C. Aubrey Hall's Blog, page 12

Book Diary

Ever hear of a company called Victorian Trading Co.? Every December it sends me its paper catalog in hopes of enticing me back as a customer, and every December I thoroughly enjoy leafing through its offerings and wishing I could buy a lot. I never do, but the wishing is fun.

This year, I had to laugh when I turned a page and lo and behold, they have a book diary.

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The catalogue description reads as follows:

“Includes sections for book lists, record of books read, books wanted and purchased, shared books, book group notes and comments, favorite titles to remember, significant passages, and address of book stores, libraries, and clubs. 144 p. Laminated hardbound gift book. 5 x 7” No. 9977          $14.95

http://www.victoriantradingco.com

Ph: 800-800-6647

Now, I’m not recommending that anyone purchase this particular diary. All you techies have probably already created a log on your computers. The rest of you may be happy with a $1 composition notebook or the luxury of a little Moleskin book. Whatever.

It’s just that once I focus on a particular topic, I seem to become magnetized and all sorts of  related material gravitates to me. It happens when I research for a book, and it’s happening now. I’m sure this means that I simply become more aware of items or details that I previously ignored.

Am I buying this book diary? Nope. I don’t like to be organized by someone else. But it’s a pretty notion, and I like the intention of it.

Another good source for this kind of thing–especially if you’re seeking a high-end gift for a writer or reader–is Levenger’s.

So browse, seek, fantasize, wish.

Meanwhile, I’m reading READY PLAYER ONE.

 

 

 

Happy New Year

Greetings, All–

I hope everyone had a good Christmas or is enjoying the holiday season in whatever fashion you choose. Ah, the time of twinkling lights and eggnog.

A power hiccup on Christmas morning crashed Ole Faithful, so I am hoping to resurrect it once more. Just when I think the computer truly has died, it comes back, trembling and coughing a little, but still game. Each time, so far, it’s proven to be mostly dead but not all dead.

Fingers crossed that it revives once more. Rest seems to help, so I am letting it have some peace and quiet offline for the time being, and writing this post via a substitute machine.

Why do I keep Ole Faithful, you ask? Why do we keep old dogs and senile parakeets? Why do we visit our grandparents even when they no longer recognize who we are? (Yeah, I know. A computer is not sentient and needs no such sentimentality, yet I cling to it because change is threatening–as every fictional protagonist knows–and I dread the agony of new equipment, new ways, and confronting whatever tom-fool “improvement” has been made to Word that will make my life as a writer harder.)

But this post is about looking ahead, not grousing, so best wishes to you all for a happy and successful new year. May your writing go smoother, your reading be more pleasurable, and your days filled with joy in whatever you do.

 

Crystal Bones Promo

I just found out that my YA book, CRYSTAL BONES, is currently featured in a special promo from Amazon. This novel opens a fantasy trilogy about a pair of half-fae twins, and was published under the pseudonym C. Aubrey Hall.

If you need a gift for a youngster that likes traditional fantasy, then this adventure might be just the ticket.

Here’s the link:

https://www.amazon.com/dlp/038f98ec/ref=gbps_img_s-3_bb19_038f98ec?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=41fd713f-6bfe-4299-a021-d2b94872bb19&pf_rd_s=slot-3&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=gb_main&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=34S7AJW2T3ANCN93K189.

Never Surrender

Back in the spring of 2015, I announced in a blog post that I was going to attempt the reading of 100 books during that summer. No doubt some of you just rolled your eyes. A few cheered me on. And there were those who thought maybe I should allow myself a year to do it.

Smarties, aren’t you?

It took me a year and three months to fill in my list of 100 titles and authors. I feel a bit chagrined that it took so long.

Well, realistic or not, I prefer to dream big and reach high. And in my enthusiasm for the project, I have to admit that I was recalling those halcyon summers of my childhood when I had nothing to do but read–sometimes one book a day, occasionally two–and the most exercise I got was walking to the public library to check out more. Life is a little busier these days and, despite two summers, I somehow never got around to actually spending a day reading on the sofa now and then, which had been my intention.

I read several books that had long been on my get-to-these pile. Others were old favorites that I reread with pleasure. I did not write down the titles of any I began but didn’t finish. Several duds were chucked aside. And some ghastly nonfiction tome bogged me down for over a week.

But in November when I filled in the title for #100, it was with a feeling of regret that the list was finished. Now I sort of miss the discipline of recording each book, and I wish, too late, that I’d dated each one. I’m thinking about starting another list, just for grins.

People of leisure used to keep what are known as book diaries, where they would enter the title and author of each book they read, along with the date and either a brief synopsis or their opinion of the work. Isn’t that a lovely custom? I am enticed by the romanticism of it. The leather-bound journal and a mother-of-pearl Parker fountain pen lying just so on my antique slant-front desk, ready for me to sit down on gentle afternoons and record my impressions of someone’s toil and effort to bring characters and their troubles alive.

And yet, have any of us time for such an indulgence? In today’s harum-scarum world of texting, multi-tasking, racing crosstown on interstates, too many appointments and a phone chiming to remind us of them all while juggling jobs, soccer games, grocery shopping, online banking, pinterest boards, tweeting, and walking our dogs–how can we fit in a book diary? Is there an app for that?

We know, however, that we will always make time somehow to do the things we really want to do.

I suppose the question then boils down to whether I really want to devote the time an actual book diary would take, or do I just want an excuse to shop for a blank journal in pretty binding? In looking over my list of completed titles, I must admit that few of them are worthy of an essay opinion expressed via bottled ink on fine paper. And the OCD in me worries about the following:  how long a journal should I buy? What if I write several pages about a book and eat up the journal and then it’s not long enough to complete the year’s reading list? What if I need two journals? What if they don’t match? Should I buy two to start with? But wouldn’t it be neater if everything was contained in one?

(And people wonder why writers sometimes never get around to actually typing manuscripts.)

Just think, I’m contemplating a new way to procrastinate away from my keyboard. Because if I vent my writing steam on the book diary, will I have any energy or will or creative juice left to actually produce the day’s writing quota?

Whatever I decide, I have until January 1, 2017, because that is when I want to start my new reading project. Maybe I’ll face reality this time and forget the book diary. I can print out another numbered list to fill in. It’s easy and quick–as long as I don’t misplace the list–and can be done on paper or on my phone while on the run. It’s less expensive than a fancy journal, and I won’t have to hunt my elegant Parker pen, much less clean it or locate that dried-up bottle of ink.

Alas, modern-day life is so practical … so dull.

Meanwhile, I’m still reading sans list. And so my discovery of author Kate Saunders will not be noted in any official capacity. It makes me twitch, but that’s good practice for fending off OCD tendencies.

And I could always aim for a 200-book goal next time!

Kindle at Last!

I’m pleased to report that my editors at Manchester University Press have–after much persistence–come through. The mysterious and perplexing glitch that’s been delaying the ebook publication of THE FANTASY FICTION FORMULA is now “un-glitched.” TFFF is finally available on Kindle. Woo-hoo!

Some of you have been waiting quite a while for the ebook version. I’m sorry about the long delay, and thank you for your patience.

Sometimes there are gremlins in the house, but at last they seem to have gone away.

From My Bookshelf: Victoria Holt

At the peak of her career, author Victoria Holt was the queen of the gothic suspense novel. I read her books as a teenager, but then moved on to discover Georgette Heyer, and never looked back.

Until this year. As I’ve already recounted in a previous post, I came across a small treasure trove of romantic suspense novels at an estate sale and plunked down my cash. Among them were a few Victoria Holt novels, including The Shivering Sands from 1969.

Smooth as chocolate, serene as a sunrise, beautifully written.

The Shivering Sands draws obviously upon Bronte’s Jane Eyre, but that is typical of the genre. It’s a pleasant read, what I like to call comfort reading. It’s easy to follow the story. The characters are vivid and complex, usually hiding secrets. The setting is a big old forbidding house in the English countryside. The heroine’s danger grows to the final confrontation with menace from an unexpected source.

These are common tropes of the gothic romantic suspense story.

Yes indeed, I remember gothic mania in the 1970s. And “mania” is the correct word for it. Women readers were crazy for gothics. Every paperback rack in every grocery and drugstore held novels covered by gray-toned, shadowy images of a girl fleeing a dark, brooding house in the background with perhaps one lighted window.

Victoria Holt’s first novel, The Mistress of Mellyn, appeared in 1960 and it became an instant bestseller. It revived the gothic genre, and by 1970 gothics outsold all other genres in paperback fiction. In 1975, a Holt paperback first printing was 800,000 copies, which is a pretty darned good print run, even by today’s standards.

I also remember when gothics died by 1980, supplanted by the bodice rippers, a less-than-kind term for historical romances featuring explicit sex scenes instead of the clean romantic yearnings within gothic drawing rooms.

I used to attend a writer’s conference held annually at the University of Oklahoma, and during the ’80s when an editor or literary agent would finish speaking and open the session for questions, the same elderly woman–clutching her cane in one hand and a manuscript box in the other–would rise shakily to her feet and ask, “Are gothics being published again?”

The crowd would groan, the conference promoters would smile behind their hands, and the editor or agent would courteously reply, “No.”

The world moved on. The bedroom door was flung open. Gothics were left behind in the dust of near-forgotten fiction.

And yet … last week, I enjoyed The Shivering Sands. Its stately pacing did not make me impatient. The heroine and hero seemed quaintly old-fashioned, but the setting is not modern-day so I didn’t mind. It was a relief not to have to skip over lurid anatomical grapplings. And if the heroine’s “investigation” of her sister’s disappearance was more passive and ineffective than modern taste might prefer, well, who cares?

I’ve read plenty of the modern heroines who stride into the world, kicking butt and getting things done. I’m not opposed to them–mind you–but sometimes they seem too strident, too shrill, too . . . unfeminine.

As for Ms. Holt, let’s unmask her.

According to Wikipedia, her real name was Eleanor Hibbert, an Englishwoman born in 1906 who died in 1993. She began writing in the 1930s after her marriage enabled her to stop working, and her first novel was published in 1941. Altogether, she wrote under eight names, and by the end of her career she’d published 191 books, including 100-million copies sold worldwide in 20 languages.

Her work was praised by critics for its accuracy, quality of writing, and attention to detail.

Here are her pseudonyms. See if you recognize any of them:

Jean Plaidy–fictionalized novels about European royalty

Victoria Holt–gothic romantic suspense

Phillippa Carr–multi-generational family sagas

Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate.

Mrs. Hibbert got things done by writing seven days a week, and she usually completed 5,000 words by lunchtime.

Then she filled the rest of her day by researching, going over her manuscript, and answering fan mail. In the evenings she played chess.

When she grew older, she escaped the cold, damp English winters by going on worldwide cruises to all sorts of exotic ports. And she kept to her writing routine while aboard.

She died at sea at the age of 86, enroute between Greece and Egypt, and she was buried at sea.

In 2006, her publisher reprinted four Victoria Holt novels, including The Shivering Sands. Holt said that she preferred to write about “women of integrity and strong character” who were “struggling for liberation, fighting for survival.”

That kind of theme doesn’t go out of fashion, does it? Change the setting, and modernize the characters, and you still have a gripping story readers can relate to.

Her reputation and written legacy remain well deserved.

Thank You, Veterans!

Happy Veterans Day! We are so blessed to live in America, and to have brave military men and women who risk their lives to preserve our precious freedoms.

Remember that we also have the freedom to read what we want, to write as we please, to complain, to criticize leaders when they fail us, to cheer for underdogs, to enjoy a safe, civil, peaceful transition of power, and to vote as our intelligence, personal choice, and conscience directs.

Not everyone in the world can do that. We live in a big, wonderful country. It has flaws, of course. It is far from perfect. I am saddened by the divisions rocking our nation, but even when our citizens are stressed, out of work, burdened, and unsure of what to do there is always a chance, always the potential to change, always a new path to seek.

I have seen divisions before and I have seen riots before and I have seen racial discord before. But despite them, Americans have held together. I hope we’ll continue to do so, recognizing that we have the hard-won right and privilege to change what we don’t like and to always dream as big as we dare.

Let us keep our common sense and beware of anyone–rich or poor, celebrity, politician, civic leader, or little guy–seeking to diminish America, to make it small, to persuade us that democracy is wrong, to tell us what to think, to muzzle our opinions, to force us to conform to a small, gray, vision of less, to shame us into feeling guilty for the privileges we enjoy, or–worse–to throw them away without understanding the consequences of doing so.

And those freedoms are due to our founding fathers, who risked their lives to create America, a nation like no other. Our freedoms did not come without a heavy price, and we should never hold them cheap. When Patrick Henry proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death,” he wasn’t just spouting political rhetoric like some bombastic modern-day congressman. Henry knew if the American Revolution failed, he would be executed for treason along with men such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Every member of the Continental Congress that voted to rebel against King George III knew his vote would put a price on his head.

Today we vote, knowing that we can do so without fear of reprisal, without fear of being executed by a tyrant. Thanks to the first American army and the courage of so many, we vote freely today–unless we cow to anyone who dares to dictate otherwise. And if our choice does not win, we should remember we will have another chance, another election in the future.

We do not listen to propaganda that makes us fearful and timid. We do not throw away our judgment and common sense to blindly follow a celebrity’s personal views. We do not bow to tyranny. We do not set some individuals above the law while punishing others. We do not live by mob rule or damage our neighbors and fellow Americans that disagree with us.

And we do not forget our veterans and what each of us owes them for their brave service that keeps us free.

 

Searching for Diction

It’s that spooky time of year, the week leading up to Halloween when my neighbors drape cobwebs across their doorways and front yards sprout headstones, pumpkins, and life-size zombies. Even this morning, the classical music station on my car radio treated me to Saint Saens’s Danse Macabre, an anecdote about how some people at the turn of the twentieth century believed composer/musician Paganini had struck a deal with the devil in order to play so well, and very eerie scrapings on a violin intended to depict the dancing of La Strega.

So, given the slanting golden days of late October with the wind whipping falling leaves and shoppers rushing to load up on candy in preparation for All Hallows’ Eve, I’m joining in the spirit of things by writing a post devoted to diction and the imagery it can create.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines diction as “choice of words especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness.”

And a much simpler way of defining it is just “word choice.”

Can that make much difference in writing? You bet! Words are our sculptor’s tool, our chisel, our brush, our paint. We manipulate reader imaginations through the various words we use as descriptors. We can make a setting dull and uninteresting or vivid and appealing. We can evoke reader sympathy for characters or influence readers to dislike them intensely. By utilizing vocabulary with precise intent, we can add another layer of entertainment value to the stories we create.

Let’s look at some examples:

The large, red dog trotted along the sidewalk. He seemed to know where he was going. He ignored all the pedestrians he passed. At Sixth and Elm, he crossed the street, evading the oncoming cars. A cop noticed him, but by then he’d vanished into an alleyway.

Are you enthralled?

No?

I’m not surprised. The diction of this example is flat, dull, ordinary, and without imagery. It lacks the specialized (or coded) language that would fit it into a particular genre, and it is not focused into any sort of dominant, lasting impression.

Let’s shift and tweak this a bit so it fits instead into the romance category:

The magnificent Irish Red Setter trotted along the sidewalk as though leading a parade of pedestrians. With his coat gleaming like a copper penny in the sunshine, he disdained all the passersby and ignored every attempt to catch his attention or touch him. So regally did he move that the crowd parted ahead of him, and even at the normally busy intersection of Sixth and Elm the cars halted to let him pass. By the time a cop saw him, the setter was disappearing into an alleyway with a jaunty wave of his plumed tail.

More adjectives? Yes. More adverbs? Yes. Longer? Definitely. The dog is moving down the sidewalk, but now we have a specific breed, plus visual cues from similes, and a focus on the animal’s beauty and regal bearing.

What about putting our pooch into a mystery?

No doubt about it, the mutt was a stray. I watched him scurry down Broad Avenue, searching from doorway to doorway for the little bowls of kibble that softies among the shopkeepers left there. Good way to attract rats and roaches, if you ask me. But the dog knew the drill and was ready to mooch for what he could find. A couple of guys in suits called to him. One even tried to grab the dog’s collar. It was just a piece of dirty rope tied around his neck, the snapped end dangling where he’d made his break for freedom. But he dodged the attempt to catch him with an outraged yelp and shot across the intersection of Sixth and Elm. Cars honked and squealed brakes to avoid hitting the mangy fleabag.  On the corner a cop put in a call, probably to the dog catcher. Yeah, like the pound could arrive in time to catch anything. Muttsie meanwhile was already ducking out of sight in the nearest dark alley.

Yes, I used “shot” deliberately as a verb and “snapped” as an adjective. I gave the street a name because mysteries focus on specific details. I used a first-person narrator and viewpoint in the detective tradition. Other terms selected as appropriate for this genre include “stray,” “mooch,” “rats,” “roaches,” “drill,” “break for freedom,” “dirty rope,” etc.

And urban fantasy?

In the thickening twilight, nightfall spread across the broken pavement. Dead weeds had pushed up through the cracks in the cement and died there, their desiccated corpses casting crooked little shadows in the streetlights’ amber glow. A lean hound, as black as the cloak of death, moved between shadow and light, seen and unseen, its pads silent upon a sidewalk littered with glints of broken glass and the occasional crumpled soda can or food wrapper. Only a few people remained out. They hurried, clutching their coat collars, and dodged to let the hound pass unhindered. No one reached out to the animal. No one called to it. For it wore the heavy black chain of its master, and to meet its glowing red eyes was to look through the gates of Hell.

Here, I’ve chosen harsh descriptors, making the weeds into dried-up corpses, crumbling the sidewalk, and littering it with trash and broken glass. I’ve also set my stage with darkness and shadows, long the playground of danger. And, yes, this time I’ve given people the collars and the dog a chain–all on purpose.

As you can see in each of these examples, I’ve altered the dominant impression to create imagery and to establish a certain mood in my readers’ minds. I’ve chosen to emphasize very different details, or created them to fit the atmosphere I want. Essentially the same action is occurring–although in the fantasy I dispensed with traffic and alleys. But each sample points to a very different plot and story world.

Tone, mood, atmosphere, weather, and setting. Beyond the writer tools of plot and characters, adopt the strategy of making diction also work for you. Edgar Allen Poe employed it in the nineteenth century, and yet this device is by no means out-dated. You can use it to frighten or enchant readers, charm them, alarm them, or even make them laugh out loud.

 

Toad Is Found!

(Before you ask, no, this isn’t another story about “Phelps” the bullfrog.)

A work colleague of mine has a sign on her office window to the effect of “You’re a writer. It’s okay to be strange.”

I smile every day when I walk past her office, and I always think, Yeah! Isn’t it great to do what I do? Isn’t it wonderful to live a whimsical life, free to explore the forests of my imagination and the roads that lead down the lane to all that’s peculiar?

So here goes … an example of how whimsical and (possibly) strange a writer can be.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been hunting a large rubber toad that has been mislaid in my house. I bought it for a Halloween decoration for my campus office, and frankly Toad is one homely critter. But I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for frogs and toads, and I love him–warts and all.

Still, Toad has been missing. I stowed him hastily out of sight while entertaining weekend house guests at the end of September, and once my company had departed, I couldn’t remember where I’d put him. After all, there aren’t that many hiding places in my house. But Toad has finally been found, hanging out in my office. He’s been half-concealed behind a recently installed card catalogue (yeah, the old kind that used to hold inventory cards in public libraries).

My office. The place in my home where I spend the most time. It’s a small room crammed to the gills with desks, dictionary stands, filing cabinets, computer equipment, books piled in heaps and leaning stacks, and papers that need filing but somehow never get put away. So how could I come and go in this den of imagination and not see Toad perched on my desk atop a precarious stack of binders?

Who knows? Perhaps he’s been winking in and out of another dimension, playing in the Twilight Zone and having a wicked chortle at my expense.

All I can say is that tonight I spun around in my desk chair, and there he was.

Life is sweet once more. Tomorrow I will take Toad to work with me and display him in a place of honor atop a bookcase where his cold painted eyes can glare at my students who come for tutorials. Perhaps next year I will buy him a little hat. Or not. He does not seem to be in the mood for haberdashery. And if he does not care for college life, I shall bring him home again and let him reside permanently in my office, where he can wander back and forth between this dimension and another, as his whimsy takes him.

Bubble, Boil & Trouble

Just the other day, I told my class that more amateur fiction fails from insufficient conflict than for any other reason.

Conflict, problems, adversity, bad luck, pressure, stress, worry, anguish–these are all part of a writer’s toolkit and should be at the center of stories.

However, sometimes new writers stumble over these variants of character trouble or dodge them altogether.

Instead, let’s look ’em right in the eye:

TROUBLE

Conflict is the linchpin of scenes. I always define it as two characters in direct, active opposition to each other. They meet in confrontation. They argue, fight, interrogate, bicker, evade, etc. Each one comes into the confrontation with a strategy and maneuvers through various tactics and persuasions in an effort to win the encounter.

So as long as you’re writing scenes, fill them with conflict.

If your characters won’t confront each other, you have a problem, and the scenes will crumble.

Problems that can’t be ignored or evaded give your characters something to do. Problems in the story’s opening situation, in the story’s subplots, in the characters’ backgrounds are all useful devices for filling mushy places in your plotline where the story action might otherwise flag.

Adversity (aka random bad luck) carries a warning label because it’s so often misused whenever inexperienced writers try to substitute it for conflict.

Let me state this clearly:  conflict and adversity are not the same thing. Adversity is conflict’s weaker cousin and it can’t do the job that conflict is responsible for.

Even so, occasional adversity doesn’t hurt. Like problems, adversity in small doses injected strategically brings another level of trouble to a story. If you’re writing plenty of conflict and your scenes are strong, adding an occasional dollop of bad luck will help raise the story stakes and keep your plot less predictable.

However, adversity alone just doesn’t carry a story well. Random bad luck is the volcano spewing molten lava on the spot where the hero just happens to be standing. Had the sidekick been there instead, the lava would have melted him. The lava doesn’t care. It has no intelligence, let alone a reason for doing what it’s doing.

Yet if lava spewing danger to a resort Hawaiian community is a catalyst that kickstarts a story and gets the protagonist moving in an effort to warn the community residents or evacuate them, then the volcanic eruption works very well as a backdrop of added danger. But on its own, it is not an actual antagonist.

Pressure ups the stakes. Pressure comes from deadlines, bad luck, and threats. Just when your protagonist has more than enough to cope with, add more pressure. Maybe Granny decides to have a coronary just as the protagonist is trying to load everyone on her neighborhood block into a van for evacuation ahead of the lava flow. The ambulance is cut off from rendering assistance. Minor characters are panicking. And now the protagonist has to find a way to save Granny.

Stress is a by-product of trouble and pressure. And while I want to experience as little stress in myself as possible, I certainly want my protagonist to suffer through a lot of it. Because stress indicates my protagonist is being tested, which is what fiction is really about.

Worry in a hero when things are going from bad to worse creates a corresponding concern in readers. And that helps keep pages turning.

Anguish stems from scene conflict that’s more challenging than the protagonist expected, ending in setback or disaster. Think about times in your life when you’ve wanted something so very, very much and it did not happen. Look at the faces of Olympic athletes who’ve trained for years for the split-second ending of a race when they reached out with all they had and fell short.

That’s your protagonist, reaching through conflict and opposition so bad he isn’t sure he can survive it, and feeling intense anguish as the story goal looks to be dropping away, lost forever.

BOIL

Conflict, problems, and trouble have to start strong and grow harsher and more formidable as the story progresses. This kind of story pressure will then force your protagonist into taking risks and growing. It will push your protagonist’s emotions into a churning turmoil of conflicting feelings.

If your viewpoint character isn’t “on the boil” inside, then chances are you haven’t pitted him or her against enough opposition.

Raise the stakes and stop protecting your protagonist.

BUBBLE

What’s bubbling beneath the surface? What do you know that your readers don’t? Is your protagonist torn within, at conflict with himself as he struggles to find a way out of his current difficulties?

External plot conflict should exacerbate whatever flaws your hero possesses. Not just little things like failing to pick up her clothes, but areas where your protagonist lacks something necessary to win, to survive the story situation.

The external conflict should force your protagonist to grow. And a character grows whenever he’s pushed from the cocoon of physical, emotional, or psychological safety where he’s taken refuge.

Trouble with consequences that can’t be ignored is the first step toward shoving your protagonist beyond the safety zone. Being pitted against an antagonist that shows no mercy will compel your protagonist to strive to do things never tried before despite that inner flaw or fear. The story’s plot is all about making your protagonist face her fear or overcome her inner weakness despite all the internal doubt and uncertainty holding her back.

Without trouble, boil, and bubble–protagonists are flat and lifeless on the page. They never quite come to life. They fail to be compelling.

Reach past your personal comfort zone and stop protecting your hero. Amp up the challenge, and kick emotions to life.