Writers in the Storm

Laurie Schnebly

Why do the first 10% and the last 10% of your book deserve far more than attention than what you give the remaining 80% of the story? That doesn’t seem fair.

Especially when we look at those lucky writers who are continuing various series which already have millions of fans. THEY don’t need to worry about making their next opening and closing incredibly wonderful!

Nope, drat it, that task is solely for authors who want to grab brand new readers from the very first paragraph of a book -- and then leave 'em so satisfied with the ending that they’ll immediately buy whatever this author writes next.

Boffo beginnings are the most effective way of ensuring that anyone who glances at page 1 will keep reading…and reading…and reading.

What else keeps them reading?

Sure, they might ALSO continue through the story if their best friend insisted “you’re gonna love this book even though it seems kind of dull at first.”

Or if the cover model looks so much like their dream hero that they’ve got to see what happens.

Or if they’re stuck on a six-hour flight and have already finished their only other reading materials.

But why go after readers like those? It’s better if you can get their best friend insisting, “I couldn’t put it down,” because that way they’ll keep reading no matter how short the flight is or how uninspiring the cover model might be.

Regardless of what got a reader started on your book, it’s ideal to have someone take in the first sentence

…then the first paragraph…and immediately want to keep going.

That means you’ve grabbed 'em. You’ve found the right answers to questions like:

• Which is more entertaining, dialogue or narrative?
• Which is more engrossing, action or emotion?
• Which is more engaging, characters or situation?

You probably already know what works best for drawing YOU into a story you want to keep reading…or writing.

How can you build on that interest and make it even more compelling?

Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a boffo beginning.

Think about the books whose opening you still remember vividly.

It’s surprising how often people can quote the first line of something they read years ago, and yet how seldom they can describe an entire opening scene.

Yet it’s the first scene, not the first line, which will keep your readers moving onto Chapter Two.

So what does your first scene need to do?

• Tell the readers what’s going on, or just give them a hint?

• Put us right in the viewpoint of a major character, or open with a secondary character in a more dramatic situation?
• Reveal what’s at stake now, or save that news for when the character learns it?

And once the main character/s and their plot are introduced, you’re still not finished with the beginning. In order to make sure the reader won’t turn away once they’ve reached the first scene break, you need to establish:

• What kind of action we can expect
• What kind of emotion we can expect
• What the overall tone will be like

• How much dialogue and description there’ll be

And, most important of all:

Why these characters will stay interesting

• Is it their mission / goal?
• Is it their personality / motivation?
• Is it their situation / conflict?
• Is it all three?

Your blend will be different, of course, depending on the story you’re writing. Your audience will have its own expectations, and they need to feel confident you can deliver the kind of experience they wanted when they picked up your novel.

That’ll be your job throughout the next 80% of the book, which -- although it’s what keeps 'em reading -- doesn’t count as part of your opening or your closing.

But speaking of closing, let’s move onto the fabulous finale.

Are you keeping the promise of the beginning?

That’s only the first question to address, but it’s a big one. The reader who picked up your book might have had some generic expectation of “a cozy mystery” or “a historical romance” when they opened to page 1, but your beginning promised a lot more than that.

It promised a certain level of tension, from relaxing to nail-biting.

It promised a story that would keep this reader engrossed all the way through.

It promised some compelling twists and turns, whether gentle or abrupt, before the final chapter.

It promised a world that the reader would enjoy discovering more of, whether the setting is comfortably familiar or excitingly different.

And it promised a style of story telling that resonated with this person -- something they already know they love, or something that has them anticipating a whole new discovery.

You delivered all of that with your beginning.

So you need to deliver it with the ending, as well -- plus whipped cream and a cherry on top.

There are tricks for accomplishing that, both in your opening and closing. But rather than get into a whole two weeks of material, let’s look at the openings and closings you’ve liked especially well.

Because that’s the prize-drawing question.

Someone who sends in a description of whatever made some book’s first or final words (whether a sentence or an entire scene) resonate with them will win free registration to Boffo Beginnings & Fab Finales at WriterUniv.com, starting a week from Monday.

So here’s your chance to share with other WITS readers:

What comes to mind when you think of a story whose opening you loved?

What ending made you want to read every single other book this author has ever written?

I’ll draw names from the next 24 hours’ worth of comments (even if you can’t decide on your favorite beginning or ending) so I can notify the winner tomorrow morning.

And I’ll look forward to hearing the names of some old favorite books along with some new TBRs!

After winning Romantic Times' "Best Special Edition of the Year" over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing…if not more. Since then she's taught online and live workshops for writers from London and Los Angeles to New Zealand and New York, and keeps a special section of her bookshelves for people who've developed that particular novel in her classes. With 43 titles there so far, she's always hoping for more.

Tiffany Yates Martin

Hello, dedicated author of great worth. Yes, you.

I already know these things about you—I know many things about you, actually. I know that you have a story to tell—lots of them, most likely. I know that you care passionately about your craft. I know that you love words, and language, and the magic of creating new worlds and new people who didn’t exist anywhere outside your head until you gave them the spark of life and brought them into the world. I also know that you care about other people, and part of wanting to share your stories with readers is because these ideas that live so vividly in your head entertain and affect and move you, and you want to share those experiences with others, to connect through the holy, transformative medium of story.

I know these things because you are reading a blog like this. Because when you aren’t immersing yourself in all things writerly, you are writing, or thinking about writing, or maybe just dreaming about writing, a bass note of longing that underlies the melodies of all your days. I know it because you carve out time from your already packed schedule to sit alone in a room or a coffee shop or a hidden corner of your house and you painstakingly put words on the page, looking to give voice to all the ideas and pictures and populace teeming in your head, to actualize your magnificent vision. I know it because most days you probably feel as if somehow you’ve fallen short, that what appears on the page lacks the depth and scope and impact of your grand mental version. But you try again, and again, and again, and some days you even marvel at what you have wrought, thinking you are finally getting the hang of this ephemeral art. Until you reread those same pages the next day and wonder who the hell you were kidding, thinking you had something to say and the talent to say it.

If I—a total stranger to many of you—already know all these things about you, then surely you must know them at an unshakable soul-deep level that nourishes and sustains you in the endless vicissitudes of the creative life—the ups and downs, the voluminous rejections, the painful silences of being lost in the slush pile, the long wait for an agent or publication or the sales of your dreams. Yes?

What, no?

You have chosen a difficult road—the path of the creative always is. Your confidence and self-esteem will probably travel a violent sine wave of highs and lows. You’ll struggle with motivation. Well-meaning family and friends may ask you why you put yourself through so much suffering for a pursuit where you have such a minuscule chance of “success,” as they (and perhaps you) define it. Beta readers and crit partners may slam on your beautiful baby and make your pride in your work feel foolish. Your editor may return your finally-anointed, soon-to-be-published manuscript with pages of notes and daunting stacks of comments in Track Changes. Even in the industries that reap great rewards from artists’ output, with a few headline-catching exceptions the person with the least influence and the least direct benefit from it is the creator.

This business can be so harsh--you can create the most magnificent piece on the planet and still not find a publishing home for it (some of the best and most original stories I’ve ever worked on were ultimately rejected by agents and publishers). The industry is driven almost entirely by marketing departments these days, and what they believe will sell doesn't always have any bearing on what's great storytelling and writing.

In exchange for digging deep into your most vulnerable soul and bravely sharing what you may find there, you will receive countless painful rejection letters (which you probably have counted, actually) or perhaps worse, indifference; you will endure long stretches of waiting to be chosen: by an agent, by a publisher, by review sites and publications, by the readers who can put you on the coveted New York Times bestseller list.

Here is the open secret that somehow doesn’t often register with artists as they wait to be chosen so their “real careers” can begin: When you get the “yes” it is utterly random.

You hit the right editor on the right day in the right market. Or an agent plowing diligently through her slush pile stumbled onto your manuscript at the very moment she was in the right frame of mind and the right mood looking for your very genre. Or some constellation of coincidence and luck and perhaps contacts got you the right review in the right publication that made your book take off.

So much of all of this is arbitrary, friends. Your writing has no more nor less worth on the day after all that magic happens than it did on the day before. That’s not to denigrate your talent, your hard work, your originality, the scintillating power of the gorgeous story you created. But it could’ve been you—or it could have been a thousand other authors and manuscripts, depending on a myriad of utterly random factors over which none of us has any control.

Considering that perhaps depressing reality, how is a writer supposed to carry on?

You have a superpower. In all of this, there is in fact a magical wellspring to which you can perpetually return, a holy font of fortitude—a single constant, one source of inspiration and support and dauntlessness: you, worthy author. You choose you.

Choose yourself and your craft—every single day, every single moment. Surround yourself with what helps nourish and strengthen you for the difficult moments—that same eternally fertile seedbed you draw on when your child is devastated or defeated, when your significant other or your dearest friends or family face crises and self-doubts and pain. Hold yourself, as the yogis say, in the highest possible regard. You don’t need to wait for validation: you have arrived already. Every day you dedicate time to your creative art, you have added something precious and unique to the world: your story, your voice, your “right effort,” to quote the Buddhists.

Find ways to stoke your own creative fires even when they begin to bank. I promise you that your writing has worth—you have worth. If you have kids (or pets!), sometimes it can help to think of your writing as a child—you'd never give up on that kid, even if everyone else on earth kept rejecting her. You'd always believe in her.

I'm not trying to make this sound easier than it is—I know firsthand how it feels when your self-worth flags and you wonder what the hell you were thinking trying to have a career with words. But this is the most normal thing I know about writing—the most universal, sadly: that writers seesaw between utter delight in the craft and their efforts and utter despair. I think it's the price of getting to live a creative life. So for what it's worth, if it helps, what you may be feeling is very, very normal. You are normal, cherished author.

Surround yourself with your people—creative souls like you who understand the capriciousness of inspiration and conviction. Find the “helpers,” as Mr. Rogers says—those people who believe in you and remind you to do the same when your resolve flags.

But more than that, find the champion, the warrior, inside you—the one person who will always, always be there for you. Read Jennifer Weiner's story about getting her first novel, Good in Bed, published—every publisher either passed because her heroine was overweight or asked her to make her skinny—and Weiner refused, knowing there was a readership for a plus-size heroine. And she started a whole movement in books. Read Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which addresses the challenges of creative life in such a lovely and inspirational way. Read Brenda Ueland's beautiful paean to creativity, If You Want to Write. Books like these will nourish your creative core. Watch Waiting for my Real Life to Begin, the documentary about former Men at Work frontman Colin Hay, a moving portrait of artistic self-sustenance even in the face of failure. Listen to these uplifting lyrics from James Taylor! The chorus fills my soul.

I often ask writers this question: If someone told you right now that you would never, ever be published, that what you were doing with your writing now was all you would ever do, would you stop?

I hope you get your random “yes,” author friend. I hope the picture of your success that you’ve cherished for years comes to pass just as you always dreamed. But if…! If it doesn’t, here’s my most heartfelt hope for you: that you will come to the end of your days with nothing but fulfillment and gratitude for your life because you were brave enough, true enough to your deepest soul to follow a creative path, rocky and uneven and even solitary as it may have been. Not everyone holds on to that holy creative spark we’re all born with, and what an inestimable loss that is for our spirit.

Tiffany Yates Martin is privileged to help authors tell their stories as effectively, compellingly, and truthfully as possible. In more than 25 years in the publishing industry, she’s worked both with major publishing houses and directly with authors (through her company FoxPrint Editorial), on titles by New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers and award winners as well as newer authors. She presents editing and writing workshops for writers’ groups, organizations, and conferences and writes for numerous writers’ sites and publications.

Leslie Marshman

Life is unpredictable. For writers, its capriciousness can be especially difficult because it influences not only our ability, but also our desire, to create. More than one writer reading this has at some point wanted to quit writing for good.

Maybe it was years ago. Maybe last week. Maybe this morning when you decided to read this blog rather than admit you’re just not feeling it when it comes to putting words on paper. I know where you’re coming from, and it sucks, right? But I also know the joy of stick-to-it-iveness, the success that can be achieved if you roll with the punches rather than giving up permanently.

Becoming an Author

I’ve written my entire life, as I’m sure most of you have. But when I got serious about writing a novel, I was determined to learn everything I could about the craft. I joined Romance Writers of America and began going to local chapter meetings. I took online classes. I bought craft books. I didn’t just read novels — I studied them.

My plan was to become a published author, and when my husband retired I would quit my day job and write as we camped our way across the country in our fifth wheel RV. I had it all figured out.

I pitched my first book to an editor at the RWA National conference several years ago. She requested the partial. I submitted it. She requested the full. I panicked. I got a bad case of the “be careful what you wish for” nerves.

I’d been told that once you sell a book, you better enjoy what you’re writing because your readers will want more of the same. I wasn’t sure I wanted to write that genre forever. A battle between fear of failure and fear of success raged within me and I froze. But I wasn’t quitting. I still called myself a writer. I’d figure it out, because I was determined to submit that book.

While I struggled with the requested book’s genre, I decided to write short stories for magazines like True Confessions. I wrote four, submitted four, sold four. The pay was paltry and there was no byline, but my confidence grew.

However, if I was going to spend my time writing, it was going to be a novel. And by God, my name was going to be on it. My mojo returned. Once again, I attacked the book, determined that nothing would stop me from getting it published.

My Unpredictable Life

My determination couldn’t hold a candle to what life had in store. Both my husband and father were diagnosed with cancer. I bounced between Houston and Denver, taking care of my parents, their affairs, and my husband while he underwent five continuous years of chemo. First my dad passed away, then my mom, and then, my dear husband.

Throughout that five-year period, my writing took a backseat to grief. I was emotionally bankrupt, physically drained, and though many writers can, I can’t channel my pain onto the page.

I’d been newsletter editor for the Houston Bay Area RWA chapter for years, and I couldn’t even bring myself to continue my monthly column. But I still went to chapter meetings whenever possible. I kept in touch with my writer friends. I continued to read craft books and study novels. I never stopped calling myself a writer. I just didn’t write.

Finding My Way Back

The first six months after my husband died were lost to crying and wallowing in grief. And then one day, I got the itch to write. I wasn’t ready to deal with the book yet, so I decided to take baby steps. I wrote an Editor’s Corner article for the newsletter, posted it to my website blog for accountability, and vowed to never miss another month.

Next, I wrote a short story and submitted it to Woman’s World Magazine. The competition was fierce, but at least they paid well and had bylines. It wasn’t accepted, but my creative juices were finally flowing. I’d dipped my toe into the ocean and felt the pull of the tide. I had to write.

So I pulled out the damn book, decided to change genres, and started over. Life’s too short to not write what you love. I saved the setting, a few of the characters, and brainstormed a whole new suspense plot.

Around the same time, a new chaptermate asked me to critique with her. To me, critique partners were to writing what a league was to bowling. They sucked all the fun out of it because you had to show up whether you wanted to or not. But I agreed to give it a try.

I soon found that being accountable to someone other than myself was everything I needed. Instead of just calling myself a writer, I was a writer. Every damn day. Within a year, my critique partner and I finished our books, entered contests, and finaled in the Golden Heart. We signed with agents.

And that book I was determined to publish for so many years? It’s being released this September through Tule Publishing’s mystery line. Because I. Never. Gave. Up.

What You Can Learn from My Story

Life is going to knock us down and kick us where it hurts the most. I’m in awe of those who can write through hard times without missing a beat. But for the rest of us, the important thing is to never wave the white flag.

Take a break if you need to, but hang on to your passion, even if it’s by the thinnest of threads. Continue to call yourself a writer. The day will come when you’ll resume the pursuit of your dream, even if that dream’s shape isn’t what you first imagined.

Instead of writing while gallivanting cross-country on six-month adventures with my husband, I’m writing in my home office or on my screened-in patio. It isn’t what I thought it would be. The important thing is that it is.

It’s bittersweet that my first book is about to be published and my husband and parents, who always believed in my talent and encouraged me to write, aren’t here to share my success. But I celebrate every step of my writing journey, big and small, with my ride-or-die critique partner and my friends.  

And really, what’s the alternative? Not writing? Not an option. I never gave up. I never quit calling myself a writer. And now I can call myself an author.

And who knows…maybe, just maybe, they have books in heaven.

Have you ever wanted to quit writing when life tossed you a curve ball? How did you avoid throwing in the towel permanently?

Multi-award-winning suspense author Leslie Marshman is (finally) putting her psychology degree to good use, getting inside the heads of her characters and figuring out what makes them tick. She writes novels that feature kick-ass heroines, the heroes who love them, and the bad guys who fear them. Leslie called Denver home until she married a Texan without reading the fine print. Now she lives halfway between Houston and Galveston and has learned to embrace the humidity.

Goode Over Evil, a 2018 Golden Heart finalist, will be published September 18 through Tule Publishing. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and/or Facebook.