Writing intense scenes can be one of the most exciting parts of storytelling. Whether it’s a gripping fight, a romantic encounter that leaves hearts racing, or an emotional moment that hits readers hard, these scenes pull readers in and keep them hooked. But creating truly intense moments takes more than just throwing in action or dramatic emotions. It’s about pacing, sensory details, and staying true to your character.

Fight Scenes: Keep It Clear and High-Stakes

Fight scenes grab attention because they often mean danger or life-and-death moments. But too much focus on body movements or external conflict can make things feel off. To keep things gripping, focus on what’s at stake and how the characters internally react to the fight. Don’t overcomplicate things with unnecessary details—keep the action clear and immediate.

For example, instead of writing: John lunged forward with a feral scream, his fist flying crashing against Mark’s jaw with the force of a freight train. Blood sprayed like a crimson fountain, painting the air in a ghastly tableau.

Try: John lunged forward, his fist connecting with Mark’s jaw. Mark staggered back, tasting blood. He couldn’t afford to go down—not now.

The second version cuts the fluff and keeps readers focused on the action and its impact. By keeping the description tight and concentrating on the immediate stakes, you can make readers feel every hit and every moment of tension.

Romantic Scenes: Go for Subtlety and Sensory Details

When writing passionate scenes, it’s easy to slip into over-the-top territory. Instead, focus on the connection between characters and use sensory details to make it feel real. A well-written romantic scene doesn’t need to scream its intensity—it should evoke the tension and vulnerability in the moment.

You can show the tension and vulnerability through small gestures and understated emotions.

For example, instead of writing: Their lips met in a fiery explosion of desire, their hearts beating as one in the eternal dance of passion.

Try: She hesitated for a moment, her breath catching as his hand brushed her cheek. When their lips finally met, it was slow, tentative—as if neither was sure whether they were ready for the storm they were about to unleash.

This second version feels more genuine because it builds on the characters’ hesitation and the sensory experience. Readers don’t need grand declarations of passion—they need to feel the connection through small, meaningful details.

Emotional Scenes: Let Tension Build

Emotional moments work best when they’re given time to grow. Jumping straight into high emotions can feel jarring, so it’s important to let the tension simmer. Build up to those big emotional beats by showing small actions, bits of dialogue, and even silences.

For example, instead of writing: “You never loved me!” Sarah screamed, tears streaming down her face like rivers. “I gave you everything, and you threw it all away!”

Try: Sarah stood in the doorway, her hands trembling. “I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I gave you everything. Was it not enough?”

By letting Sarah’s pain emerge gradually through her quiet words and trembling hands, the scene feels more authentic. Readers can sense the buildup of emotions without being hit over the head with melodrama.

Decision Scenes: Show the Inner Conflict

When characters have to make a tough call, the intensity comes from their internal struggle and the pressure of the situation. To capture this well, use short, sharp sentences and show the character’s thought process without over-explaining their feelings.

For example, instead of writing: David clutched his head, torn between two impossible choices. His mind screamed at him to act, but his heart was frozen in fear. “What do I do? What do I do?” he muttered, over and over.

Try: David stared at the two paths ahead. One meant safety. The other, everything he cared about. His hands clenched into fists. He didn’t have time to think—only to choose.

This version creates tension by focusing on David’s immediate dilemma and keeping the language direct. Readers can feel his urgency without being bogged down by too much internal monologue.

General Strategies for Writing Intense Scenes

Trust your readers to understand the emotions without spelling everything out. Instead of telling them how a character feels, show it through actions, dialogue, and reactions. Use strong verbs to convey action and emotion, and engage the senses to draw readers fully into the scene. Remember, not every moment has to be high-energy. Sometimes, quiet moments of reflection or tension make the intense parts stand out even more.

Intense scenes are all about keeping readers hooked and evoking emotion. Don’t be afraid to dive into the deeper layers of your character—just make sure it feels real and earned. By focusing on pacing, sensory details, and character reactions, you can create scenes that stick with readers long after they finish the story.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post How to Write Intense Scenes That Captivate Readers appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

“I read your pages,” said my critique partner. “And I think it’d really increase the tension if you tore the one page out of the book that your main character needs.”

It was a great suggestion. My main character was poring over hospital records, searching for a clue about her daughter’s disappearance. In my original draft, she discovered that the records for the day in question simply didn’t exist. But if that crucial page had been torn out instead, the stakes and tension would skyrocket.

I thought about it for a few days, and finally decided against making the change. Why?

Because adding tension for tension’s sake can backfire, creating a shallow narrative that doesn’t resonate with readers.

Avoiding the Trap of the “Plastic Novel”

We’ve all read them. Stories that don’t quite hold together. They feel lightweight, with no substance. The characters are paper-thin, and the plot is easily breakable.

In psychological thrillers, the last thing you want to do is write a “plastic novel”—a story that feels artificial, breakable, and lacking substance. This genre demands depth. Readers expect stories that dig into the human psyche, unearth dark secrets, and explore emotional turmoil. A plastic novel may hook readers temporarily, but it won’t keep them invested, leading to poor reviews, lower sales, or disinterest from publishers.

So how do you avoid this trap? By ensuring your thriller has depth, complexity, and, most importantly, substance.

The Pillars of a Suspenseful Thriller

To craft a thriller that not only has substance but also that unputdownable quality of bestsellers, several key elements are essential.

Let’s dive in.

Atmosphere

Weather has a lot of sway with readers in a suspenseful thriller. Why? Extreme conditions amplify tension. A lingering heatwave frays nerves, pushes characters to their breaking points, and creates an undercurrent of unease. Often, this oppressive heat will culminate in a climactic storm, breaking the tension alongside the story’s dramatic finale.

Incorporating weather into your story is like adding a character—one whose sole purpose is to amplify the conflict. Freezing temperatures add physical risk. Approaching storms introduce a ticking clock element, adding urgency. Heat breeds impatience and irritation. Even drought can symbolize a slow burn of desperation. Use weather to mirror and heighten the emotional stakes of your story.

Fast Pacing

While some suspense novels build slowly, creeping under your skin (thinking of you, Silence of the Lambs), most thrillers pick up speed quickly and never let go. Pacing in thrillers should never stall. A few ways to maintain a breakneck pace?

• Shorter chapters: This encourages readers to keep turning the pages.
• Staccato sentences:  Quick, punchy language mirrors the intensity of the unfolding action.
• Every scene drives the story forward: No wasted conversations or unnecessary exposition—every word should push the plot toward its climax.

High Personal Stakes

When I first started writing thrillers, the main conflict always ended in the threat of physical harm for my main character.

But in psychological thrillers, the danger is often more insidious. The true threat lies in the character’s mental and emotional state. While the body can heal, a fractured mind may not.

So, what vulnerabilities does your character have? What emotional wounds could the antagonist exploit to torture them on a deeper level? Target these areas and it will immediately increase the personal stakes for your character.

Secrets

In an earlier post, I covered in detail how to layer secrets into your suspense to increase tension, so here I’ll just cover it lightly.

Secrets are the lifeblood of suspense, particularly in the early stages of the story. Your first Act should be packed with them, creating intrigue and setting the stage for revelations later on. Act 2 gradually unravels these mysteries, offering tantalizing hints that keep the reader hooked. By the time you reach Act 3, the secrets should be exploding into the open, transforming the story and its characters.

Unreliable Characters

Trust no one in a psychological thriller. Assume that your characters, even your protagonist, are always lying or withholding the full truth. Readers of this genre expect deception, so take advantage of their mistrust. Who in your story is clearly untrustworthy? Who appears honest but has hidden layers? Play with these expectations to keep your audience guessing.

A Masked Antagonist, With A Relatable Agenda

One of my favorite parts of writing in this genre is creating an antagonist that is irredeemable yet relatable. The more human and understandable they are, the more chilling their actions become. To deepen the suspense, often the true identity of the antagonist remains a mystery until the middle or end of the story. In some cases, there are multiple suspects, and part of the challenge for the reader is to figure out the villain’s identity before the protagonist does.

Conclusion

An unputdownable psychological thriller needs more than just surface-level tension and twists. It requires depth, substance, and a careful balance of fast pacing, high stakes, and well-crafted characters. By focusing on atmosphere, secrets, unreliable characters, and a chilling yet sympathetic villain, you’ll create a story that truly is unputdownable.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post How to Write Unputdownable Psychological Thrillers appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Have you wondered what makes a book unputdownable? What techniques or tricks an author employs to make sure you read that next word, sentence, paragraph, page?

One of the most effective ways to do this is by building suspense. All genres have suspense…or at least should.

Suspense is reader glue. Conflict, questions, secrets, surprises, and action are the lifeblood of suspense. Suspense happens when dramatic questions or secrets trap the reader’s attention and makes them want to know what happens next.

Our job is to sprinkle secrets out like wayfinding points to get readers to ask questions…without them realizing we are doing it.

Be Careful: Gimmicks vs Suspense

The last thing we want to do is be gimmicky with our writing. There is a difference between withholding information and having genuine secrets. If you must withhold information, you must have a compelling reason. This reason must be more than to simply surprise or shock the reader.

Angela Ackerman asks three questions when planning story secrets:

1. Does this secret enhance the plotline, or distract from it?
2. Does this secret align with the character’s moral code?
3. Does this secret send a message about the character’s personality that meshes with how I want readers to think about him or her?

When using secrets to build suspense, you must make sure that:

• The secret is integral to the plot.
• The secret is true to the character.
• Your character must have a necessary or indispensable reason for keeping the secret.
• The tension is not increased by giving the reader the information upfront.

If you cannot check these four criteria off, you may be better off giving your reader the information, and building suspense through other secrets and questions.

Remember: readers are smart. Treat them as such.

How Do You Want Readers to Feel When They Learn a Secret?

• Surprise. In other words, you don’t want them to see it coming. (Hello, Snape.)
• Understanding. When the reader learns the secret, it should make total sense. We want our readers to have a WOW and DUH experience. (The Sixth Sense, I’m looking at you.)
• Satisfaction. The reveal should emotionally satisfy the reader—whether that emotion is revenge, a giant I-told-you-so/I-knew-it, character redemption, or they-had-it-coming. (The Good Place, is actually the bad place.)

Types of Secrets in Fiction + Examples

There are two types of secrets in fiction. Author Secrets, which are the story twists and surprises that you, the author, intentionally keep from the reader and reveal based on your plot. And Character Secrets, which are secrets characters keep from other characters, usually traced back to that character’s morality or original wound. These secrets may or may not also be kept from the reader.

Author Secrets:

• Directly tell the danger/stakes at the beginning, but no more. That’s what the rest of the book is for….
  • QUEST FOR A MAID, Frances Mary Hendry

When I was nine years old, I hid under a table and heard my sister kill a king.

• I mean, those are high stakes right? After this bomb of a first line, the author just goes into the story of Meg, the precocious little sister and the toothache that led her to witness this horrific event.
• The devil’s in the details…the important ones that is. These are little hints that, once your final reveal comes to light, all come bubbling back to the surface. These are the secrets that, on second read-through, readers will pick up on.

• HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, J.K. Rowling

Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell’s turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. … He rolled over and fell asleep again, and when he woke the next day, he didn’t remember the dream at all.

• Hint at what’s to come – plants and reveals
  • POWER OF THE SONG, Kris Faryn & Jules Lynn

Plant: Something thumped against my head. I looked around, up, down—and picked up a raisin. Where did that come from? Grief rolled through me, tight and tense and tinted with guilt. Raisins would be forever connected to Narfi, my troubled friend who’d tried to protect me from the Sons. And they’d killed him for it. I closed my hand around the shriveled fruit and got to my feet.

• Our main character believes her friend Narfi is dead—never to be seen again. But as more raisins appear in her path (more plants), she—and us—perk up. Something else is going on, and we’ll have to keep reading to figure out what.
• Chekhov’s Gun: ‘If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.’ This device doesn’t have to be a literal gun, but if you include a significant detail in the beginning, and spend time describing it, the item or idea must be used by the end of the story.

• THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE, Avi

But gradually — like a telescope being focused — I began to realize I was watching something clinging to one of the mooring ropes on the ship’s stern. It reminded me of a picture I once had seen of a sloth, an animal that hangs upside down upon jungle vines. But this — I gradually perceived — was a man. He appeared to be shimmying himself from the dock up to the Seahawk. Even as I realized what I was seeing, he boarded the ship and was gone.

In this example, our main character is witnessing a stowaway steal onto a ship in the beginning of the story. She’s too naive to understand what she saw and it quickly slips her mind. The detail is small, and not much thought is given to it in the story BUT our reader ears have perked up, and we’re now—on a sublevel—searching the story for this mysterious man and when he might show up again.

• Misdirection

• HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, J.K. Rowling

“It was Snape,” Ron was explaining, “Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“Rubbish,” said Hagrid, who hadn’t heard a word of what had gone on next to him in the stands. “Why would Snape do somethin’ like that?”

Character Secrets:

• To protect…either themselves or others.
  • TRUTH TRUTH LIE, Christina Delay

I sit for a moment in my car, watching her go, and the morning silence throbs in my ears. You can’t bullshit your best friend. Maybe not, but I can lie. To protect my husband, my best friend, my freedom, I can be the best damn liar in the world.

• Here, our main character is making a very obvious choice to keep a secret from other characters out of a need to protect. We’re in on it, as the reader, but the suspense is in watching the other characters struggle to understand our main character’s secrets.

• Give partial answers (also an author secret)
  • HOUSE OF EARTH AND BLOOD, Sarah J. Maas (partial memory)

She let go, like a key turning in a lock. The first rays of the sun over the horizon. And Bryce whispered, as those bullets came closer to that awaiting gun and the monstrous male who wielded it. “Close your eyes, Danika.”

• We have no idea what is going on in this memory. In fact, this memory builds upon itself in key moments throughout the story, letting us know that our main character knows exactly what is going on, but because of reasons, she can’t let us or others in on the secret.

Whether your story’s secret is something that is only known to the author, the character, or between certain characters, secrets are one of the key ingredients of building suspense, and therefore, crafting a story readers cannot put down.

Bonus Exercise: Find the Secrets

For those who want practice detecting secrets, I’m offering up the first scene of my latest release, TRUTH TRUTH LIE, to be dissected. Click here to read it!

If you think you’ve found all the secrets, leave a comment below with the number of secrets you’ve found—then enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win one of two prizes:

1. A free copy of TRUTH TRUTH LIE. (Signed hardback for US, Ebook + signed bookplate outside of US)
2. A critique of the first 5 pages of your manuscript

The lucky winners will be announced on this post, plus Mindy will e-mail them about their prize on Saturday, January 28. Good luck!

The winner is…Dedra Davis!
Huge congrats.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Build Suspense With Secrets appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

So often, writing feels lonely, doesn’t it? We’re alone in our writing cave getting words onto the page, and it’s not until we’re ready to show polished pages to a trusted critique partner that we embrace working with another creative. Or we’re alone in marketing our book, finding readers, or just figuring out how to get our final manuscript into an agent’s hands.

What if I told you that it didn’t have to be that way? According to Statista.com, in 2021 there were over 49,500 authors working in the United States alone. That is a lot of creative brain power and publishing know-how. Instead of working alone, expand your options and paths to success with author collaborations.

Collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce or create something. I like this definition for multiple reasons. First, collaboration is an act. It demands that two or more people work together toward a common goal. Second, the reason behind the collaboration is directly tied to creating or producing something. The nature of collaboration is a driving force to an end product. Third, it requires people to work together.

If you were a person who hated group projects as a student, I don’t blame you. Collaborations are only as good as the people involved and their dedication to the project.

But if you get a group of authors to work toward the same goal…that’s where you find priceless creative gold.

Types of Author Collaborations

Let’s first cover a few types of author collaborations.

• Anthologies – a collection of written works, usually by various authors. Can be themed to a subject, character archetype, world, holiday, etc.
• Cross-promotions – an agreement between two or more authors to promote each other’s books during a set time and method.
  • In reader groups
  • Through newsletters
  • On social media
  • At conventions
• Publishing Teams – an exchange of skill-based services instead of money.
• Group Giveaways – authors who have a similar theme or world and giveaway a free copy in order to either increase sales or newsletter subscribers.
• Group Sales – authors who have a similar theme or world and have come together to do a group sale.
• Author Events/Book Signings – authors with similar titles or similar audience team up to share a table at an author event or host a panel during a book signing.
• Co-writing a book or series – two authors, one story. Yes, it can be done!
• Author Co-ops – a group of authors with varying publishing talents form a cooperative to publish and market their books.

Some of these you’ve probably either heard of or participated in, but the two I’d like to focus on are Co-Writing and Author Co-ops.

Co-Writing, An Intense Author Collaboration

Co-writing involves sharing the creation of the novel in any way you see fit. That is, co-authors could alternate writing scenes, discuss and write chapters together, have one plot and the other write, or choose POVs you each represent. But the process and the result are the same: a book that represents both of your ideas, abilities, and creativity.

How can you possibly write a novel with another writer? The key is picking the right writing partner. Ideally, you choose someone who complements or enhances your skills as a writer. Yet, many authors have found success writing a book with a partner, including such bestsellers as Neil Gaiman and Rachel Caine.

The most important aspect of a co-writing partnership is trust. And trust is often built by defining expectations and following through. How will the process work? What responsibilities do you each have? How will you resolve any disagreements?

Co-writing with the right writing partner can lead to faster turnaround times on projects, more creative solutions to plot problems, and an excitement for the project that is fueled by two authors striving for the words The End.

Oh, and this entire section was co-written with my own co-writing partner of The Muse Island Series, Julie Glover/Jules Lynn. Could you tell?

Book View Café, An Author Co-op

Author co-ops are groups of authors that volunteer their time and expertise to help other members publish or promote their work. In a well-run co-op, with clear rules and responsibilities, an author co-op can operate just as any other publishing house.

Book View Café (BVC) is an author-owned and operated publishing cooperative. Their authors range from New York Times bestselling authors to award winners. They write across all genres, from science fiction to romance to historical to mainstream. At BVC, authors function as editors, copyeditors, ebook formatters, cover artists, website maintainers and more. Titles are offered in both reprints and new titles in ebook form, and many titles are also available in print. And 90% of the cover price goes to the author. That’s more than at any other online bookseller (Amazon, B&N, iTunes, or GooglePlay).

Author co-ops are a lot of work. Time is spent beta-reading, copy-editing and proofreading, marketing, and managing the overall logistics of running a co-op. But the creative gold found within many co-ops is priceless.

A Unique Opportunity for Author Collaboration

Are you in the process of discovering and completing your author team? Or perhaps you just need that precious time with other authors. Good news! There are still retreat spots open on the April 1, 2023 Cruising Writers Writing Cruise to Grand Cayman. Cruising Writers brings together talented authors along with respected teachers to provide writing time, feedback, and craft improvement. This year, Becca Syme of the Better-Faster Academy and Kirsten Oliphant of the Create If podcast are leading our cruising writers through the gorgeous waters of the Caribbean. Registration is easy on the CruisingWriters.com website, but book your spot soon. Spaces are limited and only a few retreat spots are left!

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Find Creative Gold with Author Collaborations appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

For the past two months, we’ve been in a small village in the middle of France. I imagined there would be writing galore, with wine and cheese raining down, to the backdrop of vineyards and chateaus.

There was wine. There was cheese. There was beautiful scenery. There were also two patooties who needed entertainment. In other words, the writing wasn’t happening.

Not wholly unexpected but I did find myself frustrated that I had gotten so far from my writing routine. (I mean, not too frustrated. I was in France!) Instead of wallowing, I chose to keep my creativity healthy and engaged so that when I could get back to a routine, my creative energy wasn’t atrophied.

How?

By focusing small.

Break From Brain Noise

To focus small, we have to first break an addictive bad habit.

Brain noise.

In a world that is constantly connected with news and updates twenty-four-seven, it’s way too easy to fill our heads with noisy information. Sure, most of it is important, but is it important right now?

In our small part of France, we rarely saw people on their phones. Not at dinner, not at lunch, not while driving a car, not while sitting at a park, not while hanging out with friends. The phone stayed in the bag or the pocket. EVEN THE TEENAGERS. Likewise, I never saw a single person with a laptop at a cafe.

That had an impact, and I found myself noticing how often my hand tracked into my purse to check my phone. Even if it was just for a second or two, it was enough to break my focus from what was happening. It disengaged me from the food I was enjoying, or the live music that was rocking, or the conversation I was eavesdropping.

It took me out of the present and flooded my brain with extra noise. Noise that drowns creativity.

Focus Small to Feed Creativity

Many studies have been conducted on the power of awe, discovery, and adventure on creativity. Personal experience supports these studies, but overwhelmingly the connecting thread that ties all these energy sources for creativity is the small moments.

Creativity isn’t found in the news or on social media and it isn’t found on expensive trips or sightseeing excursions.

Instead, creativity is found when you, the creative, focus small.

I’m not talking about goals here—have big goals. I am talking about immersing yourself in the present moments and actively seeking awe, discovery, and adventure within the “normal”.

In other words, those rare moments when we allow our brains to declutter, to be silent, are the moments that creativity reigns supreme.

So today, be French and build a new habit. A habit where you silence the brain noise and focus small. A habit that gives energy to your creativity.

And if you need help quieting the noise and feeding your creativity, a writing retreat on a cruise ship is always a good cure.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Small Focus. Big Creativity. appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Recently I’ve been reading Marcus Sakey’s BRILLIANCE trilogy. Yes, I know I’m behind the times, but OMG have you read these books yet?

I’m enjoying them immensely, both from a reader and a writer perspective. Mr. Sakey’s use of descriptors is like none other, and while I revel in his genius, it also makes me wonder what I’m doing writing.

Because I know I’ll never be able to write like him.

Has this ever happened to you? You think you’re doing great, then BAM an amazing book or author comes and slaps you upside the head with their talent or story or characters and suddenly, you’re not doing so great.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like a hack. It won’t be the last. And after the appropriate amount of self-pity and eating my feelings, I turn toward the tactics I know will help me regain some confidence.

Remember Your Brand

First, it helps to remember who you are as an author. What kind of stories do you write? Do they even fit in the genre of who you’re fanpersoning over? In Marcus Sakey’s BRILLIANCE case, the trilogy is a police procedural with a sci-fi twist. And yeah. I don’t write that.

Second, consider your authorial voice. Is it a close match to the author who is unintentionally making you feel inferior? More than likely, not so. In fact, you may be enjoying the writing because it is so different from your voice.

Third, list your strengths. What are the things you really excel at in your stories? What are the things that readers or critique partners or contest judges call out again and again about your writing and your characters?

Pro tip: It really is okay to print these accolades and place them where you can see them. Writing is hard and sometimes, we need the reminder.

Take A Class

Feeling better yet?

If so, gently analyze what it is about the writing style that you so admire. For me, Mr. Sakey has a very natural way of dropping phrase twists that live within the character’s voice that are so well done that I have to go back and reread the little miracle I just read.

I’ve taken plenty of writing classes before, but perhaps I could use a refresher in cliche twists or character voice. Even if I’ve heard it all before, hearing the information again when I’m at a different point in my writing journey could reveal fresh insights.

What elements do you find yourself admiring in recent reads? I can almost guarantee that there’s a class or book for improving that skill.

Surround Yourself With Other Authors

The best cure I’ve found for the I’m-A-Hack feeling is to get around other authors. It’s one of the reasons I founded Cruising Writers. And it’s one of the reasons I’ve planned a new writing cruise next spring. Being with other authors not only gets the creative juices flowing, it also allows for your craft to grow by an exponential leap. (Also, this particular writing cruise will have Becca Syme teaching about Strengths for Writers and Kirsten Oliphant of Create If Writing teaching about marketing, so you know, it’s a good place to be.)

Sharing struggles and triumphs with authors who understand is one of the best ways to remember that you’re not a hack. Every creative goes through this cycle, and most authors feel that their craft isn’t good enough…yet. That’s important to keep in mind. The yet. It keeps us striving for the next level, and when we reach it, oh man, it’s brilliant.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post When You Feel Like a Hack appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

One of my favorite characters of all time is Star Trek’s lovable android, Data. If you aren’t familiar with The Next Generation, and Data in particular, the most important thing you need to understand is Data is an android with a life mission of becoming more human. He’s the Pinocchio of space, but with better decision-making skills.

While rewatching the series for the tenth time—because of course we need to indoctrinate our oldest patootie into this world—we came across the episode titled “The Measure of a Man.” If you haven’t seen this episode, or if it’s been a while, please take a few minutes to watch this clip.

The crux of the episode is this—what (or who) qualifies as sentient life? And it made me wonder about my own characters. At what point do they become ‘sentient’?

There are tons of character interview questions for authors to get to know their characters. My deep, dark secret? Character interviews have never ever worked for me. At least, they’ve never helped make my characters seem sentient.

But what if we applied Star Fleet’s criteria for sentient life to our characters and judged them under the same microscope that Data was judged in “The Measure of a Man?” Will doing so help us understand the core of our characters better? And if so, do our characters measure up?

Intelligence

The first criteria that sentient life must meet is intelligence. Does the being possess the “ability to learn, to understand, and to cope with new situations?”

I mean, yes, we can force our characters to learn, to understand, and to cope with new situations. We are their creators, after all. But at what point do our characters become organically intelligent? In other words, when do our characters begin to tell us, their creator, if a certain decision or action is within character for them?

In the past, it has taken me a long time to get to this point with my characters. I have to live with them and immerse myself in their world for a while. Korrina, the main character in my Siren’s Call series, took years to develop because I, the creator, had a different idea of who she should be than who she truly was. (And she is nothing if not stubborn.) My idea of who she should be blocked her true self from coming out.

Once I let Korrina be her snarky, acts-now-apologizes-later self, she became organically intelligent. She was able to learn and to understand new, big concepts (such as the existence of mythological beings and that she’s a Siren with a magic object attached to her soul), as well as cope with new situations in ways that were realistic, believable, and unique to her character. It is her intelligence that adds shape to her character, as well as her ability to learn from her mistakes that makes her seem sentient.

Self-awareness

My critique partner, Julie Glover, is an absolute whiz when it comes to crafting characters who appear self-aware. One of her main characters in SHARING HUNTER, Chloe, is so self-aware that she occasionally jumps into conversations Julie and I have with each other.

Dr. Maddox, in the Star Trek episode we’re referencing, claims that self-awareness is achieved when “You are conscious of your existence and your actions. You are aware of yourself and your own ego.”

Are our characters capable of becoming self-aware?

I argue, yes, they are.

When our characters do something surprising or different than we had planned, our characters become self-aware.

When our characters speak in a way that is totally foreign to how we, the author, processes the world, they are self-aware.

When Julie Glover’s main character, Chloe, suggests that she and her best friend Rachel share a boyfriend the last semester of high school, she doesn’t just suggest it. She knows Rachel won’t go for this idea unless she sets the situation up perfectly, orchestrates the slow leak of idea building upon idea, and uses phrases like “that smokin’ hot piece of boy-bacon won’t last long in the high school meat market.”

However, she also realizes that if she comes on too strong, Rachel will balk and the idea will be over before it has a chance, “for Twain’s sake.”

The way Chloe masterminds her sharing-a-boyfriend scheme is just so…Chloe. (And if you haven’t read SHARING HUNTER yet, you really must.)

Consciousness

This one is, I believe, the hardest criteria for our characters to meet. Do our fictional characters experience true consciousness?

Consciousness is defined as “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.”

In Data’s example, that is the question that was left unanswered. It was up to the court to decide if Data met the requirement of consciousness in even the smallest measure. Is Data a machine, programmed to answer an infinite number of questions, or does he have consciousness—is he capable of original thought?

So I will follow Star Trek’s example. What do you think?

Are our characters derived from our own subconscious, meaning that the questions they pose and the answers they find are actually from deep inside our own brains? Or do these characters speak for themselves, with thoughts and ideas that belong to them?

It’s an interesting concept to ponder. What is sentient consciousness? What is life?

And do your characters have it?

Our best characters don’t simply occupy the page but come to life—for us and for our readers. They possess intelligence, feel self-aware, and seem to be, or perhaps are, conscious.

Consider these traits as you write characters your readers will connect with, and use these traits to help your readers feel that your characters are almost as real as their own selves.

Live long and prosper.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post The Measure of a Character appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Awe is Integral to Creativity

Unless you’re a full-time author, finding time and/or motivation to write can be challenging. So, finding time to boost your creativity at the expense of your writing time…crazy talk.

But…

What if I told you that staring at a dark sky full of stars was integral to your creativity?

What if I told you that watching a video celebrating human ingenuity was as important as getting words on the page?

What if I told you that you absolutely should listen to that amazing album by your favorite band and not write?

What if doing all these things made you more creatively productive?

I know. Crazy.

Or is it?

The Science Behind Awe

Awe is defined as “an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.”

Researchers have long believed in the power of positive feelings to impact creativity, however a study by Jia Wei Zhang proves that simply having positive emotions isn’t the biggest influence on creativity.

In order to significantly bolster our creativity, we need to experience awe.

Zhang found that “the experience of awe can lead to an open mindset, orient people to explore, and approach experiences with unconventional perspectives—all of which are processes critical to creativity.” (Zhang, 2017)

Even more interesting is the study found that experiencing awe is more impactful on creativity than amusement. Zhang references another study conducted in 2007 that concluded that people who relived a memory of awe, as opposed to one of happiness, “reported being more willing to engage in a creative activity in the next hour.” (Shiota et al., 2007)

So, there you have it. Scientific proof that experiencing awe will inspire you to write in the next hour.

If you need a short-cut to getting motivated to write…this is it.

Habitualize Experiencing Awe

So how do you make a habit of something that seems spontaneous or uncontrollable?

Awe can be intentional.

We’ve all noticed a beautiful sunset. But there is a significant difference in noticing a beautiful sunset versus allowing yourself to sink into why that sunset is beautiful, to ponder all the factors that had to happen to not only create that fleeting masterpiece, but to also place you in that moment so you could experience it, and to understand that this moment will never be replicated. That you’ve experienced a once-in-a-lifetime sunset.

You do have the ability to turn simple moments into moments of awe.

In the beginning, set reminders on your phone to search for these moments. Or start your writing session with an intentional moment of awe.

Fortunately, habitualizing awe is fun, and once you get started, it’s easy to continue.

Your Awe Starter Kit

If you’re someone who has a difficult time being awed, here’s a starter kit for you. Once you start making awe a normal part of your day, you’ll find your own moments and be able to create your own ‘playlist of awe’ in order to kickstart your writing sessions.

1. Nature
   1. Sunsets/Sunrises
   2. Starry nights
   3. Leaves blowing in the street
   4. A flower blooming
   5. Wind blowing through the trees
2. Family
   1. A child’s laughter
   2. A sleeping child (which can be many different levels of awe)
   3. Reliving their childhood through photos
   4. The love you hold for your SO and/or children
   5. Your own parent’s or parental figure’s love and sacrifice for you
3. The Arts
   1. Videos of your favorite type of dance (ballet, contemporary, jazz, hip hop)
   2. Poetry
   3. A beautifully written line in a book
   4. A painting that moves something within you
   5. Music – particularly a song that allows you to listen on a deeper level
4. Travel
   1. New-to-you sights
   2. Stained glass windows in churches
   3. A place steeped in history, which you’ve read about
   4. Walk in the footsteps of your ancestors
   5. Engage with people who don’t speak your language or share your culture
5. Humans
   1. New inventions
   2. New discoveries
   3. Theories about ancient civilizations
   4. Videos of the deepest parts of the ocean
   5. Stories about people who overcome great odds

What about you? Do you have a moment of awe you’d like to share?

Work Cited:
Zhang, Jia Wei. Trait and State Based Experience of Awe Promotes Creativity. 2017, UC Berkeley.
EScholarship.org, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9k10094r.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Use Awe to Spark Creativity appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Freedom is a contradictory word, don’t you think? The official definition of freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. However, follow that to its extreme and chaos reigns.

But that’s the dream of every author, right? To be free to write on our own schedule, without the hindrance of other obligations. We want our book sales or family life or work schedule to provide us this freedom so we may be the best author we can be. But what happens when we get exactly what we want?

The patooties are heading back to school for the first time in seventeen months, and I am nose-to-nose with this concept of freedom, experiencing its contradictions in all its forms: 

• Fear of the unknown
• Excitement for an actual work day
• Trepidation about what to do with uninterrupted hours (or, let’s be real here, minutes)
• Uncertainty about the right path forward
• Elation about having a few quiet hours in the house to write and to work
• Doubt I can meet my writing goals and deadlines again, as it has been so very long…. 

I don’t feel very free.

With the world finding a new normal, are you experiencing something similar? Whether it be back-to-school, back-to-in-office-work, or simply the end of summer approaching, it’s not surprising if we find ourselves wrestling with conflicting emotions about the next season of our life.

Ronald Reagan says we need order to have freedom.

“There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. ”

The musical Hamilton says our freedom can never be taken away.

“Raise a glass to freedom, Something they can never take away.”

Turns out, feeling free is different from freedom. Breaking it down further, I believe that in order to feel free and experience true freedom, we must first break free…

From Expectations

Expectations are a sticky bog. Whether they be our own expectations for ourselves, others’ expectations for us, or even our expectations of others, when we start making decisions based on expectations, and our attitude and mood are affected by expectations, we lose our freedom. We are no longer able to feel free.

What expectations are you or others placing on your creative life?

• A golden first draft
• To make a story fit into a specific genre
• To meet every deadline (self-imposed or contractual), regardless of what is going on in your personal life
• More sales
• Five star reviews
• This book must do better than the last book
• This book must be better than the last book
• Reader feedback, suggestions, wish list
• Must engage your community on social media
• Write X amount of words or write for X amount of time every day

Can you feel the pressure building? Just writing that list made my breathing go shallow. 

Now take a moment and imagine…how would it feel to let all of that go?

What impact would it have on your creativity if you approached it with zero expectations, if you allowed yourself to simply enjoy the moments in which you have to write?

I bet it’d be pretty freeing.

From Old Habits

I don’t know about you, but I have developed some…let’s frame it as not helpful…habits over the past year.

Now is a good time to assess what lifestyle changes we’ve accepted that may no longer be beneficial to what we actually want for ourselves.

What do you want? What habits are holding you back from getting there?

As with all change, baby steps that are achievable, measurable, and realistic are key. Can you commit to taking a brainstorm walk once a week? How about going to bed 30 minutes earlier? Or meal plan once a week?

Being free to be our best creative selves starts with self-care. Self-care is not selfish. It is essential.

There is freedom in understanding what it is we want for ourselves. Now’s the time to take the steps away from unhelpful habits and move toward affirming rituals that lead us further down the path we’ve chosen.

From Upheaval

…or rather, the anxiety that upheaval can cause.

And, as I’m sure you well know, anxiety is a huge drag on creativity. 2020 was a huge upheaval year. 2021 continues to be a huge upheaval year. Throw in any personal or family changes and, well…anxiety is a fairly common emotion that’s been floating around.

Our brains are wired to avoid change. Why? Change means we’re introducing something unknown into our safe zone, triggering our brains to think we’re no longer safe. 

When we begin to understand the scientific why of our reactions to change or new information, we gain the ability to better handle the anxiety that comes hand-in-hand with upheaval. Knowing that anxiety is normal when something new is introduced into our life makes it easier to breathe through it, to know that this too will pass. 

It is okay if your creativity suffers during a time of upheaval. It is normal.

So break free from the guilt surrounding not being able to be your most creative self during a time of upheaval. Let it go, give yourself grace, and I bet you’ll quickly find yourself feeling free.

Breaking Free

I wish I had a magic button or a code word that could open a heart and mind to accepting freedom without hesitation or restraint. But I don’t.

What I do have is persistence and faith. Persistence to keep trying, to keep doing a little better each day in letting go of expectations, accepting change, and breathing through anxiety. Faith that despite the uncertainty of the immediate future, I will choose to do what’s best for me, my creativity, and my family and friends.

Easier said than done, I know. So here are some practical tips on how to move into a new season with acceptance, grace, and hopefully, some creative productivity.

• Find a quiet time in the mornings to meditate, pray, or journal about your creative vision for this new season. Even five minutes will allow you a more centered start to your day.
• Reach out, talk to a friend. Connection with our trusted circle of loved ones is healing, and allows for us to navigate change with a cheer squad in the background.
• Accept that your creative work is important and necessary.
• Set small, achievable goals, rather than big, insurmountable deadlines.
• Remember to breathe.

There can be no freedom without order…and that order comes from our inner selves being at peace and able to flexibly move through change.

So raise a glass to freedom. And then get back to writing.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Freedom to Create appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

One of the things I love most about being an author is the opportunity to read books from people I personally know. I have read fabulous books by authors whom readers have yet to discover, and despite efforts with marketing, despite amazing blurbs from bestselling authors, despite an enviable collection of awards, they have yet to make their name known.

And I have witnessed some of these authors give up. 

That’s the most heartbreaking thing. They did the hard, time-consuming work of developing their craft. They learned the business of writing. They made the necessary connections. They. Did. The. Work.

But…it can be hard to keep writing, when book after book gets rejection after rejection, or you just aren’t seeing the sales you hoped to see. That dream of recreating one of your books on a private island like your very own Harry Potter world? It keeps sailing off into the horizon while you’re stuck paddling after it with one oar.

Recently, my husband made me listen to a Joe Rogan podcast. Dave Chappelle was his guest and I, not being super familiar with either comedian, didn’t expect to get much out of the episode.

Then they mentioned The Anonymous Road.

The Anonymous Road

It always amazes me how closely different types of creatives’ journeys follow each other. If you were to put an author, a comedian, a painter, a potter, a singer, and an actor in the same room, we’d find common ground in under ten minutes.

So I really should not have been surprised to find myself intensely engaged in Rogan and Chappelle’s conversation.

The anonymous road–brought up in Rogan’s podcast episode #1647–is that time in which an artist, be they comedian, author, or singer, performs to an empty room. Rogan and Chappelle mentioned ten to fifteen years of walking this road.

Ten to fifteen years. For two incredibly successful and well-known creatives.

And they said this road was essential to their success.

Without this road, they wouldn’t have had the freedom to discover who they were as an artist. This road allowed them to develop their craft in a safe space. The road allowed them to fail, start over, fail again, start over again.

For those artists who leaped over the anonymous road into instant fame, many of them lacked the depth or tenacity to survive as lifelong comedians or artists.

Depth comes after time. Tenacity comes after testing. Success comes after perseverance.

It can be hard, especially after the worldwide disruption that has taken place this past year, to keep up with creative pursuits. Some days, I only write a sentence and a half before I’m called away to take care of all the other. I have to constantly remind myself that this is an extraordinary time in every sense of the word, and that it is okay to take a rest stop on the side of the anonymous road.

With that in mind, I find encouragement in these stories. I hope you do as well.

The Journey to Success

Carmen Herrera is 103 years old, and has been a minimalist abstract artist since the 1950s. However she wasn’t ‘discovered’ until 2014, some sixty years after beginning her career. Today, her art is installed in collections around the world.

Diana Galbadon started out as a comic book writer in the late 1970s, before transitioning to an educational career, then eventually back to writing. OUTLANDER was published in 1991, and won the RITA that same year for best romance novel. However it took another twenty-three years for the book to hit the New York Times Bestseller list, the same year the Outlander TV series premiered in the US.

Morgan Freeman began acting at nine years old, landing his first role in a school play. However, he didn’t land his breakout role until forty-one years later in “Street Smart” in 1987. It took another seventeen years for Freeman to win his first Academy Award for “Million Dollar Baby,” in 2004.

Lizzo, rapper, singer, songwriter, and classically-trained flutist, began her musical career in 2005 while in high school. However, she didn’t see commercial success until 2016, eleven years after making the commitment to a creative life.

Your Anonymous Road

There is no set time for how long this road is. Maybe you’ll see instant success but have to journey the road afterward. Maybe you’ve been on this road without even realizing it. Most likely, you’ve stomped your feet on the road, kicked and screamed at it, and/or thrown a few rocks.

Challenge yourself to instead thank the road. Its purpose has been well documented from artists across a wide variety of creative genres and is essential. This is the time of deepening. Savor these years and recognize them for what they are. You’re in the womb of creativity, and are still developing all the amazing parts that make up your artist voice.

N.K. Jemisin says in her Masterclass series that one of the best pieces of writing advice she received was “Persist.” She goes on to say that, “if you continue to work on your craft and continue to improve and continue to submit, you will eventually break through. I’ve found this to be true.”

Persist, people. And in the meantime, love the anonymous journey.

P.S.: N.K Jemisin worked a full-time position as a career counselor for twenty years as she developed her author career. Her writing goals during that time? “I had very modest writing goals on work days—like 100 words, or 250, no more. I was perfectly OK with doing nothing but editing a previous chapter on those days, too.” Now she’s the only author to have won the Hugo award three times in a row, as well as the first to win the Hugo for all three novels in a trilogy.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post The Journey to Success appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

One key factor to any marketing strategy’s success is knowing who your audience is, and yet, this tends to be the main ingredient many of my author clients miss from their marketing process.

In my other life, I run the digital marketing department of a creative firm, and I have a number of Facebook Ads author clients. The main difference between my business clients and my author clients? My business clients tend to know exactly who their customers are, thanks to face-to-face interactions.

My author clients sometimes have an idea of who reads their books, but more often than not, they either

• don’t have a clue, 
• think they have a clue but are actually way off base, or 
• they’ve pigeonholed their core audience and are missing other potential groups of readers.

The most successful of my clients know their readers. 

• They know if their readers are into book clubs or online gaming. 
• They know if they are coffee or tea drinkers. 
• They know if their readers work nine to five, if they stay at home, or if they’re retired. 
• They know if their readers are weekend buyers, weekday buyers, or paycheck buyers, and if they read most during the week, at night, or on weekends.

And because they know these things, they are able to get very specific with their advertising, communication, and social media engagement—both from a targeting perspective and a messaging perspective, which drives costs down, expands reach, makes the ad budget stretch further, drives more organic sales, builds a more authentic relationship, and leads to a bigger bottom line.

So how do you go from being an author who guesses to an author who knows?

And then, how do you define your reader with real data when you only have a book or two out?

Let’s find out…

The Important Bits

The first thing we need is to understand the information we want to discover about our readers. If they love pretzels with salt versus unsalted pretzels, that doesn’t really help us out much (unless we write cozy pretzel mysteries). However, understanding that our readers are visually driven and love crafting can lead us to spend more time on Pinterest and Instagram.

What we need is information we can relate to our books that also furthers our relationship with our reader.

I think that’s really important, so I’ll say it again.

Focus on discovering the information you can relate to your books that also furthers your relationship with your readers.

First, let’s make sure we understand the places we digitally connect with our readers.

Digital Reader Connection Points

Here is a quick list of the typical reader connection points we have available at our fingertips:

• Author Newsletter
• Author Website
• Author Pages on Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc)
• Reader Communities such as Goodreads and Facebook Groups
• YouTube Channel

However this list can stretch on as much as you are willing to experiment. Reddit, TikTok, Slack, Zoom, and other sites and platforms have all recently seen an increase in author/reader engagement.

Okay, we got that down! Now, let’s see what we need to learn from these connection points in order to build a true understanding of our readers.

Reader Discovery

The below data list can help you identify which portion of these particular individuals are most interested in what you have to offer.

• Age ranges
• Gender
• Most active days and times online
• Common interests
• Device type (Mobile vs Tablet vs Computer)
• Device platform (Android vs Apple)
• Preferred image types (soft vs shocking, bold vs abstract)
• Primary communication method (text, photos, videos)

What we want to keep in mind through this is that our reader is not just a 35+ female who commutes to her nine-to-five and therefore only has time to read on weekends. Our reader is a busy woman who is employed full time. She may have a family, she may take care of her elderly parents, she may run a dog rescue on the side. 

My point is, it would be a very big mistake to only think about our readers as a set of data points. These pieces of information are meant to give us a peek into who our reader is, and allow us to meet her where is most comfortable and convenient for her.

By narrowing down that sweet spot for our readers, we are also able to employ the 80/20 rule (the Pareto Principle) and save ourselves valuable time, money, and effort. Eighty percent of our return tends to come from twenty percent of our effort.

Discovery Tools

The wonderful thing about these tools is that most of them have no barrier to entry—meaning, you don’t need a huge back list or a big budget to make them work.

Analytics

Perhaps the best starting point for figuring out who reads our books and interacts with our content (blog posts, social posts, etc) is to enable analytics on our author website.

Analytics allows us to see a detailed profile of the visitors of our website. Most analytics platforms will show us our most popular content and pages, how long visitors stay on our site, and how many visitors we have over a given period of time.

Drill down further, and we can typically find the age ranges, gender, most active days and times on our site, and the device type and platform used.

If we have a good bounce rate (under 55%), we can trust that the data we’re showing for our most engaged demographic is valid. If we have a high bounce rate (over 55%), something’s off with the content on our site or with how people are finding our site, because a high bounce rate indicates that the viewer is not finding the information they expected to find.

The most well-known analytics platform is Google Analytics, and you or your web designer can set up access with a few steps.

Analytics are just one piece of our reader puzzle. If you have an active website that you update regularly, website analytics can be a valuable discovery tool.

Facebook Pixel and Google Tag

Another great tool that is also free to use is called pixels, or tags. It’s a little bit of code you embed on your site that collects user data (nothing personal or specific to the individual) so you can get a snapshot of the type of person who is interacting with your site. 

My personal favorite is Google’s tag, as it allows you to not only collect data, but it also shows you what other things the majority of users who visit your site are interested in. 

For example, Google may clue you in that many of the visitors to your site are also really interested in DIY projects and country music. Can you use that information to better relate to your readers? Uh, why yes. Yes you can. To great effect. (Caveat: you must have enough visitors to generate this information, generally 1,000+ over a time period that you set. I like setting it up for anyone who has visited my site for the past 365 days.)

Facebook’s pixel also has its own analytics, though not near as robust as Google’s. If you already have a Facebook pixel set up (maybe you did it forever ago), the analytics for the pixel reside in a new place (thanks, new Facebook). After enough visitors come to your Facebook page and website, you’ll be able to see your most engaging posts, basic demographics, and most active times.

Again, this is something you may need a web designer’s help with as it does involve installing some code on your site, but once you get that done, you are free to use the information to build a colorful reader profile.

Email Platforms

I’ve saved these final two discovery tools for last, because they are paid tools. If you don’t have the budget for the paid email plan or pay-per-click advertising, bookmark this post and come back when you can implement them.

Many email platforms have audience data that they will provide to you on their upgraded plans. Sure, it’s your email list, but the benefit of this data is that the platform can tell you which demographic is the most engaged with your email content.

So even if you know that your key 35+ working mom reader reads your books and content only on weekends, you may not know that your 65+ retired ladies are the ones who actually click on your newsletter content, respond to your emails, and share your emails and book news, hence giving you more options to connect with your readers in new ways. 

Paid Advertising

One of the best ways to build a reader profile is to do so through audience testing in paid advertising. My favorites are Facebook and Google. As Google tends to be less cost-effective for lower priced items, I’ll just say that by using the specific user data you’ve collected, you can run some very effective advertising.

We’ve already covered a bit of what Facebook analytics can do for understanding your reader. Audience testing takes analytics even further.

Say you’ve discovered that your most engaged demographic is our 35+ working moms who love coffee, country music, and DIY projects. When you set up your Facebook audience for your ads, you’ll use those data points to create a very specific audience. 

But it doesn’t stop there. 

Once you’ve created that very specific audience, your ad creative makes the connection to that audience – perhaps appealing to the independent resourcefulness of DIYers or using imagery that connects with coffee lovers and country music fans. Perhaps you’ve discovered that your audience is most active from 6am to 8am, from 11am to 1pm, and from 5pm to 8pm on weeknights (which makes sense if they take public transportation into work). You can then schedule your ads to run during the hours in which your audience is most engaged, spread your budget out, reduce your overall ad cost, and on the whole, run a very successful ad campaign.

Whew. That was a lot. Thanks for sticking with me. It may seem daunting, but once you do the work to build your reader profile using actual data from your author assets, it will benefit your career for years to come.

Further Reading:

Finding Your Ideal Audience (Jane Friedman)
5 Author Tips for Building a Fan Base (Write Now Coach)
The F.A.R. Marketing Method (Write Now Coach)

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Identifying Your Reader appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Have you watched The Mandalorian yet? It’s worth it just to listen to the opening theme music. It has this haunting western-scifi feel that is utterly unique, compelling, and has a complexity that allows you to discover something new each time you listen.

My husband, being the musician he is, found this video about how the composer of The Mandalorian, Ludwig Göransson, found the Mando sound. What struck me about Ludwig’s process was how he created a piece of art so unique by returning to the common and familiar instruments of his childhood.

Ludwig also mentioned multiple times that he “locked himself in his studio for a month,” away from his normal sound equipment and high-end sound tech, in order to create these Mando songs. 

Most of us don’t have that luxury; however, it does make me wonder if this Academy Award-winning composer was dealing with a little bit of writer’s block–complete conjecture–and needed to clear his mind and workspace of distraction.

Maybe he needed to return to the familiar to create.

Are you struggling with finding inspiration or the creative energy to write lately? It would be completely understandable, if so. Maybe a return to your familiar will help unearth a deep well of creative energy.

Revisit Childhood for Inspiration

When was the last time you read your favorite book from when you were a kid? Maybe the first chapter book that made you fall in love with words?

The oldest patootie and I recently started reading A Wrinkle in Time together. Her first time, my fortieth. And I was struck by the way the rhythm of Madeline L’Engle’s words fell into place for me. Much like Ludwig going back to the recorder, rereading one of my favorite childhood books cracked opened the well to my struggling creativity (thanks 2020). 

As I rediscover this book through the eyes of my patootie, I’m struck by how much Ms. L’Engle’s descriptions impacted the way I write today. Not only is it inspiring and motivating me to deepen my descriptions, but it is helping add a layer of creativity to my current work.

Play That Funky Music

Music plays such an important part in many authors’ writing process–so much so that it’s fairly common for an author to post their book’s playlist on their website. But have you ever tried listening to some old favorites to inspire an emotion you need to write? Maybe an angsty song from your teenage years to inspire betrayal or love at first sight. Or your wedding song. Maybe yours and your best friend’s favorite tunes or artist? 

Music is important because it hits us in such a personal and unique way, and different music affects us differently at different times. And when we hear those songs again, we often remember where we were, who we were with, and how we were feeling with startling accuracy.

Pick Up Old Habits

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my writing routines…or lack thereof (this one goes out to all parents of young kiddos in the middle of a pandemic).

First, I want to go on the record of saying that I do not believe in shaming yourself into writing. 2020 has been exceptional in many ways, and if the most you can do is write 200 words a month? Go you. It is more important to have grace with yourself than beat yourself into creative burnout.

What did I do well when I did have a good, solid writing routine?

For one, I had a strict bedtime that didn’t allow for excess Netflix binging. I also woke up earlier than everyone else in the house…and often that was the only time I could get work done. Frequent walks by myself gave me much-needed brainstorming time. And I did a better job of balancing my time between day job, family, and writing.

Not all old habits are easy or healthy to pick up. But some are. 

As often as I’ve talked about the importance of new experiences to creativity, it is also important to have some familiar routines to fall back on when life gets too big.

Memories of Days in the Sun

(Bonus points to those of you who name that song.)

Speaking of the importance of new experiences to creativity, when you can’t travel for inspiration, revisit your days in the sun. Through photos.

I love Google Photos. They’ll send me my year ago, two years ago, seven years ago, etc photos and it is so much fun. Recently I’ve received a flood of Cruising Writers photos and have spent more time than I care to admit to my husband revisiting those memories and emotions. My photos from our international trips help me recall the way a city smelled or a pastry tasted or how the off-tune, accordion-playing, opera-singer-in-training sounded.

Maybe your photos aren’t vacation photos. Maybe they are family or friend photos. Maybe they are nature hikes or sunsets or the fish you’ve caught. Whatever they are, they are your memories and each one still holds captive a little bit of that moment for you, waiting for you to take another peek, soak it in, and use it for inspiration.

To an outsider, these activities may seem like you’re wasting your time or procrastinating doing something else. But for those in the know, they’ll recognize these activities exactly for what they are.

Food for your creative soul.

CHRISTINA DELAY - Resident Writing Coach

Christina Delay is an award-winning author of psychological suspense, as well as mythological-based fantasy written under the pen name Kris Faryn. A wanderer by heart, Christina’s latest adventure has led her and her family to the southwest of France. When not planning their next quest, Christina can be found writing in her garden, hosting writing retreats, sneaking in a nap, or convincing her patooties to call her Empress. If you love books about complex characters who never know when to quit, with a good bit of will-they or won’t-they tension, check out her books.

The post Creating from the Familiar appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.