Julianna Keyes's Blog, page 5
March 29, 2019
RELEASE WEEK - POST 1
IT’S GETTING THEME-Y IN HERE
If you know me, you probably know I’m a fan of theme. I’m one of those people who always wants to know why things are the way they are, and one of the things I think about when I’m reading is why the author made the choices they made for the story. Why this job? This setting? This conflict? Sometimes that answer is no more complicated than “because I like it,” but sometimes the answer is related to theme, and that’s my favourite.
The major theme in TEAM PLAYER is, you guessed it, the idea of “teams.” In the story, both Gwen and Ty are at particularly lonely points in their lives. Gwen has lost her only family member and cut herself off from her friends while she grieves, and now has a job she doesn’t really like. Ty has lost his best friend, his team is struggling, and despite being one of the most famous athletes in the world, he feels all alone.
The story is about Gwen and Ty meeting at a point in their lives when they have no one else, and that burgeoning relationship (their own mini team), being the one to encourage and improve the other “teams” in their lives. To say too much more would be spoiler-y, but one non-spoilery reveal is that the Thrashers players have to learn how to come together as a team despite a bunch of off-season upheavals, and one of my favourite things in writing this story was showing their growing camaraderie. I wanted to write locker room talk that was funny and authentic, and made the supporting characters come to life. This was especially important because the baseball season—and its outcome—are central to the story, and a reader’s emotional investment in the team would make the story that much more compelling. (I hope!)
While the title certainly alludes to Ty’s previous off-the-field player antics, what it really references is his journey to being a better team player on the field, and how that influences his life away from it. And that’s the story’s message. It’s about finding your own team—friends, family, a Major League Baseball organization—and finding yourself in the process.
What do you think? Do you pay attention to theme when you’re reading? Does it matter?
image:
If you know me, you probably know I’m a fan of theme. I’m one of those people who always wants to know why things are the way they are, and one of the things I think about when I’m reading is why the author made the choices they made for the story. Why this job? This setting? This conflict? Sometimes that answer is no more complicated than “because I like it,” but sometimes the answer is related to theme, and that’s my favourite.
The major theme in TEAM PLAYER is, you guessed it, the idea of “teams.” In the story, both Gwen and Ty are at particularly lonely points in their lives. Gwen has lost her only family member and cut herself off from her friends while she grieves, and now has a job she doesn’t really like. Ty has lost his best friend, his team is struggling, and despite being one of the most famous athletes in the world, he feels all alone.
The story is about Gwen and Ty meeting at a point in their lives when they have no one else, and that burgeoning relationship (their own mini team), being the one to encourage and improve the other “teams” in their lives. To say too much more would be spoiler-y, but one non-spoilery reveal is that the Thrashers players have to learn how to come together as a team despite a bunch of off-season upheavals, and one of my favourite things in writing this story was showing their growing camaraderie. I wanted to write locker room talk that was funny and authentic, and made the supporting characters come to life. This was especially important because the baseball season—and its outcome—are central to the story, and a reader’s emotional investment in the team would make the story that much more compelling. (I hope!)
While the title certainly alludes to Ty’s previous off-the-field player antics, what it really references is his journey to being a better team player on the field, and how that influences his life away from it. And that’s the story’s message. It’s about finding your own team—friends, family, a Major League Baseball organization—and finding yourself in the process.
What do you think? Do you pay attention to theme when you’re reading? Does it matter?
image:
March 26, 2019
It's the last #TeaserTuesday!
It's the final #TeaserTuesday post before release day, March 28! If you haven't pre-ordered, there's still time to jump on the $2.99 sale price (bumping up to $4.99 on release day).
If you're not following me on Facebook, consider it! Starting on Friday I'll have a series of release week posts culminating in a giveaway at the end. Come join!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
If you're not following me on Facebook, consider it! Starting on Friday I'll have a series of release week posts culminating in a giveaway at the end. Come join!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
March 19, 2019
Teaser Tuesday!
It's #TeaserTuesday! Just 9 more days until TEAM PLAYER comes out!
It's on sale for a mere $2.99 until March 28, when the price bumps up, and it's still available for request on NetGalley!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
It's on sale for a mere $2.99 until March 28, when the price bumps up, and it's still available for request on NetGalley!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
March 12, 2019
Teaser Tuesday #3!
Team Player is on sale for $2.99 until release day on March 28, then bumps up to regular price!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
Team Player
March 5, 2019
Teaser Tuesday #2!
Still just $2.99 until release day!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
February 26, 2019
February 25, 2019
Team Player now available on NetGalley!
TEAM PLAYER is now available to request on NetGalley!
Bloggers & reviewers can request here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
Bloggers & reviewers can request here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
February 7, 2019
December 1, 2017
RELEASE WEEK POST 5!
STRUCTURE ME THIS
I saved this post until the last day of the week to hopefully give people enough time to read “Bad Princess” before this went up. If you haven’t read the book yet, you might want to wait—this post is about the structure I used for the story, and by design, it’s a little bit spoiler-y. I tried to think of a way to talk about structure without discussing the plot, but that turned out to be mostly impossible.
If you’re not familiar, I use a basic (and very well-known) three-act structure for most of my stories. There’s an Inciting Incident (which is the moment that gets the story rolling), the First Act Turning Point (which is kind of the moment where there’s no going back), the Mid-Point (when something shifts and sends the plot in a new-ish direction), the Second Act Turning Point (aka the climax), and the Resolution. I broke this down in some of the On Writing posts on my website, but I basically use the “big” romantic moments as the turning points in my stories, and here’s how that worked out with “Bad Princess”:
Inciting Incident (15%): Brinley and Finn get caught red-handed in the library. If they kiss but don’t get caught, there’s no story!
First Act Turning Point (25%): Wedding night. If Brinley and Finn don’t get married, they can still go back to how things used to be. I’ll be honest—I really didn’t want to write a wedding scene, and if I had, it would have been exactly the same as every other royal wedding. So I skipped to the “after” part of the wedding, and the unexpected: a bawling princess bride on her happiest day.
Mid-Point (51%): The trip to the dungeon. The farther Brinley and Finn descend beneath the castle, the more they shed their “royal” images and reveal their truer selves. That’s why the sex happens at this point—they’re at their most vulnerable and honest. And it changes the story from “will they-won’t they” to “yes they will” and makes them a legitimate pair instead of two individuals simply stuck together.
Second Act Turning Point (72%): The party at Castle Lenora, and the egg. This is the moment that jeopardizes everything, for everyone involved, and forces them to make choices that will determine the outcome of the story. I think it’s important that this happen at Finn’s home, because it finally gives us some insight into Finn and his upbringing, and helps us better understand his choices to date, and the choices he’ll make going forward.
Resolution (the rest): What happens after the party, the choices, and the results of those choices. You know how Coke has those different bottles during the summer? When I was writing this I randomly grabbed a bottle from the cooler and it said “Saving the Princess.” That inspired a certain white knight idea and influenced the ending of the book. Thanks, Coke!
(Not a structural thing: The Brinley kicking bricks idea was inspired by a memory of my sister when we were younger. She thought I was standing on the other side of the wall so she came whipping around and kicked it as hard as she could. I was, of course, on the opposite side of the room, so I saw the whole thing and nearly died laughing.)
So that’s the structure I used for this book! I didn’t necessarily know how the moments themselves would play out, but I knew what types of events they needed to be, and where in the page count they had to fall to keep me on pace. If it’s not obvious, I kind of love talking about this stuff, so feel free to offer your comments (or questions, or suggestions) below.
And…that’s it for the release week posts! Thank you so much for being part of this release, and, as always, thanks for reading. :)
I saved this post until the last day of the week to hopefully give people enough time to read “Bad Princess” before this went up. If you haven’t read the book yet, you might want to wait—this post is about the structure I used for the story, and by design, it’s a little bit spoiler-y. I tried to think of a way to talk about structure without discussing the plot, but that turned out to be mostly impossible.
If you’re not familiar, I use a basic (and very well-known) three-act structure for most of my stories. There’s an Inciting Incident (which is the moment that gets the story rolling), the First Act Turning Point (which is kind of the moment where there’s no going back), the Mid-Point (when something shifts and sends the plot in a new-ish direction), the Second Act Turning Point (aka the climax), and the Resolution. I broke this down in some of the On Writing posts on my website, but I basically use the “big” romantic moments as the turning points in my stories, and here’s how that worked out with “Bad Princess”:
Inciting Incident (15%): Brinley and Finn get caught red-handed in the library. If they kiss but don’t get caught, there’s no story!
First Act Turning Point (25%): Wedding night. If Brinley and Finn don’t get married, they can still go back to how things used to be. I’ll be honest—I really didn’t want to write a wedding scene, and if I had, it would have been exactly the same as every other royal wedding. So I skipped to the “after” part of the wedding, and the unexpected: a bawling princess bride on her happiest day.
Mid-Point (51%): The trip to the dungeon. The farther Brinley and Finn descend beneath the castle, the more they shed their “royal” images and reveal their truer selves. That’s why the sex happens at this point—they’re at their most vulnerable and honest. And it changes the story from “will they-won’t they” to “yes they will” and makes them a legitimate pair instead of two individuals simply stuck together.
Second Act Turning Point (72%): The party at Castle Lenora, and the egg. This is the moment that jeopardizes everything, for everyone involved, and forces them to make choices that will determine the outcome of the story. I think it’s important that this happen at Finn’s home, because it finally gives us some insight into Finn and his upbringing, and helps us better understand his choices to date, and the choices he’ll make going forward.
Resolution (the rest): What happens after the party, the choices, and the results of those choices. You know how Coke has those different bottles during the summer? When I was writing this I randomly grabbed a bottle from the cooler and it said “Saving the Princess.” That inspired a certain white knight idea and influenced the ending of the book. Thanks, Coke!
(Not a structural thing: The Brinley kicking bricks idea was inspired by a memory of my sister when we were younger. She thought I was standing on the other side of the wall so she came whipping around and kicked it as hard as she could. I was, of course, on the opposite side of the room, so I saw the whole thing and nearly died laughing.)
So that’s the structure I used for this book! I didn’t necessarily know how the moments themselves would play out, but I knew what types of events they needed to be, and where in the page count they had to fall to keep me on pace. If it’s not obvious, I kind of love talking about this stuff, so feel free to offer your comments (or questions, or suggestions) below.
And…that’s it for the release week posts! Thank you so much for being part of this release, and, as always, thanks for reading. :)
November 30, 2017
RELEASE WEEK POST 4!
DO YOU POV WHAT I POV
Point of view (POV) is a big consideration when determining how to tell a story. As both a reader and a writer, I tend to prefer stories told from one POV. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but I think the reason I like it so much is because when you’re inside one character’s head, it gets a bit easy to “tell” the reader things, rather than show them. When we only learn about the other characters through their actions, it forces you to “show” more, and if you’ve read any of my earlier rants, you know I’m a big proponent of showing vs. telling.
I decided to use just one POV for this story because it’s called “Bad Princess” and the whole world is already telling us how they feel about her (spoiler: they think she’s bad), so more POVs seemed unnecessary. I chose third person POV because I liked the fairy tale feel of the voice and felt like it lent itself better to that “royal” tone. If this were a movie, the opening pages would be an omniscient camera floating down through the sky as the narration rolled over, describing beautiful, obedient Elle…and ending with “then Elle ran away and left the world with…Princess Brinley.” Record scratch moment as we settle on Brinley, sitting in a pile of dirt in a torn dress with steak sauce on her face.
I think single POV is helpful when both characters are living the same story, and not venturing terribly far apart. Because Brinley and Finn are thrust together very early on—like it or not—there’s no need to have Finn echo Brinley’s thoughts on the plot, since they’re sharing the story. Because Brinley is so lively and haphazard, I wanted Finn to be more reserved and calm, to contrast and complement her. It also helps that Brinley is unsure of Finn’s feelings, and I didn’t want to tell the reader something the heroine herself didn’t know. (That can work in some instances when you’re trying to develop a certain kind of tension, but that’s not what I wanted here, because it’s a romance and the HEA is guaranteed anyway. It felt redundant.)
I imagine a scene from Finn’s POV to be him peeling a boiled egg, then eating it, then looking out a window, then end. Very Finn-like, but not really an interesting chapter. He’s interesting because we view him and learn to love him through Brinley’s POV, through the way he changes her and she changes the way she sees him, and how that changes how she sees herself. It’s kind of like getting his POV…without actually getting it.
Got it?
I feel like I already know the answer to this because I see an overwhelming number of comments that say “I wish I had the hero’s POV” – but do you have a strong preference for what type of POV you like? Single? Dual? Omniscient?
Point of view (POV) is a big consideration when determining how to tell a story. As both a reader and a writer, I tend to prefer stories told from one POV. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but I think the reason I like it so much is because when you’re inside one character’s head, it gets a bit easy to “tell” the reader things, rather than show them. When we only learn about the other characters through their actions, it forces you to “show” more, and if you’ve read any of my earlier rants, you know I’m a big proponent of showing vs. telling.
I decided to use just one POV for this story because it’s called “Bad Princess” and the whole world is already telling us how they feel about her (spoiler: they think she’s bad), so more POVs seemed unnecessary. I chose third person POV because I liked the fairy tale feel of the voice and felt like it lent itself better to that “royal” tone. If this were a movie, the opening pages would be an omniscient camera floating down through the sky as the narration rolled over, describing beautiful, obedient Elle…and ending with “then Elle ran away and left the world with…Princess Brinley.” Record scratch moment as we settle on Brinley, sitting in a pile of dirt in a torn dress with steak sauce on her face.
I think single POV is helpful when both characters are living the same story, and not venturing terribly far apart. Because Brinley and Finn are thrust together very early on—like it or not—there’s no need to have Finn echo Brinley’s thoughts on the plot, since they’re sharing the story. Because Brinley is so lively and haphazard, I wanted Finn to be more reserved and calm, to contrast and complement her. It also helps that Brinley is unsure of Finn’s feelings, and I didn’t want to tell the reader something the heroine herself didn’t know. (That can work in some instances when you’re trying to develop a certain kind of tension, but that’s not what I wanted here, because it’s a romance and the HEA is guaranteed anyway. It felt redundant.)
I imagine a scene from Finn’s POV to be him peeling a boiled egg, then eating it, then looking out a window, then end. Very Finn-like, but not really an interesting chapter. He’s interesting because we view him and learn to love him through Brinley’s POV, through the way he changes her and she changes the way she sees him, and how that changes how she sees herself. It’s kind of like getting his POV…without actually getting it.
Got it?
I feel like I already know the answer to this because I see an overwhelming number of comments that say “I wish I had the hero’s POV” – but do you have a strong preference for what type of POV you like? Single? Dual? Omniscient?
