Writers in the Storm

by Jenny Hansen

In my "day job life," I draw a lot of wisdom from entrepreneurial, marketing, and motivation experts. People like Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, Lisa Nichols and Og Mandino, Trent Shelton and Brené Brown. Just like writing advice, I take what resonates and make it work for me and my own Success Blueprint. And of course, when I hear really great stuff, I want to share it with all my friends here at WITS.

2024 is a big exciting year for me, for a lot of reasons. I am in the middle of writing two books I'm excited about -- one fiction, and one non-fiction. My family is moving to the East Coast this summer to start some new adventures over there. I won my dogfight with cancer and I'm excited to be alive.

I'm also excited about the wisdom, so here it goes, in no particular order...

1. Audit your inner circle

"We are the sum total of the five people we hang with the most." - Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins

Every year, Dean does an event in January where he shares his own blueprint, and this one stood out to me. He said, "Don’t hang out with the people who you make excuses with about your dreams." I LOVE that.

I encourage you to try this little exercise.

(p.s. While I hope you relate to nothing on the list below, I suspect that some of it will sound familiar.)

Take a second to think about how many times you've:

• Minimized your goals and dreams around someone because they think (or have told you) you can't do it.
• Made yourself smaller to make someone else feel bigger, or better.
• Not tried to create something because you were afraid you'd fail.
• Been told in a loving tone that "you are reaching too high" or that your loved one "just doesn't want you to be disappointed if this [fill in the blank] doesn't work out."

If you nodded your head 'yes' to any of these, I see you. I hear you. I get you.

And I hope you kick the crap out of that thought pattern.

Think about the fact that one of the people you hang out with the most is yourself. Some of those messages are coming from you.

It's a new year and a new day, and we are better than that. We don't need to hide our spectacular selves away. Spread out. Live large. Shine bright. Allow yourself to be excited about the glorious stories you want to tell.

If it's a close friend or family member who isn't excited about your goals and dreams, simply have different conversations with them. But find a writing and/or mentoring circle that is excited about you and your endeavors. Your people are out there. Some of them might even hang out here at WITS.

Find your people -- those two to ten who light you on fire -- and hang out with them more. Your own inspiration will grow when you surround yourself with people who feed your creative soul.

2. Decide who’s steering the ship.

Who is steering the trajectory of your life? Who is steering your goals to completion? Is it the siren call of your dreams, or the dark whisper of your fears?

This is an important question for every person at every age and stage of life. Sometimes this is harder for creatives to answer because there's such a long runway spent honing our craft. We spend weeks months and years learning from those who have gone before us, and from our own successes and failures.

I prize the people I can trust to give me good advice. Bad advice is the most costly advice in the world, especially if it is allowed to dictate your dreams. Failures and regrets and imposter syndrome are the most unreliable of navigators. You don't want those bozos steering your career.

In the end, YOU need to be the one in charge of the steering wheel.

Brené Brown has said in numerous talks that she carries a list in her wallet with the names of people whose opinions matter to her. What a smart and tangible way to stay grounded! That means if a person isn't on that list, then their opinion is their own problem, and not hers.

3. Meet each story with love.

“Your transparency will lead to other people's transformation.” -- Trent Shelton

Our story might not be for every reader, but if we bring love and truth to our stories, readers will feel it. This is how we serve our readers and our characters. This is how we can treat them with the utmost love.

Many years ago, I heard an agent talk about writing voice. She believed that every time a writer puts words on the page, they are shouting out, "this is who I am." I think that is both true and false. We aren't our characters and our characters are not us, but pieces of them are. I know writers who struggle with being seen so clearly by their readers. I know writers who are afraid to be seen at all.

Trent Shelton has wisdom here too: “We are all a little broken. But last time I checked, broken crayons still color the same.”

Sometimes those broken bits of us are the exact puzzle piece a reader needs to feel alive and whole.

4. Be bold.

“Everything you've ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.” -- George Addair

That quote tells us to be bold. To hang in there. To keep doing the work, even when we're failing or frightened. I think of Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech, excerpted by Brené Brown more than a century later in her book, “Daring Greatly.”

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Brené, through the words of Teddy Roosevelt and through her own, helps me remember to Be Bold.

5. Small Changes Can Transform Your Life.

“Big doors swing on little hinges.” --W. Clement Stone

Small changes will transform your life. Journaling for ten minutes each morning. Stretching before your morning coffee. Stating your goals out loud while you look in the mirror. All of these have been proven to be life-changing over time, even though they are somewhat tiny in the moment.

For me, it was stretching for a few minutes before I got out of bed. I had to do it for OT and PT after my surgery last October, but I've been astonished by the results. Not only do I have far less neck pain, but those few minutes have given me back half an inch of height over the last six weeks!

What routine could you shift without very much trouble? What small daily something might make a dramatic shift for you in the long run? Reading? Stretching? Meditating? Journaling? It might be fun to pick one and try it for 5-10 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week and see what happens.

6. Don't Dim Your Glow

"Don’t you dare dim your glow to make the people around you feel better." - Lisa Nichols

I'm circling back to this point again, because it's so important. And if you've never heard of Lisa Nichols, I promise you will want more of her. In fact, I think experiencing this three-and-a-half minute video with her might be one of the most inspiring things you do today.

She makes me grin so hard my cheeks hurt.

https://youtu.be/CWpiCOmbVuY?si=p5z0UT4Pe1-BJGWW

Final Thoughts

Just to sum up that Success Blueprint again:

1. Audit your inner circle. Spend time with people who stoke the fire of your dreams.
2. Decide who is steering the ship. Work to make sure that it's the right person
3. Meet each story with love. Heck, meet each day with love if you've got it in you. Love is the shizz.
4. Be bold. Get in the game and dare greatly.
5. Small changes can transform your life. Even 15 minutes a week can astonish you.
6. Don't dim your glow. (And definitely get more Lisa Nichols in your life.)

Also, for all of you who had trouble getting into the link to Angela Ackerman's post on Monday, we didn't want you to miss it. It is stellar! -- Increasing the Emotional Impact of Your Story.

Here's one last quote.

"I will persist until I succeed. The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning; and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road." -- Og Mandino

What do you think, y'all? Did I miss anything big that's part of YOUR Success Blueprint? Has someone tried to dim your glow? What did you do to keep it? What area of your life needs to shine brighter? Please share with us 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.

All article photos from Depositphotos.

by Lynette M. Burrows

There is an avalanche of messages about the way to writing success on the internet. You invest tons of time and money via trial and error to determine which way is right for you. It would help if there was a single tool you could use to make your choices and decisions, wouldn’t it? That tool exists. It’s called intention.  

Writing with intention gives you and the words you write, a clear purpose, power, and drive. Whether you are a seasoned writer or a just starting your writing journey, infusing intention in your writing can significantly enhance its impact. It allows you to set up yourself and your business for success.

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Know Your Why

It’s almost a cliché to ask a writer if they know their why. However, knowing why you write gives you clarity. You are far more likely to succeed if most of your writing and business decisions are made with that clarity. 

What is your why? What moves you to write the stories you write? What is the message? Are you writing for fun? For profit? For entertainment?

Don’t judge yours or others reasons for writing. Your why is neither good nor bad. It simply is.

Why is this important?

Writing is a long-term commitment. It takes time to discover who you are as a writer, learn how to express your message and stories in the most accessible ways, and to learn to manage your writing life.

Your why also defines your business.

There are different strategies to use for each why. For each strategy, there are a myriad of possible tactics to use. Unless you know your why, how can you choose your best strategies? Take time to figure out your why.

What is Your Core Message?

You are aware of your why, now it’s time to discover your core message. It doesn’t matter if your core message is love endures or life is an adventure or any other message. You may have two or three core messages. There is no right or wrong message. However, if you have more than three, look deeper at those messages. Pare them down to the most basic two or three.

Explore your message through the theme(s) of your stories. Use language that reinforces your message. Choose a genre and story structure that supports your message and guides your reader to the intended take away.

Awareness of your core message allows you to craft your stories, your words, with purpose.

Explore Your Message

Intentional fiction allows you to tailor characters and situations that challenge your themes and messages. Give your characters purposes, motivations, actions, and reactions that are coherent. Your message will give your stories a depth and purpose that will be authentic and will connect with your audience. Create protagonists and antagonists, of course. But remember to craft supporting characters and spear carriers who add different perspectives. Even your settings and recurrent images or motifs can be part of the story argument.

Through this exploration, you clarify and expand your own understanding of your message. But you are not the only one who benefits from this. Through your characters, you allow your readers to clarify their own thoughts and connect with the themes, the messages, and the conflicts. 

Read with Intention

To read with intention means you intentionally choose the books you read. Read deeply in your genre, yes, but also read outside your genre. With your why and your message in mind, choose to read fiction and nonfiction that both support and challenge those ideas of yours. Explore your curiosity. 

Intention also means you protect your time and your mind. Know what books you will not read and under what circumstances you will not finish reading any book you started.

Intentional Environment

Choose your work environment. Granted, because of time, money, or space, you may not have the best choices, but think about your environment. Would music, or a scented candle, or a better chair give you an environment that works for you? When you consider how to change or improve your workspace, prioritize those things that help you the most. This post explores ways your environment can increase creativity.

The more ergonomic choices will help you work longer and more efficiently. But is longer hours sitting in a chair your goal? Keep in mind what your core message(s) are. What environment will support your efforts to express that message?

Intentional Improvement

Guided by intention, you also practice intentional improvement. You study the craft to improve your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. Choose to read craft books that will help you explore new techniques or structure that will help you express your message. Deliberately seek qualified sources to teach you. Find multiple sources so you can choose the path and methods that work for you.

Is there a writer or work you admire? Examine its story structure. Study the author’s word choices, sentence structure, and pacing. Copy passages so you experience those choices word-by-word. Save favorite descriptions for later inspiration.

Focused practice of new techniques and styles of writing becomes a natural extension of your decision making. How do you practice writing? Write a poem in different styles. Rewrite one of your paragraphs in the style of a writer you’ve studied. Practice twisting clichés into something more original. 

Intentional Business Decisions

If you intend to sell your books, there are choices to make. Should you choose traditional publishing, hybrid publishing, or independent publishing? What will you charge? Will you sell on your website? In person? Do your research. Get the information you need to make you decisions. Successful businesses require intentional decisions.

Use your why, your message, and your core beliefs to set up a business you want and will work on for a long time. Define that business. Will you choose to expand? How will you do that? Write a business plan. It doesn’t need to be a formal one, but you’ll need a formal plan in some situations. 

You’ll need to research the how your country defines business. Do you need a license? Do you need to pay taxes? 

If you are like many writers, marketing confounds you. Intentional writing means doing research and discovering which type of marketing is most likely to work for your books. It also means learning enough to avoid scams and schemes that promise quick money or success. 

Use intention to craft an emotional appeal to readers based on your core message (the one your book explores). 

But Intention Takes the Joy out of Writing

You get to choose when and what to be intentional about. Discovery writing (also known as pantsing), a first draft, can be an intentional choice. Intentional discovery writers may choose pay for a developmental editor to help you clean up that draft. Or you could intentionally learn to write a clean first draft. 

Self-care isn’t optional if you intend to make writing a long-term habit or career. There may be mental or physical health challenges, but you can choose to maintain the best mental and physical health you can. Self-care includes joy, spontaneity, exercise, and all the other aspects of self-care.

Choose to give yourself inspiration days, relationship-building days, days for spiritual reflection, and days to “veg out.” Your creative mind and spirit need intentional care. 

Intentional Decisions Are a Path to Success

Remember, intention isn’t a bad word. It’s a choice. You use intentional choices every day when you take this route instead of that one to the department store or on a trip. Each day you decide how you’ll use your time, your energy, and your attention. Make your decisions intentional.

Some of you are proud of always making instinctual (pantser) decisions. If you decide pantsing is best for you, that is an intention. If your instincts are based on an internalized why and message, it can be successful. But instincts are often based on internalized messaging from others. Dare to make intentional decisions. That's where your path to success lies. It's where your power lies.

With intentional decision-making, you define your business, your writing, and what success means to you. Lean into your why and your messages. Lean into your power.

What is one intentional decision you made in the past? Is there an intentional decision you’ve made for the future?

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 takes “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 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 Mastodon @LynetteMBurrows@wandering.shop or on her website.

Image Credits

Top photo by Positive_Images from Pixabay

Second image by Benjamin White from Pixabay

by Angela Ackerman

What do the most successful, memorable novels out there have in common? Emotional impact. The reader becomes so connected to the story, characters, and world they feel something profound as they read. 

This is no surprise because emotions are central to the human experience. Whether it’s joy, hope, fear, or something else, we’ve felt it. Emotions color our world, shape our values, inform our decisions, and help us navigate life. So, when reading a story awakens something within us, it’s because we see the characters as people who yearn, hurt, and struggle just as we do. We feel connected to them and care about their journey. 

Stories with high emotional impact bring readers back for more, so we want to do all we can to make them feel involved and invested. These strategies will help you psychologically hook your reader’s emotions.  

Strategy #1: Show, Don’t Tell

This is the Big Daddy of writing advice, which is why it is so often talked about: showing provides an experience, telling provides information. There’s a place for both, but especially when description touches emotions, we want readers to feel part of the moment. So, when the character is upset, worried, hopeful, or euphoric, what does this look like? How do they express it through body language, dialogue, vocal cues, thoughts, internal sensations, and actions? 

Showing emotions using the above indicators will help readers imagine what the character feels far better than writing, Billy was sad. Realistic displays of emotion also trigger the reader’s memories of a time they felt the same thing, causing them to empathize with the character and what they’re going through. 

Show, don’t tell isn’t only about emotions, though. In fact, every time we want to share something about a character, place, or event, we should think about what that detail does for the story. How will it further the plot, round out worldbuilding, reveal characterization, reinforce emotion, or involve readers? This is what good showing does, so if the detail doesn’t match any of these, chances are it can be omitted or shared as a bit of telling so we can move on to something more important.  

Strategy #2: POV Filtering & Internal Observations

Another important way we generate emotional impact is to use POV filtering. At any moment in the story, your POV character is feeling certain emotions, is focused on specific goals, and they’ll have personal reasons for their motivations. This means what they notice about their environment, what they say (or hold back) in conversations, and the things they zero in on or dismiss all should come through a filter of emotion and intent.

A fearful character will carefully examine evening shadows around a doorway or near a dumpster whereas a character on a fun night out with her friends will not. A character concerned about loyalty may ask leading questions as a test, but a trusting character will take everything at face value.

POV filtering/deep POV also allows you to share private internal observations, so readers become insiders to what the character truly thinks and feels. 

Strategy #3: Sensory Detail

In the real world, we notice the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures around us. This sensory information helps shape how we feel and allows us to be more immersed and present. In the story, sensory description does the same thing, making readers feel part of the moment and helping to influence what they feel as they read. How?

Well, consider a character standing at the edge of a farmer’s field in the dark, waiting to meet a friend who called and begged for her help. It’s late, cold, and her friend hasn’t showed. Our character is worried, trying to puzzle out what could be wrong, and confused about why she was told to come here of all places. Then there’s a crack of thunder, and rain begins to pelt down.

Describing those cold, painful drops hitting our character’s skin will not just convey discomfort to readers, it increases the sense of urgency and foreboding that something bad has happened. 

Strategy #4: Authentic, Relatable Characters

If we want readers to become emotionally invested, we need to give them someone to care about. Our primary characters should be so well-developed they feel like they’ve walked out of the real world. This can only happen if we take the time to think about who they are, and the needs, motivations, flaws, and fears that make them human.

And speaking of human, that means we want to build characters who make mistakes, screw up, and have regrets. Characters who are not perfect are ones a reader will relate to and get behind. (If you need help building a character top to bottom, give this tool Becca and I designed a try.) 

Strategy #5: Vulnerability

In addition to creating a lifelike character, we need to make sure readers see something that is commonly masked: inner vulnerability. Like real people, certain things will make the character feel insecure, exposed, and weak. Often these things are tied to painful experiences, and their instinct will be to hide their vulnerability, wear emotional armor, and avoid anything (or anyone) that triggers those internal feelings of hurt. (It’s what we all tend to do, after all.) 

But just because our characters have a mask on doesn’t mean these insecurities don’t exist, so find moments where you can show a character’s vulnerability through what they avoid, how they overreact, and if it is a POV character, their innermost thoughts and reflections. Vulnerability is a emotional point of common ground that readers and characters share. 

Strategy #6: Language Choice and Literary Devices

This one isn’t a surprise, but one of the best ways to create emotional impact is with language! Choose specific language that is loaded with meaning and emotion. Sure, we can say a character walked across the room, but did they saunter, limp, weave, or stride? Verbs can hint at how a character is feeling in the moment, their sense of purpose, what’s important to them, who they are deep down, and more.

Figurative language and literary devices like metaphors, similes, alliteration, personification, etc. also can add power, meaning, and help crystalize an image in the reader’s mind so they feel a certain way. 

Strategy #7: Tension, Conflict, and Stakes

When readers care about a character, they won’t want bad things to happen to them. So of course, what will we do? Make sure there’s plenty of obstacles, roadblocks, and adversaries (conflict) on the path to the character’s goal, put something meaningful on the line (personal stakes), and introduce uncertainty over the outcome (tension). This trifecta ensures readers get an emotional ride. 

Strategy #8: Common Ground

I’ve hinted at this throughout, but it generates emotional impact so greatly that it bears repeating—your story should have loads of common ground. It doesn’t matter if the story takes place in a fantastical world, or your character is an assassin fighting zombies, readers should see themselves in the story.

Readers (hopefully) are not assassins nor have experience with zombies, but they do know the toil of a difficult workday, the self-critic that emerges every time a mistake is made, and how empowering it is to have others look up to you. By including everyday human experiences like these, we create a bridge of common ground. Readers feel seen, known, and validated. Emotional impact for the win! 

What’s your favorite strategy for creating emotional impact?  Feel free to share it in the comments!

About Angela

Angela Ackerman is a story coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, and its many sequels. Available in nine languages, her guides are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over a million copies. 

Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site Writers Helping Writers®, as well as One Stop for Writers®, a portal to game-changing tools and resources that enable writers to craft powerful fiction. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Image Credits

Top image by Mikko Koivuneva from Pixabay, edited by Lynette M. Burrows

Second photo by Richárd Ecsedi on Unsplash

Third image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay