.   All world building.

It may sound easy, since you’re not writing with dramatic prose or worrying about ‘show don’t tell’, but I’m not coming up with sixty pages of mundane facts.  ‘Life in Walker County’ is not a counting of population and agricultural production. It is a look into the life of the main character, explaining the world she grew up in.  It needs to be interesting and informative.

One easy assist it to add in graphics. I’ve got maps and flags planned, and I’m leaning towards commissioning a few pieces of artwork to round it all out.  That definitely goes a long way to keeping it interesting.  But it can’t save a book where the writing is too mechanical.

At the moment, what I’m working on is getting the information down, so I have a good starting place.  It will be dry, sure, but I can worry about crafting the words later, once I know what the data is.

I can tell you this, though.  I’m looking forward to getting back to some good, old fashioned fiction writing.

-Michael

Publishing

5 Lessons from my Kickstarter

Running a Kickstarter campaign was an odd experience.  37 days of watching the backer numbers go up, punctuated by the occasional busy day of emails, postings and tweets.

There’s no reason to go through every aspect of my campaign, since many campaigns are so similar in many of their aspects.  So instead, I will go through 5 things I learned that I think people should keep in mind for their own campaigns.

1 – START THE PAGE RIGHT AWAY

As soon as you know you want to run the campaign, start the campaign page.  No one can see it until you publish, but you can start building it right away.

Once you have it started, you can preview the page, and really begin getting into what you need to make it better.  From the text you will re-write sixteen times to how many picture you’ll want to flesh it out, having it there to check and revise is invaluable.

2 – MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD ARTWORK

Imagery is really important in a Kickstarter campaign.  One of my turn-offs for campaigns I look at is having only a few or poor quality images.

This is one area where some campaigns have a natural advantage: movies, games and graphic novelists have lots of artwork lying around, while novelists and musicians usually don’t.

Get some good artwork.  Pictures of yourself working could work, but don’t be afraid to commission some artwork. I did that through fiverr, and ended up with three great pieces of art that really helped the campaign.

3 – WATCH YOUR REWARD LEVELS

and

4 – IS THAT REWARD ACTUALLY A REWARD?

For a while I had 12 reward levels.  $1/$5/$10/$15/$20/$25/$30/$50/$75/$100/$250/$500.  The idea was to try to get the maximum amount I could from any one backer.

The problem was making rewards that actually sounded like rewards.  For a while, my reward levels included things like mugs, t-shirts and posters.   Things that a lot of people might toss into a bin somewhere and later donate to Goodwill.  Stuff that I would have to pay for if the campaign funded.  And if I was going to pay for them, I didn’t want them to be stuffed into the Goodwill box six weeks after delivery.

The point is, having a $75 reward level that doesn’t offer anything of value is a useless level.  You need to find a balance between rewards and levels.

At some point I reset my rewards and worked out exactly what I could do that would be a real reward, I came up with eight levels worth of rewards.  I cut four levels out by shifting my view from Quantity to Quality.

Like No. 2, this is something that novel campaign might have some issues with, since artists can offer sketches and movies can offer clips, but I think it still stands regardless of what your campaign is about.  Avoid the garage sale fodder.  Focus on the item.  Let that draw people to the reward level.

5 – CONSIDER A COLD START

My official launch was a Thursday, but I actually launched two days earlier.  This was for two reasons:

  • I wanted to focus on the personal emails to family and friends without the loud launch releases a lot of people recommended, and
  • I wanted to have a quiet time to get used to how the campaign ran, to deal with any hiccups that might occur.

After two days I was more comfortable with the Kickstarter system, and when I did the loud launch, it already had a sizable number of pledges to give it some inertia.  I think it helped get a few pledges in to see someone was already backing it.

I don’t know if I will run another campaign in the future.  For now, I’m just working on wrapping up this one.  But it’s always an option.

If any of you have any thoughts on Kickstarter campaigns, let me know.

Keep on writing!

Michael