Writers in the Storm

by Ellen Buikema

If you want your readers to keep turning the pages, answering some vital questions early on will help them commit to your story. While developing questions for your readers piques their curiosity, you’ll lose them if you don’t provide them answers.

What kind of story is it?

Readers dive into a book looking for a specific type of reading experience. They have expectations associated with the particular genre and need to know they’ve come to the right place.

Literary nonfiction provides a certain truth to its readers, whereas the romance genre promises the hope of happiness, and horror guarantees a good scare.

Your readers should be able to pick up your book and immediately know the genre based on the cover art and back-of-the-book blurb. Here’s more info from Melinda VanLone on Genre Book Covers.

When and where is the story happening?

The setting is the story world and includes the immediate surroundings of the story. Like wine and cheese, good pairings make a difference. Creating the right location and time frame for your book’s genre can result in an instant classic.

Elements of setting may include:

• Culture
• Historical period
• Geography
• Time - The world looks much different in the broad daylight than in twilight or the dark of night.

Setting can perform the role of a character in the backdrop of your story. Consider the primary location of The Shining and the impact of the Overlook Hotel. What if the setting was located elsewhere, like above an ice cream shop? How might that alternative setting have affected the story?

Whose story is it?

You’re asking your reader to spend precious time with your characters. They’ll want to cheer for the heroes you've created. Readers will devour your book because they’re invested in the characters.

Characters who do the unexpected, such as responding to a hostile neighbor with kindness, offer non-complementary behavior that entices your reader to keep reading.

An authentic voice is essential. Including actual historical events or people can help move your story forward.

Here are some guidelines for introducing the protagonist.

What’s the story behind the story?

When we think story, we think plot. But what happened before the story? What occurred in the characters’ lives to motivate them to do the things they do? What is the good, the bad, and the horrific of it all?

The internal struggle and how events affect the characters are big parts of the story. Dropping crumbs of hints about the protagonist’s internal dilemma early in the story bonds the readers to your characters. Interesting subplots help readers to connect with your characters even more.

After introducing your cast in the first few pages, the readers need to relate to them. That’s why it’s helpful to develop a backstory for each character.

Some elements in a backstory are:

• Where the characters are from
• Family
• Inherited temperament and traits
• School
• Traumatic experiences
• Socioeconomic status
• Job or lack of employment

Once you’ve developed your characters’ backstory, you can keep the readers turning the pages by creating each character’s purpose. A purpose, goal, or mission stated early in the book will leave readers wondering:

• What will they do to achieve their goal?
• How will they do it?
• Will it influence the other characters?
• To what lengths will they go to reach the goal?

You can plan this strategy by:

• Developing the character’s goal or mission
• Showing the character’s attempt to accomplish the task
• Thwarting the attempts

In addition to cheering for the protagonist’s achievements, readers empathize with the character's challenges and keep following the story to find out what happens next. Then you can introduce another roadblock until the reader finally gets to the part where the protagonist accomplishes the goal.

Learn more about keeping those pages turned with Laurie Schnebly Campbell’s post The Most Important Reader Question.

Use chapter endings to your advantage.

Closing a chapter with an internal thought, question, or a hint of what might come will keep the readers interested. Don’t make it easy for readers to close the book.

If you’re crafting a tale with cliffhangers, be sure they pay off. Imagine the following end to a chapter: a character takes photographs in the middle of a field and then abruptly disappears. Having your protagonist wind up in another dimension with two moons will make your readers far more engaged than learning in the beginning of the following chapter that she tripped and fell. Make your readers happy. The characters will figure their way out of whatever situation you create.

What keeps you reading a story? How do you feel about chapter cliffhangers? What other questions might readers need to be satisfied in order to bond with the characters?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents and a series of chapter books for children with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, YA paranormal fantasy.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Image by Thomas Tangelder from Pixabay

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.