Ask Your Reader

John Guillen41 Comments

judging-a-book-by-its-cover

Photo Credit: StandOutBooks

This will be a first for me. But who knows, maybe it could become a more regular thing. Maybe. Oh wait, I haven’t even told you what I’m doing yet. Whoops.

Okay. A Million years ago I took ideas from you all about potentially writing a guest post for me. And the response from you guys wasn’t astronomical, but I ended up with a GREAT post about pantsing vs. plotting. This will not be a call for a guest blogger.

But you still have a say in what I write. See, I’ve maintained for a long time that my favorite part of blogging is interacting with you guys. Yes, some of you avidly disagree with me on just about everything I post to the point that your comments are aimed more toward me than what I wrote, which I’m perfectly fine with. I’m a big boy and I can guarantee that nothing you say on here is going to hurt or negatively affect me. But keep it respectful. If I rant about something and you REALLY don’t like it then go ahead and comment and call me stupid and do whatever you want. I don’t care.

Anyway, I got way off topic with that paragraph. I’ve seen other bloggers ask their readers what they want them to write about. Honestly, I laugh when I see this because they end up with one Like and one comment because they really have no readers. Don’t read that as my thinking I’m better or something, but if you’re a regular reader of my posts then you know that there are several bloggers who come back day after day to read what I’ve written. So I think I’m in a better position than others to ask this question.

What would you like for me to write about? The one thing I would say is that your suggestion in some way pertain to books or writing. That’s all. Since I am posting this on a Sunday I definitely expect the response to be fairly minimal, but feel free to throw some ideas my way if you like and just maybe I’ll write a post and give you a little shoutout.

Comment away.

PS: I have a notepad of ideas right next to me. So don’t go thinking crazy thoughts that I’ve run out of ideas. Nope.

41 thoughts on “Ask Your Reader”

  2. Hmm… I’ll have to think about this for a minute. Because I have some ideas, but I don’t want you to say, “I don’t know anything about that,” when you really do and just don’t give yourself enough credit. Here’s a couple ideas:

    1. Dialogue – not necessarily how to write it if you don’t feel confident doing that, but maybe a compare/contrast of good vs. crappy that you’ve encountered in your reading experience. And why you think it’s awesome and/or sucks.
    2. What you’ve learned during the writing process. E.g. what works for your writing process, what doesn’t, what inspires you, what hinders you, what you’ve learned from creating characters, or what you’ve learned from your characters once they took on a life of their own, etc.
    3. Cliches – love them or hate them or how to use them in a different way. Or maybe identify cliched characters in others’ writing, and whether or not they work.
    4. Your favorite type of scene to write and why. Equally, your least favorite scene to write.
    5. Writer’s Conferences – would you go? Would you stay home? Have you been to one? Was it helpful? What one would you like to go to, but maybe can’t afford? (I should probably do that one. I swear, I’d go to every conference in the country if I only had the money!)
    6. Movies that inspire your writing. Or other forms of art that have an impact on writing besides reading.

    Umm… umm… I know there are a ton more ideas, but these are a few. Love ’em or leave ’em. And if you leave ’em, let me know, and I’ll steal them back for my own nefarious purposes. MWAHAHA!!! 😉

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  3. You could finish reading my book?? And talk about your next one. Oh and this isn’t about writing but if you could talk about incorporating fitness into your daily life that’d be cool. A lot of ppl are into that now

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