If you follow me on Facebook you know I'm the Queen of Pinterest (and if you don't, why not? Beauty pics, cat memes, inspirational quotes, odd Victorian photos — COFFEE! It's a sea of happy in a chaotic world. LauraDrakeAuthor). When I saw this the other day, the photo caught my eye first. Then the message slammed into my writer's soul. Yes! This!
We get so wrapped up in the structure of writing — we take classes, go to conventions. We own about a zillion craft books (or maybe that's just me) and we're always looking for the next tool to make writing less effort. Scrivener! Mind Mapping! The W plot! The Snowflake Method! Don't get me wrong, all that is great. Lots of it even works.
But all of that won't help you write a book that readers fall in love with. You have to connect with them on a deeper level to do that. They have to care. It doesn't matter what you write — fiction, poetry, action/adventure, or even non-fiction — if you don't grab them by the heart, they'll put the book down.
How do you do that? Well, you don't have to run out and buy anything. Just:
Think less, feel more.
You can't 'show' anything in your writing that you're not feeling. Readers are smart; they ferret out non-genuine in a heartbeat. That doesn't mean you can only write about what you've experienced. I've never lost a child (thank God), but I was able to write a woman who had, in my RITA winner, The Sweet Spot, because I've lost someone close to me. I know what that feels like. And even if you haven't lost a loved one, grief is a human condition, so we have empathy — especially as writers. We wouldn't do this if we weren't fascinated by people, right? I was writing yesterday, crying over an orphaned baby I created in my head (wow, that does sound crazy. I wouldn't admit that outside a group of writers!).
Think less, feel more.
I do my most poignant writing when I'm not thinking. When I immerse myself in the character to the point that I AM the character; seeing, smelling, feeling what they are, with their backstory and their unique take on the world. Then I dig deeper. The brilliant Donald Maass taught me about layering emotion. He said (paraphrased):
Think about it; how often in your life have you felt pure joy? Pure sadness? Pure any emotion. My guess is, not often. Much more often, our emotions are mingled. At a funeral, you will feel sadness, but you also feel gratitude, for having known the deceased, right? On your wedding day, the happiest day of your life, I’ll wager you felt more than happiness. You were nervous. Will I trip in the aisle? He won’t shove the cake in my face, will he? Will my new brother-in-law drink too much and bring up that kiss he we shared, two years ago?
See what I mean?
Better yet, dig deeper and show an unexpected emotion. We all feel things we don't talk about. The stuff we're not proud of. For example, imagine a woman who served as caregiver for her mother in her ignoble, downward spiral to an awful death. The daughter was at the bedside at the very end. What would she feel? Grief, of course, loss, and sadness. But wouldn't she also feel relieved? For her mother, but also for herself. She's put her life on hold for six months, and now she's free. Then what would she feel? Guilt and shame would hit, right?
Now, your reader may never have experienced anything like this, but I guarantee, if you pull out a deep, honest emotion like this and lay it on the page, your reader is going to immediately empathize with your character. You've grabbed them by the heart.
I love it when I get to that deep place. I close my eyes, and my fingers fly over the keyboard, trying to keep pace with my feelings.
Effortless writing. We all need more of that, right?
So that's my writing resolution. 4 words. What could be simpler?
P.S. I said it was simple, not easy.
Getting out of your own way never is.
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In all her glorious dorkiness, Laura did a live video, reading the opening to her December release, The Last True Cowboy.
I had a blog post all queued up for this week, but I’m on a plane back from the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ annual Colorado Gold conference and can’t stop thinking about the weekend and what it made me realize about this business—and the authors who are the soul of it.
Nearly 400 writers—published and not yet published—agents, and editors convened in Denver for the conference. If you’ve attended events like this—brimming with inspiration, education, and camaraderie, all centered around the love of the art and craft of language and story—you already know their myriad benefits: the chance to learn the craft and the business from authors at the top of their games and to hear how they achieved their success. The opportunity to pitch directly to your dream agent or editor, to ask them questions in person in panels and hear about their agency and market trends—to join the brightest lights of publishing for a drink at the end of the day and talk shop or just chat. The overwhelming generosity and support of other writers: the friendships that form (and endure), the critique groups that are created, the tips and suggestions and connections and commiseration.
If you’ve never attended a conference, pick you a good one and get yourself there. If it’s too expensive, volunteer. If it’s still too expensive, drive or carpool and split a hotel room with three roommates, or find one nearby and day-trip (and evening-trip so you don’t miss BarCon). Trust me, it will be worth it, partly for all of the above reasons.
But mostly because of the stories, and what they will teach you.
I don’t just mean the actual stories—the stacks of books you’re likely to find for sale in the pop-up bookstore. The bag full of them you may be handed on registration. Not even the freebies lying around or pressed into your hands.
I’m talking about stories like the ones the keynote speakers tell—like Christopher Paolini (bestselling teenage wunderkind author of the Inheritance Cycle) talking about writing his first novel out of boredom living on his family’s rural Montana homestead—and rewriting it, and rewriting it, and his family nearly losing their home with the expense of self-publishing and self-marketing it, and his relentless speaking engagements and book signings and the excruciating effort to talk to person after person, one by one, to convince them to buy his book until finally something caught fire and it started to sell, and a major publisher came calling with a major deal, and then a film deal.
Or like Kate Moretti, whose first book was written in snatches while her baby slept, then quickly sold, and who benefited from a well-timed BookBub ad that catapulted her—a brand-new author with a debut book—to New York Times bestseller status, who confesses that six books later she still wrestles with the feeling of never having earned her success.
Or like Corinne O’Flynn, indie-pubbed author of the USA Today–bestselling Expatriates fantasy adventure series, who wrote her first book while battling serious health issues and losing both her daughter and her mother, who literally arrived at the conference fresh from being rushed to the emergency room for an allergic reaction and having a shot of adrenaline administered directly to her heart to accept the Indie Writer of the Year award.
Those stories are inspirational, aspirational. But if you’re doing the conference right (and that tends to involve staying in the common areas and out of your room as much as possible and talking to total strangers, usually in the bar, and often with alcohol), you’ll also hear countless stories from the other writers in attendance: the author who got dumped by his publisher or agent after a few books and finds himself back in the dugout again. The one who submitted to her dream agent four separate times over three years with four different manuscripts until she finally, finally got the yes. The one who still hasn’t. The one who came last year with a dream of writing a book, and is here this year pitching her completed manuscript. The ones who met at a conference when they were all struggling in the trenches and formed a critique group and are now all successfully published. The one who, despite crushing critique from an industry professional, is here anyway, trying to keep believing in her writing and herself but contemplating quitting…who received multiple requests for submissions from agents over the weekend.
The one who went to her first conference more than a decade ago as a freelance copyeditor desperately wanting to do something more creative in the field she adored, not just correct the mechanics—and is now a developmental editor working hands-on with authors to shepherd their visions into the world and traveling to conferences presenting editing workshops to the bestsellers of tomorrow. (That one’s me.)
What you will learn from all these stories, the common takeaway of almost any gathering of like-minded creative souls is that everyone has had a different path to get to where they are. And almost every one of them—whether the lifelong writer who amassed six unpublished manuscripts and a thousand (literally ten hundred) rejection letters who is working on the third in his series that finally sold, or a relative neophyte who stumbled to the pinnacle of success and suffers from impostor syndrome—feels no different from the hundreds of writers still dreaming of “making it.”
What conferences teach you is that you have made it already. You are a writer by virtue of the fact that you’re writing—and even if right now you’re struggling to write your first manuscript (or your seventh), or desperately hoping for an agent or a publishing contract, your world can 180 on a dime. When Kate Moretti’s book launched onto the NYTimes bestseller list and her career started to suddenly take off, she told her husband in shock, “I think my life is about to change.”
At any moment, your life—your writing career—could be about to change. But you have to be ready for it: Do the work. Learn your craft—always be learning your craft. Find your people—writers and other industry folk—and build your support network and connections. Be part of this industry at writers’ events. Read and be generous about buying other authors’ books; if money is prohibitive, then be generous with reviews or retweets or talking them up to friends.
Most of all: Stay in the game. If you love this craft, don’t quit. Tell your stories. Know that if you do, if you simply persist no matter how long it takes, no matter how much rejection you may endure, no matter how many times you lose faith in yourself or your writing and struggle to get it back, you will be rewarded. Maybe you won’t be J. K. Rowling. Maybe you will simply be a solid midlist author. Maybe you’ll indie-publish. But your stories will be read. You will make a difference in someone’s life. And you will make a difference in your own because the act of fearlessly making your art, of sharing your truth and your creativity, is sacred and it’s magic and it enriches your life and the world beyond measure.
And if you are at a writers conference, or pitching an agent, or sending off a manuscript to publishers or reviewers, breath held and heart suspended and riddled with doubt, remind yourself of this: None of this exists without you, the author.
You are the source, the nexus, the fulcrum of everything every publishing industry professional does. You are literally the creator, the fountainhead, the raison d'être of this business. Remember that if you feel overwhelmed or supplicant or inadequate or just tired. Every successful artist on earth has felt that way—and most still do, at times. But you don’t have to earn your way into anything: You are the golden ticket.
Getting on the elevator on the way to my first presentation this weekend, I found a lone woman already inside, her hands clasped in front of her solar plexus, her face a bit pale. I introduced myself, and in the standard greeting of writers’ conferences I asked her, “So what do you write?”
“Oh, this is my first time,” she said apologetically. “I’m pretty nervous.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” I fell into step beside her to the conference registration area. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
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About Tiffany
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. She presents editing and writing workshops for writers’ groups, organizations, and conferences and writes for numerous writers’ sites and publications.
As a copy editor, I've learned a lot about improving the flow of my own writing as I've tweaked the manuscripts of others. Today I want to share four easy edits you can make yourself that invite the reader deeper into the story and provide the impact you want to have.
1. Eliminate crutch words.
Crutch words are words we lean on too much in our writing — used when unnecessary, repeated too often, diluting the point. Like many definitions, it's easier to understand when you see examples. Here are a few: just, so, definitely, really, very, suddenly, and (at the beginning of sentences), smiled, shrugged, knew, saw, heard.
Adverbs are most often the culprits, but you might wonder what's bad about knew, saw, and heard. Nothing is wrong with any of these words used well, but we tend to misuse or overuse them. It's a crutch when you write, "I knew I was going to be in trouble," when "I was going to be in trouble" is the same thing and a deeper point of view (POV) anyway. The same is true with saw and heard. If a POV character says a bell tolled, we know they heard it.
Bonus thought: Curse words can easily become crutch words too. Make sure you treat each like you would other words; that is, imagine substituting another common word in its place. If it feels overly repetitive, you have too many instances of that curse word — it's become a crutch and can interrupt the flow of the read.
2. Finish strong with sentences and paragraphs.
Way back when I was in college, I learned about the recency effect. Psychologists have shown that we remember what we heard or write mostly recently better than what's in the beginning and especially the middle. For this reason, deleting or moving around a few words in a sentence can make a real difference in the impact they have on a reader.
Let's take a quick example. Which do you think would have the recency effect a writer desires?
"No one seemed to know if the spell had any real power in it."
"No one seemed to know if the spell had any real power."
"In it" doesn't finish strong the way "power" does. Ditching those two words can give the sentence the impact it deserves. Here's another example, with moving words around:
"As I stared at the knife raised above my heart, regret was my strongest emotion."
"As I stared at the knife raised above my heart, my strongest emotion was regret."
The second clearly lets the word regret linger in the reader's mind. Look for places where removing a few words or moving them around draws attention to the words you want to echo in the reader's mind.
3. Substitute action or description for he said/she said.
"I loved him like a brother," she said. She placed a rose on his grave and wiped away a tear.
Why is she said included? A dialogue is needed to tell us who's talking, but in this case, the next sentence gives that information. The action fills in that information, so that she said can get nixed and nothing's lost:
"I loved him like a brother." She placed a rose on his grave and wiped away a tear.
Sometimes you'll have a double-hit like the example above, but other times a writer has missed an opportunity to give more information about a character by using he said/she said instead of describing their body language, vocal tone, actions, or appearance. Just compare the strength of these two options:
"I loved him too," he said. "Or I did until he backstabbed me."
"I loved him too." He clutched his rose tight to his chest, crushing its petals with his grip. "Or I did until he backstabbed me."
Door number two, anyone? Simply run a manuscript-wide search for those he said/she saids and see if you want to make any deletions or substitutions.
4. Break up some paragraphs.
When I edit my own books, one run-through always involves putting the book on my e-reader so that I can see it the way a reader would. The prose appears very different in this format than on a computer screen, and it's easier to see large, clunky paragraphs that need to be broken up.
Your book needs white space — that is, areas without text — to prevent the reader from being overwhelmed with the busyness of the page. Without sufficient white space, reading a book can feel like searching for Waldo; your brain gets overwhelmed.
What's the right size for paragraphs? It depends. What genre do you write? Historical will have longer paragraphs than thrillers. What's happening on the page? Description tends to have longer paragraphs than dialogue. Who's talking? An erudite POV character will have longer chunks of thought than a street thug. So you have to make that call.
Regardless, make sure no page is so overwhelmed with text that it's difficult for the reader's eyes to focus.
With so much of writing a book being hard, it's nice to learn about some easy ideas for improving the flow of your story. These four easy fixes can help you achieve the impact you want to have on the reader.
What other easy edits do you suggest for making a story better?
ABOUT JULIE
Julie Glover writes mysteries and young adult fiction. Her YA contemporary novel, SHARING HUNTER, finaled in the 2015 RWA® Golden Heart®. 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.
Julie is represented by Louise Fury of The Bent Agency. You can visit her website here and also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
