As I mentioned last week, the point of the book blurb is to elicit an emotional reaction and make people want to read more. We already talked about the five main parts of a blurb, and this week I want to focus on tips to strengthen the reader’s emotional response. Read more…
There are several ways to get people to read your book. The title, cover art, and book reviews quotes are just a few ways to hook the readers. One of the best ways to get them to open the book is the blurb you put on the back cover. These Read more…
If you’ve heard it before, you’re going to keep hearing it. Conflict makes a good story. But it can’t just be a simple problem. It should start as something wrong and snowball into a catastrophe by the climax of the story. You do this by broadening and deepening the conflict Read more…
There’s a theory that storytellers hypnotize their readers by the power of suggestion. I’ve never studied hypnosis, but I see the similarities and have put it on my list of topics to research further. In this post, we are going over the five levels of brain waves and one way Read more…
When you write a scene in your story, it can be hard to balance the description with the action. The readers need to be able to picture the setting and characters, but too much description can make the story feel like it isn’t moving forward. There is a three step Read more…
This week I’ve learned some insider information about publishing houses: the hierarchy of authors and how to climb it. There seems to be six levels of authors in a publishing house: newbie, proven, midlist, lead, super lead, and apex. Let’s take a closer look at each. 1. Newbie Author A Read more…
Every writer wants to have engaging characters that hook the readers. In this post, I’m going to talk about three elements that can create a character that readers want to get behind. These are proactivity, competence, and sympathy. All three elements should be treated like sliders instead of an on/off Read more…
When I first started submerging myself in writing lingo, I listened to podcasts by authors. I heard the word denouement several times and recognized it as French, but I had no clue what it meant. While the word itself isn’t mandatory to know as a writer, what it represents for Read more…
We’ve talked about the Try/Fail cycle and how it needs to be repeated at least three times in a novel, and now we’re going to focus on one moment in the last cycle. Arguably, the most important scene in your book. This moment has been called many things: the Reversal, Read more…
This week we’re getting to the heart of the major conflict in any plot. James Scott Bell emphasizes that every story is about a character confronting death, but it’s not as straight forward as it sounds. There are three types of death: physical, professional, and psychological. All stories need conflict, Read more…