Taking on Social Media like Bond, James Bond

by Celeste Cox

For some of us, and quite possibly all of us writers, social media is a feared concept. An it-must-not-be-named that we promise we will work on, but never really do. It’s the monster you know is living under your bed but are too afraid to face. You hope that as long as you feed it every so often and never directly look at it, it won’t gobble you up in the middle of the night.

Well, believe it or not, you don’t have to be gobbled up to be successful with social media. Nor do you have to spend every waking moment linked to it. If you have an understanding of your brand and audience you can be successful and even enjoy meeting the monster too. Not only that, you can be like the Bond of social media—yes, that Bond, James Bond.

Your Brand

Whether you’ve already written your novel, you’re in the process, or you’ve just begun, it’s important to know what makes it unique. To start, ask yourself:

• Why should an audience invest in my novel?
• What is my novel specifically offering them? Ex: Knowledge, romance, entertainment, thrill, a mixture?
• What rating should my audience expect? Ex: If there’s violence, is it mild, heavy, extremely graphic? G, PG, R?
• What’s the style and tone of my writing? Ex: Sarcastic, literary, first person, third?
• Even the formatting is part of your brand. Ex: In Jack Weyland’s novels the internal thought is always italicized.

The goal is for your reader to hear your name or see your novel, and know what to expect. Your name and novel should evoke certain thoughts and feelings for the reader. Ex: The name, Stephen King suggests a novel that is strange, scary, mysterious etc. A Stephen King fan would be confused if they picked up King’s latest novel and it were about a ballerina torn between love and her career. The most important thing to remember is to be consistent.

Your Audience

Now that you’ve got an understanding of your brand, it’s time to find the audience to match it. It’s a common misconception among writers that the bigger the audience, the better. True, a bigger audience could mean more sales, but not if the audience could care less about you or your book.

Imagine a scuba diving instructor at a Steampunk convention. He’s trying to sell his how-to book on the proper use of scuba diving equipment. Yes, there’d be a lot of people there, but it’s unlikely the scuba man sells a single book. (Unless of course his scuba gear is based on the 19th century and is powered by steam—now that would be something!) Point is, you need to start with an audience you are 80-99% sure will be interested: your target audience.

How to find and research your Target Audience:

1. Find novels you feel are similar to yours and study their audience. Don’t waste time on the big fishes. For example, if your novel is a paranormal teen romance, don’t immediately look to Twilight fans. That audience is too broad, but you can bet it started with vampire fans and lovesick teens before it became what it is. Find novels that are emerging from the woodwork. Ones that are getting more and more reviews among a smaller, specific crowd.
2. Read the reviews voted most helpful. Take note of what the readers liked and didn’t.
3. Go to the authors’ social media accounts and study what the fans are saying.
4. Understand them. They are your target audience and your potential fans. You are writing or have already written for this audience. Think of them as your investors. They are the readers more likely to take a chance on you and your novel.

SOCIAL MEDIA

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking once you put yourself out there you’ll be surrounded with that awful sound that means no one cares: silence. Maybe it’s already happening. But now you know your brand! You understand your audience. And you can face anything. Think of yourself like James Bond just receiving your gadgets. Now here’s how to use them.

1. Be interesting. If you haven't gone on any great adventures lately, that's fine. You don't actually have to be James Bond. Interesting things are things people don't normally see. Anything ranging from an image, quote, article, your own thoughts. Keep it fresh.
2. Images are your friends. People are more likely to look at them than text. Instead of excerpts of your novel on their own, add that sentence or paragraph to an image. Like a meme, for example. If you aren’t familiar with any programs to put text on an image, an easy and completely free place to do this is at http://pixlr.com. Don’t waste too much time making it pretty though. As long as the image is somewhat interesting and eye-catching, it will do.
3. Anything funny. People like to laugh. If it’s consistent with your brand, try to bring humor into your posts. And don’t panic if you’re the opposite of funny. You can always share and re-re-tweet what others have posted, though you shouldn’t only rely on that tactic, which brings me to,
4. Be original. You’ve studied your audience to try to understand them, not to completely transform yourself to be like the authors they already follow. A carbon copy is never interesting. You want to show your audience that you’re offering them something they’re likely to be interested in, while giving them something different: you!
5. Be helpful. People love to learn new things, especially if the information will help them in their pursuits.
6. Be relevant. An article on getting published won’t be as helpful if it’s ten years old.
7. Take Notes. Check out which of your posts received the most response. Try posting more of the same and continue tweaking things accordingly.
8. Remember your brand. Anything you post should reflect your brand. You can have a variety, but if your novel’s genre is horror and you’re constantly posting pictures of baby animals and Disney princesses, your audience will be confused and wander off.
9. Socialize. There’s a reason it’s called social media yet so many of us only post things with a comment and a like here and there. It’s not enough. You don’t have to engage with everything, but if you find something helpful or interesting let the person know. When you help a fellow author out, they are more likely to do the same. You might even call it networking.

And there you have it. A quick guide to taking on social media. Just remember to be consistent and have fun with it. And when it feels overwhelming and you just want to lock the door and run, remember that you are James Bond. Okay, maybe not. But you are a writer, which means you deserve to have your work read and people deserve to read it. 

Why We Love the Bad Boys

Ah, the romantic and intriguing Byronic hero. Girls swoon over him and guys aspire to be like him.  Who can resist the dark, brooding character that hides in the shadows? Modern literature and pop culture are littered with examples:

Batman,

  

(Dark Knight)

Edward Cullen,

(Twilight)

James Bond,

 (007)

Han Solo,

(Star Wars)

Captain Jack Sparrow,

(Pirates of the Caribbean)

Severus Snape

(Harry Potter)

and, for you anime fans, Edward Elric.

(Fullmetal Alchemist)

Why are we so drawn into these characters struggles? Why does our attention and hearts bond to them whenever they walk across our pages or our screens? Let’s go back to the beginning and look at what a Byronic hero consists of.

The Byronic hero, while still the antagonist of the story, is the antithesis of what we consider a hero to be.  Their characteristics are not exactly admirable, yet if well done, the reader likes them anyway. There are several traits, mostly unattractive, that these dark heroes share:

• Intelligent
• Cunning
• Ruthless
• Arrogant
• Depressive
• Violent
• Self-aware
• Emotionally and intellectually tortured
• Traumatized
• Highly emotional
• Manipulative
• Self-serving
• Spiritually doubtful
• Often reckless or suicidal
• Prone to bursts of anger
• Decidedly prone to substance abuse
• Dedicated to pursuing matters of justice over matters of legality
• Given to self-destructive impulses (study.com)

 Take Edward Elric for example. The series Fullmetal Alchemist is centered on the science of alchemy. (Remember this is all fantasy and this stuff doesn’t really exist.) The number one rule in alchemy is that you cannot create something from nothing, meaning that things don’t just appear out of thin air. Alchemists can break apart materials using their powers and reassemble said materials into something else, but there is always an equivalent exchange. Most alchemists use a chalk drawing on the ground in order to channel their powers, but the Elric brothers are different. When they were only ten and nine, they committed the Great Taboo: they tried to bring someone back from the dead using alchemy. In a desperate attempt to regain their beloved mother, the two brothers learned the law of equivalent exchange the hard way. Edward lost the lower part of one of his legs, and Alphonse lost everything: body and soul. Seeing what he had done, Ed dragged his bloody body to a suit of armor and bound his brother’s soul to it, in exchange for his right arm. (Again, all fantasy.)

Alphonse, waking up as a suit of armor and seeing a mutilated Ed, saves his older brother by taking him to a nearby neighbor. For the rest of the series, Edward struggles with the fact that it was his fault his brother has to live life as a bodiless suit of armor. Edward gets outfitted with a metal arm and leg and he has such a strong will and sense of determination, he makes a full recovery after just one year instead of the projected three.  Edward and Alphonse start working for the government as State Alchemists in order to have access to restricted materials they would otherwise not have. Taking the weight of the brothers’ mistake on his shoulders, Edward leads the way to finding a way to get their bodies back.

At the age of fifteen, Edward has literally been through hell and back. He isn’t perfect. He makes plenty of mistakes, and gets beaten to a pulp on multiple occasions, but he is clever enough to win the battle in the end, or at least escape to fight another day. He is quick to anger and often broods about his past mistakes. There is a moment when his childhood friend starts to cry after seeing a secret scrawled message. When Edward asks why she is crying, she says, “Because you won’t cry. Someone has to.”

I think part of the reason we connect so well to Byronic characters is because we can relate to them. Unlike the usual hero in fantasy or romantic fiction, these tortured heroes are in no way perfect. They make mistakes, and they suffer for those mistakes. They get knocked down again and again, only to get right back up. They fight, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they believe in the fight. Really, they don’t even want to be the hero, but there is no one else who can do what they can do.

Also, Byronic heroes are incredibly complex to create. There is a skill to making a character dark and brooding without coming off as whiny and self-absorbed. There have been series where one of the main characters is supposed to be a Byronic hero, but he has no redeeming qualities. Just a piece of advice, if you are going to purposely make someone unlikable, he has to have something to make the audience connect to him/her.

I love reading about Byronic heroes. There is something about seeing someone fight and claw toward a goal that is inspirational. We all have struggles, but in order to reach our goal, we have to keep pushing. It’s never going to be easy, and there will be set backs, but with perseverance, any dream can come true.

Below is a clip from Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s a bit of a spoiler, so if you plan on reading/watching the series, just skip to the end of this post. Or if you don’t mind, keep reading.

*SPOILER ALERT*
Ok, so you’re still reading. You have been warned…

In this scene, Edward has gone through the Door of Truth for a second time where he finds his brother, Alphonse’s emancipated, yet alive, body. It shows that there is still hope for the two brothers to return to normal. Near the end of the clip, through sheer stubbornness, Edward fights against the little hands of Truth that are pulling him back to reality to make a fierce promise to his brother.

https://youtu.be/-JhaYY1u1Rw

Looking at this from an outsider it may seem cheesy, but trust me, this scene is a tear jerker.

*END OF SPOILER*

So what other Byronic heroes can you think of? What do you think makes us love the dark hero? Also, do you think a Byronic hero could ever be a female protagonist? I look forward to reading your comments!