This has been a year of big overhaul for my author website, how I sell my books, and how I interact with my audience. In this post, I will explain the email service I decided to use to interact with my readers. Sendfox is a part of the AppSumo group of website software that manages large email lists, sending and analytics. It was not one that I had heard of in my previous work with author websites, but I am thrilled to share my success with it so far.
In the past, I’ve used many of the popular services commonly used by authors: Mailchimp, Mailerlite, and Newsletter. When Newsletter was no longer an option for me, because it works with WordPress websites, I looked around for new options.
The Search for a New Email Service
One obvious choice was Mailerlite because it was the service I had used for several years. It did a great job of reliably sending email and tracking how my audience interacted with my emails. It also offered automations which is key to running an author online business smoothly.
Mailerlite
Mailerlite has a good pricing option for author beginning their email lists. On their main website page, they have a nice sliding tool to show what their monthly costs would be for each tier of subscribers. When I started out with under 500 subscribers, it made sense as a low-cost service, which at that time was free. But happily, my email list had grown over the years. Unfortunately, that means my costs have also grown.
Today, according to the Mailerlite pricing plans, the cost for up to 1000 subscribers ranges from free to $18. When I slide to 3000 (my current email list) the options get complicated. The cost for maintaining a list under 2500 ranges between $22.50 and $36.00 per month. But I have more people on my list that I want to interact with, and I want to grow that list to a bigger audience.
I would now have to pay between $35 and $45 per month. If I continue to grow to 8000 subscribers on an email list, it would cost me $53 to $72 dollars a month. The growth could arguable off set that monthly cost, but it is risky. Although there are certain costs you just can’t escape if you want a working, thriving author business, this level of cost is one I wanted to keep low. So, I looked around.
Convert Kit
Other email service companies are priced in similar ranges for monthly costs, which is usually billed at a yearly rate. I checked out Convert Kit, and a version of Mailerlite that would incorporate my website and book sales, but both were more complex (and more expensive) than I needed as a solo proprietor. The value of their hearty systems of tools would be lost on me, as I didn’t need any team options and the features I found in cheaper companies closer fit my needs.
I asked my author friends what they suggested and I didn’t find any good solutions for my email list size. One suggested that I check out email services in AppSumo, and I compared a few listed there. AppSumo has many solutions for websites, and I do recommend looking around on their site if you are rebuilding your store. There may be less expensive options than the known standards. This is where I found Sendfox.
Taking a Leap with Sendfox
I’m a little leery of the unknown and did a deep dive on this service. They were offering a lifetime subscription for all of their tiers. They had all of the options I was used to with Mailerlite and Newsletter, but I wanted to know how long they have been in service, how reliable they were, and whether their features, and interface would be adequate for my needs.
Ultimately, after my review I decided, despite the risks of going with a lesser-known brand of email service, to buy the life license for up to 25000 subscribers. At worst, even if I happened to hate it, the cost for me to figure that out was around 5 months of the other services. I took a leap and uploaded my subscribers.
Adding my Subscriber List
Common Labels for Subscriber emails
This was a great time to cull my list of some of the dead weight all email lists get. Here are the lists most services track:
Engaged subscribers (typically broken into lists that track who opens your email and who clicks on your CTAs)
Confirmed subscribers (They opted in – or double opted in as
Bounced emails (the email isn’t right for some reason and not deliverable)
Unsubscribed (no longer want to receive emails for various reasons)
Complaints (avoid these at all costs, but they happen)
Keeping these emails is helpful and most services have some export function. I will regularly download my latest list to keep this data safe. It is a lifeline in this type of business. Direct sales and interaction with a growing audience is key to running a author business over time. Email interaction will work even when the other big platforms fail. This is something to consider with somber realization.
Adding my Subscribers to Sendfox
So, I organized my spreadsheet into the categories above and separated the complaints and unsubscribes to a new list. This is to ensure I don’t email them.
The bounced emails also went to a new list.
The remaining list of engaged and confirmed subscribers is what I started with when I uploaded my crew to Sendfox.
The process was easy. A few clicks and my CVS file was inserted into Sendfox. Since I had cleaned up my list it should be effective. The importance of having fewer spam and bounce candidates helps you when you send email campaigns. Email services will flag your account if you get too many spam complaints, for example, so it is important to email your audience responsibly.
Segmenting my List
My email list had been segmented into many different overlapping groups when I was using Newsletter. This left me with a small dilemma: go back and repopulate the lists by hand, or organically let the readers on my current list opt in to the genres I write in. I choose to email my whole list the first few times to get them oriented to the new store.
Over time, as I release new titles, the people interested in those titles will end up on lists curated to those topics/genres, because in Payhip, a person can be automatically included on that email list when they buy the book.
My first Email with Sendfox
To test my newly revised list and my new store front on Payhip, I created a short set of emails. I hadn’t emailed my list in a few months, with the metaphoric equivalent of a “under construction” sign on my author work in the last email I had sent.
This email would be packed full of new announcements, and CTAs to browse my new store, comment on my new contact page, and an invitation for potential beta readers. I built the email, and two subsequent ones to follow up on Beta Reader Expectations and another email for people interested in my horror fiction to opt in.
Creating the Email
The process of creating the email was a breeze. I mean it. The text is something I always create in a word document first, and then cut and paste the whole thing into the email box. This interface uses a rich text editor, common in almost every technology one would use. Inserting photos, links and other media, was simple. Just like you would do in any word processing software.
Testing the Email
The testing feature was also very simple and intuitive. There is a arrow button at the bottom to click, it fills in your email you created the account with, and voila! You get the email as your readers would see it, first, before you send it. With other email services, it was always a bit buried and confusing as to when you would get your own test email. In Sendfox, the emails came immediately, I iterated the emails and resent them several times until the final email was exactly how I wanted it.
Scheduling the Email
Then I scheduled the thing. It was as easy as clicking a date on a pop-up calendar and coordinating a time to send the batch of emails. The secondary emails were also finished, so I wanted to send those automatically a few days later, and I tried to schedule them. This was my first hiccup in the whole process so far: I got a message denying me to send any more emails because my account was “warming up”. It was frustrating to get this message and I contacted their customer service to see if there was some kind of work around for this.
How I Tricked the System to Let Me Schedule My First Series of Emails
I was pleasantly surprised at getting an email from Sendfox (via AppSumo) within 12 hours. They explained that the first email was a testing email, and that they needed to send it out in small batches. I understand that this will enable all emails to flow better over time. But I needed to schedule these emails and forget about them!
The service person suggested that I send a different email and cancel my scheduled one, in order to work through the first email hoopla and to verify the quality of my list (I assume). It made sense, and I crafted a short (under 200 words) email to ask my readers to look for my new, fancy email on the first of the month.
Cloning an Email
In Sendfox there is an option to clone an email. This was useful in that, I had to reset my first email, and that could potentially make me lose the work in crafting that first, longer, welcome-back post. I clicked on “duplicate”, saw the new version of the email, crafted on the date I created it, and would be able to schedule that exact replica once my test email was finished.
“Warming up” Email for Sendfox
I sent my mini email “Pssst! Kris Maze has big news coming!” and it went well. I found that my emails were getting opened, and that Sendfox has a good interface to track the data in real time. I could see a few unsubscribes, and how many opens and clicks as people were checking their email. It was uncluttered and intuitive. Less stress and more information to make decisions.
Note that I was also very happy that I had cleaned up my list before this “warm up” first send. It made my list more reliable for emails, hence helped me pass the Sendfox test.
Once my first email was sent, I was able to schedule all three of my first emails right away.
Building Forms
Creating forms to have people sign up for things (like in my case, beta readers or opting in for a certain genre they may like) happens in your email service. Sendfox did this well. It was quick and simple. The form collects the information as I would hope, and offers an export option if I wanted to use the data outside of their site.
Pros
Easy to build.
Fast to create a form. (Under 10 minutes for sure)
Preview option lets you see what it would look like.
Can build customized fields.
Collects data and creates a segmented list in Sendfox with a new sign up
Cons
There are limited options for what the form looks like.
The form looks clunky in my Payhip website, but that may be something I can clean up in my Payhip store builder.
Automations
Like building the emails, this process is uncluttered and intuitive. The automations tab is at the top of the main dashboard. When you click on it, you see a list of any automation series you have previously built. Click on the main email to open up the automation series.
I wanted a short welcome email series to give my readers a short story for signing up. This automation is able to send the reader an email immediately. Scheduling the next emails in the series made sense as it gives you the option to delay by a certain amount of time that you decide. The automation kicks off whenever the trigger event occurs, which for me was when someone signs up to my subscibers list.
This was the easiest version of automations I have used. It was streamlined, and easy to use. Some authors may need or want slightly more sophisticated details that this program may not offer, but it was sufficient for my needs. And I appreciated the clarity and simplicity. It kept me from getting caught in the technology trap that can derail my work. This feature works and works well for a simple interaction with my mailing list.
Prefilled Automations
This feature is pretty cool and helped me to form my first automation. When you click on automations, it asks whether you want a prefilled series (that you can customize) or to start from scratch. I have now done both.
The prefilled automation starts by asking a few basic questions about what you are creating. It has templates for a welcome email series, for example, which is what I used. There were many other options, like for sales, or specific goals for growing an audience and following. They ask about what website and the name of the automation and basically gives you a series to finish up.
Welcome emails
My welcome series ended up with four emails that I built out for my needs. The first one was a quick greeting with a button to download their free story. It gets delivered immediately. The next day, a reminder email is sent and includes an inviation to look around my Payhip store. It focuses on features I want them to see, like how to navigate my store by genre (science fiction or light horror).
The third email is to invite them to follow me on social media. It arrives on the next day. This one includes the types of things they would expect to see there. It includes certain perks I have for my readers that they may not get if they are only looking at my website or newsletters.
The last email tells them about the newsletter and what to expect. I like to send readers a shared list of books that indie authors swap, so my readers like the free books they get each newsletter, and I wanted to point out that common feature. This email comes three days after the previous one and I let them know that after this initial series I will only email monthly.
Email Etiquette Tip
Being careful to not over email, keeps an audience engaged, but not overwhelmed. I let my readers know how often I intend to email them and that this first series is just to show them around. I respect their inboxes, and they seem to stick around, as my lower unsubscribe numbers indicate.
Final Thoughts
After testing the email service for a few months, I am happy to share that it has worked better than I would have expected. There have been no complaints on my part.
My favorite parts are the clean interface and easy set up to build emails quickly. One cute little aspect to look for is the score card at the bottom of the page after you send an email. An animated fox keeps track of spam and such, and it changes with your email list as you keep your list optimized.
Scheduling and automating emails is a breeze and remove a lot of the technology stress associated with being an author entrepreneur. Now I can focus more on writing and interacting with my readers!
What email services do you recommend to our indie authors? What experiences have you had? Tell us in the comments below.
About Kris
Kris Maze is a speculative fiction author who crafts suspenseful, heartfelt stories with twisty plots and a touch of the uncanny. Her work blends science fiction, mystery, and emotional depth, often exploring the big “what-if” questions of life and the universe. She also writes darker fiction under the pen name Krissy Knoxx. When she isn’t writing, she’s likely teaching, traveling, or wandering trails pondering the wisdom of Bob Ross.
Follow her author events and join her newsletter found at KrisMaze.com.
New Release coming this fall! (sign up for an ARC at KrisMaze.com)
Parallel Lives - The Paths Not Taken
What if you could see every path you didn’t take?
A speculative novel about second chances, alternate lives, and the paths not taken.
When Harriet Last, a disillusioned insurance adjuster, steps into The Experience, she is skeptical of its promise to show her a better life. The prototype simulation feels out-of-place at the convention, but it’s also an opportunity to hide from her boss. Burnt out from the corporate grind, Harriet hastily signs the terms and conditions and enters a raffle for an all-expenses-paid vacation.
Inside, she relives her nostalgic memories with invasive, hyper-realistic accuracy. The unnerving emotional depth of her future lives raises suspicions about this machine’s true purpose. When the machine malfunctions, Harriet’s Experiences become anything but the vacation-like trial she expected.
She notices a man, a fleeting figure from her past, intertwined in each scene and she wonders: is she caught in someone else’s memories? When the man shares an ominous warning, Harriet must make a choice… or become trapped in this nightmarish glitch.
A common question asked during a publishers’ panel at a writer’s conference will be something like, "What do you think the next trend in publishing will be?"
Maybe the answer is plumber suspense novels, then the writers could feverishly work on plumber suspense novels and watch the money fly into their bank accounts. But is the answer truly helpful?
Knowing what sells isn’t the same thing as knowing the next big trend.
Traditional publishing moves at a slow pace. By the time the book is launched, up to two years after acceptance, the trend may be over.
Self-publishing is a faster process, but trends change swiftly and can still beat an Indie author to the punch.
Keep in mind that publishing is a long-distance run, not a sprint. Success in publishing takes years of consistent work.
Pursue Your Interests
If you love writing mysteries, but killer robot thrillers are flying off the shelves, write your mysteries. Eventually the killer robot thrillers will no longer be in vogue, and your mysteries may the next big thing.
It’s hard to go wrong with writing what you love even if it isn’t the next big thing. Readers are savvy, will see your authenticity, and know that you care about your work.
Genres Often Run in Cycles and Trends
What’s popular this week may not be a few months from now. Is it worthwhile chasing trends?
Social media often affects the larger conversation. If your book is ready for the market when the topic of your book is in the news, you may have an easier time finding an interested editor or agent.
If the timing for your topic is not right, the topic is overdone, or on a downward trend then you may need to wait, set the manuscript aside, and work on another project for a while. Never trash your work. You can always wait for the trend to change.
Keep in mind that while your manuscript awaits a time when the trend cycles back, your writing will have changed. You won’t be the same writer as your skills will have changed. So, consider revising your manuscript, or ponder a new project.
Rushing Your Work
Should you write as fast as you can to get in on the next big thing? Probably not, unless you can write like the wind or tweak what you’ve already written to fit the newly trending.
It can’t hurt to try the trend, especially if you are passionate about that topic. If you miss the wave, hold on to the manuscript for a time when the topic comes up in the cycle. But if you are trying to catch the trend just for the big bucks, chances are the work will be without depth or emotion. Readers will feel cheated if they don’t feel the emotion in your work.
Experimenting With Trends
If you feel like trying a trend, consider brief forms in that topic:
An essay
Poem
Short story
Beginning with a short form allows you to see how that topic will work for you without a huge investment in time.
Problems With Chasing Trends
Trends are fleeting.
They may last for a few months or several years. Genre matters though, as some endure for many years.
Long trending:
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Romance
Mystery
Literary Fiction
Declining trends:
Foreign Invasion Fiction
War Stories
Chivalry Novels
Traditional Westerns
Chasing trends can stifle creativity.
There’s always the risk that one’s ideas may be influenced by what appears to be popular. Whereas in creative writing we are free to make any world, rules, and society we want.
Write what you love or what the muse sends you instead of writing just for the sake of being published. Write the story you’re passionate about, not the tale that might give you the best shot with publishers. The best story to write is the one you feel compelled to write.
Markets become saturated.
Certain genres experience surges in popularity now and then—consider dystopian fiction post-Hunger Games.
Those spikes can bring mainstream success, but often lead to saturated markets. For example, romance and erotica are billion-dollar industries but are increasingly packed with formulaic books.
Chasing trends can lead to stories that don’t resonate with the readers who want authentic voices that they can relate to on an emotional level.
Trends may appear to be shortcuts to marketability. But by the time a trend hits the mainstream the market has likely begun to move on to the next big thing.
When to Ignore Trends
Sometimes it’s better to ignore trends completely. If you feel in your gut that your story demands that it must be told, trust yourself.
Groundbreaking books can defy market expectations. Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire created a trend. She made vampires complicated, tortured beings instead of merely monsters.
Positioning Your Manuscript
Study the basic trend.
Instead of trying to replicate a trend, do a deep dive. What need is the trend fulfilling? How can your story approach that need in a fresh and personal way?
Use your intuition.
Write the story you feel compelled to tell using a trend as inspiration, not a master plan. Decide how it harmonizes with the trend after it’s written. Don’t force your story into a mold.
Think long-term.
Cultivating a connection with readers will help you regardless of changes in trends or market shifts.
Final Thoughts
There will always be trends. Know that they come and go, and don’t lose sight of your creativity.
Do you want to be a trend-chaser? A trend-setter? Consider this course of action:
Create the story that insists upon being written.
Use your distinctive voice.
Be true to yourself, because the most authentic stories have staying power.
Do what feels right. Your gut will never steer you wrong. Who knows? Your story might be the next big thing.
Have you written to a trend? What was your experience?
* * * * * *
About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.
Tired of every writing guru offering conflicting advice? They say: Write what you love. No, write to market. Pick one genre. Diversify. Maybe you've tried an approach and readers love those stories—but you hate writing them. Or maybe you've tried them all with little success. Here's what every guru misses: their approach fails if you don't write with authenticity and emotional resonance. I get it. But telling you to write what matters to you is confusing because the phrase doesn’t mean what you think.
Your Roadmap
This process works best when your timeline looks similar to this:
Week 1: Complete all the mining exercises without judging the results
Week 2: Choose your strongest emotional material and practice the distance techniques
Week 3: Translate one experience into three different story scenarios
Week 4: Write a scene from your strongest scenario and test it with a beta reader
Don't rush this. Authentic writing develops over time as you get comfortable accessing and translating your emotional truth.
What “Write What Matters to You" Actually Means
The biggest misconception about what an authentic story is that it must be based on a literal experience, an autobiographical retelling.
It's Not Just Autobiography
If writing stories that matter to you means they must be based on literal personal experience, take a step back and look again. Just think how limited our stories would be if we only wrote things from "real life."
Then if it's not literal experiences, what creates a meaningful story? The answer lies in emotional truths and five types of personal connections that tap into emotions we all feel in our lives.
Emotional Truth vs. Factual Truth
Fictional stories aren’t meaningful because of factual accuracy but from the heartfelt feelings expressed through the story. More than the specific action, plot, or characters, a story's meaning is in the themes, the emotions and the questions raised.
You don't owe readers your literal experiences. Focus on capturing the heart of your feelings rather than factual details. Give yourself permission to lie about everything except feelings. The childhood terror of hearing your parents fight at 2 AM can become a space station crew facing system failures in the dark. Different facts, same fear of powerlessness and impending disaster.
Remember, as a fiction writer, you’re not writing your memoir or autobiography. You are a translator of real human emotions into stories that fulfill your readers’ needs, whether that’s entertainment, escape, or understanding.
Personal Connection
Every human on Earth has emotions, values and beliefs, persistent questions, fascinations and experiences with injustice. These connect us. They cross genders, cultures, nationalities, and genres. And it's not just big emotions—it's the complexity, the contradictory feelings that push and pull us—and make us human. (Yes, there are exceptions, but these connections apply to most people.)
Example:
On the surface, Iron Man is a superhero movie filled with over-the-top action scenes. None of us believe the Iron Man is real. And if the story were only about the Iron Man's superhuman feats, it would be entertaining, but it would not be the same story. It’s Tony Stark's transformation from arrogant rich boy inventor to a hero protecting others from harm that plucks our heartstrings. The emotional impact of his near-death experience challenges his arrogance and forces him to face the devastation his weapons wreak on people, which becomes the source of his deep, unrelenting guilt, which motivates him to be more selfless. Yet, his arrogance remains a challenge for him in later stories, and each time he confronts it, he learns to see the larger picture and to grow from this knowledge. The story speaks to the universal desire for the courage to face one's own worst self and become a better person. Notice how the writers didn’t need to experience weapon-manufacturing guilt. They understood the genuine emotion of realizing your life’s work has hurt people, and used that to tell the story of the billionaire named Tony Stark.
So how do you systematically find these connections in your own life? There are specific areas where everyone has material worth mining.
Types of Personal Connections
There are five basic areas in your life that you can mine for story ideas:
Emotional experiences grief, triumph, betrayal, discovery, alienation from others—your experience is the starting point.
Core values and beliefs help you understand why those emotions matter—what was threatened or affirmed.
Persistent questions come from your inner tension between what happened and what you believe should happen.
Fascinations often point to the genres or themes where you can best explore these questions.
Injustices provide the outside problems that make rankle you.
Now that you know the five connection types, let’s address your concerns about marketing realities and sharing too much.
Balancing Genuine Feelings with Marketing Realities
This doesn’t mean ignoring your audience or genre expectations. How do you balance the two? Find where your real-life emotions overlap with themes your readers crave. Romance readers want stories about vulnerability and trust. These are emotions you can mine even if you’ve never experienced lost love or a love triangle. Thriller readers want stories about betrayal and survival. You might have experienced these feelings during a difficult job situation or friendship.
Ask yourself:
What emotions does my chosen genre explore? Then, look at your personal connections to see which ones naturally fit. Don’t force a mismatch. And don’t assume your emotions won’t work.
Using Personal Connections without Being Too Personal
If you think your life isn't interesting enough or something is too personal to share, you're taking the idea of using personal connection too literally. Personal connections can open truly meaningful story material by giving you access to genuine emotions. More than that, instead of being limited to what actually happened to you, you can explore those emotional connections through any setting, time period, character, or genre you choose.
Example:
Say you're haunted by a moment when you realized your parents weren't the heroes you thought they were. You don't write about your specific disillusionment—your dad's gambling or your mother's drinking. Instead, you might create a historical story where a deputy who idolizes his boss learns the sheriff is on the take. Or you could create a fantasy about an apprentice to the wizard who is secretly controlling the evil overlord. The same deep feelings of betrayal and shattered trust in a completely different context.
Even if you never had anything "interesting" happen, you had some pivotal event(s) and feelings or values that came from that event. Maybe you were ten and your parents had another baby. Or you got a haircut you didn't like. The events themselves do not have to be exotic or exciting.
Tapping into one or all five connection types offers rich material for authentic storytelling, regardless of your genre or writing style. The key is to recall pivotal moments in your life and to identify the gut feelings you had at the time of the event.
Mining Your Life for Story Material
You might be thinking, 'This sounds great in theory, but where do I actually find this meaningful material in my own life?' The truth is, you already have everything you need. The experiences, values, and emotions that will fuel your most authentic stories are already there—you just need the right tools to uncover them.
TheExperienceInventory
To uncover authentic emotions from your life, list positive and negative experiences without judgment. These can be big emotion moments or a mundane experience that sticks with you. How do you uncover these?
Try this:
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
List experiences that still trigger emotions when you remember them.
Include three categories: moments of intense feelings, times your values were tested, and situations that still puzzle you.
Write one sentence about how it felt in your body.
You’ll end up with a mix of big and small moments that still have an emotional charge. Once you have identified your authentic material through these exercises, the next challenge is turning personal emotions into storytelling fiction. For the next part, choose your three strongest reactions for the next step.
Find the Universal in the Personal
Now you'll identify the emotions associated with that experience. Yes, I said emotions plural. Emotions are complex. They grow out of our cultural expectations, environmental influences, parental examples, our personal history, our individual personalities, and the unique details of the situation. We often think of emotions as something in our hearts or in our minds, but emotions are psychological, behavioral, and physical.
Dig a little deeper and for each experience:
Write a sentence about what you wanted in the moment
Write about what you were afraid would happen next.
Dig deep. Use the granular details of your experience as the foundation for your character and her reactions, and it will resonate with your readers regardless of genre or setting.
Ask:
"What was this really about?" for each of your three strongest reactions.
For example: getting lost as a child might really be about trust, independence, or fear of abandonment. Winning the science fair in fifth grade might be about self-esteem or proving yourself to your parents or teachers or a desire to make your parents happy.
Create Distance for Perspective
Most of us can't be clear-headed about the positive or negative events in our lives. But in order to write effective and compelling scenes, we need to be able to remove ourselves from the emotions we wish to mine. Need more distance?
Try one or more of these exercises:
Change the character's gender, age, the time period, or genre.
Brainstorm metaphors or symbols that represent those experiences.
Try writing the experience with elements from fantasy such as witches and warlocks or swordsmen and women or dragons.
Change the setting to another planet or spaceship or change to a culture or country that is quite different from your own.
If those exercises give you story ideas, wonderful. Keep writing. Or, if you've gotten the distance you needed to treat your character and story as something other than yourself, you can return to your original setting and characters with a fresh perspective.
Values-Based Story Generation
Another way to mine your life for story material is to identify your top five core values. What are values, you ask?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines values as "something (such as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable."
To clarify what your values are:
Set a timer for 15 minutes.
List what makes you genuinely angry (not annoyed—angry).
List what you’d fight to protect
Identify your top five core values from these lists.
Don't worry if it seems you have conflicting values or beliefs. We humans are complex creatures full of contradictions. Besides, conflicting values or deeply held beliefs that cause guilt or indecision and internal or external pressure create compelling stories.
Dig a little deeper:
Create a situation where these values are tested, threatened, or triumphant.
Create characters who represent or test these values.
The "What If" Bridge
Your fascination with questions that don't have an answer can power a story that explores the question. Questions like: Is there such a thing as free will? What is love? Is true justice possible? Use the question that nags you when you can't sleep or you're bored and supply your characters with the conflicting answers. Stories that ask these questions without coming to a conclusive answer are often very powerful.
How do you get started? Take real emotions/situations and ask, "What if this happened in a different world/time/circumstance?"
Example:
You feel overlooked at work—colleagues ignore your suggestions, you’re not invited to important meetings, etc. Now ask, “What if?” What if a character could literally become invisible but discovers that being unseen is worse than being ignored? What if a whole society of invisible people existed? What if becoming visible again required facing exactly why you wanted to disappear? Same emotional starting point, multiple story possibilities.
Excavating Childhood Obsessions
Rediscovering the things you were obsessed with as a child may provide your writer brain with rich story materials.
List five things you loved before the age of twelve. For each, ask: what emotional need did this fill? For example:
dinosaurs and dragons (the need to feel powerful when the world sees you as helpless and small),
building forts (the need to feel safe when your environment is unsafe)
collecting and organizing things (the need to control small pieces of the world when everything feels chaotic).
Once you’ve identified your childhood obsession and its emotional need, ask:
How do I seek the same feeling today?
When do I feel most frustrated in adult life? (Often, that indicates a need isn’t being met.)
What could happen to a character if that need was threatened or completely fulfilled?
Your childhood obsession can become your emotional GPS for writing stories with themes and conflicts that will always matter to you as a writer and ultimately to your readers as well.
Crafting Authentic Stories from Personal Material
Once you've identified your most powerful emotional material, you face a new challenge: How do you turn deeply personal experiences into universal stories that resonate with readers who haven't lived your specific life? The answer lies in learning to be both vulnerable and strategic in your storytelling choices.
Avoiding the Therapy Session Trap
Stories aren't journals—they need structure, conflict, and resolution. Transform personal pain into character arcs that both reach into the reader’s heart and serve the story, not just your healing process. Guideline: If it was only meaningful to you, it's not ready to be a story yet.
The difference? A journal entry says, "My divorce was devastating." A story shows a character discovering strength they never knew they had when forced to rebuild their life from scratch. Same emotional territory, but one serves readers while the other only serves you.
The Character Filter Method
Instead of writing about yourself, create characters who face your fears or embody your questions. Give them different backgrounds, personalities, and choices than you'd make. Let them teach you something new about your own experiences.
This isn't about hiding from your emotions—it's about exploring them through fresh perspectives. When your protagonist makes choices you never would, you discover new aspects of the situation that your personal involvement originally blinded you to.
Creating distance through characters is just the first step. You also need to ensure your personal material connects with readers who haven't lived your specific experiences.
Balancing Personal and Universal
Start with what matters to you, then find ways to make readers care too. Include relatable human experiences alongside your unique perspective. Use beta readers to test the success of your story’s emotions: Do they connect emotionally, even if they haven't shared your specific experience?
The goal isn't for readers to have lived your life. It's for them to recognize the emotions you've translated into fiction and think, "Yes, I know exactly what that feels like," even if their version happened completely differently.
Warning Signs
The warning signs that you're too close to your material: you write long backstory explanations that don't advance the plot. Your character makes only the choices you made, with the same reasoning you used. You get defensive when readers don't interpret scenes the way you intended. When this happens, step back and create more distance using the techniques above.
The Passion Test
If you could write only one more story, what would it be about? That answer reveals what truly matters to you as a writer.
Signs you're not writing what matters:
boredom during writing
forcing yourself to continue
caring more about word count than story quality.
Making This Work Across Genres
Focusing on genuine emotions will work in every genre. Here are a few examples:
Literary Fiction: focuses on emotional experiences and persistent questions. Your character's internal journey mirrors your own emotional discoveries.
Romance: mine your core values about relationships and your fascinations with connection. The external plot comes from threatening those values.
Thriller/Mystery: use your experiences with injustice and your fears. What makes you feel powerless? That's your character's external threat.
Fantasy/Sci-Fi: Your fascinations become world-building elements. Your persistent questions become the philosophical core that grounds fantastical elements in human truth.
Understanding how this works across genres is helpful, but you also need to recognize when you are successfully writing from your core emotions.
How You’ll Know It’s Working
Even when you know you’re doing these exercises for story ideas, it’s often difficult work that can feel disconnected from your actual writing. But there are ways to know.
Signs you’re writing authentically:
You feel energized during writing sessions instead of drained
You discover new things about your character mid-scene.
Beta readers use emotion words in feedback (heartbreaking, inspiring, thrilling, I felt that)
You write longer than planned because you’re engaged
Readers mention specific moments or scenes that “felt real.”
Just as there are signs it’s working, there are warning signs.
Signs you’ve drifted away from the genuine emotions:
Writing feels like you’re going through the motions
You’re checking word count more than story progress
Characters feel like puppets saying and doing what you say
Beta readers say things like, “Well-written but didn’t connect with me.”
Overcoming Common Obstacles
Even when you develop a solid understanding of these techniques, you may hit some predictable obstacles. Here are the most common ones and how to push through them.
You Feel Stuck
It’s okay. We all get stuck. Look at why you’re stuck and what you can do to get unstuck.
For example:
Problem: Nothing feels story-worthy.
Solution: You’re judging too quickly. Take your most “boring” experience and ask: what was at stake emotionally? A bad haircut might reveal fears about acceptance or identity.
Problem: My authentic emotions don’t fit my genre
Solution: You may be focusing on surface tropes rather than underlying themes. Every genre explores human emotions. Look deeper at your genre to find the themes and what emotions are behind it.
Problem: I have lots of emotions, but I can’t turn them into a story.
Solution: You’re skipping the translation step. Don’t recreate the experience—go back through the steps outlined in “Balancing Personal and Universal.”
My Life Isn't Interesting Enough
Every life contains universal human experiences. Ordinary moments often resonate more than dramatic ones. The quiet devastation of realizing your best friend has been talking behind your back hits harder than most thriller plots because everyone has felt that betrayal.
Stop measuring your experiences against movie plots. Start measuring them against human truth.
It's Too Personal to Share
You control how much to reveal through fiction techniques. Start with safer material and build courage. Remember, readers respond to emotional honesty, not the facts of your life story. You can write about abandonment without revealing who abandoned you or when.
Fear of Judgment
Remember: opening up to your emotions creates a connection with your readers. Your specific truth will resonate with someone who needs to hear it. The stories that feel most risky to share are often the ones that help others feel less alone.
Writing with Purpose
Meaningful stories come from a genuine connection with your own experiences and values. Readers sense when you care about what you're writing—passion is contagious, and authenticity is magnetic. When you write from your emotional core, you give readers permission to care deeply too.
The stories only you can tell are the ones the world needs most. Not because your experiences are unique, but because your particular way of understanding and translating human experience through fiction is one-of-a-kind. Every reader who connects with your authentic voice is finding a piece of themselves reflected back—and that's the real magic of stories that matter.
Your Next Step
But understanding this magic isn't enough. You have everything you need—now you need to act.
Start with one small thing that matters to you and build from there. Maybe it's a moment of unexpected kindness from a stranger, or the weight of keeping a family secret, or the specific loneliness of moving to a new city. Whatever it is, dig into the emotions beneath the facts.
Here's what to do right now: choose one exercise from this guide and complete it today. Set a timer for 15 minutes and begin with whichever exercise feels easiest. The Experience Inventory works well for most writers because everyone has experiences that still carry an emotional charge.
Once you've completed your first exercise, commit to the four-week timeline. Mark it on your calendar. Share it with an accountability partner.
Every day you postpone this work is another day those stories stay locked inside, unable to help the readers who need them most. Your authentic voice isn't just nice to have—it's essential. The world has enough generic stories. It needs yours.
Start today.
Do you find it harder to identify meaningful material from your own life, or to translate that material into compelling story scenarios once you've found it?
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.
Her Fellowship Dystopia series has been described as intense and gripping. 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 late 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.
