While a great premise, unforgettable characters, and a fantastic fictional world are surefire ways to keep readers invested in your story, if everything is smooth sailing for your characters, it makes for a pretty boring tale.
Even the happiest of stories requires some upheaval, a hook, to keep the reader on board. But don’t worry, your character doesn’t need to lose their entire family to achieve such a thing, but messing up their world is a requirement, and here are 3 ways to do it…
3 Ways To Mess Up Your Character’s World And Hook Your Readers
1) Negative Changes
A divorce, a death, a teen/child character being forced to move to a new place/school against their will, or a breakup. Add something to your story that disturbs the peace of your characters.
It might be the catalyst for their journey or a side story, but the negative change should…
Today is a day (in several countries, the US included) dedicated to planting trees. Trees give us air. They give us shade. They give us beauty.
They give us stories?
Not exactly. I’m not talking The Giving Tree. (And don’t get me started on how tragic that story is.) And I don’t mean in the sense that wood becomes paper in some instances, which could eventually become pages of books.
So, what do I mean? In honor of Arbor Day, I thought we’d have a little fun and compare trees to story.
The Seeds
You can’t have a tree without a seed. This could be planted by someone or a naturally occurring event in the woods (or even your yard). But to grow a tree, you start with the seeds.
You start a story the same way. Just the kernel of an idea is…
Let me start by saying that this is a topic I use in my current need to write blog posts that give us a bit of information about how things really were in the ‘good old days’… I wrote about Historical Romance and Hygiene, I wrote an article describing Health and Ladies Fashion, and their […]
Hi SErs! It’s a day of Harmony here at Story Empire 🙂 Today, as promised in Homonyms with Harmony Part 1–Introduction, I’d like to share with you some common differences between US and UK spellings as well as word usage. And, as this is Admin Professional’s Day, what better time than to make sure we write it right?!
Words at War:
In my book on how to self-edit, Polish Your Prose, (Booklinker has stopped working just now, so instead of a universal link, here are the US and UK links in case it still isn’t working when you click on it. Sorry.) I have a whole chapter devoted to this common uncommon language. In this post, I’ll share the tables and information I made for this topic.
NOTE: While this post focusses on American versus British English, I would like to…
Well, I think I have really lost my writer marbles this time. Who would write 2 first drafts at the same time? Surely writing 1 first draft is enough pain and struggle?
That’s what I initially thought when my brain suggested this bizarre approach. The words, ‘no way!’ shot out of my mouth…as I sat on a busy train to London. The poor sleeping stranger next to me woke up with a jolt. I was forced to apologise to them, turn back to the train window and curse my writer brain for sending me ridiculous writing ideas.
After a hectic day in the office, a tasty burger at the station, a wander around the book shop and a sweaty sprint for the train as I’d got my timings wrong, I found myself sitting on a return train home considering my writer brain’s ridiculous and silly…
Hi SEers! Denise here to talk about one of the last steps before publishing—formatting.
Your manuscript is polished, a blurb is ready to go, the cover is eye-catching, and the blog tour is scheduled. All that is left is to get your book ready to upload to Amazon, Smashwords/Draft2Digitial, Apple, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you publish your books.
In the past, I’ve had companies do this step for me and been pleased with their work that included formatting and uploading the book—but it was pricey. So, I learned how to upload my own books but used a professional formatter. Still, this wasn’t an expense I needed, and I set out how to learn how to format a book.
The very first time out, I did okay. I used the Kindle Create app. All I had to do was upload my work. There was a learning curve along the way…
Sheila slogged up the steps to her front door. She was tired, both mentally and physically. The party had been draining on her. She really hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, and there were so many people at the noisy club, it was practically chaos. Why had Julie invited her, anyway? She knew she wasn’t a party person, and definitely not a club person. And Jim, of all people, had been there, too. Why had Julie invited him, too? Julie should have known what would happen if she ran into her ex. And it almost did. Julie was lucky Shelia had managed to get away without causing too much of a scene. What a mess.
Now all Sheila wanted was to get inside, change into something more comfortable than her party dress, and crawl into bed and stay there for a week.
Sheila unlocked her door and stepped inside. She stopped after only a couple of steps and groaned. Her widened eyes surveyed what she could only call a scene of utter chaos in her living room.
Figurines off her bookshelf lay scattered on the floor, along with a handful of books. A few of the figurines had shattered. The vase and magazines had been knocked off the coffee table. Pillows from the sofa were also on the floor, as well as the table lamps from the side tables. The small footstool in front of the sofa has been tipped over. It almost looked like a crime scene. Except for one thing.
The toilet paper.
The toilet paper that trailed down the hall towards the living room.
Sheila stared at it all for a moment, taking it all in. Then she shook off her shock and moved down the hallway, following the trail of toilet paper to the bathroom, where another chaotic scene greeted her. All the toilet paper had been rolled off the roll into a pile on the floor around the toilet and trailed out the door.
Sheila sighed and growled out one word. “Mitzi!”
Sheila went to the small, spare room next door to the bathroom. She had set up the room as Mitzi’s room, complete with a cat bed, a food and water bowl, and a small cat tree beneath a window. Here she found among all the scattered cat toys on the floor a tipped-over litter box, its litter spilled out onto the floor. The culprit, a little calico cat, lay beside it like the victim in a crime scene – except for the slightly twitching tail.
Sheila stared in wonder. How could something so small cause so much chaos? she thought After a moment, she sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Mitzi,” she muttered. “What am I going to do with you?”
Sheila left the room and headed for the kitchen to get a broom. It looked like she wouldn’t be crawling into bed just yet.
Greetings, Storytellers. Diana here to chat about a common obstacle faced by most writers – lack of TIME.
I hope I’ve intrigued you with the post’s title. If you’re like me, you have one heck of a time finding a single measly hour in your day to write (or partake in any creative venture). Work, kids, spouses, parents, chores, and a myriad of other obligations frequently get in the way.
And we’re not willing to give these “distractions” up. Some of these time-consumers are pure pleasure. Others … not so much. But to some degree, they all vie for our attention. Time to write gets squeezed and, on occasion, it surrenders altogether.
How do we create more time to write?
Some of the suggestions below are tried and true time management techniques, and some are strategies that I’ve used with short-term and long-term success. What works for one person, may…
Driving along the back roads of Vermont, you learn to appreciate the nearly forgotten charms of the printed roadmap. GPS is spotty in Vermont, and it’s easy to find yourself on a narrow, deeply rutted dirt road that seems to lead nowhere. You get to a place where you literally can’t see the forest for the trees. And then you know you are well and truly lost.
Contemplating what comes after you’ve completed the first draft of a novel is a lot like getting lost in Vermont. The journey up to now has been beautiful and inspiring, but at some point, you have to admit that you have no idea where you’re going or if you’ll ever find your way back home.
For the writer (a traveler of sorts), this predicament raises existential questions: How do you find a way back to the beginning, or else…
Hi, Gang. Craig with you once more to talk about something that concerns me; Artificial Intelligence. (AI) I’m going to qualify myself by saying I grew up as a pen & ink draftsman in a surveying firm. This was the first time I noticed computers taking over. Might as well be the village blacksmith as a draftsman these days.
I’ve seen other projects “modified” by AI for decades, like the deep water crab boats in Alaska. The ship drives itself to the traps then signals the crew to haul one in. After it “improves” an industry, the AI wave seems to move on to the next one.
Here we are at the author’s doorstep, and what set this post in motion involves AI art creation programs. Everyone is monkeying around with them these days, and I’ve done it myself. The app I used seems to create people with extra arms…
on Jane Friedman site:
Jeanne Owens, author 