R.M. Archer's Blog, page 9

How to Appreciate the Writer in Your Life

Tomorrow is National Author’s Day, so it seemed fitting to focus today’s post on how to appreciate the writers around us. If you’re a writer yourself, you might already be thinking about these things, but if you’re not–if you’re a family member or friend of a writer–then here are some tips for showing your appreciation for the authors who are important to you.

(For any family members reading this post: No, this is not a hint. XD)

Ask them about their projects

We authors often like to talk about what we’re working on. It might not seem like it when you ask us “What’s your book about?” and we stare like a deer in headlights, but I promise that once you get us going on what we really love about whatever project we’re working on… it might be hard to shut us up again, lol.

There is some wisdom to be exercised in this arena. First of all, you might have a reticent author who doesn’t know what you want to know about their work and is trying to avoid talking your ear off about something you’re not interested in. With these authors, you’ll have to get more specific with your questions; a simple “What’s your story about?” isn’t likely to get more than a couple sentences. Be specific about what you want to hear about. “What is your world like?” “Who are your characters?” “What excites you about this story?” And ask follow-up questions.

Alternatively, you may be dealing with an author who prefers to keep their plans close to their vest, in which case you don’t want to push too much or you might just end up with an irritated writer on your hands. Know your author, and, when in doubt, just ask whether or not they want to talk about their project.

Keep in mind, this latter category rarely applies the same way with published work, and if you start a conversation about an author’s published work then they’re likely to be 1) very excited that you read it and 2) much more excited to talk about it because they know you know all about it from having read it, or else that you could read it if the conversation between you is interesting enough. (This may make them very nervous as well as very excited because they also know they could lose your interest entirely if you haven’t read the book yet.)

Listen to their rambling

Whether you live with an author and they need an ear while they work out their latest chapter hangup or you’ve asked a writer about some of their work and they’ve started talking a little obsessively… just listen. Sometimes that’s all we need. And if you want to throw in some comments on things you find interesting in what they’ve said, that rarely hurts either. (Suggestions for their problems may be accepted gratefully or may receive a glare. This depends on how much you know about writing, the project at hand, and your writer’s present needs.) Regardless, we do appreciate when you listen (especially when you don’t have to, and we know that), and we appreciate knowing that you’re listening (hence the boost of dopamine we get from your supportive comments, nods, or noises).

Buy them a hot beverage and/or a snack

Or, y’know, a cold beverage if that’s their preference. This is good and helpful for a few reasons:

We tend to like fancy beverages (and by “fancy” I mean the $4 chai tea that isn’t really that fancy, we just don’t always like to spend money).We don’t always remember to stay hydrated… or fed… It’s a problem. We’re working on it.In some cases, this gets us away from our keyboards and out into the fresh air of the real world with real humans instead of just the characters that live in our heads.Also, there’s just the question of who doesn’t like being bought food?

I will also mention that sometimes you don’t even have to be the one to make the actual purchase of said beverage or snack; if you invite an author to a coffee shop, sometimes we’ll just buy the drink and/or snack on our own but it’ll be as if it’s from you because they wouldn’t have been in the coffee shop to buy it without you. Does that make sense? (No, of course not, but we’re just going to move along.)

Make sure they celebrate their successes

This might just be a “me” thing, but I have to remind myself to celebrate finishing things, hitting milestones, etc. Publishing is usually a little more celebratory, but generally speaking I forget to celebrate my successes. I just move onto the next thing too quickly. The problem with this is that then I forget that I’ve accomplished some pretty cool things and they’re worth celebrating.

So if you know an author with this same tendency, force them to slow down and celebrate. Take them out somewhere, send them a card, have a mini dance party together, etc. Use your judgment or ask what the author would like to do but hasn’t taken the time for, or something they’ve wanted to get but haven’t, and encourage them to do that thing or get that thing (or get the thing for them). Celebrate your author’s successes with them.

Leave a review of their work

This one applies not only to the authors directly in your life, but also the authors you appreciate and don’t know personally. Leaving a book review is a great way to support an author you admire. Reviews boost the visibility of our books, they help other readers determine whether or not our book is a good fit for them, and they can sometimes boost our confidence and encourage us to keep going (depending on whether or not we read our reviews–and whether or not the review is positive). Even if a book wasn’t your favorite, sharing an honest review still helps us out!

For those of you who don’t know, your review will be most helpful to the author if it’s posted on Amazon and Goodreads.

Tell other people about their work

This may be related to leaving a review, but it doesn’t have to be. We authors love finding new readers who are excited about our books–but there’s often a fear that we’ll come off as salesy if we talk about our own books too much. As a fellow reader, you can do authors a favor by recommending their books to other readers you think would enjoy them! This can be through a review, by posting about a book on social media, by bringing it up in face-to-face conversation, by including the book on a recommendations list, etc.

Word-of-mouth is a powerful help to authors, and it’s a great way to show how much you appreciate an author and their work.

So there you go! Six ways you can show appreciation for the author(s) in your life. I encourage you to choose one of these options and show your appreciation for an author tomorrow!

Plus, show your appreciation in the comments by telling us about the authors you most love to support.

The post How to Appreciate the Writer in Your Life appeared first on Scribes & Archers.

How Should Christians Write About… Cursing?

Here’s another “how should Christians write about…?” post, and this time the topic is something I’m personally working and praying through for a project.

As always, this post is meant to be food-for-thought, to lay out the scriptural guidelines for a particular topic and what we do or don’t have the freedom to include in our stories (or how we do or don’t have the freedom to portray it) based on that scripture. I’ll put forth my interpretation, but all of these topics are ultimately between you and God and the intention is not to bind or to violate your conscience.

All of that out of the way, let’s talk about cursing in fiction. (I know some of you are already squirming in your seats, but please at least stay with me through the foundational Scripture section.)

What does Scripture say?

“But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.” – Eph. 5:3-4

“Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” – Matt. 15:11

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” – Ex. 20:7

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” – Php. 4:8

In these passages, we see a couple of principles laid out.

Christians ought not to participate in “foolish talking” or “coarse jesting”What we say matters; we ought not to speak things which are uncleanWe are absolutely and explicitly forbidden from using the Lord’s name in vainWe ought to fix our mind on things that are edifying

I also want to mention that something we don’t see in these passages is any specific prohibition on particular words (besides vain usage of the Lord’s name). The language that we use is an exercise in wisdom, and dependent on the general accepted use of words in a particular society. Language changes, and that is one factor that we must take into account in pondering how to best honor God and live in accordance with these biblical principles in the way we speak (and write).

“Foolish talking” and “coarse jesting” apply to more than just those words we consider crass, and words that we consider harsh may or may not always fall into these categories. Even Jesus Himself called the pharisees “white-washed tombs” and a “brood of vipers,” both of which would have been considered strong language, and yet He used them in a context in which they were appropriate–without sin.

Now, none of this means we should go around cussing up a storm all the time, or even that we should incorporate commonly-used cuss words into our main vocabulary, but I don’t believe that every “cuss word” is inherently sinful to use (more on that in a moment) if used in an appropriate context where no other word will do. Our words are to be used wisely, whether “cuss words” or everyday terms, and it is possible to sin with either. “Cuss words” have rarer wise uses, yes, but while they are more dangerous words, they are still just words.

4 views on cursing

With the Scriptural foundation established, I want to look at a handful of perspectives on cursing in fiction and address each one with this biblical framework in mind.

Characters should never ever curse

“Cursing is a sin, therefore characters should never do it in any capacity ever.” (Extremism for emphasis.)

Stories contain lots of things that are sin; should we throw out all of the sin, brokenness, shortcoming, etc. from our stories? That defeats the purpose. There’s no redemption, no growth, no Gospel without falling short. If Romans 3:23 is true, then why would we write perfect characters? Virtuous characters, certainly, but perfect people don’t exist and thus perfect characters ring false to readers.

This is not to say that every character should curse at some point because “we’re all imperfect.” Obviously, different people and different characters have different sins! But even if you see cursing as an across-the-board sin, it’s inconsistent to excuse, say, violence or lying while forbidding your characters ever curse in any capacity (even in allusion) when that would reasonably be one of their temptations. (Of course, maybe you’re someone who writes squeaky-clean Christian fiction, in which case maybe this whole point doesn’t apply because you don’t excuse any of those other things in fiction, either.)

Personally, I just think this is an error in how we think about the interaction of sin and fiction as a whole. We should not glorify sin in our fiction, but sin will crop up and be addressed in our fiction if we write stories that are reflective of the real, fallen world. Cursing is no exception to this, and we can address it whether we put explicit words on the page or not.

 Characters can curse as long as it’s only ever alluded to (or as long as they’re fake curses)

This is the category that I practice 99% of the time, even though I don’t believe that cursing on the page is sin in 100% of cases. 99% of my books are entirely real-world-cuss-word-free because it’s just not necessary to write them otherwise. I think this category is a perfectly good and reasonable one to be in. It’s safe, it’s charitable to those with tighter consciences, and it keeps your books more family-friendly.

The reasoning here–at least as I understand it and operate by it–is that yes, cursing is a sin that crops up just like any other sin, but it’s not something that we need to put on the page as a potential stumbling block. If there’s any way around using a real-world curse that a reader might be tempted to use in their real life in a sinful manner, take it. Allude with something like, “he cursed” or “she spewed out a string of words too harsh to repeat,” or give your characters some alternatives like “snotbuckets” or “Borden’s beard.”

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this approach, and it protects both our own consciences as well as our readers’.

Characters can curse in proper contexts

This is where I fall the other 1% of the time. When at all possible, yes, I avoid putting curse words on the page. That’s true both from project to project and within each project. If cursing has no place in a project period, it’s kept out. If some cursing is appropriate for a particular project, then each individual place in which it could be used is evaluated to determine whether or not it’s truly unavoidable.

Of course, this brings up the question of, “what is a proper context?”

This question will likely be answered differently by different authors, even if at the core they have the same motivation and worldview on cursing as a whole. For me, it matters who my audience is, it matters who my character is, and it matters where my character curses in a sentence.

I will never include a curse word in a book that is intended for all ages or primarily for teenagers. The only books in which I have even considered using curse words on the page are categorized as NA because they are overall intended for an older audience. I have said before that I don’t think curse words belong in YA, and I stand by that. “Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble…”

Character matters because some characters will automatically police their own language, whether around certain characters, in certain contexts, in recording their own story, or just in general (if, say, it’s a weakness they’re trying to overcome). Some characters will police other people’s language, which is why there are no curse words in any of Nyla’s chapters of Lightning even though Erika uses them. Some characters just don’t care, like Erika, and their upbringing and character makes it unreasonable that they wouldn’t curse.

But even in these contexts, with characters who don’t self-moderate and in books for an older audience, I avoid writing a curse word on the page if I can allude to it instead by prefacing a line of dialogue with “she cursed,” if the cuss comes before a sentence, or following it up with the same thing if the character ends a sentence with a cuss word. And thus, even in scenarios where cursing does appear on the page, I can minimize it to the instances in which a character curses in the middle of a sentence, while “censoring” all of the other instances.

Who cares; it’s only language

Those in this camp would take my reasoning from earlier to an extreme, saying that there is no distinction among words and curse words are really exactly the same as any other words. What’s the big deal?

I would counter this just as strongly as the opposite extreme. Curse words do have implicit cultural weight. Those words that we have (culturally and individually) categorized as curse words will strike us as curse words and trip us up. Throwing them around carelessly is like setting a landmine for brothers and sisters in Christ who view those words as sinful and don’t want them swimming around in their brains. Besides which, carelessness with these words puts us in a position to sin with them much more easily–and simply reflects a lack of self-control when it comes to our language as a whole, which is something we’re explicitly warned against falling into, in James 3 as well as all of the verses listed before.

Curse words & their relation to everyday language

But now we have the question of how exactly curse words relate to and compare with the rest of our language, and to look at that question I want to look at a few “categories” of curse words. These are my own categories and you may completely disagree with my divisions, but here they are.

“Curse words” that have lost their edge

We had a lot more curse words ten years ago than we do today. Film, especially, has made such everyday use of what we used to call “cuss words” that much of society is numb to them as anything more than accent words like “crap” or “drat” or any other such moderate exclamations. Even some of us who grew up with PG-13 terms considered “bad words” look today and see that they’re barely even used or treated as any worse than milder exclamations.

Tolkien saw a similar linguistic shift even in his own day, and I found this quote insightful as I was reading through a collection of his letters:

“And linguistically there is not a great deal of difference between a damn you, said without reflection or even knowledge of the terror and majesty of the One Judge, and the things you mention. Both the sexual and the sacred words have ceased to have any content except the ghost of past emotion. I don’t mean that it is not a bad thing, and it is certainly very wearisome, saddening, and maddening, but it is at any rate not blasphemy in the full sense.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son Christopher

“Both the sexual and the sacred words have ceased to have any content except the ghost of past emotion.” This is a good summation of the conclusion I’ve been drawing of late, myself, that the only impact given to most curse words these days is the knowledge that they used to be used as curse words. This isn’t true in every case nor of every word, but the words we rate “PG-13” often carry no more than “the ghost of past emotion.”

“Curse words” used in their literal context — as basic words

Many of the words we consider “curse words” have literal meanings, as well. We might be referring to donkeys, female dogs, a literal place of judgment, etc. In these cases, there’s no question of cursing–though there may still be a question of wisdom in considering whether there is an alternative word that won’t trip up those used to hearing these words as expletives. Except for the question of laying a stumbling block, there’s nothing wrong with using a word in its proper, literal context.

Words that violate Scripture’s definition of clean speech

Now, there are still words that violate Scripture’s definition of clean speech in every or almost every case. The F-bomb is inherently the coarsest possible term for something God gave as a blessing, the B-word is used to reduce a human to the level of a dog, etc. Words genuinely used as undeserved insults and curses shouldn’t pass our lips.

The question with words that fall into the first category–those that have lost their meaning in many cases–is whether their use by our characters to intentionally insult other characters prevents us from writing them (in cases where it’s handled as sin).

Blasphemy

Then, of course, there’s the matter of taking God’s name in vain. This one is pretty cut-and-dry, the way I see it. It does not give the use of God’s name purpose to have a character use it without purpose–it is inherently “in vain” to portray characters taking the Lord’s name in vain. Changing the spelling so that your characters say “Gad” instead doesn’t make it better, either; it’s still clearly taking God’s title and using it for nothing.

This bugs me more than any other curse word used in fiction–especially in Christian-authored fiction–because it is the one term that we are explicitly barred from using in a vain, exclamatory context. The rest we’re left to work through with scriptural principles; this one is clearly laid out for us.

This is an area in which I disagree with Tolkien’s quote above, because I don’t believe that blasphemy loses its potency when it loses its emotion; it is still a direct violation of the commandment God gave us for using His name.

Motivation matters

While it is not the only measuring stick–obviously–your motivation for including (or even for not including) cursing in your book should affect your decision. Do you want your characters to curse because it’s “cool,” or to push against Christian fiction stereotypes and be edgy? Those are bad ideas. Do you flaunt your avoidance of cursing as a virtue signal and claim to be holier than anyone who writes characters who cuss? (Those who do so thoughtfully and prayerfully; I’m not talking the careless folks here.) That’s also not how we’re supposed to behave as Christians.

The inclusion of cursing in your book (or lack thereof) ought to be a decision made based on Scripture and the Spirit’s leading. Can we bring biblical exhortation to those we think may be in sin? Of course, and we should! Can we share explanations of why we believe that cursing is scripturally wrong (or acceptable)? Of course! And in each case we should appreciate that the one bringing a disagreement cares for our soul, and give grace and thanks accordingly. But it is not our job to bind a conscience which God has not bound, nor to jeer at a brother or sister living in accordance with a conscience that is bound.

“Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.” – Rom. 14:3-4

What is the moral judgment of cursing in your book?

Even if your characters’ language is only alluded to and you never explicitly curse on the page, you’re still shaping a moral judgment of cursing within your book–portraying it as negative, neutral, or positive. How your characters respond to cursing, whether explicit or not, will shape your readers’ view of cursing for your characters and within your world, and they can bring that view out into the real world.

Is a writer whose characters explicitly curse but who show distaste for that cursing from other characters any more dangerous in the end than an author whose characters curse like sailors “off the page” without any push-back? Maybe you’ll find that the answer to that question is, “Yes,” whether all the time or in certain contexts. But it’s a question worth considering.

The importance of audience and expectations, & obeying your conscience in writing and reading

Here we come back to something I think is critical in this conversation: being aware of your audience and setting clear expectations.

Like I said before, I would not advocate for including on-page curse words in YA or anything intended for younger audiences than that. Just because I don’t think these words have all of the same weight they used to doesn’t mean I think everyone needs to be exposed to them before the real world introduces them.

I also would not include on-page curse words in a book without warning potential readers explicitly and often. While I think there are proper places for cursing in fiction, I know and respect that not everyone agrees with that and I don’t want to broadside someone who avoids reading things with this sort of language. Likewise, I would not intentionally and directly advertise a book containing language to someone I knew was bothered by it, nor would I encourage a writer to include language in their work if the matter was doubtful to them.

“It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.” – Rom. 14:21-23

On the other hand, there are secular readers who won’t bat an eyelash at curse words in their fiction. These readers will not be made to stumble by your work and will not have their consciences bothered by it because they don’t operate by the same standard anyway–but they may see your approach to it and be made to think.

Your audience matters in deciding whether or not it is wise to include cursing in your work, when your conscience is clear.

If your conscience is unclear, or if you are convicted that cursing is sin, then don’t write it and don’t read it. I won’t try to change your conscience.

If, on the other hand, your conscience is free, there are ways to respect others’ consciences without (needlessly) binding your own

Cursing in fantasy

I’m going to take a quick aside here and talk about curse words in fantasy, particularly.

The thing about fantasy is that, even if you don’t think using real-world curses is wrong, a bunch of our real-world curse words just don’t fit in fantasy worlds. I was once reading a fantasy book that referenced “Hell” and was immediately jerked out of the story because, while I had no doubt this world had an equivalent to Hell… what were the chances it was just called Hell? Some curse words are interchangeable–d***, s***, etc.–but if you already have to exercise creativity for the rest of them, why not be creative and replace all of them with alternatives that fit your world, reflect the culture and religion within your world, and don’t violate the consciences of readers who are bothered by cussing?

There are many factors that go into the decision of whether or not swearing is acceptable to portray as a Christian author–Scripture, obviously, being the foundational consideration–and you may be able to tell that I’m still working through some of the details for myself. But hopefully this has provided some helpful food-for-thought and helped anyone else struggling through this same question.

Related reading: How Should Christian Authors Depict Swearing? on Story Embers

I now open the floor to you, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments.

The post How Should Christians Write About… Cursing? appeared first on Scribes & Archers.

2023 Know the Novel: Part 1 – Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my first writing update sort of post in a very long time, lol. Some of you may know, if you follow me on social media or are subscribed to my mailing list, that I’ve been working on a couple of book projects this year. One is a non-fiction project that I’m not saying much about yet; the other is a sci-fi novel called Lightning, which I’m working on finishing up during Christine Smith’s Fall FicFrenzy event. I’m also planning to dive into drafting a sequel, but I’ll be primarily focusing on Lightning in this post so as to avoid spoilers, lol.

If you’ve been curious to learn more about Lightning (or if this is your first introduction), hopefully this post gives you a bit of a taste!

Note: I have done this link-up for Lightning before, but a lot can happen to a project in a year, lol, so there’s some repeat content and some new info here!1. What first sparked the idea for this novel?

I don’t remember, lol. Way back in… 2017, I think, I wrote a couple snippets of interaction between two characters–Rhys and Alaric–who shared an apartment without knowing it because Grantech kept their hours carefully opposite of one another, until they decided that they wanted the two to meet. Said snippets were really cringey, the concept was also cringey, and the only things that survived out of that concept were the characters and the fact that they work for Grantech.

Meanwhile, I guess around the same time I had an idea involving Erika, Nyla, and Ash, and I decided to combine the two into one story before I even started writing it. That may have been about the time I was doing the alphabet blogging challenge and I wrote up an introductory scene for Lightning (then just creatively titled “Grantech,” lol).

I don’t ultimately remember where either piece originated, inspiration-wise, but the concept of this story has been around for six years and the world has been around a lot longer than that.

As for what sparked me to pick it back up this time around… I don’t remember that, exactly, either, lol. I wanted a new novel to focus on, nothing else was really sticking, and I think re-reading that introductory scene was what caught my attention on Lightning. That was back in the spring of 2022, and I’ve been plugging away at it ever since!

Originally, Lightning was going to be a standalone, but as I was outlining it I realized that it needed to be a duology, so that’s where the general idea for the sequel came from.

2. Share a blurb (or just an overall summary)!

What would you do to feel whole?

The scientific mega-corporation Grantech is developing a line of super-soldiers—known to the public as GenDevs—in an attempt to “perfect” the human race. But their work doesn’t always go as planned.

Nyla is left wrestling with chronic pain and fickle abilities after her alterations failed to integrate properly, her body and family both broken by the company’s meddling.

The powers Erika expected never seemed to manifest, sentencing her to “elimination” from the program unless she breaks out of their custody first.

Alaric uses his powers at Grantech’s behest to bring more kids into the GenDev program, exchanging years of debt for years of guilt.

When their fragile stability is challenged, these GenDevs must face the decision between freedom and the familiar. If they make it outside of Grantech’s walls, will it be enough to shake their grip or is the corporation’s manipulation inevitable?

Then, logically, the sequel covers the fall-out of everything that happens in Lightning. ;)

3. Where does the story take place? What are some of your favorite aspects of the setting?

If you want a more succinct answer to this question, refer to the previous edition of this link-up, lol.

So, I have a confession to make. I didn’t do a great job of worldbuilding for Lightning before I dove into it.

This world has existed in my head for at least seven years, and I have a pretty decent understanding of its basic tone and structure, the most crucial figures, how the magic system works, the kinds of technology I want to explore…

But I didn’t really dig out the details before I started writing Lightning. So this first draft has a lot of oversights, a lot of inconsistencies, and I recently changed things about the single building that most of the story takes place in (it’s not going to be a single building after I’ve done rewrites, but three neighboring buildings).

I love worldbuilding for fantasy and I often have very well-composed worlds before I even start thinking about writing the stories set within those worlds; this sci-fi world is one that I’ve more taken for granted and haven’t poked at between projects, so it’s ended up less fleshed out than I realized, and thus my first step after finishing these drafts is going to be to take some time just worldbuilding and making sure I have a solid framework before I rewrite the duology.

But I digress, lol. The story takes place in the nation of Concordia (the same setting as the two sci-fi short stories in Short Story Collection vol. 1), in the city of Newbridge (once upon a time known as New York city), and largely within Grantech’s primary Newbridge campus.

Honestly, I really like the vibes. XD It’s intended to be a very flashy city, a pretty stereotypical futuristic city, and yet there’s still very much a grounded element to it where it’s still just a big city where people live and all of the tech that’s so crazy and flashy to us is just a part of their everyday lives. So it’s a fun blend–and hopefully it will be more so after I’ve fleshed out more of the details and rewritten the book to reflect more of that sci-fi foundation.

I also really like the sciantasy mix, where these scientists have learned to harness the “magic” that has been released back into the world but it doesn’t always go according to their plan. You can’t just take the power you want; there are rules to be followed. And I just really like that genre blending, the thematic implications there, and how I get to show the outcomes of those efforts in the ways they affect relatively normal people. They’re not superheroes in any classic sense, they didn’t ask to be given these abilities, their abilities are flawed, and they have to deal with that because of Grantech’s meddling. It’s just a neat dynamic to play with, I think.

4. Tell us about your protagonist(s).

There are five of them, so this answer might also get a little long. (At this point, I think it’s safe to assume that this whole post is going to run long. XD)

Erika is the first POV character the reader meets. She’s sarcastic, doesn’t take (or dish) any nonsense, and likes to think she’s invincible. She’s often abrasive and thoughtless, but she pushes everyone else to face the truth they don’t want to see and to do what needs to be done… and she does have a heart under there somewhere. Some of her behavior is outright morally questionable, and this causes a fair bit of conflict with Nyla.

Nyla is the next POV character, and I think she has the most POV chapters (though I haven’t counted, and there is a fair bit of back-and-forth since there are… possibly too many POV characters). She’s kind and selfless but tends to assume that anyone who tries to get close to her must want something. Ever since Grantech’s experiments on her, she’s dealt with chronic pain and malfunctioning powers that she generally tries to ignore.

Alaric is a GenDev within Grantech’s Sentinel program, entrusted with tasks like containing rogue GenDevs and bringing in new subjects for enhancement. Alaric’s tasks normally fall into the latter category, and he hates it, but he’s been trapped in the job so long that he feels there’s no escaping it–or the stains on his soul–despite his efforts to hold onto some last shred of integrity.

Rhys is Alaric’s next-door neighbor–and comes to be his anchor. She’s an accountant who works for Grantech more for the resources they can provide her family than because she believes in their cause. She’s a skilled analyst, good with computers, and optimistic to a fault. She sees the best in everyone and does what she can to bring out that quality when it’s been buried.

Ash is the only main character who doesn’t have any scenes or chapters from his POV, though he shows up frequently in chapters with Erika, Nyla, and later Alaric. Ash is the guard that Grantech has assigned to Erika to ensure she doesn’t endanger herself–or Grantech. He’s a firm believer in the idea that Grantech is a bastion of order and the GenDevs wreak havoc and destruction everywhere they go–unless they remain under Grantech’s benevolent authority. But he’s also a man of reason and enjoys a fair number of respectful debates with Nyla over Grantech’s character and methods. (He’s also a bit of a problem child as far as working out his arc goes, but that’ll get ironed out.)

5. Who (or what) is the antagonist?

Grantech has two primary faces: Erdiana Class and Tamerin Lance.

Erdiana is head of the scientific division. She’s elegant, precise, and has a superiority complex. Yet despite said complex, she believes that mankind isn’t good enough and ought to be pushed into the next state of evolution. She’s seeking to create the perfect race, with the power to access their full mental and genetic potential. She also knows how to break people (she’d say “like a glow stick,” but… well, let’s just say her perspective is a bit skewed).

Tamerin is head of the security division, and he simply likes the flavor of power. He likes toying with people to see how they react and shaping the world to his own whims–at least insofar as Erdiana and their superior allow. He’s actually quite personable with most people, but there’s always some ulterior motive under the surface and he’s not above threatening people if they threaten his plans.

6. What excites you the most about this novel?

Finishing! That might make it sound like I’m not enjoying the writing process or I can’t wait to be done, which isn’t the case. But I haven’t finished a first draft for a novel in four years now, and it’s so exciting to be so close to adding a new full draft to my roster! (And hopefully the sequel won’t be too far behind, either.)

7. Is this going to be a series? standalone? something else?

A duology! Initially I imagined it would be a standalone, but there was too much story. I tend to prefer trilogies (if you look at my project list, there are a lot of trilogies), duologies tend to seem not quite long enough to me, but I think the length of this story suits a duology well and it does allow me to split it up neatly at the midpoint (which is great from a writing perspective and hopefully not too messy from a reader perspective!). Basically, I’m really hoping I can keep this series from tripping into the pitfalls I tend to see with duologies as a reader, lol, but I’m excited to try the new-to-me series length.

8. Are you plotting? pantsing? plansting?

Plotting. Well, mostly. Each book (and the duology as a whole) has been/will be plotted according to the 3-act structure with much assistance from K.M. Weiland’s Structuring Your Novel (which worked wonders for my Lightning outline and I’m hoping will work just as well for the second book and the latter half of the overarching plot). So all of the main plot points have been/will be planned.

On the other hand, I tend to need basic chapter outlines, as well, and I tend to get bored with those partway through and get an itch to write. So my outlining process tends to look like this:

Outline the main plot pointsOutline half to 2/3rds of the book on a chapter-by-chapter basisDecided I can outline the rest later; dive into writingHit the end of my outlined chapters, realize “later” has arrived, outline half to all of the remaining chaptersContinue writingRepeat the previous three steps as many times as necessary until the book is complete

So as far as that’s concerned… I suppose I’m a little bit of a plantser in that I rarely start with a complete outline, lol. But it worked for Calligraphy Guild and it’s worked for Lightning so far, so there’s no pressing need to change the process.

9. Name a few unique elements in this story.Chronically ill “superheroes”“Superheroes” with mental health issuesA mix of 3rd-person and 1st-person perspectivesLow-action sci-fi (at least in the first book; things start to pick up going into the sequel)10. Share some fun “extras” of the story (a song or full playlist, some aesthetics, a collage, a Pinterest board, a map you’ve made, a special theme you’re going to incorporate, ANYTHING you want to share!).

I have a playlist and overarching Pinterest board on the book page for Lightning, so you can check those out over there. I also wrote a post recently that explored the anatomy of a story playlist and I used Lightning‘s playlist as an example.

As far as new content goes… Since I’m starting on the sequel soon I guess it’s safe to announce that the title is *drumroll please* Thunder! (Probably not all that surprising, since it’s the sequel to Lightning, but it works so well!)

And with that announced, I can also share the playlist for Thunder:

There you have a little more insight into Lightning and Thunder! Let me know what you think, what aspects of the story intrigue you most. And if you’re working on a project this fall, whether as part of an event or not, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

If you’d like to get further updates on Lightning and Thunder as they come available, sign up to my newsletter:

The post 2023 Know the Novel: Part 1 – Introduction appeared first on Scribes & Archers.

Defining the Purpose of a World

Defining the purpose of your fictional world is a foundational and yet often overlooked step of worldbuilding. Leaving your world’s purpose indefinite and vague opens the door wide to overwhelm, lack of direction, and frustration with the worldbuilding process. But defining a world’s purpose can feel limiting–and how do you effectively frame the purpose of a world, anyway? Hence often overlooking or ignoring this helpful step.

Today I want to look at how defining the purpose of your world will aid you in the worldbuilding process and how to frame your world’s purpose effectively.

*Links marked with an asterisk are affiliate links, meaning that purchases made through them earn me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

The Prime Question: Why Define a World’s Purpose?

“Why do it? Won’t outlining my world’s purpose just limit my creativity and the scope of my world?”

Yes and no.

Defining your purpose with a world limits the scope of what you focus on developing, yes. But this is actually to your benefit. When you can clearly distinguish between which elements will further your worldbuilding purpose and which are only distractions from that goal, you can set aside all of the extraneous pieces and focus on what you really need. No more finding yourself stuck neck-deep in a rabbit hole that has no relation to your story or game!

However, your purpose with a world might change, and these limits you give yourself don’t have to be forever. If you’re working on a short story today, maybe you only need to know a bit of slang and the cultural trappings of your character’s immediate surroundings. Later, when you decide to write a novel from the same setting, you can focus on the societal structures and deeper cultural currents that are relevant to the story. Maybe then you decide this world would be great for a tabletop roleplaying campaign, and you realize that you never created a map because you didn’t need one, but now you have to know the terrain of your world. Limiting your scope for one project doesn’t prohibit you from building more later! And each shift in purpose will add something new to the world you’re building, enabling you to do more and more with it as you go.

These purpose-guided limits don’t have to be without exception, either. Maybe you’re focusing on your map and a general cultural overview for the sake of a D&D campaign, but you have a really neat idea for the fashion in this society and that’s a really fun rabbit trail for you. You’re absolutely allowed to follow that bunny trail! Worldbuilding is meant to be fun, and limits are meant to help with that, not hinder it. If the limitations are no longer serving you, take a break from them!

Medium Matters

Now you know why it helps to define the purpose of your world. The first consideration as far as how to do it is the medium you want to work with. A novel will require different information from a tabletop game, which will require different information from a film, which will require… well, you get the point.

The first step of defining your world’s purpose is to determine which of these mediums is your first priority. So if you’re building for a short story, you can focus on a very particular area of your world. If you’re building a tabletop campaign, you might need a broader scope but you can probably focus on large-scale elements of the setting vs. the details. If you’re building for a novel, what elements you need to develop within your world will heavily depend on the story you’re telling; medium doesn’t lower that one down much.

But you can see that even if your medium doesn’t tell you exactly what to develop on its own, it does at least tell you what questions to ask next.

Study Your Story

In any medium, you’ll want to look next to the story you’re trying to tell. You want your worldbuilding to support and fill out that story. An adventure story, for instance, will require very different elements from a slice-of-life type of story.

Look at the overall structure of your story. Look at what settings are involved, how much travel the characters have to do, and the overall focus of your story. If there’s a lot of traveling (like in an adventure story), the geography, weather, and flora and fauna in your world might be high priorities, along with a map and knowledge of available travel modes; in a story that sticks closer to your character’s home, it might be more important to focus on the education systems, vocational systems, and everyday elements of life like clothing and architecture instead. If you’re writing a story that focuses heavily on the political arena or follows characters within your culture’s government (e.g. if you’re writing a story about princes and princesses and castles), you’ll probably want to know something about the political system and what officials hang around (e.g. who would make up your royal court), and at least have a vague idea of what diplomatic relations look like between your culture and others (as well as between the government and the people).

These are just a handful of examples, and these are not exhaustive lists of what to know for each example, but hopefully you can see that the type of story you’re telling will guide your focus as you build a world for it.

Think About Theme

This point does tie in with the previous to some extent, but it’s a separate consideration since you can cover one theme in a myriad of different story contexts–as well as a myriad of different themes within a single story type.

I think that worldbuilding is a powerful tool for exploring themes, but this has to be an intentional piece of the worldbuilding process. If there are themes that you know you want to explore within this world, think about what elements of the setting would be most useful for doing this. If you want to explore the sanctity of life, you might develop flora or magic that endangers life in order for your characters to wrestle with and/or combat it; if you want to explore the cost of war, you might build a history of war into your suffering nation’s backstory; if you want to explore the abuse of power, you might build a magic system with heavy consequences, a corrupt religious system, or an overreaching government.

There are broad possibilities when building a world with theme in mind, and I’ve barely scratched the surface, but considering your themes is another way to define the purpose of your world and use that to direct your worldbuilding efforts. Personally, I think it’s helpful to approach this in conjunction with the elements of your world that you’re most interested in developing–which we’ll discuss more in a moment. If you could build either a magic system or a political system to further your theme, but you find one option more exciting to develop, go with that!

Consider Your Characters

Knowing your characters can be an additional way to find direction in your worldbuilding. Who your characters are will impact how they interact with the world–and which areas of the world they interact with most–which can tell you where to focus your attention. If your character is really interested in politics, you’ll need to develop at least enough of your political system for your character to sound like they actually know what they’re talking about (or to clearly not know what they’re talking about); if your character is a craftsman, you’ll need to know what type of craft they participate in, how that craft is practiced (individually? within a guild? in a factory?), and what sorts of goods they create (for example, do carpenters work in architecture at all, or are buildings made entirely without wood, leaving carpenters responsible only for furniture or something else entirely?).

The characters around your main cast may require you to hint at other areas of your world, as well. A minor merchant character, while minor, will give some insight into the economy and trading operations of your world. These things don’t have to be fleshed out nearly so deeply if they’re not relevant, but it may prove helpful to develop a few details in a broad range of worldbuilding topics in order to give these moments a flavor more unique to your world, that ties in with what you’ve developed in more depth!

Want to learn more about developing details intentionally and giving the illusion of depth in areas that don’t need as much real depth? I have a whole lesson on this in The Worldbuilding Toolbox!

Enroll here!

Invest in Your Interests

I’ve alluded to this point in previous sections, but I want to take a moment to specifically focus on it: Let your interests drive your worldbuilding!

We can’t always ignore the elements of worldbuilding that we don’t like or that don’t come as naturally to us (and we wouldn’t develop our skills if we could avoid those things!), but there are ways to focus your time and energy on the areas that you enjoy and spend less on the areas you don’t.

When you’re looking at how to build your world to support your story and you’re given two equally reasonable options–say, your character can start out as a tailor or a carpenter and neither has great bearing on the story to follow; or the “power corrupts” theme can be explored through either a magic system or a religious system–go with the one that you’re more interested in exploring! Maybe you like the idea of sewing fine, but not well enough to write about it enthusiastically, but you love the idea of exploring a guild system and carpentry fits neatly into that; the carpenter option is the one that you’re going to have the most fun developing and building out from, so follow that track!

In areas that you can’t avoid–or that you want to touch on for authenticity’s sake without spending days developing in-depth systems–find a method of developing that element of the world that gives you the most payoff for the least effort. As an example, I’m not big into language-building and I’m not interested in building complete languages for my worlds, but I do like being able to throw in bits of a fictional language to add color to the setting and a twinge of authenticity to the characters’ dialogue. As such, I’ve figured out what elements of a language can add the most color without requiring a lot of effort to develop (hence my post “The Lazy Worldbuilder’s Guide to Conlang“).

In cases where you really do need to develop something in more depth, but it’s not something you enjoy, try to think of it from a new angle or focus on a portion of it that you can enjoy. Maybe you’re not a fan of politics as a concept, but it helps to think of it in terms of the interpersonal relationships between the individuals in charge vs. focusing on the resulting diplomatic outcomes. Or maybe it’s the opposite! Maybe you don’t like the political posturing of national leaders, so you focus on the more general relationships between their countries and work backwards to figure out how the leaders might feel about each other. Or maybe you intentionally create a character to fill that leadership role who hates the political posturing as much as you do and you work out the politics through their eyes. Whatever the case, find your unique lens on the issue and work out from there! This not only makes the process easier and more fun for you, but it also helps to set your world apart as uniquely yours as you share it with readers and build stories within it, which is one key to great worldbuilding (another point that I cover in The Worldbuilding Toolbox)!

What About Worlds for Their Own Sake?

“But Ariel,” you say, “I’m not building a world for a particular project (at least not yet); I just build worlds because I like building worlds. How does this apply to me?”

Well, maybe it doesn’t. If you’re worldbuilding just to worldbuild, you may not need any of these limitations. “This world exists to be a fun world to build” is a perfectly reasonable worldbuilding purpose!

But if you’re getting sucked a little too far down the rabbit hole and your approach is starting to feel aimless, or if you know you want to have a workable world for sometime down the line even though your current focus is on exploration, there are some things you can think about to find the direction you’re looking for.

Option #1 is to go back to the previous point. Develop what you’re interested in! If you’re into architecture, spend some time developing all the different kinds of architecture in your world. If you find religious systems fascinating, focus on those. If you like building fascinating settings and locales, develop your geography for a while. Whatever your interest is, focus there.

Option #2: Develop one culture at a time. Pick one of the cultures (or people groups, nations, towns, continents… any smaller-than-the-globe portion of your world) and build it out in as much depth as you want to. Maybe challenge yourself to see how thorough you can be with that one society before moving on, or just develop it until you get bored and want to work on a different culture for a while. Either way, focus your attention on one area and make that your purpose for the time being.

Option #3: Use prompts. This is an approach I’ve used with Deseran on multiple occasions. Pick a worldbuilding prompt (I have a whole list) and answer it for as many cultures as you have in your world (whether that’s a super long list or consists of only 2-3 societies). For example, I might take the question of “When and how does this culture celebrate the new year? Or do they?” and develop 10 new traditions for my world, each for a different culture, and learn vital information about each culture I’ve answered for–or find ways to reinforce things I already knew about them through those new traditions.

Want more prompts? There’s an additional prompt list included in The Worldbuilding Toolbox!

Enroll here!

Option #4: Think ahead. If you know you want to create something within this world in the future, keep that future goal in mind as you decide what to develop. Make your first priority exploration, but keep your second priority (whether it’s a video game, novel, RPG, etc.) as an additional guideline. Say you can’t decide whether to work on Culture A or Culture B; if you’re operating solely off of exploration, you may never choose, but if you know that you want to write a story set in Culture B someday then that can make the decision easier.

Record Your Purpose for Reference

I’m a big advocate for writing things down, because my memory is super unpredictable and I know I’ll forget important things if I’m not careful–and I know I’m not the only one.

Wherever you keep your worldbuilding notes (whether in a binder, in Scrivener*, in a Word document, someplace like World Anvil*, etc.), write down your purpose so that you can refer back to it when you need to bring your worldbuilding back in line or figure out what to develop next. You can include as much or as little in this as you want; whatever is going to help you keep on track with your purpose! If “I’m building this world as the setting for [novel title]” is sufficient, great! If you want to jot down some information about the different categories I’ve mentioned here–noting your character’s background or interests, your story type, your themes, etc.–go for it! If you want to include notes of inspiration, such as jotting down some worlds or series that you want yours to resemble, that can also be a help.

Personally, I love World Anvil’s built-in “world meta” page for this purpose. Here, you can see how I’ve used it for Deseran. This is yet another area in which World Anvil’s templates do a great job of prompting consideration of some really useful elements for developing your world, and I mentioned it as one of my favorite features when I did a World Anvil review a while back. But, of course, it can be easily replicated in another format to go with the tools you already use. (I promise I’m not just promoting World Anvil because I’m an affiliate; I became an affiliate because I promoted them so much on my own anyway, lol. But that is the end of my World Anvil sales pitch for this post.)

Writing down your world’s purpose will not only help you as you develop this world, but also as you consider whether to add new worlds to your roster vs. add new pieces to your existing world(s).

Now I want to hear from you! Comment below with which of these points was most helpful to you, and share the purpose of your current world(s), if you’d like!

Now that you’ve defined your world’s purpose, learn to build your world effectively and build a system that supports your purpose with The Worldbuilding Toolbox!

The Worldbuilding Toolbox is a 4-module course designed to walk you through the basics of building a world that is built on your interests, supports the kind of story that you want to tell, and serves as more than just a backdrop to your story–plus how to develop a system to get you there that is based on what works for you, not just what other authors say you should do.

The price of the course is going up from $15 to $27 on October 25th, so enroll now to get lifetime access at the lower price!

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Intrigue & Mystery with Selective Prose

This post is based on a question I got quite a while back and answered for a newsletter subscriber. Bethani asked, “How do you write stories that are intriguing without using too many words?”

I’d been intending to expand this into a blog post for at least several months, and finally got to it in my big batching project before my wedding so I can finally share these tips with all of you!

Thank you, Bethani, for your initial question!

Questions and Answers

The heart of fostering intrigue and mystery in your book is to make the reader ask questions and then gradually answer those questions. If you answer questions right away, it sucks the interest out of the story. If you leave questions unanswered for too long, you frustrate the reader. Keeping the reader intrigued is a balancing act.

One illustration I’ve heard described is to have overlapping loops. A question starts a loop, and an answer closes it. The idea is that you want to open a new loop before you close the previous loop so that you always have an open loop to drive the reader forward in the story–until the end, at which point you want to close (at least most of) the remaining loops to resolve the story.

A lot of your questions will relate to one another, moving the reader through each portion of your story arc. Maybe their first large-scale question is whether the MC will successfully get undercover with their suspect. After they do that, maybe the question is whether they’ll find the evidence they need to snare the suspect. Maybe that loop is answered with the MC finding that they had the wrong suspect, and your new question is whether they’ll discover the real suspect.

Other questions will relate to your subplots and tie in differently. Maybe a smaller question has to do with the identity of a character your MC keeps alluding to from their past, and as the hints come together it’s revealed that they were an old friend who betrayed the MC, just in time for the MC to find that the old friend is actually helping the false suspect investigate the same crime and now your MC has to work with them.

Regardless of how your loops link together, the point is the same: Make your reader ask questions, then gradually resolve their curiosity with answers.

Words = Clarity

This header is a little misleading since using too many words can actually muddle your meaning and reduce clarity. But for a moment I’ll be focusing on overwriting, and context in which you want to make things less clear for your reader.

To return to the original question of maintaining intrigue without too many words: it can be easier to keep your work intriguing if you use fewer words. We authors can tend to over-explain in an attempt to make things as clear as possible to the reader and make sure that our intentions come across accurately, but this ruins the element of mystery and intrigue. Certain things ought to be clear–what is happening in a given moment, what our settings and characters look like, why the main character is doing what they’re doing–but other things can be left unexplained for a time.

Your antagonist’s plan, a side character’s ulterior motive, the main character’s backstory, the meaning of a symbol or item the character notices, the function of a recurring locale, etc. can all be left unexplained as mini-mysteries to add intrigue to the story. Readers like to be a little in the dark; they want to be on the edge of their seats wondering what’s going to come next–or what happened before the story began.

If your readers aren’t curious, if they’re bored or can see the whole story laid out ahead, keep an eye out for when you’re over-explaining or info-dumping and identify where you can cut back on that. Don’t tell in places you can show instead.

Hint with Details

If there’s something about a character/setting/etc. that you want to be intriguing, use hints to get your reader interested. Bring it to their attention, draw out a particular detail, and then move on until you’re ready to resolve it in the story–or ready to drop another hint along the way.

Maybe your MC keeps making vague allusions to a character from their past. Each allusion may add something to the picture your reader is forming of that character in their mind, but it’s not until that character appears in the story to shock the MC that the reader’s curiosity will be fully resolved. Don’t give away so much in those allusions that your reader is bored and feels they already know everything about the character by the time they appear on-page. They may have some familiarity with the character by the time they appear and be excited to meet them, but they shouldn’t know everything your MC knows.

Dropping hints, drawing out the details you want your reader to focus on at any given time without giving away all of your secrets at once, is a delicate balancing act, and you’ll likely have to adjust that balance as you rewrite and edit, both as you realize things that don’t work and as you get feedback from beta-readers and so on.

Be Selective

As with avoiding info-dumping in general, you want to bring things up as they become relevant–not all at once. Maybe your MC doesn’t include their ability to ride a motorcycle when someone asks them about their skills because it reminds them of that old friend, or because they want to keep it secret for some reason. Maybe instead it comes up later when they notice a motorcycle driving by and are automatically reminded of the friend, or when they have to use a motorcycle as a getaway vehicle. Withholding information can not only surprise the reader and make them wonder about things, but do the same for other characters in the story–which can, in turn, help your reader relate to those other characters.

This also applies to description. Maybe you want to highlight a particular door in a room, or a notch in a wall, or a pattern on a desk, or a character’s tattoo, to hint at something larger later on. As long as it’s something your character would notice, even if they simply glance over it and don’t focus on it until later, you can raise questions in your reader’s mind by the simple mention of it. Especially if it’s one of only few details you mention to outline a setting or character.

Your choice of words can hint at certain things, as well. Describing a character with “a hunter’s focus,” even if all they’re looking for is the buffet table and the MC likes them fine, can imply a lot about their character–especially if someone else describes their gait as “predatory” or an extra looks “cornered” when approached by the character for conversation. Whether the MC is glad to be on the “hunter’s” good side or they end up their intended prey in the end, the character of the “hunter” will have been foreshadowed by your word choice, as your reader will be wondering by that point why the character is painted that way (presuming, of course, that they’re not a literal hunter or a known antagonist).

As the author, you have a similar role to the cameraman for a movie. You have the power to draw the reader’s attention toward exactly what you want them to notice and away from anything you don’t want them to see yet. In fact, thinking of scenes in terms of movie shots can sometimes be a helpful exercise for this purpose. Use your words, your description, and your character’s attention and behavior to direct your reader where you want them to look and lead them to ask the questions you want them asking.

There are my best tips for maintaining intrigue and mystery in your stories. Which of these points was the most helpful? Anything I could have covered more? Comment below!

Want a chance for your own questions to be directly answered and potentially expanded into blog posts? Become a subscriber!

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Book Review: Sworn to the Sea by Dawn Dagger

Sworn to the Sea is a complete rewrite of a book I reviewed previously, Slave of the Sea, so Dawn reached out to me during re-release to see if I would share my review as someone who has the experience of having read both versions. It took me longer than I’d hoped to have the time to say yes, but I slotted in Sworn to the Sea as soon as I could in order to support Dawn and read this new version of a book that I’d enjoyed.

Disclaimer: I was not required to leave a positive review and all opinions are my own.What is Sworn to the Sea about?

He faced Levanine with the intensity of flames. “You must swear that you will not try to escape. You will not die by your own hand.”

“I swear it.”

–

Levanine’s life as a servant for the Ehrenfeld Family is not an unfortunate one. She has food, a place to sleep, and her best friend, Putra. But as they prepare for the suitors of Miss Leoni Ehrenfehld to arrive, the worst happens: pirates ransack the home.

And they demand Leoni Ehrenfehld, the family’s only heir, as payment.

Bound by duty, Levanine offers herself as a surrogate for the girl, and the frightening captain accepts her offer. But there is one condition. She must swear that she will never leave.

The world is bigger and more frightening than she could ever imagine. The men are dangerous, the seas even more so. Levanine has one of two choices: to become stronger or to die.

And she has sworn to the captain that she will not die.

Review

It’s been long enough since I read Slave of the Sea that I can’t remember much of it, but based on my review… Sworn to the Sea is extremely different. Which was by design; Dawn makes clear in her acknowledgements section that she wanted this to be a lighter story than it initially was, something hopeful rather than cynical and dark. So far as it goes, she accomplished that goal. Sworn to the Sea is a light adventure story rather than the hard-hitting look at morality that Slave of the Sea was.

Unfortunately, I think Sworn to the Sea is a lot weaker as a story–and in its writing.

There is no real story arc in this book. I get the impression it was intended to be a character-driven story, in which we see Levanine’s growth from timid and unsure servant girl to capable and confident pirate… but we don’t really get to see that. The events of the story feel disconnected from one another and disconnected from Levanine and her arc, which gives the whole thing a disjointed feel and keeps the reader distanced from the story and the characters. (Of course, a large part of this was the writing. There is very, very little “showing” in this book; everything is told, from the actions to the feelings to the settings to everything in between, which prevents any deep connection between the reader and any element of the book.) The potential was there, but the execution was not.

In fact, a lot of the elements of this book were just fine. When I say this is a “light adventure story,” that doesn’t mean nothing bad happens; there are cannibals, a sea monster, a marooning, and plenty of near-death experiences. The characters, too, are clearly outlined in unique ways and clearly hold to differing belief systems and whatnot that would have been fascinating to see further fleshed out. The setting and the differences between nations were interesting. Each of these pieces could have been a great contribution to the whole, but none of them got to shine through and none of them were tied together in such a way as to support a compelling, cohesive storyline. It felt like having all of the raw ingredients for a cake set out on the counter instead of having a ready cake to enjoy.

All of that said, I wouldn’t say this book was unenjoyable. It wasn’t a slog and it wasn’t terribly confusing. It just kind of… happened. Some of the characters and events were still interesting despite the uninteresting way in which they were presented, and it is a fun adventure at its core. But there was so much untapped potential, and it was disappointing to see it go to waste in the way it was put together and presented. The elements of Levanine’s faith, especially, would have been so interesting to see explored in the way she thought about things–in practice, not just how we’re told she thought–and in deeper conflict both within herself and with her surroundings and the other members of the crew. I would have loved to see more about her views on femininity and a real struggle when she’s asked to set those convictions aside.

I think Sworn to the Sea has the makings of a really effective lighter counterpart to the previous Slave of the Sea. It seems to keep the heart of the characters (as far as I can recall and see in my previous review) and the heart of the pirate story while shifting the focus into something more hopeful for Levanine and into a world that is freed from some of the darkness present in Slave of the Sea. Unfortunately, I think it needed more time to develop as a story and more time and support for the actual writing itself.

Rating: 2 stars

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The post Book Review: Sworn to the Sea by Dawn Dagger appeared first on Scribes & Archers.

Book Review: Unearth the Tides by Alissa J. Zavalianos

I’ve seen this series of “Classics Retold” going around my author/reader circles for a while now, and it looked pretty cool (I enjoy classics) but I didn’t really stop long enough to add any of the involved books to my TBR. But then I connected with Alissa on Instagram, discovered she writes “cozy” fantasy, and said, “Hey, would you like to do a review swap?” So here we are with my review of Unearth the Tides (and I will probably check out more of the Classics Retold series in the future).

While I received a copy of this book to review, I was not required to leave a positive review and all opinions are my own.What is Unearth the Tides about?

𝐁𝐞𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐓𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬
𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮

Huxley Krew Gannon III always knew he would be a royal guard; defending the Crown is in his blood. And coming from a long line of Gannons, that means the job is to be taken seriously at all costs.

When tragedy strikes, Huxley is framed for treason, and his only option is to flee to Braka’s most feared place: The Wasteful Tides.

It’s rumored a monstrous beast haunts those waters, but what Huxley encounters is even worse: an elusive captain, magical herbs, a beautiful lady, and unearthed truths that could change the course of history.

Unearth the Tides is a fantasy retelling of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Filled with mystery, found family, and themes of truth and forgiveness, Unearth the Tides is perfect for those who love the coziness of the classics and the thrill of adventure.

Review

So, funny story, I’ve participated for about a year in a Jules Verne-focused online book club and our most recent read was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And, while all of the above about the Classics Retold series is true, I didn’t actually realize that Unearth the Tides was part of that series or that it was a retelling of 20,000 Leagues until I opened it, lol. So the timing of starting it just after finishing its source material was pretty fun and providential.

One of the first things that struck me about Unearth the Tides–beyond discovering it was a retelling of 20,000 Leagues–was how fast-paced it is. It dumps you straight into the story and there’s not really a lot of breathing room for the first several chapters–even where it sometimes seems like there should be. My biggest disappointment with this was that it felt like the pacing did a disservice to the characters and world. It’s evident that both the characters and the world were well-developed, but that depth gets lost on the page as there’s not a lot of processing time with Huxley to really understand how he’s thinking about things or come to see the world through his eyes. He responds to things in real-time and then seems to sometimes forget about them until they become relevant again–even things like the inciting incident that led to his entire predicament. This also has a detrimental effect on the climax, as there’s not a lot of lead-up or foreshadowing before we’re thrown into a discovery with Huxley and the ensuing plan for resolution. In short, the pacing made it hard for me to get invested in the story in a lot of places.

However. The characters were still engaging, in certain points toward the middle of the book especially. Huxley was a little difficult for me to connect with for the reasons stated, but Willa, Monty, and Aldo were compelling side characters. I would have liked to see a little more from Monty because he struck me as rather one-dimensional, there just to serve a purpose in Huxley’s story instead of really having his own, but that desire came from the fact that he had enough depth to seem like he had more to offer the story. Willa was a great feminine character, and I enjoyed the way that her relationship with Huxley was written. I found Aldo to be the most compelling character for a while because of his similarities with Captain Nemo; he was a really well-done counterpart, and I enjoyed the intrigue carried over from 20,000 Leagues.

I don’t have much to say on the world. It was largely unexplored, as the majority of the story takes place on a submarine, but it was pretty typical fantasy fare. The propulsion of the submarine was well-done; I enjoyed that detail. The way that the ship was generally constructed–as well as the restoration of Monty’s boat–stretched my disbelief a bit. But those were minor details easily moved on from.

As this book is a retelling of a classic novel, it seems appropriate to discuss its merits as a retelling. For those who enjoy very distinct retellings, this is a fun read. It keeps vestiges of the original, while spinning them into what is very much an original story. On the other hand, if you enjoyed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for its slow pacing, its ambiguity and intrigue, or a main character who is fascinated by the research opportunities afforded on a submarine, you should be aware that Unearth the Tides steps away from all of those elements. Huxley is more of a Ned Land than an Aronnax, the submarine’s crew plays much more of a role, and the ending–built on the captain’s backstory–is clearly defined. None of these are faults in the story, whether as a retelling or not, but they are worthwhile details to be aware of if you go into this book as a fan of Verne’s story.

Overall, Unearth the Tides is a fun adventure story that draws bits of inspiration from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into a fantasy world. It takes a fascination with the Nautilus and Captain Nemo and answers the questions that arise from that curiosity in the context of a new story in a new world.

Rating: 4 stars

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Cross-Section of a Story Playlist

Today we have a just-for-fun sort of post. A lot of music-loving authors, like myself, create playlists to accompany their books–whether for the sake of the reader experience, for their own writing process, or both–and I thought that it would be fun to look at what sorts of songs might get onto these playlists, as well as give you a look into Lightning‘s playlist as we go!

A Prologue on Structure

Before we get into the type of songs that tend to appear on story playlists, I want to talk for a moment about the broad options when it comes to the structure and style of a story playlist.

Story playlists can be as long or as short as serves the purpose they’re intended for. I have story playlists ranging from 20 minutes (so far) to 15 hours. In my case, story playlists tend to grow as I use them during my writing process and stay shorter if I’ve created the playlist after the book is done (as in the case of my 40-minute Lost Girl playlist).

The musical style of a playlist can also differ dramatically based on the author, the story, and the purpose of the playlist. Most of my story playlists include a lot of alternative rock, some pop, and indie music. But 1) a variety of genres fill in around these core genres on different playlists–metal, jazz, cinematic, throwbacks, etc.–and 2) some playlists have a totally different bent altogether, with the focus on instrumental music on playlists where that’s a better fit or I’ve found instrumental makes it easier to focus.

You can also play around with the order of songs on your playlists, if you’d like. I listen to 90% of my playlists on shuffle, so I don’t bother to put them in any order other than chronological by when I added them, but if you want to order them to accompany the arc of your story, to sort them by character, etc., go for it!

With that said, let’s get into the different types of songs you might find on a story playlist!

Songs Representing the Protagonist(s)

These are songs that embody who your protagonist is, whether highlighting the traits they hold throughout the story or representing who they are at the beginning of their arc. On a predominantly instrumental playlist, this will be a song that simply sounds like it matches with your character. On lyric-based playlists, you can get a little more specific. And these can be songs that represent how you see the character or how they see themselves!

These are a few of the protagonist songs I have on my Lightning playlist, for example:

Erika – “Ember” by Katherine McNamara

Nyla – “Easy to Break” by Fireflight

Alaric – “Silence” by Marshmello

Ash – “Coat of Arms” by Jonathan Thulin

Songs Representing the Antagonist(s)

These songs are certainly not a staple (none of these categories really are; you shape your playlist however works best for you), but it’s sometimes interesting to throw in a song or two that represents your antagonist. Sometimes these songs can be helpful to get into their heads if you have scenes from their POV, they can be a fun hint for readers, or they can simply round out your playlist with something different–especially on a primarily instrumental playlist.

Prior to writing this post, I didn’t have any antagonist songs on my Lightning playlist (“Enemy” by Tommee Profitt was the closest thing), but I went looking on some of my related playlists and found that Imagine Dragons’ “Whatever It Takes” is a good fit for all of my main antagonists in various ways.

Songs Representing Character Relationships

Romantic relationships, sibling relationships, friendships, the relationship between your protagonists and antagonists… Songs that match up with any of the relationships in your book can easily fill out your story playlist. Some examples from Lightning:

Friendship – “Monsters” by Katie Sky

Protagonist/antagonist relationship – “Not So Nice” by Terah Lynn (and “Enemy” by Tommee Profitt, as previously mentioned)

Family relationship – “Ruins” by LEDGER

Songs Representing Character Arcs

With this category, I’m thinking of songs that represent a key point of change in your character, perhaps a realization of something they believed being undone. Again, “Enemy” is a good fit for this category–which is another point, that story playlists aren’t generally neatly divisible by category; you’ll have songs that represent multiple characters or multiple elements of the story, and that’s totally expected.

“Resuscitate” by Fireflight is another character arc song on Lightning‘s playlist, to a degree.

Songs Representing Backstory

Your story playlist doesn’t have to be limited to only the present story; you can throw in hints at backstory, as well, whether for your own reference and inspiration or for the sake of reader interest.

There are several such songs on my playlist for Lightning, including “Follow Your Fire” By Kodaline.

Songs Representing the Setting

These songs can actively describe the city, or they can be representative in painting an audible picture (e.g. through instrumental music) or giving an idea of what the setting is built around or what it would sound like. I have a couple setting songs on Lightning‘s playlist that approach this from different angles:

Description – “Lights in the City” by The National Parks

Sound – “GetReady” by Hiss

Songs Representing Key Scenes

Some of the songs on your playlist might be associated with particular scenes of the story–whether the lyrics reflect events or the soundtrack backs the scene well. Soundtrack/cinematic music can be especially good for this if your playlist is primarily for your readers or if you write best to non-lyrical music; if you want a bit of word-based inspiration or write better to lyrics, a lyrical song might be more useful.

“Run Boy Run” by Woodkid got added to my Lightning playlist in part because the underlying music of it fits to soundtrack some of the scenes I’ve envisioned.

Songs Representing Key Themes

This category tends to be better served by songs with lyrics, so you may find it doesn’t show up much on an instrumental playlist, but you can work in songs that represent the core themes of your book.

I have several songs on Lightning‘s playlist that are sort of adjacent to my themes but don’t quite hit the mark–either in the precise theme or in their approach to the theme–but Juniper Vale’s “Unchangeable Love” is a pretty good representation for this category.

Songs That the Characters Would Listen To

Whether it gets mentioned in the book or not, sometimes it’s fun to look at the kinds of things that your characters would listen to. (In fact, I have one playlist that is specifically titled “Livi Would Listen” because it’s composed of songs that a character from one of my retired short story collections–Livi Brooklyn–would listen to.) This can also spice up your playlist, if your character listens to something distinct from the rest of the playlist’s style. On the other hand, it can spice things up too much in some cases–for example, if you’ve gotten into a writing groove with one style of music and suddenly there’s something drastically different playing.

“Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways is a song Erika would listen to–and, in fact, she alludes to it in the book.

Songs Matching the Overall Story Tone

Besides the songs that relate to particular elements of your story, your playlist will often match the overall tone of your story. For example, my Calligraphy Guild playlist suits that story with lots of softer, more oriental-sounding music, while Lightning‘s playlist is drastically different, with more hard-hitting and high-energy music. And, of course, these impressions can be achieved with either instrumental or lyric-based music.

There you have it. Those are some of the types of songs I have on my story playlists; hopefully they’re inspiring to you. Now I want to hear from you! Do you create musical playlists for your stories? What types of music do you gravitate toward when building them? What are some songs that have particularly inspired your creativity? Let’s talk in the comments!

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Building Your Community as an Author

To finish up this series on investments to make as an author, I want to talk about building relationships through your author career. Relationships are another integral part of succeeding as an author, in all areas, so let’s talk about what kinds of relationships you need and how to build them up effectively.

Building Relationships With Readers

There are multiple ways to connect with readers, but the most obvious way is through books. Joining reader groups can be a great way to find the right readers for your book. Join groups that discuss the genres, categories, and styles of books that you write. (I’ve recently found the “Lorehaven Guild” on Discord a great place to chat about books and storytelling.) Participate in conversation, discuss books that are similar to yours, etc. Connect with like-minded readers on social media and engage with their posts. Make your own posts about books you’re enjoying.

You can do the same thing with things like TV shows and movies, as well, and find readers whose media preferences overlap with the content of your book(s).

Of course, you can connect with readers through your books. Your books introduce you as an author, whether readers find your book before your platform or they find you talking about your book on your platform, and you can take advantage of that to make sure that readers know what to expect and know why they should care about you and your work. This is where you want to connect with them and make yourself recognizable to the readers who want what you have to offer.

I spent 6 months hyping up Calligraphy Guild by highlighting exactly what kind of book it is and how my personal values went into making it what it is. I was therefore able to connect with readers who share those values and are looking for the kind of book that I wrote with Calligraphy Guild. I talked about my love for music, the value of being counter-cultural, the value of community, the fact that Calligraphy Guild is slow-paced and character-driven, the fact that it bypasses a lot of common YA tropes to highlight strong relationships, etc., etc.

You can also discuss non-media topics related to your book. To use Calligraphy Guild as an example again, I might start conversations about tea, dragons, writing, community, the arts in general, etc. Discuss things you find interesting, and interests that have made their way into your books.

Once you’ve connected with people, you can determine whether they’re the right audience for your book and, if so, find more natural opportunities for recommending your book than if you were just trying to market it “into the void,” so to speak, via social media and the like. You’ll know you’re talking to the right people, and they’ll know, like, and trust you when you recommend they try your book (as well as future books you publish).

Part of the trick is then to maintain those relationships and not let them just fade away after you’ve promoted your book, only to reappear when you have a new book to offer. This should go without saying, but build relationships for the sake of the people, not just for the sake of your book. This doesn’t mean you have to message all of the people you’ve met on a weekly basis or something, but you do want to keep commenting on their stuff, checking in now and then, etc. And these are the sorts of people you’ll want to invite onto your mailing list, as well, so that you can keep connecting with them through your newsletter emails.

Building Relationships With Fellow Authors

It can be easy at times to envy fellow authors and see them as competition, but resist that urge. You need authors just as much as you need readers. Building relationships with authors will help you to find critique partners, endorsers (authors who write positive review blurbs to print on your book), reviewers, and people who can share your books with their own audience of readers.

Join groups of like-minded authors where you can exchange feedback and discuss the craft. Engage with authors on social media and through their newsletters. Go to conferences if you’re able. Reach out to authors directly to thank them for their books or share what you appreciate about them. Reach out once you have your own book and invite people to participate in promo for your book (having done your research so you can explain why they’re the right fit for your book), whether requesting an endorsement, review, or just that the author share your book link and graphics.

And hey, guess what. Authors like a lot of the same things readers do, and they’re human just like you. Even bigger-name authors are really not as scary to reach out to as you think they are. (In my experience, it’s scarier if you get ahold of an author’s agent than if you talk to the author themselves. But maybe I’ve just gotten the scary agents, lol.) So if fear is holding you back, kick it to the curb and reach out anyway; the worst an author can say is “no.”

Building Relationships With Other Artists

I really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with other artists and the like when I put together my Calligraphy Guild book box. That was a really expensive project and I don’t think I would normally recommend it to authors early in their careers because there’s no guarantee whatsoever that it’ll return on the financial investment (full disclosure: mine hasn’t), but for me it was a great experience to shape my own team of artists and put together a box of goodies for readers, and I’m glad that I had the money to do that for Calligraphy Guild. If you do have the funds, character art and the like are great for getting to know new artists and potentially connect with them as readers as well as artists.

You can connect with artists for cover art, character art, bookmark designs, promo graphics, custom products like candles and teas, etc., etc. Think outside the box and consider mediums that coordinate with your book.

Building Relationships With Other Professionals

Other artists aren’t the only professionals to build relationships with. As discussed in the first post in this series, building a rapport with a quality editor is one great long-term investment to make. And as you look for that perfect fit editor, you’ll probably work with several editors who aren’t such a good fit for you, and you’ll build relationships with them, too; even if they’re not right for your book, they might be perfect for a friend’s book, they might still be willing to help with the promo of your book once it’s ready, or they might just turn out to be a good friend.

Virtual assistants are another group of professionals you might work with. If that term is foreign to you, a virtual assistant is someone who helps with your “virtual” presence–your social media, sometimes your newsletter, etc. A VA helps you with your online content so that your time can be freed up for things like… writing. VAs aren’t for everyone, but VAs are also adaptable, so sometimes even if you don’t want to hand over all of your social media content to an assistant you can still get their help with the tedious work of scheduling posts (for example). Regardless, VAs are great to build relationships with, whether you intend to work with one down the road or you want to know who to recommend to other author friends who ask. (Speaking of VA recommendations, I have an email going out tomorrow highlighting a couple of my VA friends, so sign up if you’re interested in learning more!)

Book/business coaches are also great to work with! Some specialize in particular genres (like Nicole Whisler who does fantasy novel coaching) or aspects of the writing process (like Andrew Wall who does worldbuilding coaching), while others work more generally or focus on business more than the craft of writing itself. Again, it’s great to build relationships with people who have this kind of expertise, whether you purchase their coaching services or not; they’re great contacts to have for other authors, for book promo, for questions outside of a coaching context (if they have an online group or newsletter), etc. And, going back to the obvious point of building relationships for the people, not the opportunities, they’re just great people! I’ve personally spoken to three writing coaches (these two and one I’ve worked with on a more regular basis, Abigail Hays), and they have all been fantastic to work with, incredibly personable, passionate about what they do, encouraging, thoughtful, etc. and I’m very grateful for the relationships I’ve been able to start and build up!

How have you built up your community as an author? Comment below! And let me know if a newsletter covering some places to find fellow authors and readers would be of interest. (Don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list if you haven’t already!)

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More Author Career Investments You Should Be Making

Last week I talked about what I think are some of the most valuable investments you can make in your author career. I started off with the basics in that post, but there are a lot of worthwhile investments you can make to improve your career. A lot of the investments listed in this post are much more optional–the question of which tools you choose to use isn’t going to make or break your career–but they can be beneficial tools if you have the resources to invest in them.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means purchases made through marked links earn me a small commission at no extra cost to youEducation: For Marketing, Connection, & Communication Skills

This is the one item on this list that I do think is almost as foundational as those listed in last week’s post. In order to get your books to the right readers, you need to be able to effectively communicate what your book offers and what readers it’s intended for. (I’m sorry but your book is not going to appeal to “everyone.” That’s just not how it works.) Learning to not only communicate your story (i.e. write the book) but also communicate about your story and know who you’re communicating to are critical skills for your writing career. If you don’t learn to understand your ideal audience, you’ll cast your net too wide (or too narrow, but the former is more likely) and end up losing readers through the gaps. And if you don’t learn how to highlight and communicate the key selling points of your book, then even the right readers won’t realize your book is for them.

Marketing is one of the more difficult elements of building a writing career, at least for a lot of authors, but the nice thing is that there are a lot of ways you can approach it. It just takes a time investment to experiment and learn what actually works, and then to repeat the process.

Another nice thing about marketing is that, at its core, it’s built around relationships. You want to connect with readers and engage with them on common ground, communicating how your book can benefit them in the process–why they’ll enjoy it, how it will make them feel, etc.

So learn to build those relationships, study how marketing works, and learn to communicate your story well. The biggest investment you’ll make in this area is time, because it takes a lot of trial and error and simple practice. But there are also courses you can take, coaches you can work with, virtual assistants you can hire, etc. if you have the money to invest in additional resources.

Of course, there are a lot of educational resources you can find for free. For example, there are some marketing bloggers whose newsletters I follow (Leanne of Passive Income Superstars is my favorite; her emails are always valuable and practical!), and Coursera* offers college-level marketing courses that you can audit for free (or purchase the complete certificate and get full access to submit assignments and the like).

Whatever route you choose to take, find a way to consistently improve your communication and sales skills.

Resources: For the Writing Process

Here we get into “bells and whistles.” Obviously, you can build an effective writing process with nothing more than a notebook and pen, or a basic Word document, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If you would like to try some additional tools and potentially improve your organization, however, there’s some cool stuff out there.

As you’ll know if you’ve been here a while, I love World Anvil* for worldbuilding organization (and presentation). It’s sleek, it’s thorough, it’s inspiring, the interlinking capabilities are excellent. Beyond a worlbuilding braindump document, it’s my favorite worldbuilding tool. I’ve talked about some of my favorite features and more of why it’s my favorite before, so I’ll link you there if you’d like to learn more!

For more of the planning and actual writing process, I use Scrivener*. Scrivener enables you to keep all of your files related to a single project in one place, as well as to break up your story by chapter, scene, etc. while still being able to view it all together if you want or need to. You can show as much or as little of the interface as you need, and there’s also a distraction-free mode that I love designing to match the setting or mood of my book. And when you’re done writing, Scrivener can compile and export all of your story documents into a single document for editing! I use Scrivener for 90% of my projects, using it to hold everything from my initial plot bunny notes before I even focus on a project all the way to edited drafts, in some cases.

Campfire is a similar program, with more templates and–I think–more complexity. I intend to explore Campfire more thoroughly and write up review posts–both attempting to judge it on its own merits as well as comparing it to things like Scrivener and World Anvil (since it boasts its worldbuilding organization, as well)–but for now all I can say is that it has similarities with Scrivener, it offers a lot more built-in options for things like character sheets and world information–so if you don’t already have means of organizing that information, I can see the appeal–but it can be a little overwhelming and there’s no good way to import information that you already have elsewhere without just manually inputting everything. I personally wouldn’t choose it because I’m well established with Scrivener and World Anvil and the other assorted tools I use, but I can see it being beneficial if you’ve never used a “fancy” writing tool and you don’t find the interface overwhelming.

If you want to make sure your timeline is consistent while you write, if the storylines in your book are complex and interweaving, or if you just want to be able to see everything that happens in your book clearly laid out, Aeon Timeline is a great tool. It’s a little more complicated now than I remember it being when I tried it a few years ago, but I found it incredibly helpful for The Dark War Trilogy while I had it and I’m seriously considering biting the bullet and buying the full software so that I have it for current and future projects (and definitely The Dark War Trilogy whenever I pick that back up). And it integrates with Scrivener, which is pretty cool.

Resources: For Publicity/Marketing/Outreach

There are a lot of resources in this category, because there are so many options and opportunities for outreach and publicity!

As far as physical resources go, things like business cards and bookmarks fall into this category. Bookmarks can be great alternatives to business cards for authors, in fact, since they’re a practical item that’s relevant to those we want to gain the attention of–readers and fellow authors. Make sure your bookmarks have your name (or pen name) on them, as well as the book they relate to (if you have a design based on one of your books) and potentially your author website link as well. These are a few of the bookmark designs I’ve created to go with my books. (Do as I say, not as I do; I opted to forego information on some of these and just plain forgot on others.)

Watercolor credit goes to my little sister, artwork on the second horizontal design was done by RavenFire at 99designs, and the last design is part of my cover art by Alli May!

I’ve printed all of my bookmarks to this point with GotPrint, and I’ve been happy with the quality every time. And, as you can see, I’ve printed a lot of bookmarks! The only design here that I haven’t actually printed is the Lost Girl design.

Bookmarks are great for promo–whether for distribution in place of a business card or as advertisement in places like bookstores and libraries–but also as a fun extra to send your existing readers when they purchase your book or support you in other ways.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a traditional business card, either–especially if you do writing-related things beyond publishing fiction. For example, I intend to purchase business cards before I attend a writing conference next year so that I can not only talk about my fiction but also my editing services and any other ventures I’ve started by then (hopefully more in the sphere of worldbuilding).

If you want to display references to your books in other ways, “merch” like tote bags, t-shirts, and mugs can also be fun! While not merch for my own work, one of the tote bags I use for crochet projects has the Phoenix Fiction Writers logo embroidered on it (courtesy of my sister) and it’s always fun to carry that around.

Beyond physical promotional resources, there are some online tools and resources you can invest in. If you want to do a lot of social media promo, it might be worth investing in a social media scheduling tool that can help you streamline your automation process. Buffer has been my favorite tool for this. The difficulty with social media marketing is that it can easily become a time-suck without a lot of return on investment, so create a plan for yourself that enables you to steer clear of the pitfalls and use social media as a means of engaging with your audience, engaging with other authors, and getting people onto your mailing list.

Speaking of your mailing list, this is an important resource to invest your time in. Everyone says that, and for a long time I was like, “yeah, right.” For one thing, I hated writing emails for my list; it didn’t come easily to me, it was always a struggle, and it didn’t feel like it fostered engagement. But trust me, once you figure out what you enjoy talking about that your audience can benefit from, it can actually be a lot of fun! And in my case, it made a huge difference just to change email providers! Switching to MailerLite* was the best decision I ever made, and I highly recommend it as a place to get started.

You don’t necessarily have to invest in these tools monetarily–though you’ll give yourself more options if you do–but you’ll have to invest some time in getting set up and learning to use these tools to their full potential on whatever plan you’ve chosen.

There are also places you can simply invest time in connecting with people. Forums have been a great place for me to engage with other authors, helping to answer questions, asking questions of my own, and simply making friends with like-minded authors. I’ve mentioned some of my favorite writing communities before, but Story Embers and Kingdom Pen are my top two recommendations. These days, Kingdom Pen seems to be the more active of the two, but the demographics skew older and more experienced at Story Embers while they skew younger at Kingdom Pen, so which you join will depend on what you’re looking for. (Or you can just do like I did and join both.)

It’s also a worthwhile investment to spend intentional time listening to podcasts and reading blogs and the like. This is another great way to get to know and engage with authors and others who may be interested in promoting your work. Plus, it’s just a fun excuse to read and listen to cool stuff. If you’re interested in making guest appearances on blogs or podcasts, engaging with what they publish on a regular basis is a good starting point. But this is why I say to spend intentional time, because you do need to know that these publications are a good fit for you (if networking is your goal; obviously reading blogs and listening to podcasts for fun is also good!) and you need to engage if you want to really build relationships with the authors behind the screen.

Resources: For Sales

This category is all about resources to invest in for actually filling sales. A lot of these have the broadest application if you want to sell your books, etc. directly vs. through a distributor (e.g. Amazon), so let’s start by talking about the investment in direct sales themselves.

Direct sales have a couple of benefits. One is that you make more of the profit; you have to still pay to print your books and have them shipped to you, but there are no royalties taken out by a distributor, so you can charge the same amount for your books on your site and on Amazon but actually earn more of the price of the book through direct sales. (Of course, there is the math to consider by the time you’ve paid for the shop hosting and other sales materials, so there are priorities to take into account.) Another benefit is that it’s more personal! When you ship books directly to readers, you can throw in bookmarks, sign the book, include a personal note, package it your own way, etc. You can personally appreciate each reader who buys from you, which is my favorite part of selling directly.

If you do want to do direct sales, you’ll need a means of setting up an online shop. If you already have a website, that’s a great start; you can either create a shop page where your readers can contact you about a book and get a PayPal invoice, if you want to go really simple (but a little clunky), or you can download a plugin that does all the processing and information compilation for you. I personally use WooCommerce, which I’ve found pretty easy to work with. You have to make sure the plugin and any extensions you use remain up-to-date, but I’ve never had any issues with it unless I failed to keep it updated.

The first physical resource I want to talk about is worth investing in even (perhaps especially) if you don’t do direct sales: bookplates. These are stickers with a nice border and blank space in the center where you can write your signature. These are great to send to readers who acquired the book in a context where it couldn’t be signed, but still want the author’s signature. Whether they bought through Amazon or another distributor, won your book in a giveaway, etc., bookplates are a way to provide a “signed” book to a reader for the low price of postage. This means it’s really easy to send signatures to international readers, too, even if the price to ship an entire book is insane.

Another resource that can be worth investing in regardless of your sales system is a set of address labels. Especially if you write under a pen name, these make it easy to nicely label packages, notes, thank-yous, etc. sent to readers. And if you don’t use a pen name, they can serve double-duty for personal letters as well!

On a related note (no pun intended), it can be fun to have nice stationary on hand for reader thank-you notes. I have pretty plant-themed cards that I’ve been sending out with book orders since my shop opened with Calligraphy Guild‘s book boxes, and I like to think they add to the experience when a reader gets a package from my shop. They’re also nice if you want to send out standalone notes, whether to thank readers for their support or connect with fellow authors. I got my notecards off of Amazon, but if you’d like to support a small business with a variety of options, I recommend Peach and Poppy Co. on Etsy! (Her classic books set looks especially appropriate for this purpose.)

If you’re going to ship books directly, you need something to ship them in. Priority mail boxes are good for bigger packages. For single-book orders (or even some two-book orders, since most of my available books are thin), I use bubble mailers–and the fun thing with those is that you can get them in colors! Mine are forest green, but there are tons of available colors depending on what you want for your reader experience. You can also wrap your books before packaging them, whether with tissue paper, wrapping paper, butcher paper, ribbon, etc. I have some jade moss-green ribbon I’ve been wanting to use with brown paper to wrap books if/when I get holiday orders, inside the bubble mailers. There are a lot of options in this category, and you can use it to personalize your orders quite a bit.

That’s a wrap on part 2! Which of these investments is the most interesting to you? Which is the most intimidating? Comment below!

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