Before I dive in, I'd like to say congrats and cheers to everyone at WITS on their new home! It's hard to improve something so good, but they managed to do it. Kudos, Stormies! And thanks for letting me stop by to help you celebrate.
Okay, on to the writing tips...
When you pick up a novel, what keeps you reading?
The desire to see what happens next? The fear that something horrible will happen to your favorite character? The need to see it all turn out for the best? The need to know what happens next or what it all means? Maybe all of these at different times in the book.
No matter what hooks a reader about a book, she's made an emotional connection.She cares, and doesn't want to see the characters get hurt. But the wonderful things is, once you've made that emotional connection, "hurt" takes on a much broader definition. The emotional peril the character faces becomes just as important as physical peril. Probably more so, because readers know a major character isn't likely to die, so they don't worry as much about the outcome (unless it's Game of Thrones, then all bets are off).
But you can destroy a character emotionally without physically hurting her. She can survive, yet never be the same. (and if you're giggling in glee over the very thought, you're my kind of writer)
Once you get your emotional hooks into readers (pun intended), they'll follow you anywhere. There's almost a pathological need to see the characters through whatever devious and wonderfully evil plot you've created for them. Sure, readers know the protagonist will survive, but there's no guarantee she'll survive unscathed.
4 Ways to Create Emotional Peril in Your Characters
1. Make their worst fears come true
We all have things that scare us, and the thought of facing this fear is almost as scary as the fear itself. Give your characters cringe-worthy fears and then force them to face that fear to get what they ultimately want. Maybe they overcome it, maybe they don't, but it'll be so rich with emotion it'll be a moment your readers won't forget. Better still, readers will see this coming and dread it up until the moment it happens, keeping the tension high.
Bonus tip: This is especially useful during a major turning point in your plot when the stakes are at their highest and the protagonist can't afford to fail.
2. Put someone they love in jeopardy (double points if it's someone vulnerable)
A risk to a loved one can be more horrific than a risk to oneself, and protagonists can suffer greatly when people they care about are in danger because of them. If it's someone who can't defend or save themselves, it's even more emotionally charged. Readers know secondary characters are usually fair game, so even if they think that funny sidekick is safe, deep down they know something bad could actually happen.
Bonus tip: This is a great way to get a character invested in the plot, because now it's personal.
3. Make them do something they're morally opposed to
There are lines people swear they won't cross under any circumstances, but apply the right pressure points and anyone will do anything. When readers see a character is up against that line they start to worry, and the more they fear that line might be crossed (with terrible repercussions of course) the faster they read to see the outcome. And once it happens, they're grieving right along with character.
Bonus tip: This is handy when you want to show just how far the protagonist is willing to go to resolve the problem and get what she wants.
4. Have them screw up--badly
Even good intentions can go horribly, horribly wrong, and sometimes protagonists make mistakes. Huge mistakes that cost lives or get people in trouble or opens the doorway to a major evil upon the land. Since heroes are, well, heroes, your protagonist is going to feel terrible about this and be wracked with guilt. Your readers will sympathize and want to see if that poor soul finds the redemption she'll no doubt crave.
Bonus tip: This is a fun way to shake up a story and keep it from being predictable. It's even better if this mistake A) causes the protagonist to have to face her worst fear, B) puts someone she loves in jeopardy, or C) forces her to do something she's morally opposed to.
The more a reader emotionally connects to your story, the more likely she is to enjoy it (and talk about it to all her friends). Tug at the heartstrings and the fingers will keep turning the pages.
What books have tugged at your heartstrings lately?
Looking for tips on planning (or revising) your novel? The first book in my Foundations of Fiction series, Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structureis out now, with over 100 exercises to help you develop your novel.
Janice Hardy is the author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, where she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her novels include The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She lives in Georgia with her husband, one yard zombie, three cats, and a very nervous freshwater eel. Find out more about writing at her site, Fiction University, or find her on Twitter @Janice_Hardy.
Summer is the perfect setting for first time love. I’m pretty sure everyone, EVERYONE, had a summer love, fling, crush, or even just a sweet moment at some point in their lives. The unrequited variety counts too, because you did in fact feel that way for the first time. And for those with unrequited love, the first time that love was returned, I’m sure it tasted even sweeter. Like a long walk on a summer’s evening, feeling the sun lift from your skin as the sky makes that long transition into night. Mmmmm it is the perfect time to write a YA or NA novel.
Let’s jump in with our clothes on, shall we? Heads up, there is a small spoiler alert for The Fault In Our Stars in this excerpt.
Idiotically, it occurred to me that my pink underwear didn’t match my purple bra, as if boys even notice such things. I crawled under the covers and kicked out of my jeans and socks and then watched the comforter dance as beneath it, Augustus removed first his jeans and then his leg.
***
The whole affair was the precise opposite of what I figured it would be: slow and patient and quiet and neither particularly painful nor particularly ecstatic. There were a lot of condomy problems that I did not get a particularly good look at. No headboards were broken. No screaming. Honestly, it was probably the longest time we’d ever spent together without talking.
This excerpt is obviously showing us the couple’s first time. Where did you go when you were reading the above passage? Did you have any feelings taking you back to your first? Your emotional brain was either saying, “Oh how true!!” or, “Mine was so much worse!” or “OH wow mine was nothing like that!” And then you might have gotten a few mental flashes of your past.
Guess what, you just made an emotional connection to those characters. Even if your situation was not similar, you still made a connection. You went a little deeper into their world. Notice that Green never went into huge emotional detail here. He didn’t try to force you to feel one way or another, he didn’t take you deep deep POV to reveal every quiver of their loins. But, you still felt something. Not all YA/NA authors choose to do this, and that is okay too. I’ll show you another example in a minute that might try and melt off your britches. Don’t worry, it’s still PG 13, and that is what is so darn great about it!
Why am I going on and on about first times? Well, breaking into our memories to create high emotional moments is one thing (I talk about breaking through the Emotional Barrier here) but reaching back to the first times you experienced pieces of life is quite another. Synapses never crossed before, neural pathways being created from the shiny new experiences you are having, those first time memories are the ones that really light emotions on fire when I write and when I read. First time memories are also the memories that are easily tapped into if a reader happens to stumble upon this type of raw moment. This makes people want to read more more more!
Using first time love and first time experience writing is a tool and this tool is an underused weapon in most genres. Although, there are two genres lucky enough to utilize this weapon throughout their every breath.
YA/NA authors don’t glaze over first time memories. Their genres demand that they dive to the bottom of their own memory pools and in turn show us every emotion and decision their protagonist makes during these precious moments of discovery.
What memories are chosen?
When you flesh memories out of your life and into your story, do they move your story forward?
Are you using multiple layers of thought, body language, choreography, and physical emotion to create these first time moments?
Do you need to tweak them a little bit?
Do you need to borrow a friends memories, someone with more experience in the type of love you are writing about?
Do the memories help deepen characterization?
Is your voice unique enough?
Do you truly understand your POVs volcanic relationships?
How are you showing the sequence of events to the reader?
Does the sequence of events heighten the tension?
How much emotion does your protagonist show, and how much are you leaving for the reader to feel for themselves? (The difference between John Green and Tahereh Mafi)
Speaking of exquisite examples of writing craft, time to take a peek at an excerpt from Suzanne Collins, Hunger Games. This excerpt displays the young adult first time deep thought:
I hear Peeta’s voice in my head. She has no idea. The effect she can have. Obviously meant to demean me. Right? But a tiny part of me wonders if this was a compliment. That he meant I was appealing in some way. It’s weird, how much he’s noticed me. Like the attention he’s paid to my hunting. And apparently, I have not been as oblivious to him as I imagined, either. The flour. The wrestling. I have kept track of the boy with the bread.
Collins lets us watch her protagonist waffle between thoughts about the possible love/like interest. We get to know more of the POVs personality through these segments. What if she had just said, “I think that boy likes me, and, gosh, maybe I like him too!” BORING.
Gale’s eyes fastened on the bow. “Can I see that?” I handed it over. “Just remember, stealing’s punishable by death.” That was the first time I ever saw him smile. It transformed him from someone menacing to someone you wished you knew. But it took several months before I returned that smile. Collins, Suzanne The Hunger Games
She sure knows how to present the base of a relationship. A snarky – could be friend-flirty remark. In return a fresh description of a smile that takes us a step deeper into who Gale is. Then she tells us something HUGE about her character. Even at 14, this girl was cautious and stubborn. And as a bonus, Collins raises the question, what will those traits do for her POVs future? Thank you Suzanne Collins for also raising the YA emotional bar.
The most common first memory found in YA novels is that of LOVE. I’m not sure if it’s because when we are young we are able to feel love more? Or, that love itself makes us feel young again. Whatever it is, YA authors find themselves heart deep in first loves, first glances, first worry, first kisses, first lovers quarrel, first jealousy, first betrayal, and the biggest of all – first heart break.
Readers are attracted to the rawness that “First Love” brings to the story. The reader has only experienced “First Love” once, as we all have, and it is such a strong emotional event in everyone’s life, who wouldn’t want to experience that again? The depth to which the author goes to show deep inside a “First Loves” POV is like we are being thrown into our own youth to relive these cognitive adventures. Our brains start shooting endorphins. Poof!
“Can you see me?”
“No,” I lie, and I’m trying to ignore the immediate tension, the electricity humming in the air between us.
I take a step back.
I feel his hands on my arms, I feel his skin against my skin and I’m holding my breath. I don’t move an inch. I don’t say a word as his hands drop to my waist, to the thin material making a poor attempt to cover my body. His fingers graze the soft skin of my lower back, right underneath the hem of my shirt and I’m losing count of the number of times my heart skips a beat.
I’m struggling to get oxygen in my lungs.
“Is it even possible,” he whispers, “that you can’t feel this fire between us?” His hands are traveling up my arms again, his touch so light, his fingers slipping under the straps of my shirt and it’s ripping me apart, it’s aching in my core, it’s a pulse beating in every inch of my body and I’m trying to convince myself not to lose my head with I feel the straps fall down and everything stops.
The air is still.
My skin is scared.
Even my thoughts are whispering.
2
4
6 seconds I forget to breathe.
Then I feel his lips against my shoulder, soft and scorching and tender, so gentle I could almost believe It’s the kiss of a breeze and not a boy.
Do I even need to tell you that, that excerpt was displaying first time lovers heat? Didn’t think so. Kudos to Mafi for creating such steamy lyrical scenes with such emotional passion, I’m pretty sure she pushed the genre envelope by writing this poetic series.
Another incredible YA author that knows how to write active passion is Sophie Jordon. Uninvited will kick your breath away. Here is a teeny snippet, because I just can’t help myself.
He grabs my arm and whirls me around, smacking me right against him. I strain to get away, arching my body. His eyes hold me again. It’s always his eyes. The gray-blue so seductive, like smoke weaving its spell on me.
One of his hands cups the back of my head, fingers weaving into the wet strands. Everything inside me stills, locks tight as his palm curves around the back of my skull. I can only look into those eyes. Watch him watching me. Stare helplessly when his gaze drops to my mouth.
His head moves down swiftly, stopping just a half inch from my lips. Our breaths merge, mingle His hand flexes in my hair, as if testing the wet texture.
Then he closes the space between us. Kisses me finally. Sensation explodes inside me when his lips touch mine. It’s not tentative or shy like most first kisses. The ones I’ve had anyway.
The imagined reality of this teenage world is intoxicating. Who wouldn’t want to read YA/NA fiction?
Precisely.
But don’t let “First Love” and “First Time” memories limit you to the high school or college setting. Not all YA/NAs have to be like the high school Summer Nights of Grease. In Grease, the only thing getting in the way of the lover’s love is which side of the “tracks” they lived on and if you were a prep or a greaser. Authors today are placing their stories in wonderfully distorted dystopian locations, in the past, in the west, in the sky, and underground. It is truly astonishing to see the plethora of adventures we can write and read about today. The sky isn’t the limit anymore.
Because of the expansion of these stories, the audience of YA fiction is now surpassing anything publishers would have dreamed of 10 years ago. Literary agents are widening their submission guidelines to include YA/NA fiction and it’s multitude of sub-genres. Authors like Dean Koontz, James Patterson, Harlan Coben, John Grisham, and Candace Bushnell, etc. are now pushing out YA/NA series by the handful.
I refuse to let them have all of the fun.
So I ask you, “Are you ready to dive into the pool?” Because readers are out there. Out there waiting for their next emotional ride.
You have the super weapon of first time experiences in your hearts pocket. If you don’t write it, someone else will!
Thank you so much for visiting the new WITS site today. I hope your summer is creating wonderful memories for your future novels. In the comments: Without going into extreme detail, what are some of the first time memories you have nabbed for your writing? Did you enjoy writing them?
Tiffany Lawson Inman claimed a higher education at Columbia College Chicago. There, she learned to use body and mind together for action scenes, character emotion, and dramatic story development. Tiffany’s background in theatre provides her with a unique approach to the craft of writing, and her clients and students greatly benefit.
She teaches Action and Fighting, Choreography, Active Setting, Emotional Impact, Scene Writing, and Dialogue for Lawson Writer’s Academy online.
As a freelance editor, she provides deep story analysis, content editing, line by line, and dramatic fiction editing services. Stay tuned to Twitter @NakedEditor for Tiffany’s upcoming guest blogs around the internet, classes, contests, and lecture packets.
A few years ago, I ended a 15-year marriage to Microsoft Word and hooked up with a younger, sexier writing program: Scrivener. My graduate thesis took the shine off my romance with Word, but it was my foray into fiction that finally killed the relationship.
That’s because Scrivener understands my needs in a way that other word processors never have. Here are just a few reasons why I threw over the old standby for a newer model.
Scrivener remembers your spot. Every time you open a project in Scrivener, it takes you right to where you left off. Maybe not such a big deal when writing the first draft, but when you’re in the midst of revisions, it’s a lifesaver.
Your structure is easy to see. Scrivener lets you write in chunks—such as scenes or chapters—called documents. The Binder, where you view all of the documents in your project, gives you an at-a-glance overview of your entire manuscript and thus the structure of your work.
Change your mind about the order of scenes or chapters? It’s a cinch to move them around and play with a different story flow.
Saving epiphanies is easy.Got an idea for a future scene, but you’re not ready for it yet? Just create a new document, write out your idea, then ignore it until you figure out where it goes. You can also add notes right into the text you’re working on. When you can’t think of the perfect line of dialogue, or you need to do some additional research, simply insert an annotation or comment and get back to writing.
Color-coding. In Scrivener, you can color code your documents by whatever piece of data you want to track. For example, in the drafting phase I tag my fiction scenes by point-of-view (POV) character, using blue for the hero and pink for the heroine (original, right?). Instantly, I can see the POV of a scene and check my overall balance.
In the revision phase—and for nonfiction—I use the Label field to keep track of the status of each section (e.g. Not Started, WIP, To Editor, Author Review, Complete).
Auto-save protects your hard work.If you’ve ever faced the Blue Screen of Death, or lost power after writing 3,000 words without saving, you can appreciate that Scrivener saves your project every time there’s more than two seconds of inactivity. So while you’re pondering your next sentence, Scrivener’s committing your words to memory.
Scrivener is like Hermione Granger’s bottomless handbag. You can import research documents, web pages/links, and photos right into your project, so even when you take your laptop on the road, you have everything you need. You can also import any writing you already started in another program.
Plus, you can keep outlines, notes on ideas for changes and future scenes, and character and setting information all within the project. No more scouring your hard drive or that pile of sticky notes on your desk for a crucial piece of information.
Working without distractions. Scrivener’s full screen composition mode blocks out all distractions, making it easier to focus on your writing. Change the background color or image to suit your mood.
And there’s so much more! I could wax poetic about my fabulous writing partner all day. The ability to set word count goals and track your progress. The Corkboard where you can view each document as an index card (perfect for storyboarders). Advanced searches that help you find anything, anywhere in your project.
But one last thing…
Exporting to e-books is a snap. Scrivener is your one-stop publishing program. When your masterpiece is done, you can compile (export) it to an EPUB or MOBI (Amazon) file for easy self-publishing, or for perusing on your e-reader. You can also export to DOC, RTF, TXT, PDF, direct-to-printer, and other formats.
That’s just a small list of what makes Scrivener—available for Mac and Windows—too hot to resist. So, if you’re tired of your stodgy, inflexible word processor, hook up with a program that puts your needs as a writer first.
There’s no commitment with Scrivener’s free trial, but you just might find your happy ever after.
Hit me with your questions. One commenter will win free enrollment in one of my upcoming Scrivener online courses, or an electronic copy of my romantic suspense,Blind Fury (winner’s choice).
Bio:
Gwen Hernandez is the author of Scrivener For Dummies,Productivity Tools for Writers, and Blind Fury. She also teaches popular online Scrivener courses for Mac and Windows. The former Army/Navy brat is currently living in a hotel room while in the midst of relocating from the D.C. area to Boston with her Air Force husband, two teenage boys, and a lazy golden retriever. Learn more about her books or classes and get free Scrivener tips at gwenhernandez.com.
