What should Fiction writer blog about?

spottedgeckgo

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I started a blog a couple years ago about inspiration/motivation type advice for writers. It's ranked 4.4mil in all websites in the world now according to alexa. Don't know how many writing blogs you look at, but that's not a shabby score for a blog about writing tips. I also blog about building my property in the woods and started posting some stories the other day. I actually get the most traffic when my readers find out about some recent illness that's befallen me (last year was gallbladder cancer, right now I'm dealing with lyme disease, hope that doesn't become a yearly thing). So if you get sick a lot and still have a positive mindset, that could be a thing ;)

What are you passionate about besides writing? There must be something. You can blog about a TV show, do book reviews, recommend different types of animals to keep as pets. It's really endless. There's an audience out there for just about everything. Heck, you can set up a news blog that focuses on one specific topic, like what SpaceX is up to this week. There are no limits.

But if you are going to do it, comit. I was getting about 0-5 hits per day for a year and a half. Then this year, all of a sudden I'm averaging about 20 with a dwell time of 3 minutes. I ran a webcomic for years, then stopped but left the site up. Didn't get a single email from anyone till I shut it down, and then my email box exploded with "hey, I was reading those" comments. As long as you enjoy it and you aren't doing it for money, the audience will eventually find you. Your twitter and instagram accounts will help to promote it. Bout to go check out your twitter right now.

Cheers.
 

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My real life is boring, and I don't think it'll attract the right readers. Any suggestion?
What are the attributes of the right readers you want to attract?
 

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Why are you blogging?

What do you want to accomplish?

What's your purpose in blogging?
 

mccardey

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My real life is boring, and I don't think it'll attract the right readers. Any suggestion?
Don't blog, would be my suggestion.

I say that as someone who also has a very boring life (I love boredom. I embrace boredom. Boredom is my comfortable place). Every now and then, if I'm doing something not-boring (accidentally travelling, or hatching quail eggs*) I'll start a mini-blog about it. But there's no need to blog. It's not a rule or anything.



*Less boring than you'd think. Surprisingly. I got a quail to do the actual sitting. I just filmed the hatching part.
 
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I suggest reading this article and see where you line up with it. If you're thinking that you need to blog because of online marketing/promotion you-have-to-have-a-platform stuff, keep in mind that these days, especially with the advent of social media, blogging is no longer as "mandatory" as it once was for building up an online presence.

If you actually like blogging, and enjoy it, and were going to do it anyway, then by all means. But if it's something you view as a chore, you should probably look at alternatives.
 

storiesweaver

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My hobbies do not reflect my book. Even if I have many followers on my blog if none of them will check my book it's useless.
 

Albedo

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Then any effort spent blogging is useless, isn't it? Don't do it unless 1. it's not going to be a drain on your writing time or just another form of procrastination, and 2. it's actually something you want to do. Like people above have said, it's not essential.
 

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This thread has been very educational. I keep seeing articles that writers should blog, and this thread opened my eyes to some of the reasons one should or should not blog.
 

Shoeless

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To be fair, those articles you're reading were probably right a few years ago. But the nature of online marketing has changed since then, mostly because things like how Google itself conducts searches and assigns popularity rankings is constantly evolving, and that's been combined with the rise of social media, as well as more "book-centric" websites like Goodreads. When author websites were the only game in town for finding more information about an author on the Internet, they were essential. But that's no longer the case these days.
 

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I had the same questions for years. I haven't started yet, but I now plan on using my blog for publishing flash fiction that relates to my subject matter. Some will be mini-series that actually interlock with my books. Those will obviously be timed around my releases. The others will be short, standalone pieces that demonstrate a similar style of writing.
 

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My hobbies do not reflect my book. Even if I have many followers on my blog if none of them will check my book it's useless.
Are your reasons for blogging are solely to sell your book?

How often do you, as a reader, buy a book from a first-time author because you read their blog?
 

Laer Carroll

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If your purpose is to sell your books, a blog needs to include posts about topics YOU and your likely READERS are both interested in. Those topics will very likely show up in your books and help sell them to those readers.

If you are passionate about something (horses, space travel, ancient history, whatever) just about every week you'll discover something you'd love to share. You won't have to struggle to come up with something to write about; it will fall into your lap.

Easiest are announcements of new books, songs or song albums, TV shows, movies, conventions, events, and so on. Post a link to that something, and a few SHORT paragraphs about it. End with a graphic if you can. Movie studios and publishers with a new film or book usually love to have you include their YouTube preview or announcement blurb in your blog, because you are advertising their product. Be sure to include a link to their web site.

Your pro writer's web site is to establish a brand for you as a writer, so avoid getting too personal beyond some general info. Your focus should be on your books, and the general area in which they'll be published such as historical areas or space travel tech. You might also want to include a few static pages relating to your books, such as genealogies of your main characters. Or the world you've built, or researched, in which they take place.

But that longer stuff you can add over time, as you'll need to spend a lot of your time writing about them in an interesting as well as informative way. Short blog posts are a more useful way to further your career by getting followers of your blog/web site. You want to spend time writing your books, rather than writing about them or you or something else.
 
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Svader

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I am pretty new at blogging, and have struggled to figure out, what should I blog about? I've come to realize that I might get a few hits on blogs that have to do with writing, but most of the people who end up following me have done so because of the posts I write about my kids, being a parent, and the struggles parents/people go through. I figure even if they aren't avid readers, I enjoy blogging about real life, and if a few of my followers then try out my books, great! I guess we will see when the time comes.
 

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I probably do it wrong. I write about things I'm passionate about. I write about travel, poetry, playwriting, music, life, inspiration, writing. I veer madly off in all directions. I am authentic. I try not to be pushing my stuff...but I know that at times, I do. I write about what I love. I write about loss when an actor or writer or someone dies. I write about the way a particular song makes me feel. I write about upcoming events in my writing life and in my life in general. I'm all over the place and a publicist would most likely shut me down with an iron fist.
 

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Even if your life is "boring", you can write about your fiction writing process, about the things that inspired the story, about the difficulties that come up, about editing, or whatever. Sometimes the writer may just pop in to say that they did not write anything that day, or even that they had a dentists appointment and that may still be interesting to the readers because it's still an insight about the "writing lifestyle" ;) (it's not all glamour and sparkles after all). An interesting blog may get you fans, but that doesn't mean it will get you sales. There are writer's blogs that I often read although I don't buy their books and there are authors whose books I buy but don't care about their blogs. Things are totally unrelated these days.
 

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If the sole purpose of your blog is to attract readers for your writing (you said 'right readers'), then I suggest looking into your writing. What genre do you write in? If you write historical, write about historical events, artifacts etc. If you write scifi, write about science. If you write fantasy, write about myths and legends, and so on.

I love blogging for the sake of it, so I blog about whatever comes to me. been doing it for quite a while now. But I also realise that some of it jives with my writing and the topics/ themes I care about: social justice, being positive, love and death.
 

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I have a blog about my China life. Have updated it for more than six years now. I struggle with any sort of blog beyond that. And even with that. Maybe I'll branch out more if I land an agent and they recommend more on "writery" side of things.
 

CathleenT

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I suggest blogging reviews for other writers' books. They'll be grateful and more inclined to lend a helping hand, and you'll have a built-in audience. I had a lot of other book reviewers who started following me when I did this.

Although I'd recommend against reviewing things like LOTR or Sanderson. I'd focus on writers who are still scratching for reviews. :)
 

TedTheewen

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Mine started off about horror and horror things. Then it turned into rants. In the past year, it's been my own personal black box, like on an aircraft, for some dark reasons I won't get into.

If you want to blog, do it, and have fun with it. It's your canvas.
 

Laer Carroll

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If you don't care about your writing career, post about anything whatsoever. But if you want to be a pro writer, you need to focus on subjects your prospective readers are likely to also be interested in. Most creative people have wide-ranging interests, so this suggestion to narrow your focus should not be a straitjacket.

Agents and publishers want to see a professional look and feel when they visit your web site, and posts written by a grownup with a mature outlook on the world to whom writing is a profession as well as a means of self-expression. This doesn't mean lacking of passion, but a confident forceful expression of that passion.
 
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Enlightened

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My real life is boring, and I don't think it'll attract the right readers. Any suggestion?

Laer Carroll nailed it. I added the following if you find it has merit.

Economics is the study of the efficient allocation (i.e. itemized list of who gets what) of limited resources. You need to find ways to get the best followers (i.e. ones who will buy your writing) from an already oversaturated marketplace of people looking for these people themselves.

I did an exhaustive search of literary agents. Most say nothing of having a public platform (e.g. social media presence to market/promote your own book to your followers and passers by your work). However, there are a considerable amount of literary agents who want evidence that you have such a platform in place. They want this in your first contact with them.

Economically, a public platform will help you: 1) land a literary agent (if your writing and story are great); 2) potentially sell more books (to your followers and passers-by). The question is, who do you want to cater to; i.e. what followers will buy your books most often? The vast majority of readers are women. This does not mean to exclude men from wanting to read your views and opinions. From here, weed out people who are unemployed. I'd stay away from things that might attract unemployed/underemployed people, or teens (making little or no money).

YouTube can be used for blogging (via video called Vlogs). Many people do not read Web logs (blogs) anymore, because they are visual people and do not like to read. If you could do both blog and YouTube, I think you would get a wider audience. Just re-iterate the same things, but have different ways of packaging it for video and writing.

I think the goal is to maximize potential book buyers, and using more than one social-media platform is ideal. If you do not have a video camera, or do not want to show your true ID on video, you can make screen capture presentations (via PowerPoint presentations).

In Introduction to Entrepreneurship, we learn of 6 ways to generate money (which can be translated into viewers/subscribers/followers).... Only 4 are germane for gaining followers.

1. Provide a tangible/physical asset to people.
2. Provide help/advice/information.
3. Provide guests with some feeling of feeling special through your brand.
4. Provide followers with access to people or things they do not have access to (this is correlative to club goods or a voucher system).
 

April Swanson

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I think you have to ask yourself why you want to blog in the first place. Are you pursuing traditional publishing? If so, then yeah, agents will probably want an online presence. This doesn't have to be a blog though, you could use your favourite social media platform instead.

From what I've heard from the indie-verse, blogs for fiction aren't really good at drawing in readers. So if you're writing for fun or going to publish yourself, then a blog probably won't help you. Only do it if you want to. This is a meaty post from Rachel Aaron's site about what works and what doesn't, but it might be worth reading.