When you write a book, it needs to be about something. When someone asks what your book is about, how do respond? Do you stumble over your words trying to describe your book? Time to pin down your premise. The perfect pitch means you need to hone your premise statement. Premise: The central idea, situation, or set-up which provides the foundation and pushes the narrative forward. What happens as a result of actions is another way of describing the premise. If point A is where the conflict or problem arises and point B is the outcome, then the premise is A leads to B. Perhaps another way to get a handle on the premise of your book is to determine its main point or take-away lesson. What’s the moral of your story? A premise is usually one sentence. “When Dorothy is caught up in a Kansan tornado, she visits a magical place called Oz, only to discover there’s no place like home.” Expressing your premise — your driving idea — helps you while you write. It keeps you from wandering too far astray from the organizing concept and your narrative arc on a steady path. Consider your opening scenario, central characters, the inciting incident and how the stakes are raised. Your premise may be stated in the form of a question. “What if a group of school boys stranded on a desert island work to govern themselves?” A premise should be brief, provocative, and include the central characters, a conflict,…
You may have been noticing a particular status update making the rounds on Facebook. It’s a disclaimer that asserts the poster’s copyright and privacy rights, and it makes it seem like it’s as easy as copy/paste to protect yourself from anything you failed to catch in the Terms and Conditions you agreed to upon signing up for Facebook. Of course, it’s total malarky. Before you can… [Read More]
Filed Under: Facebook, internet, Marketing, online privacy, Social Media networks, technology
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It was only up for a few hours – a programmer stumbled upon a link to access the raw, unfiltered chronological newsfeed that so many users want. But as soon as the internet had discovered a glimpse of the pure stream of friend posts and status updates, it was gone. You may have noticed that your news feed doesn’t give your all your friends’ posts. In fact,… [Read More]
When you first sign in to Facebook, your newsfeed automatically defaults to Top Stories – but how do these items get ranked? What makes your aunt’s status update rank higher than your soccer coach’s new car photos? And more importantly, how can you find yourself consistently ranked in the top stories? First off, take a deep breath, because you can’t control everything – if one… [Read More]
You’ve been told that as an author you can’t afford to ignore Facebook with its 3 million followers. So you created a Page and worked hard to gain those “Likes” with compelling content. You stopped complaining that you had to do double duty with both a personal profile and an Author Page to maintain. You even accepted the changes with the new timeline without much… [Read More]
It’s easy to ignore those update pop-up windows on your computer, especially for web browser updates – after all, you can still get online. Why fix what ain’t broke?