11 Reader Tips for Writers

For new writers it can be tricky to know what to focus on. In a sea of rules and guidelines, what are the most important elements to perfect first? I always wonder what readers want to see in books, so I asked readers what they would tell new writers if they had the chance. This was a savvy group of responses. I hope you find it helpful!

Description:

• One thing that is a drawback for me is if I feel like the writer could say something very simply, but I can tell that they are trying to use more words or fancier words, than are necessary. It is one thing to paint an image or convey an idea with strong vocabulary, but another if you are trying to force something that isn't really there... don't try to just fill a page or use complicated vocabulary if that doesn't come naturally to you. Think about your audience and think about how you would tell the story if you were "telling" it, instead of writing it.
• Some descriptive detail is good but don't go overboard with it. The character development is a lot more important than a description of the room where they are.
• The story and characters need to capture me in the first 20 pages.
• I love many new authors, as they seem to take the time to really make each word count. The story is incredible. Sometimes the ones that don't focus on keeping the quality in their stories lose me. Have a picture of the story you want to share to others. Make the words describe it.

Dialogue:

• Authentic conversation style for characters. I have read some very good stories, but when the conversation is too stilted and unnatural, even though it may be good grammar, it just doesn't feel real.
• Good dialogue, action in beginning, less flowery language, super plots & believable characters!

Editing Matters!

• That editing is everything! You can have a great story, but if it's not well-edited I'm going to trip up on mistakes and the flow will be interrupted.
•  Make sure they are well-edited with no spelling errors, punctuation errors, etc. Have several people who are good proofreaders read it before publishing. If there are multiple errors in a book, it distracts me from the story.
• Spelling , Spelling, Spelling! I detest reading a decent story when there are so many mispelled words!

Characters:

• Believable characters with believable feelings.
• Personally, I struggle reading books written in first person. As a result, when I find a book is in first person, I'm loathe to delve into it.

Come back next week for more tips. If you're a reader, what would you add to this list to encourage newer writers about what you love to see in books?

Cara Putman

An award-winning author of more than twenty books, Cara is a lecturer on business and employment law to graduate students at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. Putman also practices law and is a second-generation homeschooling mom. She lives with her husband and four children in Indiana.

Too Many Pets

by Rachael Phillips

The week my first grandchild was born, I stayed a week with my daughter and her family. Looking back, even her husband, a Dr. Doolittle clone, admits they owned too many pets. The birth of their beautiful baby girl constituted enough drama. The addition of a large, needy dog, whom I privately nicknamed Droolius Rex, and eight cats (a total of 148 kitty claws) in the house detracted from the main event, rather than adding to it.

In a similar way, pet words and phrases can diminish, rather than enhance a story. Like my daughter’s cats, 148 “suddenlys” leave 148 claw marks that puncture a suspense novel and drain it of its potency. Suddenly, readers fall asleep.

The overuse of another pet word, “literally,” and its cousin, “actually,” jumps on readers the way Droolius jumped on me at his dinnertime. Instead of being convinced by such adverbs, readers feel an urge to back away. Or chain them outdoors. Excess “verys” and “reallys,” even in dialogue, can produce a similar effect.

All pets exhibit a sneaky side, and words are no exception. Some, however, possess exceptional covert abilities. Words such as “it,” and “there” can take over a story before an author realizes they have slipped en masse through the back door. Before we know it, litters of “the” and “that” increase exponentially. Pronouns, too, can overpopulate a manuscript if preventive measures are not taken.

 Perhaps you, like me, cherish particular words for your own reasons. I like the word “angst” because it sounds like its meaning. When I crunch the word between gritted teeth, I feel my character’s fear and frustration—expressed in streamlined five-letter form. However, my critique partner pounced on its overuse in my romance as telling rather than showing. Some people just don’t understand pet lovers . . . and in my case, that’s a good thing.

How about you? Have you made a watch-list of your pet words to keep them under control? 

                                 

Could Publication Be Your Idol?

As a Christian author, I occasionally have to ask myself a question that I will now ask you: "Is getting published becoming your idol?"

Sure, the typical image of an idol is a solid object carved from stone, or clay, or even wood. It might be painted, and it might be adorned with gold or gemstones. In our mind's eye we picture uneducated pagans bowing down, making their petitions to this object. However, an idol isn't necessarily a solid object. An idol can literally be anything for which you live, or which gives your life meaning, or which would cause you serious depression if you could not have it. With that broader description, an idol could be almost anything. For instance, a certain type of physical body. The goal of being considered intelligent or helpful. Even success at getting published.

"But wait!" you object. "I want to get published for good reasons. My manuscripts glorify God. They contain important messages people need."

However, explanations make no difference. We can rationalize our "need" for any idol, including weight loss, education, productivity, and even getting published with with good, God-glorifying material.

I will not suggest for one second that all writers over-emphasize getting published and idolize that goal. I don't believe that at all. Yet, when I see the deep pools of depression that some sink into when they can't reach that goal--or can't re-acquire it after some initial success--I can't help but wonder whether they are elevating the goal to too-lofty a pedestal in their lives? Rejection slips serve to keep me humble and to remind me that--no matter how many manuscripts I've had published--I should never live for getting published.

Dear friend, getting published will not give your life meaning. It will not affirm your reason for existence. It will not grant you new respectability. It will not add a glistening halo above your head. It won't make you special in any way. So, if you knew right now that you would never be published (or never again), would you slump into depression? If so, perhaps this publishing goal has grown into an idol in your life. Perform a heart check. Better yet, ask God to examine your heart. If your goal of writing for God has grown even larger than your love for God Himself, that would be a vital lesson to learn!

May the Lord bless you!

Rick Barry has freelanced hundreds of articles and short stories, had two novels published, and has more projects in the works.

Making Your Setting Work (It's a Character, Too!) by JoAnn Durgin

For a long time, I don’t think I truly understood how important the setting is for a novel. For a novel to be successful and resonate with readers, the setting should be a critical component, and so much that it actually becomes an actual character in the book. Think about some famous novels and their settings. Would Gone With the Wind be the same? To Kill A Mockingbird? Tom Sawyer? Would John Grisham’s Pelican Brief (or many of his legal thrillers) be the same without that unrelenting Louisiana heat? It’s difficult to imagine these particular books in any other setting. Sure, it’s the way the author wrote them, but they work. Well.

We’ve all heard it’s best to write what you know, and that extends to setting. I believe this advice is sound and good. Most authors make the settings of our books places we’ve either lived, currently live in, or else we’ve visited and done a lot of research in order to make it authentic. I wrote about San Antonio in my debut novel, Awakening, but I’ve only visited once for three days, and longer ago than I care to remember. But that’s all it took to ingrain the sights, sounds and general “feel” of this marvelous city in my mind. I visited some of the missions, the Alamo, the Riverwalk and the downtown open air markets. It was enough to spur the creative spark in me, and I knew I wanted to make it the setting of a book.

One of the biggest compliments you can get as an author is for the natives of a region you use as a setting to tell you, “You nailed it.” Here’s a confession: my second novel, Second Time Around, takes the reader from Massachusetts (where I lived for nearly eight years) to Montana. I’ve lived in Massachusetts, and the house used as my characters’ home in that book was based on our house outside of Boston. However, I’ve never even flown over much less set foot in Montana. For a large portion of the book, I needed a setting with lots of wide open spaces and freezing cold weather in November (representing the hopelessness and isolation of the main character when they first arrive), but also a setting with great opportunities for adventure and danger (on a working ranch). Being a romance, of course, there has to be a place which can also offer romantic possibilities (cold weather, warm fires, hot chocolate…you get the drift). But at least I have writer friends in Montana (thank you ACFW), and thank the Lord for the wonder that is the Internet and Google. This writing journey would be a lot harder without technology, wouldn’t it? 
 

In subsequent books, I’ve based the setting on places I’ve lived or visited in person, but I’ve gained some details from citizens of that locale and also gleaned information online. My current novella, Echoes of Edinburgh, is based on the famous city in Scotland. Yes, I’ve been there long enough to get a good “feel” of the people, the region, the culture, the customs. But having cousins who visited every summer for 30 years with photography students gave me the American “insider’s scoop” that I never could have found elsewhere. Invaluable details…

What makes a setting memorable? In my opinion, it’s all in the details, folks. They can make all the difference. Anyone can say Texas is hot and dusty during the summer. But how do you show it? By sweat snaking a winding trail down your characters’ backs, or having them frequently wipe perspiration from their foreheads or gulp down water to keep hydrated. They wear lightweight clothing and pray for rain – and when it comes, it can be torrential. Dust swirls around their boots as they walk. Mountain ranges are beautiful. You have tall trees, pathways to follow, beautiful, winding, babbling streams. Rocks to climb. The gorgeous creation of God is all around us, and in many different settings. Make it work for you and your novel!

Cities are sometimes more boring as a setting. They’re full of concrete, glass, passivity and the impersonal. Fill your book with these things, and who’d want to read it? So, what makes a city non-boring? Any number of things. Take Rome, Italy, as an example. I’ve been blessed enough to have visited twice. I will write about it someday because it’s so vibrant and alive in my mind. For such an ancient city, there’s such an absolute joy in living exhibited by the Italian citizens. Not all of them, mind you, but enough to make an impression. But I’d no sooner step behind the wheel of a car in Italy than I’d bungee jump off a cliff. You can almost feel the history oozing as you stroll the city streets, eat pasta in a sidewalk cafe, or sit around a fountain in a piazza eating strawberries purchased from the street market. Paris, France, is full of citizens who aren’t as friendly to tourists, but they sure know how to make pastry. What am I really saying here? There are other aspects such as the weather, circumstances, events, the social mores and customs—they all factor into the overall effect and impact of your novel. Make that passivity—or the liveliness—of a city work as a reflection of what’s going on inside your character.

Of course, conjuring a setting in your own mind can work equally well and, as an author, you have the freedom to create places along with your characters. Personally, I love doing this since no one can point a finger at you and tell you that you got it wrong. Real places change, but fictional locales are at the author’s discretion and whims. What fun. I’ve created two fictional settings thus far: Croisette Shores, South Carolina, in my most recent full-length, stand alone novel, Catching Serenity, and Starlight, Iowa, for my Christmas novellas. Small-town, fictional locales definitely have their own unique charm.

I’d love to hear about what settings you either write about or love to read about. What makes them work? No matter your setting, embrace it, indulge yourself in it, fully explore how it can work for your plot and characters. Above all, keep writing and keep reading! Until next time, blessings my friends.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. 1 Chronicles 29:11

JoAnn Durgin
Matthew 5:16

JoAnn’s most recent release is Starlight, Star Bright (November 2013), a Christmas novella and sequel to Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (2012) with Pelican Book Group. She is the author of five full-length novels (four in The Lewis Legacy Series). She’s currently working on edits to Echoes of Edinburgh, a Passport to Romance novella, also with Pelican Book Group, in addition to working on Moonbeams, Book #5 in the Lewis series.