Writers in the Storm

A blog about writing

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17 Tips to Care for the Writer's Digital Soul

by Edie Melson

As writers in this day and time, we combat a specific kind of stress—digital stress. So much of our lives are spent seated at a computer, on the phone, or even in digital meetings. Because of that, I've discovered there are certain things I need to build into my life to stay healthy—spiritually, physically, and emotionally. So below are my tips, with thoughts about how to apply them in our lives.

1. Decide on boundaries, write them down and STICK with them.

These are some of mine: 

  • Time is no longer driven by my phone. 
  • I set a time to return text messages, emails, and phone calls—not during lunch or after working hours.
  • I have set office time. And my phone is NOT my office. I don’t work during family time. 
  • I’m specific with clients on what type of correspondence I expect. For example, while I will answer emergency text messages, all other correspondence should be in email. 

2. Weekends off are now the norm, NOT the exception.

As writers, it’s far too easy to always be at work. But for our mental health we need to learn to set healthy boundaries about time off and time for work.

3. Learn to limit digital meetings.

Zoom Fatigue is a real thing! Spending long hours staring at a screen leads to eye fatigue, back issues, and all the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle.

4. Work smarter, not harder when connecting with your audience.

Learn the things that help you connect with your audience. Even if you hire someone else for marketing, make sure you know how you want it done.

5. Families come first.

Let’s face it, life happens. Kids get sick, parents grow older and need help. One of the advantages to writing for a living is having a flexible schedule. But we should never sacrifice our family time.

6. Be aware of the pressure coming at you right now and make your own decisions.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is this, just because I see a need doesn’t mean I’m obligated to fulfill it. There are ALWAYS things that need doing, and jobs that need filling. We cannot do everything. Don’t let life apply pressure that keeps you from saying yes to the things you are called to do.

7. Kick up the volume.

 I love to play music while I work. It helps me focus, inspires me, and even sets the mood for what I’m writing.

8. Relationships matter, and beyond that, they need nurturing to survive.

Many writers are introverts. That means we are energized by time alone and drained by time with people. Neither one of those truths is an excuse to ignore the relationships in our lives.

9. Reach out when you’re down.

This one is hard for me. I don’t want to be a burden or bring someone down. But I’ve learned that not asking for help discourages others from requesting help from me.

10. Field trips are time well spent.

I love going on field trips. I’m inspired by many things—a hike outdoors, a trip to the zoo, a movie, a concert, and a visit to a museum or art gallery. Visiting places that inspire me aren’t luxury ways to spend my time, they are necessities.

11. Mix it up.

I have certain things I usually write. I’m good at nonfiction, blog posts, and articles. But one of the reasons I do well is because I also write things that challenge me and force me to grow in my craft.

12. Quit judging how you’re doing by what you’ve accomplished.

This is another difficult one. I love checking things off my to-do list. I feel like I’m a success when I achieve something. But there is a lot of satisfaction found in the process and in being rather than doing.

13. It’s okay (even encouraged) to have hobbies that have NOTHING to do with writing and/or reading. 

Just like field trips, my hobbies feed my creativity.

14. Keep moving.

 Don’t neglect your physical well-being. That means staying active, limber, and in good shape. Trust me, it’s much easier to write when you’re not in pain.

15. Be gentle with yourself. 

Writing is hard. Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith said, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” Our words mean so much and represent who we are. It’s emotionally taxing to write and then submit those words to the world.

16. Write it down.

I’m a hug fan of journaling. Writing things down helps me process life. In addition, it gives me good material for future projects.

17. Seek time apart. 

Yes, we need to nurture the relationships in our lives, but we also need to embrace solitude. For me this means time in nature, as well as time in prayer and spiritual contemplation.

These are the things I try to put into practice to stay healthy and care for the digital parts of my creative life. Now it’s your turn. How do you build Digital Soul Care into your creative life?

Learn more from Edie Melson, Sally Hamer, Margie Lawson, and four other amazing writers by attending the “Polishing Your Mirror: Self-Care for Writers” Symposium, March 23-24, 2024. Visit MindPotential.org for more info!

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About Edie

Edie Melson is a woman of faith with ink-stained fingers observing life through the lens of her camera. She’s learned to embrace the ultimate contradiction of being an organized creative. As an author, blogger, and speaker she’s encouraged and challenged audiences across the country and around the world. Her numerous books reflect her passion to help others develop the strength of their God-given gifts and apply them to their lives, often using creativity to empower this connection. The Write Conversation, the blog she developed and manages, reaches thousands and has been on the Writer’s Digest Top 101 Sites for Writers since 2017.

As a social media and blogging expert she’s worked with clients that range from authors and speakers to business and ministry leaders. She also knows the necessity of Soul Care and leads retreats, conferences & workshops around the world on staying connected to God. Her numerous books, including the award-winning Soul Care series reflect her passion to help others develop the strength of their God-given gifts. She’s the director of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and board member of the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. Connect with Edie on her blog, The Write Conversation, Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, and other places on social media.

Top Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

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Ways to Know Your Characters, Part 3- Flaws

by Ellen Buikema

In the real world we want to get rid of flaws. But to writers, flaws can be precious jewels, reflecting light on the storyline and all the other characters within.

A flaw for one character may be seen as a strength for another. Greed and dishonesty may be strengths to antagonists, but thought of as flaws to the protagonists in the story.

Why are character flaws desirable?

Tension

In a perfect world nothing will go wrong. What fun it that? Flawless characters are boring.

The way characters act, think, and speak weaves into the plot. Character flaws increase the odds that things will go wrong, sometimes horribly wrong, powering up conflicts. Flaws also help to differentiate between characters.

Relatability

Readers like to see a version of the familiar in characters. Recognize the struggles, see the mistakes made and how the characters deal with the drama.

When a character is overly agreeable and never unreasonable or cranky, they are hard to connect with, to feel for their problems and joy for their successes.

A character’s lack of imperfections makes them unlikeable. Flaws are key to crafting meaningful conflict for our stories.

Keep characters memorable. The hero may be kind, have a great sense of humor, but also have narcolepsy and sing in their sleep. Mixed traits mold the character’s definition. No one will forget the character that breaks into song while snoozing.

Realism

Our world is rich in interesting people with diverse, and often troubled backgrounds. Fictional people must be interesting too. Life is messy and the journey filled with speedbumps in the forms of conflict and indecision. A good story will reflect all that.

Creating Character Flaws

In fiction, a flaw isn’t always a negative character trait. It can also be a false belief, quirk, fear, or limitation, that is part of the character. A character flaw might be an annoyance or be damaging, to the character who possesses it or to those they encounter.

Any flaw a character possesses can be categorized as minor, major, or tragic. Let’s look at three types of flaws.

Minor Flaw

This is a flaw that sets apart a character in readers’ minds but doesn’t impact the story in a major way. Examples of a minor flaw include:

  • Excessive knuckle-cracking. One of many behaviors for nervousness.
  • A disability that requires the character to use a cane. The cane can be a handy weapon as well as a mobility device.
  • A bilingual character’s tendency to misuse words in their non-native tongue. One example is “chicken” for “kitchen.” I remember saying “cochinita” piglet instead of “cocinita” kitchenette causing my Spanish teacher to giggle.
  • Wide-eyed innocence. This can work well as comedic relief. For instance, the Dill character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Character flaws don’t have to be moral ones.

Major Flaw

This flaw impacts the character such that it affects the plot of the story. For example:

  • An addiction that gets a character in trouble with the mob.
  • Fear of intimacy that keeps a character walled away from love.
  • Stubbornness that keeps a character from accepting help.
  • Putting others first to the point of repeatedly nearly getting killed. Such as Katniss Everdeen in Susan Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Major flaws often represent moral failings, that may cause external, internal, or secondary conflicts that affect the plot.

Tragic Flaw

The tragic flaw that leads to a character’s downfall. Examples of a tragic flaw include:

  • Sense of duty that leads a character to needlessly sacrifice themselves.
  • Need for revenge that leads a character down a rampaging path toward destruction.
  • Overly trusting nature that sends a character into ruin.
  • The main antagonist of the Harry Potter series, Voldemort, has a tragic flaw—fear of death—that leads to his demise.

Tragic flaws are usually moral failings or idiotic tendencies that tie straight into a story’s main conflict. By the story’s climax, a character’s tragic flaw often results in a bad end.

Here are two useful lists of flaws to consider 101 Character Flaws and 70 Interesting Character Flaws for future works.

Consider the character’s journeys

To develop powerful flaws for your story’s characters, consider their journeys. Think about where your characters’ stories start and where you want them to end. Then create a flaw that will fuel the major internal and/or external conflicts they’ll experience. For example:

  • Your character must defeat an evil wizard that forever dwells underground. Their flaw might be an overwhelming fear of enclosed spaces.
  • You want your character to find true happiness. Their flaw might be the false belief that they’re unworthy of love.
  • Your character must solve the murder mystery. Their flaw might be that they are insufferable, which keeps other characters from sharing information helpful for the case.

Final Thoughts

When writing your story, consider the different viewpoints. What does each character think their strengths and weaknesses are? Does this influence how they treat others, and in what ways? How do their flaws influence choices they make?

Discovering flaws is a fantastic way to learn more about your characters, assist with the plot, and give you a better sense of your story and where it’s going.

Flaws make your characters relatable and interesting to the readers. Give all your main characters flaws and let the story flow from there.

What character flaws do you find most interesting in the books you’ve written or read? Do you think characters should have combinations of flaws, like major and minor, or minor and tragic? Have you felt empathy for a character with a tragic flaw?

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About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by syaifulptak57 from Pixabay

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How To Remove The Author Voice For Deep Point Of View

by Lisa Hall-Wilson

voice pattern

In deep point of view, the goal is to immerse the reader in the character’s lived experience of the story journey. The reader isn’t being told a story by an author about one, or many, characters. Rather, the character is living out this story in real time with the reader in their head the whole time.

If story is a car and the point of view character is the driver, the reader isn’t in a helicopter above the action where they can see everything (omniscient POV), nor are they in the backseat of the car with the author riding shotgun (third person POV). Even first person or limited third person keep the author in an ear piece when they’re riding shotgun. Deep POV puts the reader in the lap of the driver and the author/narrator isn’t even in the car.

Arguably, the biggest tool in the writer’s toolbox is the author’s or narrator’s voice. We want to remove it as much as possible in deep POV, and to do that we have to recognize it. And then we have to know what to replace it with.

What Is The Author Or Narrator Voice?

The author or narrator voice is the storyteller. In third person (even limited or close third person), the author is telling a story about a character. The reader may get some dialogue or thoughts from the character directly, but the author is telling the story. In first person, you can have either a narrator voice, or have the main character narrate their own story.

Deep POV is different. Those writing in limited third person will have learned to put some limits on the author voice, but that voice is still telling the story. The author voice often uses a lot of telling, which in acceptable in varying degrees depending on the point of view style you’re using.

The function of the author voice is to:

  • Summarize
  • Explain
  • Justify

If we can begin to catch where this outside-to-the-story voice sneaks in to give the reader information, we have a great first step to immersing readers IN the story.

How The Author Voice Summarizes

We’re all writers, I’m not going to define summary. However, this is an important tool in storytelling because it allows us to make sure the reader “gets it” and follows the story with an economy of words. This could include time gaps. Three weeks later, Tom sat at his desk again after vacation.

It could be summarizing a setting, or summarizing what it is about the setting the character is noticing. Tom noticed the hole in the wall immediately.

The house looked tired with its broken windows and crooked shutters.

Tom walked through the house, the modern organic aesthetic doing its best to create peace and serenity.

Do you see how a voice outside the story (ie. Not the POV character) is summarizing what the character sees, perceives, thinks, feels, etc? Often, for those who have learned to practice showing, what happens is they begin showing AND telling. In deep POV, we’d strive to remove the author voice so that the information comes to the reader raw, without explanation.

Examples

Tom slid his gym bag under his desk and reached for the stack of mail. He sifted through the envelopes. Three weeks and no job offer.

Tom kicked off his shoes and groped in the dark for the switch. His fingers dipped inside a hole in the drywall, about the size of fist.

Tom stared at the broken glass in the windows, the last shutter hanging from one hinge, the blistered paint, and the sag to the front porch.

Tom followed Ann through the living room. He trailed a finger across a macrame pillow and a thick knit blanket thrown over the sofa arm. No bright colours, no clutter, everything in the room begged to be touched or invited him to forget the rest of the world just for a while.

I hope from these brief examples you can see the difference. In deep pov, every word on the page has to come from the character. A good place to start is limiting yourself to only what the character can see, hear, touch, know, learn, etc. But more than that, deep POV aims to capture the lived experience of the character.

How The Author Voice Explains

It’s easy to reach for the author voice to explain how a character feels, why they’re doing something (or not doing something), contextualize a setting or provide backstory. Watch for anywhere a voice external to the point of view character enters the story. To be clear, using the author voice, using explanation isn’t wrong, but if the goal is to write in deep point of view, we want the reader to discover or learn this information as the character does. If the character already knows the information, we need to give them a reason to think of that detail.

With Author Voice:

There’s Tom, Cindy’s third husband.

In Deep POV:

“Is that Pete?”

“No, that’s Tom. Cindy’s third husband.”

With Author Voice:

It just wasn’t that easy for someone with his past.

In Deep POV:

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, the gaping ache in his chest threatening to swallow him whole. “It’s not that easy!”

With Author Voice:

Tom kicked the can down the street pretending to score the game-winning goal instead of tripping in front of the net like at last night’s game. Macy and her friends pointed at him from the swings, laughing. He was such a loser.

In Deep POV:

Tom timed his steps. He swung like he held a hockey stick while he kicked the can farther down the road, his bag dropping from his shoulder to hang from his elbow. The roar of a crowd cheers the game-winning goal in his mind. He lifts his hands in victory. Girl-voices reached him from the swings. Macy and her giggle friends pointed at him, laughing. He lowered his arms and shoved his hands so deep in his pockets he might reach his knees. Perfect.

With Author Voice:

The Black Forest was known for its gnarled trees, bogs, and unpredictable pits. “It’s not a nice place.” Edric couldn’t suppress the body shiver that rattled his spine.

This is where the author voice gets sneaky, right. There’s explanation here that does not come from the POV character (Edric) in this sentence. This might just be labelled as “telling” by an editor, but it’s the author voice explaining WHY Edric is uneasy. Also, if you look at the rewrite, do you see how the author voice describes the setting one way, but when forced to put the explanation into the character’s voice, the word choices is more reflective of who that character is, his mood, priorities, etc.

In Deep POV:

Edric couldn’t suppress the body shiver that rattled his spine.

Arah leaned her shoulder into his. “What’s wrong?”

“Place is full of diseased trees, bogs, and sink holes. It’s not a nice place.”

How The Author Voice Justifies

This one can be tricky and stealthy. Most writers pick up on the summary and explanation with a bit of practice, but this one can be hard to spot. Often the author voice creeps in here to provide the reason “why” for the reader. Two words I like to watch for “made” and “because,” as a starting place.

The smell of hot biscuits made Tom want to call his mom.

Tom loved Becky because she was smart.

I mean, these are super obvious, right. But can you parse out how the author voice is justifying here?

Part of why it’s sneaky to see the justification is because often it flows easier when you use your own voice. It’s harder to write every word from the POV character’s perspective.  

What about this one?

With Author Voice:

He’d trained his whole life for this moment, as many before him had, but never thought to see it with his own eyes.

Deep POV:

Edric scrubbed his face with his hands and stared out the window. They were at war. Was supposed to happen to some fool far in the future, not him. Not now.

The author or narrator voice is a tool, it’s not right or wrong.

Do you think removing the author voice brings the reader deeper into the story? Where might you choose to use the author voice intentionally and cheat deep POV?

About Lisa

Lisa Hall-Wilson is a writing teacher and award-winning writer and author. She’s the author of Method Acting For Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layers. Her blog, Beyond Basics For Writers, explores all facets of the popular writing style deep point of view and offers practical tips for writers. 

She runs the free Facebook group Going Deeper With Emotions where she shares tips and videos on writing in deep point of view. 

Lisa is running a Deep POV Masterclass starting March 18 for 4 weeks. People can visit her Facebook group to be notified when registration opens.

Image Credits:

Top image from Depositphotos.

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