By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

To strengthen your story, look at each scene as a reader would.

We writers spend a lot of time looking at our work like, well, a writer. We study plot and structure, pace and tension, character and dialogue, but how often do we think about how the reader is going to react to our story?

One of my critique groups is a “critique as we write” group. Every week, we turn in two chapters of our first drafts or whatever draft we’re revising. It’s a great way to keep our writing momentum going since we have people waiting for pages, but it’s had a much better benefit than we realized when we started the group.

We get real-time feedback about what readers expect to happen next.

This has utterly changed the direction of two of my novels so far, and both for the better.

We don’t turn in our comments and line edits until after we’ve met, so our group discussion focuses on the big picture issues and what the author is trying to do with the story.

Which means, when I set up certain situations that really hook the reader, my critique partners tell me they’re excited about what’s going to happen next. If I didn’t plan for anything exciting, I know I need to figure out something and meet those expectations.

This pushes me to dig deeper and think outside the box, as well as take advantage of anything I might have accidentally done or inadvertently set up.

Example One: Make the World Building Matter

I have a magical storm in my middle grade WIP that was originally just colorful world building. It was approaching the town, and would hit and be scary and cool, but I’d never intended it to be more than just “magical weather” to show how the magic in this world works.

But my critique partners were excited about it, and one was convinced that the storm was going to cause something awful that would have a significant impact on the story.

Which, um, yeah, it wasn’t gonna do that.

I was in quite the quandary after that session, because I knew the next chapter would let my readers down. Clearly, I’d created a great hook and they were anticipating what might happen, which raised the tension and stakes in the story. Even though the storm wasn’t that big a deal, I saw how it could be.

Not following through on reader anticipation would have missed a huge opportunity to deepen my story and make the world richer. I brainstormed how that storm could play a larger role, and that changed the course of my entire novel.

It was still the same story, but the storm created a situation that brought the core conflict into play in a much more impactful way than I’d previously planned. It went from being a world building detail to the bridge between the inciting event and the second act of the novel.

Which was super cool.

How you can use this in your own novel:

If you don’t have access to critique partners or beta readers, look at your scene as if you’ve never seen it before and have no idea what is going to happen next. Ask:

• What events have you set up that could go somewhere more interesting than you originally planned?
• What are the moments that will pique reader curiosity?
• What currently doesn’t lead anywhere, but it interesting? Could you make it lead somewhere?

Pretend this is the first time you’ve seen these pages and put yourself in the reader’s shoes. If you do have access to a beta reader, give them the chapter and ask them what they expect will happen, and what parts they were excited or curious about. If they line up with what you did, awesome! If not, can you use that knowledge to improve the story?

Example Two: Move Things Around for the Strongest Impact

In the science fiction detective story I’m revising, one of my critique partners noted that she was ready for my protagonist to “go to the cabin.” It was something I’d been teasing for the first half of the book, but it was originally intended to be part of the epilogue. I never planned for my protagonist to go there before the plot was resolved, as it was something that was part of his backstory, and a subplot for the series.

Well, after her comments, I obviously needed to re-think that. I’d dangled too big a carrot and now I’d set reader expectations that I wasn’t going to deliver on. That would lead to unsatisfied readers.

I’d been trying to deepen the protagonist’s personal story, and I realized that if he did indeed “go to that cabin” in the midpoint, it combined the two main conflicts of the entire novel. It solved a problem I’d be struggling with, and did it in a way that cranked up the tension and mystery, as well as brought the personal story arc into the plot arc.

My critique partner was right—that character had to go there, and everything I’d done during the revision inadvertently set it up so readers were ready and anticipating that trip. If I didn’t do it, they’d get annoyed about all the focus I was putting on something that wasn’t going to play a big role in this book.

And just as my magical storm had changed my MG fantasy, this visit to the cabin changed my detective novel, and made it oh, so much richer.

How you can use this in your own novel:

First drafts are great dumping grounds for solid ideas and half-formed ideas. It’s the half-formed ones that often sneak in at odd times, totally out of order, but they bring something compelling to the tale. Move them around and you might wind up with an awesome twist you didn’t realize you had. Ask:

• Am I holding back the “good stuff?”
• Is there anything in the story that would have more impact if I revealed it sooner? What about later?
• What are the things readers are going to be most curious about?
• What have I been teasing readers with all book? Is there a payoff for all that teasing?

Don’t be afraid to cut and paste events and see how the story flows. Moving things around can tweak your pacing and tension, and add a more compelling layer to the story.

There’s a fine line between doing what readers expect and satisfying reader expectation, and the trick is to skirt that line.

When we do it well, readers anticipate what’s to come and eagerly look forward to seeing it happen. When we do it poorly, they know what’s coming and the story feels stale and predictable. If you can get a sense of what readers expect as you write (or in an early draft), you can play with those expectations so they’re satisfied by what happens, and surprised because it’s not the way they thought it would be.

Do you have beta readers who share thoughts on works in progress?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author and founder of the popular writing site Fiction University, where she helps writers improve their craft and navigate the crazy world of publishing. Not only does she write about writing, she teaches workshops across the country, and her blog has been recognized as a Top Writing Blog by Writer’s Digest. She also spins tales of adventure for both teens and adults, and firmly believes that doing terrible things to her characters makes them more interesting (in a good way). She loves talking with writers and readers, and encourages questions of all types—even the weird ones.

Find out more about writing at www.Fiction-University.com, or visit her author’s site at www.JaniceHardy.com. Subscribe to her newsletter to stay updated on future books, workshops, and events and receive her ebook, 25 Ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now, free.

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By Piper Bayard of Bayard & Holmes

I’ll say it straight up. Marketing is the bane of my writing existence. I can draft a book, withstand ruthless editing, rewrite the book half a dozen times or more, format it, create a cover for it, etc., but, dear God, don’t ask me to sell it!

I did all of the things I was supposed to do. I posted blogs and articles. I built respectable platforms on Twitter (now X) and Facebook. I networked with everyone from readers to mega-authors. I started a newsletter. I taught at conferences. I ran ad campaigns. What I learned from all of it is that I need professional help. Today, I’m sharing some mistakes and challenges I’ve encountered in the ruthless marketing arena.

1. Platforms Can Disappear in a Blink

Tech platforms that we build for years can get torpedoed into oblivion overnight through no fault of our own. I’ll give you my own cautionary tale as an illustration.

For years, my espionage fiction and nonfiction partner Jay Holmes and I supplied articles twice a week for a company called Social In, in addition to posting three times a week at our own site. Social In had over 60 websites with corresponding Twitter accounts.

The Twitter accounts consisted of ads to provide people with information on articles at the sites and on social events in their city, and each website was tailored to a different city. The ads were programmed to tweet out at various times throughout the day, and the followers signed up specifically for those event ads and contributed articles. Through Social In, Holmes and I reached over six million people. . . You read that right. Six million.

In 2018, a mere two weeks before our first nonfiction release, Spycraft: Essentials, Twitter changed its rules--no more identical tweets. With over 60 sites, it would have been too labor-intensive to keep Social In alive by hand. The business crashed, and our six-million-reach platform disappeared. Seven years of investment gone overnight, and us left high and dry.

We learned the hard way that six thousand loyal readers in a newsletter we control would have been better than six million followers at the mercy of Big Tech.

2. The Spawn of Satan -- Social Media Algorithms

Believe it or not, there was a time when all of our “friends” on our platforms saw our posts in their feed. With the rise of that Spawn of Satan known as Social Media Algorithms, we have all been squeezed into little echo chambers online. This means that only a handful of people see our posts, and unless those posts garnish great admiration through likes and replies, they remain in obscurity.

Compound that with Big Tech curating what gets seen and what does not, and it makes for precarious marketing platforms. As a result, it is now possible to have thousands of followers with a reach of only a few dozen. It doesn’t mean social media is a complete waste of time for building an audience, but it does mean our audience is severely limited.

3. The Propaganda Cold War

Increasingly, “social media” has become a battleground for foreign and domestic powers to control what the Romans referred to as “the mob.” The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, domestic political parties, etc., closely monitor social media feeds and use the platforms to incite violence, chaos, and confusion in the world. They do this with trolling, and as anyone who is on social media can attest, there is always a swarm of poorly informed people with strong opinions who are happy to pile on.

As a result, the consequences of one wrong word, one misinterpretation, one unpopular opinion, etc., have become catastrophic to careers. While it is intellectually fascinating for me to watch, as I have been a student of propaganda for decades, this deluge of social media incitement has put a damper on civil discourse and driven many readers from the arena, making them harder for authors to reach.

4. Ideological Dominance

One more marketing challenge that we face as writers is the elimination of diversity of thought in the traditional publishing world. At this point in time in the publishing world, the current dominant social ideology has pre-empted all else in New York publishing. This is not the first time this has happened. When any single ideology, regardless of what it is, so completely dominates the publishing world, it poses a challenge to the substantial number of authors who have diverse voices. Those authors cannot get contracts with the Big Five, and, therefore, cannot benefit from the Big Five ready-made route to market through established media support, social platforms, and audiences.

Those who do not fit into the narrow conscripts of the prevailing ideology must go with smaller publishing houses, which have fewer marketing resources, or enter the world of indie publishing and depend on their own marketing efforts or the efforts of those they hire. Their customers don’t exist in a convenient block in one place, waiting for material. Those alternative voices must find their own ways to seek out readers and corral them together into the virtual store fronts of their websites and newsletters to build marketing blocks of their own.

I’m not saying there are no advantages to publishing with smaller houses or indie publishing. There are excellent small publishing houses which offer benefits that can outweigh the Big Five, and certainly the independence and flexibility of indie publishing cannot be overvalued. I’m only pointing out that marketing is much more of a challenge for those publishers and  indie authors.

5. Satan’s Other Spawn -- Amazon Algorithms

When a book is loaded into Amazon, key words and categories instruct the program where to place the book so that it appears in searches of similar books. Sounds simple, right? Sure it is, when it works. However, it often doesn’t work, and books get buried in unlikely places.

Again, I will offer my own example. We released The Leopard of Cairo in April of 2022. Key words and categories all involved such fun things as espionage, thrillers, adventure, etc. Somehow, the book quickly disappeared from visibility to be pigeonholed with travel books to Egypt and Africa, and it sits there to this day. The Panther of Baracoa came out one week later with similar key words and categories, and as of this article, it is listed with The Pink Panther videos.

I suppose this is an upgrade, because for over a year The Panther of Baracoa was categorized with panther plushie toys. I kid thee not. When I contacted Amazon for help, they told me to update my key words and categories, but other than that, they could do nothing.

Similar things have happened with the books of a few other authors I know, and none of us knows why. Speculation ranges from computer glitches, to advertisements gone awry, to straight up shadow banning. Regardless of the reason why, misbehaving Amazon algorithms can take a book down faster than fire took down the Hindenburg.

6. Shifting Sands of Success

Successful book marketing is a chaotic target. It is not a math problem which, once solved, will always have the same answer. That means that what works today will at least need tweaking or will not work at all in a few months. For those of us who are not marketing marksmen, constantly having to re-focus on the target is a huge time suck that can torch the joy of writing, stoke depression, and prove prohibitive to actually getting words on the page.

7. Shifting Sands of Technology

Which brings us to the other huge marketing time suck, technology. My husband is a computer hardware architect, and I’m always asking him why he and his peers can’t just make something that works and leave it alone. He blames the software guys, but the blaming does nothing to solve the problem.

Using the technology of word processors, book formatting programs, websites, all of the various social platforms, etc., isn’t something we only learn once. It’s something we have to continually figure out and keep up with as Big Tech does what it does best--make largely arbitrary changes to keep themselves in business. And then there are all of the glitches, outages, hackers, and computer failures that add to that equation. As a result, the infrastructure that our book marketing efforts rest upon is at best an occasional drain of time and energy and at worst entire days spent down technological rabbit holes just to keep things running.

So for all these reasons and more, I’m done with leading my own marketing department. Life is just too short. I’m going with the pros, and, as I’ve told them, I will be putty in their hands--as biddable as a duckling looking to imprint on its mother. May I never fight these obstacles on my own again.

Do you do your own book marketing? What pitfalls have you found? What works well for you this week? Do you hire professionals to help you?

About Piper

Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes of Bayard & Holmes are the authors of espionage tomes and international spy thrillers. Their fiction and nonfiction books are available at their site, BayardandHolmes.com. You can contact Bayard & Holmes at their Contact page, on Twitter (now X) at @piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or at their email, BayardandHolmes@protonmail.com.

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By Lori Freeland

Have you ever read a book where the story (or romance, mystery, character arcs, or any major plot) is leading up to something big but when you get there, instead of a BIG BANG, you get a baby blip?

It’s frustrating, for sure. You’re invested. You’re sucked in. You’re racing through the book to the big finish line. Then . . . nothing. Or pretty close to nothing.

What a huge disappointment that makes you wish you could get back the hours you spent. And you’re probably not going to be searching for any more of that author’s books.

Why the Blip?

As writers, we don’t want our readers to have that experience. We want to hook them and keep them coming back for more of our books. Being aware of why the blip steals the BANG’s thunder can help. Here are a few reasons:

Not Understanding Story Structure

When you first start writing, there’s a lot to learn, and you can’t do it all at once. So while you’re working on perfecting your wordsmith skills, you might postpone learning story structure. Sometimes it takes writing an entire book—or two—to figure out your storytelling skills need work.

It’s worth it to invest in a book, a webinar, a video, or a class to learn how to get this right. Sadly, a good story with mediocre writing usually does better than a bad story with stellar writing.   

Book Fatigue

You’ve been crafting a story for ages. You’ve edited each chapter seventy thousand times. And you’re—understandably—tired of the characters, the world, the dialogue, the words, and just want it to be done. It’s good enough at this point, right?

Not always. Put the story away and revisit it when you’re not exhausted. Give it to beta readers or critique partner and ask for honest, specific feedback. They can catch what you miss.

Not Spending Enough Time 

You might be on deadline and rushing. Or pushing yourself to write too fast. Or maybe your goal is to release a book a month. All of it leads to things that are missed.

If you have no control over the time crunch (you’re on a publisher’s deadline), finding those editing partners/beta readers is crucial. And next time, plan ahead on pacing.

We writers tend to procrastinate and then freak out when our book is due. If the time crunch is self-imposed, slow down. It’s okay to not release so many books a year. It’s better to have a few (or one) great book than twelve not-so-great books.  

By Accident

Readers devour your story with fresh eyes and excitement. It’s their first time on this ride. But you know everything that happens. And your “eyes” fill in things that aren’t there. This is an issue at a line-editing level but also on a story level. Or maybe you’ve changed the story and taken things out that you forgot need to be rewritten or put back in. Either way, you’ve unintentionally missed the BANG.

Putting the story away for a week or more and then rereading can help you spot what needs to be fixed. Beta readers or critique partners are great for this as well.

Other Ways to Fix the Blip

Writers never aim for the baby blip. But we may also forget to aim for the BIG BANG. In addition to the suggestions above, here are 3 more things you can do to be intentional about hitting that end target:

Breadcrumb Your Plotlines Through the Story

Be consistent. Make notecards or a story map. Ensure that the reader is seeing important pieces of the story (or relationship or mystery) pop up on a regular basis. Think of it as a trail of breadcrumbs leading up to that BANG. If there’s too much space between each crumb, the reader will veer off on the wrong trail or get lost entirely and then when the BANG happens, it will be random and unexpected, and not in a good way. 

Spotlight Important Moments

As you’re being consistent with the breadcrumbs, there will be moments that need to stick out. If they don’t stick out for the characters (the characters don’t react to them on an appropriate level), they won’t stick out for the reader. They’ll be glossed over and filed away.  

Build Out the Climax

When the BANG finally comes, build it out. Build it up. Make it into a show. Readers have been waiting all 356 pages for this moment. Make it count. Don’t skim over it or skip the important parts. This is where “show, don’t tell” is huge. Let the reader feel and experience everything that’s happening. Make sure you put the reader deep into the POV character’s head. And take enough time to give a satisfying climax.  

Keep in Mind

Next time you read a book, make mental or take physical notes about what’s working or not working as the author’s leading you toward the BANG. Being intentional is more than half the battle when it comes to writing a satisfying story that has an ending worth waiting for.

Let me know what you think. Do you struggle with this? How do you make sure you hit your BANG? What doesn’t work for you?

About Lori

Lori Freeland wrote her first story at age five. It wasn’t good, but it left her with the belief that everyone has a story to tell. An author, editor, and writing coach, she writes everything from articles to short stories to novels, has taught at conferences across the country, and helped many new writers find their voices.

An eclectic writer and finicky mood reader, she loves happy endings, thrills and chills, unexpected twists, and anything a little weird—as long as it has a touch of romance. When she’s not curled up with her dogs stressing about her life choices and drinking too much coffee, you can find her messing with the lives of the imaginary people living inside her head.  

The Accidental Boyfriend

Jess is everything Gabe wants. Gabe is everything Jess doesn’t know she needs. Some accidents were meant to be. 

Gabe isn't a werewolf. He just plays one on TV. Jess isn't a guy magnet. She just writes teen romance. TV heartthrob Gabriel Wade has never met a party he couldn't rock, a problem he couldn't dodge, or a crowd he couldn't play. Homeschooled Jessica Thorne has never met a party she couldn't wallflower, a problem she couldn't stress over, or a crowd she couldn't escape. But they both know what it's like to lose someone . . . someone who's still here.

After a hotel escalator dumps Jess into Gabe's spotlight and he unknowingly hijacks her first kiss, he decides she'll be the perfect decoy for the paparazzi. If he can convince her to play his "girlfriend of the week." Except Jess isn’t about to be anyone’s fangirl and doesn’t care about TV's Hottest Hairball or his Hollywood ego. And by the time she figures out he isn't who she thought, it might be too late to say she needs him as much as he needs her. Even if he wants her for real.

More than just a romance, The Accidental Boyfriend is the story of what happens when two people from very different worlds are thrown together only to discover they’re both struggling to figure out who they are and how to navigate a loss they didn’t plan.  

Lori Freeland | author |editor | writing coach    lorifreeland.com (young adult & contemporary romance fiction)  lafreeland.com (inspirational blog & resources for writers)  Grab your copy on Amazon kindle | paperback   read the first 3 chapters