Writers in the Storm

Note: Congratulations to Robin Kramme, winner of the giveaway by Melissa Cutler!
Writers In The Storm is thrilled to welcome Steena Holmes.

There’s one key aspect to writing that authors either love or hate. Promotion. We either find it exciting and can’t wait to dive in or we fortify ourselves with pots of coffee followed by bottles of wine all the while wishing our books would magically appear on the bestsellers list with no effort on our part.

I’m one of those authors who fortify myself with a fresh pot of coffee and some of my favorite chocolate before I dive in. But I’m not relying on magic. I have a Street Team!

A street team is made up of readers who love your storytelling and want to help get the word out about your book(s).

Why have a street team? Simple – promotion! By banding together readers who love your stories, you’ve expanded your sphere of influence to reach more potential readers. The best form of promotion after all is word of mouth.

Creating a street team

First, I had to get over the “Who in their right mind would want to join my street team” angst, I’d seen several authors spam their way through social media trying to get people to join their team. Not the way I wanted to approach this.

The objective for me was not to get more sales, but gain new readers.

How?

• I redirected attention off me and focused on my books. Through social media (Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, etc) I connected with readers.
• I redesigned my website so that it would be more appealing to readers.
• I created Steena’s Secret Society. Who can resist a “secret society”?
• I built up my newsletter following and sent out a special invite to join my Secret Society.

That’s it. I didn’t fill up my friends timeline with multiple requests to join my street team. I didn’t create a group and then invite all my friends and all the authors I knew. I didn’t join Goodreads discussions or visit the kindle boards and entice strangers with free books.

In other words – all I did was ask the readership I had built up if they’d like to be part of my secret society. I didn’t want to inflate my street team with people who ONLY wanted free gifts. I wanted people who loved my stories and would support me as an author.

I expected to garner only a handful of readers who were interested. I was surprised at the responses and found myself needing to cap it to a level I found manageable for the beginning.

Once I created my group I had one focus. NOT to promote myself.

Weird, right?

Counter productive? No.

I don’t want just a street team. I want a community. I want it to be a place where my ‘sisters’ feel like they belong. Where they feel a personal connection not only with me but with each other.

Why?

Because I write stories that touch women’s hearts. If I’m going to connect with them personally, then I need to connect with their hearts as well. I don’t want a group that will only promote me if I’m throwing gift cards or free books or other items their way. I want them to want to promote me – because we’ve built a connection, because they love my stories, because they want to see me succeed.

What about the free stuff?

Of course I offer free stuff as well. They get swag for being part of my group and then I offer gift cards and chocolates here and there as a way to say thank you for all the promoting they do. But I’m the type of person who likes to be part of their lives – so when they lose a loved one, when there is a wedding, Easter, Christmas, birthdays...they are not JUST my street team – they have become my friends.

And to me, that’s the key. I’m connecting with my readers in a personal way. My street team are my readers. My team will grow and will continue to bond as a community, as a family.

It’s probably why it started out as Steena’s Secret Society and my group now calls themselves Steena’s Secret Sisters.

Have you started a Street Team? What worked for you? Or are you part of a Street Team and what made you join?

About Steena

Chocoholic. Reader. Wife. Chocoholic. Mother. Author. Chocoholic. Living a life full of passion is the only way to live – especially if you have coffee on hand. Author of Bestselling Finding Emma, Steena snagged a 3-book deal with Amazon Publishing after thousands of readers fell in love with a little girl and grandfather from her story. Emma’s Secret is coming out June 25th! Visit www.steenaholmes.com to find out more.

First a quick congratulations to the winners of the two most recent giveaways: Deb Kastner and cwolffe both won a copy of Laura Drake's debut release;  Karen Duvall will be taking a Margie Lawson class! Now, please give a warm WITS welcome to Melissa Cutler (take note folks, she's doing a giveaway).

I'm excited to be on Writers in the Storm today talking about how to keep readers turning the page long after their bedtime. One of the best pieces of revision advice I ever got was from a national best-selling author: There's no such thing as big problems in a manuscript. They're all little problems.

I wholeheartedly agree. What can at first look like a sweeping, vague issue (like the ubiquitous term pacing) really just boils down to a chain of small craft choices an author makes on every single page. I used the word chain because when it comes to page turning potential, layering is key.

If you've been told, either by agents, editors, or crit groups that you have a pacing problem, don't get overwhelmed. Yes, look at where you enter and exit each scene, but also try this: zoom in to a single plot point or interaction between characters and analyze how you build anticipation.

Okay, yeah. That's great. But how?

My answer: promises and answers. Throughout a story, the author continuously makes leading promises, both big and small, about what is to come. Readers, then, anticipate the fulfillment of those promises. On a whole book scale, this is easy to see in romance novels—the reader is promised a happy ending and (hopefully) reads until the promise is fulfilled.

But it's the hundreds of little promises an author introduces along the way that make up the lifeblood of anticipation and keeps readers up past their bedtime.

There are two distinct author skills at work here: 1) knowing how to frame promises that hook readers and 2) how to layer a momentum gathering chain of promises and fulfillment.

How you frame the promise: There are lots of ways. Here's a few…

1. It can be as subtle as planting an object in an earlier scene that will be crucial later on in the story. For example, if you pointedly explain that a character hides her diary where no one will ever find it, then savvy readers are going to expect that someday, someone is going to find that diary and all the consequence will be OMG important.
2. Or it can be more obvious, such as a qualifying statement tacked onto the end of a character's declaration. "It didn't matter how sexy her smile was, he refused to hold the elevator for her. Not after what happened last week." ***And you'll be rewarded with bonus page turning potential if you hint that the answer or secret is juicy or sexy or so huge that every other character's life will be forever changed.
3. Sometimes, these promises come in the forms of introducing a question in readers' minds. For example, having a character note a detail, or a hero realizing his girlfriend won't look him in the eye when she tells him she was home alone all night.
4. And sometimes the promises are a vague statement made by a character, either aloud or internally. "She took one look at the man across the lobby and knew her life would never be the same." Should you explain in the next sentence or paragraph why her life will never be the same? Please, no. Save that all-important secret for later, dole it out in pieces at critical moments

The point is this—don't come right out and blab a character's secret. Don't lay out a character's each and every intention up front. And whatever you do, don't dump the juicy backstory in a big, unexciting clump. Tease! Hint! Make them turn the page to find out. Most importantly: don't fulfill a promise until you've introduced at least one more.

I don't know about you, but concrete examples work best for me. To show you what I mean, here's a scene example from my June release, Tempted into Danger. On this page, the heroine has tried to kiss the hero, but he rebuffed her advances.

"Why shouldn’t I kiss you again?" she said. "Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t do something we both want. And don’t you dare deny it.”

You've just promised the readers they're going to get an information reveal. Do you give it to them right away? No way. Make the reader turn the page to find out.

I used these next lines to let the reader see what's going on with each character internally, which gives a hint that the answer is going to be juicy and emotional:

He whirled on her. The look on his face was dark, pained. “You need a reason?”

She raised her chin a notch. “Yes.”

Time to anchor the moment with some blocking that introduces the next promise—putting the two characters in close proximity. This particular plot beat, when an author brings two characters into each other's physical space, is one of my favorites and gives readers lots of great anticipation of what is to come.

Three steps and he was before her, his hands on her shoulders. His eyes squeezed closed, and he lowered his forehead to hers.

Do I let him answer her question now? Only with an answer that introduces a new question…

He brushed his thumb across her cheek. “Because one kiss with you wouldn’t be enough for me.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Hell, yes, it’s a problem. Because…” He went silent.

“Tell me.”

It's time to let him come clean.

“Because all the things you deserve, I can’t give you any of them. I can’t even tell you my real name.”

Why do I let him answer that question? Because now the readers have the promise of something else, given that the two characters are embracing, with their faces close. What is that next promise? A kiss, of course! Does he kiss her in the next sentence? Nope. It's another full page of them in close proximity before the actual kiss happens. And while they're kissing—yes, while the actual kiss is taking place—I introduce the next promise, which is a doosy. It's this subtle chain of author choices, this layering of promises, that pushes momentum forward page after page.

Combine this method of layered promises and fulfillment with scenes that start and end in the right place, as well as characters that readers care about, and you have yourself some great page turning potential.

Giveaway: I'm giving away a copy (print or digital) of my sexy cowboy contemporary, THE TROUBLE WITH COWBOYS,  to one commenter. So tell me, what manuscript are you working on right now?

My thanks to Writers in the Storm for hosting me today. I love hearing from readers and am really easy to find at www.melissacutler.net, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MelissaCutlerBooks ), and Twitter (@m_cutler). And you can always email me at melissa@melissacutler.net or sign up for my newsletter (http://www.melissacutler.net/newsletter/ ) to find out about my latest books and upcoming events.

About Melissa

Melissa Cutler knows she has the best job in the world, dividing her time between her dual passions for writing sexy contemporary romances for Kensington Books and edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense for Harlequin. She was struck at an early age by an unrelenting travel bug and is probably planning her next vacation as you read this. When she's not globetrotting, she's enjoying Southern California's flip-flop wearing weather and wrangling two rambunctious kids.

By Laura Drake

Normally I’d be too nervous to claim a WriterStrong post, but today I’m emboldened by my debut release. After fifteen years of work, tomorrow, I become a real live author at last!

I want to celebrate with my WITS buds by giving away The Sweet Spot to two random commenters. Stop back; we’ll announce the winners on Wednesday’s post!

My goal is to learn something about craft with every new book I write. The Sweet Spot was my lesson in portraying emotion. All I can say is, thank the writing Gods for Margie Lawson. I knew what I wanted to say before her classes, but didn’t know how to get it on the page.

We’ve all read the usual heart-pounding, stomach churning, blah, blah, blah emotion. It invites skimming by the reader, because we’ve seen it all before. In fact, we’ve seen it so often that it can be considered cliché. It’s also almost ‘telling.’

If we’re not feeling the emotion in a deep POV, then the author is ‘telling’ us, right? It’s lazy writing.

Hey, I’m guilty of it too.

When I find one of those in my writing, I make myself stop, close my eyes, and put myself in the character’s situation. I actually picture the scene happening to me. Then I note what I’m feeling. Here’s a few examples from The Sweet Spot:

• The homing beacon in the Valium bottle next to the sink tugged at her insides.
• He hadn’t heard that delighted, tinkling sound in over a year. It slammed into his chest like a fist. Who made her laugh again?
• She understood then, saw clearly the fork in the river, but in the, churning current, sinuous shapes slid past, baring teeth. Hungry, guilt-tipped teeth. Petrified to numb cowardice, she let him leave, and floated away on her life raft of Valium.
• She felt around the edges of her mind. She'd forgotten something. Something important. It barreled from a tunnel and slammed her to reality. The hollowness in her chest made her gasp and she hugged herself, afraid she would implode.  Benje is gone

WRITE FRESH:

Have you ever read a character’s emotion that is so real -- said in a way that you’ve never read before? One that makes you think -- That’s just what it feels like!

One of my favorite authors, Jodi Picoult, does this many times a book. There’s a reason she’s NYT – with every single release. It’s a lofty goal, but one worth striving for.

• Agitation amped until a fine hum of electricity ran right under his skin, making him want to jump out of it.
• Her chest spasmed like a fibrillating heart; having forgotten the skill of breathing.
• Did she dare trust that softened spot on her freezer-burned heart?
• Oh, she’d been mad at Jimmy, plenty mad. In the beginning. But after the initial rush of words, the mad was gone, just like that. As if the anger were a heavy bucket of water she’d toted around; she’d gotten used to its weight. Apparently there’d been a hole in the bottom, and the anger had leaked out the past year, unnoticed. Now, without it, she felt kind of . . . naked.
• Hands busy, he shot her his, “I-may-be-wrong-but-I’m-not-admitting-anything” look.

TRUST YOUR READER:

Sometimes the most powerful description does not mention the emotion itself. The author trusts that the reader will get it.  It’s like a scary movie; your mind conjures scarier things than the cameraman could ever show you. Try this in a black moment, or a key turning-point scene.  It’s subtle, and can be powerful.

• Myfaultmyfaultmyfaultmyfault. The taunting litany chided her as she groped her purse for her keys. Finding them, she dropped the purse, scattering former essentials of her life onto the cement floor. After a few fitful tries, her shaking hands managed the lock.
• Hearing a rapid tapping, she looked down to see her foot bouncing on the bleacher. She made it stop.
• She muttered, staring at the login screen for their accounting software. Password? She tapped in the first number that occurred to her, the date of their anniversary. The program popped open to the business checking account. A single, sparkly bubble rose from the depth of her mind. “Nobody changes those things once they set them.” The bubble popped.

Short and pithy:

You can give flavor of genre or your story world with short succinct descriptions. They showcase your voice. Done well, they can ‘show’ the reader the mood in just a few words. Capture it, and your reader will be in the scene.

• A strange calm radiated from her chest to fill her body, a liquid balm that cooled her hot skin and stilled the roar in her head. Sounds came to her; the drone of a lone cicada and the soft burble of water as it tumbled over rocks in the river’s bend.
• Stetsoned cowboys strutted around glittery ladies in a barroom mating dance. The females flitted and flirted, choosing their mates for the evening.
• Bella wore the black faux leather like chain mail.

So, what do you think? Have you ever tried any of these to get the emotion on the page? I’d love to see some of yours posted in the comments!