Writers in the Storm

by Tiffany Yates Martin

Regardless of what POV you’re writing in, allowing readers to understand what’s going on inside your character is what makes a story immediate, direct, and vivid to us. If we don’t know how they react to things and how they process them, your characters might as well be game pieces we simply watch progress along the board. Readers want to feel we’re part of the game.

To do that we must understand the character’s perspective: how events strike her and what she makes of them. That’s the heart of the character’s journey—how you show them moving along their arc. It’s stimulus-reaction-response: The thing happens, it affects the character in a certain way, and as a result in impacts their thinking or perspective or plans.

But how do you let readers be privy to the inner workings of your characters’ lives without bogging your story down in interiority?

Bring Your Readers Inside Characters’ Direct Experience

Here’s a simplistic, general example of issues I see frequently in creating immediacy and intimacy in stories.

“Are we going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

We sat in silence for a while. Despair set in, and my tears began to fall.

There’s nothing overtly wrong with this passage. We have a clear conflict—there’s some kind of relationship crisis—and we know that the POV character is unhappy about it.

But readers may not be affected by this moment, because it has a distant feel. We’re on the outside looking in because we’re not directly experiencing the character’s reactions—rather, they’re being narrated to us, as if the character were dispassionately standing just to the side of herself and reporting on what’s going on.

It’s “safe” writing, the way that we often protect our own emotions by distancing ourselves from them—“No, I’m fine, just a little sad”—rather than risk letting people really see our pain.

In story, we want to not only see characters’ pain—and joy and fear and excitement and anger and everything else—we want to feel it with them. We read not to hear someone’s story related to us secondhand, but to live it right along with them.

For that, you have to bring us more deeply into their direct experience.

That doesn’t mean every story must be deep POV; you can open the curtain to a character’s inner life in every point of view. And it doesn’t mean swaths of navel-gazing self-reflection or inner dialogue. It simply means giving readers not just a front-row seat to the character’s journey, but a backstage pass.

The above passage makes three common missteps that can keep readers at a remove from a character’s direct perspective:

1. Misusing silence

As I’m fond of saying, silence is never empty; our minds are always processing, even when our mouths aren’t moving. And yet frequently I see authors employ silence as a mere piece of stage description, as in this example, rather than utilizing all its juicy potential.

Something is going on inside your characters during their silences, even if it’s only reaction to the silence, like discomfort or anxiety. More often it’s when we’re processing whatever was happening right before the silence fell: the argument, the momentous piece of news, the screech of brakes, the thought-provoking comment—even just a piece of new insight or information.

In the silence our minds are churning: “Why did he say that?” “What does that mean?” “What happened?” “Now what?” or even just “What the hell do I say to that?” Our emotions are likely engaging too—we have a reaction to whatever just happened or was said, and we’re experiencing it: we’re hurt or angry or confused or offended or gobsmacked. Or maybe we’re just thinking.

Silences are processing moments—and readers want to be privy to the processing.

2. Labeling emotion

In the above example, “despair set in” is a shortcut to emotion, rather than allowing readers to feel what the character is feeling directly. As with the “I’m fine, just sad” comment I mentioned above, it’s distancing “tell” instead of the “show” of what’s going on inside the character that their higher-reasoning brain then assesses as sadness.

If you want readers to deeply invest in your characters and their story, then you have to not just tell them what the character is feeling, but rather let us feel it with him directly. It means giving us that all-access pass to the same experience the character is having, instead of just reporting on it.

I call this “lizard-brain writing”: conveying the instinctive, reactive amygdala reaction of a character rather than the intellectual conclusion about it that the higher-reasoning cerebrum draws.

Instead of the dispassionate labeling of the character’s emotion as “despair,” can you find a way to describe what the character is actually viscerally experiencing that their intellectual mind concludes means “despair”?

This usually involves what I often call “method writing,” the writer’s equivalent of Stanislavski’s Method acting where you recall a situation in your own life when you’ve experienced something similar to what the character is experiencing. Maybe you’ve never felt the black despair of a broken marriage, for instance, but because you’re human you’ve felt something at least despair-adjacent in your life: perhaps when you lost a job, or your dog died, or you heard a daunting diagnosis of someone you loved.

Can you remember what that felt like inside you, or imagine it, or extrapolate from it? Every human is marvelously unique, so your version of what despair feels like will be different from anyone else’s, but put that direct experience on the page rather than the intellectual description and you will let readers feel it right along with your character.

3. Letting physical or physiological description substitute for insight

Every writer probably knows the struggle of trying to find yet another tangible way to describe intangible reactions and emotions: “her throat closed,” “his stomach tightened,” “she frowned,” and my least favorite, “bile rose in his throat.”

Besides being overfamiliar to the point of cliché, these shortcuts bypass actual direct emotion for a dry commentary on its manifestation, a DSM of presenting symptoms.

These visceral reactions are useful—they actually can be a tool for letting readers understand the effect of an emotion rather than labeling it. But used without some insight into why the character is reacting that way, they can leave readers in the dark about what’s going on inside them.

In the above example, yes, we know the character is crying, but that’s simply a physiological fact. It doesn’t get at the actual cause. The author told us that these are tears of despair, but despair of what, exactly? Does the character think this heralds the end of the line for this relationship? Is she frustrated at the impasse they seem to be at? Does she no longer see the point of trying to fix things?

We don’t know—all we have is a reporter’s recounting of general events. We want to be in the scene—to feel firsthand what it’s like to be at the nexus of the action. We need some glimpse into what the character is making of what happened, how they’re processing it, what they think that is creating what they feel. We want to know what impact this occurrence has, how it shifts their reality, moves them along their arc to the next action they will take.

And all of that lives inside of the character, opaque to us unless the author invites us in.

How to Open the Window to Your Characters’ Inner Life

None of that means we need paragraphs of exposition or purple prose—don’t overcorrect. Just stop and process along with your characters—what they might be thinking and feeling, how they might be reacting, and what that experience might be like.

In the case of our original example perhaps that looks like this:

“Are we going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence fell like a child’s ball down a well, vanishing into darkness. Hot hopelessness swam up my throat and behind my eyes, but tears wouldn’t save my marriage any more than a child could retrieve a favorite toy lost forever.

This version isn’t so much better writing as that it opens a wider window to the character’s inner life: We sense something of the character’s reaction in the nature of the silence—dark, empty, lost. We viscerally understand what she is actually experiencing as she cries, not just the fact of her tears. And her metaphor of the ball in the well gives the reader specific insight into why she’s crying: her marriage feels hopeless, irretrievable.

It doesn’t matter what POV you’re writing in—even omniscient (go back and recast each step of this example in other POVs and you’ll see what I mean). If you want your readers to feel directly engaged in your stories, put yourself inside the characters’ head, behind their eyes, and imagine—the writer’s greatest tool.

What books have you read where the author does a great job of bringing you inside the character's head? What questions do you have for Tiffany? Please share with us down in the comments!

About Tiffany

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial and author of the bestseller Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and leads seminars and workshops for writers around the country. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she's also the author of six novels, including the recently released The Way We Weren't(Berkley/PRH). Visit her at www.foxprinteditorial.com or www.phoebefoxauthor.com.

Top photo from Depositphotos.

by Laurie Schnebly Campbell

Genre is often a hot topic of discussion in the writing world, and new writers particularly wonder how much does genre matter?

For some writers, genre is an integral part of their craft.

• “All I’ve ever done are thrillers, but someday I might like to branch out.”
• “They couldn’t pay me enough to write anything but Regency romance.”
• “Lately she’s been thinking about switching from MG to YA mysteries.”
• “Police procedural fans will snap up whatever he writes next.”

For other writers, not so much.

• “I couldn’t pin down a genre; my book doesn’t fit any specific niche.”
• “Well, maybe you could call this a cozy LGBTQ historical fantasy..."
• “Why should a book have to fit within one very limited set of rules?”
• “My story is mainstream, literary -- it’s meant for readers who think.”

So that leads to the question of how much (if at all) genre actually matters.

What IS genre?

It’s a quick way of defining what kind of reading experience someone can expect from a particular book. Fans of certain genres have definite expectations of what they do and don’t want to see in the kind of story they love.

“That’s so LIMITING!” someone might protest. “That’s like saying you can build whatever style of house you want as long as it’s exactly 1357 square feet and has three bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen and living room. Where’s the creative freedom?”

“That’s so FREEING!” someone else might exult. “As long as I plant enough clues that readers could solve the mystery, and show the good guys hauling the bad guys off to face justice in the final chapter, I can do anything I want with this story.”

Both points are valid. And a lot of writers’ feelings about genre are based on their reason for writing in the first place.

Why ARE we writing?

There’s sure no One Right Answer to that question – although, since genre is only an issue for writers who intend to publish, let’s change the question to “Why are we writing for publication?”

Some possibilities might be:

• Validation (to prove I can write books people want to read)
• Money (to at least cover my expenses, or even earn a living)
• Accomplishment (to take pride in achieving a difficult goal)
• Expression (to share my thoughts and ideas with the world)
• Recognition (to gain credibility, honors, sense of fulfillment)
• Recreation (to have fun making up stories people will enjoy)

For some of those desires, writing within a specific genre will make life easier. For others, harder. Which makes it important to consider the question...

How can genre help you?

Genre fiction is, by and large, easier to sell. Romance has been the top-selling genre for decades, with readers loyally buying every single book their favorite authors release. Mystery is the next highest, and science fiction/fantasy does extremely well, too. While any of those categories could easily contain truly innovative themes, they’re still considered genre fiction because, by and large, readers appreciate knowing:

They can count on the kind of story they want.

• When someone picks up a book labeled “romance,” they’re going to see by the end that love conquers all.
• When someone picks up a book labeled “mystery,” they’re going to see by the end that justice triumphs.
• When someone picks up a book labeled “fantasy” or “science fiction,” they’re going to see a fascinating other world.

And so on.

That holds true for literary fiction, as well. When readers pick up a book reviewed by The New York Times, they can feel pretty certain that their thinking will be challenged or deepened. If the book simply offers the same kind of traditional satisfaction they expect from a romance or mystery or SFF, they’re going to feel cheated.

And it’s the other way around for genre readers. If the romantic couple doesn’t live happily ever after, or if the murderer kills not only the hostages but the entire police force, THEY’RE going to feel cheated.

Does your book fit a genre?

It might. If you want quicker, easier sales and likely higher profits, it probably should. But if that’s not part of your aim in writing, there’s no reason you need to fit into any genre -- you can tell any kind of story you feel like telling, and feel satisfied with having expressed yourself in a book that readers who love it will remember fondly for a long time. (And, heck, you never know: you could also wind up on the NYT bestseller list!)

But let’s say that for now, you’re more interested in delivering a story that readers will feel confident about buying because they know what kind of experience they can expect.

How do you satisfy the demands of genre fiction, while also making it work for you?

Genre highlights can be a powerful tool. So can plot and character, which are the other two elements of your Story Braid. In fact, someone who answers the question below will win free registration to a class on that very topic.

Your Plot Character Genre Braid will be taught via email from September 5-30, going over how to integrate all three elements (plot, character, and genre) for a story that stays strong from beginning to end.

Which leads to our prize-drawing question...

What genre(s) do you most like to write and/or read?

Are they the same? Are they different? Of course they’ve changed since you first started reading children’s books way-back-when, but what’s your latest favorite for reading and/or writing?

Mention either or both -- it’s fine to use conventional labels like “cozy mystery” or “erotic fantasy” and it’s also fine to mention something more specialized. Just think about what you love to (at least sometimes) write and/or read!

Other Offer: if you’d like a Zoom class on “Keeping the Writing Fire Lit,” that’s free for anyone who makes ANY size donation of time or money to ANY charity (not their usual) they feel like God has in mind. It’ll be held next Saturday, August 27, from 12-1pm Eastern Time and you can register here.

About Laurie

Laurie Schnebly Campbell (BookLaurie.com) always loves creating a class, so when a writer asked about “braiding” she was delighted at the chance to explore an untouched subject. Although she enjoyed braiding her own books, including one that beat out Nora Roberts for “Best Special Edition of the Year,” she enjoys teaching even more. That’s why she now has 52 first-sale novels on her bookshelf from authors inspired by her classes.

Top Photo by Daniel on Unsplash

by Sandy Vaile

One of the fastest ways to alienate readers is to get your facts wrong, which can feel like an overwhelming responsibility when writing a story. But how far would you go to bring authenticity and interesting elements into your story? 

I’m going to demonstrate how research can benefit all stories, and then we’ll peek over the shoulders of a few authors to discover the lengths they’ve gone to, in the name of fiction research.

Do You Need to Research for a Fiction Story?

If you’re writing anything longer than a short story, you are bound to need to do some research.

For historical times or stories based on real events, it’s easy to see how understanding those times will add credibility to what you write, but the benefits aren’t as obvious if you’re creating make-believe worlds and situations.

The truth is, we can’t possibly know everything about everything. Each of us is limited by what we’ve experienced or have intimate knowledge about, which may result in missed opportunities to add authentic details to our story.

The right research can strengthen a story by:

• Incorporating the five senses to add vivid details.
• Setting an appropriate tone for an era or event.
• Helping readers feel confident in the believability of the characters and plot.
• Supporting the people, places and events in the story with authentic facts.

You might think if you’re writing a fantasy story or fictitious place, that you just make the whole lot up, but consider these situations:

• Another universe will still have plants and you may need to know the science behind how they grow or what the leaves look like.
• You may need to describe how an alien creature moves and could base this on watching real animals.
• A make-believe town will still have buildings and gardens, and drawing inspiration from locations you can see helps you add more than basic descriptions because you can better picture the colour of the bricks, the types of plants, the layout of shared spaces, etc.

The Bottomless Pit of Investigation

Some authors absolutely love surfing the internet and/or library to learn everything there is to know about a subject, while others prefer a minimalistic approach. Writers are inherently curious, so it’s no wonder we sometimes have a tendency to disappear down the rabbit hole of research. The danger is, never being heard from again!

“Research feeds the natural curiosity of an author. Use it to add authenticity to topics and places, and fill your pages with specific, vivid details that deepen the reader’s experience, instead of generalizations.”

Sandy Vaile

Out of the Box Research

Many authors expend a great deal of effort uncovering interesting gems to add that “special something” to their stories but the truth is that the really good stuff is buried deep. These days, anyone can Google a subject and come up with a list of common facts. To get to the hidden gems, you need to keep digging after most authors have given up.

An author needs to investigate obscure and forgotten aspects of a subject. Track mere traces of interest and root out the cause and effect. Go the extra mile and you will be astounded where those fascinating facts will lead, like previously unimaged details, subplots and descriptive layers.

For example, while researching the bathing habits of the 1400s, a friend stumbled across a newspaper article about a gentleman who drowned in his bathtub, with wet footprints that were too small to be his at the scene. By following this research trail, she discovered hearsay about a female serial murderer whose modus operandi was drowning. Now there’s a great story waiting to be told.

How else can you unearth those information gems?

Ride Alongs                    

Well, you might not be as lucky as Tara Moss and get to ride along with FBI agents and police officers, but you might be surprised at how willing people are to be interviewed about a subject they’re an expert in. Seriously, all you have to do is ask.

Interviews                      

I gleaned a wealth of knowledge interviewing a coroner, detective, and firefighter. All because I asked and was respectful of their time, knowledge, and privacy.

Don’t limit yourself to experts either. Laypeople with special skills or interests can be a wealth of knowledge. Put your feelers out with friends and acquaintances, asking if they know anyone with information about a particular topic. People love to help.

Travel                           

I know lots of authors who have travelled to the locations in their books so they can experience the sounds, scents and textures you simply can’t understand from photos. If you can’t make it to a location, you could walk along the streets using Google Maps or read travel blogs.

Historical Accounts         

If you’re writing about the past, visit the archives or historical society and look for personal accounts of events.

Amass a Library              

Many authors build a library of information that is relevant to their genre. For example, details about what existed at a point in time, cultural customs, police procedures, or body language. Every time you read an interesting article or come across a curiosity-inspiring news report, make a note of the details for a rainy day.

Books                            

Remember those heavy paper things that smell a bit musty? Visit a library and rediscover them, because there’s a book on every topic you can think of. Don’t stop there, delve into science and scholarly journals too.

Special Interest Clubs      

If there is a minuscule interest in it, there is probably a group of people somewhere in the world talking about it. Search the internet, local councils and community centres for clubs and interest groups.

What have other authors done in the search for research gold?

Examples from Real Authors

Sandy Vaile

I like to be hands-on whenever possible (read – any excuse for an adventure).

One time I flew a jet plane in a flight simulator. Under the guidance of a genuine pilot, I took off and landed the plane from several airports around the world, rolled it midair, stalled and re-started it. I even performed an emergency landing on the Tamar River near Launceston — and didn’t lose a single passenger! 😊

One of the most fun adventures was a day at a local gun club. A writing group approached a local gun club to organize a hosted day, during which I shot thirteen different guns. It was frightening and exhilarating, but there’s one thing for sure, there is no way I could have understood what it felt, sounded or smelt like to shoot, without doing it myself.

That sort of insider knowledge enables me to add authentic layers to my stories and (hopefully) anyone who knows a lot about guns will appreciate the accuracy.

When it comes to writing, I am more aware when selecting the type of gun, the differences in bullets, the volume of the report, how they feel in your hand, how to load them, the gunpowder smell after they’ve been fired and the kickback. Oh, the recoil!

All of this information will enable me to take the guns in my books from props to realistic features.

Carla Caruso

Carla read a newspaper article about a local woman who worked as a professional organizer and said she often became an accidental counsellor for her clients because going through people’s possessions can also mean dealing with a tonne of emotional baggage.

This sparked the idea for a mystery series, which took hold and wouldn’t let go. I mean, what other job would let you see into the deepest, darkest corners of another person’s closet, under their bed or behind closed doors?

Before she started writing, Carla interviewed a few professional organizers to find out about the nitty-gritty of the job.

Rowena Holloway

undertook a time-consuming language study for her latest release, All That’s Left Unsaid. Now that’s dedication! She wanted to capture the cadence of the language so that her Italian characters sounded authentic and didn’t slip into cliché accents or overused Italian phrases. What Rowena discovered was so much more than verb drills.

Her teacher explained the language through examples of Italian culture: “I learned that cappuccino is only consumed at breakfast, that when meeting it is customary to shake hands over the phrase piacere, and that when first names are exchanged a native Italian will say ‘now we speak to each other as friends’—a sign to use the less formal tu forms of verbs when speaking. I also learned it takes more than a year of weekly lessons to master the language!”

Lillian Grant

Writer of erotic romance novels, Lillian once interviewed a real-life male stripper, Justin Whitfield. Thankfully, the interview was conducted via email, which avoided any blush factor. It gave her the courage to ask all sorts of probing questions.

The answers to many questions were surprising, like the reasons he started stripping, his usually shy demeanor and how they get those skimpy undies. All of this off-the-cuff information spawned multiple books.

Research has Benefits

I sure hope you see not only the benefits of going deep when conducting research but the potential fun adventures and unique storylines you have the potential to uncover.

If you are stuck in a rut of writing novels you never finish, never submit, or aren’t sure how to fix, then it’s your lucky day. I’m offering Writers in the Storm readers a FREE masterclass, which reveals the real reasons few aspiring authors finish their novels (and how to avoid them).

Grab the Quit Procrastinating and Write a Publishable Novel masterclass here.

Are you ready to jump right into research and bring authenticity and interesting elements into your story? How deep do you go when you research? What is the most intriguing fact you've discovered? Please share it with us in the comments!

About Sandy Vaile

Sandy Vaile is a motorbike-riding daredevil who isn’t content with a story unless there’s a courageous heroine and a dead body. She writes romantic suspense for Simon & Schuster US and coaches fiction authors to write novels they are proud to share (and which get noticed by agents and publishers).

In her spare time, Sandy composes procedures for high-risk industrial processes, judges writing competitions, runs The Fearless Novelist Facebook group, and offers developmental editing.

Connect with Sandy Vaile on her website or social media.