Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 109

Unpublished Writers and Websites: Should You Have One and What Should It Say?

Tomorrow, in partnership with Writer’s Digest, I’m teaching a two-hour online class on how to get an author website up and running in 24 hours or less, using WordPress.

If you plan to pursue writing as a professional, long-term career, I recommend starting and maintaining an author website even if you’re unpublished. Your website serves as an online home and hub for everything that you do, whether in real life or in the digital realm. You fully own and control it, tell your own story, and connect directly with the media, readers or influencers. It’s hard to overstate its importance over the long term. Consider it the cost of doing business in the digital era, a necessary business card and networking tool. In some cases, it can also be a creative outlet and community area, especially for writers who blog. (To be clear, having an author website does not mean blogging or require blogging. But if you’re interested, here’s my guide to blogging.)

Your first attempts at creating an author website probably aren’t going to be that great, and that’s okay. Plus, it’s unlikely you’ll get much traffic. Instead, the point is to practice your skills at expressing who you are, and what you do, in a public space. Over time, your ability to do this will improve, assuming you tend to your website periodically and don’t abandon it. (And why would you, if you’re still writing and publishing?)

If you start the website development process early, before you really “need” a site (before people seek it out), you can enjoy a gentler learning curve, as well as the power of incremental progress. You don’t have to launch and perfect everything at once. Start small, and build your skills and presence over time. You want something doable and sustainable—and sustainability is key.

What do you say on your website if you’re an unpublished author?

For very new writers, a website might consist of only one or two pages, mainly focused on your bio and portfolio of work, if any. Consider the following elements.

About page. Write a bio of about 200-300 words if you don’t have one already. (Here’s how to write a good bio.) If you have a decent or professional head shot, add it to the page.

Contact page. Make it clear how you can be reached. This can be combined with the about page if you prefer.

A page detailing any work that’s been made public. Mention any magazines, blogs, or websites you’ve contributed to. Link to specific work you’ve written if it’s available online. If the list here becomes long, group your writings by genre, and use reverse chronology. Very prolific writers might consider creating a separate page for each genre, series, or type of work. For example, a multi-genre writer might have separate pages labeled “Poetry”, “Fiction” and “Personal Essay.”

Links to your social media profiles. If you’re active elsewhere and invite interaction, make it clear either with social media buttons in the header, footer, or sidebar—or by using widgets and badges that reflect your activity.

Email newsletter signup. Consider having an email newsletter to keep your fledgling readership updated on news and publications. Learn more about email newsletters for writers.

Home pages typically include the following elements.

A site header with your name and possibly a line describing what you write. Commercial authors often include their headshot in the header or somewhere on the homepage, to make the site feel more welcoming. However, some authors find this too self-absorbed. Do what feels comfortable.

Some unpublished writers, if their site is only one or two pages, will put their full bio on the homepage. However, it’s best practice to limit how much information you put about yourself on the homepage, and save the full story for those who are really interested (and end up clicking on your “About” page). Homepage messages should be reader-focused and help visitors understand what sets your work apart.

Social proof. We’re all very susceptible to signaling that says, “This person is liked and trusted by others.” Some writers include logos of the publications they’ve contributed to or mention grants or awards received. Others mention offline/online communities they belong to.

Website and homepage design is incredibly subjective, but the most important criteria is that the type of writer you are—and the work you produce—should be recognizable quickly. You don’t want visitors guessing; you have about three seconds to convey a message. Some writers are able to get away with a fair amount of intrigue or cleverness, but try to be honest about whether you’re actually intriguing people or frustrating them.

Make the homepage navigation or menu system plain and clear—which usually means having an obvious path for people to find out more information about who you are (“About”), how to contact you (“Contact”), and what you’ve written (“Books” or “Publications”).

You might not have the resources to do it right away, but in the long run, it’s helpful to hire a designer to create a custom header for your site, or a custom look that fits your personality and work. If you’re using WordPress or a blog-centric system, be careful that your homepage doesn’t automatically default to showing blog posts—especially if you’re not going to blog!

Should you use WordPress, SquareSpace, or something else?

I generally recommend writers use WordPress (WordPress.com to start) because even though it can be a more complex and intimidating tool, it’s free and has so far stood the test of time. (WordPress has been kicking around for more than a decade, is open source, and underpins about 20-25% of today’s websites.) SquareSpace can be easier to use for those with few tech skills, but it comes with a monthly cost that may not be justifiable early in your career. Here’s a post that looks at the pros and cons of each.

Here I discuss when and if you should use WordPress.com or WordPress.org (self-hosting).

The good and bad news is that your website is never finished. It is always a work in progress. You’ll improve it, tweak it, experiment with it, and hopefully take pride in how it showcases your work. It’s better to get your site established while you’re unpublished, so you own your domain early on, learn how to use the tools, and begin the journey of expressing who you are within digital media environments.

Tomorrow, in partnership with Writer’s Digest, I’m teaching a two-hour online class on how to get an author website up and running in 24 hours or less, using WordPress.

What Writers Can Learn About Voice From Opera

Photo credit: Ted Drake via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-ND

Today’s guest post is by author Jeff Shear (@Jeff_Shear).

Writers profit from listening to others’ conversations, tuning into their voices—cocktail voices, household voices, voices of hucksters—voices beyond the obvious growls of anger and shrieks of delight. Careful listening develops an author’s skill as a ventriloquist able to project a character’s lines into speech. The skill requires a good “ear” —the opposite of a tin ear—particularly when it comes to the rugged, logical rigor of great dialogue. The butcher and the baker may be enjoying a conversation, but when the professor of theoretical physics shows up across the counter, the conversation changes. There’s a new voice in the room. The professor stands apart, and the reader should hear it; even if the professor is from the neighborhood, he’s still the customer.

Consider opera (uh-oh!) and the use of voices. Opera is the single Western art in which voice determines character, or, more closely, expresses character. For writers, opera offers a set of finger exercises, if not pointers.

There’s a taxonomy of opera voices called the Fach system, if you’re into the finer points. But it’s enough to know seven broadly defined voices evoke the personas ruling the opera program: soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto among the women; and counter tenor, tenor, baritone, and bass among the men.

Sopranos, the highest voice among the women, take a lead role, the heroine. Or her opposite. A little more nuanced is the “lyric soprano,” whose role depicts a tender, plaintive character. Mimi, for instance, who anchors Puccini’s La Bohème. Staged as a tale of 19th-century struggling “creatives,” the libretto requires a lyric soprano to embody a woman falling in love and later tragically losing her life to the ills of Bohemian poverty. Who might play Mimi in a novel? A young idealist, a librarian and a bookish intellectual desperately in love and doomed, much like the character of Liz Gold, a pawn sacrifice and involuntary heroine in John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

On a recent Sunday in The New York Times an item appeared that said, “Over the last 35 years at the Metropolitan Opera, Franco Zeffirelli’s staging of Puccini’s La Bohème,” Mimi’s destiny opera, “has played nearly 500 performances and sold 650,000 tickets.” Let’s try some quick writer-math. Translated into the universe of indie novels (and assuming I do the math correctly), the equivalent number of books per year is 18,142. That’s a good number. Sold at $3.99 as an ebook, La Bohème would gross $72,390 each year for 35 years. At Pronoun’s 70% royalty, it represents a $50,673 a year in income. A sustaining wage for a family, or a bucket-list of primo vacations for writers with trust funds.

So, it’s fair to say, opera works; but how can it work for the writer? Regard the clown, a virtual archetype. He opens the opera Pagliacci. His name is Tonio, and he appears in a pointy hat and a mask of plaster-white makeup. He frowns more than smiles and heralds the opening moments before a cast costumed for dramedy mounts the stage and inches toward murder. There’s a message here for the writer, a way to bring dimension to a character. Often played by a verdi baritone (to my ear, at least), Tonio’s voice ranges from wistful and pleading to broad and declamatory. “Comic” Tonio exhorts his audience, “Our author has endeavored to paint for you… a slice of life, his only maxim being that the artist is a man, and he must write for men. Truth is his inspiration.” (Reproduced with express permission from http://www.murashev.com/opera/)

Those are portentous lines for a clown; he’s been cast against type; he’s more than he appears, a man of many parts, expressed through his voice. He sees the plot unfold, knows the players, recognizes their quandary, and witnesses their deaths. What a clown! And he’s a familiar figure to readers, the Fool from “King Lear,” a harlequin who recognizes his sovereign verging on a disastrous choice, advising him in couplets to keep his powder dry. “Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest…”

Opera offers parallels to print, but it also tempts parody. It’s akin to Japan’s Kabuki theater, formal and stylized; although Kabuki aims at stereotype. It’s cultural. It’s nothing like Wagner’s Brünnhilde, a mythical character once portrayed as a mountainous woman wearing braids, helmets, and horns. (See Bugs Bunny in “What’s Opera, Doc?” for reference.) Brünnhilde, a deathless Valkyrie, half-god and half-human, requires a voice equal to her climactic role, an epic mezzo soprano whose scorching arias crash in battle. (Read Lord of the Rings for contrast.) Brünnhilde’s type should remain a deathless character for writers, however, despite the risky cliché. There’s no changing archetypes, but attention must be paid: No breastplates and thunder allowed. Better to substitute tattoos and a cell phone. Enter, stage right, Lisbeth Salander. (If she ain’t a Brünnhilde, you haven’t read Steig Larson’s original trilogy.)

Voice is big and delicate, a part of a character’s costume as much as a plaster mask. But it’s there to be used, developed, changed in deathless prose and complex characters. The great voices of opera and print require skill and care. The clown who plays against type, the heroine dying in poverty, and a Brünnhilde who barely speaks and writes computer code. The voices remain, like the letters on a keyboard, which must be chosen to be made into narrative, character, scene, and plot.

How Distraction Can Be an Asset

Over the last year, a consistent theme has emerged in my discussions with writers around the country: They feel distracted. While that distraction is often connected to social media, it’s just as much about current events that we observe through social media. There’s a never-ending and chaotic feed of news that crowds out those things that remain (or at least once felt) important to us.

What is to be done?

I admire and recommend Lee Conell’s way of dealing with distraction in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

I decided that distraction did not have to be something to beat myself up over. It could be an asset. It could even be a kind of craft tool. After all, the more I let my mind wanderings play out, the more I noticed that most of my thoughts also had to do with narrative: A plot twist in the news. … If I gave it time, all of my distractions funneled themselves into something like fiction.

Keep reading The Art of Distraction.

Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

On Spaceships by Arianna Reiche

Constraint as a Method of Surprise by Chase Burke

The Conflicting Advice You’ll Receive on Query Letters

For 15 years, I was on the receiving end of query letters for books and magazine articles; today, I help writers perfect these documents, to increase the chance someone will look at their manuscript or book proposal more closely.

At its core, a query letter is a sales document, and so it’s meant to sell. Not explain, not argue, not defend, not plead. But opinions differ on the best possible sales approach in a query. These are the key areas where I see consistent confusion (and disagreement) on the best approach.

Personalization of the query letter

I used to be a big advocate for personalizing the query letter and showing the agent you’d done your homework—that your letter wasn’t being blasted indiscriminately to everyone listed in Writer’s Market.

Today, I’m less enthusiastic about this because so many forms of personalization have become floppy and unmemorable, e.g., “I’m reaching out to you because your website says you represent romance.” That kind of opening could be used with dozens and dozens of agents. It’s not really personalization as much as stating the obvious.

I encourage personalization in queries if you have something meaningful or specific to say, but throwaway lines aren’t going to impress the agent. They will have seen them a million times before; they blend right into the background of the letter and have little or no effect on the consideration of your work.

The query letter opening

Some say it’s essential to open with a catchy, one-sentence hook (sometimes called a log line) that sells the “sizzle” of your story. Others recommend opening with the facts: “I’m seeking representation for MY GREAT NOVEL, a medical thriller complete at 80,000 words.” Still others say: Dive straight into the story premise (at least for narratives): Who’s your character and what’s the problem they face?

Assuming you don’t have a better way to begin (more on this in a moment), I generally recommend beginning with the story premise for fiction. You can launch right into it, without explaining upfront that you’re seeking representation or that you’re writing in a specific genre—or adding any other prefacing comment. Believe me, agents know what you want when they receive your query; you don’t have to explain your purpose. Instead, just sell them. (For nonfiction queries, read this separate post on how to structure them.)

Sometimes it’s better to start the query with a bit about yourself, especially if you’re traditionally published, were previously represented by another agent, or have special qualifications or accolades. That may help an agent more carefully consider your material.

If you do have a kickass one-sentence pitch for you book, then sure, start the letter with that. But I wouldn’t bend over backwards to produce it, as not every book is a high-concept work that’s going to make jaws drop. Some agents may ask for this stupendous sales line at the beginning of your query, and if your hand is forced, do the best you can. Just understand those agents are looking for a very particular type of work, and not everyone will have that one-in-a-million hook that elicits a gasp within seconds of reading or hearing it. (But every author should be able to at least craft a decent, clear, and interesting log line, even it’s not fall-out-of-your-chair good.)

Appropriate query letter length

For ages, the standard query length was one page, single spaced. This is actually quite long (probably too long) for a fiction query in the age of email, when everyone’s finger hovers over the delete key. For fiction queries, I recommend writers shoot for 200-350 words, or somewhere around half a page, single spaced. I’ve seen some length recommendations of 150 words, and while that’s not wrong, it rarely works for epic-style novels (like science fiction and fantasy), where you need some time and space to establish the world the story takes place in.

Always remember: brevity is your friend in a query. The shorter the query, less trouble you’re likely to get in. Plus, you don’t want agents lingering over your query; you want them to be reading the manuscript or proposal. You need to hit on the most salable aspects of your work, and avoid a book report that recounts the plot twists and turns, or introduces a cast of characters we can’t even keep track of by the second paragraph.

Your bio in the query letter

For nonfiction, your bio statement is a near-requirement. Agents need to know something about your visibility to the target readership and your platform. However, if you’re querying for fiction, I consider it acceptable to simply leave out the bio statement all together if you have nothing to say about yourself or feel awkward and uncomfortable about your unpublished status, if that’s indeed the case. It’s exceedingly rare an agent would reject you for lack of bio, as long as they’re interested in your story.

However, agents do tend to be curious about your background, especially if it has informed the work (e.g., lawyers writing legal thrillers). But getting too far into such detail can be a distraction and discredit you if done improperly. E.g., this does not help: “I’ve never tried writing before since I’ve spent the last 50 years practicing medicine, but I’ve just finished my first novel about a doctor that shows what the job is really like, and I think it will be a bestseller.”

Information on author platform, marketing, or audience

Authors can be tempted to include their enthusiasm or skill for marketing and promoting the book to readers—or they elaborate on who the book will appeal to. Certainly your platform and target market is important for nonfiction pitches. Novelists, however, shouldn’t bother with platform and audience statements, as agents’ decisions are rarely affected by your online prowess, and are primarily driven by the quality and marketability of the work itself. (That said, if you’re a social media celebrity or Wattpad Star with millions of followers, lead your query with that!)

But what if agents ask for this market or platform information? First, make sure that you’re reading the guidelines closely. Nearly all agents want marketing and platform information for nonfiction authors, but not for novelists. Second, if the submission guidelines state they only want a query letter, it’s likely they seek clarity on your genre or category, plus basic information on your background and writing community activities. It’s rare for an agent to ask an unpublished novelist for a full and separate bio statement, marketing plan, or anything else that is more appropriate for a nonfiction book proposal. I would even go so far as to say that if an agent asks you to submit a bunch of marketing or platform information along with your novel query, you probably should look elsewhere for representation.

Professional editing

Sometimes authors hire a professional freelance editor to do a high-level edit, copyedit, or proofread on their manuscript; the motivations to do so are as varied as writers themselves. (I don’t think it’s necessary to do it before submitting, and in many cases it doesn’t increase your chances of a book deal—but that’s a different post.)

Regardless of one’s reason for hiring an editor, I don’t think it helps to say your manuscript has been professionally edited. This statement has become so common as to become meaningless—it doesn’t indicate the manuscript will necessarily be any better than one that hasn’t been professionally edited. Sometimes, in fact, it can indicate the manuscript isn’t very good. (Freelance editors can unfortunately do as much harm as good.)

Praise from others

Similar to the “professional editing” qualification, authors can be tempted to quote praise or positive reviews they’ve received from mentors, editors, critics, or published authors. It may make you feel good to have this feedback (and you should celebrate it if it was hard won), but this material isn’t helpful in your query unless the person is well known and trusted by the agent you’re querying. Even then, if they are well known by the agent, it begs the question: Why didn’t this person make an introduction to the agent on your behalf—that is, provide a referral of some kind?

In the end, the agent has to be enthusiastic and fall in love with your work—in addition to seeing a place in the market for it. They’re not going to rely on the opinion of a third party, and including praise from others can just as easily backfire rather than support your pitch.

Simultaneous submissions

You don’t have to state that you’re simultaneously cold querying many agents at once. It’s assumed. However, once you start sending out requested partial or full manuscripts, you should make it clear when an agent isn’t the only one considering the work at the time the pages are requested.

Parting advice

There is an element to query letter writing that is hard to perfect: the writer’s own voice and sense of confidence. I can help writers express story lines clearly and succinctly, draw out the voice of the characters, and keep the author out of trouble—but I can’t inject the writer’s own personality into these documents. (I’m not a ghostwriter!)

Sometimes a successful query breaks all rules and standards because it’s done in a way that’s charming and reflects something unique about the writer. The real challenge is knowing when your effect is truly charming or in fact annoying, and it’s a tough balance. You want to have some life in the query, but not at the expense of it backfiring and distracting from what it’s there to do: get the agent to request and read the manuscript.

3 Reasons Why You Might Not Want a Hybrid Publisher

Today’s guest post is by Lizbeth Meredith, author of Pieces of Me.

“Are you happy you used a hybrid publisher?”

I’ve been asked this repeatedly since publishing my memoir with She Writes Press, usually just after I’ve stammered out a definition of what hybrid means.

“Hybrid publishing is a middle-ground,” I explain, parroting my editor, “between traditional and self-publishing in which the author pays for some of the services.” [For a fuller definition of hybrid publishing, see this post from Jane.]

And before I can answer comes the inevitable, “Do you think I should?”

I would never tell someone to publish with a hybrid publisher. Here’s why.

1. Every writer’s publishing goals are unique.

You know better than anyone what your goals are. I don’t. More specifically, I don’t know your work, your platform, and your finances. I don’t know what your motives are for publishing your current book, and how much work you are willing to do to get the word out about it after publication. I didn’t even know how much work I was willing to do until after publication when I was happily surprised at how much I enjoyed promoting my book. And that’s been a relief, since not promoting my book would result in even more boxes of paperbacks hogging my car’s space in the garage.

2. Hybrid publishing puts substantial financial risk on the author.

With hybrid publishing, there are no book advances. No team of marketing geniuses scheduling future book appearances unless you pay for them. The cost of your print run? It’s on you. And you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and sell that print run, because a year later, the warehouse storage fees will be yours as well.

While it’s true that after your book is accepted by a reputable hybrid publisher, you will have a talented team to help with editing and the selection of a stunning book cover, help ensuring your book is discoverable online, and that your book will (depending on the hybrid publisher) be available in bookstores and libraries. Still, what happens after the launch is up to you.

3. Another publishing option may be better suited for your book.

There are many routes to publishing, and all may lead to success or failure. So I encourage you to explore all of your options thoroughly.

For example, a retired Marine I met set a goal to become an author. He self-published 12 books after his first year. Today, three years later, he makes thousands of dollars a month on his rapidly expanding series of dystopian novels. Another author I met through a writer’s group toyed with hybrid publishing her ghost-written memoir, but instead reached out to a university press. Her book is close to its release date, and already she’s been asked on a national television show to promote it. And several author friends I met through my publisher have become bestsellers and award winners, and some others have found other income streams using the book as a tool for speaking engagements or teaching writing courses.

On the flip side, I know authors who’ve published with both large and small presses and with hybrid presses who complain that their books aren’t selling. They’re unhappy that they must use their own resources to hire public relations and marketing experts to generate book buzz. They insist that they don’t want to be tethered to social media to engage with fans when they could be writing.

So how should you publish your book? I encourage you to learn as much about every opportunity available to you before diving in. Ask questions. Compare options. And then proceed with confidence.

My path to hybrid publishing came after years of disappointments. I’d shopped my book to agents at conferences. I got feedback, joined a critiquing group, hired an editor. I rewrote it again and again, and shopped it some more. While I got a few nibbles on my queries, they did not result in getting an agent or the traditional publishing deal I wanted. My final nudge was when a literary agent told me that he loved my first pages, and had no suggestions of how to improve them. “But it’s another abuse memoir,” he said, shaking his head. “I just can’t sell it.”

When I finally learned about hybrid publishing, the clouds parted. There are many hybrid publishers to choose from, like Inkshares or Evolved or Ever After. My book, Pieces of Me, found its home with She Writes Press after I found that they offered what I’d been looking for.

I’d worked for over two decades to tell my story. More than a misery memoir, it was a book of hope about bucking intergenerational patterns. I wanted my book to be accessed wherever books are sold. I wanted it to be eligible for trade reviews. And I wanted to be a part of an author cooperative where innovative ideas and ongoing support is at my fingertips.

I would never tell you to publish with a hybrid publisher. Every writer’s publishing goals are unique. Hybrid publishing puts substantial financial risk on the author. And another publishing option may fit your work best.

But am I happy that I went with a hybrid publisher?

Absolutely.

Using Patreon and YouTube to Grow a Writing Career: Q&A with Jay Swanson

I first learned about author Jay Swanson in 2015, when he successfully crowdfunded his fantasy series, Into the Nanten. My first Q&A with him is here. Later he wrote guest posts for this site on commissioning original illustrations and cover art for his fantasy series, as well as producing audiobook editions.

Jay has been notable from the start for his ability to directly engage his readers, both online and in-person at fan conventions. Earlier this year, he was a speaker at Digital Book World to talk about his indie publishing efforts, which have been ever evolving and multi-dimensional, spanning real-time blogs; deluxe, limited run print editions; audio editions; and video.

Most recently, Jay has had considerable success with Patreon, which allows his fans to pledge monthly financial support. This effort has centered on his YouTube channel and vlog, which now has more than 2,000 subscribers.

Two years have passed since I ran my first interview with Jay; here’s what’s happened since then.

Jane: I’m going to be first to admit that I’ve never been an advocate of a video content marketing strategy for fiction writers. But you’ve been doing YouTube videos for 4 years now, and much of it is oriented toward Paris and France, where you currently live. Did you start this vlog initially for fun, as a way to promote your novels, or for some other reason?

Jay: I can understand why you might not want to encourage it—video requires a lot of work, whether or not you’re doing it well. I’ve been making videos since I was nine, so I have the benefit of a lot of practice behind me when approaching the current “Vlog a Day” project.

Making videos is a lot like blogging or any other attempt to build an audience for fiction outside of the fiction itself—you might be able to gather people around any other subject, but getting them to jump from that to your book when the time comes might be downright impossible. Proceed with caution.

As for why I do it, the answer is manifold.

The first reason is because I love making videos, I always have, and I wanted to reintroduce the process into my life in a consistent way. The discipline of making one literally every day seemed like a perfect, if slightly masochistic way to achieve that.

The second reason is personal growth and long-term documentation. I’ve been posting a photo every day for over five years and a big part of that was trying to keep my family up to date with where I was at and what I was doing. I also hoped it would serve as a personal journal while I moved around West and Central Africa.

Sounds good in theory, but a photo and caption do not do any given day justice (especially with how little effort I put into a lot of captions). In the style that I do it, however, vlogging works wonders. My family rarely feels like they’re out of touch with me now and I can always go back and remember exactly what I was wearing, what I ate, or where on Earth I physically was on any given day. Like, remember that one castle? Oh yeah.

Finally, yes, self-promotion is very much interwoven into all of this. Writing is hard. Promoting your writing is harder still. I could dedicate an entire post to my theories and philosophy of personal branding as an essential tool for any author who wants to someday knock books out of the mixed-metaphor park. Our world is increasingly personality and celebrity-driven—if you want to sell a lot of books, people need to have already bought into you.

I find most people burn out on these things after a year or two. How or why have you been able to sustain it? (Also: how much time does this take out of your day?)

I love making videos. I also think that every day is worth taking the time to notice, inspect, and savor if possible—missing one feels like a waste. So that accounts for desire, which I think is a vital component.

Discipline is another. Having a daily deadline and pre-recorded intros means that I have to show up or I’ll fall behind, and the whole project will start to unravel. Fans are another great motivator, if a newer one (I went for a few months in the first season without gaining a single subscriber). This could be reconstrued as stubbornness. I refuse to stop—come hell, high water, hangovers, or cute women winking at me from down the bar, it will get edited. It will get uploaded.

I’ve been pushed recently to make a video about how I make videos (vlogception), but it does take a chunk of time. Filming throughout the day usually adds minimal time; setting up and walking through a shot doesn’t add that much to your schedule. That’s more about energy and willpower—sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world to set your camera up and take a stroll down a hallway when all you want to do is get down that hallway and to wherever you need to be.

Edits are where the real time sink is. Editing my vlog takes anywhere from two to four hours every night, although I average much closer to two hours per video now. I’m pretty judicious with what I shoot.

The main issue is finding time to sleep.

How much crossover is there between your vlog fans and readers of your fantasy series?

An increasing amount. I’ve noticed an uptick in my readership, as well as my newsletter growth since I’ve started linking to it. I was writing a weekly newsletter as a behind-the-scenes delve into YouTube/Patreon stats and strategies, as well as my thoughts on the whole process, but I have enough on my plate at the moment as it is, so I’ve dropped back to monthly for now.

The theory (as hinted at above) is that if people show up, get to know me, like me, and want to hang out with me, then when my next book comes out they’ll be game to give it a try. They don’t have to—they can just watch my vlogs or tweet cat gifs at me—but people get invested. It’s a privilege to have people’s attention. But like any good story, once you’ve proven you’ll make good on your promises, people will only want more.

Videos are an easier point of entry than anything written. People actively ask me what my YouTube channel is when I mention I make videos. No one asks for links to Amazon when I tell them I’m a writer. This deserves its own full-length post as well, but I digress.​

How much of your success do you think is attributable to you being good on camera or having some kind of charm or charisma? For example, I often talk about how successful YA author John Green is with video, but always point out: he scripts these things, he knows how to cut the videos to make them fun and appealing to his audience, and—bottom line—I think he knows how to perform for the camera.

It’s funny that you’d bring John Green into this as he’s plastered all over Paris right now for his new book. He and Hank were huge influences on me when I started vlogging five years ago; I stole their style wholesale for a while (just like I would later steal Casey Neistat’s—”Good artists borrow…”).

I think my answer to this would be twofold. For me in particular—for the style of video I make and how I’m hoping people come along for the ride long-term—yes, charisma helps a lot. Editing and scripting can get you a long ways, but personality is unarguably a differentiator.

Still, it all depends on content. If you make videos on subjects people want to know more about, you’ve got something. There are a lot of people out there like John Green who may struggle to be on camera, but the content they develop is phenomenal and there’s an audience out there craving it. And never forget the magic of editing. YouTube is a wonderful thing because anyone can do it, and I believe everyone who wants to should at least give it a try.

One other thing that I often mention: listed among my personal goals for my first year of daily vlogging was wanting to get even more comfortable on camera. Specifically, being on camera in live environments, out and about in the world with people staring at me and making faces or looking generally concerned. We all start somewhere, but with practice and repetition I think we can all look good on camera.

Your growing pledges through Patreon are stunning. Have you spread the word mainly or primarily through the vlog/YouTube, or have you been using other methods?

It is nuts. I think one of the coolest and most encouraging aspects of this season of vlogging has been my Patrons, who are so amazing it shocks me regularly. And I’m not exaggerating. When it comes to their generosity, “stun” is the right word to use.

Patreon has grown for a number of reasons, but principle among them is that I’m actually pushing it this year.

Originally my Patreon was geared towards my writing, Into the Nanten specifically, but that didn’t work too well when Into the Nanten came to a close. People wanted to support me, but I wasn’t giving them much in return. Enter my vlog, and my two biggest Patrons joining just to support me for making it. This was a turning point in realizing what I had on offer in my vlog was not only something people valued, but was significantly easier to get people on board than for my writing.

Don’t believe me? Try asking a stranger to read your book sometime, then ask them to check out a YouTube video. There’s a stark difference in the response.

I reformatted everything as I approached season two, geared the rewards toward things that would interact directly with the vlog (in the form of polls), and relaunched as I started the second season. I link to the Patreon everywhere, mention it occasionally on video, and stay very interactive with my Patrons. It’s grown by 20% per month since I re-launched the vlog, and as October comes to a close it’s grown by over 40% in this month alone.

One of the big motivators for Patrons, beyond making me eat weird things or climb tall buildings, has been disposable cameras. I inherited a pile of old cameras from one of my friends here in Paris who said “I know you’ll do something with these.” It made him feel better than just throwing them away, and didn’t take long to figure out how to put them to use.​

I took photos in and around Paris and showed the camera in the vlog as I went, which created an immediate response from a handful of people who asked what they had to do to get that camera!? I responded that I would figure something out through Patreon, and what I wound up doing was this: I would develop Camera One and turn the photos into postcards, which I would send to each of my Patrons around the world. Camera Two, when full, would be given away undeveloped to a Patron at random. The plan is for this pattern to continue, odd cameras getting developed and even cameras given away.

It’s a natural call to action within the vlog, and one that I think can be credited with doubling the growth rate of Patreon this month. I have some more fun things in mind for the future, but you’ll have to join me on Patreon to find out what they are.

This is an unfair question, but I’ll ask it anyway: would you rather spend more time doing videos or more time writing books?

I WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME WRITING BOOKS. Sorry, caps lock broke there for a second.

Seriously though, I really want to spend more time writing books, but I firmly believe that investing in my vlog now will provide that opportunity later. I think vlogging goes hand-in-hand with my future writing and creative careers. If I can live full-time off vlogging within another year (we can dream, can’t we?), then I no longer need to carry a day job. Theoretically, this frees up a lot of time that would otherwise be spent working, which can then be spent on vlogging and writing in turn. Vlogging also exposes more people to my writing, making for stronger book launches, and people who discover me through my books have an entire world to dive into if they want to get to know me better as a person.

Enter Archivos, an app in beta that I’m steadily using to build up a map of the people, places, and tasty restaurants I visit in every vlog (I get asked for this information a lot).

That’s the other really cool thing about vlogging: it’s about my life. I’m not limited to any particular subject or interest. So if I’m writing all day, the vlog can be largely about where I’m writing and how I’m feeling about it. I don’t have to dance to the music (too often), which is why it’s an ideal format. This also makes it a long-tail format, one that has less initial chance of “going viral” or growing with insane rapidity, but one that I think will build a strong foundation for the future.

It’s that foundation that I believe will make all the difference in the years to come. So while I don’t think that video is for every author out there, I do think it is well worth the effort if you want to give it a try. And like you regularly remind us all, if anyone is going to start, stick with it long enough to give it a real chance to grow.

Don’t Back Down: Choose the Writing Territory You Can Defend Long and Fiercely

Photo credit: NRK P3 via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is by author and coach Ginger Moran (@gingermoran).

When Tom Petty died early in October, a great storyteller left this world. Whether or not you are a rock and roll fan, you might have heard his songs about defiant outcasts and refugees, people looking for their place in the world. Though he was successful early, he never forgot the forgotten people he gave voice to—the rejected lovers, the people searching for freedom and finding only thin air, and those who are driven by the energy of desire.

As writers, we might sometimes feel the loneliness and challenge of writing, how the difficulty of writing well itself and the seemingly insurmountable barriers to successful publication and marketing can make us refugees from the whole thing. How many of us are scribbling away where no one sees what we’re doing—or just holding the idea of writing in our mind while we wait for the right time, the clear desk, the clear day? I suggest that we look to Tom Petty for understanding how to break out of this impasse.

Petty came from very humble beginnings, son of a working class family in Gainesville, Florida, and the target of his father’s disappointment that he was, from early on, artistic. He never backed down, though, and played his way to the top, taking musical and career risks all along the way, fighting the record companies when he had to, even fighting and winning a battle to make the cost of his records low enough for ordinary people to afford.

Running Down a Dream

Many people want to be rock stars—and many people want to write books. According to some statistics, 85% of the population wants to write a book, but only 3% will succeed.

As both a writer and a person who educates people on writing good books, I have seen the many ways in which a writing dream can crash and burn. One way is to be unclear about what you want with what you are ready to do. People who want to take the journey tend to fall into one of three categories: wishers, dreamers, and do-ers.

Wishers, as the name implies, wish they could write a good book. They have a good idea and several people have told them they should write a book about it. They love to read and wrote some good stories in high school or college. They find that writing, though hard, is also a place they feel happy, where time disappears. They enjoy doing it, but hardly ever have the time.

Dreamers are also people who love to read and have a story to tell. They have taken writing classes and they may have even gotten a degree in writing and worked with talented teachers. They have invested significantly in learning the craft of writing and the business of publishing from experts. They attend writing conferences and have a regular writing practice. They regularly submit to magazines and have a book or two in the drawer that they pitch to agents when they can.

Do-ers are those who fully commit. They know what the odds against them are and they aren’t going to be discouraged no matter what. They write every chance they get, get top expert guidance, write some more, revise, try it out on good readers, and revise some more. They have an original vision and are willing to go to any length to find the audience for it.

Room at the Top

Any of these approaches can lead to writing satisfaction, as long as the wisher, dreamer, or do-er knows what path they are on. The problem comes when the wisher expects the same results as a do-er—such as mainstream publication and commercial success. This way frustration lies.

Wishers can take a run at writing a poem, story, essay or book. They can revise it, let some people read it, and then get it into circulation with a small group of fans. For these writers, there is a copious amount of good information on the internet and many low-cost courses or free groups. Self-publishing is a natural for them and they can do that at little cost, though the product will reflect that and likely the sales as well. They might not break through to a wide audience, but they will achieve their dream and have a great deal of satisfaction.

Dreamers can get an education in writing and put it to good use. They can write, revise, test, and market. They’ll take a lot of rejection and come back for more. They may never break through to the bestseller lists, but they are determined writers who will continue to work on their craft and get their writing into the world. They may not make a living through writing alone, but supplement it through other activities, such as teaching.

Do-ers know the craft of writing and the ways of the reading public and the vicissitudes of the publishing world. They make the time, whether they have it or not, and sacrifice practically everything to their vision. They will not be denied.

Like Tom Petty, do-ers:

Know what they want

Get very, very good at it

Don’t compromise

Keep their standards very high

Work incredibly hard

Take extraordinary risks

Work only with the best people

Once they’ve found them, are very loyal

No path is easy—but is anything worthwhile in life ever easy? Humans have a practically infinite capacity to be afraid, to fear their lives and even themselves, to feel alone. Some people will use that fear against us, to create divisions. And some will try to heal the wounds, to show that we aren’t alone. These are the artists. If you sincerely want to write a book, you are one too. Like life, writing, however challenging, can be deeply rewarding.

As Tom Petty said so well, “Hey, babe, there ain’t no easy way out.”

Choose a path intelligently, a path that will bring you the most satisfaction. Once you’ve chosen your territory intelligently, do NOT back down.

For a creativity checklist and more tips on how to take on the challenges of writing, sign up here.

What Is an Editor’s Role in a Changing Publishing Industry?

This fall, there’s a new essay collection out, What Editors Do, edited by Peter Ginna and published by University of Chicago Press. I’m delighted to be a contributor; I offer up the last chapter in the book on the editor’s role in a changing industry.

As Peter says in the introduction, “It’s ironic that publishing, a business whose essence is words, has some of the loosest, most confusing, and most contradictory terminology of any industry I know. … [T]he title of editor misleading. What the word editing connotes to most people—correcting and improving an author’s text—is only part of what book editors do.”

Thus What Editors Do covers three phrases of editing: acquisition (finding the book), the editing process, and publication (bringing the book to the reader). Twenty-seven people in book publishing—representing publishers large and small, and encompassing trade, textbook, academic, and children’s publishing—discuss the function of editors and reflect just how much it matters to writers and readers everywhere.

As such, the book is a resource both for those entering the profession (or already in it) and for those outside publishing who seek an understanding of it. It sheds light on how editors acquire books, what constitutes a strong author-editor relationship, and the editor’s role at each stage of the publishing proces (a role that extends far beyond marking up the author’s text). This collection treats editing as both art and craft, and also as a career.

Here’s a brief look at my chapter:

In a talk at Frankfurt Book Fair’s CONTEC 2013 conference, called “The Future of Metadata,” German publishing expert Ronald Schild emphasized the need for semantic analysis, which relates to identifying the “core concept” of a book. Without semantic analysis, recommendations are less valuable; for example, your average reader is not searching for books by ISBNs or trim size but by themes, such as LGBT coming-of-age stories, thrillers set during the Communist era, or other intellectual or emotional touchstones. But up until the growth of online retail, publishers had done very little thinking about this type of marketing.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the discussion is how much metadata can affect the sales of fiction. Conventional wisdom might lead one to believe it’s most important for information-driven books, but a Nielsen study indicates just the opposite. When publishers provide specific, detailed information about their novels instead of broad generic labels (which don’t help readers), sales jump. For example, more readers are attracted to a title tagged with “historical suspense,” “19th century,” “London,” and “female protagonist” than to one simply labeled “mystery.” The same discussions have also been happening in the self-publishing community, where authors have discovered that being meticulous with their categories, keywords, and summary descriptions have resulted in better visibility and thus better sales.

What do these trends mean for editors? To be the best possible advocates for their books, editors need to think about this larger picture throughout the book’s development, starting in the acquisition stage. No one can count on quality bubbling to the top by itself—not that it ever did…

For more about the book, check out this interview with the editor of the collection, Peter Ginna, or take a look at the table of contents at Amazon.

4 Key Ways to Launch a Scene

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Make a Scene: Revised and Expanded Edition by Jordan Rosenfeld (@jordanrosenfeld), published by Writer’s Digest Books.

All great novels and stories start out with a mere idea. No matter how grand or ordinary, strange or beguiling your idea, you must take it through an alchemical process that transforms it into a story. How do you do that? This is the function of the scene; it is your story maker. Inside each scene, the vivid details, information, and action breathe life into your at idea and round it out into something in which a reader participates.

Any story or novel is, in essence, a series of scenes strung together like beads on a wire, with narrative summary adding texture and color between. A work of fiction will comprise many scenes, the number of which varies for each individual project. lIn a manuscript, a new scene is usually signified visually by a break of four lines (called a “soft hiatus”) between the last paragraph of the previous scene and the first paragraph of the next one, or sometimes by a symbol such as an asterisk or a dingbat, to let the reader know that time has passed and a new scene is beginning.

You want to start each scene by asking yourself the following questions:

Where are my characters in the plot? Where did I leave them in the last scene, and what are they doing now?
What is the most important piece of information that needs to be revealed in this scene?
What is my protagonist’s goal for this scene?
How will that goal be achieved or thwarted?

Only you and the course of your narrative can determine which kinds of launches will work best for each scene, and choosing the right launch often takes some experimentation.

Character Launches

It’s generally a good idea to get your characters on the page sooner rather than later. And, depending on how many points of view you use, the majority of scenes should involve your main character(s). If your scene launch goes on for too many paragraphs in passive description or narrated ideas without characters coming into play, the reader begins to feel unmoored in time and space, impatient for something to happen and someone for it to happen to. If your character isn’t present by the second paragraph in any given scene, you’re in danger of losing the reader.

Set scene intentions for the characters

While the hallmark of a scene may be the momentum that generates the feeling of real time, a scene feels purposeful when you give the character that stars in it an intention, or a goal to pursue. So you need to know your characters’ intentions at the launch of every scene so you can reveal, follow, build upon, and even thwart that intention. To set scene intentions, you must make the following decisions:

What the most immediate desires of the characters are
When your characters will achieve their intention or encounter some type of opposition
Whether the intention makes sense to your plot
Who will help your characters achieve their goal, and who will oppose them

Scene intentions ought to be intricately tied to the plot, i.e., your character’s goal—and the unfolding of that goal through actions, discoveries, and explorations your character undertakes that drive the story continually forward. You don’t want free-floating intentions or vignettes that leave the reader wondering why your character has set out to do something.

Action Launches

Many writers believe they must explain every bit of action that is going on right from the start of a scene, but narrative summary defeats action. The sooner you start the action in a scene, the more momentum is available to carry the reader forward. If you find yourself explaining an action, then you’re not demonstrating the action any longer; you’re floating in a distant star system known as Nebulous Intellectulus—more commonly known as your head—and so is the reader.

Keep in mind the key elements of action: time and momentum. It takes time to plan a murder over late-night whispers; for a drunk character to drop a jar at the grocery; to blackmail a betraying spouse; or to kick a wall in anger. These things don’t happen spontaneously; they happen over a period of time. They are sometimes quick, sometimes slow, but once started they unfold until finished.

The key to creating strong momentum is to start an action without explaining anything. A scene from M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts does just that:

When the key turns in the door, she stops counting and opens her eyes. Sergeant comes in with his gun and points it at her. Then two of Sergeant’s people come in and tighten and buckle the straps of the chair around Melanie’s wrists and ankles. There’s also a strap for her neck; they tighten that one last of all, when her hands and feet are fastened up all the way, and they always do it from behind. The strap is designed so they never have to put their hands in front of Melanie’s face. Melanie sometimes says, “I won’t bite.” She says it as a joke, but Sergeant’s people never laugh. Sergeant did once, the first time she said it, but it was a nasty laugh. And then he said, “Like we’d ever give you the chance, sugar plum.”

M.R. Carey plunges his reader into the scene in this novel. For a significant portion of the early scenes, the reader doesn’t know why Melanie, a ten-year-old child, is restrained in this way. The lack of explanation for what is happening forces the reader to press on to learn more. The action here gives the reader clues: Something about Melanie is either threatening or dangerous, though, based on her internal narration, we don’t yet know what. We want to know what grown men, including a Sergeant, no less, would have to fear from a child so much that he would have to strap her into a chair and point a gun at her the whole time.

Action launches tend to energize the reader’s physical senses. Here’s how to create an action launch:

Get straight to the action. Don’t drag your feet here. “Jimmy jumped off the cliff”; not “Jimmy stared at the water, imagining how cold it would feel when he jumped.”

Hook the reader with big or surprising actions. A big or surprising action—outburst, car crash, violent heart attack, public fight—at the launch of a scene can then be the stage for a bunch of consequences to unfold. One caveat: You’ll be unlikely to pull this off in every scene.

Be sure that the action is true to your character. Don’t have a shy character choose to become suddenly uninhibited at the launch of a scene—save that for scene middles. Do have a bossy character belittle another character in a way that creates conflict.

Act first, think later. If a character is going to think in your action opening, let the action come first and the thought be a reaction. “Elizabeth slapped the Prince. When his face turned pink, horror filled her. What have I done? she thought.”

Narrative Launches

Writers often try to include narrative summary, such as descriptions of the history of a place or the backstory of characters, right at the launch of a scene, believing that the reader will not be patient enough to allow actions and dialogue to tell the story. When delivered in large doses, narrative summary is to scenes what voice-overs are to movies—a distraction and an interruption.

Yet a scene launch is actually one of the easier places to use a judicious amount of narrative summary (since you’ve only just gotten the reader’s attention), so long as you don’t hold the reader captive too long. Take the opening of an early scene in Gina Frangello’s novel Every Kind of Wanting.

You think you know our story, Nick, but that would imply that I was capable of honesty. You think our stories are some joint thing, a common narrative on which we, the coconspirators, would agree, but you don’t know anything yet.

One thing you taught me is that all empathy involves a kind of method acting. You used to say I was a natural actress, but with bipolar as rapid-cycling and tidal as mine, maybe inhabiting alternate states isn’t particularly foreign.

The above bit is almost entirely narrative summary, all set inside the narrator’s mind. However, we do get a sense of a complicated tale about to unfold, one with secrets and lies—the best kind of story. We get the sense that this will be a story in which things are not as simple as they seem, and that there may be multiple perspectives that need to be accounted for.

Narrative launches should be reserved for the following occasions:

When narrative summary can save time. Sometimes actions will simply take up more time and space in the scene than you would like, or that they deserve. A scene beginning needs to move fairly quickly and, on occasion, summary will get the reader there faster.

When information needs to be communicated before an action. Consider the following sentences, which could easily lead to actions: “My mother was dead before I arrived.” “The war had begun.” “The storm left half of the city under water.”

When a character’s thoughts or intentions cannot be revealed in action. Coma victims, elderly characters, small children, and other characters sometimes cannot speak or act for physical, mental, or emotional reasons; therefore the scene may need to launch with narration to let the reader know what they think and feel.







Setting Launches

Sometimes setting details—like a jungle on fire, or moonlight sparkling on a lake—are so important to plot or character development that visual setting must be included at the launch of a scene. John Fowles’s novel The Magus is set mostly on a Greek island that leaves an indelible imprint on the main character, Nicholas. He becomes involved with an eccentric man whose isolated villa in the Greek countryside becomes the stage upon which the major drama of the novel unfolds. Therefore, it makes sense for him to launch a scene in this manner:

It was a Sunday in late May, blue as a bird’s wing. I climbed up the goat paths to the island’s ridge-back, from where the green froth of the pine tops rolled two miles across to the shadowy wall of mountains on the mainland to the west, a wall that reverberated away south, fifty or sixty miles to the horizon, under the vast bell of the empyrean. It was an azure world, stupendously pure, and always when I stood on the central ridge of the island, and saw it before me, I forgot most of my troubles.

Here’s how to create an effective scenic launch:

Use specific visual details. If your character is deserted on an island, the reader needs to know the lay of the land. Any fruit trees in sight? What color sand? Are there rocks, shelter, or wild, roaming beasts?

Allow scenery to set the tone. Say your scene opens in a jungle where your character is going to face danger; you can describe the scenery in language (simile, metaphors) that conveys darkness, fear, and mystery.

Use scenery to reflect a character’s feelings. Say you have a sad character walking through a residential neighborhood. The descriptions of the homes can reflect that sadness; he can notice the houses in disrepair, with rotting wood and untended yards. You can use weather in the same way.

Show the impact of the setting on the character. Say your character is in a prison cell; use the description of the surroundings to show how they shape the character’s feelings. “He gazed at his cell: the uncomfortable, flat bed, the walls that squeezed around him, the dull gray color that pervaded everything.”

The scene launch happens so quickly and is so soon forgotten that it’s easy to rush through it, figuring it doesn’t really matter how you get it started. But take your time with it. Craft each one as carefully and strategically as you would any other aspect of your scene. A scene launch is an invitation to the reader, beckoning him to keep reading, so make the invitations as alluring as possible.

If you enjoyed this post, I highly recommend Make a Scene: Revised and Expanded Edition by Jordan Rosenfeld, published by Writer’s Digest Books.

Using Dysfunctional Behavior to Reveal Characters’ Emotional Wounds

Today’s guest post is from writing coach and author Angela Ackerman (@angelaackerman).

An emotional wound is so much more than a uncomfortable memory: it is a past traumatic moment that generates fear so deep it changes a person’s behavior and beliefs, often in negative, unhealthy ways. Wounds are something we all share because life can be a painful teacher.

As we know, real-world experiences should also make it to the page. Giving characters painful backstory makes them feel credible to readers. Often this backstory wound is shared with readers, as overcoming it will be key to the character moving forward and achieving their story goal (character arc). But when it comes to describing what happened, many writers jump headfirst into an info dump, hoping a summary will create a shortcut to empathy and “catch readers up.” Unfortunately though, info dumps often have the opposite effect, creating leaden and lifeless writing that may generate some sympathy, but not empathy.

It can be tempting to rush into telling. Emotional wounds are especially complex and showing the aftereffects is a lot of work. But using exposition for the wrong reason meddles with the golden rule: readers come to the page to experience something meaningful. So no matter how much elbow grease is needed to provide this experience, that’s what we must do.

Reveal the Dysfunction

Showing the impact of the past on a character’s psyche is best done through action because after a wounding event, behavior changes—sometimes drastically. A trusting, kind, and confident character who is victimized during a violent home invasion may become mistrustful, paranoid, and jaded toward the world at large. She may become obsessed with safety, feel anxious when home alone, and refuse to go out because she believes that if she was vulnerable in her own home, another attack could happen anywhere. Her mindset shifts from chasing dreams and obtaining desires to being motivated by fear and acting in ways that will ensure this painful event, or another like it, will not recur.

A character can remain in this dysfunctional state for years (or decades!), rationalizing their behavior and choices no matter how much it limits them. As writers, we want to showcase this harmful behavior so it will bookend the change the character will undergo during their arc. One way to show the impact of a wound is to use Defense Mechanisms—behaviors rooted in human psychology which will ring true with readers.

Defense Mechanisms

In the real world, when we see signs of a possible recurrence of a traumatic event or the negative emotions related to it, defense mechanisms kick in to protect us. They may not be good for us or our characters, but because they’re subconscious, we aren’t usually aware of them. When readers see the character repeatedly employing one of these shielding techniques, they’ll recognize when she’s being triggered and that the circumstance could point to a painful past event. Here’s a shortened list of defense mechanisms covered in my guide The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma.

Denial occurs when the character refuses to admit that the wounding event happened. It may begin with a verbal denial, but if pressure is increased, she’ll become more agitated. Depending on her personality, her behavior may progress to aggression or violence in an effort to stop others from pursuing the frightening topic. When it comes up in conversation, she either disengages and flees, or becomes confrontational.

Rationalization happens when the character tries to convince herself and others that what happened wasn’t so bad. The victim may also rationalize the behavior of the perpetrator. This can happen when someone abused by her boyfriend makes excuses for him: He’s only like this when he drinks, or I should’ve called to tell him I’d be late. A benefit of this mechanism is that it makes the wounding incident obvious. Then, when the character begins to try to normalize it, readers will see her unhealthy response and recognize that it’s altering her psyche in an alarming way.

Acting out is often written off as undesirable attention-seeking behavior, but it’s really an extreme way of expressing desires or releasing emotions the person is incapable of communicating in a healthy manner. Children are described as acting out when they become angry and throw a temper tantrum because they simply don’t know how to convey what they’re feeling.

As it relates to a wounding event, you can show this mechanism by putting the character into a situation in which a certain response is expected, then have her react in an overblown or unexpected way. For instance, a woman in a relationship with a controlling partner may desperately desire control herself but doesn’t feel comfortable asking for it. So when she’s feeling particularly oppressed, she steals things—things she doesn’t even need but is compelled to take.

Dissociation is a state of feeling disconnected from one’s body, emotions, or the world at large. This separation is a means of protecting oneself from unwanted feelings or triggers associated with a wounding event. In severe cases, the person exists in a constant state of dissociation, living in an ongoing rejection of what’s real. Memory loss is also dissociation; if your character can’t recall certain periods of time from the past, this can indicate that she’s protecting herself from a painful memory or event.

Projection occurs when a character attributes undesirable traits, attitudes, or motives to someone else. This mechanism allows the character to avoid or deny the things about herself that she doesn’t like. For instance, a teenager who was verbally abused by a caregiver may turn those hurtful slurs on a friend, calling her stupid, ugly, slutty, or weak. By applying these labels to someone else, the character separates them from herself. The truth or falsehood of the accusations are inconsequential. If she convinces herself that these labels are accurate for her friend, she can feel better in comparison.

Compensation is the act of striving to prove to others and oneself that a real or perceived weakness doesn’t exist. In relation to wounds, it’s used to make up for a deficiency the character believes he exhibited during the past event or to regain something he lost because of it. This is usually accomplished by overemphasizing certain qualities, abilities, or physical characteristics to prove strength in the less-than-perfect area. A boy who was bullied for being weak may grow up with a fierce desire to prove his physical prowess—living at the gym, competing in combat sports, or taking steroids.

There are many other defense mechanisms to explore, but revealing aftereffects of the wounding incident through behavior allows you to show it a bit at a time while emphasizing the wound’s stifling weight. As the story progresses, the character’s fears, triggers, avoidances, defense mechanisms, and other responses will reinforce to readers that this isn’t simply an isolated event; it’s a debilitating past moment that continues to haunt the character years later, into the present.

For more help with emotional wounds, test drive the thesaurus, or access the expanded online version at One Stop for Writers, along with extensive tutorials, tools, and worksheets on writing emotional trauma.