Writers in the Storm

by Fae Rowen

Years ago, when I attended the UCI Summer Writing Institute, I learned about golden lines. These are the lines you go back and highlight after taking notes in a class or workshop or in a great book. These are the takeaway ideas, the ones you want to remember and implement in your writing.

Every year, after the annual RWA conference, I share my golden lines from the workshops and sessions I attended, so that those of you who were unable to take advantage of the talks presented by experts in writing and marketing are able to share in my experiences.

Here are my golden lines from this year’s conference in New York.

From Skye Warren, an indie author who accidentally grossed over seven figures in sales last year:

Your visibility = conversion (sales). More conversion gives more visibility.

If you don’t already have a closed Facebook reader group, put one together. Ask questions and run polls about your books and your characters. Let these readers in as you get ready to write a new book, with questions about names, book covers, etc.

Use reader quotes in your ads.

Mobile Only ads have the highest conversion (click through to sales site).

Do not spend on a new release or the first book in a series.

Write a bonus chapter for your previous release. Update that book the day before the release of your new book.

Marketing does make a difference.

For more info: www.skyewarren.com/rwa19

DEEP POV presented by Kristan Higgins and Sonali Dev:

Do not write description that is skippable, like, “I was nervous.”

Always tie descriptions to the story.

Use active verbs.

For deep POV, use the five sense like this:

1. Sight: intellectual sense
2. Sound: emotional
3. Smell: memory sense
4. Taste: deeply intimate; very sensual
5. Touch: experiential sense

Example: “He walked in the room and I swear I felt a baby kick in my postmenopausal womb.”

• Get
  across the character’s experiences and choices, their belief system, the
  history of impactful life events.
• What
  is your character’s deepest fear? …deepest secret?
• Think
  about the purpose of every scene. Why would the reader care about that scene?
• Characters
  have opinions. Know them and show them.
• Show
  the push/pull between what the character is thinking vs what the character
  needs.
• Does
  the story arc move the character’s voice? Does s/he have different thoughts
  than in the beginning of the book?

Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts (AME:)

95% of all books are sold through personal recommendations. The micro-influencers have a smaller base, but they are more active.

Put clickable links in your newsletters and the back of your e-books.

Always put a call to action (ask for something) in each newsletter.

Vet your street team by checking their book reviews, that they’ve read all your books.

From Eliciting Emotion Panel of Mary, Winnie, and Reese:

Google up to twenty-one emotions. Our emotions are different because of:

• Sense
  of time (distortion)
• Sense
  of equilibrium (dizzy disorientation)
• Sense
  of space (how we perceive distance and bodies)

Everything is colored by our emotions.

Your word choices can affect the mood of the scene.

The use of character tells, like in poker, are subtle, but your reader will get it.

The age of your character at their wounding will be the age they will act when the same wounding comes back to hit them again.

What’s the bulls-eye of the scene?

Emotions come from the character, not from the plot.

The external goals keep the characters together. The internal goals keep them apart.

Ramp up the story tension to ramp up the emotions.

Laurie Cooper on Facebook:

Compare your page with similar pages.

Ask your readers how they found you.

When you get a sign up, give them a call to action, like read more, which is a button that takes them to your website and excerpts.

Share teasers with text, then share link not website with the buy link.

Basic FREE marketing tutorials at www.facebook.com/business and www.facebook/business/learn.

Sign up at www.amyporterfield.com for free tutorials.

Get reader permission for anything (quotes!).

Last Three Chapters: Teri Michaels:

The HEA has to be earned.

You can do the wedding/honeymoon after the book ends—makes a great follow-up novella!

We must see the moment that both people recognize they love each other.

What is the best "golden tip" you've heard from a recent class or conference? What "golden tips" of your own do you have to share?

About Fae

Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.

P.R.I.S.M., Fae's debut book, a young adult science fiction romance story of survival, betrayal, resolve, deceit, and love is now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.Fae's second book in the series will be available for pre-order October 1, 2019.

by Colleen M. Story

If you’re looking for a way to get yourself out of a creative rut, refresh your viewpoint, and bring new life to your writing, you may want to try going on a color walk. 

What is a Color Walk? 

American writer and artist William S. Burroughs came up with the idea of the color walk to inspire his students. 

It’s really easy to do. Simply pick a color before you head out on a walk, and then let that color lead you on your route. 

Follow that yellow bicycle until it goes out of sight or until another yellow object catches your fancy. Maybe it’s a yellow Labrador taking a walk with its owner, so you go the same direction for a while until you see a yellow car turning left at the next block. 

You turn left, too. 

Little by little, let the color lead you on a route you wouldn’t normally take, all while keeping your eyes peeled for new things containing that color. 

Here are some other helpful tips: 

• Give yourself an hour of uninterrupted time. Take your watch with you. Once thirty minutes have passed, turn around and head back, or arrange for a friend to pick you up wherever you end up at the end of the hour.
• Use your intuition to pick your color. Which one speaks to you today?
• Try not to talk or interact with others on your walk. Use it solely to observe your surroundings and allow your imagination to play.
• When you return from your walk, sit down immediately and record your observations, including any ideas that occurred to you while you were out.

5 Ways Writers Can Benefit from Color Walks

Anyone can benefit from a color walk, but they can hold some special creativity-boosting benefits for writers.

1. Spices Up Your Exercise

Writing and walking go well together. (Check out our post, “What Famous Writers Know About Walking.”) But let’s face it—sometimes those daily walks can get boring, especially if you’re treading the same old route all the time. 

Focusing your mind on a particular color forces you to pay closer attention to your surroundings and creates new interest for your brain. Suddenly what’s old looks new, and that’s all it takes to make the walk more fun. 

2. Adds Unpredictability

The fact that you need to follow the color takes all the routine out of your walk and plunges you into the unknown. You don’t know where you’re going to go or how you’re going to get there, and that simple change causes your mind to wake up and pay attention.

Don’t be surprised if after a color walk your writing descriptions become a lot more detailed and rich!

3. Gets You Out in Nature

Nature inspires creativity. Several studies have shown that walking, by itself, boosts creativity (by 60 percent in a Stanford University study!), and when you add in greenery and plant life, the effects are even greater. 

If you think you don’t have time for a walk, reframe it in your mind—this is part of your creative work. You need to do what’s necessary to inspire the muse, and walking in nature is one of the easiest, least expensive, and most enjoyable ways to accommodate that need.

4. Gives You Another Way to Craft a Story 

One of the fun things you can do while on a color walk is to take the items you see and bring them together into a story. Weave together the yellow bike, the yellow dog, and the yellow car into a series of events involving a character—perhaps one you see on your walk.

Allow your imagination to play. This story doesn’t have to become anything important. Use your color walk as simply a way to exercise your imagination, then see what you can come up with for a story, essay, or poem. 

5. Livens Up Your Descriptions

We writers love to spice up our descriptions, and a color walk can help you do that. Try “interviewing” your color when you return from your walk. What did it have to say to you? What did it teach you? What do you think the color represented to you that day? 

Write down the impressions you received regarding this color in general, and then see how you might use your findings the next time you need to describe a setting or a character.

Have you tried a color walk? If you haven't, are you willing to try one?

About Colleen

Colleen M. Story inspires writers to overcome modern-day challenges and find creative fulfillment in their work. Her first non-fiction book, Overwhelmed Writer Rescue, was named Book by Book Publicity’s Best Writing/Publishing Book in 2018, and her novel, Loreena’s Gift, was a Foreword Reviews' INDIES Book of the Year Awards winner, among others. 

Her latest release, Writer Get Noticed!, is a strengths-based guide to help writers break the spell of invisibility and discover unique author platforms that will draw readers their way. With over 20 years in the creative industry, Colleen is the founder of Writing and Wellness and Writer CEO. Please see her author website or follow her on Twitter.

by Laurie Schnebly Campbell

“You’re building a WHAT?”

“A world.”

“The whole THING?”

That’s where the next response will be different for each writer. Yes, some of us do build an entire world for our stories. No, some of us don’t.

But regardless of how detailed or how sketchy it might be, we can never write a story without creating SOME kind of world.

It might be as simple as a few lines about the setting. “Twelfth-century France, on the way to the Third Crusade.”

“A doughnut shop on Main Street where all the townspeople come to get their news.”

“The camp for women who served with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War.”

Sometimes, that’s all the author—and the readers—need to envision where the book is set. For them, the world takes second place (or third, seventh or fifteenth place) to other aspects of the story ... like plot twists, character journeys, dramatic dialogue, emotional arcs, entertaining events and more.

Other times the world is an essential part of the book, without which the story would feel emptier. Lacking in richness. Imagine a Harry Potter story without Hogwarts Academy or an Eve Dallas story without the New York Police Department. Readers would feel cheated.

Series readers, especially, like seeing the touchstones they’ve come to expect in a particular story world. J.R. Ward, Susan Mallery, Robert B. Parker, J.R.R. Tolkien and dozens of other authors have created worlds that live far beyond the covers of each book in the series.

Other writers create a fresh world for every book, and their readers are perfectly satisfied with each new one they come across.

What belongs in your story world?

Obviously, it’s more than just the physical setting.

That doesn’t mean the place and time aren’t important. Where the characters are located, what surrounds the active area, what the weather is like, what hour of the day different scenes take place in, what seasonal events will affect the plot ... all of those matter to the story.

And that setting can be described in lavish detail or quick brushstrokes, whichever best suits the author’s voice.

There are times when it’s crucial for readers to have a solid grasp of the setting, like when clues are related to “the distance from the dock to the barn” or “whether sunset actually happened along the way home.”

There are also times when knowing details like the color of the heroine’s bedroom quilt and the sound of her clock gives the reader a welcome sense of being fully immersed in the story world.

Then there are times when such details diminish the reader’s interest, taking them away from character or plot elements and shifting the focus to things they view as immaterial.

Why time and place matter

Regardless of how extensively or briefly your physical setting is described, though, the time-and-place location plays a crucial role in making your story’s characters do what they do.

Taking real-life locations as an example. Nobody would expect the same response to news of a kidnapped child from someone living in present-day Jerusalem and from someone living in an Antarctic research station.

Likewise, the characters’ setting—whether or not it appears during story action—has already played a role in making your people who they are. If Elizabeth Bennet and Katniss Everdeen were faced with one another’s choices, we can figure each one would still value her beloved sister’s well- being above her own ... but what she’d do to preserve it would be completely different, based on the world she grew up in.

So whether or not the characters’ coming-of-age setting is included in your present-day story, it’s still going to affect what happens. Because it’s made them who they are, whether or not that’s something they embrace or want to change.

Accept it? Or change it?

Just as characters are faced with the decision of whether they’re satisfied with who they are, or whether they need to alter it somehow, that same question can apply to the world that surrounds them.

In fact, it often provides the conflict that gets a story started. Someone who perceives injustice in the way feudal serfs are treated by the local barons, or someone who dreams of a more exciting life in the big city rather than on an isolated ranch, is someone with a story ready to happen.

Conflict doesn’t have to come because of dissatisfaction with their setting, though. It can also come from someone else who wants to change it.

Say, the new boss who decides to transfer everyone to the upgraded headquarters office two hours away. Or the character’s true love who plans to pursue a new opportunity on the frontier. Again, there’s a conflict waiting to unfold.

And that’s still only the beginning of how the story world plays into making your book memorable.

We’ll go into more detail on that from August 12-23 during “More Than Setting: World-Building” at WriterUniv.com, but meanwhile I’d love to know what story world comes to mind when you think about those you’ve enjoyed reading ... or writing.

Somebody who responds will win free registration to the class, and everybody who responds will give the rest of us great ideas for books we want to read or re-read. So that’s my question for you:

What story world did you love reading or writing?

I’ll check back for answers throughout the day and tomorrow and congratulate the winner of the registration for the free class on Saturday night. I’m looking forward to hearing about some fabulous story worlds!

A novelist who won “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell always has trouble choosing her favorite activity: writing, reading or teaching. Her newest course explores building story worlds, whether they’re a completely fictional creation or an actual setting the author knows well.