Writers in the Storm

Whether you are aiming for 50,000 words written this month (NaNoWriMo) or you’re in the middle of your years-long writing project, middles are hard. You know when you’ve reached the middle of a writing project because your inspiration evaporates, leaving you with a desire to do anything, everything except write.

You rake the leaves, clean the house, read a book, watch TV, or play a game. Stop avoiding your writing. When inspiration wanes, don’t beat your head against a wall. There are ways you can nudge your muse (or subconscious) and your slog will turn into a race to get the words down.

Take Time to Recharge

NANOWRIMO participant or not, you’ve probably spent more time writing than taking care of yourself. Recharge your body and mind and creativity.
Do something physical: stretch, take a walk, garden, or play a sport. Scientific research has shown that “physical exercise may sometimes enhance creativity…”

Another aspect of caring for your physical health is getting enough sleep. Your physical health and creativity suffer when you work your brain too hard. While there are some of us who get our “best ideas” when fatigued, chronic fatigue is a health problem. Sleep restores the brain physically, mentally, and creatively. Take a nap. Do a repetitive chore that doesn’t need brain power. Or zone out in your favorite pastime activity.

Recharge by re-filling your creative well. Depending upon your personality and preferences, you refill your creative well when you read, listen to music, draw, visit a museum. Madeline Le’Engle states that “playing the piano is, for me, a way of getting unstuck.”

It doesn’t have to take a long time to recharge. Experiment with doing this daily versus weekly. Even fifteen minutes of exercise, or of practicing a different type of creativity, or a rest will help. Choose the best intervals and durations for you. But include a recharge in your schedule and then do it.

Ignore Your Inner Voice

Does your inner voice nag you with “this is no good” or “I can’t do this?” You’re not alone. Many writers suffer doubts about their skills when they reach the saggy middle of their book. Remind your inner voice that is a first draft (or whatever draft it is) is not supposed to be perfect. That you will go back and fix it. This can be easier to do if you’ve completed other stories, but sometimes it is extremely difficult whether you are a novice or have dozens of published books. Keep doing it. Practice makes it easier no matter your experience level.

Review Story Structure

The middle is the largest portion of your story. The first half of the middle is your protagonist exploring and testing the limits of the problem. Complications and obstacles keep her from her goal. At the end of the first half, there’s an event that gives the protagonist a false win or loss. It causes a change in how the protagonist views the problem and how to approach the problem during the second half of the middle. Find more about story structure in the books Story Engineering by Larry Brooks and Plot & Structure and Write Your Novel From the Middle by James Scott Bell. Or check out the resource page here on Writers in the Storm.

Trust Your Muse

You can put your inspiration back on the page. Re-read the first part you’ve written. Your muse has inserted hidden gems into your story. What are hidden gems? Hints that are seed into what you’ve already written. Hints your characters give about what happens next or what they want, hints that build tension, hints on how the story world will impact your characters. Take one of those hints and make it a subplot in your middle.

Or simply journal about your novel in your own voice. Do a brain dump. Write down why you chose to write this story. Include any shoulds or should nots you have running around in your head. Argue with yourself why this next step will or won’t work. Your written discussion may show you the best next step. Don’t forget to complement yourself for having reached the middle. Your own words may surprise you with the answer you knew all along.

Categorize the Obstacles

What types of obstacles have you put up for your protagonist to overcome? Are they mostly physical, all mental, or heavily emotional? What type of obstacle was the last one? Mix it up. Change the type of obstacle your protagonist faces next.

Twist the Challenge

Ask yourself what the antagonist (or any character or environment) will do to create an obstacle that forces your protagonist to change tactics. How will this obstacle increase the stakes for your protagonist? How will the antagonist change her tactics to keep the protagonist at bay?

Twist the Choice

Similar to twist the challenge, this time you ask yourself what your protagonist will do to keep the antagonist guessing. How will she force the antagonist’s next move to be one that is favorable to her? And the follow-up question: How will this fail or succeed?

Write a Scene Sentence

This sentence gives a brief description of what your character is doing in the scene, who or what causes a complication or obstacle, and what your character does next. Find the more detailed description of the scene sentence in my post, “Create a Compelling Plot with What-But-Therefore”.

Create the Mirror

According to James Scott Bell, and others, the last half of the story should mirror the first half. Read the first half of your story. What actions can your character take mirroring or reflecting the beginning? What wouldn’t your protagonist do at the beginning that she must do now? In fact, many how-to-write gurus refer to the end of the second half of the middle as the look back. Usually after a resounding defeat, the protagonist reflects on the challenge ahead with a bleak dread. (The reverse can also work.) What does your protagonist dread?

Need More Inspiration?

Here at Writers in the Storm, we have several authors who gave brilliant suggestions on how to change your slog into a suspense-filled ride. Read Donna Galanti’s “Building Suspense: Meet Your Readers in the Middle and They Will Come”, or “A Simple Tip to Help Get Rid of Saggy Middles” and “Panties or Protein Powder? How to Tighten a Saggy Middle” both by Fae Rowen.

Find Your Inspiration

It takes a combination of inspiration, intuition, and knowledge to create a story. Some writers focus on one or the other of these three. If that works for you, great. But all of us get stuck once in a while. If your inspiration wanes, don’t despair. There are many ways to spur your inspiration rather than just soldiering on or giving up. Be prepared. Keep a list of things to try. Experiment. Find what works for you and for this story. And write on!

What do you do when your inspiration wanes? Do you keep a list of things to try?

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, Yorkie wrangler, and occasional stained glass technician. She writes character-driven science fiction filled with discovery, inner strength, determination, and courageous choices.

Her fast-paced series the Fellowship Dystopia, takes place in 1961 and America’s a theocracy. Following the rules isn’t optional. Not even for one of the elite. The first two books, My Soul to Keep, If I Should Die, and the companion book, Fellowship, are available on Amazon and all online bookseller sites. She is hard at work on the third book of the series, And When I Wake.

Lynette lives in the land of Oz. When she’s not procrastinating by not doing housework or playing with her dogs, she’s blogging or writing or researching her next book. Join Lynette online at https://lynettemburrows.com, Facebook.com/LynetteMBurrowsAuthor, or on Twitter @LynetteMBurrows. 

by Melinda VanLone

This is the last of my series focusing on current book cover trends for 2022. If you’ve missed any of the others, you can find them here:

• Book Cover 101: A Book By Another Cover to Boost Sales
• Book Cover 101: Romance Covers
• Book Cover 101: Mystery/Thriller
• Book Cover 101: Fantastic Fantasy and Scintillating Sci Fi

Women's Fiction Cover Trends

Women’s Fiction, or Women’s Literature, is an interesting beast. It’s a broad genre, accounting for a huge chunk of the marketplace. That said, it’s hard to get a grasp on because it’s an umbrella term that it encompasses a wide range of sub genres, much like Young Adult. 

In general, Women’s Lit encompasses all sorts of life experiences and includes everything from romance (though generally not the central plot or the only main focus) to family drama to death and taxes.

Women’s Lit is usually the first shelf you see when you walk into the bookstore. We expect these books to take up prime real estate on the shelf, both in the store and at home.

That means they need to look pretty or striking. They have to catch your attention like a museum piece that almost nobody understands or an Oscar winning movie that nobody watches.

More than that, they really need to look good on TikTok.

TikTok Influence

Of all the publishing trends we’ve seen over the last couple of years, the biggest by far is the influence TikTok has had on publishing. A prime example of this is Colleen Hoover. Her TikTok popularity combined with her publisher’s take on the most recent covers is single-handedly responsible for a seismic shift in cover trends and a HUGE uptick in sales. Take a look at the top five best sellers last week:

The first thing to notice is that Colleen Hoover owns the top five in Literary Fiction/Women’s Lit. She actually dominates the top ten and beyond, depending on which sub categories you look at. TikTok put her there, in part because Booktokers love those covers. 

These covers are influencing not only Women’s Lit but other genres as well. Roaming around TikTok I discovered one of the main reasons for this is that these covers are “discreet”. They don’t shout about the subject inside. They look “literary” or “smart” and they definitely look attractive.

In other words, nobody feels like they need to hide these books like they do one with a naked man chest cover.

If you’re writing romance, thriller, or mystery, jumping on the Colleen Hoover trend train could help boost your sales. These trends include, in no particular order:

1. Large, In-Your-Face Fonts

This trend might partially be due to sheer necessity. It’s hard to read titles on tiny icon size images, so the bigger you make them the easier it will be for your customer to ponder whether they want to click. While type usually takes a back seat to pictures, in this case the type IS the picture. It Ends With Us, Ugly Love, and It Starts With Us all feature enormous type that works with the background to form a pretty piece of art that would look fantastic in your hand when you’re telling your TikTok audience all about how much you loved the book.

2. Minimalistic Background

It used to be geometric shapes or possibly soft landscapes that dominated Women’s Lit. Think old school Danielle Steele.

They were minimalistic, yes, but in a completely different way. The colors were subdued. The title was thin or practically invisible. Honestly, if these covers were in Barnes and Noble today, you’d probably walk right past them. Gold foil on the title isn’t enough to catch the reader’s attention these days.

Today’s fiction cover is bolder and more in your face. It’s focused on one image in a big, big way.

Having one central image, or even nothing but a gradient, in the background makes the cover stand out on our digital screens. Tiny details get lost unless you’re holding the physical book in your hands and even then, less is more. Notice the basic simplicity of Colleen Hoover’s backgrounds.

3. Flowers

A huge trend for Women’s Fiction right now is flowers. One flower, a dozen flowers, an entire collage of flowers, it doesn’t matter. Flowers are colorful, bright, and pretty. You can convey a wide range of emotions with them too (is there anything sadder than a dying flower?).

Just ask Lucy Score how well flowers work for a cover. (Hint… she owned the top spot for both eBook AND print, with this book, for weeks.)

Trends are a funny thing. What’s hot today could be gone tomorrow, literally. That said, what I see happening here is the desire for something that makes the reader happy to see it on their bookshelf, to hold it in their hands, and to show it off to others. That’s something that I don’t see going away any time soon.

I’m re-thinking my own covers with all this in mind. How about you?

About Melinda

Melinda VanLone is a coffee addict, a cat lover, and avid writer of stories about rascally heroes and sassy heroines who live happily ever after in spite of themselves. She shares her house with her fur babies and the love of her life, Mr. Melinda, who spends most of his time at home huddled under blankets because the thermostat remains under her iron control. 

When she's not playing with her imaginary friends you can find her designing covers that sell, taking brisk walks around the neighborhood and failing to resist the pistachio muffins at the nearest local coffee shop. Head on over to melindavan.com to check out her latest writerly doings, or hop over to bookcovercorner.com to peak at her cover designs.

All photo credits - Melinda VanLone except as noted.

by Janet Forbes

It’s called the worldbuilding trap.

Worldbuilders disease.

In fact, it seems like worldbuilding is Public Enemy #1 amongst writers. 

But why?

Some of the biggest, best, and most memorable books - especially, but not only, books in genre fiction - are steeped in worldbuilding. And strong settings are the reason fans buy not just sequels, but lorebooks and artbooks of their favorite novels, video games and TV series. 

It’s why there are so many Lord of the Rings spinoffs. 

And dammit, it’s why I know Klingon.

Whatever your genre, your readers want to escape to the place you’ve created. They want to immerse themselves in your book, open the cover like they’re pulling the duvet over their heads, and revel in your world setting. Worldbuilding, then, is just about the most important thing for a writer, especially of genre fiction. So why do some writers seem to hate it so much?

Here’s my spicy take…. Worldbuilding gets a bad rap because authors don’t know how to handle it.

Worldbuilding has been framed

Worldbuilding in your novel is the egg in your souffle. If it’s well balanced, well-mixed, it makes everything work better. If it goes wrong, it leaves everything smelling of farts. 

And it’s particularly a problem in genre fiction. Here’s why.

As fantasy and scifi developed as genres, prologues that told you ALL about the world were common. Told. As in, the opposite of Show-Don’t-Tell.

Large, dull paragraphs of exposition-dumping (often using Butler-and-Maid style dialogue) were also common, as authors struggled to convey information about their fascinating new world settings using less-than-stellar methods.

Authors who’ve read a lot of older genre fiction, and those who are younger in their craft, often fall into these mistakes. And it makes people hate worldbuilding.

But as always, it’s clunky writing that’s the real villain here. 

Worldbuilding has been framed. 

Worldbuilding Exposition - how to get it right?

OK, so if you’re still following my metaphor, how do we remove the eggy smell from our souffle?

There are two main ways to do this. 

1. Baking in the worldbuilding to our core elements
2. Making sure new information is in motion, and emotional

Baking the Worldbuilding into your souffle book

Somewhere in your novel writing process, you’ll have figured out the three basic elements - setting, characters and plot. 

The trick to a strong novel is to make those things knit together beautifully. It’s time to break out my favourite saying:

“Your setting is the tapestry across which your story is told, weaving through your characters & plot.”

Janet Forbes

The reason for that eggy worldbuilding smell is usually because the setting is tacked on as an afterthought. Let’s add some pointy ears and a weird religion to this character. Yup - that’s definitely going to smell by next chapter.

Instead, use your characters and your locations as vehicles to convey the intricacies of your world.

For characters, consider building in:

• Unique backgrounds that give insight into your wider setting
• Taboos and morals influenced by, or in reaction to, those backgrounds
• Interesting professions (and past professions) unique to your world
• Associations with important organizations (universities, clans, crime syndicates)
• Naming conventions tied into cultural or religious ideals
• Physical expressions of their background, religion, training etc. (tattoos, weapons, clothing, piercings)
• Idioms that have deeper cultural meanings - e.g. not room to swing a warg

For locations, consider:

• Choosing representative locations in your setting - instead of a general store, make the scene happen in a potion shop, a cybertech garage or an exotic animals shop! 
• Filling your location descriptions with the trappings of your world. Tapestries of ancient battles, songs of long-lost heroes in the background, or induction hyper-spanners littering the workshop. 

But also, plot is deeply steeped in setting: the organizations that act, the history that set current events in motion. Make sure you've woven all the elements of your plot from and into your setting, and your book will be tighter and stronger. 

By the way, I always recommend starting with a worldbuilding “meta” when the story is just a spark in your mind’s eye, before you get too deeply into character and plot. It definitely helps this baking-in process. 

In motion and emotional - Worldbuilding exposition done right

Exposition - that is, delivering crucial information to your readers - is necessary. It moves the story forward. Deepens the conflict. Provides stakes. 

But as I mentioned, exposition done wrong leads to that eggy smell. 

So how do you get exposition right? 

Step 1: Ask yourself - should this fact be here?

Consider if you really need to introduce the information. It might be critical if it’s:

• important for your plot (foreshadowing!)
• adding to the mood of the scene 
• leading to deeper understanding of a character

If it’s not doing any of those things, see if you can remove it, or introduce it as a mood element or a detail later. If it DOES need to be there, then consider:

Step 2. How do I make my readers care about this fact?

After all, we’re writing because we want our readers to feel things. We want them to be eager for new knowledge. This is my rule for exposition of new information:

All your exposition should be in motion and emotional. 

Janet Forbes

Essentially, this is an extension of the “show-don’t-tell” principle, and should be treated with the same rules (and with the same caveats!).

Here’s an example. 

Let’s say, I need my audience to learn about the First Principle of Magic. It’s critical for the solution at the climax of my novel. How can I introduce that to my audience in a way that is in motion or emotional to my MC (main character)?

1. In motion: MC is involved in a magical explosion, but leverages the First Principle of Magic to save another character. Essentially, involved with MC doing things.
2. Emotional: MC is humiliated by another, who taunts them for not knowing the First Principle of Magic. A friend explains it while MC has a small meltdown that they’re out of their depth. Involved with MC feeling things. 

In both those instances, the audience has learned the First Principle of Magic. But it was through an exciting scene that gave emotional depth and action to the novel, and developed the characters, too. You can apply this to anything you like - faster-than-light travel, a societal taboo, or whatever.

That’s worldbuilding feeding into plot, feeding into character, and feeding back into worldbuilding… 

And it’s going to make you a souffle book I’m dying to devour. 

---

If you need help avoiding Worldbuilders Disease - i.e. compulsively building your setting instead of writing your novel - then do check out the worldbuilding “meta”. It’s a great tool for prioritizing what worldbuilding information you NEED (and avoiding the trap of worldbuilding you don’t need).

What are your tips for folding the worldbuilding into your stories?

About Janet

Janet Forbes (she/her) is a published fantasy author, RPG game developer and (secretly) a velociraptor, and has been building worlds since she was knee-high to an orc. 

In 2017 she co-founded World Anvil, the award-winning worldbuilding and writing software (and tabletop RPG manager) which boasts a community of 2 million users. 

As a writer, Janet has published short fiction in several collections, was the lead author of The Dark Crystal RPG (2021) with Riverhorse Games and the Henson Company, and has also written for Infinite Black, Kobold Press and Tidebreaker. 

As a D&D performer, she has played professionally for the likes of Wizards of the Coast, Modiphius and Wyrd Games. Janet is passionate about teaching, and has given seminars on writing and other topics for Exeter University, GenCon, Dragonmeet, the Circle of Worldbuilders, Full Sail Writers Conference, PWA’s Fantasy week, and more. She holds a BA and MA in Early Music Performance, is an experienced archaeologist, and speaks 5 languages.

Top image by Deleyna via Midjourney