A Dragonbird in the Fern by Laura Rueckert #bookreview

A Dragonbird in the Fern by Laura Rueckert

Be sure to also check out yesterday's Spotlight on New Book Debut Author @LauraRueckert



Hello Operation Awesome readers! My name is Kara Reynolds, and I was a contributor to the OA blog from 2015-2018. OA is a great community with a ton of useful, encouraging information about writing and publishing. I learned so much about writing as I wrote posts and read my fellow members’ posts every week. I’m so proud to have been a part of it!

Sometimes in life, you get a full-circle moment, where you get to see how something plays out from beginning to end. Writing this book review is one of those moments for me. Now, OA isn’t really a book review site, but hopefully it’ll be clear soon why they made an exception.

When I wrote for OA, I ran a regular feature called Tuesday Museday to where I provided a writing prompt and chose a few people from the comments of my post to receive a query letter critique. One of the earliest people to take me up on the offer was Laura Rueckert.



I no longer have our email exchange, but I remember Laura’s query letter being pretty polished. I was intrigued by the concept of a princess with dyslexia having to move to a foreign country to track down her sister’s killer. Laura and I stayed in touch on Twitter, and I’ve kept an eye on her and her writing journey ever since.

Which brings us to today! After years of hard work, Laura’s getting published!



Her book, A Dragonbird in the Fern, releases on August 3rd. I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy so I could write this review. While I’m sure the story has been edited many times since I saw that query letter, the heart was the same, and I loved that.

To me, a princess with a learning disability who has to move to a foreign country where she doesn’t speak the language felt like such a fresh hook for a YA fantasy novel. Not only was it a great hook, but it becomes a really important part of the plot. The scope of the worldbuilding was large, with a neat magic system that’s not too complex. Laura could easily write a large series of novels set in this expansive world, yet the book focuses tightly on Princess Jiara’s POV and journey. To me, that was a best-of-both-worlds scenario: tons of worldbuilding, with the deep POV readers of YA fantasy typically enjoy.

I also found a lot of value in the portrayals of sexuality and gender in the book. It’s clear that in the world of A Dragonbird in the Fern, relationships and people are on equal standing no matter what the genders of any of the involved parties are. I like fantasy that features societal conditions we can aspire to, and this fit that bill.

To learn more about A Dragonbird in the Fern, including content warnings (so great to include these!) and buy links, visit Laura’s website at https://www.laurarueckert.com/books. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Thank you, Kara Reynolds!

So long, and thanks for all the words

I started out on Operation Awesome about three years ago. I thought I would have a platform for sharing the many thoughts about writing that had been piling up in my head. I had no idea what else I would be getting.

I made some amazing friends, both on the team and through the blog readership. I learned how to critique query letters, and had the opportunity to help so many people with theirs through my Tuesday Museday feature. As one of the co-creators of Pass Or Pages, I got to help even more people get amazing feedback, and from literary agents, too! Pass Or Pages is unique in that way, and I'm proud of the role I played in creating it.

The amazing thing about Operation Awesome is that it persists through member turnover. Even though the team changes, Operation Awesome is always the same: a place for writers to find craft tips and encouragement no matter what stage of the publication journey they are on. I know it'll be in good hands when I leave. Will they be yours? Fill out the new member application here.

Operation Awesome has given me so much, and I wish I could give it more of me. But sadly, there are only 24 hours in a day, and I cannot do all the things I'd like to. Something had to give, and this time it was Operation Awesome. It was a hard decision, but it was the right one.

I hope the next time I'm on here it's for one of J's Debut Author Spotlights! Until then, I wish everyone reading this the best of luck with the next step in their writing journey.

Agent News

I'm taking a break from working on Pass Or Pages stuff to give an update: My agent, Jill Corcoran, has merged her agency with Transatlantic Agency. I get to go with her, so I'm part of Transatlantic Agency, now, too! I'm excited for this new phase of my writing journey.

A Good Day of Writing

I took a day of writing self-care last week, and I want to tell you all about it because it felt AMAZING.

I'm co-hosting Query Kombat this year. I've helped in the past as a slush reader, but somehow I failed to realize how much work went in behind-the-scenes to make that contest tick. I'm really enjoying it because I love supporting my team as they improve their queries and first pages. However, after a few weeks of going non-stop, I had to acknowledge: it was really eating into my own writing time.

I've been stuck on restructuring the end of my WIP for a few weeks; the Dark Night of the Soul period wasn't long enough, so the climax was coming right on the heels of the All is Lost moment and the pacing just felt off. Figuring out when things should happen has been a struggle, even more so than usual because I haven't had the time to think and write.

So last week, while my husband was out of town for work, I called up my favorite teenage babysitter and asked her to come by for three hours during the afternoon and play with my kids while I disappeared. I went to a coffeeshop in town, got an overpriced but delicious smoothie, and plugged my laptop in. I wrote over 1500 words, expanded the scenes that needed it, and figured out the next steps. It was incredible. I felt so recharged and refreshed when I finished. I think it was exactly what I needed to push through this revision and get the book to my CPs.

Are you burned out or frustrated with your writing time? What helps you?

Author Websites When You're Prepublished

When I was making my New Year's resolutions on December 31st, 2016, I was still in the query trenches. And I know it's not healthy to make goals you don't control, so I didn't put "get an agent" on my list of resolutions. As I thought about what more I could resolve to do that I wasn't already doing, I decided to make myself an author website.

I am no technology wiz, but I have been using Blogger since 2008, so I decided to stick with a Blogger website. I paid the $12 to have a custom domain name, and got to work.

What to put on an author website when you're a writer but not a published author? I figured if anyone went to my site, it'd be an agent who got the link from my query letter. So what might be interesting to them?

I don't have any publication credits, but if I had I would definitely have included them. I put up a photo of my family, my Twitter handle, some light information about myself. I made a page with my query letter and first chapter of the book I was querying. Finally, I made a page to list the most recent books I've read, because I love recommending books, and also because I think the books you read speak volumes about you. (That was an intentional pun; I'll show myself out.)

Now that I have an agent, I included a link to her agency on my site so people could check her out. I took the first chapter of my book down, but left the query up. And now that I'm working on a new book, I added a brief blurb about that book. Not a query letter, because I didn't have to write one for that book 👐

My website is very simple, and I did everything myself, including the logo at the top of the page. I used Canva, which is about as much art-related technology as I can handle. If my book sells, then I will probably invest the time and money into getting a more professional site that will appeal to future readers. Until then, I'll keep plugging along on my own.

If you'd like to check out my site, you can see it here: www.karareynoldswrites.com
In the comments, I'd love to hear what you like to see on the websites of "prepublished" authors.

The Best Explanation of why Showing is better than Telling

I feel like I've talked about it a lot here on Operation Awesome, but just in case you missed it: I went to an awesome writing conference called Storymakers. One of my favorite classes from the conference was called Using Character Emotions to WOW Readers, and it was taught by Becca Puglisi of The Emotion Thesaurus fame.

I flipping love The Emotion Thesaurus. Becca and Angela Ackerman have several books in their Thesaurus series, plus an amazing website for writers called Writers Helping Writers. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to take a class from Becca.

As I reread over my notes from the class while tackling a revision, this little bit on showing versus telling tugged at my brain until I remembered I needed a topic for my OA post this week. Show vs tell is one of those topics that feels like it's been talked about to death among writers, and I've seen many people complain about it. Whether it's because it's harder to show than to tell, or because they don't see why it's important, many writers struggle with this concept.

Here's what I wrote down while Becca gave her presentation:

“Telling” emotions is bare and sparse, and conveys information instead of engaging the reader’s emotions. “Showing” creates an emotional echo with the character, gives a sense of shared experience, and fosters reader empathy.

And that was a "boom" moment for me. That's why showing is more powerful than telling. I was never able to put it into words before.

That's all I have. If you haven't been to Writers Helping Writers yet, that should definitely be your next click!

Lessons from Query Kombat

I'm co-hosting Query Kombat this year, which is a lot of fun and a lot of work. So much work, in fact, that last week I completely forgot to post here on Operation Awesome!😯 I have a bit of a lull before the competition gets going on Friday, so I thought I'd write about some of the things I observed and learned while going through the entries and selecting my team.

We had about 430 entries, which meant I ended up with 143 entries in my pile. We divide all the entries as they come in, so it's completely random who ends up with what entries. I also read some of the entries in Michael and Michelle's piles. I was amazed at the fact that no two books were the same. Can you believe that? I was constantly blown away by all the interesting premises. Whether someone got into the contest or not, they came up with a unique story idea and turned it into a whole book. That's absolutely wonderful.

Out of the entries I read through, there were plenty that I felt "meh" about. The premise just didn't catch my fancy. I put those in my "Up for Grabs" folder. Michael and Michelle each poached an entry from that folder. They obviously didn't feel "meh" about those entries--they thought they were good enough for the contest! Taste is subjective, and writers just have to accept that not everyone is going to like their book. You can't do anything about that, so I say don't waste a second worrying about it.

What did I love about the entries I selected? First off, always, it's premise. I picked a YA time-travel entry because that's my kryptonite; an entry that could be described as a Middle Grade Groundhog Day because it's one of my favorite movies; a thriller about someone who creates near-death experiences and has to deal with the fallout from an all-death experience because it made me sit up and go YES I WOULD READ THAT RIGHT NOW. Every entry I chose had a premise I loved.

But there were other premises I loved in the entry pool. The ones that were chosen also had strong query letters. By strong I mean I got a good sense of who the main character was, what the main conflict of the book would be, and what was at stake. There's something about those three elements that makes people want to read a book, which is why people who give query advice regularly stress those elements. Do we sound like broken records? Maybe. But you never know who's hearing it for the first time, and so we repeat ourselves in case ours is the advice that gives someone the "A ha!" moment they need.

One of the entries I chose had received a query critique from me a few weeks before the contest. I held my breath as I read, hoping it had improved. It absolutely had. I was so proud of that writer! Incorporating feedback is not easy, but this writer obviously knows how to revise. I feel confident that person will get a lot of benefit out of the feedback aspect of Query Kombat.

For me, the first 250 words part of the entry submission is the hardest to judge. For all I know, there's an amazing sentence or twist around the corner at word 275. For a submission to an agent, that's great. For the purposes of the contest, it's not. So I try to keep an open mind while reading. That part counts the least for me. Others will feel differently. I'm sure the judges will have plenty of opinions to share on the entries' writing!

The last thing I want to say is that making connections in the writing world is so important. I hope the people who entered and weren't chosen take the opportunity to find critique partners on the Query Kombat forums. I got to know Laura Heffernan while working on pitches for PitchMadness over 4 years ago, and that's how we became CPs. Now she's one of my most trusted friends in the writing world. Making friends through contests works!

A Note on Critique Partner Relations

I believe that good critique partners are absolutely vital to the writing process. A good critique partner gives valuable insights into improving your manuscript, and will also cheer you on as you go on your writing journey.

When I figured out that I needed critique partners to improve my writing (side note: sometimes I look at 2013 Kara and slowly shake my head at her nonsense), I was delighted to find that two women I already knew were writers, and they were interested in forming a critique group! We were all kind of newbs at the offering feedback part of writing, but we dove into it anyway.

At the beginning of that summer, I let my new CPs know that I was going to pursue publication, and I wanted their help getting my book into shape. They both agreed to read for me, so I sent the book on.

And then I waited. For almost three months. One of the women suggested that we add new people to our critique group and move it online. I said I would be okay with that, but if we were going to invite new people, we should be clear on when we expected people to get back to us so that no one got upset, because my feelings were hurt that neither of them had said anything about my book the whole summer.

Now, they both had a lot going on that summer. They were scheduled things that we all knew were going to happen. But they had agreed to read in spite of that, and it bothered me that neither of them had even said so much as "Hey, sorry I haven't gotten to this yet."

One CP apologized, read the book within a week, and returned notes that were very helpful (including pointing out that I wasn't doing my em dashes correctly, which was great because I had no idea that em dashes and hyphens were different!). We're still friends to this day, and I still value her input on my work.

The other got snippy, unfriended me on Facebook, and hasn't spoken to me since even though we live in the same small town.

I hope you take away a number of things from this story. One: if you are unhappy with something in your CP relationship, speak up promptly. Don't let it fester for months. You'll know which CPs are worth keeping based on how they respond. Two: if you find that you've screwed up? Apologize and make it right. If your CP forgives you and can still take your critique without getting defensive, then you guys are a good match. And finally, clear communication and honesty are crucial to a good CP relationship.

Writing Conference Reflections

Last week I gave a list of all the things I was excited to do while in Utah for the Storymakers Conference. It was a blast! I had a great time and learned so much. I'm home now, and have been reflecting on the conference for a couple days. It was my third time attending the conference, and my experience at each one has been so different.

In 2014, I was in the middle of querying my first ever novel, and had received nothing but rejections. I had a pitch session with an editor, and was looking forward to hearing Orson Scott Card speak at the keynote dinner. Having never been to a writing conference before, I literally thought those two things would be the only benefits I got out of the conference. (shakes head in shame at past Kara)

The pitch session was great, not because I was invited to send material to the editor (I wasn't), but because it was what I finally needed to let go of that first terrible manuscript and move forward with my writing. I got to meet OSC, which was cool, but even better was meeting the person in front of me in line to talk to him: Amy Wilson, who became my friend and someone who I swap work with!

Last year, I went to the conference as a freshly agented writer with a highly polished manuscript. Most of the classes I gravitated towards dealt with plotting a new book. And I have to say, not having a pitch session took away ALL the stress I felt at the first conference!

I used the plotting techniques I learned last year to plot a new book, and finished my first draft a month before this year's conference. The classes I chose this year were all tools that I could use while working on the second draft. In fact, during almost every class, I found myself scribbling notes in the margins of my notebook with specific ideas of what I could do to improve this draft. It was awesome.

Whether you're a newb or a seasoned writer, a good writing conference will have something for you. I highly recommend Storymakers. If you go in 2019, I'll see you there!

I'm going to a writing conference!

I'm headed out to Utah on Thursday to attend Storymakers '18. This will be my third time attending this conference, and I am stoked for SO MANY REASONS:

(in no particular order)

-time off from my 24/7 job as MOM
-no cooking!
-meet Twitter friends and make them IRL friends
-meet three! agents who have participated in Pass Or Pages and thank them in person for helping us
-learn new writing craft tools
-feel like I'm not alone in this publishing game
-listen to SHANNON HALE give the keynote address
-treat ma self to some new books from the conference bookstore
-hang out with the members of my writing group who are local
-visit my non-writing friends in the area
-spend time with my sister (who of course moved to Utah AFTER we moved away)

For the comments: What is your favorite part of attending writing conferences? And if YOU'LL be at Storymakers '18, too, hit me up on Twitter so we can sit together at lunch!

S is for Seniority: An Interview with OA Blogger Kara Reynolds #AtoZChallenge

Operation Awesome's #AtoZChallenge theme for 2018 is... 

OA to Z! We'll be correlating our usual posts with the challenge letters, plus, each weekend, you'll get a chance to get to know one of our bloggers better.

Hi! I'm Kara, and I've been writing for Operation Awesome for almost three years. Everyone else who was a member of the team when I joined has left, which makes me the Senior member of Operation Awesome! I love this blog, and all the friends I've made through being part of it.

What's your passion in life?
(Is it too obvious if I say writing? Okay, I'll pick something else.) (What about books? Still too obvious?)

Here's one that starts with S. I'm passionate about Stories, whether they be books, movies, or TV shows.

Would you share a picture with us of something Silly?

This is my daughter. She asks me to take a picture of her making this face several times a day!

What are three of your short-term goals?

Revise my Work in Progress and get it to my critique partners by the end of May.

Deep clean my daughter's room and get rid of all the baby items we don't need anymore.

Decide which classes I'm taking at the writing conference I'm attending in May.

What tip can you share to improve someone's writing craft?

Share your work with other people, and read theirs in return. I have learned so much from my critique partners, both from their notes on my work and my thoughts on theirs.

Kara Reynolds is a stay-at-home mom of three with a Master's degree in Genetic Counseling, who greatly prefers writing novels to academic papers. She writes contemporary YA novels with a speculative twist. Her work is represented by Silvia Arienti and Jill Corcoran of Jill Corcoran Literary Agency.

I is for Inspiration #AtoZChallenge

Operation Awesome's #AtoZChallenge theme for 2018 is... 

OA to Z! We'll be correlating our usual posts with the challenge letters, plus, each weekend, you'll get a chance to get to know one of our bloggers better.

I is for inspiration! The very first "writing inspiration" quote that I ever wrote down is from Pearl S. Buck:

"I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work."

At the time I discovered this quote, I was having a hard time finding the desire to write, and these words helped me move past that and make myself write even when I didn't want to. That's changed my life as a writer.

Operation Awesome has some inspiration resources under our Resources for Writers tab. Check them out here!

What are your favorite sources of writing inspiration? Share in the comments!

C is for Camp NaNoWriMo #AtoZChallenge

Operation Awesome's #AtoZChallenge theme for 2018 is... 

OA to Z! We'll be correlating our usual posts with the challenge letters, plus, each weekend, you'll get a chance to get to know one of our bloggers better.

C is for Camp NaNoWriMo, a writing event I look forward to twice a year! While I love regular NaNoWriMo, it's actually quite difficult to serve as a Municipal Liaison and write 50K words in a month. But during Camp NaNo, I get to sit back, set my own goals, and stretch myself a little. It happens every April and July, and there's still time to sign up this month if you want to join! I highly recommend it.

My goal this month is to finish the first draft of my WIP and begin revising it. I'm so close! I think the added push of Camp will help me devote more time to this book. My husband is defending his master's thesis this month, and I'm helping put on a major fundraiser for my kids' school. It would be easy to take this month off from writing. With Camp NaNo's help, I'm hoping to keep my head in the writing game.

Are you doing Camp NaNo this month? What are your writing goals?

Breaking Your Own Rules

We all know there are a million "rules" for writing, and that not everyone follows the same rules. I think it's pretty awesome, actually, that there is no one way to write.

Most of us, after a while, decide on what rules work for us. These may change over time; a writing rule is only useful as long as it is helping you achieve your writing goals.

One of my writing rules is that I'm not allowed to go back and edit what I've written until the first draft is finished. This is a rule I had to adopt during my first NaNoWriMo, and I've never looked back. I've found that without enforcing this rule, I don't finish my first drafts. (YMMV, obviously)

A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience getting my groove back by participating in #AHundredOrDie on Twitter. I was having a great time, plugging along a little bit every day, until... I wasn't.

It took a lot of pondering, but I eventually realized my frustration was because of a structural mistake in my book: there was way too much time between the reveal of the twist and the characters acting upon it. I couldn't move forward without fixing this big mistake, so I broke my own rule and edited to get the scenes in the right order.

Progress restored! I was able to move forward. And that's the plan: continue moving towards The End without stopping to edit. Editing was helpful in the moment, but it was only an exception to the rule. Full steam ahead!

Which of your writing rules have you had to break, and why? 

Book Quiz!

I made a thing. And it was my first ever, so it is not perfect, but I hope you'll forgive me. And play along! Let me know in the comments what book you got, and if you've already read it.

#AHundredOrDie

I've had several conversations with my writing friends lately about how everyone's writing process is different. That's why there's so much writing advice out there. We're all trying to find our way, and when we find something that works for us, we want to share it with everyone else.

I've never been the type of writer who can switch between projects easily. Before I had an agent, that wasn't a big deal, because I was the only person who cared what I was writing and when. Now, though, I'm accountable to someone else. So in the fall, when my agent gave me revision notes on my manuscript, I dropped the WIP I had been working on all summer and threw myself into revisions.

But after the revisions were done, it was not as easy to throw myself back into the WIP. With the holidays and everything, I ended up taking a three month break from it. I wanted to get back to work. I just couldn't.

And then I noticed some of the writer people I follow on Twitter using a hashtag I hadn't seen before: #AHundredOrDie. I tried just stalking them for a little while to figure out what it was all about, but I eventually broke down and asked (human interaction! so stressful!). Beau (@INukeYou) started doing it in December to get out of a writing rut. Basically, the idea was to commit to writing at least a hundred words a day. The rationalization was that a hundred words was manageable no matter what kind of day he was having.

I agreed. A hundred words is nothing. I mean, the word count for the first two paragraphs I wrote for this post is over a hundred words. Over the next few days, a little over a hundred words at a time, I got through my writer's block and was able to make real progress in my WIP. Some days I only wrote a hundred words. Other days I wrote over a thousand. But I made sure I wrote every day. Having accountability buddies is a strategy many writers use, and this one was the perfect amount of casual commitment for me.

It helped (is helping!) me so much, and that is why I wanted to share it with you. Will it work for everyone? No writing advice does. But if you are feeling stuck, or feeling guilty for not writing, try to write a hundred words. We'll cheer you on at #AHundredOrDie.

Happy Birthday Giveaway!

Today is my birthday, so I'd like to give YOU a present: an ARC of The Summer Wives, by Beatriz Williams!

It's literary fiction, which I don't usually read, but I found it very engaging. This would definitely be a good book for a book club. It doesn't pub until July, so if you'd like to read it now, enter my giveaway! 

To enter, comment below with the best book you've read lately. Please include your email address or Twitter handle so I can follow up with you if you win! U.S. only, please, because so far no one's paying me to write anything and funds are limited at the Reynolds house. I'll choose a winner Friday evening at 9pm Mountain time.

Sharpen the Saw

It's time for the last post in the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Writers series. The 7th habit is Sharpen the Saw.

We can never become complacent as writers. We should always work to improve our skills. As we do so, we experience what Covey calls the "upward spiral" of progression.

Self-improvement doesn't happen by accident. We must make conscious choices about what we want to improve and how we're going to go about it. There are many resources out there for writers who want to improve their craft--we have lots of them here at Operation Awesome, for one--it's just a matter of finding something that works for you and having the tenacity to stick with it.

Good luck to you!

What Books are You Afraid to Read?

There's this book I want to read, but I'm afraid to. Not because it's a scary book (I don't want to read scary books, I'm a big ole chicken). It's because this book deals with a topic I'm very knowledgeable about, and I'm afraid to read it in case the author didn't get it right.

This book sounds awesome. It's gotten a lot of buzz, people speak highly about it on Twitter, and from what I know of the author's social media, she seems like a really cool person. So I would love to read this book. But if the book doesn't get this one aspect correct, or worse, doesn't even include it, then it'll be ruined for me and I'll be disappointed.

I don't know what it will take for me to get over my fear and read the book. If I go to the library tomorrow and it's on display, that will be my sign from the book gods that I can read it. I will definitely take that as a sign (hint hint, book gods).

What books are you afraid to read? Why? What helps you give a book a chance? Let me know in the comments!

Learning from 1-Star Reviews

While I'm not a published author, I like to read advice given to published authors while dreaming that it will someday apply to me. One piece of advice that I've always thought sounded good is Don't Read Your Reviews. That seems like a good way to stay sane.

Randy Ingermanson, who sends out the Advanced Fiction Writing e-zine every month, offers up some advice on how to learn from 1-star reviews that I thought was valuable. Even better, you don't have to read your own reviews to do it! Here's how:

Yes, 1-Star Reviews Can Be Useful

The answer is “Yes, if.”

Yes, a truly bad author’s 1-star reviews could contain valuable information that would point the author in the direction of improving his or her work. If …

If the author doesn’t freak out and go into a deep depression after reading a toxic, cruel, slashing review.

If the reviewer is able to explain what’s wrong AND how to fix it, in a way that an author can easily put into practice.

If the author doesn’t just dismiss the review out of hand with the easy phrase, “haters gonna hate.”

But Here’s the Problem

The problem is that those three ifs are hard to meet.

Not going to admit anything here myself, so I’ll take the usual dodge that “I have a friend” who has failed to benefit from 1-star reviews for all three of these reasons. And this “friend” has had a few toxic reviews. Ahem.

It’s just hard to read your own 1-star reviews objectively. But that suggests an idea …

How To Benefit From 1-Star Reviews

It occurred to me that an author can still benefit from 1-star reviews. In fact, even if you’ve never been published, and therefore you have no 1-star reviews of your own, you can still benefit from 1-star reviews.

The trick is to benefit from the 1-star reviews of OTHER WRITERS.

Here’s a simple exercise you can do:

1. Go to the Amazon page for the last really excellent book you read. It should be one that you consider a no-brainer to get 5 stars. 
2. Read all the 1-star reviews (or if there are more than ten, read only the first ten 1-star reviews, because they start repeating pretty quickly). 

Did you learn something? I bet you did. So that’s a win. That’s something you can use in your own writing, and it cost you nothing.

Did you find any toxic, cruel, slashing reviews? I bet you did. But you didn’t go into a deep depression because it’s not your book, so all that rat poison had no effect on you.

Were any of the reviewers able to explain enough about the craft so you could see how to improve the book? I’m taking no bets on this. The reviewers undoubtedly exposed some flaws in the book you liked so much. Unfortunately, most reviewers don’t know enough about the actual craft of writing to explain how to fix the problem. Most reviewers are readers, not writers, and so they know what they like, but they don’t necessarily know the mechanics of fiction. But if you believe they’ve exposed some real flaws in the novel, you could always go find a good book on craft that would explain how to fix those flaws.

Did you dismiss any of the reviews with the phrase “haters gonna hate?” I bet you did. Because there are some truly angry, hateful, vindictive people out there so some of the bad reviews are just people being spiteful. But I also bet you didn’t dismiss them all with that phrase. Because some of the haters had REASON to hate the book you liked so much. Since you have no vested interest in the book, you can be objective in classifying some reviewers as merely hateful and some of them as reasonable. 

So this exercise has value for you, because IT’S NOT YOUR BOOK, so you aren’t going to take the 1-stars personally.

That’s the danger of reading your own 1-star reviews. You can’t help taking it personally.

But What About Your Own 1-Star Reviews?

Now there is a way for you to benefit from your own 1-star reviews, but you can’t do it on your own.

Here’s what you do: Find a writer friend and agree to eat each other’s rat poison. You read her 1-star reviews and have her read yours. Then each write up some helpful advice for the other, writer-to-writer. Maybe some hateful reviewer said that your friend’s characters are so 1-dimensional, you could floss your teeth with them. That’s pretty cruel, but if it’s a valid concern, you could rephrase it by suggesting ways for your friend to deepen her characters. 

That’s constructive advice. That’s turning rat poison into gold.

And that avoids ever having to eat your own rat poison.

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This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 17,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.