Wednesday links: Staying published and impossible situations

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. How do I stay published with lackluster sales?, from Janet Reid: If your first couple of published books don’t sell well, your future publication prospects could be affected. So what do you do in that situation? Excerpt: “You are now at an important junction in your professional writing life. How hard are you willing to work to stay published?”

2. Plot: How to Drive Your Story with Impossible Situations, from Black Fox Literary Magazine: Putting your characters in the same situations as every other character on the market isn’t going to amp up the tension in your novel. What will is putting them in a situation that your readers don’t expect–and that they don’t expect them to get out of. Excerpt: “In order to write a good plot, you need to take big risks. Often times when we write, we fall into the usual patterns of building suspense. We are not being unique in our choices, because in that moment, we feel that it will be impossible for our character to get out of that situation in an interesting way.”