Writers in the Storm

by Lisa Norman

So, you’re going to have an author website! Great! You’ll want a couple things:

• a domain name — the address people type in to get to your website. It’s usually your own name if you can get it, or you might need to buy one, although you can use a free one from some platforms;
• and hosting—a home where your website will live.

Those are the basics. Domain names are pretty familiar to anyone who has spent any time online. But hosting — that’s probably the least understood expense, and often the largest! It's the one I get the most questions about. The company you choose to host your website can affect your budget and how well your website works.

Note: if you use a hosted platform like Substack, Shopify, or even World Anvil, you're leaving the management of the server to them. Essentially, they become your hosting company, and they maintain your connection to the internet.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this post because clients ask about this all the time. I have strong opinions about which hosting companies I recommend to my clients because I have to support those sites in the future. My "short-list" of recommended hosting companies changes often. I'm too old to waste time fighting with bad hosting. I tried to find a good review site to include in this post, but none of them felt reliable, especially long term. Hosting companies often spend more money on advertising than on their machines or their tech support people. Word of mouth is often more reliable than review lists, so asking friends who are happy with their website is not a bad idea.

What does a website hosting company do?

Website hosting provides the computer (called a server) that your website lives on. This computer should stay connected to the internet at all times. And since anything connected to the internet is constantly attacked by killer robots, it needs to be secure. The domain name you use points at this computer.

The problem with hosting is that it can be hard to know if a company is good or not! You pay a lot of money, and if you have a good host, they are invisible. You aren’t calling them once a month about problems, because the problems don’t exist. But not all hosting companies are equal. And many of the biggest names spend more money on advertising than on making sure they provide a good product. Here are some things you need to consider.

A good web host will do more than just stay connected to the internet. (A bad one may not even do that well.) It should protect your website, connect you to services like email and SSL (an encryption method that makes websites safer to use), and have the software necessary to run your website.

If you just have a plain hand-coded site (yes, they still exist), you may not need much software on your server. But if you use a modern content management system like WordPress, you need a server that can handle geeky website programming languages like PHP and MySQL. These languages need to be updated regularly or they'll become targets for hackers.

Yes, I know these are things you don’t care about—but I guarantee: if you don’t have them, you’ll care!

Are there hosting companies that don’t have these basics? YES! There are also companies that charge extra for these services. You need to know what you’ll be paying for—and how much.

Basic services that aren’t always available:

• Quality technical support: This is one area where I see huge differences in hosts.
• High-speed servers: Every hosting company says they are fast. That doesn’t mean any more than a politician telling you they’re honest. Some companies’ servers are just faster than others. And visitors will leave if a site loads slowly.
• Updated PHP and MySQL: These are annoyingly important and surprisingly not always there on some budget hosting plans. I’ve even seen hosts promoting that they have WordPress-quality hosting that don’t meet the minimum requirements for WordPress.

How to compare prices

When you look at the cost of a hosting plan, you want to look at a few different things:

• Does the plan include free email? If it doesn’t, you will pay extra for your custom email address (like Jane@JaneDoe.com). A charge of $5/month is not uncommon if you have to buy it as an add-on.
• Does the plan include access to free SSL? If not, you’ll pay extra for it. I’ve seen charges for SSL cost $50-$150/year.
• Look at the storage space. Websites are tiny things. But if you decide you want to store a lot of high resolution images (don’t) or video (don’t do that either) on your hosting system, you’ll be paying extra for that.
• Hosting company reputation—this one can be harder to verify, but a host with a poor reputation can affect whether your email gets to your readers' inboxes or how well your site shows up on search engines

Ways to save money on hosting

• The first year on any hosting company is usually cheaper. Websites move.
• Buy a good plan that supports multiple websites and share with friends.
• Ask the hosting company if they offer longevity discounts. Mine gives me 20% off for 2 years and 30% off for 3 years, but only if I ask. Not all do, but some will.

I’ve been a web developer since the web was new. Here are some horror stories I’ve seen:

• A hosting company lied to one of my clients and said that a service was unnecessary and that they’d never provided it. Problem: I’d used that service on that hosting company for about 10 years. The technician didn’t know how to set it up, so he lied. We changed hosting companies and her site worked fine. The service was automatic on her new host.
• A hosting company that boasted WordPress hosting where the “edit post” screen wouldn’t load all the way. You couldn’t post a blog post. It’d run WordPress… but you couldn’t edit more than a page every few hours or it overloaded the server.
• Hosting servers with internal viruses that allow evil actors to hack websites from within.
• Automated backups that never ran. They said they did… right up until you needed to restore one. Then the company said that it was on the marketing material, but shouldn’t be something you relied on.
• A client’s website got hacked. When he tried to contact support, he was in the hold queue for 8 hours before being disconnected. (This was a well-publicized internal hosting company hacking that affected hundreds of thousands of websites. No, calling tech support should NOT have been his first recourse, but… well, he called me second.)
• A client switched to a cheaper hosting company and his website started crashing about once a month. It’d come back up, but he’d just have to wait until the server restarted.
• Hosting companies that don’t monitor their reputation, and then their email addresses get flagged as spam. (Note: if you don’t set up your email correctly, it will also get stuck in spam filters, but I’m talking about a host that actively allowed known spammers to have accounts on their servers. Anything coming out of those servers looked like spam. This is more common with budget hosting and is one reason good hosting often costs more.)
• A beautiful website on a bargain hosting company that wasn’t being indexed by search engines because the host was of a low reputation. We moved it to a better host and the site’s discoverability improved right away.

It may not be your website software

Pain points I’ve seen authors have due to hosting:

• Slow website
• Inability to update a site
• Emails not being delivered
• Headaches because their website keeps doing weird things

When I meet people who’ve had bad experiences with websites, much of the time it isn’t actually the website software that caused the problem. But because web-hosting servers are such geeky things, it can be hard for a normal person to realize that the problem isn’t their website but their host! And sometimes technical support representatives lie.

One of my favorite stories was an author who had landed a big promo deal. He was going to be on national television on Monday. His PR person contacted me on Friday to do a review of his website and get it ready for the event. As I was looking over the site and making sure it was ready, I asked about the hosting plan. Could it handle the sudden spike in traffic?

“No problem. I have it on a computer in my friend’s basement. He’s a geek, and says it’ll be fine.”

I flagged this as a concern, but with 2 days before the event, we were too short on time to resolve it.

Five minutes into the interview, the site went down.

Have you ever thought about where your website lives?

About Lisa

Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.

Lisa writes as Deleyna Marr and is the owner of Deleyna's Dynamic Designs, a web development company focused on helping writers, and Heart Ally Books, LLC, an indie publishing firm.

Interested in learning more from Lisa? Sign up for her newsletter or check out her classroom where she teaches social media, organization, technical skills, and marketing for authors!

Top image from Depositphotos.

by Jenny Hansen

When I first began writing, a lot of common writing terms and quotes made no sense to me. Maybe you felt that way too. I'd have running commentary in my head about point of view, dialogue, turning points. Because seasoned professionals said smart things about writing and I had no frame of reference for most of it.

Me at writing seminars in the way back:

• Write what you know. (I don't know ANYTHING.)
• Show, don't tell. (I'm writing a book...don't I HAVE to tell the story?)
• Tension on every page! (What kind of tension? WHICH page?)
• The 1st turning point happens a quarter of the way through the book. (What's a turning point???)

Reference: Seminar speakers in bold. I was the bumbler in the parentheses.

I bumbled along for a very very long time, reading writing books, and attending seminars. Scribbling stories that make me cringe now when I come across them. They had no structure, no stakes to keep anyone engaged, and no clear turning points.

Knowledge Begets Knowledge

Frankly, I didn't have even a glimmer of why a turning point was important until I heard Stephen J. Cannell speak about 3-Act Structure. (He was the writer behind tons of TV shows -- Castle, Rockford Files, The A-Team, and the original 21 Jump Street.) However, for turning points it was all Jennifer Crusie, the author of books like Bet Me, Faking It, and Welcome to Temptation. She also co-wrote some great books with Bob Mayer.

I wouldn't have understood Crusie's talk on the five turning points of a story without Cannell's primer on what the three acts looked like. Every bit of writing craft you learn will build on other bits of writing craft you have mastered.

The 5 Turning Points

Jenny Crusie describes writing structure in a way that makes sense to me. Certainly, she gave me the big turning point light bulb moment at that conference more than a decade ago. She didn't just tell me what a turning point was, she further defined what they looked like in a story and why they are important.

What is a turning point?

A turning point is a part in the story where an event happens that throws the protagonist into a whole new place.

Your reader is going to connect to your hero or heroine from that first page – you give them the payoff with your turning points.

• The 1st Turning Point is where things go from stable to unstable. You can start 5 mins before or after this turning point, but not later. You must introduce a protagonist that the reader wants to stay with for the whole book. (It’s why you often start things off with the protagonist in trouble.)

• 2nd Turning Point - The original trouble gets worse.

• 3rd Turning Point is where the reader can't go back.

A really good turning point tip.

Crusie pointed out that some people title each turning point, which she thinks is a grand idea. In Agnes and the Hitman (currently free on Kindle Unlimited) the third turning point was called "Agnes Unleashed" and it is where she gives in to her rage.

• 4th Turning Point is the Dark Moment. This is the crisis where both the main character and the reader lose everything. This is the crisis the protagonist is not sure they can overcome. The actions the main character decides on here will determine the last turning point.

• 5th Turning Point is the end, where there is once more a stable world. It is just a new stable world, with a changed protagonist.

More Advice About Turning Points

There are a few things to clarify. Some of these (#1 and #6) are mine, but most of these are still sage advice from Ms. Crusie, with a teensy bit of commentary from me.

1. Don't confuse "inciting incident" with "turning point."

Stories are about a protagonist's journey in solving a big problem. The article linked above defines it like this:

"The Inciting Incident is the event or decision that begins a story's problem. Everything up and until that moment is Backstory; everything after is 'the story.' Before this moment there is an equilibrium, a relative peace that the characters in a story have grown accustomed to. This incisive moment, or plot point, occurs and upsets the balance of things. Suddenly there is a problem to be solved." 

The first turning point is when the protagonist commits to the journey ahead, despite the obstacles they'll face. It's a moment when everything changes, and the protagonist will spend the next quarter of the book reacting to the change and its implications.

2. Some math clarification from the diagram above.

If you're thinking in terms of a 100K word book, the first turning point would happen around 25K. For an 80K word book, it would be around 20K, This needs to be a very big event.

About 20-25K words later, you hit them with another big event. (This second event combats "sagging middles.")

3. Each chunk of the book should grow smaller.

Things are getting worse faster if the pacing is quick and you keep the main character struggling with these events.

4. Every scene should have a protagonist and an antagonist.

This keeps the conflict (aka "tension") on every page. Stephen Cannell called his antagonists, "the heavies." His advice when a story begins to drag? "Go see what the heavies are doing."

5. People do not change because of thoughts – they change because of actions.

In other words, don't stay up in the character's head thinking deep thoughts. Have them do something active, and interact with the other key people in that scene.

6. Do not identify these turning points until the 2^nd draft.

Your first draft is just about getting the big picture and the characters down. Attempting to do the math and the pacing for your novel before you've gotten the story out is not likely to do you any favors. Pace the novel AFTER the first draft.

Are those stellar or what? Have you ever heard a good talk on turning points? Who gave it? What turned the story structure lightbulb on for you? Please share your a-ha moment down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. 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 from Depositphotos.

by Ellen Buikema

 
A character's impact on the plot involves all their traits. It's important to understand how their background, personality, flaws, and strengths influence the plot and move the story forward.

This time, I’m covering how characters’ hobbies and interests affect the narrative.

Develop well-rounded characters

People in our world have hobbies and interests, as should our characters. Some enjoy the extreme end like bungee jumping, aerial silk gymnastics, surfing on boards upon the waves, or sails for land surfing on the desert floor. Others prefer more laid-back activities like gardening, reading, playing a musical instrument, going to the movies, or painting. Although, I have witnessed people painting via swing, and playing something akin to musical chairs on a piano bench, so maybe that’s something in between.

Gifting your character with hobbies like these gives insight into the kind of person that character is. To make them relatable and believable, consider hobbies/interests that mirror personality traits in your characters, making them behave the way they do.

Making a protagonist or antagonist overly endowed with skills, unless they are superheroes or supervillains, might make those characters unrealistic. Who wants a perfect person, for the good or for the bad? Not me. And readers likely agree. Show characters failing while attempting to try mastering a hobby. This shows they are just like anyone else. Becoming good at anything, including hobbies, takes time.

Create character relationships

Having a hobby can be a great way to meet new people. In a story, characters having mutual interests is an excellent way to introduce characters to each other or kindle relationships, friends and otherwise. The choice of hobby/interest can be important to the kind of relationship between characters.

Consider:

• Two people meeting at a contemporary arts museum. What that might say about who they are?
• People locking eyes from across the science lab. Are they interested in each other? Or preparing to cause mayhem?
• A small group of people getting ready to jump from an airplane with one member of the group frozen in fear. Who will help that frightened person out?

These are a few ways to bring like-minded characters together, and give the reader immediate insight into what these characters may be like.

Use of negative/antisocial hobbies

A hobby can be a problem if it has negative consequences. These hobbies are not just for antagonists. Any of the following can be used as problems protagonists must overcome to achieve their goals.

For example:

Emotional pain: Purposely causing stress in others.

• Playing characters against each other.
• Guilt tripping.
• Purposefully ignoring.

Extrinsic motivation: Characters participating in hobbies at which they excel for external rewards like:

• Money.
• Popularity.
• Praise.

Financial strain: Spending money on the hobby and therefore unable to afford basic needs.

• Shopping addiction.
• Drug addiction.
• Gambling addiction.

Illegal activities: Participating in illegal activities for the rush.

• Cybercrime.
• Antiquity theft.
• Smuggling.

Influence the setting

Hobbies happen somewhere. Hence the setting. Some hobbies can be set anywhere, anytime, like reading as it is portable.

Other hobbies dictate the setting, such as surfing where you find the characters in Hawaii, Fiji, or perhaps off the Australian coast. As writers, we can use hobbies as a reason to put characters in specific settings where we want a particular scene or story to take place.

Travel is a flexible interest that allows writers to introduce their characters to new people, places, and experiences. For instance, Jules Verne’s novel,  Around the World in Eighty Days, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s, The Hobbit.

Move the plot forward

Hobbies don’t necessarily need to move the plot forward—only mentioned in passing—but can be great tools to help the story along.

For example:

A hobby/interest may help determine how characters solve obstacles in their path. A swimming teacher may be able to help a person with deep fears—water and as well as her abusive husband. In teaching the woman to swim, she unwittingly helps the character escape an abusive marriage. The woman fakes her death. The abusive spouse assumes his wife, terrified of the water, had drown.

In this case a secondary character’s interest, love of the water, assists the protagonist’s interest in escaping her tormentor, which occurs in Nancy J. Price’s Sleeping with the Enemy.

J.K. Rowling included the hobby of card collecting, which Harry Potter and Ron Weasley do in the Harry Potter series. That hobby allowed her to add information to the stories as needed.

Harry along with friends Ron and Hermione Granger learn that an important item recently arrived at the school for safekeeping and there had been attempts to steal it. They discovered that the hidden object involved both Albus Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel, both wizards.

Soon after the Christmas holidays end, friend Neville Longbottom gives Harry one of the Famous Wizards cards for his collection. It’s the Dumbledore card, which mentions his connection to Nicolas Flamel. Hermione researches Flamel, and determines that the Philosopher’s Stone is likely the item hidden at the school.

Harry and Ron’s card collecting hobby lets the characters make this intellectual leap.

Here are some helpful links for character hobbies:

One from Robin Piree 101+ Hobbies For Characters To Create Interesting Characters
Plus a PDF of Character Hobbies and Skills Brainstorming from Jill Williamson

Do you give your characters hobbies? What have you read that uses hobbies/interests to enhance the narrative?

* * * * * *

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.

Image by Gipfelsturm69 from Pixabay