Writers in the Storm

by Eldred Bird

Our characters need to be relatable and have depth so they’re easy to get attached to. One of the highest compliments I've received about my writing is about my characters. Seeing as how I’m kind of attached to them, that makes my whole month. So how do I create that bond between a character and a reader? One word—backstory.

If you really want to figure out where a character is going in your story, you first need to know where they came from. Everyone has a past—you, me, your best friend, the stranger at your door delivering the pizza—everyone. Our past experiences have shaped who we are now and how we react to the world around us. It should be the same for your characters.

Our job as authors is to dig into our character's past to find out where they hid the bodies.

Real People have Real Problems

There’s no such thing as a perfect human, so there should be no perfect characters in your stories either. Heroes with no flaws have no depth. There’s no story to tell if your MC is infallible, as they can never be put in a situation they can’t handle. Flaws, weaknesses, and personality quirks are what make characters interesting and real.

Most of these traits have their roots in the character’s early years. You need look no further than comic books to find heroes with tragic pasts. Every origin story is pumped full of pain, loss, and failure, usually leading them down a path of vigilante justice in an effort to heal old wounds. Most of these heroes could really benefit from some intense anger management counseling, which leads me to my next tip.

Talk to your Characters

 When I create a new character, I like to get to know them before ever putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). The best way I’ve found to do this is sit down and talk to them. As we go through the interview process any interesting details about their past that come up get jotted down in my character file. I keep the conversation going until I can see their face, hear their voice, and understand their facial expressions and body language. After a few sessions like this, the character becomes so cemented in my mind that they become real to me.

The more real a character becomes, the easier it is to write from their perspective. Like an actor, I can put myself in their shoes and view the world through their eyes. It’s at this point where the magic starts to happen, and they begin telling me their story. The narrative becomes more personal when the character takes over and starts driving the bus.

Find Real World Examples

If I’m having trouble digging up the backstory for a particular character, I try to find real people to use as a foundation. Friends, family, and coworkers are all fair game, but I don’t make a carbon copy of anyone. I pick and choose details to shape a unique individual with their own special combination of traits. I’ve also been known to go out in public and do a little people watching when I’m out of character ideas. Going to settings similar to the story’s location can also yield some useful character details as you observe real world interactions.

Give Your Villains Some Love Too

As difficult as it may be, your villains should be as relatable as your heroes. Just as heroes shouldn’t been all good, villains shouldn’t be all bad. Their past has shaped them as well, though it’s bent them in a different direction.

Tragic, but believable backstories can create sympathy for an antagonist and show them to be more than just a monster. It helps the reader to understand their motivation, even if they don’t agree with their actions.

Weaving it into the Narrative

Now comes the hard part—working the past in without the dreaded data dump. Don’t hate me, but the truth is most of the backstory you’ve built will never be seen in the final edit. Too much dwelling in the past can kill story pacing and bore your readers to death. Most of the history you’ve created is there to give you, the writer, the opportunity to get to know the characters better so you can write them in a more realistic way.

This is the point where I sift through my character files and decide what the reader really needs to know and how I can weave it into the story without breaking the pace. I find the best way for me to accomplish this is to let the characters tell the tale. I work the needed information into dialogue, action tags, and scene descriptions. For tips on how to do this check out my WITS post, Let Your Characters Tell the Story.

Prologues and Flashbacks

One way to work in backstory is a prologue. If used intelligently, they can give insight into the MC’s past, but be careful. Prologues often become the dreaded data dumps we work so hard to keep out of prose. The need for a prologue may also be an indication that you’re starting your story in the wrong place. Keep this in mind and if you must use them, use them wisely.

The same can be said for flashbacks. Just like prologues, they often become data dumps. This will put the brakes on the action and kill your story pacing in a heartbeat. Flashbacks may also indicate that the story needs to start earlier in the life of the MC.

Some Final Thoughts

Like I said before, everyone has a past, including the characters we write. Sit down with your characters, dig into their past, and free the skeletons in their closet. Get to know them. Hear their voices. See their faces. Make them real to you and you’ll be better equipped to make them real to your readers!

How do you develop your characters and work their backstories into your manuscript? Who are some characters you’ve become attached to? Let us know in the comments!

About Eldred

Eldred Bird writes contemporary fiction, short stories, and personal essays. He has spent a great deal of time exploring the deserts, forests, and deep canyons inside his home state of Arizona. His James McCarthy adventures, Killing Karma, Catching Karma, and Cold Karma, reflect this love of the Grand Canyon State even as his character solves mysteries amidst danger. Eldred explores the boundaries of short fiction in his stories, The Waking Room, Treble in Paradise: A Tale of Sax and Violins, and The Smell of Fear.

When he’s not writing, Eldred spends time cycling, hiking, and juggling (yes, juggling…bowling balls and 21-inch knives). His passion for photography allows him to record his travels. He can be found on Twitter or Facebook, or at his website.

Photo credits: Eldred Bird

by Julie Glover

Have you tried using planners? Time management apps? Color-coded spreadsheets with goals and deadlines? And yet nothing seems to work?

Welcome to my club!

In case you’re a bit like me, let’s talk about time management for writers who hate time management.

First, what doesn’t work.

The System of Someone Who’s Not Like You.

Some writers seem to get 80 hours of work done in a precisely timed 40-hour work schedule while I can’t seem to remember it’s Tuesday. The personalities of those people and me are so vastly different that trying to adapt their system just isn’t going to work.

Someone else might draft a novel in two weeks, but I need eight weeks to turn out something I’m proud of. Someone else might write well on the subway or in a coffee house, while I need complete quiet or Bach playing through my headphones. Someone else might divide out their day in 15-minute chunks, while I lose track of hours when I’m writing.

If you want to try someone else’s time management method, make sure they’re a bit like you. How do view time? How long do you need to complete tasks? What helps you and what distracts you?

The Right Time Management Tool.

Have you been on the quest for that one planner, that one course, that one inspirational system that will make everything fall into place? Yeah, that’s not out there.

I’m not saying I’ve tried them all. But most time management tools are created for people who thrive with time management. For people who aren’t great at tracking time, you will probably have to adapt whatever tool you use to your particular way of working.

I finally found my own groove with more flexible planners like a bullet journal or the weekly planners at Erin Condren. (Thanks to my critique partner for getting me hooked on those!)

But your best tool might be something else entirely, yet adapted to your own workflow.

Carrots and Sticks.

Theoretically, reward and punishment should work to motivate better time management.

But those of us with an innately amorphous sense of time often find that no reward or punishment can overcome the sense of dread we feel at being nailed down to a schedule. Tell me I have to have something done by Friday, and I’m good to go! Tell me that I must work on that Friday project from 3:30 to 4:45 on Thursday, and my stomach hardens, my muscles feel heavy, and my interest wanes. Dangling or denying me a cookie doesn’t increase my desire to complete the task.

If there’s any carrot or stick, it must be for the project itself—not the specific, scheduled steps required to meet that goal.

Now, what does work.

Before I start these points, let me confess that I don’t know what will work for you. It’s a lot of trial-and-error for those of us who struggle with time management. But I am convinced that you can figure it out. Here’s what helped me and others I know.

Listening to Your Own Rhythms.

How do you work best to complete your projects? Is it by writing for three straight weeks and then taking a long break? Writing when the mood strikes and following that through until you’re spent? Writing in early morning or late-night chunks of time?

Pay attention to when you work best and then plan your schedule to that rhythm. Don’t worry if it would sound ludicrous to someone else. When you study the writing processes of various writers, you discover that a variety of time approaches work. What matters is not how you finish the book, just that you do.

Planning by Projects, Not Processes.

While writing with my co-author, we’ve had exactly one big disagreement. She is a time management guru, who not only lists the books she’s working on but plans out each step of drafting, editing, copyediting, proofreading, etc. (Good heavens, I’m exhausted just thinking about it!) Meanwhile, I just know when the book’s supposed to release. Every “deadline” in between now and then feels like a “guideline” to me.

However, we didn’t understand how the other worked when we started. Thus, I missed a “deadline” (read “guideline”), which made her anxious. Her anxiety made me anxious. And anyway…it devolved until we cleared the air, hugged like the besties we are, figured out a plan, and returned to writing excellent novels.

The point is that time management gurus like her plan both projects and processes. That’s way too much info for me to juggle. If you’re like me, you know what needs to happen from Nothing to Release Book, and you don’t want to write it down. It’s overwhelming! If you think about it too much, you’ll stop writing altogether.

No worries. Just track the projects and your next step in the project you’re currently working on. Step by step, you’ll get there.

Rearranging the Schedule (According to Your Muse).

What I write down on my calendar doesn’t have to happen exactly that way. I felt so much freedom and relief when I gave myself permission to rearrange the schedule when my writing did or didn’t cooperate.

For instance, some of my best writing has happened long after I should be in bed. But if I felt like the story and words were coming well, I didn’t stick to the schedule—I wrote well past midnight. Likewise, if I sat in front of my manuscript and nothing came, I learned to walk away.

This actually is a tried-and-true time management technique, but it’s a struggle for many who see that note jotted down on their calendar and internally demand that they check off that task on that certain date. As Elsa said, Let. It. Go.

For myself, writing in pencil helps this process, because if it really bothers me, I can erase rather than cross out a task. Then it’s like I never even planned to do it until it got done. And as long as it gets done, it’s a-okay.

* * *

Final Thoughts

I still don’t love schedules, but I’ve come to embrace mine a lot more—now that I’m tailoring it to how I work, rather than trying to tailor myself to it. Even as I type this, I have “write WITS post” in the planner in front of me. Mind you, that was jotted down for Monday and it’s currently Wednesday. But it’s okay, because I left myself some extra time, felt free to move the task to a different day when the first plan didn’t work out, and came back to the computer after dinner when I felt like I could write.

What I have stopped doing is trying to be like the amazing get-it-done time managers whose systems are precise, colorful, impressive, and just not for me.

I’d love to hear from y’all! Which time management system has worked for you? What have you learned as a writer trying to manage your time well?

About Julie

Julie Glover is an award-winning author of mysteries and young adult fiction. She also writes supernatural suspense under the pen name Jules Lynn.

Her most recent release is My Team's Fairy Godmother, the fourth of five YA paranormal short stories coming out this year.

When not writing, she collects boots, practices rampant sarcasm, and advocates for good grammar and the addition of the interrobang as a much-needed punctuation mark.

Image credits: Jan Vašek and Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

by Melinda VanLone

Book marketing is a squiggly squirrelly snake. Just when you think you have a handle on it, things change. People change. Audiences change. What works for one marketplace doesn't work for another. It makes sense, then to re-think or add-to your book cover strategy from time to time. Traditional publishers know this trick, and indie authors should too.

Book Markets Based on Country

It's a long-established marketing tactic to have a different cover for each market you're trying to target or country your book is published in. What works for the US doesn't exactly work as well in the UK, and vice versa. That's because societies in different countries expect different things, or are drawn to different things.

You don't have to look further than J. D. Robb/Nora Roberts for an example:

Book Markets Based on Audience Age

Another reason to put a different cover on a book is to target a new audience. For example, the first Harry Potter books aimed at a children's market with one set of covers, and adults with another.

Book Markets based on a Movie or TV Series Deal

Getting onto a bestseller list or (fingers crossed) having a TV series or movie based on your book always means a new cover, usually one featuring the actors in the book and/or that shiny "New York Times Bestseller" announcement. 

Book Markets based on Format

It can also be a good marketing move to put a different cover on each format of the book: ebook vs paper vs hardback. Readers are often collectors. If they loved the book a portion of them will go on to buy all the versions of the book. For example, check out these Nora Roberts covers. Clearly the original wouldn't work for today's audience, even though the content is exactly the same. The third version is obviously targeting a different audience than the first two, allowing that same content to reach shiny new readers.

If your sales stagnate, a new cover targeting a slightly different audience is an excellent way to generate new excitement, especially if you have a cross-genre story. You might start out targeting the mystery/suspense market first, then switch to romantic suspense. The subtle change can make all the difference in finding fresh readers.

The bottom line is, your cover is not set in stone, whether you're indie or trad published. If you're indie, you have the flexibility of changing it whenever you want to target a new audience, to generate excitement, or simply to bring fresh interest to established content, so don't be afraid to experiment.

Have you ever thought about having different covers for your already published books? Let me know what you're thinking down in the comments!

About Melinda

Melinda VanLone writes urban fantasy, freelances as a graphic designer, and dabbles in photography. She currently lives in Florida with her husband and furbabies.

When she's not playing with her imaginary friends, you can find Melinda playing World of Warcraft, wandering aimlessly through the streets taking photos, or hovered over coffee in Starbucks.

Her elementary fantasy series, House of Xannon, begins with Stronger Than Magic. For more information on covers, visit BookCoverCorner.com.