Writers in the Storm

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine into Gold

You will experience unexpected setbacks and disappointments in your writing career. This is not a guess, or a mere function of my confident writer’s voice—it is a given. And when the stormy seas threaten to sink your spirit, one of the best ways to stay afloat is to remain tethered to the larger world and a greater purpose.

Your inner artist will fight this. All it wants is to lure you deeper into the tunnel of your own mind, consuming your time and energy and spirit until you are fully sequestered. Tricky thing, that tunnel—it may be your imagined route to maximum output, but it can also lead to some pretty dark places.

Especially when you hit an obstacle that throws you for a loop, as happened when my publisher’s ambitious media campaign for The Far End of Happy, my novelization of my first husband’s suicide standoff releasing May 5, fell through.

Expectations for second novels weigh on any author, but this is a project I’ve waited seventeen years to write, It’s important to me. Early on, when I first saw the tight production schedule, I knew I’d have to dump ballast from my schedule to complete it, so I resigned from many of the volunteer activities in the writing community that had given me a deep sense of purpose through my many years of revision and rejection. And it worked—I got my novel done, and let no one down in the process.

Except, perhaps, myself. Defining yourself by only one activity leaves you vulnerable when inevitable problems hit.

I’d poured everything into this book, and when I got the bad PR news I feared all my efforts might turn into a cosmic joke. I’d be peddling “the book no one knew existed,” and my “career” would come to a screeching halt.

“It’s not time to panic yet,” my publicist said.

Right.

This book completed such an important emotional arc for me that I couldn’t even envision what life beyond it might look like. I had to make this work. I flew into action in the way that only full-fledged panic can inspire—and my entire team started to think outside the box.

While brainstorming with my agent, something exciting happened: a Twitter campaign, #choosethisday, was born.

On the day my husband chose death over life, “choose this day” became my mantra. Each day, no matter how sad or horrified or frustrated I felt, I chose life—and with this simple daily act, my sense of empowerment grew.

Now that I saw my book through to publication I want to write inspirational messages and cast them into the wild, random Twitterverse. I want people to be more aware of signs of depression and suicidal behavior. I’m not a psychiatrist and won’t play one on the Internet—but I can share resources where people who are truly hurting can find help.

I’m writing this post because it fits my “Turning Whine Into Gold” theme, to be sure. It’s already brought me gold: for the first time in my life, since the suicide, I can envision a project with the potential to last beyond the life of this second novel.

But I’m also writing to do something else it took my husband’s death for me to learn to do: ask for your help.

On May 1, I am asking everyone I know on Twitter to post an empowering, positive message or quote using the #choosethisday hashtag.

Why May 1? Two reasons: because “mayday” is a distress signal, and because “May Day” is an ancient celebration of renewal. Both play into the notion of positivity and suicide awareness that I hope to advance.

I’m hoping, through a massive number of retweets, to keep this going throughout May, and end with a Twitter event after Memorial Day that is still in the planning stages.

Might you add your voice to #choosethisday? It will cost you a little bit of positivity. A favorite inspirational quote. A small confession of what makes you come alive.

If you don’t yet follow me, please do so @kcraftwriter. I’ll follow you back. If you’re not on Twitter you can still play—I’ll happily accept #choosethislife quotes on my Facebook Author Page as well, and look forward to sharing in your inspiration on May Day and beyond!

What activities, non-writing communities, or initiatives keep you tied to a world larger than your stories? What beyond writing gives you a sense of purpose? I’d love to hear your answers.

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About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, out May 5.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.

Twitter: @kcraftwriter
FB: KathrynCraftAuthor

Penny Sansevieri

What is an elevator pitch and why do you need one?

An elevator pitch is a short one- to two-sentence description about the book. It's the briefest of the briefest descriptions you can develop. The reason elevator pitches are important is that we have an ever- shrinking attention span, so you need to capture someone's attention in a very short, succinct pitch.

How do you begin crafting an elevator pitch?

The first step is to look at the core of your book. What is your book about, really? Looking at the core of your book will help you determine the primary message. The next step is to look at the real benefits to the reader. Not what you think the reader wants to know but what they actually need: What's in it for the reader?

When I worked with people on elevator pitches, I found that they often kept the best sentence for last. This comes from being an author and saving the crescendo of the story until the final chapter. You don't want to do that in an elevator pitch. You want to lead with the tease that will pull the reader in.

When would you use an elevator pitch? You might use it to promote yourself to the media, to book a speaking event, or to pitch a blogger. Elevator pitches can be used for a number of reasons and in a variety of ways. Once you create a great elevator pitch, you may find yourself using it over and over again. That's a good thing!

Components of a great elevator pitch

 All elevator pitches have particular relevance to them, but for the most part, every elevator pitch must:

• Have emotional appeal
• Be helpful
• Be insightful
• Be timely
• Matter to your reader!

Essential Elements of a Powerful Elevator Pitch

1. Concise: Your pitch needs to be short, sweet, and to the point.
2. Clear: Save your five dollar words for another time. For your elevator pitch to be effective, you must use simple language any layperson can understand. If you make someone think about a word, you'll lose them and the effectiveness of your elevator pitch will go right out the window as well.
3. Passion: If you're not passionate about your topic, how can you expect anyone else to be?
4. Visual: Use words that bring visual elements to your reader’s mind. It helps to make your message more memorable and brings the reader into your story.
5. Stories: People love stories. It’s the biggest element of the elevator pitch: tell the story. I also find that when the pitch is woven into the story, it often helps to create a smoother presentation.

How to Craft Your Killer Elevator Pitch

• Write it down: Start by writing a very short story so you can tell the story of your book in two paragraphs. This will get the juices flowing. As you start to edit your story down from 200,000 words to two paragraphs, you'll start to see why it's important to pull only the most essential elements from your story to craft your elevator pitch.
• Make a list: Write down 10 to 20 things that your book does for the reader. These can be action statements, benefits, or book objectives.
• Record yourself: Next, record yourself and see how you sound. I can almost guarantee you that you will not like the first few drafts you try. That actually is a really good thing. If you like the first thing that you write, it probably won't be that effective. Recording yourself will help you listen to what you're saying and figure out how to fine-tune it.
• Rest: I highly recommend that you give yourself enough time to do your elevator pitch. Ideally you want to let it rest overnight, if not longer. Remember the elevator pitch is perhaps the most important thing that you created in your marketing package. You want to make sure it's right.

Having a prepared “pitch” for your book will help you enormously, whether you are pitching the media, an agent, a publisher, or even a bookstore. Having a short, concise pitch will get and keep someone’s attention and also, increase your chances for a positive desired outcome. Keep in mind that if your elevator pitch is tied to current events, it might change as events change. A good elevator pitch can be fluid, but it should always be an attention grabber. In a world cluttered with information and filled with noise, the shorter and more focused you can be, the more exposure you will get for your message!

Have you ever delivered an elevator pitch? Share your experience with us!

 ABOUT PENNY

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert and an Adjunct Professor with NYU. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of fourteen books, including How to Sell Books by the Truckload. AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through online promotion and their signature program called: The Virtual Author Tour™

To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at http://www.amarketingexpert.com. To subscribe to her free newsletter, send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@amarketingexpert.com

Copyright @2015 Penny C. Sansevieri

 

 

 Tiffany Yates Martin

Writers love their brains: We exploit our highly evolved prefrontal cortex to infuse our prose with dazzling verbiage and transport our reader to the world of our creation.

Yet for creating tension—one of the most important elements of compelling fiction—nothing beats the lowly amygdala: the primordial lizard brain that handles the most basic functions of survival.

Authors of all levels can fall into the trap of intellectualized “summing-up,” which drains your writing of tension and can leave your readers unmoved, uninvolved, and disengaged. But juicy, suspenseful, irresistible fiction lies in those gut-level reactions that are so under the radar of our higher reasoning, they barely even register before the quick-thinking cerebrum analyzes and labels it.

Spotting Cerebral Sabotage

Most of us don’t react to a shark by thinking, “I’m scared!” That’s the clever cerebral cortex instantaneously putting together a slew of input (big gray fish, lots of teeth), comparing it to past experience and knowledge (Jaws!), and coming up with a conclusion to lead us into quick action (“Swim, fool!”). The lightning-fast process makes for impressive biology (and a higher survival rate), but really dull prose.

So what’s happening in that immediate, subconscious microsecond after a stimulus? Consider this scene:

The noise startled Josie, and she sat up in bed, wondering what the sound was. Could someone be in the house? Unease pricked her—Jim was still out of town. She eased out of bed, pulling a robe on over her flimsy nightgown. She reached for the penknife he’d left on his nightstand—the only thing resembling a weapon.

On the surface, that’s not a bad premise for a scene: things that go bump in the night have been a staple of suspense since Homer, and here we have a heroine in a dangerous situation—a great recipe for fiction.

But descriptions like these rob what could be a riveting scene of all its narrative tension. And no matter your genre, when tension flags, so will your reader’s interest.

Digging Down to the Lizard Brain

The writer’s job is to slow down time—to stretch out that microsecond of primitive lizard-brain reaction so that the reader can experience the scene along with the character, rather than being told about it by the know-it-all cerebrum.

Let’s take a look at the above example. Everything is in place, and we have all the makings of good storytelling: a suspenseful situation (a mysterious noise waking what appears to be a relatively defenseless character); a strong heroine we can root for (despite her fear, our brave protagonist goes to face the threat even scantily clad and poorly armed); high stakes (alone with potential danger!). Yet why aren’t we particularly concerned for poor defenseless Josie?

It’s because the writer has let her cerebrum do the writing here, when this scene calls for the remedial lizard brain.

Let’s put ourselves in Josie’s situation and prolong the lizard-brain reaction that the cerebrum processes as fear. First we might feel our heart race, our stomach hollow out; maybe we suddenly need to go to the bathroom. Perhaps our armpits prickle with sweat and we shoot to an upright defensive position almost instinctively—as a dog might when startled. That’s beat one in the Josie scenario. Only after these autonomous physiological responses have kicked in does her higher reasoning brain draw its first conclusion: There’s a noise in a house where I am alone; someone is here.

Now our brave heroine covers her near-nakedness and consciously looks for a weapon, lighting on the best option available to her in her absent husband’s penknife—resourceful, our Josie. An opportunistic writer might take another lizard-brain moment here to add more juice: perhaps her heart leaps as she sees it, then sinks even as she grabs it, her nimble cerebrum quickly concluding it’s an inadequate weapon, but all she has.

In the above example, the author has skipped over the experience Josie might be having and instead intellectualized these events—in more common writing terms, she has “told” this action, rather than “showing” it.

In actuality the first, gut-level thing we register is not the logical conclusion we reach, but the effect on us of whatever is happening.

In your writing, show us that.

Let the Reader Be the Cerebrum

What makes writing vibrant and immediate, and characters three-dimensional and relatable, is showing more of the characters’ behavior and reactions, rather than simply describing them— i.e., telling us about them. Instead plunge us directly into the scene by letting us experience the scene as the characters do, in their heads and through their eyes. It’s visceral instead of intellectual, and that’s where tension springs from.

Paint the picture for us and show us the scene; let us come to the conclusions you want us to by leading us there, instead of stating them directly for us. The idea is to lead the horse to water, not shove his head in and make him drink. Show the effect the stimulus—in this case, the noise from downstairs—has on your character, and then let the reader draw his own conclusion—She’s scared!—the same way the cerebrum takes the lizard-brain reactions and does so. That involves us, makes us more invested in the story. If you simply tell us the result (“she was scared”), you keep us at a remove—we are hearing a distant narrator describe events, but we don’t experience them in the direct, visceral way that grabs a reader by the throat and thrusts her into the story.

Here are some easy ways to root out and fix cerebral sabotage in your writing:

1. Look for adjectives in your descriptions: scared, happy, excited, nervous, etc. These are often red flags for the intellectualized conclusions the cerebrum has leaped right over the juicy lizard-brain stuff to reach.
2. Then backtrack: Great writers, like great actors, play “what if” wonderfully. What if you were in that situation? What might you feel before the label of the emotion registers? Or have you been in similar situations—i.e., maybe you were never in a fiery car crash, but have you had a fender-bender? Remember that sick lurch in your stomach on the second of impact, that flicker of disorientation before you processed what had happened, the flutter of panic as soon as you did? Start from that rather than using the easy label.
3. Amp it up: You’re a creative type—now take those reactions you felt or can imagine to extremes using your writerly imagination.

Think of it this way: Would you rather watch someone’s vacation slide show as they dryly narrate all that they did? Or be on that vacation with them and experience it? The latter is what lizard-brain writing does for us—puts us there, with the characters; lets us live the scenes through their eyes, in their heads. That’s why we read—to live experiences outside our own—and experienced writers know how to offer that to their readers.

Do you notice cerebral sabotage in others’ writing, or your own? Have you come up with other ways to spot it—or address it?

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About Tiffany

Tiffany Yates Martin has worked in the publishing industry for more than twenty years, currently through her editorial consulting company, FoxPrint Editorial, helping authors hone their work to a tight polished draft. As a developmental editor she works both directly with authors as well as through major publishing houses.

As a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, she has worked with major New York publishers, among them Random House, the Penguin Group, and HarperCollins. She holds a BA in English Literature from GSU and is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association.

Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she is the author of The Breakup Doctor and Bedside Manners, part of the Breakup Doctor series from Henery Press.