Writers in the Storm

by Johnny B. Truant

Think about this for a second: “Normal” is nothing more than cultural brainwashing.

Now, I’m not getting all conspiracy theoristy on you. I don’t think our society has been engineered by dark forces meant to erase our brains. (Reality TV did that. Dark forces were not necessary.)

What I mean is that for a long time, there were only so many media outlets in the world. TV was originally broadcast on three major networks, and everyone listened to the same radio. Even after channels multiplied (thank you, cable TV, Netflix, and the internet), most content was still only made by a small group of people. Movies and TV are expensive and take a lot of specialized talent, equipment, and money, so only certain groups can make them. That’s even true today, as content has democratized and expanded. 

Welcome to California

Here’s a question: Have you ever noticed how many movies are set (not just shot) in California?

That happens because the people who make movies primarily live in California, so they’re best able to write what they know. It’s not sinister; it’s just a fact of human nature. It’s the reason more of my protagonists are middle-class straight cis white guys than anything else: because I’m a middle-class straight cis white guy. That doesn’t happen because I’m trying to push a viewpoint or agenda. It happens because like most writers, I draw most easily and naturally from the world I know.

If you knew nothing about the United States except what you saw in movies and TV, you might think that most Americans live in California, since so many movies and TV shows are set there. You might think that California took up half of the North American land mass, seeing as relatively few movies are set anywhere else.

I’m sure there’s been some deliberate manipulation of TV and movies, but my maybe-naive belief is that most of our media’s historically homogenous portrayal of the world comes from laziness and complacency, not evil intent. I think that most creators just wake up in the morning and write the world they see around them, because it’s their world. And then, because the film and TV industry broadcasts that vision of that world, it starts to seem like it must be everyone else’s world, too.

Normal isn't always normal.

In other words, “normal” isn’t actually the norm. It’s more like a lopsided delusion. When we think of “normal,” we’re talking about what we think the world looks like … and a lot of our “looks like” is created by the media we consume — media that was written by a group of people who aren’t remotely the majority.

What we call “normal” is actually the worldview of a tiny minority who just so happen to have massive reach. Ten people in a Hollywood office work together to write a movie filled with people like themselves, doing things they do, surrounded by activities they enjoy, responding to things in the way their mothers and families always responded to things, aspiring to goals that make sense to them. Then that movie becomes a blockbuster, and everyone thinks that version of life is just “how things are.”

I was forty before I finally understood something my father kept trying to tell me: that 1950s America wasn’t anything like Leave it to Beaver or Mister Ed. Nope. Those were just versions of life and values held by the small group of people who made decisions in TV at the time. Sure, there were people like that … but it was far from everyone.

Different is the New Normal

I’ve taken you down this philosophical rabbit hole for one reason:

Think about what we consider “normal,” along with all the pressures in the world — both overt and subtle — to conform to that normality.

Now, remember that if “normal” is actually the worldview of a minority with a disproportionately huge reach, that means “abnormal” people actually outnumber them. Weirdly, “abnormal” is more normal than “normal.” Remember what Lewis said in Revenge of the Nerds? “We have news for the beautiful people: There’s a lot more of us than there are of you.” 

Normal is a lie. By the numbers, the most “normal” thing you can be is atypical.

This matters to you as an Artisan Author because the Artisan ethos is all about being unique. It’s about operating with a different flavor than the norm. If readers want mainstream, they know exactly where to find it. If they want something different — something off the beaten path, told in a different way — they come to us. It’s our duty to give them that difference — to be brave enough to show them our way of peering through the looking glass.

All these years, everyone outside of our culture’s definition of “normal” has been ignored and underserved. That’s great news for you, if you’re weird. If you’ve got a freak flag in your back pocket, then by all means get out there and fly it. There are audiences all over the world who’ve been waiting breathlessly for a worldview that better matches their own than the mainstream. All those people will see your outside-the-nine-dots books as a breath of fresh air … but only if you’ve got the guts to go out there and be yourself.

From Weirdo to Bestseller

Want an example of how “different’ can be an advantage for you as an author — especially one who markets and sells your books in the ways this book talks about? Okay, sure — I’ve got one all ready for you.

Exhibit A: Chuck Tingle.

I won’t list Chuck’s book titles because this is a family blog, but do yourself a favor and look him up. I laughed so hard at his early books because it seemed he was walking a fine line between erotica and winking hilarity, and I couldn’t tell which side he was on.

But then one day, I saw a book by the author of Scary Stories to Tingle Your Butt and Handsome Sentient Bubblegum Who Is Also a Successful Landscape Architect in all of the bookstores around me. Suddenly good ol’ Chuck’s got a horror book called Bury Your Gays running up the bestseller charts.

I’m telling you, man: There are bestsellers-in-waiting out there in the oddest places.

If you’re far outside society’s usual nine dots, you’ve actually got an advantage on this one. If you’re more like me, though, you’re a lot closer to the mainstream and won’t stand out as easily as that aforementioned breath of fresh air. Fortunately, you don’t need to be far off center to find your own special tribe. Every author’s style is unique, if the author lets it be unique.

Where do you fit?

I used to back away from making the constant 80s and 90s references that find their way into my books. They were funny to me, but I figured a lot of people would either never get them or find them annoying. Then I realized it was more tiring and less fun to try to be mainstream than to just leave it alone, so I started letting me be me.

I used to wonder why I kept shooting myself in the foot by creating books that didn’t cleanly appeal to any of the major genres. I mean, who was Unicorn Western for — western fans, or fantasy fans? Who was The Future of Sex for — sci-fi fans skeeved out by the hard-R rating, or hard-R readers who didn’t appreciate the intense sci-fi? And forget about the several humor/erotica titles Sean and I had so much fun writing, the best of which was Adult Video. Who the hell were those books for? 

Well, they were for me and Sean, of course. We loved all of them.

They were for my wife, who laughed until she cried reading Adult Video.

And they were for the folks here and there who emailed to tell me or to request more of the same.

Were there a lot of those people?

Nope.

Were there some?

Yep.

And those some — who hung in there through every one of my freak-flag books — have historically been my best and most loyal fans.

If You Try To Please Everyone, You’ll End Up Pleasing No One

If you write a book meant to please as many people as possible in the mass-market audience, you’ll have to take out all the edgy stuff that makes it different. To write a book with maximally broad appeal, you’ll have to smooth it out and make it bland, like unflavored ice cream. Giving a book any strong flavor at all means limiting its appeal … but it also means strengthening its appeal to the smaller number of people who like it.

The fans of Unicorn Western, The Future of Sex, and Adult Video don’t just like those books. They LOVE those books. They RAVE about those books. They become superfans. They jump whole-hog into my world because I gave them something that nobody else could.

An Artisan Author must be bold. Bolder than other authors, who are, in themselves, pretty bold. An Artisan Author has to be bold enough to say, “You know all those people out there who are brave enough to put their creative work on the line for all the world to see? Well, I’m going to be different from them. They’re outsiders, but I’m going to be an outsider even among the outsiders.”

Being an outsider isn’t a bad thing. In practice, it’s an amazing thing. Because the truth is that even if you’re alone among authors, you’re not actually alone. There’s a whole tribe of readers out there who’ve been waiting for something only you can deliver.

Nobody else can be you. Nobody can duplicate what you uniquely offer.

It’s your cheat code, and using it can be terrifying … but isn’t that true of all real creation.

QUESTION: Have you ever risked “being fully yourself” in your books? What happened if you did?

This is based on an excerpt from the book The Artisan Author, available now.

About Johnny

Johnny B. Truant is the author of The Artisan Author: The Low-Stress, High-Quality, Fan-Focused Approach to Escaping the Publishing Rat Race. You can get it here right now on Kickstarter, or later in the usual stores.

Featured image from Depositphotos.

By Lori Freeland

Whether you’re starting your novel or you’re shoulder-deep in revisions, snacks, and wine, knowing when to hit Enter can take your writing from meh to manuscript-ready.

Paragraphs aren’t just for spacing. They’re for storytelling. A single line break can shift focus, change pacing, or land an emotional hit. The right paragraph tells the reader where to breathe, what to feel, and when to pay attention.

Used well, paragraphing isn’t just structure. It’s voice. It’s rhythm. It’s power. So how do you know when to actually hit Enter? Let’s break it down.

The Art of White Space

Reading a giant paragraph that goes on forever—sometimes pages!—feels like trying to find your black SUV in a parking garage full of black SUVs. Exhausting. Disorienting. And honestly? Many readers won’t even try. They’ll skim and miss potentially important information or some great prose.

Here’s the secret: The words might be the same, but how you break them up changes everything.

White space is more than just aesthetics. It’s a psychological trick that tells your reader, “Hey, this isn’t hard. It’s fun.” Without white space, even great writing feels dense. With it, your story flows. And your reader stays engaged.

A rule of thumb is 4-6 sentences depending on how long they are and what you’re trying to say.

Here’s a visual example:

The Strength of a Stand-Alone Sentence

Stand-alone sentences scream “Notice me!” Use them to set something off, get the reader’s attention, build tension or emotion, highlight a change in story or character direction, or deliver a punchline you’ve been setting up in the scene or story.

The Rule of Clarity

Keep a character’s speech, actions, body language, expressions, and thoughts together unless it gets too long. This makes it easier for the reader to know who’s speaking and doing the action.  

Out with the old. In with the new. The rule used to be new speaker = new paragraph. But that doesn’t give you ideal clarity. The better rule is change of focus = new paragraph.

• Change of Speaker

While we’re expanding the paragraphing rules, the old still stands. Every time someone different has dialogue, you need to paragraph.

Example:

“I’ll be back by curfew.” My sister breezes past, repeating the lie she’s told me all week.

“You know liars go to hell, right?” Aidan calls her out when I don’t.

“Be sure to save me a seat up front.” She shoves her phone into the back pocket of her dark gray jeans and tugs up the hood of her black sweatshirt.

• Different Characters Performing Actions Without Dialogue

Example:

Jerry slammed his hands on the table.

Paul whirled around.

• Change of Physical Focus

This can be inside to outside, to another room, or to another person.

Example:

Outside, the SUV inched forward.

Unease slithered through my gut. I tugged my phone from the waistband of my candy-cane flannels and rubbed my thumb across the dark screen. I could call Dad. But if I ruined the last day of the only vacation he and my mother had taken in ten years, she’d make me pay for the next five.

• Dealing with Dialogue

Readers should never have to guess who’s talking.

• Simple tags can be your friends

“Said” is invisible magic that works when you need something quick. It also helps differentiate when you have a fast back-and-forth between two characters. And you don’t need to keep using it once you’ve established who’s first in the exchange. However, if the conversation goes on a while with no other “speaker” cues, you’ll need to stick it in every so often.

Example:

“I like you,” she said.

“You do?”

“I do.”

“Absolutely.”

“Why?” he asked.

• Beware the adverb parade
  

Example:

“I have to have that candy bar,” I whined loudly.
“Fine!” Ella angrily cried.

Your editor’s soul just died a little. It’s better to show how someone’s speaking than to slap on these kinds of descriptions.

Example:

“I have to have that candy bar.” I dragged the last word out like it might change her mind.

“Fine!” Ella’s voice was sharp enough to cut glass. “Take it.”

• Use action beats

Make the action do double duty and tell the reader who’s speaking.

Example:

“I have to have that candy bar.” I clutched it to my chest.  

“Fine! Take it.” Ella threw up her hands and stalked away.

• Try internal thought

This only works for your point-of-view character because we, as the reader, can only be in one person’s head at a time.

Example:

“Stay.” It’s sounds like I’m begging. Maybe I am.

Leaning into the car, Claire throws my backpack into the passenger seat. “Matt needs me.”

Right. Whatever. Because apparently, I don’t. “Just go then.”

*A note about punctuation.

• Use quotation marks for what people say out loud, NOT what they’re thinking.

Example:

“Hey, let’s catch that movie.” (dialogue)

We should catch that movie. (internal thought)

Side Note: Avoid using words like thought and wondered when possible. They are filter words that pull the reader out of deep point-of-view.

Example:

I thought she looked pretty in that dress. / She looked pretty in that dress.

• Use a comma and a lowercase letter with a dialogue tag.

Example:

“I’m in,” she said.

• Use a period and a capital letter with everything else.

Example:

“I’m in.” She grabbed her bag. (action)

“Don’t do that.” Her voice rose. (dialogue cue that’s not a tag like said)

“Sure. I can do that.” Not gonna happen. (internal thought)

• Use an em dash for interruptions.

Example (cutting someone off):

“I just think—”
“Don’t think,” she snapped.

Example (interrupting dialogue in the middle):

Old school: (commas)
“I think,” she said, “you should go.”

New School: (em dashes)
“I think”—she looked away—“you should go.”

Note that the em dashes go OUTSIDE of the parentheses, and you don’t use a comma.

(Two hyphens + no space before next word = em dash magic.)

Final Thoughts

With smart paragraphing, your story has room to breathe and so does the reader. Paragraph with purpose. Because clean, intentional writing doesn’t just keep readers reading—it keeps them feeling. And that’s the goal, right?

What’s your paragraphing pet peeve or your favorite line-break power move? Drop it in the comments!

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About Lori

Lori Freeland wrote her first story at age five. It wasn’t good, but it left her with the belief that everyone has a story to tell. An author, editor, and writing coach, she writes everything from articles to novels, has taught at conferences across the country, and helped many new writers find their voices. A mood reader, she loves happy endings, thrills and chills, unexpected twists, and anything a little weird—as long as it has a touch of romance. When she’s not curled up on the couch with her husband and her dog drinking too much coffee, you can find her messing with the lives of the imaginary people living inside her head.

lorifreeland.com (young adult & contemporary romance fiction) 

lafreeland.com (inspirational blog & resources for writers) 

The Accidental Boyfriend was an Amazon #1 New Release, a ReaderViews Bronze Award Winner, and a Publisher’s Weekly BookLife Prize Finalist.

Jess is everything Gabe wants. Gabe is everything Jess doesn’t know she needs. After celebrity heartthrob Gabe unknowingly hijacks homeschooled Jess’s first kiss, he decides she could be the perfect decoy to throw off the paparazzi. If he can convince her to play his girlfriend of the week. Keeping the impossible promise he made his mom depends on it. Only Jess isn’t about to be anyone’s fangirl and wants nothing to with TV's hottest hairball or his Hollywood ego.

Header photo - Tom Hermans - Unsplash

Every writer hears these three rules: “write what you know,” “bleed on the page,” and “show, don’t tell.” Since those rules don’t tell you how to use them in storytelling, many writers turn to classes or books to learn how. They learn skills that are helpful. But those skills won’t forge an emotional connection with your readers. For that, you need three unique and interrelated skills: knowing what you feel, knowing the best words to use, and the willingness to share raw and honest feelings. This post shares information and suggestions on how writers can develop these three skills.

Knowing What You Feel

Humans are born with the capacity to experience and express basic emotions. Researchers have observed happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust in infants across all cultures. These inborn emotions are identifiable through specific, recognizable facial expressions. But understanding, regulating, and labeling our emotions are skills we must learn. A wide range of factors—trauma, emotionally distant parents, depression, anxiety, mental health conditions, environmental, societal, and cultural factors, educational factors, biological factors, and more—influence how well you develop your skills in understanding, regulating, and labeling emotions. It’s a wonder anyone can know what they feel.

When you know a character’s personality and why it’s there, you’ll have what you need to write their behavior authentically. - Angela Ackerman

Most of us have grown up with the notion that there are positive emotions and negative emotions. That is true in that we have biological and mental responses we interpret as positive or negative. But emotions are our body’s way of communicating with us. For us to understand what that message is, we must first be aware. For writers, this is crucial to being able to convey characters’ emotions in a believable way.

Mindfulness

The first step is to increase your emotional awareness is to be mindful of your own. Listen to your body, your self-talk, and pay attention to the circumstances you’re in. Big feelings are easier to identify at first. So, if you’ve not included this in your writing practice before—start there. Write it all down. Describe what happened, what emotions you experienced, and where on or in your body you experienced those emotions first. Try to describe the intensity of your feelings.

If you feel too exposed having your feelings in writing, you can lock it up (passwords for digital files, physical locks on journals or boxes to keep journals in). You can also write a first entry advising anyone who reads your journal that these are exercises you are doing to improve your craft. Some writers have included the destruction of their journals in their last will and testament. Do whatever allows you to be raw and 100% honest in your journal. 

Blind Spots and Triggers

We all have emotional blind spots and triggers. 

Blind spots are areas where you lack insight into your emotions or the emotional impact you have on others. Blind spots create opportunities for character development, conflict, dramatic irony, and much more. You can reveal them as your character’s boundaries or flaws. Your characters can be completely unaware of them or develop an awareness of them over the course of your story.

Triggers are things (words, events, places, etc.) that you respond to with strong emotional responses. You probably already use emotional triggers in your writing. In scenes where one character betrays another, or falls in love, or dies, you create emotional triggers for your readers. You can add depth to characters with emotional triggers based on wounds from the character's past or with new triggers based on events in the story.

Understanding and identifying your own blind spots and triggers opens a hidden world of emotion and awareness you can create for your characters. Overdone, these things will read as melodrama. If the blind spots and triggers are unrelated to anything else in your story, or only appear once, readers will find it odd or inconsequential. Striking the right balance is key.

Emotional Literacy

Emotions are a complex mix of what goes on in our heads and hearts and our physical responses.

A writer who is emotionally literate has awareness, can label emotions appropriately, has a basic understanding of what triggers these emotions, and understands how emotions affect behavior, decision making, empathy, and interactions (social and personal). Without at least a basic understanding of these things, crafting believable and relatable characters will be much more difficult.

We learn the labels we give our emotions over a lifetime. Often they are imprecise or contain connotations specific to where we grew up, who our parents were, their background, cultural influences, and societal influences. Sometimes we simplify our emotions down to basics when they are much more complex.

It’s no wonder that most humans are not great at labeling their emotions. not even all psychologists agree upon how many emotions all humans experience. There are theories that say there are six and others that say eight.

Fortunately, there are tools writers can use to help them identify emotions and express them through concrete details.

The Emotion Wheel

The Emotion Wheel is a visual representation of emotions created in 1980 by an American psychologist, Robert Plutchik, to help patients identify eight core emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, anticipation, surprise, disgust, and trust. Other psychologists narrowed those down to six core emotions. Whether you use Plutchik's eight core emotions wheel or the six core emotion one, the design of the wheel places each emotion’s polar opposite on the opposite side. Example: joy is in the position opposite of sadness. 

Between each emotion on the wheel is another emotion that combines two adjoining emotions. For example: between anticipation and joy is optimism. Between anger and anticipation is aggressiveness.

The wheel goes even further. Not only does it give the emotions that are combinations of feelings, it also identifies degrees of emotion. For example, anger can range from annoyance to full-blown rage. Anticipation can go from mild interest to vigilance.

You can find more information about the emotion wheel online in videos and blogs. And you can buy your own wheel at online retailers. 

The wheel is not perfect, but as a tool it can help you figure out the range and progression of your characters’ emotional responses.

Turning Your Emotions into a Character’s Emotions

When you have kept a journal of the range of your emotions, the stimuli that triggered those emotions, and where you experienced them in your body, you have an invaluable took that will help you “write what you know” even when you have never been in that exact situation. For example, you have never experienced a lover’s betrayal, but you have experienced betrayal by a co-worker. With concrete details in your journal, you can use them to portray or extrapolate what being betrayed by a lover could feel like. Based on your authentic experiences, you have a much better chance of making your reader feel that sense of betrayal is real.

When you mine your journal, your emotions, for those concrete details, you can get into a rut of sameness. That’s not surprising. You experience your emotions in a certain way every time. To avoid all your characters having the same concrete details of emotions, use an emotion thesaurus. I (among many of the Writers In the Storm Blog Hosts) recommend The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi. Its entries include the definition, a list of physical responses, internal responses, mental responses, signs of acute or long-term experiences, and signs of repression, and additional writer’s tips.

The key to turning any emotion into something that feels real to your reader is in which concrete details you use and when because you have experienced something similar.

The Problem with Using Tools

As a writer, you can use tools like the Emotion Wheel but it may not give you the authenticity your readers crave. Unless you are vulnerable enough to educate yourself, to be aware of your own emotions and their underpinnings, you won't recognize when your characters feelings (and how they express them) are not quite relatable.

Is that a problem? It depends on your characters and the story you want to write. You will create a stronger connection between your characters and your readers if you are vulnerable enough to share concrete details from your own personal journey.

Emotional Awareness is Your Author SuperPower

What we do, say, and believe lines up with who we are and what shaped us. - Angela Ackerman

Your awareness of your emotions is a crucial step to using the power of emotions in storytelling. Writers are people. And as people, some of us may lack awareness of nearly all but the most basic emotions, while others of us might know every tiny nuance of their emotions. Awareness launches your journey toward emotional storytelling, but to deliver those emotions authentically in your writing requires more. You’ll need emotional literacy to pinpoint and express precise emotions at critical moments. And perhaps most importantly, you need to be vulnerable enough to express your rawest and most honest emotions. These interconnected elements—awareness, literacy, and vulnerability—get stronger the more you develop and sharpen them. It’s a lifelong personal and professional journey. It’s not a journey every writer needs to take in order to sell their work. But it is a journey that might be worth your time and energy both personally and professionally.

Has recording or studying psychology or your own emotions been a helpful part of your writing life?

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About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, writing coach, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. Her stories weave her experiences into speculative fiction stories that balance character growth with thrilling action and social themes. 

My Soul to Keep is book one of an alternate history dystopian trilogy about a young woman of privilege who in her desperation to avoid her pre-planned life, escapes and ends up in a no-win situation. She faces a choice: return to suffocate under the rules of her society or fight for her country and her life. Book One, My Soul to Keep, and Book Two, If I Should Die, are available at your favorite online book seller. Book Three, And When I Wake, will be published in December 2025.

When Lynette’s not writing she avoids housework and plays with her two yorkies. They live in Dorothy’s home state of Kansas. You can follow Lynette on her website or her Facebook page or Sign up for her newsletter.

Image Credits

Smiley image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay

Emotion wheel is courtesy of Ainrvteers Emotion Wheel on Amazon.