Writers in the Storm

by Tasha Seegmiller

About two years ago, my husband got the idea to start a cotton candy business. We bought a machine, played around with flavors and techniques and materials and during the local Fourth of July parade 2017, we opened for business. 

Not quite two years later, and we are merging that in with a soda shack (think Starbucks for sodas and shaved ice — they’re all the rage in Utah). And we are launching a grand opening on Saturday.

There are a lot of things that we have learned over the last two years, most of which tie nicely in with writing (really, you knew this was coming). 

1.     Get a solid idea of what you’d like to do.

To go from “I think we could sell cool cotton candy” to business implementation is a bit of a bizarre journey, but probably not any more than coming up with an idea, and making up people, and seeing what is out there, and what we can do differently. When we were starting, we (aka my husband) spent A LOT of time looking at what other cotton candy makers were doing. We talked about what we liked, what we didn’t like, how we would make our product unique. 

There are a lot of writers who think they don’t want to read what they want to write because they might be influenced by it. During drafting, fair enough. There are certain authors I can’t read when I’m in certain parts of my stories, whether that is because the genre is similar or because I’m writing several emotional scenes and I’m hoping to channel a unique, authentic voice. But I also know the only way that a writer can get better is by reading what they want to emulate in their writing. If you write historical fiction, you’d better be reading them, both those that deal with the time period you are playing with and others from times neighboring your desired era. If you dabble in magic, break out the notebooks and jot down how your writing heroes craft theirs. Study, study, study, and then decide what you’d like to emulate and what you’d like to do differently. 

2.    Get feedback.

As you might imagine, we had a lot of people who were interested in giving us feedback on our products.

We’d set up our machines in our front yard and send some texts out to friends, adults and children alike, to see what they thought of certain flavors, jot down the ones people wanted more of, make notes of those that people tossed away. While my husband and I have diverse palates (he likes the really sweet, me not so much), we needed a broader sense of who thought what. We especially leaned into the feedback from people who said they didn’t like cotton candy. 

There are all kinds of theories out there about who should critique what when. I say follow your gut. If you can take a critique when you are drafting, and keep going, do that. If the thought of someone reading your new pages before you’ve had a chance to make them as shiny as possible makes you reach for a brown paper bag, don’t. But realize two things: 

1. You will never get your work as good as you’d like it without someone else giving insight. 
2. There is a very real danger of looping through a story so many times that it becomes a vortex for your drive and creativity. 

It’s the scariest thing, to take something you’ve thought about, worked on, got to a point where you feel good about it. But writers are courageous, and I know you will benefit greatly if you will just let others read and listen to what they are saying. 

3.    Your product will improve the more you make it. 

When we look at some of our first products, we can see things, now, that we would have done differently. We struggled to regulate the temperature of the machines (it needs to be around 400-425 degrees), we weren’t sure the best product to spin them onto, some flavors sounded like a good idea and they just weren’t (looking at you, black licorice). 

It is not fair to the writer you are now to look back at when you were beginning, published or not, and berate yourself for the product that it wasn’t. You can’t go back in time. You shouldn’t want to go back in time. Instead, you need to look at what you wrote, what you knew at the time that you wrote it and congratulate yourself for everything you were able to do with what you knew. And then keep learning. Keep practicing. Keep getting better. 

4.    Stretch and grow. 

During the beginning phases of business building, when we were deciding on a name, we realized that we didn’t want to be committed to just cotton candy forever. My husband has been brainstorming business ideas since we got married almost 20 years ago. We didn’t want a business name that would lock him into just that. And since launching, our little cotton candy business has tried edible helium balloons (super fun and yummy, super inconsistent) and toyed with the idea of custom gummies. We often return to conversations surrounding waffles, and as I’m writing this post, my husband is seeing if he can make shaped, tricolored marshmallows in my kitchen. It costs a bit of time, a small bit of money, and then we know if a thing works, if it could work, or if that idea isn’t sustainable.

Just because you started writing in one era or genre doesn’t mean you have to lock into that forever. It’s one of the reasons all the business professionals suggest authors build a brand around themselves and not a particular book. If you look at your favorite writers, I bet most of them have dabbled in different things, even if they have a particular genre that is their bread and butter (Brandon Sanderson comes to mind – his Alcatraz series is very different from his epic fantasies).

And that’s okay. 

Writing the same genre over and over can feel clichéd, the tropes that were once fun might even start feeling like barriers boxing in your creativity. So dabble. I have a folder called My Sandbox, where I just play with ideas, not that are necessarily the serious work that I’m doing, but a place where story ideas can hang out, a place where I can test my prowess on a different kind of thing. 

This is how we grow. 

And sometimes, when we allow ourselves to grow, a fun little idea can manifest into something that brings us a bit of joy. 

What practices have you put in place to help your writing grow?

About Tasha

Tasha Seegmiller believes in the magic of love and hope, which she weaves into every story she creates. She is the current president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and studying in the MFA in Writing Program at Pacific U. The former high school English teacher now assists in managing the award-winning project-based learning program (EDGE) at Southern Utah University. Tasha married a guy she’s known since she was seven, is the mom of three teens, and co-owner of a cotton candy company. She is represented by Annelise Robey of Jane Rotrosen Agency.

Shame is one of the most powerful and underused emotions in a fiction-writer’s toolbox. Shame is pervasive and common, it’s ugly and hard to capture well. Readers cheer for characters who are relate-able. They cheer for characters who stand up to bullies, who stay and fight when they don’t have to. They relate to characters who have flaws! 

And shame is one emotion everyone studiously avoids, denies, and conceals. It’s isolating, defining, and has some awful negative consequences like rage, anxiety, depression, emptiness, isolation, etc. 

Shame insists we hide, conceal, and disguise what we perceive to be our greatest inadequacies. We refuse to acknowledge shame. Shame is that dark shadow that haunts your every step whether you admit it’s there or not. Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man character struggles with shame (cue memory of father’s murder). He can’t ever be good enough, and everything bad that happens is deserved because he’s a terrible person.

Shame is a hard emotion to capture authentically, but the key is to drill down into the primary emotions causing the shame and showing those emotions through internal dialogue and showing the consequences of shame that are observable. So a character fails at something and is reminded of his Dad yelling at him that he’ll never amount to anything (internal dialogue, backstory, etc.). 

He doesn’t know how to handle the shame, so he off-loads the uncomfortable feelings and explodes in anger at his colleague or spouse over something trivial. The anger is what’s observable, but the character won’t label the shame in his internal dialogue. It’s clear the anger isn’t really about what the other person has done or not done, and the anger is an over-reaction. 

Maybe the colleague stands up to him and calls him out on his anger. Maybe he gets written up for his anger at work. Maybe his wife breaks down in tears. The consequences of shame should be tangible for the character. This is how you SHOW shame.

What Kind Of Characters Could You Use Shame With?

So basically, ANY character you write could deal with shame and the only way readers will be able to know they’re struggling with shame is through internal dialogue and observable off-loading/numbing/consequences of shame because in real life we’re all experts at hiding our shame from everyone—especially ourselves.

Brene Brown’s Guide To Creating An Emotional Arc Using Shame

Brene Brown in her book Rising Strongdescribed shame as living with a rock on your chest. Shame feels like a crushing, inescapable weight on our chests, cutting off our air, knotting our guts, stealing our words, making us flushed. (Read The Emotion Thesaurus entry on Shame here.)

Whether your character starts off feeling shameful about something (past or present) and works to shake that off, or shame is something that they take on in the course of the story, the key to a shame emotion arc is what Brene Brown calls The Reckoning, The Rumble, and the Revolution. It looks a lot like the 3-act structure *smile*

In Rising Strong, Brown gives this example: “…Your face turns red and heat radiates from your chest when you learn that your boss gave the lead for a new project to your colleague.”

Here are two scenarios Brene poses to this emotional problem:

“My boss is an a—hole. Todd’s such a brownnoser. Who cares? This job sucks and this company is a joke.” This is the shame-train reaction—the knee-jerk, off-loading, emotional avoidance caused by shame. As long as your character stays here and never questions WHY they feel this angry, then your character is letting emotions they refuse to admit they feel to drive the shame-train.

 “I’m so pissed about her giving the lead to Todd. I need to figure this out before I lose it with everyone on our team…” This curiosity begins the process below. There’s an inciting incident that causes the character to take a proactive step to get off the shame-train.

The Reckoning: At some point in the story, your character decides to jump off the shame-train and gets curious. Why do I feel like this? Why am I reacting like this? Why do I think of x or y when this happens? Hopefully your character has a friend or ally with them. The Reckoning is about identifying and/or labelling the emotion or thinking that’s got them convinced they’re a bad person (put them on the floor of the arena). 

The Reckoning is heart-breaking work because it’s one step forward and two steps back over and over. Their best thinking is what put that boulder on their chest (either as a reaction to something they did or is a survival mechanism to something done to them) to begin with and they’ve managed the rock by ignoring it was there altogether. Now that they acknowledge it’s there, life is going to get harder as they reckon with hard emotions they’ve trained themselves to numb or off-load onto others. 

This kicks off The Rumble.

The Rumble:The Rumble is the shame-showdown. Now that your character acknowledges the thinking and emotions that have put them on the floor of the arena, now they’re going to THINK their way out from under the shame-boulder. But they’re acutely aware of those in the stands staring at them, at their repeated failure, their unworthiness. 

Now the character moves on to The Revolution.

The Revolution:Once the character has gotten the rock of shame off their chest, once they’ve rumbled with the emotions that put it there, now comes the revolution. They now must rebuild their self-esteem. This provides incredible character arc if you look for it. How does one let go of perfectionism? How does one learn to forgive themselves? What do they ask themselves as they stumble in The Rumble? That’s narrative gold, right there.

Questions To Ask Your Characters About Shame

What emotions does your character refuse to acknowledge they’re struggling with? Does the tomboy refuse to acknowledge the girly side that’s vulnerable? Does the warrior refuse to cry? WHY?  

When something negative happens, we create the stories in our heads we expect to hear. We filter everything that’s said and done through how we believe we’re perceived even if there’s no evidence for that conclusion. How can a self-fulfilling prophecy of shame play into your story? 

What thought does your character avoid having confirmed in any conflict or hurtful event? 

What is your character’s go-to emotional substitution? Do they lash out in anger? Do they self-flagellate with destructive internal messages? 

Can you think of a character from TV, movies, or fiction who struggles with shame? What are the consequences of their shame?

About Lisa:

Lisa Hall-Wilson was a national award-winning freelance journalist and author who loves mentoring writers. Fascinated by history, fantasy, romance, and faith, Lisa blends those passions into historical and historical-fantasy novels.

Find Lisa’s blog, Beyond Basics for intermediate writers,  at www.lisahallwilson.com.

Last week , Sharla Rae lost her final battle with cancer. Sharla was a founding member of Writers in the Storm. On Wednesday, May 1, we'll remember Sharla with pictures and words.

By Margie Lawson

I’ve read the same wording about tears in too many books. 

Tears stream and streak, glint and glisten, flee and flow, prickle and trickle. 

They slip, slide, run, roll, seemingly unstoppable.

Tears blur vision, soak hair, get wiped, get blinked.  But some tears are unshed, unspent, unspilled, or unspecified.

Sobs can choke and rack and wrench. Characters sob on shoulders and in showers, often uncontrollably.

I could go on about crying and bawling and weeping and wailing. But I won’t.

You all get it.

Let’s dive in and play in words.

Five Tips for Writing Tears that Carry Power

1. Write Fresh.

Write sentences about tears and crying that we’ve never read before.

2. Nix Some Tears.

Give your characters some different reaction.

In real life, eyes fill to the brim with tears more often than we want to see on the page. And a single tear may slide down someone’s cheek. 

But you’re in charge of your characters. You don’t have to stick with what pops on the page in your first draft. 

Nix some of the crying and tears in an early draft—and give your characters a different reaction. Could be dialogue, an action, body language, a facial expression, a dialogue cue, a visceral response, or a powerful thought. And give it some fresh elements.

You can make the reaction fit your character, and not be predictable. You’ll keep the reader immersed in your story, locked on each page.

3. Amplify.

If it’s important, give the reader more.

Amplify the emotion in a variety of ways.

Every example in this blog is amplified.

4. Play with Style and Structure.

Use a wide range of rhetorical devices, provide plenty of white space, vary sentence lengths.

If you know me, you know you’ll see examples of style and structure.

5. Check for Compelling Cadence.

Read your work out loud. With feeling.

Always. Always. Always.

DON’T MISS THIS POINT:  

I’m not saying writers shouldn’t ever use some of those common words and phrases I mentioned at the beginning of the blog. But if you use some, twist, play, and amplify. Give them a boost, and give your readers and reviewers a smile. 

As always, I’ll share some examples and what you can learn from them.

1. She should slap Hartwell or pull away from his heavy arms, but there wasn’t much fight left in her, just a sack of tears in her chest she refused to spill. 

Deep Edit Analysis:

Power Words — slap, pull away, heavy, fight, tears, refused, spill

Rhetorical Device — Structural Parallelism:

• sack of tears in her chest 
• she refused to spill

Compelling Cadence

Look how Vanessa Riley deepened characterization. She showed what the character thought she should do, but didn’t. Then she explained why.

Vanessa also shared that the POV character felt like crying, but wouldn’t give Hartwell the satisfaction of seeing her break down.

But smart Vanessa didn’t rely on my overused phrases. Her sack of tears was fresh.

2. No one would see her cry. None of the duke’s friends, especially the leeches.

Deep Edit Analysis:

Vanessa amplified that basic first sentence. She shared specifics and backloaded with the strongest power word, leeches.

1. (Crying)  She clung to him—the only safe place—as the battle for her soul and sanity raged. And then it was over, and she hiccupped against his shirt as she tried to catch her breath. 

Deep Edit Analysis:

Power Words: clung, safe, battle, soul, sanity, raged, over, breath

Compelling Cadence

Rhetorical Device — Alliteration: soul, sanity

2. Tears burned in her sinuses, then filled her eyes and spilled to race to her hairline. These weren’t sad tears. They were angry tears. Tears filled with fight. 

Abbie Roads packed power and rhetorical style in those 28 words. 

Deep Edit Analysis:

Power Words: tears, burned, filled, spilled, race, sad, tears, angry, tears, tears, filled, fight

Rhetorical Devices —

• Alliteration: filled, fight
• Assonance: filled, spilled, filled
• Anadiplosis: …tears. Tears…

Backloaded with the most important power word, fight

Compelling Cadence

1. She had worked hard to get herself strong again.

Must not cry. Must not cry. Must not cry.

Deep Edit Analysis:

Power Words: worked, hard, strong, not cry, not cry, not cry

Compelling Cadence

2. She swallowed and blinked a few times, the tears drying up as if she regretted losing control. Her expression tightened as if all of her facial muscles were holding in her emotions and only just managing to contain them. 

Deep Edit Analysis:

Power Words: swallowed, blinked, tears, drying, regretted, losing control, tightened, holding in emotions, just managing, contain

Love how Melanie Milburne deepened characterization by amplifying with two similes. And the second simile is mega-amplified. I see that barely-in-control expression.

Compelling Cadence.

Dear Wife will be released June 26.

Four Paragraphs:

To my absolute horror, my eyes grow hot, the tears welling so quickly it’s impossible to blink them away. I choke on a small but audible sob. “I can’t even tell you how much.”

The Reverend takes me in with a kind expression. “Are you all right, child?”

I wipe my cheeks with my fingers, but new tears tumble down before I can mop the old ones away. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Or I will be. I don’t even know why I’m crying.” I force up a throaty laugh. “I promise it won’t be a regular oc­currence.”

I hate to cry. For the past seven years, my tears have been slapped, backhanded, punched, yanked, kicked, squeezed and one time, burned out of me. Tears are a sign of weakness, fol­lowed always by punishment. Only losers cry. 

Deep Editing Analysis:

Power Words: horror, eyes hot, tears, welling, quickly, impossible, blink, choke, sob, Reverend, kind, fine, tears, crying, force, laugh, promise, hate, cry, seven years, tears, slapped, backhanded, punched, yanked, kicked, squeezed, burned out of me, tears, weakness, punishment, losers, cry

Deepened characterization. Used crying to slip in powerful backstory.

Asyndeton:  No and in the first sentence.

Compelling Cadence

One Paragraph:

These past four months, I’ve shed a shitload of tears. More than I’d like to think about. But I stand here, in the middle of the church aisle and bawl, and for the first time I don’t feel ashamed of my tears or wipe them away with a sleeve. I let them fall because these are the good kind of tears. The—well, if not the happy kind, at least the everything’s-going-to-be-okay kind. 

Deep Editing Analysis:

Power Words: four months, tears, more, church, bawl, don’t feel ashamed, tears, fall, good, tears, not, happy, okay

Amplification: Tears. All 73 words are about her tears.

Alliteration: shed, shitload

Fresh Hyphenated-Run-On

Compelling Cadence

1. I pounded my fist on the desk, my pens jumping up in the air, my coffee leaping out of the mug. This rage was a hand grenade whose pin had been pulled, and there was nowhere for it to go. I had no tears left. Just a raw, aching wound. 

Deep Edit Analysis:

An example of NO TEARS. Christa Allan showed her character’s rage.

Power Words: pounded, rage, hand grenade, pin, pulled, no tears, raw, aching, wound

Rhetorical Device — Metaphor, Mega-Amplified.

Compelling Cadence.

2. I’d moved past tears, past sobbing, to a convulsing, ragged-breath squall.

Deep Edit Analysis:

That sentence seems simple. But it’s brilliant and powerful.

Power Words: tears, sobbing, convulsing, ragged-breath, squall

Compelling Cadence

3. If only I could be like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News and schedule my cathartic crying. My eyes dripped, my underarms dripped, and my emotional reserves dripped. All in a medical building lobby as I waited for Mia to come up with a plan, and I wiped my face with a crumpled Starbucks napkin. I counted on her to save me from myself. Now wasn’t the time for her to forgo the life vest when I was drowning in the sea of my own irresponsibility.

Deep Edit Analysis:

Love the humor hits, and the juxtaposition of those humor hits with her reality. If you’ve read this book, you know her reality is emotionally challenging.

Power Words: cathartic crying, eye dripped, underarms dripped, emotional reserves dripped, medical, plan, counted on her, save me, forgo life vest, drowning, irresponsibility

Backloaded: irresponsibility

Rhetorical Devices —

• Alliteration: Holly Hunter, cathartic crying
• Allusion: Holly Hunter
• Metaphor: life vest, drowning
• Asyndeton and Symploce and Zeugma:  My eyes dripped, my underarms dripped, and my emotional reserves dripped.

Compelling Cadence

If you’ve taken my Deep Editing course online (or lecture packet), or Fab 30: Advanced Deep Editing, or an Immersion Master Class, you know the terms I used, or you figured out the structure they referenced.

If you haven’t taken my Deep Editing course, I’ve been talking Greek to you. I shared a quick explanation of all the rhetorical devices but epistrophe and zeugma.

Symploce:  The word or words at the beginning and end of three or more phrases, sentences, or clauses, are the same (my, dripped).

Zeugma: In a series of two or more, the last one is an idiomatic mismatch. It’s not like the other. Eyes and underarms are part of your body. Emotional reserves are not. 

Want to learn more about my deep editing techniques? 

My blogs share a few deep edit points out of hundreds. And that’s not hyperbole.

Drop by my website and check out my online courses and lecture packets. Your writing career will be glad you did. 

A big THANK YOU to Vanessa Riley, Abbie Roads, Melanie Milburne, Kimberly Belle, and Christa Allan. 

If these examples impressed you, check out their books. I bet you’ll love them!

BLOG GUESTS:  Thank you so much for dropping by the blog today.

Please post a comment or share a ‘Hi Margie!” and you’ll have two chances to be a winner.

You could win a Lecture Packet from me, or an online class from Lawson Writer’s Academy valued up to $100.

Lawson Writer’s Academy – May Classes

1. Write Better Faster, Instructor: Becca Syme
2. It’s All About Character, Instructor: Elizabeth Essex
3. Crazy-Easy Social Media for Authors, Instructor:  Lisa Norman
4. Virtues, Vices, and Plots, Instructor: Sarah Hamer
5. Taking a Book from Good to Sold, Instructor: Shirley Jump
6. Getting Series about Writing a Series, Instructor: Lisa Wells
7. Creating Compelling Characters, Instructor: Rhay Christou

Please drop by my website to read course descriptions and register: www.margielawson.com

I’ll draw names for the TWO WINNERS on Sunday night, at 8PM, Mountain Time and post them in the comments section.

Like this blog? Share with your friends. Give it a social media boost. Thank you soooo much!

I love the brilliant WITS gals. Thanks so much for inviting me to be your guest.

Margie Lawson—editor and international presenter—loves to have fun. And teaching writers how to use her deep editing techniques to create page-turners is her kind of fun.

She’s presented over 120 full day master classes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and France, as well as taught multi-day intensives on cruises in the Caribbean. 

To learn about Margie’s 5-day Immersion Master Classes (in 2019, in Palm Springs, Denver, Dallas, Cleveland, Columbus, Atlanta, and in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, Australia), Cruising Writers cruises, full day and weekend workshops, keynote speeches, online courses, lecture packets, and newsletter, please visit: www.margielawson.com

Interested in Margie presenting a full day workshop for your writing organization? Contact Margie through her website, or Facebook Message her.

Interested in attending one of Margie’s 5-day Immersion classes? Click over to her website and check them out.

Margie’s newsletter is going out next week. Sign up on her website, and you’ll be in a special drawing for a 5-page deep edit from her!