by Becca Puglisi

What does your character fear the most? You need to know because that fear will motivate them throughout the story and contribute to their fatal flaw—something they must address if they want to achieve their goal and grow as a character.

You see, when a deep fear or insecurity is triggered, characters instinctively default to a familiar defense mechanism. Usually, this is a knee-jerk response that helps them deflect, control, or avoid emotional pain. Dishonesty, denial, aggression, and isolation are examples of these self-protection measures.

Those behaviors and flaws in response to perceived threats are a kind of emotional shielding that keeps potentially threatening people and situations at a distance. They’re unique to the character’s life and personality, most often arising in the aftermath of a painful experience.

Let’s look at this in action with young Lindsay.

A Character Arc Character Study

Eight-year-old Lindsay was abandoned by her mother at the mall. What she takes from thisawful experience is that the people who say they love you might not, and they could leave you at any time. This makes sense to Lindsay. Her mom did say she loved her, and she was a good mom at times—but at the end of the day, she chose to dump Lindsay without looking back.

So Lindsay goes into foster care, where she encounters more people who don’t care about her, use her for their own reasons, and generally aren’t in her corner. Over the years, this deepens her belief that if you let others get close, they’ll either hurt you or bail when things get too hard.

Her desire to be part of a family is overpowered by her fear of being abandoned again. To protect herself, she behaves in ways that discourage people from engaging. She’s rude, hostile, and emotionally distant. These tendencies are like a porcupine’s quills, warning people to keep away.

Analysis

Lindsay experienced something horrible as a child, and her greatest fear is that it might happen again. So she adopts new traits and behaviors to protect herself. And to a degree, they work, because people can’t abandon her if they’re always kept at arm’s length. The problem with using flaws and unhealthy defense mechanisms for self-protection is that they also block good things: healthy relationships, positive opportunities, and the chance to work through problems constructively and build resilience.

Knowing this information for Lindsay, we see a snapshot of who she is at the start of the story: wanting to be loved and belong but isolated, fear-driven, and unable to trust. And as her fear becomes more entrenched over time, her emotional shielding also deepens, creating new problems in her current story.

Lindsay’s hostility keeps people away, and this suits her just fine. But as she gets older, it starts being an issue—like when she mouthed off to the corner store owner when he didn’t give her a job, and she ruined any future opportunities there.

In her late teens, she’s placed with a new family that seems to truly care and isn’t scared off by her tough-girl attitude. Their daughter is her age, and for the first time Lindsay has someone to talk to and hang out with. But when the family brings up adoption, Lindsay’s fear of abandonment is triggered because the only family she’s ever had took off.

Her hostility rises as it always does when she feels threatened—and if she lets it out, it could stop the adoption in its tracks. Is that what she really wants?

Analysis

This is a crossroads moment for Lindsay. She’s become aware of both her fear and how her behavior is limiting her. To achieve her goal of belonging to a family, she needs to heal from her pain of being abandoned, and the opportunity is right here. It terrifies her, but she wants to find a family who loves her. To do that, she must 1) fight her fear instead of being ruled by it and 2) overcome her fatal flaw.

The Two Parts of a Fatal Flaw

In fiction, a character’s fatal flaw is the central internal obstacle they must overcome to reach their goal. It has two parts: a behavioral component—something they do—and a cognitive component—something they believe, also known as a false belief.

Lindsay’s fatal flaw is her hostility (behavioral) combined with the idea that letting people in leads to hurt (cognitive). If she doesn’t challenge both, her fate will be sealed and any hope of being part of a family will go up in smoke. But why would she reject her fatal flaw when it’s helped her feel safe for so long?

Growth can only happen when the character recognizes that her defensive behavior is keeping her stuck. What’s causing Lindsay’s hostility? Her fear of abandonment. By recognizing how much power her fear holds over her life, she takes the first step toward subduing it.

Newly aware of fear’s stranglehold, Lindsay challenges herself to see past the fear and view her life objectively. Her foster family’s unconditional love has created opportunities for Lindsay to be herself. She remembers moments when she let her guard down and nothing bad happened. When she spoke her mind, she wasn’t kicked out. Without fear obscuring her view, she now sees that putting herself out there emotionally doesn’t always result in harm.

Analysis

A new belief takes hold: Lindsay needs people, and vulnerability is a necessary part of achieving that end. It’s a risk worth taking. With this new perspective, she sees that her hostility is standing in the way of what she wants, and she can take steps to respond differently when she feels threatened, letting people in instead of keeping them out.

Backstory Elements You Need to Know

This is a character study of a change arc in action. To win in the story, the protagonist must face their fear, challenge their false belief, and replace the behavioral aspect of the fatal flaw with productive habits. This isn’t easy. It means embracing vulnerability for the hope of something better, and only someone truly committed to change can achieve it.

It also requires you, as the author, to know exactly what your character must overcome so you can provide the opportunities for growth that will enable them to succeed (or fail, if you’re writing a tragedy). To get there, you’ll want to identify the following backstory elements of your character’s arc:

• Their wounding event
• The specific fear it spawns
• The lie they believe about themselves or others (it explains, in their mind, why the wounding event happened)
• Their shielding behaviors and traits they adopt to protect themselves from experiencing the same trauma again
• Their fatal flaw: the cognitive aspect (the lie) plus the behavioral aspect (their go-to trait or behavior meant to protect them). Your character will have adopted many shielding behaviors in the wake of their trauma, but one of them should rise to the top as their default response that protects them when they’re threatened while keeping them from getting what they want the most.

Armed with this information, you’ll have a good idea who your character is on page one, how fear will drive them, and the fatal flaw they’ll have to address by the end. And you can build a story that will get them exactly where you want them to go.

For more information about the fatal flaw, fear’s role in character arc, and how it contributes to your story, check out The Fear Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to What Holds Characters Back.

Do you create your character’s backstory to help identify their fatal flaw? What character flaws do you tend to use? Is there a character with a specific fatal flaw that sticks with you?

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About Becca

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and best-selling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other resources for writers. Her books have sold over 1.4 million copies and are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online resource for authors that's home to the Character Builder and Storyteller's Roadmap tools.

Top Image by John Hain from Pixabay

by Jenny Hansen

I had a great conversation recently with a writer who said something profound: “I understand writing craft…but I don’t know how to connect it to ME for marketing.”

How honest is that? And why don’t more writers talk about this?

The truth is that every time a reader picks up your books, they’re not just deciding whether to read your book. They’re also deciding whether to trust you as a storyteller.

That decision doesn’t come from your plot alone. It comes from what I call “the story behind the story.”

The Shift Many Writers Haven’t Made Yet

We tend to laser-focus in on the goal of writing a great book. That’s a valid goal. No book, no writing career. But once we’ve written a great book (or two or twenty), our long-range goal is to keep readers coming back, book after book

To get this kind of loyalty requires something deeper.

Readers need to feel things like this:

• “This author gets me.”
• “I feel like I know them.”
• “I trust them.”
• “I know what I’m going to feel when I read their books.”

Let’s put this into "NYT Bestseller List perspective":

• In The Hunger Games, readers don’t just follow Katniss. They read the books and watch the movies for stories about survival, sacrifice, and moral courage.
• In Charlotte's Web, we’re tuned in to see how Wilbur gets saved, and what happens to Charlotte. We’re drawn along by friendship, purpose, and what it means to matter.

Different genres. Different themes. But the same kind of reason why we stay: we trust these authors to take us on a journey. We trust their intentions.

Your Core Story: The WHY Behind Everything You Write

Your Core Story answers a not-so-simple question: “WHY do you write these kinds of stories?”

And I’m not talking about the surface “why.” I’m talking about the real why that drives you to write a book or a series.

Maybe you write:

• Stories where justice wins
• Stories that explore identity and belonging
• Stories that find humor in chaos
• Stories that eradicate shame

Your Core Story becomes the emotional throughline across your work. Your books will often change, but your Core Story doesn’t.

It’s why readers follow YOU, not just your books.

Bestselling Author Core Story Examples

(And yes, I browsed the internet for great examples and picked some favorites.)

1. Suzanne Collins

Core Stories: Exploring the emotional cost of survival, and what it means to stay human in inhumane systems.

How this shows up:

• The Hunger Games series is about survival vs compassion
• She also writes about power structures, sacrifice, moral choice

2. Stephen King

King doesn’t just write “horror,” he writes about what happens when people confront fear.

Core Story: Ordinary people are forced to confront extraordinary darkness (in themselves and externally).

How it shows up:

• It → fear, trauma, childhood vs adulthood
• The Shining → isolation, inner demons

3. Colleen Hoover

Hoover doesn’t just write romance. She writes about where love and self-worth collide, and how that struggle plays out.

Core Story: Love is powerful, but it must never come at the cost of self-worth.

Note: Hoover was a social worker before she was an author. Her Core Story reflects her prior career.

How it shows up:

• It Ends with Us → love vs self-respect
• The characters of that story are forced to choose themselves

4. John Grisham

Core Story: Justice is fragile. Grisham’s characters must decide whether they’re willing to fight for it.

He writes about what it costs to stand for what’s right.

How it shows up:

• The Firm → integrity vs corruption
• A Time to Kill → moral justice vs legal system

5. Kristin Hannah

Core Story: Ordinary women are capable of extraordinary strength in impossible circumstances.

She writes about strength, not just survival.

How it shows up:

• The Nightingale → courage in war
• The Four Winds (and The Great Alone) → resilience in hardship

6. Fredrik Backman

Core Story: Broken people are still worthy of love, belonging, and redemption.

He writes about the humanity underneath behavior.

How it shows up:

• A Man Called Ove → grief, connection
• Anxious People → humanity, empathy

All of these authors are very distinct. Readers may come to their books for the plot, but they stay for the pattern.

Quick summary of the above

Let’s zoom out from these authors’ individual books to their Core Stories:

1. Suzanne Collins → survival + humanity
2. Stephen King → fear and human darkness
3. Colleen Hoover → love + self-worth
4. John Grisham → justice vs corruption
5. Kristin Hannah → resilience + the strength of ordinary women
6. Fredrik Backman → broken people + belonging

They have different genres and different audiences, but each author is exploring a very similar emotional truth across their body of work.

How do you identify YOUR Core Story?

Here are a few questions you can ask.

• What emotional truth repeatedly shows up in my writing?
• What do I care deeply about exploring?

 “Core Story” is more than “theme.”

Different books have different themes. But the Core Story is typically something that will show up across multiple books, woven in alongside plot and theme and character. (Once you see your Core Story, you can't un-see it.)

One last question: If someone read ALL your work, what do you think they'd see as your Core Story?

Look for Your “Throughline”

There is absolutely a throughline to your work, and you should know what it is. Instead of asking, “What’s this book about?” ask: “What connects everything I write?”

That throughline is:

• Your brand.
• Your voice.
• The topics you care so deeply about that they show up book to book to book.

These are part of your Story DNA at the author level.

Final Thought

I’ve often told my non-writing friends, “I just want to entertain people with my stories.” And I mean that.

But underneath that surface answer, I’m driven by deeper things.

• A need for clarity: of feelings and communication.
• A desire to lift people up and help them feel seen.
• To speak the hard-to-speak-about things.

There is always a deeper reason behind your work. That’s what “the story behind the story” actually is.

When you understand it, everything changes. Not just how you market, but how you write.

Have you defined your Core Story yet? If so, would you share it with us in the comments? If not, feel free to ask me any questions you have!

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 purchased from Depositphotos and edited in Canva.

by Gale Leach

This article follows two earlier posts published on the Writers in the Storm blog:

• Charting Your Course: How should you publish?
• Charting Your Course #2: Self-Publishing in 2025

Together, these posts explore the pros and cons of self-publishing, examine today’s self-publishing landscape, and conclude with the practical steps for self-publishing your book(s).

Much of this article had been written when I happened upon “The big self-publishing checklist” by Rob Fitzpatrick, posted in March. Fitzpatrick explains masterfully what I’d hoped to share with you. I thought about suggesting you read his article and leave it at that, but I won’t; you’ll find good information here. Instead, I ask you to read this post and refer to the Fitzpatrick article for additional information.

Follow the Workflow

The first graphic in Fitzpatrick’s article shows his overview of the process for both ebooks and print.

Correlate the information shown in Fitzpatrick's article with the steps listed below. My numbered steps refer to those in my timeline.

1. Final Manuscript

Self-edit your manuscript using any/all available tools/software. If needed, hire someone to do a developmental edit. Follow all other edits with a line/copy edit. Edits can be pricey, but good edits are worth the money. Readers abhor typos and errors.

2. Ebook, Print, or Both

• Decide whether you will publish an ebook, a print book, or both. If you are launching both an ebook and paperback, you can create the full wrap cover for the book and then use the front cover for the e-book.
• Many independent authors publish both ebook and print. Ebooks are easier to create, provide easy global reach, and have higher margins; print books provide perceived credibility and higher revenues. If you plan on selling at events, print is necessary.

Genre–Format Correlation

Genre	Best Format
Fantasy	Both (strong print presence)
Historical Fiction	Both (Print important for credibility)
Horror	Ebook (strong) + Print (collector niche)
Mystery/Thriller/Crime	Best format: Both
Nonfiction (General / Narrative)	Both
Romance	Ebook (strongly); Print (secondary)
Science Fiction	Both
Self-Help / Personal Development	Both (Print is strong)
Young Adult (YA)	Both (print slightly stronger)

Note: Many more genres exist, and the list grows as they cross over each other, blending romance with paranormal or horror with romance, as examples. It’s important to be as specific as possible with your genre choices on the KDP metadata list, as they determine where your book will be categorized, helping readers locate it.

Choose a Trim Size

100-150 pages: choose 5.5” x 8.5”

150 or more pages: choose 6” x 9”

• Your genre should suggest which trim size and look of the cover might be most appropriate (see the table above). You should choose an appropriate trim size even if you only have an ebook—it will display correctly on Amazon along with the other books in your genre.
• If print, choose the trim size (physical dimensions of the book). Trim size refers to the book dimensions in inches. Most authors choose 6” x 9” because it costs less to print than  smaller sizes. With fewer pages, pick 5.5” x 8.5” to create a good-looking book that’s not too thin (KDP requires your book to have a spine label). Determine the approximate number of pages based on typical word count/page for that size.
• An 80,000-word manuscript usually produces a book around 300–330 pages, depending on trim size and layout elements. If you have many graphics or photos, the page count could be much more. Amazon’s Printing Costs & Royalty Calculator will help you make the most sensible choice.

3. Cover Design

Most people recommend you hire a skilled cover designer. You can use many programs to create cover artwork, but I strongly recommend that you take advantage of the knowledge a skilled cover designer can offer. Their cover might cost from $100 to $500, depending on complexity. Look at other covers in your genre for help with design. You don’t want to copy their covers, but neither do you want to stray too far from what readers expect.

The cover is your most important marketing tool. Readers should recognize the genre immediately. Start designing your cover as soon as your title is certain. For a full-wrap cover, use a template downloaded from KDP (absolute spine width must wait until page count is final). Get an ISBN and apply it (as an ISBN-13 barcode) to the lower right corner of the back cover. Add your metadata to the back print cover at the top left and to the copyright page of the interior.

Fitzpatrick says to start designing the front (ebook) cover and extend it to wrap around the spine and to the back for print. I’ve always done this the other way around, making a complete wrap cover and then selecting only the front image (in the trim size) for the ebook. Do whatever works best for you.

ISBN, Metadata, Pricing, Keywords

ISBN

• You can buy ISBNs from the official source in the United States: Bowker. Purchasing an ISBN means you'll be your own publisher and the owner of a unique number that can never be republished. If you choose to produce your publication in multiple formats (e.g., hardcover and paperback), each will need its own ISBN. The same rule applies if your publication is an updated version of a previous edition.
• The same ISBN you purchased separately can sometimes be used with multiple companies. For example, you can use your own ISBN with an upload to KDP and again to D2D. The recommendation is that you upload to KDP first (without choosing Expanded Distribution—it will conflict with IngramSpark), then upload to IngramSpark to handle widespread distribution. It’s best to upload to both KDP and IngramSpark prior to your publication date to help avoid conflicts.
• If you get the free ISBN from KDP, D2D, or IngramSpark, the ISBN belongs to them and cannot be used anywhere else.

Metadata

Metadata identifies and describes your book to retailers (e.g., title, author, keywords, subject). Good metadata helps retailers bring your book to the right readers. An ISBN is necessary for print books but not ebooks. Fitzpatrick’s description of the other elements is worth a look (see below and his Section 5).

Title

Shorter titles are usually better than long ones. Also, think about where the book’s name will fall in the alphabet: if it begins with “Z,” the book will appear in lists after all the other titles.

Description

Besides having a fine cover design, you need a great book description. Writing the description is the hardest thing you’ll do after writing the book. Be sure your description is excellent, as it will lure your potential reader to learn more and buy. Check the internet for information on how to create a great book description. Reedsy has good information on writing a book description that sells.

BISAC Categories

All sites ask that you choose categories within which your book fits. For a book about teaching children to play chess, you might choose “Games & Activities/Chess” and “Juvenile Nonfiction/Games & Activities/Board Games,” among others.

Keywords

Keywords are phrases readers might type into search engines when looking for books. Amazon allows seven keyword phrases to help readers discover your work. These can be single words or many words, as you wish—for example, “pickleball” and “advanced pickleball strategy.” For my first children’s book, I chose “adventure,” “animals,” “caterpillar,” “friends,” “courage,” and “family.” I then added “Charlotte’s Web, believing that children who liked that book might also like mine.

4. Interior Design—Ebooks

Interior design is the process of attractively arranging text and images, if any, on a page in order to create a pleasant reading experience. The cover attracts buyers; the interior design keeps them reading through consistency, readability, good use of white space, and a visual style that matches the genre.

For an Ebook

 If your book is mostly text, an ebook should be simple to format and lay out. The goal with ebooks is to keep things simple. They must look good on so many different devices—that means you should not format your text in elaborate ways. Look at other ebooks you like and emulate what they do. If your ebook has many graphics, it would be wise to find help.

Most platforms accept Word documents and can convert them automatically to EPUB, the standard ebook format. (MOBI, the older Kindle format, has largely been phased out in favor of EPUB, and PDF is not recommended.)

If you have images or designs, you will still need to work on the layout, which can be complicated. I suggest getting help with this.

Ensure your file is clean: consistent chapter headings, proper scene breaks, no manual tabs or extra spaces, and a linked table of contents where appropriate. Keep your ebook file neutral; nothing fancy. Fitzpatrick writes more about this in his Section 3.1.

After upload, ebooks typically appear on Amazon within 24–72 hours.

Ebook Pricing Strategy

Typical debut pricing ranges:

Ebook novel: $2.99 – $4.99
Ebook nonfiction: $5.99 – $9.99

 

Print Books

Good interior design can be difficult for the uninitiated. You can do a good job of layout/design using Microsoft Word, but it wasn’t created for this type of work, and it’s tough to make it behave. Page layout programs have a learning curve (a week or more) and aren’t free, but the money is a good investment if you plan on writing more books. The alternative is to hire a designer to do the job. You can find great designers at fiverr.com and reedsy.com. Fitzpatrick speaks to this in his Section 2.1, “Layout complexity and DIY vs. delegation”:

At its simplest, interior layout means taking your manuscript and formatting it with the proper page size, margins, page breaks, page numbers, and a title page. However, there’s a lot of fiddly detail to get right.

In general, interior layout goes one of two ways:

1. For prose-heavy books that are able to be prepared with the DIY tools of either Vellum or Atticus, it's trivially easy and should be done yourself
   1. For design-heavy books that require custom page layouts, it's extremely tedious and will probably involve a freelancer

Fitzpatrick suggests using Atticus (Windows) or Vellum (Mac) for DIY interior layouts because these programs are simpler and less costly than the big name in the business, InDesign. I’ve long used other powerful and less-expensive alternatives to Adobe’s tools made by Affinity.

About Affinity

However, while researching this article, I learned that Affinity was acquired by Canva in 2024 and subsequently made its entire professional creative suite (Photo, Designer, Publisher) FREE on Mac, Windows, and iPad as of October 30, 2025. Despite initial user fears regarding potential subscription models, Canva has committed to keeping the software as a high-quality, non-subscription, and perpetual-license-based product. Affinity is now a single product comprising software for professional page layout, graphic design, and photo editing. The most amazing thing is that these programs really are FREE. Read more at Affinity.studio.

Of course, I must say that Adobe’s InDesign is by far the best layout program on the market. If you plan to write more than one book, it might be a wise investment.

Specifications. Make your margins no smaller than 0.75 inches, use running headers, and set page numbers in the center or outside of all pages except the first few.

If these DIY options don’t work for you, I’ve had good luck hiring freelancers from Fiverr; other authors have said they liked using Reedsy. Both groups offer services covering the gamut of everything you might need.

Proofreading

Ebooks: Use Kindle Previewer. This app, available for Windows PC and Macintosh, allows you to visualize your ebook on many different platforms.

Print Books: Reviewers have traditionally proofread PDF files at this point, but Fitzpatrick argues that it is hard to track notes in the PDF file, so errors often persist. He suggests proofing the document file in its native state and transitioning to PDF when ready to upload (see his section 2.2).

To Be Continued . . .

I wrote too much for a single blog post—the rest will follow soon. I hope this much has been helpful and that you’ll let me know in the comments.

Reference:

Fitzpatrick, Rob. “The big self-publishing checklist.” Useful Books, March 4, 2025.
https://www.usefulbooks.com/learn/self-publishing-checklist

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About Gale

Writing The Art of Pickleball in 2005 launched Gale Leach’s career as an award-winning author. From 2011 to 2020, she also managed her own company, Two Cats Press, which published the works of six Arizona authors, including seven of her own fantasy adventure novels for children and teens. Currently, she’s at work on a fantasy trilogy involving magic, technology, multiple worlds, and creatures you only thought were mythological.

Gale and her hero husband live in Arizona, accompanied by two cats and a bearded dragon. Gale’s interests outside of writing include singing, playing music, genealogy, reading, crafting, and many types of puzzles and games. You can connect with Gale on social media or her website.

Top Image created by Gale Leach using ChatGPT.