Writers in the Storm

by Eldred “Bob” Bird

My characters are my children. I create them, nurture them, and help them grow. I also abuse them, annoy them, and torture them. I’m a writer—it’s my job.

If I’ve done my job well, by the end of the story the main character will have gone through the fires of hell and come out the other side a changed, more well-rounded individual. That’s the hope anyway.

But you’ve probably heard it said that for someone to profoundly change, they must want to change, and therein lies the rub. People—including our characters—need a reason to step out of their comfort zone and make deep, lasting changes. As writers it’s our job to push our characters out the door and slam it behind them, giving them no choice but to move forward.

So, how do we accomplish this task? We must answer the question our characters ask every time we try to get them to step up:

“What’s my motivation?”

Creating Change

The catalyst for change can come from an endless number of sources, but they usually fall into one of two basic categories:

• External motivators - Just as the name implies, external motivators come from the world around our characters. These are factors that are out of their immediate control—things like weather, natural disasters, interference by other characters, or major life changes (divorce, financial ruin, death in the family).
• Internal motivators. – Psychological needs fall into the category of internal motivators. These are the things that feed our emotions and egos and are fertile ground for planting the seeds of fear and self-doubt, among other things. While these factors are under the individual’s control, they don’t feel like it in the moment.

A Helpful Tool

My favorite way to generate motivation is to consult with our old friend Abraham Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow gives us plenty of rocks to throw at our characters. Let’s look at his five levels of need and see how we can use them to create internal and external pressures to force change.

Basic Needs are the external motivators and minimum requirements everyone needs to survive. They make up the foundation of Maslow’s pyramid and are an easy place to start when looking for ways to complicate our character’s lives.

• Physiological Needs - food, water, warmth, rest –Take away any one of them and you create desperation, a psychological state that can easily push someone to cross a line they might not otherwise cross. Force someone into survival mode and they will lie, cheat, steal, and in some cases, even kill to get what they need.
• Safety Needs – security, safety – These can be internal or external. It’s not just about locking doors for physical security or to hide from prying eyes, but also about the feeling of security, or lack of it. Sometimes those feelings are rooted deep in the past, giving us scars to pick at and expose weaknesses. The trick here is to expose the old scars without dumping too much backstory and pulling the reader out of the narrative. Weave the details into the action but use them sparingly.

Psychological Needs. Now we get into the tough stuff. Psychological needs are internal motivators—the mental triggers both dreams, and nightmares are made of. Messing around in the psyches of our characters can be a dangerous and disturbing exercise. Bringing truth to the narrative often requires us to face our own demons in order to lead the character through the experience and bring them out whole on the other side.

• Belongingness and Love Needs – intimate relationships, friends – The romantic love angle is obvious, but there are other types of intimate relationships. They may be as simple as needing that one friend you know will listen or as complex as the blending of families after a second marriage. The need to belong can be deeply rooted in the past, like trying to overcome a rejection that shakes you to the core.
• Esteem Needs – prestige, feelings of accomplishment – This one is ego driven. While your main character might be pushed to change by the need for recognition, I find this a great tool to use when developing the antagonist. Villains are often ego driven, overcompensating for being put down or ignored in the past. This can push someone to try to “prove everyone wrong.”

Self-fulfillment Needs

• Self-actualization – achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities – As creatives, this is a motivation I feel everyone who writes can connect with. We’ll do just about anything to finish that novel or land our dream agent. We can feed the characters with our own desires to reach the top of our personal mountains, beat our chest, and scream with delight at achieving our goals.

Some Final Thoughts

Anyone who has ever tried to break a bad habit or make a life altering course correction knows that change doesn’t come easy, so don’t make it easy on your characters either. Maslow is a great place to start when looking for motivation, but don’t stop there. If you do your research, draw on your own experiences, and make the change relatable for your readers, you’ll end up with a more engaging, believable tale.

How do you motivate change in your characters? Do you have any favorite tools to get the job done?

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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.

Top Image and Pyramid Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

by John Peragine

As the date of the launch of my novel, Max and the Spice Thieves, approaches I have been seeking and receiving reviews. Every time I see a new one in the mailbox, I cringe a little before opening it. I brace for the worst and hope for the best.

There is a certain amount of courage that is needed to send your “baby” out into the world, not only to be read but to be judged. On purpose, no less.

Before I was a full-time writer, I was a symphony musician. Since I was a boy, I played the flute and had many years of lessons and education. By the time it was performance time, I would have rehearsed with the orchestra for two or three weeks. As I sat down, I still worried about missing a cue or hitting a wrong note. As the piccolo player, there was no hiding in the orchestra. If I played at the wrong time or missed a passage, it was very obvious. 99.99 percent of the time, I played well, but it did little to help me reduce my stress for the next performance.

Sending a book out, and having someone read it, is my live performance. When I finished a piece with the orchestra, the conductor motioned with his hand, I stood up, and there was applause. When I type “The End,” there is no such applause or feedback, and so reviews take the place of the applause.

How To Protect Yourself

Coming from a music and theater background, I often heard, “Don’t read your own reviews.” For many years, I believed this advice is to deter people from getting an inflated ego, but now I think it was for a different reason: to protect your confidence.

Even one bad review can wheedle away at your self-confidence and allow the fraud police to step in and whisper in your ear, “You see, they hate it. Give it up. You’re not a writer. You’re a fraud.”

There have been times I have read a review and heard those very words in my head. So, maybe I shouldn’t read my reviews? I don’t think that is the answer. Instead, I have to read them with the right mindset.

Not Everyone is Going to Love It

I have accepted (or I am learning to accept) that not everyone will love my book. To me, it is like taking my human baby out for a stroll in the park and someone coming up and saying, “Damn, that’s an ugly baby.” It’s tough, right?

But the truth is that not everyone will love my book. I have broken down the common reasons for this:

1. My book just wasn’t good enough. It could mean I need another edit, a better cover, or a rewrite. I have to watch for patterns of many reviews saying the same thing, determine they are right, and then being willing to do something about it. This is why authors MUST get reviews early and allot at least 90 days before they release their book so they can make changes before the book goes live.

2. The reviewer is a troll. You know, someone who just likes to trash another person because they are a coward or a bully. These are easy to spot, as they are usually one or two sentences, and from their remarks, it is obvious they never read the book. Moving on.

3. Jealously or competition can be a motivation. This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. An author may trash another author to try to bring the book down and reduce its rating. If you know that this is happening, you should contact whoever is in charge of the platform for the review and report it. Most readers can recognize these types of attacks. Again move on.

4. It just isn’t their type of book. This is the category that most less-than-stellar reviews fall under. It’s not you, it’s not your writing, they just don’t like your book, and that is fine. You want honest reviews. Accept it and move on.

Reviews are Important

Sometimes people skip asking for reviews. They fear people are not going to like it. They may or may not like it, but reviews are very important for a couple of reasons.

First, they provide you with feedback about what works, what doesn’t work, and what your readers are craving. If they like a particular character in your first book, you should definitely consider putting more of them in your second book. If Jar Jar Binks appears in your book, then you should kill him off quickly and in a satisfying way in your next book.

Second, you are building buzz. You are getting people to talk about your book and hopefully convince them to buy a copy when it’s available.

Third, it adds credibility to your book. Good blurbs make your book worth reading. Adding these to your book listings, your cover, and inside your book make it look desirable.

Final Thoughts

Having a few imperfect reviews makes the other reviews look more authentic. No one gets all five stars, and it could look like to readers that you only had friends and family review your book.

Less than perfect reviews can trigger me a bit, but then I sit and analyze the review further and remember that someone on the other end cared enough to read my book and then sit down and write a review. And for that, I am grateful.

Where do you get your reviews? What is your best “bad” review? Please share your stories down in the comments!

About John

John Peragine has published 14 books and ghostwritten more than 100 others. He is a contributor for HuffPost, Reuters, and The Today Show. He covered the John Edwards trial exclusively for Bloomberg News and The New York Times. He has written for Wine Enthusiast, Grapevine Magazine, Realtor.com, WineMaker magazine, and Writer's Digest.

John began writing professionally in 2007, after working 13 years in social work and as the piccolo player for the Western Piedmont Symphony for over 25 years. Peragine is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. You can learn more about his books at JohnPeragineBooks.com. 

His newest book, Max and the Spice Thieves, will be released on April 20, 2021. Click here for a free first chapter. 

by Barbara Linn Probst

I recently read an essay that summarized American painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s views on how to be an artist. Her first principle was: Observe the world around you—closely, hungrily.

That advice seems equally apt for a writer. Before we can write, we need to look, to see fully and well.

What does that mean exactly?

Is it more than accuracy—the 20/20 vision that indicates that we’re seeing what is “actually there” at a standardized distance?

Here’s what the American Optometric Association has to say:

Having 20/20 vision does not necessarily mean you have perfect vision. Other important vision skills, including peripheral awareness or side vision, eye coordination, depth perception, focusing ability, and color vision, contribute to your overall visual ability.

The American Optometric Association is clear: you might think you have “perfect vision because you can see objects at a distance of twenty feet, but that doesn’t mean you’re seeing what’s in the margins—or the colors, patterns, and movement that might, in fact, be only inches away.

 As a writer, the parallel is intriguing.

To be a writer, I have to watch.  I need to notice, take in, and respond to the world around me—in multiple ways, not just from a single perspective. Then, my imagination and purpose and voice can guide me as I incorporate the raw material of those impressions into the story I want to tell.

So I ask myself: What kind of vision do I have? Are there aspects of vision I tend to dismiss?  Can I see more?   

Aspects of vision and the craft of writing

Peripheral vision lets us see the stuff in the margins, outside our range if we’re only attending to the center of the image. For a writer, this can mean turning our attention to a minor character—to offer contrast, ease the tension, delay resolution, provide information, or plant a seed that will germinate later. In other words, the detour has to have purpose. Otherwise it’s just meandering—which means it’s something the reader will skip, appropriately.

Macro vision is like the wide-angle lens of a camera, illuminating the broader landscape. By stepping back, we can see things in context; they might lose their detail, but they gain in meaning. For a writer, this means paying attention to the setting: era, culture, climate, landscape. It doesn’t mean spending pages and pages describing the town where the story occurs, but it does mean pulling back (at times) to keep your story anchored in a time, place, and way of life. A “macro” sentence or two can introduce a scene, orienting the reader, or help to clarify why something has a particular impact.

Micro vision is just the opposite. It lets us zoom in and focus on the details, things we never could have seen from twenty feet away. Anomalies and unique aspects come into view, and things we thought were the same turn out not to be. For a writer, these are the tics and traits of our characters, their signature phrases and gestures, and the descriptive details that bring a scene to life.

We can’t include all the details; that would clutter and overwhelm, to no purpose. So we select. In the dinner table scene, we note the chipped Blue Willow plate because it evokes a relevant memory for the protagonist, or represents something, or will be important later. By emphasizing a particular detail, we signal: This matters.

Depth perception lets us know where things are in relation to each other. Without it, everything seems equally near and important. A writer uses depth perception when she brings something forward that had seemed minor or peripheral, drawing the reader’s attention away from the foreground. A sudden noise or a sharp movement—and something new jumps forward, capturing our attention, causing other elements to recede. 

Color perception allows us to see hue, brightness, contrast; the more nuanced our color perception, the more we can differentiate shifts in tone or intensity. A culture’s color vocabulary—where it splices to make new words and where it lumps under a shared label—reveals what’s important. On the island of Mindoro in the Philippines, for example, there are no words to differentiate by hue, as we do in English. Instead, “colors” are named according to their lightness, darkness, freshness, and dryness—which makes sense for tropical forest-dwellers.

So too, the complexity of a writer’s lexicon can reveal what matters in the story. Are specific words needed to differentiate how the protagonist walks, opens a door, or replies at different moments in the story? A neutral word like said tends to be invisible, while a more precise word like muttered or snapped adds emotional meaning. We wouldn’t want our characters to constantly mutter, blurt, shout, or whisper, of course; sometimes neutral is better. But the more words we have to choose from—the finer our gradations of perception—the more purposeful our choices can be.

Coordination between the two eyes and among these aspects. Finally, there’s the integration among these elements. One aspect of vision may dominate at one moment, another at the next moment, but the shifts happen naturally as we move our eyes and look out at the world.

It’s the same with writing. One passage might be terse and direct, another more lyrical, yet the transitions need to seem natural. So too for the interweaving of interiority, exposition, dialogue, and action. It all needs to be seamless, serving the whole. As readers, we know when the writer has inserted a chunk of commentary or backstory that doesn’t belong.

As an exercise, I opened a novel I admire and looked for examples of each of these lenses. To my delight, they were all there. Then I dared to do it with my own book and saw right away that there are certain lenses I employ often and well, and others I rarely use.

For example, because I write in close third person, I don’t use “macro vision” as much as I might. The small settings are full of life, but there’s not much sense of era or the wider geography. Interestingly, however, in my new WIP place is central to the story. I can’t say that I did that “on purpose,” but it feels good to know what something in my subconscious must have known that I was neglecting this kind of vision.

What about you?

Are there “ways of seeing” that you tend to rely on, and others that you tend to avoid? 

Think about a scene you’ve been struggling with. What would happen if you shifted to a different lens or added a lens? How might you expand your ways of seeing?

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About Barbara

BARBARA LINN PROBST is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, living on an historic dirt road in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her debut novel QUEEN OF THE OWLS (April 2020) is the powerful story of a woman’s search for wholeness, framed around the art and life of iconic American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. QUEEN OF THE OWLS was selected as one of the twenty most anticipated books of the year by Working Mother, a debut novel “too good to ignore” by Bustle, was featured in places like Pop Sugar, Entertainment Weekly, Parade Magazine, and Ms. Magazine. It also won the bronze medal for popular fiction from the Independent Publishers Association, placed first runner-up in general fiction for the Eric Hoffer Award, and was short-listed for the $2500 Grand Prize. Barbara’s second book, THE SOUND BETWEEN THE NOTES, launches in April 2021.

Barbara has a PhD in clinical social work and blogs for several award-winning sites for writers. To learn more about Barbara and her work, please see http://www.barbaralinnprobst.com/

Top Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay