Fiction University

Choose the Setting for Your Short Story: Location, Weather, Atmosphere

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 25 May 2023 11:12:00 +0000

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: With a short story, you don't have a lot of time or space to develop your setting. Rayne Hall shares tips and exercises on how to get the most out of your short fiction setting.

Where does your story take place?

Consider giving your story an unusual, quirky setting. This will make the piece memorable and vivid. What’s the weirdest possible place where the events could plausibly happen?

If this is a romantic story about a first date, how about these two people don't go to a predictable meal in a restaurant, walk in a park or movie in a cinema, but a Ferris wheel ride at the funfair, rollerblading in a deserted car park, or picnicking on a mountain top?
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Grow Up Already: Creating Character Arcs

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Tue, 23 May 2023 11:01:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A strong character arc will weave its way through the turning points of the plot.

A character arc is the internal struggle and progress a character goes through over the course of a novel that changes them in some way. It's usually connected to the internal conflict so that what they do (the plot) forces changes in who they are (the character arc). It can sometimes be confused with character motivations (a character worries over something so they act to prevent that something) but why a character acts is different from how they change because of their actions. Motivation drives the actions. Growth is the result of the actions.

But should the writer know where the character is heading/motives before the first draft? Is it bad if you don’t?" Heck no.

Internal Medicine: How Much Internalization is Too Much?

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 15 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Readers want to know what's going on in a character's head, but they don't need to know every last thought.

Internalization is the glue that holds a story together. It's where the readers learn why those awesome descriptions matter, who those great characters we create really are, and shows why those cool conflicts hurt so badly.

But good internalization requires a balance. Too much and the character in too in their head and slows the story, too little and the reader can't connect to the character enough to care about the story.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, internalization is what's going on in your point of view (POV) character's head. It's how they see the world and how they choose to tell the reader about it. It's the filtering process that makes everything in the story have meaning, and conveys the opinions and judgment of the POV character.

Getting Your Short Story Published: What You Need to Know About Submission, Rights and Payments

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 11 May 2023 10:40:00 +0000

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: Writers are on their own when it comes to the business side of short stories. Rayne Hall explains what you need to know when submitting and publishing your short fiction.

We’re in a ‘golden age’ for short stories, with more opportunities for short story authors than ever before. This doesn’t mean that getting your tales published is easy, or a way to earn riches fast.

You need to be sure that your stories are good, and you need to submit them to the right markets.

Where To Submit Your Story

If your story falls under a category (a ‘genre’), focus on markets specializing in that genre, because there your chances of acceptance are greatest.
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The Power of Small Problems: Elevate Your Plot with Little Conflicts

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 08 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Little problems can be just as devastating to your characters' plans as full-blown issues.

I'm prone to migraines and when one hits, I'm pretty much down for the day (or longer if it's bad). As you can imagine, that puts a bit of a crimp in my day. It's hard to get much writing done when you can't stare at a screen without pain. Annoying little issues are things we deal with every day, so why not make sure our characters also have to deal with them?

When you're creating your characters and their lives, don't forget to add in the little things that can cause them trouble, even if it's not earth-shattering trouble.

Think about the bad days you've had, where nothing went right, and how that escalated into you snapping and yelling at someone who didn't deserve it. Or caused you to do something you wouldn't have ordinarily done had you not already been stressed by stupid little things.

In other words, pile on the problems.

The Difference Between a Writing Problem, and a “Not for Me” Issue

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Sometimes the problem is with the reviewer, not the book.

Not every book is for every reader. Readers have topics they dislike no matter how well written a book is, and nothing you do is going to change that. Sometimes, the problem with a book isn't the quality—it's just a "not for me" issue.

This is an important distinction in writing. I’ve read many a novel that was a “good novel,” even if it did things I don’t particularly care for as a reader. I didn’t like it, but I could see that others would.

For example, I’m not fond of distant narrators. It’s nearly impossible for me to connect with a distance third-person omniscient narrator, because I never feel like I’m in the protagonist’s head. I just can’t lose myself in the story.

Living in My Head: Crafting Natural-Sounding Internal Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

How to write tight, third-person internalization that feels natural to the character.

Getting inside a character's head is a key element to getting the reader to care about that character—love them, hate them, fear them, whatever the emotion you want to evoke.

In first person this is easy, because you're already so close to their perspective the thoughts roll naturally into the story. With third person it can be more challenging, because there's an extra layer between the character and the reader. The narrative distance often determines how your internalization will sound.

A close narrative distance will make the internalization feel similar to first person (without the "I" of course). A more distant one will include tags such as he thought. Some will use italics, others will make it part of the narrative. The style is up to you.

((Here's more with Where Do You Want Me? Choosing Narrative Distance in Multiple Third Person).)

Give Your Story Meaning with Inner Conflict and Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: No matter the size of your story, a theme can deepen it and make it stronger. Rayne Hall shares tips on finding and developing your story’s theme.

Do you want your story to be meaningful and memorable? Then give it a theme.

Although there are many ways of creating and exploring a theme, here's the one I find the easiest as well as the most powerful.

'One Purpose/Ideal/Value' versus 'Another Purpose/Ideal/Value'.

For example:

Love versus Safety
Patriotism versus Friendship
Faith versus Integrity
Honesty versus Compassion

The Real Problem With Passive Voice in Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Passive voice in a novel can put your readers right to sleep.

Before we dive in, a little heads up that I'm over at Writers in the Storm today, chatting about how to use clichés, metaphors, and similes to bring your story world to life. Come on over and say hello.

And now on to our regularly scheduled article...

“Avoid the passive voice” is one of those pieces of advice most writers have heard and likely struggled with at some point. It’s good advice, since revising passive into active typically makes the sentence stronger, but like all things writing, simply doing it because people say so isn’t always the best idea.

Without understanding why a passive voice causes trouble, you might rewrite it when its actually the best thing for your story at that moment. It does have it’s uses after all.

So first, let's look at what passive voice means.

I used to be one of those folks who wrongly equated passive voice with all forms of the "to be" verb, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. Because quite often, a “to be” verb is at the heart of a troublesome sentence, but a “to be” verb doesn't always signal passive writing.

3 Steps to Crafting a Story Arc that Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 12:35:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Sucks readers in…of course.

A novel is a series of smaller story arcs all leading toward “an exciting conclusion,” whatever that may be. These smaller arcs fit together like puzzle pieces and make up the larger plot and story of the novel.

At its most basic, a story arc is the trajectory that a story takes from its beginning to its end. But a well-crafted story arc is much more than that. It's the engine that drives a story forward, the structure that gives it shape, and the journey that takes readers on an emotional roller coaster.

Let's explore the three essential components of a story arc: the beginning, the rising action, and the climax.
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Plotting a Short Love Story

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: Short fiction is a great way to satisfy readers between novels. Rayne Hall shares tips on how to write a compelling romance short.

Readers enjoy short Love Stories in collections, anthologies, magazines, websites. But Love Stories are among the most challenging tales to write.

The Challenge: A Relationship in a Short Space

The challenge is the length. A Romance novel follows the couple as they form a relationship to the level of commitment. How can you do that in the limited space of a short story?

How to Make Backstory Work for You

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A character's history is important, but not enough to bog down your entire story to hear it.

Along with adverbs and telling, I think backstory completes the unholy trinity of writing. So much so that agent and writing guru Donald Maass advises writers to cut any backstory in the first 50 pages.

But backstory does have its uses, and sometimes, it's critical to know that history.

Even if it's not critical for the reader to know it.

In some genres it's more of an issue. Fantasy, science fiction, historical—any genre where the past and the history of that past strongly affects the current plot and the motivations of the characters. Doubly so if the antagonist is the one with the past that's come back to haunt someone, since you don't always see the antagonist's POV.

How to Write a Short Story Spin-Off from Your Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 09:49:00 +0000

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: Short stories can be a fantastic marketing tool for your novel. Rayne Hall shows you how to use your novels to create short story spin-offs.

Do you want to create short stories as spin-offs from your novel? This can be a great marketing strategy. When readers who discover your short story on your website or in an anthology and love it, they will look for more fiction by this author. This can strengthen your reputation as an author and boost your novel's sales.

Can you use the novel's main character for spin-off stories?

What is “Bad Writing?” (And How Can We Avoid It?)

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

"Bad writing" means different things to different readers.

We writers notice bad writing far more easily than readers, because we know the rules. For us, the writing is critical, but for a reader, it’s more about the story.

Readers don’t care how the sausage is made as long as it tastes good. And “good” is very subjective.

No matter what genre you write, I bet you can name a few huge, mega-bestsellers you feel are badly written. Every genre has them. And they drive us crazy as writers because “writers must write well” is drilled into our heads by everyone in the writing and publishing industry.

How to Find Your Character's Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy

Finding the right voice for a character can be tough, especially if you’re not sure who that character is yet.

Although a lot of people talk about author voice in fiction, character voice is just as important. It’s also harder, because you only one author voice (usually), but you need multiple character voices in every book you write.

That means knowing the personalities, hopes and dreams, fears and worries, of multiple people, as well as knowing what they’d say or think in any given situation. That’s a lot to figure out.

Luckily, the more you know about a character, the easier it will be to write them. And not just them, the entire novel, too.

The 5 Turning Points of a Character Arc

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The character arc is a strong tool for adding an emotional layer to a story.

For most novels, the character arc is a critical part of the tale. It’s the emotional layer that makes readers care about all the cool plots and exciting scenes we put before them. Readers enjoy seeing how a character grows, and how they handle the emotional trials of the story.

Just like a plot, the character arc has several turning points that fall at specific structural moments throughout the novel. There’s wiggle room as to where, but they generally fall along the same path as the plot, since the plot is what triggers or impacts these moments.

How to Find Your Readers

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:05:00 +0000

By Jenna Harte

Part of The Indie Author Series

JH: It's hard to sell a book if you don't know who you're selling it to. Jenna Harte shares tips on identifying and then finding your reading audience.

I wrote an article for Fiction University on Selling More Books with Marketing Mind Shift in which I suggested authors think less about selling a single book through a Tweet, and instead about building a community of avid readers. The article explained how to do that, with one exception; how do you find your audience? This piece is a follow up to that article to provide tips and resources on finding your readers and creating a community for them.
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There is No Bad Guy: What to do When Your Antagonist Isn't a Villain

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy. @Janice_Hardy

All stories need an antagonist, but not all stories have a villain.

The word antagonist usually conjures an image of a "bad guy," but that's not always the case. The antagonist in a story is simply the opposition to whatever the protagonist is trying to accomplish.

A mother trying her best to stop a willful child from going down a destructive path is the antagonist to that child, same as a terrible storm is an antagonist to a hiker trying to reach safety on a mountain.

An antagonist can come from any of the four basic conflict types, and they each focus on a different type of conflict opposition. We've discussed the person vs. self antagonists, and person vs. nature conflicts, so let's continue with the person vs. society conflicts.

Move Along: Fixing Pacing Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A badly paced novel can ruin an otherwise strong story.

Pacing problems fall into two categories: too slow or too fast. While this makes it easy to diagnose the trouble, it takes a bit more to solve the actual problem. Too slow can be an editing issue, a stakes issue, or even a structure issue. Too fast can be a plotting problem, a characterization problem, or yes, a structure problem.

If your pacing isn’t where you want it to be, first identify what the problem is.

Is your pacing too slow?

While any number of things can contribute to a slow pace, "too much of something" is usually the culprit. Maybe it has too many long sentences, or it's heavy exposition, or characters give too many speeches. A reader has to slug through "a lot of something" to get to the actual story.

5 Ways to Raise the Stakes in Your Scene

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 13:20:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The worse things get for your character, the better it is for your reader.

I love doing terrible things to my characters. I’m a firm believer that whatever doesn’t kill them makes them more interesting. But even I sometimes forget to raise the stakes—or even have stakes—in a scene.

I get distracted by the plot, or a world building detail that needs to fit in somehow, or I get caught up in a fun conversation between characters and lose myself in their banter. Anything could cause me to forget to add the stakes, because there’s so much that goes into every scene, it’s easy to miss an important element.

But when that element is a core part of keeping readers hooked in the story, it risks ruining a perfectly good scene.
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How a Sequel Works with a Scene

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Sequels are the emotional glue holding scenes together.

Before I dive it, I’m over at The Insecure Writer’s Support Group today, chatting about the dangers of empty dialogue. Come on over and check it out!

Now, on to today’s regularly scheduled post…

The sequel trips up a lot of writers, even when they know what it is. The most common problem is thinking it has the same nature (and structure) as a scene, so they try to write it as one.

And it fails.

The pacing flatlines, there’s no goal, and often, writers twist themselves into knots trying to add a goal, motivation, and conflict to a sequel, trying to “make it work.”
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7 Reasons Why Your First Draft Sucks

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 12:22:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

First drafts are written first for a reason.

Getting to the end of a first draft is an accomplishment that ought to be celebrated, no matter what state that draft is in. It takes a lot of effort and determination to write an entire novel. It takes planning and brainstorming, and uses up a ton of creative juice to get all those ideas from our heads to the page.

It’s also not uncommon to stumble a bit and write a first draft that’s, shall we say, less than stellar. Maybe it even sucks.

If this is you, take heart—you’re not alone.

Bad first drafts happen all the time, even to professional authors with dozens of books under their writing belts. Writing is a creative endeavor and you can’t force creativity, even if you can plow through it and keep writing when the muse is on vacation.

The Difference Between Setting and World Building

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 11:28:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your novel’s world will change the look and feel of every setting in that world.

Where is your novel set? It’s a basic question every writer can answer, either with a simple location or a description. For example, it’s set in New York vs. it’s set in an alternative Atlanta where magic and technology battle in waves over which one has control.

But look closer at those answers. One is a location, the other is a world.

“New York” can exist in any novel set in a big city. It gives readers a general sense of where the story takes place and what it looks like, but there’s a huge difference between New York in 1763 and New York in 2023.

“Alternative Atlanta” gives you a world that suggests far more than a basic setting for a story. Magic and technology, battling for control, which naturally leads to imagining the kind of people who live here and the problems they might face. It even says what genre this is. (For the curious, this is the world of Kate Daniels in Ilona Andrews’ urban fantasy series)
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The 2022 Wrap Up: What Are Your Goals for 2023?

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 13:53:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It’s a new year, and time to take a look back on what we accomplished, and set new goals for 2023.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are starting off 2023 with new vigor and purpose.

As for me, well, I feel kinda bad for 2023. I have such expectations for it. It’s unfair of me to put so much pressure on it to be a better year than 2022 (or let’s be honest here—better than the past five years), but I’m doing it anyway. I’m ready for more positivity and optimism in my life, and I’m hoping this new year will arrive with some.

I didn’t do a wrap up or goal list last year, so I went back to 2021 to see what my goals and accomplishments were. It was interesting to see where I was as 2020 rolled into 2021. It started off well until July, when life imploded health-wise for me and my husband.

Dealing with Multiple Drafts During Revisions

noreply@blogger.com (Janice Hardy) — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:16:00 +0000

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

During a revision, trying to piece together all the best parts of your novel and still make the story feel cohesive can be a challenge.

Some novels are really hard to revise. The story goes through multiple drafts and there are strong scenes in each one—but no one draft that works on its own. The only way to save the story and craft the novel you know you have in there somewhere, is to pick the best scenes and smoosh it all together.

Which can be good, or lead to a Frankendraft.

Don't fret though—you can turn all those drafts into a novel worth reading. It just takes a little more work and a lot more focus.

When dealing with multiple drafts of a novel, the first step is to clarify what you have that works, and what you have that doesn't.

Make a list of your scenes allows you to identify which pieces contribute to your core conflict and which don't. Note the critical details in all the scenes you plan to use and see how they flow together. Maybe even craft a one-line summary of each scene that describes the plot movement so you can see how they connect to the overall story arcs.