So tomorrow I start my first Thursday schedule plan. This is going to be a sneak peek of a future book in the morning and a guest blog around 12PM EST. Tomorrow’s guest blog will be Zombie Phreak, who will be helping me get a feel for this. You’ll get to hear how he got into Amazon reviewing and his personal take on the art of critiquing.
As for the sneak peek, I’m wondering if I should stop worrying about spoilers. I’ve been trying to keep a few later characters hidden, but that’s starting to get in the way of me doing certain things.
Do any other authors do sneak peeks and not worry about revealing new characters or future plot points?
Legends of Windemere 
As long as you aren’t going to give away the most major plot point or the end of the book i don’t see why it should matter. The turning points in the book won’t make sense unless they read it anyway.
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Good point. I might have to avoid the fifth book entirely and anything that mentions character deaths. I might be able to get away with the Sari ‘torture’ scene to get a feel for that.
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JK Rowling gave away a few pages of her new book on Goodreads. I think if she does it, it is probably a great idea.
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Following her example could work. I’m doing this because I found out that I got a few readers because of my previous sneak peeks. Just have to be careful.
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Looking forward to it.
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Thanks. I might actually go with one of the big events of Prodigy of Rainbow Tower. It’s a really juicy one that I’ve been dying to show people, but thought it would count as a spoiler. Now, I think it would just drive up interest.
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Actually, I can’t do that because I’m aiming to end the Prodigy of Rainbow Tower posts on that scene. Dang it. Too many books to juggle.
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If it’s an extreme plot twist I wouldn’t, as that’s the biggest part of books. If it’s a character reveal that won’t effect earlier books that aren’t yet out, then by all means go for it!
Basically, as long as it doesn’t spoil anything that isn’t out already then you’re safe. A character that only appears in book six of a series won’t be a spoiler as long as you’re not saying they die. 🙂
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Unfortunately, that negates everything in Books 3, 4, and 5. It also means I can’t use much from the Book 2. That’s the problem I’ve been having. If I fear every spoiler then I’ll be putting up boring filler. The sneak peeks that have gotten some attention are the ones that have the new characters and a plot twist. For example, I had the one where Nyx and Trinity (characters from book 2) battle in a necrocaster’s lair and are interrupted by Sari (debuts in book 3). There’s also the one where Luke meets with the girl he left at the alter, which is a big plot twist.
So the question is, where is the line between a tantalizing teaser scene with meat in it and a horrific spoiler?
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I suppose it also depends on what anchors your writing.
If your writing is character-focused, don’t worry about plot twists so much in teasers.
If plot twists are your main aspect, then you really don’t want to spoil that.
So it’s a combination of knowing your writing and knowing your audience’s expectations. Personally, I’d be completely against any spoiler and want a book to be a complete blank spot. Yet my friends LOVE when there’s a spoiler because it gets them pumped for the release.
So after writing all this rambling I’ve come to a possible conclusion: Do the spoilers you want, simply warn people in advance and make it extremely clear that it’s a spoiler. Then it’s up to the readers whether or not they see the spoiler. 🙂
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I always assume that a ‘Sneak Peek’ implies spoilers, but I might be giving people too much credit.
My writing is very character driven, so I thought scenes with the new characters could help entice readers. A character is more than a scene and this also opens the door for me to do more character origin posts.
I’m looking at the sneak peeks as trailers since I lack the ability to make book trailers. It’s only once a week and I have 3 books to pull from, so I can avoid the bigger events. It’s still really hard to figure out what to choose. For example, I went with a humorous scene with established characters today instead of a scene that would reveal a new villain. I might do that one next week though because I want some feedback on it.
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It’s sad to say it, but you really have to underestimate peoples’ intelligence. Always overdo it just to be safe. It’s as simple as calling it “Sneak Peak (SPOILER Alert)” just to be safe.
How come you can’t do book trailers?
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I don’t have the ability to draw or the ability to create videos. I’m really not that good at those kinds of things. Also, that’s a single post at best and I was looking for something consistent to do on Thursdays. I have the guest blogging, but the random sneak peek scenes were getting a decent amount of attention.
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Well if you were desperate I’d be happy to do a trailer or two. I’ve done a few when bored, but I’ll admit that they’re as amateur as they come – just a few google images and musics slapped together with fairly miserable transitions. Although I rarely spent more than a day on them, so I’m sure with a little extra time I could make them more smooth. Here’s an example of one I did:
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The transitions weren’t that bad. Was that Da Vinci Code in there? I’m wondering about the legal stuff on there because the trailer gets destroyed the moment somebody complains about copyrights. That’s why I was thinking it’d be smarter to do it with public domain stuff or even fantasy art by deviantart or elfscape people with their permission. Just give credit at the end. Again, I still lack the ability to make something like this and you seem to be pretty busy.
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Just sent you an e-mail there about it Charles, give it a look when you can and let me know. 🙂
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Sure.
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I’m thinking about including the first chapter of my second book at the end of the first book.
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A lot of people do that. I was thinking of doing it too, but I use prologues, so it’d be a little strange. As it stands, I went for a humorous post instead of an action one to see how things work. Trying to avoid even the smallest spoiler makes this idea difficult.
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I can see how that would be hard.
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Part of me wonders if a scene like that would be more enticing because people would wonder how the heroes got to that point. For example, a character trapped in a dungeon would reveal part of the story and maybe they’ll talk about a character who died. Those are spoilers, but you don’t know the specifics.
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(Don’t know how you feel about this?) But in the Twilight series, the opening is actually part of a scene from later in the book, but it does a good job at drawing a reader in.
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I’ve seen that style a few times. I don’t think it would work for me. My prologues let me give my villains and gods some scenes, so I don’t have to squeeze them into the action later. It works rather well for present tense writing.
I’m rather neutral on Twilight, the tale of a girl struggling to decide between necrophilia and bestiality. 😉
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