Violent religions come and go with time, but some stick around for centuries.
Some religions are not entirely violent but have certain sects that branch off that are extreme and violent.
Make sure that if you create a violent sect or religion that there be an underlying cause for the violence that “justifies” violence in the eyes of its believers.
To keep it realistic and interesting make sure that it is a cause some are willing to die and kill for.
And at the end of the story make sure your reader knows it’s just fiction.
2. Overbearing governments
Overbearing governments are nothing new or shocking.
They do make a world that is interesting to read about. Follow the struggles of a few in detail and the many in general.
3. Rebellions
Overbearing governments naturally breed constant rebellions and uprisings.
Use these rebellions to make your government sweat or to make your main characters a part of the rebellion.
Or make your main characters a part of the government that is being fought against.
5 Oppressive Settings for World Building
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Imagine book-burning, giant piles of smoking books after a night of crowds and mass fires.
Imagine people hiding books in their houses.
They hide them in their walls, in their floors, in their bookshelves, in their food storage.
What does the government do to those rebels that they find with the banned books?
5. Banning religions
Banning religions and certain sects of religions is nothing new either.
What do they do to those they find practicing this religion? What measures does the government take to find them?
Are your main characters part of the religion or part of the government that bans it?
Who are the “good” people and the “bad” people?
What is right and what is wrong in this world?
Write oppressive settings in your fictional story to keep your reader intrigued and on the edge of their seat while they read into your story. Writing story settings that are in turmoil is a good way to keep your reader interested in what will happen next.
Focus on the natural things that could happen in a world like this so that the consequences are believable to your reader.
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How to Write a Book: 32 Tips | Your MASSIVE Guide How to Write a Book
We didn’t want you to have to scrape the internet for ALL the professional advice out there on how to write a book so we did it for you and compressed it into this massive guide for you to use and enjoy forever!
Okay…maybe not forever but at least long enough to start and FINISH your book.
The easy part is starting your book. But we all know that the hardest part is finishing the darn little thing.
So if you really want to know what the professionals are saying you can find some of that advice conveniently for you right here.
With 6000+ words and 32 tips, be sure to save this resource to your favorites so you can reference back to it anytime you want because it would be difficult to take in all at once.
Find Your Writer’s Mindset
It can be easy to think stuff like, “I’m not good enough.” “No one will read this.” “How can I compete with them?”
Self-doubt is a hideous beast and it preys on all that would venture outside of themselves to try to do anything more than exist in life.
“Imposter’s Syndrome.” Self doubt.” Call it whatever you want but you have to fight against it.
Just think if Stephen King, Rowling, Lewis, or Tolkien thought this way and ended up not writing anything at all. How sad would that be?
To think that you could predict the future that your book wouldn’t be good is quite the ability.
Instead find your writer’s mindset.
“Amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals get to work.” – Stephen King.
Finding your writer’s mindset means finding the motivation and space to do what needs to be done to get the book done and written. Thinking things like, “I’m not good enough.” And quitting isn’t going to help you.
But sitting down and writing to get the work done will.
Don’t think that something magical will just flow forth. It is work and it takes much time and discipline.
Use these tips to help you create a discipline, get to work, and get the job done.
A good action to help at this point would be to study the way professions like Mr. King manage their writing schedule. You will find fun facts like that in this resource.
Starting Your Book
Come up with your book idea
So you’re here. You are at the start of your book adventure and you are sitting at your workstation ready to write down every word.
No?
Are you in your notebook jotting down story ideas?
Are you thinking about your characters as you ride the subway?
Are you on your way to work, but in your mind you are having a conversation with your antagonist about why what they’re doing is unacceptable behavior?
That’s the funny thing about starting a book huh?
There really are a million and one places you could be right now.
What’s The Big Idea?!
It must be said that today’s book market is EXTREMELY competitive. You need to choose a book idea that people are going to like.
Look at what is doing well. Decide on a genre that you personally enjoy and are passionate about. Pick one that you know well and have read and seen a lot of stories about.
It’s important that you enjoy it a little because it is a giant undertaking to conquer your first book. It’s tough to finish and it’ll be even harder to finish if you really don’t care about it at all.
Take your ideas and write every one of them down. See which ones you can’t stop thinking about. Which ideas do you get excited about weeks to months to years later. Write everything down.
Run the idea that stands out to you the most past friends and family that enjoy that genre as well. When you start to see a repeating pattern of good feedback you can feel a little safer that it’s a good idea.
Write a short story about it and have some people read the short story to see if it is interesting.
Don’t try to have your friends that aren’t readers read your stuff. It won’t be good feedback for you.
But some of the best advice would be to make sure that you enjoy the story and want to see it through.
Just because the book doesn’t blow up right away doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success.
The Game of Throne books were written in the 90’s and only recently blew up. They had a following back then but only recently did they become really really big.
If you love it and others seem to be on board, write it anyway. It may not be the best book in the world but it may show you how much you enjoy writing novels and lead to many other great books. You will never know if you don’t write it.
Start Somewhere
Martin actually claims that he was in the middle of a completely different story when his first Idea for Game of Thrones came to him.
He said it was so real and vivid to him that he had to write it. It was only a scene. “They found the direwolf pups in the summer snows.”
It was from this one sentence that the entire series flowed out of.
Rowling took a train to London after being out hunting for flats. She said the idea for Harry dropped into her head. She didn’t have a pen to write anything down, but she said for the next 4 hours she let her imagination run wild with all the ideas for the book.
She said that night she started writing the Philosopher’s Stone.
You don’t know when or where your idea is going to come from, so just start somewhere and let it grow.
And what might be some important advice:
Don’t worry about it being perfect at first. That’s why you go back and edit once it’s all out.
Don’t procrastinate. Just get it done.
Don’t hold back ideas at first, just keep getting the story down.
Research
How long are books in your genre?
How many chapters?
How many pages?
Look on Amazon Best Sellers to see what people are into right now.
What are looking up and reading that will help you write?
Have you read enough about your subject matter to have something to say about it?
Who will read your book?
What demographic of people will be the target market of your book?
J.K. Rowling wrote her books targeting teenagers and young adults reading for fun.
Who will you be writing for? Will it make sense to them? Will they enjoy it?
Here is an activity to help define your books audience.
Take a moment and think about finishing these sentences:
My book helps…
My book entertains…
My book helps…see that they need to…
My book teaches…to…
My book teaches…about…
My book won’t help…
My book will mostly be enjoyed by…because…
Even just thinking about these ideas can help you narrow things down.
Neil Gaiman on starting a book
I listened to Neil Gaiman teach about starting a book and here is some advice he gave. (These will be paraphrased, not quotes, and with some of my conjecture.)
Before you even start thinking about big novels you should be making short stories.
We should be making short stories all the time.
We should have a notebook that is just short stories or story ideas.
Any time a story idea comes to mind we should IMMEDIATELY write it down somewhere. (Write it down on your hand or a napkin if you have to and transfer it later!)
He mentioned that these short stories, if important, will stick around in your mind and become something more.
Neil is big on short stories, because he will tell you that most of his novels and movies started as short stories that he later expounded upon.
So if you’re about to start a book, hopefully you have already turned your story idea into a short story and you are about to expound upon that idea that has been toying around in your mind.
But let’s keep looking around for more advice.
The Reedsy Blog had some great Questions to ask yourself (I’ll paraphrase them here):
Will I be able to accomplish a finished book with my big idea?
Who is my audience? Who do I want to speak to? Who do I want to read my book?
What am I personally passionate about that I can write without losing my mind?
What do I think is important and needs to be written about?
I think these are great questions that can help you think through ideas you are having so they are worth a moment to chew on.
They made a good point to say that questions like these will help you narrow things down and I agree.
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After listening to Stephen King talk about his writing practice I don’t totally agree with this advice.
I used to do this. Just write and don’t worry about typos or anything, just keep moving forward.
This was very helpful starting out, but as time has gone on I have realized how much time it saves in the long run to write “clean.”
This means do my best to write the first draft without typos so that it is much closer to the finished phase.
When I used to write messy and just skip typos till the editing process, I used to miss a lot of typos (let’s be honest. I still miss typos) that would have been easy to catch in the moment and move on quickly without losing my idea that I’m writing.
Tools
Several sources mentioned tools that you might be interested in checking out for yourself if you are to start writing a book.
If fiction then here is some ideas that might help you:
Do you know who your protagonist is?
Who is your antagonist?
Who are your side characters?
How does your story start and does it hook your reader?
Do you know what your climax will be?
Have you figured out your ending yet?
What age group is this story for?
Is it a children’s book?
This is not an exhaustive list but questions like these can help you start to make the bare bones of your story.
Take a moment to write down the very bare minimum summary (bare bones) of your story idea.
Answer these questions above if you can.
Don’t worry if you can’t. It is better to start writing something instead of nothing so write down whatever you can to get the ball rolling.
If you are really going to write a book the best thing you can do is to start to write about it, even if it isn’t quite writing the book yet.
Even if you’re intimidated by the idea of writing a book, writing about the book is MUCH less scary and it’s good to get the writing moving forward in one way or another.
Go ahead and answer some of the questions or if you haven’t yet, this week turn your story idea that you like the best into a short story that you can enjoy.
Are You Writing Non-Fiction?
Here are some ideas to get you started on a good non-fiction book idea:
Ebook
Recipe book
What is your profession? Could you write about it?
Can you write about finance?
Travel?
Food?
Fashion?
History?
Teaching?
Music?
Art?
Marketing?
Sales?
We could go on and on about ideas for your non-fiction book, but only you can really decide which makes sense for your goals.
What Are Your Goals?
When you’re thinking of writing a book, your end goals are extremely important at the start.
Possible goals:
Make money
Teach people
Entertain
Become a best-selling novelist
Self-enjoyment
Create a career
Depending on what your ultimate goal is will determine what you write about and how you write it.
If you want to become a best-selling author then you must learn the art of telling a good story and entertaining your reader for hundreds of pages.
If you want to make sales based on your expertise then you may be writing non-fiction and offering to sell valuable information to people that they are willing to buy.
You might have to ask yourself, “Is there a market for this?” before you’d even want to spend the time investment it takes to crank out an entire book.
Take a moment and write down your goals and dreams for your book.
Sometimes the best place to start a project like a book is with the end step in mind and visualize each step it takes from the end to get the beginning, where you are now.
And sometimes all the prep work in the world won’t change anything as much as just sitting down and writing the thing out.
It may take days or weeks or months or years, but in the end you’ll be proud of what you’ve done and then only then will you see if what you did create worked. And you better bet you’ll learn a ton along the way.
Look For Wisdom From Those That Have Gone Before You
Pick out your favorite authors in the genre that you want to write in and start reading.
Study the way they write the niche your in.
If they don’t specifically tell you how to write a book, don’t worry. Looking at how they write a book with a detective’s eye for details will help you start writing yours.
When you come to a problem place, pull out one of their books and start researching how to write it.
Create a Writing Routine
One of my favorite authors is Dan Brown.
Learning from Dan Brown in his Masterclass has been a really awesome experience. If you love learning I highly recommend investing in Masterclass.
One of Dan’s main points in his class is creating a writing routine and protecting it. No one says in order to be a writer that you have to write all day long, but Dan will tell you that is vitally important to create a space and time in your daily life where you can write uninterrupted.
Creating a Space
Try to find a place where you can write. It needs to be somewhere that is very hard for people to interrupt your thought and word flow.
You might think this is impossible.
Dan tells a story of a woman that he knew of that felt like she couldn’t find anywhere to write because she lived in a small apartment with her family and there was absolutely no place in the apartment where she could get alone and write uninterrupted.
So she did the impossible.
She started to write in her car.
In her car she found a place and made a way to get away from any interruptions and write without being interrupted.
She kept up with this practice, and over time of getting away when she could and making it a priority she wrote her entire book in her car.
So who knows where you might have to go, but it is possible to find a space to write.
Find a Time
The time that you write doesn’t have to be the same time of day every day and it doesn’t have to be the same amount of every day.
Dan starts first thing early in the morning, but not all of us are full-time writers yet. You might have to write after the kids go down for sleep or after they go to school.
It doesn’t really matter when you write and it doesn’t always matter how long you write, but find a space and time to write and write when you can. If you do this, you will be much more likely to finish your book than those that don’t have a routine.
How to Write a Book: 32 Tips | Your MASSIVE Guide How to Write a Book
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Don’t make the error of writing too much of your book before you have a friend or family member read a bit and critique it.
If you’re in the right direction then it should go well but if you’re not sure to get a good advisor.
You can’t do this just anyone. It has to be with someone that is a good reader, is open minded, and isn’t afraid to hurt your feelings.
It needs to be someone that can tell you that it isn’t good at the beginning instead of finishing 100,000 words and being told the entire thing needs to change.
Have someone in mind that you can get quick feedback from along the way.
Different Kinds of Writers According to George R. R. Martin
George R. R. Martin says there are two different kinds of writers. One is more of an architect and the other is like a gardener.
The architect has everything mapped out and starts writing with a complete outline in place. The gardener starts from anywhere and kind of sees what grows out of it.
Knowing which one you are will help a lot with your daily writing process.
It will help you know where is best for you to start. Should you start making an outline to help you stay on track or should you just start writing and see where it goes?
Don’t Worry About the Title Before Starting
Titles are extremely important, but they aren’t worth not starting.
As you go just be looking for the title. You’ll find it.
Speed Up Your Writing Process
You can speed up your writing process by using a talk to text app or software.
If you feel that you have strong communication speech skills this might help you get down everything you’re thinking about in your story quickly.
Some people don’t like this method and prefer typing or writing, but it’s really up to you what you think will work best.
Expect Writer’s Block
If you set out to write anything, you can bet that no matter what a day will come (okay lots of days) where you can’t think of what to write next.
Here’s some ideas to try to beat writer’s block:
Read about the genre or subject matter you are trying to write.
Review your outline (if you made one).
Try listening to music.
Watch your favorite movie in your genre.
Take a walk.
Change your writing location.
Get somewhere quiet to think.
Read the news to get an idea for conflict you can add to the story.
Reread what you wrote yesterday to see if it is naturally heading somewhere you didn’t see before.
Exercise. Build up a sweat and get your heart pumping blood into your brain so you can think more clearly.
Technical Stuff
Know how you want the project to be formatted and format as you go. The experts say this will save you a big headache.
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A major problem that a lot of writers can run into is getting burnout.
It can be in the middle or end of your book, but the temptation comes to just rush to the finish line and call it quits.
Don’t do that. Finish the story. Spend the time it takes and finish it well.
Rely on your editing process to really take your time with the ending. Go over your outline and make sure that it really comes to a solid end with a solid resolution.
You could write a really interesting story with interesting characters and botch the ending and not be able to sell a second book.
If you have multiple ideas for your ending, the sage wisdom is to go with the ending that causes more emotions in your reader.
Help Yourself With Others
Try to find places where other writers are to help yourself keep moving forward. Find FB groups where writers help and inspire each other.
Watch talks from professional writers where they inspire you to write better and try different techniques and practices to better help and form your own.
Working in places like coffee shops where others are working and writing can be really helpful to keep yourself motivated.
It helps to look up and see others working around you and feel like you’re not the only one.
Let It Breath
Let’s say you finished your first draft! Great job! Now let it breath.
Let your book sit for a bit. Maybe a couple days, maybe a week or more. It doesn’t matter.
The point is you want to be able to step away from it a little so that you see it with a critical eye.
Sometimes when we are too close to our writing for too long it’s hard for us to see what’s working and what’s not working.
This is especially true in freelance writing, but the same is true with any writing. We take time away from it so that hopefully we can see it with fresh eyes again like a stranger would.
In your editing process here’s an simple list to follow to keep your sanity:
Read out loud to hear any weird wording.
Focus on just one chapter at a time at first to not get so overwhelmed.
First, make sure the structure makes sense.
Second, go through the chapter to adjust wording.
Third, go through last to catch any more grammar mistakes.
If you complete your book, Congratulations! But you’re not finished.
Now you have to let people know that it exists.
You have to know if you are going to self-publish or if you are going to start sending out cold emails to publishers to see if they’ll pick up your story.
Study Amazon Best Sellers.
Look on Amazon Best Sellers list and study how they market their books on Amazon.
Study their blurbs and how they get their first reviews.
Check out their covers for their books and try to get a good cover for your book.
Don’t cheap out on the cover. Don’t do a free cover. Figure out how to make it look as legitimate as possible for your targeted readers.
Get specific with your niche.
While you are studying other best sellers be sure to go to the books that are in your genre and see how they did their covers.
If You’re Self-Publishing With Amazon
If you are self-publishing with Amazon you need to know some key things:
Get reviews. Amazon loves reviews the more you can get the more Amazon will recommend you to other shoppers.
Get good at using the right keywords on your metadata.
Run free giveaways to get more reviews to help with engagement.
Ranking well in Amazon partly has to do with selling copies in a brief period of time.
It’s recommended to try to do “Blitz promotions” where you set it up to go out all at the same time to get mass sales quickly in a short period. They then recommend waiting 90 days and doing it again. Hopefully this will help you leapfrog in ranks.
A quick pitch is the perfect 5 to 10 second sentence you would tell someone about your book to get them interested.
It could be something like this, “Game of Thrones just met Ender’s Game. That’s what you’ll find in this book.”
Now that might not sound interesting to you, but somebody might get excited about that. It just needs to be short and punchy and gets people initially curious enough to download the sample.
Don’t forget about the Front and Back.
Make sure to take time to think about your forward, your introduction and your testimonials.
In your introduction try to include a short story that makes sense.
Get the best testimonials you can. Edit them as time goes on and you get some reviews.
In the back you could tease a cliffhanger that your audience doesn’t expect to get them thinking about a second book.
Include any images you want to.
How Do You Really Write a Book?
How to write a book?
You started reading this because you were looking for tips on how to write a book.
There are so many things to do or not do when it comes to the idea of writing stories, but if there is nothing else you get out of this post, get this:
How do YOU write a book?
You start it. Plain and simple.
And then you write it every day if you can, until it is finished.
If you can’t simply do that, then you can’t write a book.
At the end of the day starting your book really comes down to one simple thing and it is sometimes the hardest thing.
You must sit down and start putting words on a page.
You must stay motivated in the middle to keep going day in and day out.
And you must finish the book, down to every last word.
Now What?
Don’t stop. Write another book.
Use the momentum and the lessons you’ve learned from completing your first book to write your second and third and fourth and fifth.
You might be thinking, “I’m too tired to start another one right now.” That is okay. Even the professionals take breaks after finishing a book. The thing is if you enjoyed writing one you should start making another one soon.
How to Write a Book: 32 Tips | Your MASSIVE Guide How to Write a Book
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One of the most manipulative strategies in politics is the indoctrination of the youth to serve the side that is trying to create laws and systems around teaching the youth what they want them to know and not allowing them to learn what they don’t want them to know.
2. Banning education
Another form of a power move or shift is to attempt to purposefully not educate certain people groups so that they cannot rise up from where they are in the settings economy.
Uneducation is just as detrimental to a person’s well-being as indoctrination.
3. Hired Mercenaries
Hired mercenaries carry out whatever they are paid for.
They are paid to do horrific acts that their employer may never even have the gall to do themselves.
They don’t want to get their hands dirty, but they surely will hire someone that is willing.
On the other hand, people with affluence, money, and power might decide they want to take more power by hiring a team of mercenaries to take what isn’t theirs for them.
5 Barbaric Settings for World Building
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It can also be a sad part of a corrupt unchecked prison system.
Are your main characters in prison?
Are they a part of the corrupt prison system?
Do they stand idly by and do nothing? Or do they shake things up by getting in the way?
5. Why are there so many widows?
Create a world where widows are the main characters. Follow their struggles of how they became widows and the struggles they go through to find love again or struggle to take care of themselves and those they love.
Do they have children?
Do they live under constant threat? Is the threat the same that killed their spouse?
Write barbaric settings in your fictional story to keep your reader intrigued and wondering, “what will happen next?” Writing story settings that are barbaric will be interesting for your reader and help keep their attention to see how it turns out for the poor characters involved.
Keep in mind the realistic consequences that could arise from the setting.
Follow the natural flow of possible events to add character and depth. The details are what makes it new and fresh for the reader and yourself as you write.
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Writing Inspiration: How to Find Inspiration to Write From Your Life
Finding inspiration to write can be tough, but finding writing inspiration can be easier than we make it. One of the greatest tricks an author has in their bag is the ability to draw inspiration to write from real life and write that into an interesting story.
Someone might say “my life isn’t interesting. I have nothing to write about.”
Successful authors would argue that thought and would say that you just have to be observant and creative to find writing inspiration in your life.
For example, right now we are all locked up in our homes watching Netflix, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.
How can you find writing inspiration in that scenario?
Some think this is very boring, but not for us writers. For we have alternate worlds in our minds just waiting to be explored in our writing.
Say I have a character who is living a normal life and then boom, one day a virus pandemic hits the world. I can write about restaurants closing, about government officials mandating in-home orders. People that are out past curfew get tickets and arrested.
Protests start happening and then riots, and then without warning people start disappearing. Just individuals at first but then entire neighborhoods without a trace.
But why???!
And that’s exactly my point is that a little scenario like this is exactly what writers use to create interesting stories.
That’s one of the beautiful things about fiction writing. You don’t have to write inside the box.
Life is more interesting than most people realize and there is writing inspiration all around us. You just have to be observant and take mental notes. Then come up with creative ways to make it into a story, and it does not just come from world events.
Add a few Characters, some problems they face and then bam you have a story outline that just needs to be filled in.
So what if there is no pandemic and life is more normal?
Where do you find writing inspiration then?
Writing from what we know will always be powerful because for someone else it’s either what they know too and it resonates with them or is what they don’t know so it’s interesting to get an inside look.
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Writing Inspiration: How to Find Inspiration to Write From Your Life
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Writing Inspiration: How to Find Inspiration to Write From Your Life
Let’s say you grew up in the country.
Most of your neighbors are 100 yards or more away.
The days are nice and peaceful and you can ride your bike around and play with the other neighbor kids.
Then one day someone moves into a new house.
They build it and they are there. You know someone has moved in but you never see them or anyone coming or going from the house.
One night you get thirsty and go to the kitchen for a drink and you notice flashlights around the new house and then you hear a helicopter.
You think it’s police but as you look more closely you realize it’s not the police.
Who is it?
Who’s the neighbor?
Why is there a helicopter and people running around with flashlights?
What’s going on?
You can find writing inspiration anywhere and the key secret is…starting with normal life is actually an amazing place to start.
You can make a story about any walk of life you just have to put in some real-life experience, research, and then be creative.
And whatever it is it doesn’t have to be perfect or great.
You can write a short story and scrap it later, just try to write it anyway because that’s how we get better at it.
The first draft of anything is usually trash anyway if it’s really going to be a project you believe in and want to promote you’re going to have to spend time editing it and you can’t edit anything you haven’t written in full.
So find ways to take your real-life experience and weave it into your stories.
Write from what you know.
Write from what you find interesting to research or read.
Write from your hobbies and passions and that will be interesting to others like you and others that don’t know anything about what you know well about.
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How to Make Your Reader Care About Your Characters
We write our characters.
We think about them at lunch.
We dream about them.
As writers in a weird way we are emotionally connected to the characters we create.
And thus we want our reader to connect with them and interact with them just as we do and have a fondness towards them.
One of the best ways to make your reader not care about them is to wane on and on about specific details about what they look like and what they act like.
We should avoid this.
It’s our job as writers to understand our characters deeply and reveal who they are through actions, inactions, and dialogue.
So how do we make our reader give two hoots about our awesome characters?
Give them something to lose
At any given moment in the story our character needs to be facing some type of conflict whether big or small.
We need to give our reader a reason to follow along as we reveal to them our beloved character.
Give them small things to lose
Some practical ideas of small things they could lose would be:
– An argument with another character
– They left their homework at home
– Forgot to do homework
– The bully steals their homework
– They have a huge zit they can’t hide
– They get to talk to a crush for the first time but forgot to brush their teeth that morning
– They are apprentice to a blacksmith and chipped the knife they were working on
– A thief steals their coin on the way to the market
– They live on a moon colony and they dropped their groceries outside the grocery store
You can see how the setting can be worked around or even used, but these problems they face are mostly small.
They have something to lose but it’s not life and death.
Use little problems like these to lead your character and reader to the big problems and the overarching biggest climatic problem.
As you take your character through little problems your reader will start to feel invested in who your character truly is at heart.
They will start to be concerned for them.
Keep in mind there is a caveat here.
In order for them to care about these characters, the character has to have some redeeming qualities.
They do not have to be perfect. I advise against that. Do not try to make them flawless.
Give them flaws and redeeming qualities.
Give them a strategic main character to follow
In order for them to care about our characters they have to get to know them.
A few ways to let our readers know our characters:
– From the view of the narrator (you can tell them the thoughts and feelings of whoever you want)
– From the view of the main character only (they only ever know what the main character is thinking and feeling)
– From the view of the main party (they get to see inside a band of characters)
So this can really be done anyway you prefer but if we are going to get them to like them and care about them losing stuff then we have to help our reader get to know them through a certain lens.
We can follow one character that interacts with all other characters.
We can follow a group of main players that we know the inner thoughts of and any one of them at any time could have individual moments with side characters.
This doesn’t mean our side characters can’t be interesting or noteworthy.
When Happy Days was in its prime, the directors and producers would specifically introduce new side characters to audiences to see how they would react.
If the reception was good, they would create a new TV show around those firstly side characters.
So you can take a side character and make them stand out as much as you want for as long as you want.
But whoever you decide to have the story play through, make sure your reader can follow a cohesive story line or it might get confusing.
Make your reader aware of your character’s emotional distress
Whether we want to admit it or not we are emotional creatures.
And with that we enjoy watching characters go through emotional rollercoasters just like we do from day to day stress.
How to Make Your Reader Care About Your Characters
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Almost everyone has a past. And most pasts come with regrets.
What are your character’s regrets?
– Worries/ Fears
What is your character worried about?
What does your character’s worries have to do with the main plot line?
– Character Flaws
Like we said earlier, do not make your character perfect.
Give them realistic character flaws that your reader can relate to.
By giving our characters these traits we can seamlessly invite our reader into our characters.
Ideas for character flaws:
– Selfish
– Self-loathing
– Arrogant
– Steals
– Harbors resentment
– Greedy
– Lazy
– Know-it-all
– Show-off
– Etc
Flaws are a good way to lead the reader into the characters emotional distress as their flaws create conflict with other important characters and strangers.
These flaws can lead to hurt and broken relationships and leave room for redemption and second chances.
Turn up the heat
We aren’t talking about romance.
We are talking about taking your characters from the frying pan and into the fire.
You can take your character through many small problems to get your reader to care for them but we also need to put them through even bigger difficult situations.
Ways to make your character’s problems seem big to your reader by creating tension:
– Create a time sensitive event
Nothing creates more tension than setting a timing and telling someone. You have this much time to do this OR ELSE.
In fact a popular TV show was made around this entire premise. Remember 24?
We were just watching Nonstop the other night with Liam Neeson and the entire movie the villains have him wrapped up in time tension.
“Every 20 minutes someone on this plane will die if you don’t give us 150 million dollars.”
It’s worked a million times before and it’ll work again.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use timed tension.
– Use the character’s career or reputation
Nobody wants to lose the respect they’ve earned over years and years of hard work.
Nobody wants to lose the company they’ve built.
We don’t want to lose a high paying career.
These are examples of high stake things that we can use to make our reader worry for our characters. Especially if they are being blackmailed or wrongly accused.
– Hunger Games: survival tension
I just said Hunger Games because it is the epitome of survival tension.
There are many stories that use this form of tension as well.
Put your character into a situation where they have to survive dangerous encounters with people, nature or other beings and you’ll create the nail biting tension you need to make your reader care about your character.
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How to Make Your Reader Care About Your Characters
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We want our reader to gobble up every page and to always be wondering “what’s next?!”
But how do we know we are writing in such a way that our story will become a coveted “Page Turner?”
How do we know that when our reader talks about our story they’ll say “Oh! I read that! I couldn’t put it down!”
“Couldn’t put it down…” We long to hear those words about our stories that we have mulled over and lived through.
We won’t know for sure until it is in their hands and under their eyes, but there are some writing techniques that can help us write page turners.
Make your reader worry by adding suspense
Suspense is a pivotal skill in creating a page-turner.
Suspense helps the reader feel like something bad is about to happen so they must know what will happen next because it could be a good or bad outcome for the characters involved.
Create suspense by creating a time sensitive event
A time sensitive event could be big or small.
For example, “We need to figure out the code in 60 seconds or the alarm will sound!”
That is a small amount of time and maybe a minor event but it still creates a moment of suspense for your reader.
It creates a moment where they are thinking and feeling, “What is going to happen next?”
Another example, “if we don’t stop him from reaching his destination, he will release the virus on London.”
“How much time do we have?“- classic suspense question
“He’s already on his way. We only have 16 Hours.“
This scenario has more time and more people are at stake but still creates time sensitive suspense.
In order to create real suspense in our reader’s mind the stakes have to be high.
Always make it that characters that the reader cares about will lose big time if they don’t accomplish their goal.
The what if
You can call this the “what if.”
You want your reader to feel the what if:
– “What if they don’t get there in time?!”
– “What if they release the virus?!”
– “What if the bomb goes off?!”
– “What if the alarm goes off?!”
If we can create questions like this in our readers minds, then we are doing our job as writers that create suspense.
Create question marks that you are ABSOLUTELY going to answer at some point
Let’s say we are with Bruce Wayne (Batman, for those living in non comic inhabited caves) and Bruce is with Alfred strolling through his collection of gadgets and he picks up a grenade that is implanted in the core of a real apple.
He says, “Alfred, how did this apple get down there?”
He goes to take a bite.
Alfred stops his hand.
“That’s not an apple sir. That’s a bomb. The apple core is infused with C4 and the detonator is specifically vibration sensitive to it being bitten. After you take a bite you have 15 second to place it before it detonates.”
“Hmmm, they say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but in this instance I guess not.”
Now as a reader I’m not assuming this interaction was just to create a silly pun.
I want to see Batman use this apple bomb somewhere, somehow.
As a writer when you bring up a specific item you should be bringing it up for a reason.
Don’t tell your reader how your are going to use it yet.
Make it a “Question mark moment.”
Leave your reader wondering”how is Batman going to use that and when?”
Questions like these (and you should have many of them throughout your story) will give your reader a reason to keep reading.
They will want to pick the book up again after taking a break.
Revisit questions to add to the payoff
In your story you might mention a particular side Character.
They may bump shoulders with your character at the train.
Then later they see them at a coffee shop.
They see them again at a party and exchange words.
At this point you’ve created curiosity in your reader’s mind, “who is this character and why do they keep popping up.”
Now, depending on the genre of your story this could be a new budding romance or a deranged serial killer.
Only you can tell.
9 Tips on How to Write Page-Turning Excitement
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But the more you bring up this person the more your reader will be waiting and longing for you to share why they are there.
We can do this with objects too.
In chapter one Bruce almost bit the apple.
In chapter 3 Robin could be riding in the cockpit and say, “Bruce I’m starving. Did Alfred put anything in here to eat?”
“Yeah” Wayne says, “check the black bag behind your seat.”
There are two black bags behind Robin’s seat. In one he sees a shiny red apple. He grabs it and pulls it to his face. He looks it over and goes in for a bite.
Bruce puts his hand in front of his mouth. “I said the black bag.”
“I did get it out of the black bag!”
“Let me see.”
Robin pulls up the black bag. Bruce looks into it. “Not that one. That’s not an apple.”
“Not an apple?! Well what is it then?”
“It’s a bomb.”
“Oh…” Robin gently puts it back into the bag and sets it slowly behind his seat.
They’re both silent for a moment.
“I’m beginning to think bombs and fruit don’t go well together.”
Again a comic relief moment but not the one, as a reader, that we’re anticipating.
We’ve seen the apple bomb twice now. And both times it almost kills our heroes but we have yet to see it used strategically by Batman (the hero of unbelievable gadgets) in a way that satisfies our gadget lust.
Having multiple moments surrounding an object or person can create more curiosity and thus bigger payoff when things are finally revealed.
Have multiple hooks working for you
In our stories it is necessary to create suspense and curiosity in almost every scene.
We can’t just say, “if the bad guy wins then the world dies,” and expect our reader to be engaged for the entire story without adding additional “hooks” (suspense and curiosity).
Create curiosity and suspense in every scene (well almost every scene)
Most stories have the long question: “Will our heroine beat the bad guy?”
“Will he find true love?”
“Will he solve the murder?”
“Will they survive?”
But along the way we as writers need to create many small questions to be answered too.
“Will she survive the booby trap?”
“Will they get over this argument?”
“Will they survive the affair?”
“Will she lose her business?”
“Will he get fired?”
Smaller questions help lead the reader to answering the Big question.
Bad stuff happens in real life, allow bad stuff to happen to characters
If we want our reader to keep page turning we need to teach them that the threat our character is facing is actually a threat.
How do we teach them that the threat is real?
By allowing bad stuff to happen sometimes.
If nothing bad ever actually happens to our characters we will inevitably teach our reader the wrong lesson: nothing bad ever happens to character therefore I don’t need to be worried about this problem they’re facing. They’ll be fine.
At this point, we’ve almost lost them.
They’ll surely be losing interest soon.
So instead teach them that the problems are real and worth being concerned about by letting bad things happen.
Use other page-turners
A great practice is to think of page-turners you’ve read.
Think of books you just couldn’t put down.
What did the author do that made you want to keep going and never put the book down?
Learn to read books and consume TV and movies critically in order to use the same techniques they used to keep you hooked for every juicy page.
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I’ll be the first one to say that I don’t love writing dialogue.
The actual task of recording down their conversation is quite un-riveting for me personally.
That being said, analyzing dialogue and the actual process of creating it, thinking through it, and revealing character using dialogue is quite fun.
It shows your reader:
– What’s going on in characters heads
– What their normal life is like
– Into scenes that they might otherwise not be able to see
– The story
– What makes characters different
– What makes them similar
– It can persuade your reader to believe something about a character that may end up being a great twist later
– Suspense
– Drama
– Conflict
– It also makes pages easier to read through
Think about people talking normally.
When you’re out the next time to the movies or mall or restaurant, out to the groceries or whatever.
Be purposeful to hear the way people talk to you and others.
Even think about the way you speak to others and your mannerism.
You can log this information away as normal speech patterns.
The more people and cultures you interact with the more dialects and different speech patterns you find.
But a great way to figure out how to give your characters the right words and thoughts is to listen to people in your real life.
Talk your dialogue out loud.
Another great dialogue practice is to have your character’s conversations out loud with yourself and maybe your editor or friend. Whoever you have that’s willing.
When you hear it out loud it gives it an entirely new feel and it’ll be easier to tell if it sounds weird, odd, or abnormal.
Draft it out.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard when it finally comes to sitting down and typing it out on the keys is to write it out without making many punctuations at first.
Just let the words flow fast and naturally so that you can feel what it’s going to look like and sound like right away without stopping much to be distracted by punctuation
Don’t be overly concerned with he said, she said just yet except to just keep it organized.
This will really free you up to create the dialogue and have it come out right rather than being bogged down in the first draft by all the writing technical work.
5 Tips on Naturally Writing Effective Dialogue
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Add the punctuation after you feel the dialogue is right.
Take your time in the editing process of your dialogue to make sure it sounds natural and each character has their own voice just like a real human.
When their talking and interaction seems right for them add the punctuation.
This helps compartmentalize the creative process from the technical process.
Common dialogue pitfalls to watch out for.
– Don’t overuse names.
Overusing someone’s name in real life is weird and it’s weird in writing too. Unless your character is a creepy salesperson.
– Try not to create a repetitive chain of information.
If you need two characters to talk about information that you already introduced once just make it that the second character found out from another source.
“Did you hear about so and so?”
“Yeah I did. Jackie just told me. Crazy right?”
– People in real life day umm a lot and make filler noise. Characters do not mostly.
Take this thought liberally as every once in a while it helps make a certain character to give them a weird noise that they make while they are thinking, but for the most part, cut it out.
– Get on get out.
Make each line have a purpose.
Most characters shouldn’t talk too much. And other characters shouldn’t talk too little but our dialogue needs to have a point and move the characters forward in the plot.
If they decide to head for Starbucks to gab about ‘whatever’ in reality one of the characters is about to bump into someone important.
Otherwise they need to be meeting up at Starbucks to discuss things that are important to the plot and revelation of character.
– Help the reader see who’s talking without being annoyingly redundant.
He said.
She said.
He asked.
She said.
We don’t have to add ‘they said’ at the end or beginning of every quotation.
The goal is to just make sure that we are clearly letting the reader know who is talking and then write the dialogue in such a way that they can skim through and it’s very clear who is saying what even if we stop writing he said/she said/ she asked, etc.
Make your main goal to just tell the story and make it simple. Don’t be tempted to over display what they are feeling with adverbs while they speak.
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This 1 Key Trait Can Tell You Whether You Will Succeed As An Entrepreneur Or Fail
Abraham Lincoln. You might remember him as honest Abe or you might not know who he is at all.
But his story is a powerful and persuasive one.
Abraham Lincoln
You see, Abe wanted to get into politics. We would imagine he didn’t like the way things were being run and wanted to make some changes of his own to the country’s political landscape.
The only problem was he wasn’t a very good politician.
He was running for state legislature and kept losing. His life wasn’t going anywhere except failure.
He became immensely depressed in his failures. So much so that his friends took all of his knives and razors away from him because they were afraid he would Jill himself.
He broke off is engagement to the woman he loved.
His life kept getting worse.
He ran for the senate not once but TWICE and lost BOTH TIMES.
You would think someone would think, “I’m not made for this,” and choose a different career path at this point.
But in 1860 Abraham runs as a “dark horse candidate” for the presidency and WINS!
He failed so many times for so long in his life but never quit and ended up winning the presidency instead of those lesser goals he tried for but it would seem that all the hard times he went through prepared to be the president of the United States at a very pivotal time in history.
He didn’t allow loss and adversity to prevent him from moving forward.
Teddy Rosevelt
Teddy’s story is a bit different.
Teddy was a well educated young man planning on becoming a naturalist but when everyone least expected it he suddenly ran for state legislature and to everyone’s surprise he won.
At this time his wife is pregnant with their first child and his mother who is only 49 comes out to his house in New York to help take care of his wife while he’s working in government.
This is when tragedy strikes.
For a brief moment everyone is elated as a telegram arrives for Teddy.
It says his child is born.
Everyone celebrates with cigars.
But not many hours later a second telegram arrives.
It says, you must return immediately. Your wife is dying and your mother is dying too.
It turns out that his mother had contracted typhoid fever upon arriving in New York.
Teddy arrived at home in time to see his mother before she died and about 12 hours later his wife dies too.
Teddy thought his life was over.
At this point he essentially runs away. He quits the legislature and moves out to the Badlands and rides his horse for reportedly 15 hours a day.
During this time he falls in love with nature and becomes quite a conversationalist.
He gains a deeper perspective on life and eventually goes back to run for the presidency.
Sometimes getting an outside perspective on things can lead to a deeper understanding of the big picture we need to move forward. And breaks aren’t always bad, but if Teddy has decided never to run again he might not have accomplished all that he did.
He did indeed quit for a time but ultimately he got back up “on the horse “ and kept going.
Rejections
You might not know it but MANY of your beloved authors have been rejected many times before finally being published.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: rejected 144 times.
Canfield once wrote, “If we had given up after 100 publishers, I likely would not be where I am now,”
“I encourage you to reject rejection. If someone says no, just say NEXT!”
This 1 Key Trait Can Tell You Whether You Will Succeed As An Entrepreneur Or Fail
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Lisa Genova, Still Alice: rejected 100 times (some of those were just non-responses)
She eventually decided to self published. It got picked up after that.
Kathryn Stockett, The Help: 60 rejections.
She wrote, “In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help,”
“But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.” The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 100 weeks.
It sold over seven million copies, and has been made into an inspiring award winning movie.
Heidi Durrow, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky: 48 rejections.
“When I was trying to publish my book, it received some 48 different rejections from publishing houses mostly because people said to me that there was no market for a story about a half black half Danish girl. There was no Afro Viking demographic to sell this book to.”
Dispite the adversity her book was the winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. The award came with a publishing contract and it became a bestseller.
One of my favorite authors James Patterson: James Patterson, The Thomas Berryman Number: 31 rejections.
Patterson’s first book was turned down by 31 publishers and he kept a list.
31 publishers turned down Patterson’s first book. The first of many in his extremely popular Alex Cross series. Now, of course, he’s one of the most successful authors in the world, arguably in history.
He told the New York Times that he kept a list of all the editors that turned down his first novel. “Sometimes they send me books and ask for blurbs. Mostly, though, they’re dead.”
Stephen King, Carrie: 30 rejections.
30 publishers rejected his first novel Carrie, the one that started King’s legendary novel journey.
One day he received a short letter from Bill Thompson at Doubleday:
“Congratulations. Carrie officially a Doubleday Book. Is $2500 advance okay? The future lies ahead. Love, Bill.”
And what was at that time their future is now our history.
The one thing that makes or breaks a successful entrepreneur is perseverance.
This key trait can be used in so many different avenues and career paths.
The thing is that most of us won’t be handed success in our endeavors so easily.
We inevitably will meet adversity and when that adversity comes what will we do?
I believe you have it in you to persevere and keep going despite adversity coming your way.
And as many we’ll have gone Beckies is would most likely admit that the adversity helped mold them into who they are today and who knows where they would be if they didn’t persevere and remain persistent despite many challenges.
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3 Mental Muscles You’ll Need to Flex to Be a Freelance Writer
If you’re interested in becoming a freelance writer you’re not alone.
Many aspiring writers are looking to join the freelance movement, work from home, make money online, and be their own boss.
If you’re going to take this journey though and be realistic about it. You’re going to want to keep some things in mind.
It’s not for the faint of heart but if you’re willing to do these three things you’re much more likely to succeed then those that don’t.
Be fearless
Being fearless sounds hard because let’s be honest, who isn’t a little intimidated to try new things?
I tend to believe that almost everyone is but those that do it usually tend to try new things and take on some risk feeling the fear but doing it anyway.
If you’re serious about freelance writing, you are definitely going to have to go out of your comfort zone to find work, make pitches, and hopefully fulfill projects handed to you.
Sometimes it’s easier to find the work and get the job.
Then all the sudden you realize, “oh crud…I actually have to deliver something good to them…” as you stare blankly into outer space.
It takes a bit of fearlessness to hand over your writing to an editor in the hopes that they don’t call it absolute trash and fire you.
But that’s a part of the freelancing game. You are always a little at risk of your client not liking what you deliver.
But not to fear, if you don’t give up you are likely to make it in the freelance business.
Don’t fear failure
You are going to fail.
It is almost inevitable.
You might be thinking, “gee Jeremy, thanks for the inspirational confidence booster.” Just follow me here.
You are going to fail, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. No.
The bad thing would be to quit after a failure thinking fallacy that you aren’t good enough.
Of course you are good enough. You just need more time, practice, and study.
Don’t be afraid to fail and don’t be so quick to quit.
Ask for help
Humility is hard.
It is hard to admit that we need help on something.
The opposite of this is pride. Pride will tell you that you don’t need help. That you’ll be better off figuring it out on your own.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. There are many people that have done this first and you can avoid their mistakes by asking for help.
Here are some ways you can ask for help:
– Do research
– Buy a course
– Buy a book
3 Mental Muscles You’ll Need to Flex to Be a Freelance Writer
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3 Mental Muscles You’ll Need to Flex to Be a Freelance Writer
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I personally have bought several courses on things like copywriting, affiliate marketing, and running ads.
Sometimes it will accelerate your progress if you just invest in yourself and buy that course you’re thinking about.
To go along with that same thought, books are very helpful.
And just a bonus tip: learn the skill of skimming well. Being able to skim large sections of books and articles will save you hundreds of hours.
Conclusion
Most people aren’t actually “fearless”, but pushing through the fear of failure and rejection will be paramount in a freelancing career.
And every freelancer should look for ways to avoid the mistakes that others have made before them.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Even here, don’t let fear stop you from posting a comment and asking for advice. Someone that’s already gone through what you’re going through might read it and be able to save you some trouble.
You’d be surprised how many people enjoy helping others 🙂
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1 Bad Writing Tip You Can Cut Out Right Now That’ll Make Your Writing 10X Better
There is one thing that many authors do.
It could be by accident. It could be on purpose.
But if you cut out just this one thing, your writing will be better to read instantly.
What is that one thing?
Passive voice.
Now this doesn’t mean we can Never use passive voice as authors.
It just sounds better and it’s less wordy if we don’t. And less wordy is almost always better.
What is passive voice?
Passive voice makes the object look dominant to the subject.
For example, passive voice would say,
– The book was thrown by the student.
– The guitar was played by the musician.
– The door was opened by the driver.
Instead as writers we mostly want to use active voice.
What is active voice?
1 Bad Writing Tip You Can Cut Out Right Now That’ll Make Your Writing 10X Better
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1 Bad Writing Tip You Can Cut Out Right Now That’ll Make Your Writing 10X Better
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1 Bad Writing Tip You Can Cut Out Right Now That’ll Make Your Writing 10X Better
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1 Bad Writing Tip You Can Cut Out Right Now That’ll Make Your Writing 10X Better
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It is the Amazon you love, for work. Make workplace procurement easier with convenient delivery options, simplified purchasing workflows, multiple payment options, and a competitive marketplace with business-only pricing and quantity discounts. Anyone who makes purchases for work (eg. procurement specialists, office administration, IT departments, etc.) can create a FREE account for their business. Customer must be from a verified business in order to successfully create their Amazon Business account.
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