Posts by Anne Brown
Since having my first novel published over a decade ago, I have received more writing advice than I can remember. I’ve crumpled some of that advice into hundreds of paper balls while the rest lives in three-ring notebooks flagged with colorful Post-it notes.
The difficult thing about advice is that it’s almost always contradictory. To prologue or not to prologue, that is the question.
Therefore, deciding what works best can only be determined after much trial and error. Advice can also be finicky, so I’m careful what I throw out. What doesn’t work on one project might work better on the next.
Some of the most contradictory advice I have received has come in terms of how to structure a chapter. The following three methods have made it into my 3-ring notebook:
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If you’re considering self-publishing and wanting to maximize potential income, do yourself a favor and take a peek at Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform.
If you haven’t already heard about Kindle Vella, it’s a place where you can serialize your novel over an extended period, instead of publishing one whole story all at once. Instead of chapters, you are publishing “episodes,” much like a television series.
This isn’t a new concept. Serialized novels first popped up as early as the 17th century and really took off in England during the 19th century when novels were published episodically in newspapers and magazines.
This allowed poorer overworked readers to enjoy stories that would have been too expensive for them to read as leather-bound volumes. In the modern era, Kindle Vella readers are reading on their phones, often during short breaks in their busy days, like while standing in line at the DMV or waiting in the carpool lane.
There was (and still is) a benefit to authors for writing serially. Many unknown 19th century authors were able to establish an audience and grow in popularity by first publishing in serialized format, including but not limited to Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Many modern-day authors are having similar success, building their fan bases through Kindle Vella. Why couldn’t this be you?
In a nutshell. The first three episodes of every Kindle Vella story are free to readers. After which, readers must redeem tokens to unlock future episodes. The number of tokens it takes to unlock an episode corresponds to the length of the episode. For example it takes 6 tokens to unlock an episode that is in the 600-699 word length. It takes 12 tokens to unlock and episode that is 1200-1299 words in length.
Readers can buy tokens in bundles of 200 ($1.99), 525 ($4.99), 1100 ($9.99), or 1700 ($14.99).
As they read, readers can give feedback such as marking your story as a “favorite” or giving an episode a “thumbs up.” This feedback will affect your bonus. More on that later.
How to get started. It is ridiculously easy to set up an author account. If you do not already have an Amazon account, start there. Once you have an Amazon account, access Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Once you sign in to KDP, access the “Kindle Vella Library.”
After that, KDP will take you through the step-by-step process of entering your name/pen name, the title of your story, the genre, and the key words.
As for the cover image, you don’t have to pay for an expensive book cover. Traditional book covers aren’t even allowed. Instead, choose a simple image with no words on it that conveys the tone, theme, and genre of your story. You can find many images for free online. For example, explore Canva. The dimensions of a Kindle Vella cover image should be 1600 x 1600 px.
Here are some examples of cover images from Kindle Vella (the platform will make your square image round):
Writing the Perfect Episode. Kindle Vella allows episodes to be anywhere from 600-5000 words; however, there does seem to be a “sweet spot” with readers. Because they’re often reading on their phones to […]
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A while ago, a writer friend of mine was talking about her first query letter. She’d let me read it and I thought it was well done. This wasn’t a surprise. She’d spent a lot of time on it, she’d researched, revised, and sent it out to critique partners for their honest opinions. It was at a place where further effort was just spinning her wheels, at least until agents started to weigh in.
But she was frozen in place, terrified to send it out. She admitted that even though she knew the query and the manuscript were both in excellent shape, she couldn’t pull the trigger. “What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like…me?”
“They won’t,” I told her in my usual too-blunt way. “At least, most of them won’t. That’s just the way it works. But they don’t all have to like you. Only one has to like you.”
She laughed and said, “Can you imagine going out on stage in front of a large audience, singing a big emotional ballad that you wrote yourself, and when you’re done the audience is silent except for one person, slow clapping in the back row?”
She had a point.
It occurred to me that as writers, we really are true performers, and not so different than any other artist whose platform is a stage or a gallery wall. My friend couldn’t send out her query because she was suffering from good old-fashioned stage fright.
Based on my research, social anxiety and fear of public speaking/performance affect 22 million Americans and are two of the top-twelve most common phobias (along with fear of spiders, snakes, heights, flying, dogs, storms, needles/injections, germs, and both wide open and small spaces). These phobias are evolutionary and have been key to our survival—keeping us away from poisons or getting too close to a cliff edge and falling to our deaths. But now, with our day-to-day lives being lived in much safer environs, those evolutionary anxieties have less purpose while being no less present. Even when there’s no actual threat to our safety, our bodies often want to flee, or they just freeze up. Not surprisingly, these fears attack self-confidence and cause people to avoid stepping up to the podium even when doing so could lead to long-term success.
Getting back to my friend and her query letter, she’d admit that her stage fright comes from her need to be perfect and her fear that she never will be. Well (here’s me being blunt again), she’s right about that. She never will be perfect. None of us will. Check out this 1-star review for the King James Bible:
“I would have given it 5 stars if not for the 2 typographical errors that I’ve found (so far).”
For some, simply acknowledging that perfection is not attainable may be all it takes to gather the courage needed to put their writing out there for others to see, to judge, to love, or to hate.
But if that’s easier said than done for you, here are 6 techniques you can try to help you step out into the spotlight:
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Credit: Jens Johnsson
I thought it would get easier. I thought, at some point in my career I wouldn’t struggle so much with the same darn thing. But I was wrong.
Yes, I learn new tricks, new skills, new degrees of mastery with every manuscript. But without fail, every time, right around the half-way mark, I want to break down and cry. I can’t go any further. Like, it’s physically uncomfortable for me.
It’s the same visceral feeling I get at a large party, when the volume is going up, up, up, and all I want to do is find the nearest restroom and decompress from all the people. Or maybe just go home. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why that is.
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A while back, I texted my daughter.
Dinner is ready.
Her: Are you mad at me?
What? Why? I’m just saying that dinner is ready.
Her: Your period is really angry.
Perhaps you’ve encountered this yourself. These days, if your text message doesn’t end in an exclamation point, you come off as terse, and even (apparently) supremely pissed off. So, I guess dinner is ready! Hooray! Who knew we’d ever eat again?! *confetti emoji*
But there is something interesting about this phenomenon that applies to fiction writing–namely, while we toil over the perfect word choice to create the right mood and to elicit the intended emotions, those little flicks and curls are sitting there, waiting to do their own heavy lifting. They look small. But they can be mighty.
Here is a non-exclusive list of ways you can use punctuation to impact the emotion in your dialogue and narrative voice.
The Punchy Period:
Using full stops more frequently can add power and energy to your words. They can be used to emphasize an authoritarian voice because periods give the dialogue more control. For example:
“Today, you will be gathering stones from this field, beginning now and working until the sun goes down, and you hear my whistle.”
– versus –
“Today you will gather stones. You will start now. You will continue until the sun sets. Listen for my whistle.”
In which example does the prison guard command the most respect? In which example can you best hear the guard’s speaking voice? For most people, the answer to each of those questions is the dialogue with the most full stops.
But frequent full stops can also be used to indicate uncertainty, surprise, or the inability to understand; for example:
It was a ship. There. On the horizon. Yes. He was almost sure of it.
– and –
She stood. Right in front of him. Not at home with her mother. Not where she should be at all.
Frequent full stops can also show despair, like this example from Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín:
“Would you like me to call Miss Bartocci?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Are you sad?”
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“Yes.”
Try using frequent end stops whenever you want to deliver an emotional punch.
But wait! There’s more.
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At the WU Unconference last fall, I gave a presentation on the “meet-cute.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s that moment when your characters meet for the first time. Sometimes they click immediately (Titanic; 50 First Dates), other times they don’t (Pride & Prejudice; When Harry Met Sally). Regardless, some kind of chemistry is established between them that makes the reader want to root for the characters as a couple. It’s a typical element of every romance novel, but it can manifest in other ways in other genres. The typical meet-cute goes a little something like this:
Sarah walked onto campus as a new freshman. While she wrestled one-handed with the campus map, her Human Anatomy textbook slipped from her hands and fell open on the sidewalk to a page her mother would have censored. Embarrassed, Sarah quickly crouched to retrieve the book before anyone saw, just as someone knelt to help her. She looked up and locked eyes with the most handsome man she’d ever seen. Sarah’s heart raced.
When I say this example reflects the typical meet-cute, I mean really, really typical. Too many meet-cutes I read are all about racing hearts, or some other obvious go-to like stammering, sweaty palms, or stumbling over words and/or feet. These common crutches got me thinking. How can we better delve into our own personal experiences to come up with more unique and inspired ways to demonstrate the interior landscape of a scene? How can we show our characters’ feelings through more unique physical reactions to those feelings?
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In 2010, when I first dipped my toe into the publishing world, the biggest mystery to me was—besides figuring out the difference between a query and a synopsis—this thing called a “platform.”
At the time, I was writing about killer mermaids. I didn’t know how I was going to go about becoming enough of an expert on the subject that a potential editor would take me seriously. Imagine my utter relief when I learned that it was only the non-fiction writers who required a platform. All we fiction writers had to prove was that we had an imagination, a way with words, and that we understood the shape of a story.
That blissful world is no more.
These days, even debut fiction writers are being asked by would-be editors about their platforms. What they’re really asking is:
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Photo Cred: Alex Robert
With the WU Uncon just around the corner, many of us are getting excited for a writing retreat. There is the anticipation of seeing old friends and meeting new ones, the expectation of learning something new, and the chance to gain insight and inspiration for the current WIP. And while big retreats like the Uncon pack a big punch, there is also much to be gained from smaller, more intimate retreats—especially ones you plan yourself.
I’ve done a few of these with my critique groups over the years. If you haven’t put one together yourself, here are some ideas to get you started. It might be just the thing to tide you over during the Uncon’s off years.
[Before I get going, I wanted to note that I reference a number of websites in this article. I am not affiliated in any way with any of these businesses, nor have I used all of them myself. Rather, they are selected from my own research file, which I have compiled over the years for planning writer retreat weekends.]
Location, Location, Location. The location for your retreat goes hand in hand with the number of people you can invite to attend. There are, of course, places specially designed for writers retreats. For example, the Highlights Foundation offers private writing cabins in the Pocono Mountains, and offers a lodge where everyone can congregate for meals. There are smaller places, too, like this writers and artists retreat home available for rent in Wisconsin, or this one in Tennessee. In fact, airbnb is an excellent place to start if you don’t have a private home or cabin available to you.
Whatever you choose, you’ll want to make sure you have not only sufficient bedrooms, but also ample space to spread out during the day for quiet, undisturbed writing time. I also suggest asking what everyone’s writing process is beforehand. For example, many people like to listen to music while they write. Be sure that headphones are required. Others like to read aloud to themselves, or they use Dragon software as part of their writing process. The other attendees will appreciate it if that person has some space where sound can be contained and won’t bleed over into others’ work areas.
Schedule. You can do whatever you like, of course, and it’s always a good idea to ask the attendees what they want to do. However, I’ve found that providing a schedule before the event sets the right expectation: this weekend is meant for writing first, socializing second. This is particularly true because people are likely spending money to participate. The following schedule has worked well for my retreats in the past:
8:00 AM Breakfast
8:00 AM- 12:00 PM Write
12:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM Recreational Activity to Recharge
3:00-6:00 PM Write
6:00 PM Dinner & Drinks
7:30 PM Time to Share Aloud the Products of the Day
Food. […]
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This book gave me “all the feels.”
We all strive to write the quintessential delivery system for “feels,” whether we know it or not, whether we’re consciously striving to deliver, or not. We do this because that’s what drives us to tell stories in the first place. Somewhere along the line—whether it was Vonnegut or Brontë, Irving or Rowling—we all read something that touched a chord and made us say, “Ah. Yes. I’ve been there.”
Or maybe we were too busy blowing our noses to get those actual words out, but you get the idea.
So what can you as a writer do to elicit more empathic reactions from your readers than detached ones? Writing emotional scenes has less to do with the scene itself and more to do with tapping into universal experiences and the emotions that go with them. Not many people (if any at all) will have experienced the exact scene you are writing and be able to connect to it. But all people have experienced some sort of loss, triumph, grief, disappointment, or love.
Empathy creates a bond. When you as the writer find your empathy for the character, chances are you will create an empathetic bond between your reader and the character, as well. Therefore, if you find yourself in a scene that is so much bigger (emotionally) in your head than it is coming out on the page, take a step back. Identify the emotion you are going for, then recall the last time you felt that way yourself.
Easy, right?
Confession time. I talk the big talk. Walking it is a whole lot harder. I come from a long line of stiff-upper-lipped Scandinavians who settled in the Midwest. Stoicism is a virtue; “not too bad,” is high praise. My natural reaction to writing an emotional scene is to pull back. Getting in there and feeling right along with my character seems very rude and more than a tad voyeuristic. Good manners tells me to fade the scene to black. But I know in my phlegmatic Midwestern heart, that this won’t do for storytelling. So I make a list.
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A month or so ago, I was deep into first-pass editing. This is the stage after you receive an editorial letter that poses questions about character development, suggests adding scenes (or removing them), and encourages other “big picture” thinking. I posted a photo of what my editing process looked like for that morning, and Therese Walsh messaged me: “Please write a post about this.”
I thought that was Therese just being sweet and supportive (as is her way) because what could I possibly say about something so obvious?
But then, over the course of the day, similar comments trickled in. I was surprised, and it got me thinking that maybe…was it possible?…not everyone organized their thoughts in pictures? So I did a little digging.
Turns out, I am a visual thinker (aka picture thinker), as are 60-65% of the rest of you. When you write, do you first picture the scene in your mind, and then describe what you see? Or, do you begin to write and the scene slowly materializes as your words hit the page? If you are the former, [insert Jeff Foxworthy’s voice] you might be a visual thinker.
If you are athletic, musical or mathematically inclined, you may be more inclined to visual thinking.
Back in the 1970s,“visual” and “verbal” thinking were set up as opposites, but the brain is never that simple. Most of us think and learn in a combination of ways.
For example, Temple Grandin reports that words touch off cascades of images as her visual and language systems interact. (Otis, Psychology Today)
Poet Natasha Trethewey has such a strong visual memory that, when she studied for tests in high school, she would visually memorize her notes and then read the answers off her mental scans. (Id.)
Jessica Spotswood, an author friend of mine, gets down to editing by retyping her entire book, character-by-character, starting with page one. She says, seeing the words all together on the page visually disengages her from the specific words originally selected, and allows her to fine-tune her message.
So, this brings me back to my own writing and editing processes. Why do I do it the way that I do, and might it also help you?
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I have a daughter. She’s seventeen. She’s a fantastic writer (truly), and a big-time reader (no surprise). She’s also totally blind. And this is where things get interesting.
A few weeks ago, we were driving down the road. She was reading aloud to me from her work in progress—a fantasy that featured a blind person as the main character. Here’s a snippet of that conversation:
Daughter reading: “As the minivan approached the curb, we all turned to look, and John’s face clouded with disgust.”
“Stop,” I said. “Stop right there. Isn’t the main character blind?”
“Yeah,” she said, as if it should be obvious. She’d already told me so.
“Okay, so how did she know it was a minivan approaching? How did she know everybody turned to look? How did she know what John’s face looked like?”
Long pause…Then, from the passenger seat. “Dammit.”
This exchange triggered a fascinating conversation about points of view and author intrusion. My daughter had infused her character with a point of view that was not specific to her character’s visual impairment, but rather to every sighted character in every book she’d ever read. This disconnect caused reader/listener confusion and a lack of trust.
“How can you rewrite it?” I asked.
A few minutes later she came back with:
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Photo by alq666
We all have an inherent sense of story. There is an expected rhythm to it, like breathing, and we notice when that rhythm gets interrupted. This is why we give up on a novel we’re reading because it’s moving too slowly, or why we are dissatisfied with an ending because it felt too rushed.
I had the pleasure earlier this month to present at Writer Unboxed’s Unconference in Salem, Massachusetts. One of my topics was “Wrangling with Plot,” to correspond with my essay in Author in Progress. Rather than focus on the three-act plot structure that, perhaps, we have all heard too much about. I attempted to focus my remarks on the pacing of those three acts so that they resonate well with modern-day audiences’ expectations. In other words, while you want your plot to surprise, to inspire, and to get readers thinking about things in new and interesting ways, the pacing of that plot, the delivery of that message, is often best received when it has a certain anticipated rhythm.
If you are getting comments from agents, editors, or even readers that the story is “hard to get into” or “moves too slowly,” then you are likely dealing with a pacing problem. Your story is not beating in rhythm with the pulse of the modern-day audience and that lack of rhythm can, no doubt, be unsettling.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy lately. It’s been an obvious subject of conversation in the wake of the Orlando massacre and high profile sexual assaults. Violence is often the result of one person’s inability to connect with and appreciate the value and integrity of another person.
In that regard, author Shannon Hale has been very vocal about schools not engaging female authors for speaking engagements and not promoting books with female protagonists on the premise that the author or the book won’t be interesting to boys (while not having the same concerns about male authors and male protagonists being interesting to girls). Hale recently tweeted (and I’m paraphrasing here): When we constantly tell young boys that they don’t have to consider the female point of view, that the female protagonist’s story has nothing to teach them, and even to ridicule those boys who (gasp!) pick up a book about a girl…is it any wonder why there are so many young men who cannot empathize with their female peers?
Obviously developing empathy is an important piece to cultivating a safer and healthier world, but I’m not here to bemoan current events. Instead, let me focus on the importance of developing empathy for the purpose of improving our writing. This is Writer Unboxed, after all.
Why do we, as writers, need to develop a strong ability to empathize?
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