Writers in the Storm

by Becca Puglisi

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about character chemistry—that spark, bond, or shared connection we often associate with strong and compelling romantic relationships. 

But chemistry shouldn’t be limited to love interests. Frodo and Sam, Thelma and Louise, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader…some of the most memorable relationships in fiction had nothing to do with physical attraction. If we can bring chemistry into the protagonist’s friendships, rivalries, or even mentor/protégé and adversarial relationships, the characters and dynamics will come alive for readers.

So I’d like to share six tips for creating that oomph between characters in any genre. 

1. Make the Characters Clash

Tension—the reader’s emotional response to what’s happening with the character—is a key element of chemistry and can be generated through conflict, suspense, uncertainty, and anticipation. When we examine tension within the context of relationships, it often arises through the interplay between the characters.

Even positive and symbiotic relationships need tension to keep them moving. So give the characters opposing traits—impulsive vs. cautious, logical vs. intuitive, tolerant vs. inflexible—to create that sense of strain. Maybe they have conflicting goals, or they’re pursuing the same objective but for different reasons. Are they opposed when it comes to certain questions of morality or ethics? Differences create friction, and friction creates interest. So make sure your characters challenge each other simply by being true to themselves.

2. Let Them See Each Other Clearly

Everyone wants to be seen; it’s something we look for in our real-world relationships, so adding that element to a fictional dynamic can give it an extra dose of authenticity. Maybe one character sees something in the other that most people miss: an undervalued strength or how they’re uniquely different. Maybe the character sees a friend’s flaws and weaknesses and are able to call those out in a way that’s challenging rather than critical. This depth of knowing each other speaks to a deeper kind of relationship that most readers appreciate and will respond to.

3. Don’t Forget the Subtext

I recently rewatched the TV show Lie to Me, and in the first episode, the protagonist claims that people on average lie three times per hour. I don’t know if that’s true, but it feels true. Whether we’re lying outright or covertly being deceptive (leaving out details, pretending to feel something we don’t, etc.), no one is completely honest all the time. 

Authentic characters hide things: their true feelings or opinions, what they really want, their insecurities and fears—even from the people they love and trust. So a character’s surface-level interactions (their words, choices, and behaviors) contradict what’s really going on inside (visceral responses, thoughts, and emotions). That subtext charges the energy in the relationship, making it crackle. 

This kind of chemistry is compelling to readers because it adds a sense of realism to the relationship. It also creates intrigue as the reader sees everything isn’t as it seems, and they start paying closer attention to figure out what’s happening under the surface.

4. Create Shared History or Inside Moments

Chemistry builds on shared experiences—good and bad. When you’re creating characters and their important relationships, add in backstory events that reveal a bond. When they reference those touchpoints, it reveals a depth to their relationship. If the characters are just getting to know each other and don’t yet have a history, create bonding moments—even something small, like a shared joke or win—to start building that depth early.

5. Make the Relationship Interesting

Chemistry is anything but boring, so it’s hard to find it between boring, predictable, or clichéd characters. What can you add to the relationship to make it unusual or interesting? 

• As discussed, make the characters clash through opposing traits, goals, or morality. 
• Unify them in a difficult objective. 
• Make the pairing itself unusual, as in the case of a high school chemistry teacher and his student joining forces to make meth.
• Give them a powerful joint enemy in the form of an individual, organization, a natural or supernatural force, or even the society or culture they live in.
• Add mystery. One of my favorite pairings in all of fiction is the one between Scout Finch and Boo Radley. Their relationship teems with chemistry despite them not talking or officially meeting until the very end. They were separated for most of the story, but the tension, energy, and spark were there because of the mystery surrounding Boo Radley.

Relationships are only as engaging as the characters who embody them, so invest ample time and energy in the character creation process to be sure you’re building a unique and authentic cast that readers will find interesting.

6. Ebb and Flow

Chemistry is very much about shifts and changes. A relationship where both parties are content and comfortable and everything stays the same will read as flat. One way to address this is to map out the relationship arc—all the characters’ interactions—throughout the story. Mark those events with a + or – sign to indicate strengthening (increased admiration, proven trust, bonding through adversity) or a decline (increased distance, an argument, loyalty being questioned). If you don’t see changes (if the relationship is mostly flat) add moments that create movement. This will keep it from stagnating, giving the relationship a sense of flow and evolution.

Basically, chemistry emerges not only from what the characters say and do, but through how they engage with each other. Big moments have big impact, but you can only have so many of those in a story. Capitalize on the small things that can bring about friction, camaraderie, subtext, and uncertainty in the relationship, and readers will be drawn in.

About Becca

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other resources for writers. Her books have sold over 1 million copies and are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online resource for authors that's home to the Character Builder and Storyteller's Roadmap tools.

Image Credits

Top image by TréVoy Kelly from Pixabay

Second image by Krzysztof from Pixabay

by Jenny Hansen

My day job involves helping businesses clearly define their brand, so they can turn their stories into money and clients. And do you want to know the most common request people approach me with? "Can you help with my marketing?" *shakes head* This is a common thread among businesspeople AND authors.

Branding and marketing are two very different things, and yet I see people mix them up all the time. Even worse, they try to put the least important of the two at the front of the line.

Before we dive into the "what, how, and why" of a strong author brand, here's a quick overview of the difference between branding and marketing.

Branding vs Marketing in a Nutshell

Branding is the foundation of your entire author platform, and marketing is the series of actions you take to express that brand. Let's break that down.

• Branding is the Why
• Marketing is the How
• Branding = Perception and Connection
• Marketing = Visibility and Conversion

The biggest takeaway for this post...

Until you clearly define your brand, your marketing won't work.

Why? Because your branding is "Who you are." Your marketing is just how you show up (e.g. social media or your newsletter). Your brand is the emotional imprint you leave on your readers. It is your identity. It's your VIBE.

Besides your actual writing, building a strong brand is the most important thing you can do for yourself as an author.

Branding is the foundation of everything else. Everything. Without a strong brand, your marketing will just sound like a bunch of noise with no purpose except "please please please buy my book."

Branding includes:

• Your voice and tone
• Your values and mission
• Your visual identity (logo, colors, design)
• Your personal story
• The emotional promise you make to your audience (aka readers)

Branding answers the question: “What do you want people to think, feel, and say about you and your books?”

The greatest strategic creative in America

The greatest strategic creative of our time (IMHO) is Dolly Parton. She's not just a singer, she's an icon. Her fans have followed her across musical genres, watched her movies, stayed in her hotels, and visited her theme park. And do you know why? She is a strategic branding guru with a clearly defined philosophy, which is...

"Find out who you are, and do it on purpose."

That's her superpower in a nutshell. Across all of her endeavors, Dolly is true to both herself and her brand.

Dolly Parton's brand:

• Her voice and tone: country, unpretentious, kind, resilient
• Her values and mission: she cares...about Tennessee (she and Dollywood donated close to $3M for Hurricane Helene victims/cleanup), about reading (she founded the Imagination Library in 1995), about health (she donated $1M to Covid research at Vanderbilt University)
• Her visual identity: big hair, bold colors (especially pink), confident femininity, glamor, sparkle, and country charm
• Her personal story: she grew up in a big Tennessee mountain family in deep poverty, before building her career in Nashville and beyond
• The emotional promise she makes to her audience: You can shine bright, lead with kindness, and rise above life's challenges with grace and grit.

Here's a timeline of Dolly Parton's good deeds, if you're interested. (Clearly, I'm a fan.)

Figuring Out Your Own Brand is a Process

Have you ever heard the following African proverb?

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

This applies to branding in a major way, because most of us can't see ourselves clearly. An example we've probably all experienced:

You know how your author friends can sell your stories effortlessly? Someone asks what you write, and your brain freezes for a moment. Typically, your friend will slide right into describing the best parts of you and your story. Meanwhile, you might be fumbling around for that elevator pitch you imprinted on your memory, so you'd be ready for this exact moment.

We can all define someone else far more easily than we can ourselves. This applies to so many authorly things: bios, blurbs, and (you guessed it!) branding.

Below are a few "how to's" to help you dive into the heart of your own brand.

Step 1: Enlist some help!

Before you give yourself anxiety trying to do all this branding business yourself, plan to enlist some help. Below are a few exercises for you to try out with other people.

If you're already established:

Established Authors, your best resource is your superfans. There are reasons why people are buying your books, joining your street team, or adding you to their auto-buy list. Find out what those reasons are!

Here's how you do it:

1. Go to your Facebook group, newsletter, or wherever you connect with your fans.
2. Tell them you are doing some research about your author brand, and you need their help. Ask any who are interested to send you a direct personal message.
3. Schedule a phone or video call with them (20-30 minutes should be more than enough time).
4. I highly recommend you offer them a free book after they've answered the bulleted questions below.

Your questions:

• Why do you like my books?
• Why do you like them really? (The use of "really" provokes a more thoughtful response.)
• Which of my books do you like the best, and why?
• What made you join my (fill in the blank for whatever they opted into)?
• What has made you stay in my (fill in the blank)?
• Is there anything you'd love me to do more of?

Some people really DON'T feel they can do the interview. While I recommend that you DO, it's counterproductive to force things. Just ask a variation of the questions above (only one, so people are more likely to answer), as a Facebook post. You won't get the value you'd get with the process I recommend above, but you'll at least get a tiny sliver of it.

If you're trying to become established:

You will have to research differently than someone who's already well-established. In many ways, you have the advantage here because you're doing this research before you publish.

Here's what I recommend:

1. Find established authors who are similar to you in multiple ways (ex: genre, story themes, personality, settings, background).
2. Pick two or more authors and study their brand. Minutely! (Websites, social profiles/conversations, Amazon pages, book covers, articles...all fair game.)
3. Define each author's brand using the bullet points in the "biggest takeaway" section above.
4. List how you and that author are most alike and most un-alike.
5. Pick and choose elements of each author's branding that "feel like you" and re-write them for yourself. Make a few versions of this.
6. Give those versions to several different kinds of people who know you well. (ex: family, colleague, friend, fellow writer)
   • Ask them to list up to 5 adjectives/qualities that describe you.
   • Ask them which bullet point list sounds closest to describing you.
   • Ask them to tell you which individual points "don't sound a thing like you" (and why).
   • Ask them whether there is something they feel you should add or take away from the lists you compiled (and why).

Step 2: Make several drafts.

No matter which of the above categories you're in, you've just done a heck of a lot of detective work trying to figure out your brand. It's a bit overwhelming to do all that research on yourself. Take a minute to sit with it before you do anything with what you've learned.

Note: The majority of authors are introverts. If that describes you, then all that people-ing has earned you an intermission!

Maybe go put your feet up, and sip on the beverage of your choice.

When you're ready...

Sift through everyone's answers for the things you didn't expect, or comments that don't fit how you thought about yourself. Those are some of your biggest clues on where to focus your brand strategy. Because, again, we rarely see ourselves clearly. Those people you interviewed didn't just give you their time, they gave you the gift of insight.

Remember: "Branding is what people say about you when you're not in the room." It's almost impossible to figure out your strongest author brand without some help.

The Why of Your Author Brand

We've talked a bit about how to figure out your author brand, and what defines that brand. But why is it so important for us to do this?

Your brand is what builds recognition, loyalty, and trust.

Without those three emotions, no one will be moved to spend time or money on your stories. Marketing is largely a waste of your time and money if you don't build it around a strong, consistent author brand.

Taking the time and energy to build that brand thoughtfully is a love letter to your readers.

Put the best of you in your branding.

Your brand needs to reflect YOU.

For example, if you love sewing, small towns, animals, military, libraries, scuba diving, gardening, the beach, or something else, that thing you love will absolutely be in your books. The more specific the thing you love, the more "your kind of people" will be drawn to you (and your books).

Don't be afraid to be specific.

You don't need a gajillion fans to earn a living. A thousand or more will make a significant impact on your bank account. Start by building a brand that attracts the first hundred, and expand from there.

Why must you include what you love in your branding?

Including what you love will make you happier as an author. Don't brand with "what you think will get you readers," brand with a vibe that is pure you. Plus, branding with the things you love means that there are tax write-offs for the smart authorpreneur. Those things you love become "research" and "marketing expenses."

Some examples:

I know an author who loves chocolate and travel, and has incorporated both into her newsletter and giveaways. Plus, she holds a few travel events every year. Just imagine being paid to travel by taking some superfans along!

Another author loves small towns and cooking. She makes videos of herself cooking and creating recipes. She also gives recipes away in her newsletter. Guess what is a write-off for her? Her newsletter software, any ingredients or cooking supplies she uses in her videos, and any branding elements she created as background for those videos.

Still another author friend is into all things gothic. She really adores black, purple, moonlight, and wine. Her books are paranormal romance (vampires), and her Amazon pages and book covers are very distinct with those four elements. She is her brand, and her brand is her.

A thriller author who contributes here at WITS has done police ride-alongs and courses on all sorts of badassery that she uses in her novels. Every bit of that is a tax write-off and it is all incorporated in her brand.

Note: Bestselling authors usually have someone branding for them. For our purposes, they don't count. We are looking for ways that newer or midlist authors can use branding to build strong brands that can grow with them and make them happy.

Final Thought

I'll say it once again: Branding is not marketing.

Branding is what authorpreneurs need to do BEFORE they start marketing. Like historical authors whose research informs the direction of their story, branding will point you to the marketing efforts are a great fit for you.

If you've never put thought into this, then today is a great day to start. Conversely, if you've branded something that doesn't feel authentic to you, today is a great day to begin giving your current brand a glow-up.

The more thought you put into your brand, the farther it will take you, and the more your marketing efforts will build into sales.

Have you worked on your author brand? If not, what's stopping you? Are you willing to share your brand, and why you chose it, down in the comments? I'm happy to brainstorm and talk branding with you!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.

Top photo created in Canva. Dolly Parton photo from Flickr, CC License 2.0.

by Jenn Windrow

Developmental editing is one of the most important steps in your book’s journey to publication, and one that shouldn't be skipped. But many authors are unsure what to expect when they hire a developmental editor. What is an editor looking for when they open your manuscript and read that first sentence? What questions do they ask themselves about your MS to help you write the best book that you can? How deep are they going to go when scouring your words?

As a developmental editor for six years, I’ve read dozens of manuscripts, and almost every time, my clients are surprised by the things I find. Things they never noticed the gazillion times they read it before sending it to me. I always tell them that’s normal. It's easier to see the problem areas in someone else’s work than in your own.

That’s true for me as well. Just ask my critique partners.

To help you understand what I look for when I read a manuscript, I’m going to share with you the list of questions I always ask myself as I am editing a manuscript.

Let’s get started…

Story structure

Is the story’s structure clear and engaging?

When I edit, I ask myself whether the author followed the basic rules of structuring a novel. Sure, a novel’s structure can vary slightly depending on the genre, so there are exceptions, but most books follow the same structure. So, I ask myself, “Did they hit all their pinch points, plot points, and the mid-point reveal? Are the genre’s conventions being honored? If not, why, and does it still work?”.

Is the pacing effective and appropriate with buildup and resolution?

One of the comments I leave most frequently is, “Remove this section, it slows the pacing.” Usually, I note this in areas with a lot of internal thought in the middle of the action. But it can be anything that disrupts the flow of the story and makes the reader want to skim to get to the good parts. Most often, the section that slows the pacing needs to be cut, removed, or moved.

Plot

Is there conflict in every chapter?

This one is huge for me. Even a cozy book must have conflict. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a story. Conflict is the driving force of a well-written novel, but I’ve edited plenty in which there are full chapters of characters sitting around and talking. Now, if they are laying out plans to rob a bank, then you’ve got conflict (or at least the start of it), but if they are sitting around and discussing the weather, and it is not integral to the plot, you don’t have conflict.

When it comes to plot, I like to remind my clients that every word, every sentence, every paragraph has one job: Move the plot forward.

Are there plot holes or inconsistencies?

As an editor, it is my job to ensure that the main plot, and especially the subplots, are all wrapped up and topped with a pretty bow by the end of the book so the reader doesn’t tumble into a plot hole.

I also make notes when something contradicts what was previously established in the plot. Even silly things, such as a character who was wearing a blue shirt two lines ago and is now wearing a green one. Those are all considered plot holes and inconsistencies, and when I edit, I am searching for all of it.

Characters

Are your characters believable and relatable?

To me, this means likable. Now, not all characters have to be likable. Not everyone you meet in the world is likable, but even if they aren’t likable, they have to be relatable. The reader must understand why they do what they do or what makes them a Grumpy Gus.

Do the characters have clear motivation and goals?

I think the main characters’ goal and motivation should be established in the first chapter (or close to it), and if you have a well-structured novel, it will be. If you do this well, then the reader can follow the character’s journey to the end, when they ultimately achieve their goal.

Dialogue

Does the dialogue sound natural?

When editing, I frequently encounter character dialogue that reads (or sounds) stilted or robotic, and I am sure you have come across it when you’re reading. This can be due to a lack of contractions or too many words used to express their thoughts. The best way to fix this problem is to read your book out loud. You’ll hear the cadence of the words and be able to detect and fix the problem in your MS.

Point of View

Is the point of view consistent?

One of the first things I identify is point of view (POV). Is the author writing in first person or third person? Past or present? Are there multiple character POVs, or only one? 

Once I’ve established this, I ask myself whether the author is consistent, or do they “head hop?” Head hopping is when the author slips into another character’s POV and back again (usually within the same paragraph/scene), or they allow a character to know information that hasn’t yet been revealed to them by another character. In the latter case, I’ll often leave the comment, “The character can’t know this.”

Head hopping is not only wrong, but it’s also jarring for the reader. A good editor will point out when you slip into a different POV.

And the biggest question I ask myself when I am editing a book…

Is the opening engaging and impactful?

IMO, an engaging opening drops the reader right into the action. It introduces the characters, their story world, and the journey they are about to embark on. It showcases your writing style. And above all else, it leaves the reader wanting more.

I could write three blog posts on this subject alone, but I am going to stop here.

I hope that seeing the questions I ask myself when I’m doing a developmental edit will help you during your own editing process. Maybe when you are plotting and planning, you can look at this list and answer these questions before you even start writing. Or while you are self-editing, you can keep this list next to you to make sure you have hit all the points. 

In the end, it will make your editor’s job easier when they begin work on your novel.

If you’ve worked with a developmental editor before, was there anything your editor did or said that surprised you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

About Jenn

Jenn Windrow is an award-winning author of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. When she isn’t editing her own books, she spends her time helping other authors shape their characters and worlds into the best books they can be.

Jenn loves characters who have a pinch of spunk, a dash of attitude, and a large dollop of sex appeal. Top it all off with a huge heaping helping of snark, and you’ve got the ingredients for the kind of fast-paced stories she loves to read and write. Home is a suburb of it’s-so-hot-my-shoes-have-melted-to-the-pavement Phoenix, where she lives with her husband, two teenagers, and a slew of animals that seem to keep following her home. At least that’s what she claims.

Website: https://jennwindrow.com/