Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

Having recently completed a rigorous scientific investigation into the relationship between writers and holly bushes (over at Writers Helping Writers), I felt obligated to continue my “research.” My snarky writing-self demanded it.

Backstory

For those who missed my Writers Helping Writers post, here’s the scoop:

Holly leaves don't begin life with spikes. They start smooth, and get stabby only after repeated encounters with grazing animals. The plant adapts. It develops defenses. It becomes (in less-than-botanical terms), quite stabby.

The Parallels with Writers Can’t Be Unseen

This holly bush discovery explained so much about writers that I immediately began cataloging the various subspecies. After decades in writing communities, conferences, critique groups, and online forums, I can report that Writer Holly exists in several distinct varieties.

You’ve likely met some of these sub-varieties of “Writer Holly.” (You’ll have to let me know in the comments if you belong to one. I sure do.)

The Critique Group Holly

This variety can hear the phrase "I have a suggestion…" from three blocks away.

Researchers believe their hearing evolved after prolonged exposure to comments such as:

• "The middle feels a bit slow."
• "I wasn't connecting with the protagonist."
• "Have you considered cutting Chapter Eight?"

The remarkable thing about Critique Group Holly is that it voluntarily returns to the very environment that wounded it. Sometimes weekly. (Scientists remain baffled.) It is undetermined whether the repeated stimuli of weekly vs monthly vs quarterly make a difference in the spiky-ness of Critique Group Holly.

More research is needed.

The Query Letter Holly

This sub-species begins life cheerful and optimistic. The ego-chomping nature of querying changes their leaves from smooth to spiky, almost overnight.

After approximately thirty rejections, new spikes appear.

After sixty rejections, their spikes look sharp enough to key a car.

After one hundred rejections, this subspecies can identify a form rejection from the first six words and has developed the prickly protection of a medieval fortress.

Common behaviors include:

• Refreshing email every nine minutes.
• Interpreting silence as an ominous communication strategy.
• Saying things like, "I'm fine," while maintaining a spreadsheet that would impress an auditor.

This variety survives almost entirely on caffeine and spite.

The Conference Holly

Conference Holly appears friendly. But beware of sitting too close during industry panel discussions.

This subspecies has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to hear publishing professionals answer pressing writer questions with:

• "It depends."
• "The market is changing."
• "Nobody really knows."

Conference Holly develops a fascinating defense mechanism. Ask what they're writing, and they'll immediately launch into a polished pitch they've rehearsed in the shower, in traffic, and while standing in line for coffee.

It should be noted that Conference Holly members are champion queue-ers. They’ll stand patiently in line for coffee, elevators, book signings…and industry chats.

The Amazon Review Holly

One of the most sensitive species in the ecosystem.

Amazon Review Holly can receive ninety-nine glowing reviews and one negative review. Guess which one it remembers? A five-star review is treasured. A one-star review can trigger more spikes than a cactus.

Years later, the writer will still remember: "I couldn't connect with the characters." Meanwhile, they cannot recall where they left their keys ten minutes ago.

Amazon Review Holly memory is an ongoing mystery.

The Goodreads Holly

This species evolved from the Amazon Review Holly, but in a much harsher environment.

Goodreads Holly understands a terrifying truth: Readers are talking about your book even when they aren't talking to you. Their reviews are not intended for the author, and that changes everything.

A Goodreads reviewer might write: "The heroine annoyed me." And fifty-seven strangers will arrive to discuss the heroine as if she were a problematic aunt at a holiday dinner.

Goodreads Holly tells itself: "Reviews are for readers." (Then immediately reads every review.) Goodreads Holly also possesses an extraordinary ability to locate a two-star review hidden among hundreds of positive ratings.

The writer then spends the rest of the afternoon wondering whether the reviewer was right. (Even when the reviewer admits they only read three chapters.)

The Social Media Holly

This subspecies, which did not exist when I started writing, now appears everywhere.

Social Media Holly can spend four hours creating content about writing in order to avoid writing.

Its natural habitat includes:

• Instagram analytics
• Facebook engagement reports
• LinkedIn impressions
• Threads conversations
• Twenty-seven browser tabs explaining algorithms

A common mating call is: "I should really be working on my manuscript." (The manuscript, meanwhile, has not seen its creator in days.)

And finally we come to…

The Veteran Writer Holly

This is the most interesting variety of all.

At first glance, it still appears prickly. The spikes are definitely there. But something changes after enough years of being gnawed on by predators.

Veteran Writer Holly learns the difference between criticism and catastrophe. It learns that one rejection isn't the end. One bad review or disappointing lunch isn't the end.

It learns that most writing wounds are survivable.

More importantly, it has learned that not every deer deserves a response. Veteran Writer Holly has wisdom. And exhaustion. (But mostly wisdom.)

Final Thoughts

What fascinates me most about holly is that the plant itself never changes. Underneath every prickly leaf is the same DNA that existed before the outside world nibbled at it. The spikes are an adaptation, not an identity.

Maybe that's true for writers too.

Beneath the rejection letters, critique comments, conference pitches, Amazon reviews, algorithm panic, imposter syndrome, and emergency chocolate...

...the original writer is still there.

That person who loved stories. Who wanted to make something. The one who sat down one day and thought, “Writing sounds fun.”

That person still lives inside each of us.

Even on the days when we’re exhausted by the rest of it. Even when we’re feeling a bit stabby. We still keep writing, and we still love words. (Which may be the strongest evidence yet that writers are a little bit crazy.)

But at least we're all here, hanging out together in this writing forest.

Cheers, y’all!

So now enquiring minds want to know... Do you belong to one of these various writing subspecies? Perhaps to several? I'd love to hear about it down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for small businesses. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.

Top photo purchased from Depositphotos

by Sarah Sally Hamer

A book becomes a universe the moment a character draws breath. Not the moment the plot begins, not the moment the setting takes shape, but the moment a presence stirs on the page and begins to exert its quiet pull.

Characters are the gravitational bodies of a story. They are the weather systems, the shifting seasons, the tectonic plates. They are the reason a reader steps inside and the reason they stay. A story without characters is a landscape without wind. A story with characters is a world in motion.

When we talk about the universe of characters, we’re not talking about a cast list. We’re talking about the ecology of a narrative. The way one person’s longing changes the temperature of a room. The way another person’s silence creates a pressure drop. The way someone’s wound bends the emotional space around them. A character is never just a person. A character is a force field.

And a universe is made of forces.

The First Law: Characters Create Gravity

Every character has a center of gravity — a pull that shapes the space around them. Some characters pull inward, drawing others close, creating intimacy, confession, and collision. Others push outward, creating distance, tension, or the sense that something is always just out of reach.

A protagonist’s gravity is often the strongest, but not always the most interesting. Sometimes the most powerful gravitational field belongs to the character who barely speaks, or the one who appears only in memory, or the one whose absence is the loudest presence in the room.

Gravity is not about page time. It’s about emotional mass.

A character with a wound, a longing, a secret, a contradiction — that character bends the narrative space. They make other characters react. They make the reader lean in. They create the sense that something is happening even when no one is moving.

When you build a universe of characters, you’re really building a map of gravitational pulls. You’re deciding who orbits whom, who collides, who escapes, who burns up on re‑entry.

The Second Law: Characters Generate Weather

Every character carries a weather system inside them. Some walk into a scene like a cold front, dropping the temperature by ten degrees. Others bring heat, humidity, the kind of air that makes everyone sweat. Some are lightning, some are fog, some are the stillness before a storm.

A character’s weather is the emotional atmosphere they create simply by existing.

Think of the friend who makes everyone relax the moment they enter the room or the colleague who makes everyone sit up straighter. Think of the relative who turns every holiday into a pressure cooker. These are weather systems. They are predictable, recognizable, and powerful.

In fiction, a character’s weather system is one of the most reliable tools you have. It lets you shift tone without changing setting. It lets you create tension without adding conflict. It lets you reveal relationships without a single line of exposition.

When two characters with opposing weather systems meet, the story experiences a front. A clash. Maybe even a storm. And storms are where stories crack open.

The Third Law: Characters Shape Time

Time in a book is not chronological. It is emotional, stretching, contracting, looping, fracturing, and freezing. It all depends on who is in the room.

A character who lives in regret pulls the story backward. A character who lives in fear pushes the story forward. A character who lives in longing suspends the story in a kind of shimmering present — a moment that feels like it could last forever or break at any second.

Characters shape time by the way they experience it.

A child’s time is different from someone older. Someone who is grieving a loved one experiences differently from someone in love. A character waiting for news experiences time differently than when they try to outrun it.

So, when you build a universe of characters, you’re building a universe of clocks — each one ticking at its own pace, each one telling a different truth about what matters.

The Fourth Law: Characters Carry Mythology

Every character is a myth in the making.

They carry origin stories, sacred objects, taboos, rituals, omens. They carry the stories they tell about themselves and the stories others tell about them. They carry the stories they refuse to tell at all.

A character’s mythology is the symbolic layer of their existence — the archetype they echo, the pattern they repeat, the shadow they cast. And, ultimately, the way the reader understands them.

We have characters who are heroes but don’t want to be heroes. Villains don’t always know they’re villains. Some are tricksters, healers, guardians, wanderers who guard the threshold over which the protagonist must pass.

When you understand a character’s mythology, you understand their purpose in the universe of the book. You understand what they awaken, what they challenge, what they protect, what they destroy.

You understand why they matter. And so will the reader.

The Fifth Law: Characters Create Ecosystems

A universe of characters is not a collection of individuals. It is an ecosystem — a living, interdependent network of needs, fears, desires, and histories.

Characters evolve in response to one another. They adapt. They compete. They cooperate. They form alliances, symbioses, rivalries. They create balance or imbalance. They create scarcity or abundance. They create harmony or collapse.

When one character changes, the ecosystem shifts.

A character who finds courage destabilizes the character who depended on their fear. An honest person destabilizes the character who depended on silence. Someon who leaves can destroy the character who depended on their presence.

This is why character development is never isolated. It is always relational. Always ecological. Always part of a larger system.

The Sixth Law: Characters Are Portals

Every character opens a door into a different way of seeing the world.

Some teach the reader to notice beauty. Another teaches them how to survive. The wise one, or better yet, the fool can teach them how to grieve, or hope, or forgive, or fight, or surrender.

Characters expand the reader’s emotional vocabulary.

They let the reader inhabit lives they’ve never lived, feel feelings they’ve never felt, and imagine futures they’ve never considered. They let the reader practice empathy, curiosity, courage.

A universe of characters is a universe of portals — each one leading somewhere the reader has never been.

The Seventh Law: Characters Are Alive

This is the law writers whisper about. The one that feels like magic.

Characters are alive.

Not in the literal sense, but in the creative sense — the sense that they surprise you, resist you, argue with you, refuse your plans, demand their own arcs, their own truths, their own endings.

A character who is alive will not let you write the wrong scene. They will not let you force them into a shape that doesn’t fit. They will not let you silence them when they need to speak.

Bottom line, a universe of characters is a universe that talks back.

And that is the moment a book becomes more than a book. It becomes a living world.

The Writer as Cosmologist

To write a book is to build a universe. To build a universe is to understand the laws that govern it. And to understand those laws is to listen — deeply, patiently, reverently — to the characters who inhabit it.

You are not their puppet master, you are their cosmologist. Their cartographer. Their witness.

Writers map their gravity, track their weather, listen to their clocks, study their myths. You observe their ecosystems. You open their portals. You honor their aliveness.

And in doing so, you create a universe that feels real enough for a reader to enter, wander, and remember long after they’ve closed the book.

Because the universe of characters is not just the world inside the story. It is the world the reader carries with them when the story ends.

What does your character universe look like?

Join Sarah Sally for a free video on this subject at this link: https://youtu.be/OmNaZLsmIjQ.

About Sarah (Sally)

Sarah (Sally) Hamer is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two RWA Golden Heart finals.

A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online at both margielawson.com and nostresswriting.com with blogs for writersinthestormblog.com/ as well as her monthly blog for thewriteconversation.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Mind Potential, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. 

You can find her at sally@mindpotential.org

Featured picture from Canva Magic Media.

by Ellen Buikema

By 2018, I’d organized myself into a fairly neat routine. Worked a bit on the house in the morning after a meal, reviewed email, went over the previous day’s writing, fixed what needed fixing, and compose new material until I needed a break or went blank.

The remains of the days varied, but I worked at our family dining room table in the same spot each day with a worry stone given to me by the mother of a past student and a stuffed dragon that guarded my writing area.

Occasionally, Bailey, our lovable black lab, would lay down on the floor with me and help me think when I was stuck for what to write next. That’s part of my process, either lay down to think or play solitaire using physical cards. Solitaire on the screen doesn’t work for me. I need to remove myself completely from electronics when temporarily stuck. I have no idea why that is, but it is.

The Big Move

Bailey, our wonderful, unofficial therapy dog and writing partner passed over the Rainbow bridge that year.

Since we’d both retired, we decided to move to Mexico and use living there as a base for travel. Eventually we found a place that felt right for us, Mazatlán, off the sea of Cortez.

Now, settled in a condo off the beach, I could get back to the business of writing. Except there were differences:

• Worry stone, hiding somewhere.
• Dragon Guardian, in a box with a friend in Phoenix.
• Dining room table, left behind for the new owners of our house.
• Writing Partner Pup, in heaven where he belonged—angel on four paws.
• Daily schedule, drastically changed due to neighborhood noise.

Living in a port city can be fantastic. Busy. Lots to do of cultural interest in El Centro Historico. Opportunities to meet people from all over the world.

Mazatlán is home to Banda music. If you’re not familiar with this musical genre, imagine a marriage of Mexican Norteño and German Oompah music. It’s not on my favorites list, but is very popular there.

When the Germans came though Mazatlán in the mid-to-late 19^th century they left beer (Pacifico) and Oompah. Sometimes, very late at night, musicians would play their tubas along the beach. That being a horrific way to be roused from sleep.

Basically, the beauty of the area aside, my writing process and writing comforts were caput.

Do we need the perfect writing conditions?

Some days when you open up the laptop the writing flows. Other times you stare at the screen and nothing comes to mind. Author Kris Maze, in a blog post for WITS, has helpful suggestions for getting the writing flow back after falling into a slump—never a fun place to be.

Having the perfect writing condition for one’s self is wonderful but life happens and you must either change your methods or be distraught at not being able to write.

Instead of perfect, try aiming for what works.

Dealing With Your Inner Perfectionist

You sit in front of your notebook, laptop, or for me recently, a blank canvas. You think, well isn’t it lovely, all that blankness—perfect just as it is.

My canvas depicting a polar bear in a blizzard of blinding white needed to become a jungle scene with parrots for the grandbaby’s nursery.

• What if I get the perspective wrong?
• How on earth can I possibly mix that unusual shade of blue?
• I’ve never painted anything misty before. What if it ends up looking blotchy?

This need for everything to go right can cause a whopping case of paralysis. Instead, take a deep breath, pick up the brush, pen, pencil, keyboard, and get something down.

Perfection is not real; it is an illusion. There is beauty in imperfection.

Walk into a library and look around at the many books, all works of art in their own right. Not one of them was flawless in the beginning. Even the best writers have published works that still have the occasional error.

Keep These Points in Mind

Your first draft will be a hot mess. No worries! First drafts are supposed to be messy. It takes a village to put together a great book. Lots of eyes-on help.

Remember that the goal is to tell a good story, which will take many drafts. But you have to start with the first one.

Focus on attainable goals. The over-arching goal is to complete your story, but there are the day-to-day benchmarks along the way:

• Mastering your writing routine
• Getting in your daily word count goals
• Improving your writing skills

Final Thoughts

Try what my best friend does, write as if no one is ever going to read your work. Write for yourself. Get it out of your head. In this way, there is no fear of composing words on a page.

Learn to embrace imperfection.

There will be disappointing days when the Muse refuses to show up to work. On those days step away from the computer, notebook, canvas, and do something that gives you joy. Short breaks can do wonders. A bit later, with a fresh outlook, read over what you’ve started, ask yourself “What happens next?” and move forward.

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written Parenting ... A Work in Progress, 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 of Mazatlán at sunset taken by Ellen L. Buikema