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YA Retellings: an Epic Infographic

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Christi

This post contains affiliate links that help this blog continue to be awesome.

For generations, storytellers, bards, and troubadours — ancient and modern — have been putting new spins on old tales.  One of the oldest collections of stories, the Bible itself, even mentions this in Ecclesiastes 1:9:

That which has been done is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

Epic Reads recently put together a gorgeous infographic specifically focusing on these retellings in YA — 162 of them, in fact.  It could even be argued by some that a few of these original stories, like Romeo and Juliet, were based on earlier stories.  You’ll find the infographic below, and a complete list of the retellings can be found here.

I remember loving Robin McKinley’s Beauty as a kid and thoroughly enjoying Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted some years later when I stumbled across it as a camp counselor (that one makes great bedtime reading for a room full of kiddos).  Do you have any favorite YA retellings?  Or favorite retellings in general?

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YA Retellings Infographic via Epic Reads

P.S. While you’re here, don’t forget to check out The 10 Most Read Books of All Time.

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The DNA of a Successful Book

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Christi

Although here in blogland, it seems like everyone is reading e-books, the general public still reads more print books than e-books.  According to this recent Pew Research Study, about 1 in 5 American adults read an e-book last year vs. about 7 in 10 reading any book last year.  However, the rise of e-books is giving us a fantastic new avenue for book-related data.  Reading a book on many e-readers lets publishers know which books people are completing and which books are just sitting on their virtual shelves.

Hiptype recently released a fantastic infographic, The DNA of a Successful Book, that dives into the publishing industry data.  What stood out most to me is that books with a female protagonist are 40% more likely to become a bestseller.  I wonder if that has to do with certain demographics reading more or if it is just a recent phenomenon.  I also noticed that younger groups are reading faster – but I wonder if that means they’re skimming or if they’ve actually learned to read more quickly from being around so much data from such a young age.  It also really took me aback that only 4% of sample chapters and bundled books are completed.  I wonder which bundled books were part of the data sample and what that implies for the broader picture.

What stands out to you?  What strikes you most about these little info bites?  Do you know of any books that match or contradict this data?

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The DNA of a Successful Book via visual.ly

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2013 in Review: Top 5 Posts of the Year

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Christi
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Spider Firework, Omiya, Japan via Wikimedia Commons

January is a fantastic time for reflection on the previous year.  As 2014 swirls around us in anticipation of all the lovely projects we’re creating and building, this is a great time to assess where we are.  2013 proved to be a fantastic year of growth for the Novel Conclusions blog, thanks to all of you who are visiting and reading and commenting and generally being supportive.  I love creating conversation and fostering good writing and writing-related ideas.

In honor of the conclusion of 2013, I’d like to share the 5 most popular Novel Conclusions posts of 2013, courtesy of the WordPress stats genie.  Although my semi-controversial take on TFA is an outlier, it seems that my meaty writing discussion posts have been attracting the most attention over my flightier infographic posts (though those are fun and will definitely continue to appear here now and then).  In descending order:

#5:  What Do Your Fears Say About You?
How can you use your characters’ fears to reveal more about them?

#4:  5 Things Olivia Blanchard Got Wrong: In Defense of Teach for America
In response to Olivia Blanchard’s piece in The Atlantic – a bit about my Teach for America experience, including quitting the program, and why I still think TFA makes a  difference

#3:  What’s So Great About Unreliable Narrators?
How having fantastically biased characters gives your novel some bite

#2:  What Makes Love Triangles So Compelling?
Why are so many of us fascinated by love triangles?

#1:  Inciting Incidents and Why They Rock Your Plot
How inciting incidents can be a magnificent tool for you to shape your plot and give your story staying power

It’s so much fun to find so many other writing and reading-related blogs and to part in and foster conversation about the book world.  I keep finding more new and creative sides to the book and writing world that I didn’t know before.

What was your most popular post on your blog this past year?  What do you find attracts readers to your blog?

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5 Things I Learned in My First Year of Blogging

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Christi
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Birthday Candle by Ardfern via Wikimedia Commons

This week marks an entire year of blogging – October 23rd will be my one-year blog anniversary!  Happy Blog Birthday to Novel Conclusions!  In honor of this epically momentous occasion, I’ve decided to put together this gorgeous list of what I’ve learned about blogging.

  • I’m not alone.  There’s this whole community of writers and book bloggers and fan girls and people who just adore the English language.  Becoming a part of this super fun community encourages me to do more inside the writing arena (like participating in NaNoWriMo).  The book and writing community rocks!
  • Bonus:  Interacting with said community drives engagement on your blog.  Who woulda thought?  Catching up on what other writers and book enthusiasts are doing encourages people to drop by your blog and join the conversation.
  • Positive posts/notes/comments get the most love.  There was actually a report done about Facebook recently backing up this idea.  Outside of reports and etc., people in the blogosphere tend to be much friendlier than, say, commenters on a newspaper website or a gossip column – another reason the book and writing blogosphere is amazing.
  • It’s okay to occasionally break the cycle of your blog posts.  Your audience won’t immediately disappear.  I usually try to post about once a week.  Occasionally it will be more often, and sometimes when life is crazy, less often.  However, don’t wait too long between blog posts.  Two weeks is a little vacation.  Two months is more like starting over.
  • There’s a wealth of knowledge in the blogosphere about everything imaginable that’s related to books and writing.  Reading all the posts over at Nathan Bransford’s blog and Mary Kole’s blog would practically give you an MFA.  That’s not even mentioning other fantastic resources like Lynn Price at the Behler Blog or all the other agents and editors and authors with free, abundant, awesome writing and publishing tips. You can even interact with these people by commenting.  Craziness.

What have you all learned while blogging?  What have you done to streamline your blog?  What do you like (or dislike) that others do with their blogs?

P.S.  I also took this opportunity to discover that this blog’s sun sign is Libra, which apparently represents the element of air or intellect.  We can pretend that I planned that. 😉

P.P.S.  This shows a way cool map of indie bookstores in your area (and also confirmed my knowledge that LA is severely lacking in indie bookstores).

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Grammar Pet Peeves: Annoying Writing Mistakes Infographic

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Christi

Perhaps it’s a side effect of reading so voraciously when I was a child, but I’ve never had major issues with grammar.  Although my grammar isn’t perfect (no one’s is, really), grammar comes pretty naturally to me.  I’ve never had to study it to inherently understanding parallel structure or compound sentences or what have you.  I don’t strive for perfect grammar, but I do strive for excellent grammar.

As a child, I would embarrass my parents by correcting adults’ grammar (because it was something my parents corrected in my brother and me, I didn’t yet understand at 4 years old that it was rude to correct adults when they used bad grammar).  I’ve since grown out of that habit, but I still get a little nails-on-the-chalkboard feeling when people use incorrect grammar in the written word.  For your grammatical delight (or perhaps you’re trying to learn English grammar?), I’ve found a gorgeous little infographic over at bitrebels.com about the most annoying writing mistakes (and yes, it does have an unnecessary hyphen in “most-annoying,” but we’ll let that pass for now…).

Most Annoying Writing Mistakes - Learn English Grammar - Grammar Goofs - Novel Conclusions writing blog - writing rules - writing tips - infographic

Most Annoying Writing Mistakes via bitrebel.com

One mistake that this infographic didn’t include was when people end a sentence with “John and I” instead of “John and me, or they say “Jane gave it to John and I” when it should be “John and me.”  Egads!  And for me, one mistake I personally am frequently making is spelling the word “happened” wrong — I never can remember whether it has one “n” or two.  Thank goodness for spell check!  Which mistakes really make you want to whip out that red pen?  Which mistakes do you have to keep catching yourself on?

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Getting Reluctant Readers Reading: the Grown-Up Edition

Posted on August 25, 2013 by Christi
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An Interesting Story by Leon Perrault via Wikimedia Commons

If you Google “reluctant readers,” you’ll find quite a bit of material on very young and middle grade readers.  These ideas are absolutely important; however, recently, I’ve been thinking about grown-up reluctant readers.  About 25% of adults will actually go an entire year without reading a single book (craziness!), and most read 6 books or less per year.

Although it would be a whole other post to go into the intricacies of this (see here to start), in my humble opinion, reading enhances everyone’s life, not just the lives of the person who is reading.  Readers become more well-informed, more sympathetic, and more well-rounded than non-readers.  They develop better problem-solving skills from exposure to different ideas.  They develop better communication skills.  We could really go on for a while, but if you’re already here reading this book-related blog, you’re probably already on the same page.  What I’m getting at is that the more we can nudge non-readers into reading, even if it’s just a smidge more than they’re reading now, the better our world will be.  I’m always a fan of making the world a better place.

So how do we encourage others to read more and therefore improve our larger world?

  1. Do not (publicly) judge what others are reading; it doesn’t pay to be discouraging.  It might horrify me a bit that my teenage cousin is reading some disgusting political propaganda book, but at least she’s reading something.  I’m sure there are some five dollar words in there somewhere to build her vocabulary.  It might be disconcerting to sit next to someone on the subway reading 50 Shades of Gray, but at least they’re getting back into the habit of reading books.
  2. Ask about books that they have read.  If you can get someone talking about a book they read that they loved, it might remind them how much they miss reading.
  3. Recommend easy “transition” books (e.g. transitioning from not reading).  The book that finally got my man back into reading was Hunger Games (he picked up my copy, of course, after seeing me wrapped up in it a few years ago).  He spent a number of years after undergrad just reading accounting textbooks and movie scripts (he’s an accountant who used to work in the film industry), and he says that Hunger Games was just like a movie script.  It hooked him, and he stayed up until 2am one night finishing it.
  4. Talk about books you love.  Enthusiasm is infectious.  My mom, my dad, my boyfriend, my best friend, my friend’s mom, and a coworker –among others – have all been talked into picking up The New Geography of Jobs after my enthusiastic description of the book’s awesomeness and its applicability to everyday life.  When I first read Hunger Games, I was similarly excited – though I still haven’t talked my mom into it.  She’s afraid it’s too violent (and she’s into Game of Thrones!  Talk about violence!).
  5. Recognize people for reading.  This may sound silly, but people need to be validated.  A simple “That’s awesome you make time to read!” goes a long way.

How have you been successful in encouraging friends to read?  What could we add to this list?

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Glorious Summer Reading

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Christi
Sun-bathing Girls in Brittany by Moric Goth via Wikimedia Commons

Sun-bathing Girls in Brittany by Moric Goth via Wikimedia Commons

What makes summer such a great time for reading?  Leading up to summer, even the most trivial magazines and talk shows have a column or segment on “Great Summer Reads” or “Fun Beach Reads.”  As children, we’re all given a handful of books to read over the summer, some more interesting than others.

There are so many other vacation seasons during the year, but for some reason, summer wins as a time to read.  Perhaps it’s because the warm, lazy days lend themselves to sitting in a lounge chair on the beach with a fun read propped up next to a yummy drink under a sun shade.  Perhaps it’s because summertime, as a child, was so carefree that we long to bring that time into adulthood, even through just a few hours reading something escapist.

Something about summer is a little bit magical.  The books you read in summer, on vacation, when it’s warm, seem somehow a little more than they would otherwise.  As a kid, I went to Girl Scout camp in the summers, and my camp had a library of sorts, really just a collection of book crates.  At age 9, I was already in love with books, but I had never read any classics.  In our camp library, I ran across a copy of Little Women (it was an abridged version – I was pretty young, after all).  I devoured that book; I fell in love with Jo and all her sisters, and it ignited in me a desire to read more books that weren’t just about other elementary-age kids.

Which books have been your favorite summer reads?  What do you think makes summer such a great time to read?

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Falling in Love with Writing

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Christi
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Glade Jul. Viggo Johansen. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

First of all, a very Merry Christmas to everyone!  I love the holiday season and getting to be with family from all over the country, even if just for a little while.  This is also part of the reason I haven’t been actively blogging as much this month — the holiday prep monster has been greedily eating my time in huge chunks.  I need to work on getting as organized as my amazing friend Casey, who has three adorable young kids and an awesome craft business and still blogs constantly.

Anyhow, in all the Christmas madness this morning, my mother gave me a fun writing book.  I picked it up after all my little cousins had gone down for naps or to attack each other with Nerf guns, and it opens with the author reminiscing on his love affair with books.  This made me think of my own fall into writing as a kid — because it truly was a fall, with no hope of coming back.

As a little kid, I LOVED books, and around age 5 or 6, started writing all the time, though not quite as much as I was reading.  However, this writing was more like little drawings of characters and a paragraph about them.  In second grade, I graduated to writing a “book” on that big paper that kids learn to write on.  It talked mostly about my class and how we wanted to go on a field trip.  Plot was a bit thin on the ground, I’m afraid.  I was able to include every kid in my class in the story, though, which was quite a popularity bump.  In fifth grade, we had to write a story with our vocabulary words every week, and each week, I wrote a brief story about sisters Julie and Natalie, who managed to get into some pretty crazy adventures.

What has always drawn me into writing (and into reading, for that matter) is finding out the stories of interesting characters.  Interesting characters fascinate me even now.  What drew you into writing?  What keeps you going now?

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