by Jaime Buckley

The need for attention is a human trait we all share. It feeds our souls and validates our hearts. 

... unfortunately, some become addicted and need a shot of rehab.

Morphiophelius Smith

❖

My little brother and I ran for cover once we saw the red and blue lights. 

In the area we lived, Diablo California, the country club environment meant perfectly manicured lawns, trees and hedges...but what the adults didn’t know was a small network of crawl spaces for little kids like us. 

I was 11 years old.

My brother and I hit the grass and started crawling.

...but something was horribly wrong.

“MATT!” I cried out, looking over my shoulder, “What are you DOING!?!”

My best friend was still standing in the middle of the road, bright lights from the cop car shining on him. ...as he unzipped his pants.

“We’re gonna get caught anyway,” he said matter-of-fact, “so why run?”

I gasped as his jeans and his underwear dropped around his ankles. 

The police car slowly came to a halt, and the officer got out of the car, clicking on his Mag Light and drawing his black baton.

Oh crap, I thought to myself; the cops gonna beat him! My heart raced as thoughts of visiting Matt in the hospital, broken bones, and concussion from the brutal cop thrashing he was about to receive. 

The officer walked up slowly, stood behind my best friend, who stood there with fists on his hips... 

Then smacked him hard on the butt with the baton—hard enough for me to hear the smack...and hard enough for Matt to let out a yelp. 

“Pull up your pants, son. I don’t take kindly to being mooned.” 

As Matt did as he was told, the flashlight turned our direction. 

“Now where did your little rat friends go?” The officer holstered the baton and said firmly, “I’ve got your friend, boys. Better you come out now...or we can do this the hard way.” 

The hard way? Oh, NO! Not...the hard way!!

I had absolutely no idea what the hard way was—but I was pretty certain it was something I should fear, if the tone of the officer’s voice was any sign. Terrified I might get beaten myself, I crawled out from the shrubbery, my little brother in tow. 

“And there they are,” the officer said smugly. “Now, what are three little boys doing out in the middle of the night?” 

Luckily, our loyalty ran deep. 

...as a sliver. 

“That house over on Ranchero Drive with all the toilet paper all over the front lawn and trees — that wasn’t us!” my brother squeaked. 

“It wasn’t, huh?” the officer replied cooly. He glared at each of us.

I bit my lip. Hard.

“It was ALL THEM!” my brother vomited, pointing his finger at me and Matt. 

“Well, well, well,” the officer concluded, “I bet your mom and dad will be worried that you’re out in the middle of the night, boys....and I’m guessing they would like me to make sure you get home safe and sound.” 

Oh mannnnn, my mom was gonna be ticked.

My heart sank, and I learned a valuable lesson that night: 

Never bring your stupid little brother on a TP job! 

❖

Why Do We Seek Attention? 

I always wondered why Matt did things like that night. 

He would stand up to bullies as long as there were people watching, talk back to most adults, and he didn’t mind getting caught. 

It’s a question I keep asking myself, even as an adult now...because all of us seem to do it. 

You might think this is a simplistic subject, or perhaps even stupid. 

You’d be wrong. 

How do I know? 

Because all you have to do is think about the opposite: Would you like to be forgotten? 

Unless you’re a politician forced from (or laughed out of) office, a criminal that just robbed a bank...or a sex offender out on parole, probably not. 

Many youths (and adults) want to be noticed. 

It may be simply to be liked. 

Perhaps you want to be noticed for that new book you just wrote. 

In my case, I seek attention for three reasons: to make new friends, uplift others and lastly to encourage people to read my fantasy books. 

Some have a deep need to be the center of attention—because they measure their importance by the level of attention they receive. 

Others use attention to take away from someone else or to redirect another’s attention altogether—think of lawyers in court or the way the media manipulate viewers. 

Goodness — consider Social Media — isn’t it ALL about attention?? 

We use attention to raise money, find a companion, start businesses, put politicians into office (or smear their competitors names in front of the public). Heck—I can’t think of too many reasons we wouldn’t want to gain attention. 

Even in self defense, we seek attention—when someone’s doing wrong; they do NOT want to be seen, so it’s strategic to draw attention to a situation for one’s own protection. 

I brought this subject up to Chuck and Dax the other day and they just about laughed me out of the Tavern. 

...well, until Chuck reminded his green sidekick about his run in with the Gypsy Sentry.

❖

Note to self: ask Dax about waking up in the Black Market naked and covered in chicken feathers.

We talked about this subject for a while (as Dax sulked, of course). I mentioned to Chuck how I wanted to share some good ways to get the ‘positive’ attention we seek...without resorting to dropping our drawers or being coated in chicken feathers. 

He suggested using one of the best examples we know of: Kevin Duncan, creator of Be A Better Blogger, The Solopreneur Experiment, and Editor-in-Chief of Smartblogger, with 4 million readers. 

❖

5 Ways You Can Be Like Kevin Duncan & Gain POSITIVE Attention 

Kevin Duncan is one of my favorite people online. His website, Be A Better Blogger, was one of my 10 blogs to follow, not because of the great information he shares...but because of the personality behind it. The attention he gained from Be A Better Blogger propelled him on to greater projects, which makes it a powerful example of how to get the attention you want (and likely need).

In fact, I openly tell people that Kevin’s blog is the first blog I signed up to just because I enjoyed it. Needed nothing, wasn’t looking to get anything from it, other than the pleasure of being a part of his growing community. 

To me, that said a lot about the caliber of person Kevin is. I kinda pride myself on having good taste in people. Though we’ve never met in person, he’s become a good friend and someone I admire. 

The fact is—Kevin Duncan gets attention. Why is that? 

Well, he gives a fantastic example in his article: How I Went From Unknown to Boost Blog Traffic Writer in Six Months (and How You Can, Too), but let me break down the principles for you... 

❖

Kevin gets attention by building a brand. 

Now when I say ‘brand’, this is something that applies to you, me, everyone. 

If you’re a teen and you’re new in school—you should think about branding yourself. Honesty, humor, integrity, kindness...all characteristics that speak about your character and that’s exactly what Kevin has done. He not only branded Be A Better Blogger—he continues to brand himself as an individual.

He kicked his success into overdrive by writing: How to write a blog post: The definitive 10,273-word guide your mom will understand.

❖

Kevin gets attention, because he’s original.

I read a lot of articles...and I mean, a lot. 

That being said, when I read one of Kevin’s articles for the first time, I actually read it...twice. Once because I enjoyed it, the second time because I was trying to reason out why I enjoyed it so much. 

His writing wasn’t like the regurgitated emotional and mental babble most blogs spew out. 

Yeah...I think many blogs who try to be popular don’t produce original content—the vomit what’s already been done, thinking the smell, even though it still smells bad, is good enough as long as it smells different. 

Wrong answer. 

Don’t be good enough—be better. 

Excel. Exceed expectations. Soar. 

...and write in ways your readers will never forget. Something like: What Weird Al Yankovic can teach us about blogging 

❖

Kevin gets attention because he stands out.

There’s no question that this man is unique to bloggers. I saw that in the first post I read. As I mentioned before, I read the post twice.

The first thing I noticed was that I noticed nothing at all.

Is that strange? Not really. 

What I mean is, Kevin’s writing was so natural to read, it felt like I was having a conversation with a dear friend. It was personal, light, funny, and I found myself thinking about answers to the questions asked. The experience sucked me mentally and emotionally in until I was done with the article. 

Talk about refreshing! 

We can all do this in the way we communicate with people, the way we dress, the way we carry ourselves...even the way we respond to others. 

Kevin even has impeccable taste when it comes to his choice of guest writers. 

*cough* 

❖

Kevin gets attention because he is always subtle.

Okay...sort of. 

If you go through any of the blog posts on Be A Better Blogger, what you’re going to find is kindness and a ton of valuable information...and no beating chests. 

Kevin’s never pushy or rude. Ever. 

If he has something he’d like you to try, it’s a suggestion or an option, not a “You should do this or you’re a moron,” approach. 

There’s something brilliant about this—because all he does is execute without compulsory means. 

Fact is, I joined his email list because I wanted to be part of his community—not because I was getting something in return for my email address. 

Hmmmm....maybe I should ask for something?

ANYway—being ‘subtle’ means taking small, simple steps, consistently. Don’t force people to do things and don’t beat your chest like a gorilla...but be the person who others want to be around. 

In short, be irresistible. Like Chuck.

(You’re welcome buddy.) 

❖

Kevin gets attention because he’s always nice.

I don’t know what to say if you’re a jerk. 

Yes, you’ll get attention, but it’ll be short-lived and in the end, I’m not sure it’s the attention you’ll want to have. 

One of Kevin’s best qualities is that the man in always nice. 

I mean always. 

He has class. Style. Humility. 

What makes Kevin Duncan a powerful blogger is he teaches by example and shows through his interactions with other bloggers and readers in a respectful, creative and humble manner. 

One of my favorite posts—and the one where he and I started to get to know each other in the comments section was The Howdy Neighbor Technique. Read it, especially if you’re trying to get attention online...it’ll change your life in one sitting. 

Promise.

This is Kevin in a nutshell.

Well, if he could FIT in a nutshell.

(I couldn’t fit my pinky toe in a nutshell.)

No grasping for credit.

No shoving people out of the way to get gain.

What you see is what you get with Kevin and what you get is a guy you’ll want to become friends with. In fact, you’ll want to guard that friendship for years to come. 

Do people feel that way about you? Think about it. 

The Biggest Key is to Start Right Here, Right Now! 

It doesn’t matter where you are in life or where you are pertaining to your goals.

You start where you’re at right now. 

From business executives to mommy bloggers, fiction writers to high school students, it doesn’t matter...

Start today. Start now. 

Decide to be something more, someone more...and choose who that person is on purpose, with purpose. 

I learned that from Morphiophelius Smith (aka Chuck).

See you next time. 

What are some brilliant ways you've learned to get attention?

Top image from Depositphotos.

Part Two

by Lynette M. Burrows

Mastering the elements of tension, suspense, and conflict in your stories requires that you recognize the difference between them. Last month, in Part I, I discussed the definitions and gave samples of each. This month, we’ll dive deeper into the role of each of those elements in a story and techniques to develop them in your work.

The Role of Tension in Storytelling

If you recall from Part One, tension is the feeling of uncertainty or anticipation. Readers expect a certain level of excitement via anticipation in the stories they read. In a thriller or a horror novel, the anticipation/tension levels are high. It’s different in a memoir or romance, but there is still tension.

To elicit the right amount of tension in your story, it’s usually best to develop tension in more than one aspect of your story. 

Techniques for Enhancing Tension

In the Characters

Tension in your point of view characters, including the protagonist, often creates the strongest emotional reactions in your readers. The tension between their internal needs and their external needs can create great sympathy. This is especially true if each of those needs, whether “good” or “bad,” are of equal strength or desire.

Between Characters

Another place for great tension is between characters. This is part of why HEA romances appeal to readers. There is tension between the two love interests. Often there is tension between them and other characters as well. When the reader “sees” what each character desperately desires and how that desire conflicts with the other characters, it creates tension in the reader.

Unachieved Goals

An unachieved desire creates tension in both your characters and your readers.

Unreliable Characters

There is a possibility of another tension if you have written an unreliable narrator. Making your narrator unreliable will make the reader always question, do I believe him this time or not?

Deep Point of View

Show what the character is thinking and how her emotions affect her body, her thought process, her actions, and her dialogue. Give her conflicting emotions. Give her both pride at winning but guilt for being able to afford the fees when her best friend couldn’t. Make the reader wonder whether she will resolve those feelings.  

Have her feel one thing and act or speak in a contradictory way. Your reader will expect that contradiction will come back to haunt her. 

Use the character’s five senses. Instead of a sweet smelling rose, it can be sickly sweet, or the smell of decay. Food can turn dry and tasteless or turn sour on the stomach.

While the five senses are important, don’t forget visceral reactions. The gut-feeling or the chill that spiders down the spine are among the visceral reactions you can use to increase tension.

Slow vs Fast Burn

Vary the pace at which you reveal information and how you build tension. Sometimes a slow burn is the most effective at raising tension between two characters. The romance in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a slow burn that some readers adore. Some readers prefer a faster pace where the tension is in how they will get together instead of if they will. This is true of most fiction. Mystic River by Denis Lehane (book and movie) slowly builds atmosphere and chilling tension. In No Country for Old Men, the tension begins in less than three minutes. 

Shorter is Better

Short words give your sentences punch. A series of short, choppy sentences create a staccato sound. That staccato sound changes the reader’s brain. She takes in those sentences more quickly. A run of staccato words gives movement to your story. 

The short story, “It’s a Good Life”, has a great example of this.

Anthony came into the room.

Pat stopped playing. He froze. Everybody froze. The breeze rippled the curtains. Ethel Hollis couldn’t even try to scream she had fainted.

“It’s a Good Life,” Jerome Bixby

Dialogue

When you employ all the levels of dialogue, you can control the tension from mild-mannered to explosive. Use the weight of what the reader knows and the characters do not to increase the reader’s tension. Choose words that convey your character’s education levels, their social skills and emotions.

Use Subtext

The right words can imply innocence or hidden feelings or thinly veiled threats.

 A masterful example is this is in The Great Gatsby where Daisy, now married to Tom, visits her long-lost love, Gatsby, for the first time after he gained his wealth. He’s showing her all his linen and silk and fine flannel shirts that his man in England sends him. 

 Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The reader knows Daisy isn’t crying over the shirts. 

Things left unsaid between characters is another way to create tension.  

In Scenes and Story

Be certain to include tension in every scene. That’s right, every single one. Your reader will need to know what will go wrong? What will go right? Varying the levels of tension (internal vs external), the causes of the tension (between characters, inner, situational, etc), and the magnitude of the tension helps create the movement of your story.

Finally, make sure tension exists in the overall story. Give the reader reason to believe the climax will resolve the overall story problem presented (or hinted at) on the first page. This means the overall story problem must be big enough or complex enough to last until that climax. If your story is complex, you may need to remind your reader of this problem from time to time. 

The Role of Suspense in Stories

Suspense encourages the reader to expect something risky or dangerous is about to happen. They speculate, theorize, and try to predict the story’s outcome. The uncertainty you inject into your story keeps your reader invested in reading to discover how it ends. It creates questions in the reader’s mind. Questions the reader’s brain compels her to answer. (Read Part I for the science behind this compulsion.) Questions that keep the reader reading and guessing. 

Techniques for Creating Suspense

Have you found it difficult to create suspense in your stories? If you’re too heavy-handed with suspense, your story will read like an overblown melodrama. Too little suspense and your reader grows bored and doesn’t finish your story. So how do you learn to create the right amount of suspense? Like most things in writing, it isn’t as easy as it looks.

First, remember the thing that distinguishes suspense from tension is the amount of risk. You must set up your character’s desires and goals so that the reader understands that no matter how trivial or life-altering the desires and goals are, the cost of not getting them is of utmost importance to your character. 

Borrowing from terms from scriptwriting to label the techniques for creating suspense in your stories. We’ll talk about how you can “Controlling the Scene,” “Build Emotion,” “Take It to the Extreme,” “Use the Entire Shot,” and “Take Your Time. “

Control the Scene

In scriptwriting, the idea of controlling the scene usually means using sound to build the suspense. A musical score, a ticking clock, the rush of water, or the roar of flames kick the reader’s need to know how this ends into high gear. But in writing fiction, we don’t have to rely on sound alone. Use all the senses.

Setting is more than what you see. Setting includes the layout of the setting, the mood of the setting, the lighting, the scents, and so much more. Choose to show details to the reader that increase the uncertainty of your character’s situation. 

Don’t read uncertainty to mean only fear. Play with a reader’s uncertainty by challenging her expectations. Misdirect her attention to some important detail the character interprets incorrectly. Make the uncertainty fun sometimes and more challenging other times. 

You are the creator of this world. Think about the details of your scenes in terms of what things will make the character react in ways that increase the suspense for the reader. 

Build Emotion

The setting can set the mood, but for it to be effective, the character must react to the setting. In films, closeups of the actors’ faces reveal much of the emotion of a character. In writing, you need to let your readers inside your character’s head and body. But be careful of too much too soon.

Start Small

If it’s a creepy swamp, start with smaller emotional reactions like a case of the nervous giggles that gets on another character’s nerves. Build to a jumpiness at every sound. Riddle your character with goosebumps and the thudding heart that will fill your reader with foreboding. Let the reader in on the self-talk going on in her head, trying to keep her calm. Then spring some action on her that causes her to panic. 

Building emotion can happen with positive emotions, too. A friendly smile makes your character feel welcome. Later a helping hand sets her skin to tingling. Maybe she tries to ignore how this person makes her feel. But the more she tries to ignore it, the more tongue-tied she gets. 

You can use the small to big pattern over and over again for any emotional reaction. 

Having difficulty showing instead of telling? Whether you need the small emotions or bodily changes or the big emotions and the dramatic physical cues to those emotions, I highly recommend The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi (I’d recommend this invaluable book even if Angela and Becca were not good friends to Writer in the Storm.) 

Take It to the Extreme

In films, this phrase usually refers to camera angles. Instead of always filming from a standard eight feet away, zoom in for a closeup, or zoom out for a wide shot. Writers of fiction don’t have film cameras. But we can use viewpoint characters to create a similar effect.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has some of this effect. The reader knows Juliet has taken a potion to fake her death, but poor Romeo does not. Though the reader may already know the ending or guess it, she follows him frantically race to her side, hoping somehow he’ll discover the truth before it’s too late. 

The converse can also increase the suspense in a story. In the “Tell Tale Heart,” a single detail, the beat of the heart, builds the suspense. 

 “…the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!”  

“Tell Tale Heart,” Edgar Alan Poe

Use the Entire Shot

Give your reader enough information to allow suspense to build. Create a foreground, a middle ground and a background for each setting. That will give your characters a “real world” in which to interact. 

Know where your character stands and how she moves around the physical obstacles in each setting. Have a working knowledge of how her culture works or doesn’t work. Know how educated she is, what terminology or jargon she’s accustomed to using. 

You won’t include every detail in your story. Still, you need to know these things so that you write the character’s reactions as if she and the setting are real. Give her a piece of furniture that she always bumps into in the dark. Give her a tradition or a habit she follows every time she enters this room. Use those details to give both normalcy and suspense to your story.

Take Your Time

Certain stories, like Fahrenheit 451, build suspense from the very first line. 

“It was a pleasure to burn.”

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Some stories need a slow buildup of suspense. In the Disney animated, Little Mermaid, 1989, the story begins slowly showing us how Ariel is obsessed with all things human.

Never be in a hurry to the payoff. Let your character have a moment of peace, linger on a touching detail, or a moment of dread. Think of suspense in a story like a drip that builds a bigger and bigger pool. 

Use all the tools of writing to ratchet up the tension bit by bit and your readers will exclaim that they couldn’t put your book down. 

The Role of Conflict in Storytelling

Robert McKee says in his book Story, “Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.” With rare exceptions, conflict makes our characters move out of their everyday situations into more extraordinary ones. The outcome of the conflict matters deeply to our characters (these are the stakes of the story.)  Because the outcome matters, the conflict and hoped-for outcome shapes the decisions and actions of your characters.

When your readers find a connection with your characters, the conflict that matters to your characters matters to your readers. Therefore, the choices our characters make in the face of the conflict or obstacle is what our reader finds interesting and or entertaining. 

Techniques for Creating Story Conflicts

There are more ways we can thwart or oppose or endanger a protagonist’s goal than we can cover in this blog post. Depending upon who you ask, there are five to seven basic types of conflicts in stories. You can use the basics: man vs. self, man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. technology, and man vs. supernatural to help guide what your story will be about. There are also levels of conflict: global, local and inner conflict. Types and levels are helpful in creating conflict, but these are broad strokes and many of us, especially those who avoid conflict, need more detailed help in creating conflict in our stories. 

As the author of your story, you need to create obstacles for your characters no matter how much you love them. Remember, obstacles are anything that keeps your protagonist from her story goal.

20 ways to create obstacles for your characters:

1. Develop a stronger antagonist. In Disney’s Little Mermaid, Ursula has the power to take voices and souls of people to accomplish her goals. 
2. Threaten someone or something your character loves. A threat that exists in both Rear Window and The Greatest Showman. 
3. Create conflicting groups. The Greatest Showman does this with the upper class vs the performers in Barnum’s circus.
4. Keep your character from getting close to something she loves. 
5. Push the antagonist and protagonist together. This happens in all three example movies. Ariel has scenes with Ursula. Jeff faces the murderous neighbor and Barnum uses his family and then Jenny Lind in his attempts to be accepted by the upper class.
6. Make the character suffer. Often, this takes the form of making your character choose between two equally bad or equally good options. 
7. Cause misunderstandings. Think about your own life and the misunderstandings you’ve had. These can be minor or major obstacles for your characters. 
8. Create a power struggle. Power struggles can be personal, within a family, within a work situation, or more global.
9. Use competition. Whether your character wins or loses, make it something your character needs to do.
10. Families are complicated. Make your characters struggle with family bonds and conflicts. 
11. Create complications and consequences, especially unintended consequences.  
12. Give your protagonist a weakness that is her fault. 
13. Put your character at a disadvantage. This could mean being in a wheelchair like Jeff or being unable to speak like Ariel.
14. Put your character in a perilous situation. Perilous can mean her life is in danger like in the Little Mermaid and in Rear Window, but it can also mean she will lose relationships or integrity, as happens in The Greatest Showman.
15. Give your characters secrets they don’t want anyone else to know. Secrets they’ll go to extremes to protect create all kinds of conflict.
16. Give your character a prior wound. When writers talk about wounds, we usually mean internal wounds, but there can be physical wounds as well or in tandem.
17. Use your character’s strengths against her. Jeff’s curiosity is a strength for a photographer but gets him into trouble when all he does is watch his neighbors.
18. Turn her success into failures. Ariel is successful in becoming human, but she’s a human without human social skills and without a voice. 
19. Make her make disastrous decisions. These types of decisions often come from the character’s weakness or flaw. But it can be for any of the above reasons as well. 
20. If you’re still struggling for conflict ideas, ask yourself, how can my antagonist make things worse for my protagonist? What would “hurt” the protagonist most? 

Bonus: Re-watch your favorite movie (in the same genre you write) and figure out what obstacles create conflict for the protagonist for additional ideas.

It’s a Balancing Act

We’ve all been told that no matter what you write, it will be a unique story because of your voice. The same is true in creating tension, suspense, and conflict in your story. The way you do it will differ from the way another writer does it. And it often is different with each different story you write. It’s one of the frustrating and exhilarating parts of writing. You create your own story recipe by balancing the tension, suspense, and conflict. In isolation, you can add too much or too little of those. This is why Beta Readers are vital. They will give you reactions so you can diagnose which of a story’s ingredients you need to re-balance. A story with a balance of tension, suspense, and conflict will spur your readers to turn the pages and eat up the stories you write. 

Your turn. What techniques or tips do you have for creating tension, suspense, or conflict in your stories?

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, creativity advocate, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. This alone makes her uniquely qualified to write an adventure or two.

Her Fellowship series is a “chillingly realistic” alternate history in 1961 Fellowship America where autogyros fly and following the rules isn’t optional. Books one and two, My Soul to Keep, and  If I Should Die, are available everywhere books are sold online. Book three, And When I Wake, is scheduled to be published in late 2024.

Lynette lives in the land of OZ. She is a certifiable chocoholic and coffee lover. When she’s not blogging or writing or researching her next book, she avoids housework and plays with her two Yorkshire terriers. You can find Lynette online on Facebook or on her website.

Image Credits

Top image by mallgoth from Pixabay

Middle image by Maria from Pixabay

Final image by Denis Doukhan from Pixabay

by Lisa Norman

Statements I’ve heard recently:

• "I keep getting errors from my friend's Yahoo email. Tell her to fix it!" (hint: Yahoo was refusing the person’s email because they didn’t have it set up right…the problem was not on the receiving end, but on the sending end)
• "Why is MailChimp telling me to do something? What do I DOOOO?" (MailChimp was spitting out alphabet soup… read on to translate)
• "MailerLite just changed everything!" (Yep. MailerLite had to release a new version in order to cope.)

As the resident geek to a herd of authors, I've heard a ton of this over the last month, combined with a lot of existential dread. Over the years, I've come to believe that when writers experience pure tech fear, it's often because the language of geeks puts them into the uncomfortable space of not knowing what words mean.

For writers, not understanding words strikes at something close to our souls. Words are our life, and when words don’t make sense, it can be scary.

Let's translate all the geek into English.

When we get into our cars, we put the key in, and it goes. Or at least we did, then someone developed these new ignition systems, and we just keep the key in our pocket. I don’t know about you, but I still feel weird getting into a car and pushing a button.

Email is something we all use, but we don’t always know how it works. Let’s face it: most of the time, we don’t WANT to know how it works. Until it doesn’t. Then it becomes a problem.

When you send an email, you are sending it from a “server”—a big computer that is always attached to the internet. Usually, we write our emails using a program like Gmail or Outlook, something on our computer. Then it sends the email to the server, which then uses an internet address system to determine where to send the email. That system is referred to as the DNS system, or Domain Name System.

You know about domain names: those are the website addresses that we use, the ones we type into the address bar at the top of the screen.

A cartoon to help:

https://youtu.be/2ZUxoi7YNgs?si=023I3aNWuuaebGQe

The domain name system is the part of the internet that keeps track of what physical machine each website lives on. Websites move, and if you move from one hosting company to another, you’ll need to update the DNS so that your followers can still find you. Owning your own domain name gives you a professional appearance and also allows you to control your space.

But the internet is full of killer robots trying to take your site down. They also love to intercept internet traffic in the middle and re-route it or change it. Bad robots!

If you watched that video, you may have noticed that it is old. The DNS system is as old as the internet. In addition to telling where the websites live, the DNS system also has a set of “records”—lines of text that have important information about how that website works. Among them are records that say who is allowed to send email from that domain, where the email should be coming from, and even bits of encryption to keep the information safe in transit!

Understanding the alphabet soup of DNS records

DMARC

DMARC is an acronym for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. Translating from the geek, that means a way to prove that this email comes from you. DMARC tells a person’s email system that you are a professional and that if the system can’t prove that the email came from you, you want it to… “quarantine” (stick it in spam), “reject” (throw it away) or “none” (just go ahead and deliver it, I don’t care). Yeah, we probably don’t want “none.” DMARC also allows you to request a report from each email system telling you what they did with all of your emails. (Fair warning: those emails can be confusing.)

DMARC tells email servers what to do if the email isn’t from us, but how do we prove that an email IS from us?

SPF

Nope, we’re not talking sunscreen. SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. This is the one that says, “this email came from this server, this server is allowed to send things from my domain.”

When a big company’s email server gets an email, it checks to see where that email came from. Then it checks to see who that email says it is from. It checks to make sure that the big web server (hosting machine) is allowed to send email from that person. If the two don’t match, that is an SPF failure. It’ll then look at DMARC to see how you want that handled, but understand: DMARC is a suggestion. Most email servers in our modern environment are now going to say, “nope” and throw it out. It won’t get to spam. That email never existed.

DKIM

DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. The important part here is: key. There’s a little bit of encryption added to your email. If the key at the end isn’t the same as the key that is supposed to be there, it means that while the email came from your server, someone grabbed it in transit and messed with it—like someone intercepting a check in the mail and changing it.

DKIM is another test that email servers are using. Email companies use DKIM to prove that your email wasn’t damaged somewhere along the way. Fail the DKIM check and… yep…. you know the drill: “nope” that email gets tossed out.

A DKIM record looks like a secret code. That’s because it is.

Why now?

To be fair, this isn’t new. But over the years, many companies that helped people send out big email lists decided that it was probably too hard for the average person to figure this out. So they had the information available, but they didn’t enforce it.

Enter AI and the dramatic increase in spam over the last year. The email providers are even more tired of spam than you are! Do you know someone who has abandoned an email address because it was getting too much spam? Or someone who just has one email address for all of the spammy stuff and one for their real email? All of that spam wastes time and space. The email providers have decided to do something about it.

Their first step was to start deleting unused email addresses. The next step was to start enforcing the DMARC system.

The goal is to cut down on spam and make email more protected.

You are not alone.

This is where it gets both super-geeky and not nearly as complicated as you might think. If you are sending emails from a wonderful hosting company, they may already have set these for you! This is why I start everyone out by recommending mail-tester.com.

Send an email from the same server as your website is hosted on, and things shouldn’t be too bad.

Finding helpers

AH… but what if you use MailChimp, MailerLite, or some other sending service? This is where the challenge comes in. You need to get those “records” on your server to match up. You need your hosting server to say that it is okay for your email service to send on your behalf.

In your website hosting, there will be a place to set up DNS records. I recommend that you contact your technical support for help here, or get a geek to hold your hand. You’ll need to get the information from your mailing list company and put it into the DNS records on your hosting platform.

This is one of the areas where I’ve really been seeing some of the hosting companies shine the last few weeks. They’re getting swamped with people needing help. But here’s the thing to understand: these geeks have been doing this all day. Your request won’t bother or confuse them.

Support from the various email sending services has also been really good, despite the overload. You may need to be patient to get through, but they should be able to give you the records that you need.

Get the information from your newsletter program, take it to your hosting company or a friendly geek, and they’ll help you get the records in the right place.

Remember: if you are sending from your own website, you may just need to make sure the default records are set up, and some hosting companies have already done it for you. Run mail-tester.com before you panic.

So just getting the records right will fix this?

Well… yes, and no.

If you are sending out a lot of emails, the email companies are looking for a few other hints to make sure you aren’t a spammer.

What do they want? They want people to:

• open your newsletters
• click on a link in your email
• reply to you

According to the official news release, this only applies to those sending over 5000 emails per day, or those who have a reported (spam) rate of over .3%. (Spam reports: those are when people click “spam” at the top when they are reading your email. Note that sometimes the spam button is next to the archive or delete. It is normal to have some spam reports, even if you aren’t sending spam, because people don’t always hit the right button. And no, they don’t realize how much harm they’re doing to their favorite author when they do that!)

But realistically? None of us want to be mistaken for spammers, and I’d like to suggest that if you are sending emails that people don’t want to receive, maybe you ARE actually sending spam.

Best Practices

Go back over my articles on sharable newsletters. Make sure that you are sending out useful emails. Interact with your readers and make sure you’re sending them something they want.

Run mail-tester.com and get your score up above 8/10.

Have a button people can click that will unsubscribe them immediately from your newsletters and be happy when they use it.

Let’s compare notes! How is your email deliverability? Are people getting your emails? Are you having any problems? Have you done anything to get your readers to reply to your emails? What has your experience been?

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 by Deleyna via Canva