THE BENEVOLENT FIRE HOSE

The World Wide Web is bursting with advice on how to do literally anything. Experts abound, and they're not shy about waving their opinions around.

Take writing, for instance.

Would you like a little advice and encouragement? Check out YouTube. You'll find more than you can handle. A LOT more.

Here's a list of five channels I think you'll find worthy of investigation. Simply navigate to youtube.com and type the name into the Search box at the top.

First up is Big Red Stripe. Yes, it's all about movie scripts, and a lot of this information is likely to be useless to you. (For now, at least. You ever think about writing a movie?) But plenty of his content concerns story and character and plot, basic stuff you'll be wrestling with in the process of throwing novels at KDP. Movies are high-concept and start fast (conflict on page one or go home). If you're interested in making KDP pay off, you should probably be writing high-powered category fiction—just like popular movies.

Next: Alyssa Matesic. She's an editor and knows what publishers want. No, I get it—you are your own publisher. What do you care what trad pubs want? Well, easy: They want what readers want, so they can sell it to them. And you want that information too, so you can sell stuff to your readers. Lots of basic plot and character info on this site.

Next: The Oxford Writer. Basic stuff about story, etc.

Then: Bookfox. Oh, God, the stuff keeps coming! Lots of detailed material here.

Finally: Patrick Walsh | Writer. He's a ghost writer and editor who likes to get his hands dirty by correcting faulty word ink. Plenty food for thought here.

There are many, many others, of course, folks who will provide you with enough material to warp your pretty little mind. You could seriously fall down the rabbit hole here, so watch yourself!

I'm not kidding, boys and girls.

Writers have to write, at some point, and listening to folks yammer on about how to write doesn't really count, fascinating as it all might be.

(It’s been said you have to write a million words before you can be trusted behind a keyboard. How’re you coming with that assignment?)

So pace yourself, okay? Binge a bunch of this stuff, ponder what sounds useful, and jump clear!

You've got things to do, right?