People always say, write what you know. But when you write fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, what you know may have little to do with your story. For example, how relevant is a receptionist in modern dentist’s office to a historical fantasy? Unless that’s your protagonist’s job, it might not provide much fodder for your story, but in the case of a historical fantasy the day-to-day knowledge of the job wouldn’t fit the time period for the story.

The “write what you know” theory goes deeper than what you consciously think you know. It speaks to emotional truths and truths of life. Your entire story may be made-up, but your characters need to feel like real people for your readers to connect to them. In order for them to feel real, you need to share the characters’ vulnerabilities, their flaws, and their emotional truths.

This is one issue I’ve struggled with in my writing. It’s hard to be mean to your characters. It’s hard to give your characters impossible choices where no matter what they choose, there’s no right answer. We all want to give our characters better lives than our own. But the struggle is part of what makes a story interesting.

It’s even more difficult to engrain your characters with the emotions of those conflicts – because people might miss-interpret. Just because I write about a certain topic or emotional state doesn’t mean it relates directly to my own life.

I know a poet who wrote a very emotional piece about a family mourning the son they lost in a war. Several people in the audience at the event assumed the poem was the poet’s own personal story and told him they were sorry for his loss.

It is frightening to let yourself be vulnerable by making your characters show their weaknesses. That is one of the biggest things that holds writers back. But even a New York Times Best-Selling author like Margaret Stohl experiences the same feelings as those of us still struggling to sell our first book.

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He came strong
The dragon she never thought she’d see again
No longer trapped in a youngling body
His breath searing the brittle landscape
Flames sprang to life and engulfed the land around her
Burning the distance
He came back for her
He came back to do the one thing he hadn’t done before-
To fight.

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Today I want to discuss the difference between a Facebook Page and a FaceBook Profile. “Aren’t the terms interchangeable?” you ask. Well, yes, people interchange the terms all the time – usually when they are referring to a profile, but they are actually two different things with separate purposes.

As an author, artist, musician, or other creative person, it’s possible and often likely you have two portals on FaceBook. The first one would be your personal profile. This is what most people use. A profile is a personal page where you can “friend” your friends. They tend to be more personal and have more security options for limiting who can see content you post.

Then there are FaceBook Pages. Pages tend to be more professional. The easiest way to know if you are looking at a Profile or a Page is you can friend a Profile, but you can only “Like” a Page.

Why should you create a FaceBook Page for your business or professional persona when it’s easier to have everyone on your personal Profile?

Well, there are a number of reason. First of all, to create a professional environment, you want to filter out unprofessional personal posts and chatter that may hinder your appearance as a professional. While that is now possible to do with a FaceBook Profile, it is a lot easier to have your own professional FaceBook Page and only post relevant content on the Page. Then you can post anything you want on your personal Profile for your close friends without a strenuous filtering process.

Also, there is a limit to the number of friends you can connect with on a personal Profile. The new “Subscribe” button is a step towards turning a personal Profile into a professional page, because it essentially eliminates the issue of having a limited number of friends. Honestly, the friend limit shouldn’t be an issue on a Profile unless you are 1) famous or 2) using your personal profile for both personal and professional purposes. FaceBook Pages, however, have no limit. They don’t have friends, but followers. You can have as many followers on your FaceBook Page as you can convince to follow you. :)

The biggest reason you should use a FaceBook Profile for your professional activities is the analytics. FaceBook Pages come equipped with analytics tools which tell you how well each post is received. One a FaceBook Profile you have no idea how many people see your post unless they actually comment of like the post. With a Page, you are given charts showing you the number of people who actually saw the post and the number of viral hits the post got. (That’s friends of friends who saw the post because a person who liked your page commented or liked the post and one of their friends saw it.) Viral hits are the chocolate of the internet world. Everyone wants them, but they aren’t easy to acquire. Ideally, you would turn those viral hits into new “Likes” for your page and then their friends would be your new viral audience.

On a Page, you can also see demographics about who likes your page. You can see the age range and location of your audience. This can help you customize your posts to target the type of people who you want to interact with your Page.

Although it’s possible to use a FaceBook Profile as a professional page, I would recommend using a FaceBook Page for that because it really does have a lot more built-in tools designed for a professional environment that the Profile lacks.

Come back in two weeks for the next installment in my Social Media Tutorial Blog Series. If you have any particular social media topics, send me a message or leave me a comment here and I will try to get to them.

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One of the most well-known events in the online poetry world is the annual Writer’s Digest April Poem-A-Day Challenge on the Poetic Asides Blog. Robert Lee Brewer provides a new poetry prompt each day in April. There is also a contest at the end where Robert picks his favorite poems. It’s another great excuse to write poetry this month.

I, however, have other projects I am working on this month. But here is a poems I wrote a while back. Happy Poeming!

Road of Life
By Robin A. Burrows

on a three-seater bus
hand in hand in hand
faces interchange
left and right
all loved
deeds done
never forgotten
goodbye and hello
faces change
on the road of life

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Lists are wonderful because they allow you to filter through the tweets and see only what you want to see. For example, if you have one Twitter account for both your personal and professional self, you can set up a list to just show you tweets by your real life friends and a separate list for tweets from your clients.

For lists you create, you can choose whether they are public lists that anyone can see and follow, or if they are private lists that only you can see.

In addition, you can also follow other people’s lists.For example, if your publishing company has 8 reps, one person could create a list of those 8 people, and you could follow their list instead of making your own.

Go to a person’s profile on Twitter and click on lists to see all of the public lists they created and follow. You can follow any of the lists you see because you will not be able to see someone’s private lists.

There are some really creative uses for lists. One person created accounts for Star Wars characters and then added all of the characters to a list and the characters tweeted out the Star Wars story. By following the list (or visiting the list page) you could read all of the posts by the characters all in one place without having to friend them all!

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Over a year later, I had completely forgotten about it. Then I got an email telling me my manuscript was in the final round.

When I saw my manuscript again, it was awful. Either my writing improved a lot over the past year or my distance from the piece let me see in much clearer than any other piece of my writing. I’d actually forgotten I’d written it.

A couple of edits later, my article passed the final round of cuts. It will appear in the Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers book which will be released May 21, 2013.

It’s only a page and a half article among a hundred other pieces. But check it out if it’s something that interests you.

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So I read said book and looked online for movie show times. It was no longer showing…?! How was that possible? The movie had premiered only a few weeks earlier. Who only shows a movie for 3 weeks?

I dug around in the reviews and found out why. Apparently the adaptation was so different from the book that it offended most of the readers. And I’m not talking about a few nit-picky difference. I’m talking about a long list of differences, and some of them were major changes. So that’s why the movie is no longer showing.

I can understand how difficult it is to compress a whole novel into a movie. I can accept omissions and minor changes for the sake of compression and a good movie. I can even accept a few moderate changes if the changes appear to be close to what the author might have changed if they revised again.

But completely changing important things and people in the story is unacceptable in most cases. The author had a story to tell and if you change it so much, it is no longer the author’s story.

In Marketing 101 you learn about target audiences for your products – whatever those might be. Movies based off of books have a built-in audience, especially since a book has to be popular before it is considered for a movie. If you present the true essence of the book, those fans will likely come back for every sequel. A few little things like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Twilight come to mind. Even if the book was bad, if the fans like it, they will go to the movie as long as you make an effort to be true to the book.

So why in the world would a screenwriter write a script for a movie that changes so much that it would offend your built-in audience? I just don’t understand.

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Well, here’s the secret to hashtags. On Twitter they are the key to conversations. If you want to talk about writing with other writers, you have two choices. You can friend/follow writers with similar interests. But how do you find other people like you? Hashtags are a good way to find and connect with people with similar interests.

Hashtags are also a great way to follow topics that interest you. For example, if you do a search for writing, you will find all tweets mentioning the word writing in all contexts. Including a college kid complaining about the essay they are writing for class. But if you search for #writing. The search will only bring up tweets which people marked as conversations about writing (using the hashtag).

Many groups create special hashtags for their group or event. You can tweet with other people at a conference (about the conference) by using the conference hashtag. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date on a conversation with people who are not followers.

Hashtags are also used for Twitter memes. You will recognize these by the typically long length of the hashtags and the humorous nature.

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From Paradise to Forever
To John and Jamie – March 8, 2013
By Robin A. Burrows

Hand in hand
They walk the sand
A soft breeze
A salty splash
Beautiful days
Blazing memories
Wash away the past
And start
A new journey
On gentler paths
From paradise
To forever.

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Tweets

A basic message it called a tweet. It can be 140 characters long – that’s counting each letter, space, number, punctuation mark, and any other individual characters you use in your message.

However, you want to make your tweet shorter than 140 characters if you want people to retweet your post. I will explain why in a minute.

Retweets

But what is a retweet? A retweet is when someone else shares your post or you share someone else’s post. Retweets usually begin with RT@yourusernamegoeshere. The RT is short for retweet and lets everyone know that you are sharing someone else’s tweet. The username of the original poster is automatically included in the retweet – because it’s polite to credit the source of your post. I will talk about how to retweet after I discuss your other basic messaging options with twitter.

Crediting/Tagging People in Tweets

When you retweet a post, the username is automatically included in the post. But what if you type a new post and want to credit someone, or tag friends so they will be notified of the post?

The @ symbol is always included directly in front of a user name in a tweet because that adds a link to that person’s profile. To tag someone in a post type the @ symbol and include the username right after the @ sign. The username is all one word without spaces. It can be different from a person’s display name, so be sure to use the person’s one-word name after the @ symbol if you want to tag them.

When you tag someone in a post, they are notified of the tag. Also, when people click on the tag in your post, it will take them to the profile of the person you tagged. This is especially useful when crediting someone.

Tags are included in the 140 character limit, so you can’t tag everyone. It’s best to only tag people when you retweet or want them to be copied on a conversation.

Replies

Replying to a tweet is a lot like tagging someone. You can click the reply button on Twitter, and the @username will automatically appear at the beginning of a new tweet. This shows you are directing the tweet to that person. They will receive a notification that you mentioned them in a tweet. Replies link to the person’s profile just like tags, but replies always show the @username at the beginning of the tweet, and it you are copying or tagging someone on a tweet, those tags appear at the end of tweets. The reason for this is many aggregate programs can filter out @replies to uncluttered a feed, but they do this by filtering out every tweet the begins with @. So to summarize: reply @s are at the beginning of a tweet and tagging @s are at the end.

Direct Messages

Tweets are public and anyone can see them (unless you set your account to private – which I do not recommend because it limits some of the best marketing features of twitter). However if you need to send someone a private message or don’t want to clutter your page with lots of @replies, then you can send a direct message. These messages still are limited to 140 characters, but they are sent to the user’s inbox. Only you and the user sees direct messages.

Message Length for Easy Retweeting

Remember earlier I said that you don’t want to take up the full 140 characters for a tweet? Here’s why. If you are a writer who wants to build a following on twitter, you want people to retweet your posts. It makes good business sense. The more people see your tweets, the better the chance you connect with your target audience.

However if your posts are the full 140 characters when someone tries to retweet your post, they will need to eliminate some characters before they can retweet it. Wait? Why would they have trouble retweeting a post that was 140 characters? Because when you retweet, the original username is added to the beginning of the tweet.

For example, my username is robinaburrows, so when someone retweets my post RT @robinaburrows is added to the beginning of the tweet. That is 18 extra characters counting the spaces you want between the username and the tweet. So the longest tweet I can post is 122 characters if I want people to be able to retweet easily.

If your username is shorter you might need to reserve fewer characters for the retweet. But if your post is even one character over 140 when the RT @username is added, the person retweeting will have to edit your post before they can retweet. In many cases people would rather cancel retweeting than try to shorten your post to fit. So always make sure to leave enough empty space for retweets when you tweet.

Come back in 2 weeks for the next installment of my social media tutorial series – the ever elusive hashtags!

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