Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

Hi Readers and writerly friends!

This week in Freelancing, we’re discussing dialogue tags and how to properly format them. Consider this as your new intensive, all-encompassing guide for doing fictional dialogue well.

No matter what genre you write in, learning how to write dialogue effective is an essential part of any writer’s toolkit. Poorly-written dialogue can be distracting or worse —it could cause your readers to close the book in disgust. However, dialogue that is done well can transform your characters into truly believable people and you readers into satisfied, lifelong fans. Of course, the best kind of dialogue isn’t just believable conversation between characters. Good dialogue provide exposition, involves distinct language true to the voice of the speaker, and most importantly, helps move the story along. Dialogue is directly tied to pacing, plot, and tension, and can make or break your story just as much as lame characters or a sagging plot.

This guide is separated into three parts for your convenience: 1) Dialogue Basics, 2) Punctuating Dialogue, and 3) Dialogue Tags—and is filled with cheat sheets, quick-reference-guides, examples, and more to help you with your writing! (This post took me a long time to write, so if you found it helpful, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this with your writerly friends!)

Of course, this is just my own experience as well as examples of other writers who have done dialogue well, but this is by no means a rulebook for dialogue. I’m simply a proponent of the idea that if you know the rules of the writing world well, you can effectively break them well.

Dialogue Basics

Enter late, leave early.

If you’ve been around the writing world for a moment, you might have heard this phrase tossed about when discussing scenes, pacing, and dialogue. It’s a helpful saying for remembering to start a scene at just the right time instead of too early or too late.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that “drama is life with all the boring bits cut out.” Hinging on that, you could say that good dialogue is like a real conversation without all the fluff, and one of the best/easiest ways to cut out that boring fluff is to enter the conversation as late as possible.

Think about it: How many times have you heard someone in real life or in media say, “I hate small talk.” It is the same for your readers. They don’t want to be there for every single “Hi, how are you doing today?” or “I’m doing great, how are you? Thanks for asking. The weather is lovely, isn’t it?” This is a fine and good, but its not interesting dialogue, and it’s highly unlikely that this would move any story’s plot along in a meaningful way. The same goes for other kinds of small talk that usually occurs at the beginning and end of a scene. In order to avoid this kind of slow-paced dialogue, simply enter late and leave early.

Keep dialogue tags simple.

Dialogue tags are the phrases in writing that indicate who is speaking at any given time. “I want to write a book” Layla said. In this case, “I want to write a book” is the dialogue and “Layla said” is the tag. Of course, there are plenty of other dialogue tags you could use besides “said,” such as “stated,” “exclaimed,” or “declared” and so on. When writing dialogue, you generally should keep these elaborate tags to a minimum. Think of it this way, to the reader “said” is boring and simple, but its virtually invisible. Readers expect you to use “said” and because of this, it isn’t distracting to the reader.

Remember the KISS method —Keep It Simple, Sweetie? Remember that for dialogue tags. It’s always better to air on the side of caution than risk potentially distracting your reader with overly complicated, elaborate or convoluted dialogue tags.

As American novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard put it:

“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But ‘said’ is far less intrusive than ‘grumbled,’ ‘gasped,’ ‘cautioned,’ ‘lied’” (Leonard 2021).

“Intrusive” is the operative word here. You want to bring readers into your scene and make them feel like firsthand observers, like one of the characters in the background, without drawing attention to the fact that they’re reading a book. Wordy dialogue tags are a surefire way to yank your readers out of the immersion of a story and snap them back to reality. When you raid your thesaurus for fancy dialogue tags, you risk taking readers out of the scene for a fleeting display of your verbal virtuosity. This is true for any writing where you use convoluted language where you would be better served using simple language instead. If it serves a purpose to use uncommon or elaborate verbiage, then by all means, do so, but if its just for the sake of using big words, the practice of using “wordy” language is best avoided.

Additionally, in some instances, dialogue tags can be removed altogether. If there are only two or three people present in a conversation, dialogue tags aren’t always necessary to keep track of the speaker, especially if their voices are distinct convey a character’s personality to the reader.

Descriptive action beats are your friend.

Action beats are descriptions of the expressions, movements, or even internal thoughts that accompany the speaker’s words, and are included in the same paragraph as the dialogue to indicate that the person acting is the same person who is speaking. Action beats help illustrate what’s going on in a scene, and can even replace dialogue tags, avoiding the need for a long list of lines ending in “he said,” or “she said.”

Check out the fourth part of this guide for an example of how to use action beats to strengthen and vary your dialogue structure.

Character voices should be distinct.

Another key aspect of writing realistic and engaging dialogue is make each character sound distinctly like “themselves.” This employs the use of a number of different linguistic elements, such as syntax and diction, levels of energy and formality, humor, confidence, and any speech-related quirks (such as stuttering, lisping, or ending every sentence like it’s a question). Some of these elements may change depending on the circumstances of the conversation, and especially when it comes to whom each person is speaking, but no matter what, there should always be an underlying current of personality that helps the reader identify each speaker.

Example: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

In the very first piece of dialogue in Pride and Prejudice, readers encounter Mrs and Mr. Bennet, the former of whom is attempting to draw her husband, the latter, into a conversation of neighborhood gossip.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

     Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

     “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

     Mr. Bennet made no answer.

     “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

     “You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

     This was invitation enough.

     “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.” (Austen 2002)

Austen’s dialogue is always witty, subtle, and packed with character and is never simple or convoluted. Readers instantly learn everything they need to know about the dynamic between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet from their first interaction: she’s chatty, and he’s the beleaguered listener who has learned to entertain her idle gossip.

Develop character relationships.

Dialogue is an excellent tool to demonstrate and develop character relationships throughout your story. Good dialogue establishes relationships, but great dialogue adds new, engaging layers of complexity to them.

One of the best ways to ensure your character’s dialogue reflects their personalities and relationships is to practice some dialogue writing exercises. It’s likely that you won’t actually end up using the products of these exercises in your writing, but they’re an easy, low-pressure way to practice developing your characters and their relationships to one another.

For this kind of practice, I’ve found that exercises like “What Did You Say?” are particularly helpful.

Pretend three of your characters have won the lottery. How does each character reveal the big news to their closest friend? Write out their dialogue with unique word choice, tone, and body language in mind.

If the lottery isn’t interesting enough, consider changing things up. Maybe three of your characters have a role to play in a murder investigation. Each one knows a different take on what happened. Lottery or murder investigation aside, developing your character’s relationship will teach you more about your characters themselves, their stories and circumstances, and how to write dialogue that best fits within that framework.

 Find similar exercises here.

Developing character relationships alongside and through dialogue is an excellent opportunity to work on both simultaneously. In this exercise, there are a number of characteristics that will affect how each character perceives and delivers the news that they’ve won the lottery (or that they’ve been involved in a murder investigation).

These characteristics might include whether a character:

• Is confident and outgoing vs. shy and reserved

• Takes things in a lighthearted manner rather than being too serious

• Has lofty personal aspirations or doesn’t

• Couldn’t care less or wants to help others

• Thinks they deserve good things or not

Carefully consider each of your characters and which of these categories they fall into. This should help you determine how they all relate and react to each other in the context of such news.

Show, don’t tell.

Much like the “enter late, leave early” saying, you’ve probably seen or heard this phrase making rounds throughout the writing world. It’s a sliver of advice that creatives like to use as a buzzphrase in writing communities, but there may be a golden nugget of wisdom to be found in it.

Readers enjoy making inferences based on the clues the author provides, so don’t just lay everything out on the table. This doesn’t mean be cryptic —on the contrary. It basically means you should imply information rather than outright stating it.

Take the dialogue below for example. Even if this is the first instance the reader encounters of Jones and Walker, its easy to deduce that they are police officers who used to work together, that they refer to each other by their last names, and that Jones misses Walker — and possibly wants him to come back, despite Walker’s intentions to stay away.

 Hey, Jones. Long time no see.”

“Heh, Yeah, Walker, tell me about it. The precinct isn’t the same without you.”

“Well, you know I had good reason for leaving.”

“I do. But I also thought you might change your mind.”

However, cloaking this information in dialogue is a lot more interesting than the narrator simply saying, “Jones and Walker used to work together on the force. Walker left after a grisly murder case, but now Jones needs his help to solve another.”

Of course, sometimes dialogue is a good vehicle for literally telling — for instance, at the beginning or end of a story, it can be used for exposition or to reveal something dramatic, such as a villain’s scheme. But for the most part, dialogue should show rather than tell in order to keep readers intrigued, constantly trying to figure out what it means.

Bounce quickly back and fourth.

When writing dialogue, it’s also important to bounce quicky back and forth between speakers, like in a tennis match. Consider the ping-pong pace of this conversation between an unnamed man and a girl named Jig, from Hemingway's short story, "Hills Like White Elephants".

It might seem simple or obvious, but this rule can be an easy one to forget when one speaker is saying something important. The other person in the conversation still needs to respond. Likewise, a way to effectively break this rule is to intentionally omit the other character’s response altogether if the plot warrants it. Sometimes, leaving the other character shocked proves to be just as effective on the reader. 

On the other hand, you don’t want lengthy, convoluted monologues unless its specifically intended and needed to drive the plot forward. Take a close look at your dialogue to ensure there aren’t any long, unbroken blocks of text as these typically indicate lengthy monologues and are easily fixed by inserting questions, comments, and other brief interludes from fellow speakers.

Alternately, you can always break it up using small bits of action and description, or with standard paragraph breaks, if there’s a scene wherein you feel a lengthy monologue is warranted.

Try reading your dialogue out loud.

It can be tricky to spot weak dialogue when reading it on the page or a computer screen, but by reading out loud, we can get a better idea of the quality of our dialogue. Is it sonically true to the characters’ distinct voices? Is it complex and interesting, conveying quirks and personality beyond plot? Does it help drive the plot in a meaningful way or is dialogue being used to fill space? If it is the latter, it should be removed, but more on that next.

For instance, is your dialogue clunky or awkward? Does it make you cringe to hear it read aloud? Do your jokes not quite land? Does one of your characters speak for an unusually long amount of time that you hadn’t noticed before, or does their distinct "voice" sound inconsistent in one scene? All of these problems and more can be addressed by simply reading your dialogue out loud.

Don’t take my word for it, take John Steinbeck’s! He once recommended this very strategy in a letter to actor Robert Wallston: “If you are using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.”

Remove unnecessary dialogue.

Dialogue is just one tool in the writer’s toolbox and while it’s a useful and essential storytelling element, you don’t have to keep all of the dialogue you write in your first or second drafts. Pick and choose which techniques best tell your story and present the interior life of your characters. This could mean using a great deal of dialogue in your writing, or it might not. Carefully consider your story and the characters and whether or not it makes sense for them to have dialogue between one another in any given scene. Just because dialogue can be brilliant, doesn’t mean it’s always integral to a scene, so feel free to cut it as needed.

Format and punctuate your dialogue properly.

Proper formatting and punctuation of your dialogue makes your story clear and understandable. Nothing is more distracting or disorienting within a story than poorly formatted or improperly punctuated dialogue —well, except for an excess of wordy dialogue tags instead of “said,” but I digress! Likewise, knowing when to use quotation marks, where to put commas, full stops, question marks, hyphens, and dashes will make your text look polished and professional to agents and publishers.

How to format dialogue:

• Indent each new line of dialogue.

• Put quotation marks around the speech itself.

• Punctuation that affects the speech’s tone goes inside the quotation marks.

• If you quote within a quote, use single rather than double quotation marks.

• If you break up a line of dialogue with a tag (e.g. “she said”), put a comma after the tag. However, if you put a tag in between two complete sentences, use a period.

• Speaking of tags, you don’t always need them, as long as the speaker is implied.

• If you start with a tag, capitalize the first word of dialogue.

Avoid these major dialogue mistakes.

Tighten up your pacing and strengthen your dialogue by avoiding these common dialogue issues. Although the differences in some of these examples are subtle word choice, usage frequency, and arrangement play a big part in dialogue delivery. Consider how these small changes can make a big difference in your writing.

Too many dialogue tags

As you might have guessed, the most contradictory advice you can receive and most egregious errors you can make when writing dialogue have to do with dialogue tags. Do use them. Don’t use them. Don’t use “said.” Do use “said.” Do use interesting tags. Don’t use too elaborate tags. How does the lowly writer win?

Consider this: good storytelling is a delicate balance between showing and telling: action and narrative. So, how does one do dialogue well? Craft and maintain a sustainable balance between action and narrative within your story. I can’t tell you when and when not to use elaborate dialogue tags or when  to cut tags out altogether, but I can suggest that when you examine your dialogue, keep this idea in mind and consider it when you sense the balance of action and narrative has skewed slightly (or dramatically) to one side or the other.

Constantly repeating “he said,” “she said,” and so on, is boring and repetitive for your readers, as you can see here:

So, keep in mind that you can often omit dialogue tags if you’ve already established the speakers, like so:

One can tell from the action beats, as well as the fact that it’s a two-person back-and-forth conversation, which lines belong to which speaker.  Dialogue tags can just distract from the conversation — although if you did want to use them, “said” would still be better than fancy tags like “declared” or “effused.”

Lack of structural variety

Much like the “too many tags” issue is the lack of structural variety that can sometimes arise in dialogue. It’s an issue that most commonly presents itself in narrative but can occur in dialogue as well. Not sure what I’m talking about? Take a look at these sections again:

Now, action beats are great, but here they’re used repeatedly in exactly the same way — first the dialogue, then the beat — which looks odd and unnatural on the page. Indeed, any recurrent structure like this (which also includes putting dialogue tags in the same place every time) should be avoided.

Luckily, it’s easy to rework repetitive structure into something much more lively and organic, just by shifting around some of the action beats and tags:

Another common dialogue mistake is restating the obvious — i.e. information that either the characters themselves or the reader already knows.

For example, say you want to introduce two brothers, so you write the following exchange:

This exchange is clearly awkward and a bit ridiculous, since the characters obviously know how old they are. What’s worse, it insults the reader’s intelligence — even if they didn’t already know that Sherri and Kerri were thirty-five-year-old, twin sisters, they wouldn’t appreciate being spoon-fed like this.

If you wanted to convey the same information in a subtler way, you might write it like:

This makes the dialogue more about Indiana Jones than the brothers’ age, sneaking in the info so readers can figure it out for themselves.

Unrealistic smooth-talking and clichés

In your quests to craft smooth-sounding dialogue, don’t make it flow so smoothly that it sounds fake. Unfortunately, this is a weak point of sounding your dialogue out aloud because even though it may sound good, it may not sound believable. Consider reading dialogue with a friend or critique partner to see if it sounds believable coming from someone else. If it doesn’t sound any better read by your friend, it might be an indicator that your dialogue needs some work. It can also be helpful to record dialogue (with the participants’ permission, of course) and study it for natural speech patterns and phrases. (Feel free to leave out any excess “um”s and “er”s that typically accompany authentic dialogue.) Authentic-sounding written dialogue reflects real life speech.

Likewise, you should steer clear of clichés in your dialogue as much as in the rest of your writing. While it’s certainly true that people sometimes speak in clichés (though this is often tongue-in-cheek), if you find yourself writing the phrase “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” or “Shut up and kiss me,” you may need a reality check.

For a full roster of dialogue clichés, check out this super-helpful list from Scott Myers.

Disregarding dialogue completely

Finally, the worst mistake you can make when writing dialogue is… well, not writing it in the first place! Circling back to one of the first points made in this guide, dialogue is an integral part of storytelling. It’s an important element in any story, no matter the genre because it provides exposition, indicates, personality, and character relationships, and can even be used to reveal a major plot twist during the climax.

So, what do you think of this guide? I will be adding to it periodically, so make sure to bookmark it and join my newsletter to get notifications when updates go live! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Bibliography:

1. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin Books, 2002. Amazon.

2. Du Preez, Priscilla. “sihouette of three people sitting on cliff under foggy weather photo.” Unsplash photo (Thumbnail photo), March 5, 2019.

3. Leonard, Elmore. “Elmore Leonard: 10 Rules Of Writing.” Fs blog post, accessed June 27, 2021.

4. Myers, Scott. “The Definitive List of Cliché Dialogue.” Medium article, March 8, 2012.

5. Reedsy. “A Dialogue Writing Exercise.” Reedsy blog post, accessed June 27, 2021.

Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101: How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing

• Check out my other Book Writing 101, and Freelancing posts.

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— Payton

Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

A stack of books with different points of view. Photo by Payton Hayes.

Hi readers and writerly friends!

This week in Freelancing, we’re discussing how to choose the right POV—Point of View—for your book. This refers to not only the way your story is told but also who is telling your story. The point of view is the lens through which your readers connect with your characters and having the right POV can make your story while having the wrong point of view can certainly break it. There’s no real wrong or right here, but sometimes certain viewpoints just make sense for certain stories. We’re going to look at the definition of POV, the importance of POV, the four different POV’s, what POV’s are popular in what genres, how to know when the POV you’re using is right/wrong for your novel, the top POV mistakes new writers make, and how to execute POV well so that it acts as the perfect vehicle through which you tell your story.

Point of View Definition

Point of view is (in fictional writing) the narrator's position in relation to a story being told, or  position from which something or someone is observed.

The point of view, or POV, in a story is the narrator’s position in the description of events, and comes from the Latin phrase, “punctum visus,” which literally means point sight. The point of view is where a writer points the sight of the reader.

Note that point of view also has a second definition.

In a discussion, an argument, or nonfiction writing, a point of view is a particular attitude or way of considering a matter. This is not the type of point of view we’re going to focus on in this blog post, (although it is helpful for nonfiction writers, and for more information, I recommend checking out Wikipedia’s neutral point of view policy).

I also enjoy the German word for POV, which is Gesichtpunkt, which can be translated as “face point,” or where your face is pointed. How’s that for a great visual for point of view?

Note too that point of view is sometimes called “narrative mode.”

Why is Point of View so Important?

So, why does point of view matter so much? Point of view filters everything in your story. Every detail, event, piece of dialogue, person, and setting is observed through some point of view. If you get the point of view wrong, your whole story will suffer for it.

One writing mistake I see often in my editing work is when writers use the wrong point of view for their stories. As the writer, it can sometimes be hard to tell when your story is written in the wrong point of view, but for readers it sticks out like a sore thumb. These mistakes are easily avoidable if you’re aware of them and I’ll go over just how to do that later on in this blog post.

The four different types of POV’s

• First person point of view. First person is when “I” am telling the story. The character is in the story, relating his or her experiences directly.

• Second person point of view. The story is told to “you.” This POV is not common in fiction, but it’s still good to know (this POV is common in nonfiction, such as blog posts like this one).

• Third person point of view, limited. The story is about “he” or “she.” This is the most common point of view in commercial fiction. The narrator is outside of the story and relating the experiences of a character.

• Third person point of view, omniscient. The story is still about “he” or “she,” but the narrator has full access to the thoughts and experiences of all characters in the story.

First Person Point of View

In first person point of view, the narrator is in the story and is the one who is telling the events he or she personally experiencing. The easiest way to remember first person, is that the narrative will use first-person pronouns such as My, Me, Myself, and I. First person point of view is one of the most common POVs in fiction writing. What makes this point of view so interesting and challenging, is that all of the events in the story are experienced through the narrator and explained in his or her own unique voice. This means first person narrative is both biased and incomplete, and it should be.

Some things to note about first person point of view:

• First person narrative is mostly unique to writing. While it does appear in film and theater, first person point of view is typically used in writing rather than other art mediums. Voiceovers and mockumentary interviews like the ones in The Office, Parks and Recreation, Lizzie McGuire, and Modern Family provide a level of first-person narrative in third person film and television.

• First person point of view is limited. First person narrators observe the story from a single character’s perspective at a time. They cannot be everywhere at once and thus cannot get all sides of the story. Instead, they are telling their story, not necessarily the story.

• First person point of view is biased. In first person novels, the reader almost always sympathizes with a first-person narrator, even if the narrator turns out to be the villain or is an anti-hero with major flaws. Naturally, this is why readers love first person narrative, because it’s imbued with the character’s personality, their unique perspective on the world. If I were recounting a story from my life, my own personal worldview would certainly color that story, whether I was conscious of it or not. First-person narrators should exhibit the same behaviors when telling their stories.

Some novelists use the limitations of first-person narrative to surprise the reader, a technique called unreliable narrator. You’ll notice this kind of narrator being used when you, as the reader or audience, discover that you can’t trust the narrator.

For example, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl pits two unreliable narrators against one another. Each relates their conflicting version of events, one through typical narration and the other through journal entries. Another example is Rosie Walsh’s Ghosted, where the main narrator conveniently leaves out some key information about herself and her missing lover which could change reader opinion of her, had it been presented earlier in the story.  Once it finally is presented, readers can’t help but feel they were deceived by the narrator and wonder who they should trust at the end of the story.

Other Interesting Uses of First-Person Narrative:

• Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird is told from Scout's point of view. However, while Scout in the novel is a child, the story is told from her perspective as an older woman reflecting on her childhood.

• The classic novel Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, is actually a first-person narrative within a first-person narrative. The narrator recounts verbatim the story Charles Marlow tells about his trip up the Congo river while they sit at port in England.

• Many first-person novels feature the most important character as the storyteller. However, in novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the narrator is not Jay Gatsby himself but Nick Carroway, a newcomer to West Egg, New York.

"I lived at West Egg, the — well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard — it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn and the consoling proximity of millionaires — all for eighty dollars a month."

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

2 Major mistakes I often see writers make when using First Person Point of view:

• The narrator isn’t likable. Your protagonist doesn’t have to be perfect, and in fact, that’s generally frowned upon because people want to connect with characters and no real human is perfect. They don’t have to be a cliché hero nor do they even have to be good. However, your main protagonist must be interesting. Your audience won’t stick around for even a hundred pages if they have to listen to a character they just don’t enjoy. This is one reason anti-heroes make fantastic first person narrators —they may not be perfect, but they’re almost always interesting.

• The narrator tells but does not show. We’ve heard this phrase “show, don’t tell” thrown around a lot in the writing community, and while it’s often used as a buzz phrase, and requires some elaboration to make sense, it’s especially true with first person narration. Don’t spend too much time in your character’s head, explaining what he or she is thinking and how they feel about the situation. The reader’s trust relies on what your narrator does, not what they think about doing. It’s all about action. To build on that, first person is the absolute closest a narrator can get to a reader’s personal experience—by that, I mean readers will make the most connection and feel the most represented by first person narration, as long as it is done correctly. Everything the narrator sees, feels, tastes, touches, smells, hears, and thinks should be as imaginable as possible for your reader. It needs to be the difference between looking at a photo of a field of wildflowers and actually standing in the field (mentally.)

Second Person point of view

While not often used in fiction —it is used regularly in nonfiction, web-based content, song lyrics, and even video games — second person POV is good to understand. In this point of view, the narrator relates the experiences using second person pronouns such as “you” and “your.” Thus, you become the protagonist, you carry the plot, and your fate determines the story.

Here are a few great reasons to use second person point of view:

• It pulls the reader into the action of the story

• It makes the story more personal to the reader

• It surprises the reader because second person is not as commonly used in fiction

• It improves your skills as a writer

Some novels that use second person point of view are:

• Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series? If you’ve ever read one of these novels where you get to decide the fate of the character, you’ve read second person narrative.

• Similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, there was a really interesting and unique interactive game based on Josephine Angelini’s Starcrossed Trilogy that could be played from the Figment website. It was based in Angelini’s modern-day world and surrounded the main character Helen Hamilton, who is gradually revealed to be a modern-day Helen of Troy. The game was a playable maze that took place in Hamilton’s dreams —she would wake up each night after having the same nightmare of being trapped in an endless labyrinth.

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern takes place primarily in third person but every few chapters, it shifts to second person which pulls the reader right into the story.

The opening of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern:

ANTICIPATION

The circus arrives without warning.

        No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentioned or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it wasn’t.

        The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring tree and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white striped and sizes, with and elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

        But it is not open for business. Not just yet.

        Within hours everyone in town has heard about it. By afternoon, the news has spread several towns over. Word of mouth is a more effective method of advertisement than typeset words and exclamation points on paper pamphlets or posters. It is impressive and unusual news, the sudden appearance of a mysterious circus. People marvel at the staggering height of the tallest tents. They stare at the clock that sits just inside the gates that no one can properly describe.

        And the black sigh painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:

Opens at nightfall

Closes at dawn

        “What kind of circus is only open at night?” people ask. No one has a proper answer, yet as dusk approaches there is a substantial crowd of spectators gathering outside the gates.

         You are amongst them, of course. Your curiosity got the better of you, as curiosity is wont to do. You stand in the fading light, the scarf around your neck pulled up against the chilly evening breeze, waiting to see for yourself exactly what kind of circus only opens once the sun sets.

        The ticket booth clearly visible behind the gates is closed and barred. The tents are still, save for when they ripple ever so slightly in the wind. The only movement within the circus is the clock that ticks by the passing minutes, if such a wonder of sculpture can even be called a clock.

        The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.

        The sun disappears completely beyond the horizon, and the remaining luminosity shifts from dusk to twilight. The people around you are growing restless from waiting, a sea of shuffling feet, murmuring about abandoning the endeavor in search of someplace warmer to pass the evening. You yourself are debating departing when it happens.

        First there is a popping sound. It is barely audible over the wind and conversation. A soft noise like a kettle about to boil for tea. Then comes the light.

        All over the tents, small lights begin to flicker, as though the entirety of the circus is covered in particularly bright fireflies, the waiting crowd quiets as it watches this display of illumination. Someone near you gasps. A small child claps his hands with glee at the sight.

        When the tents are all aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign appears.

        Stretched across the top of the gates, hidden in curls of iron, more firefly-like lights flicker to life. The pop as they brighten, some accompanies by a shower of glowing white sparks and a bit of smoke. The people nearest to the gates take a few steps back.

        At first, it is only a random pattern of light. But as more of them ignite, it becomes clear that they are aligned in scripted letters. First a C is distinguishable, followed by more letters. A q, oddly, and several e’s. When the final bulb pops alight, and the smoke and sparks dissipate, it is finally legible, this elaborate incandescent sign. Leaning to your left to gain a better view, you see that it reads:

Le Cirque des Rêves

        Some in the crowd smile knowingly, while others frown and look questioningly at their neighbors. A child near you tugs on her mother’s sleeve, begging to know what it says.

        “The Circus of Dreams,” comes the reply. The girl smiles delightedly.

        Then the iron gates shudder and unlock, seemingly by their own volition. They swing outward, inviting the crowd inside.

        Now the circus is open.

        Now you may enter.

—Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

There are also many short stories that use second person, and writers such as William Faulkner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Albert Camus that played with this point of view.

2 Major mistakes I often see writers make when using Second Person Point of view:

• Breaking the fourth wall completely. Some writers, such as Shakespeare often broke the first wall within their writing. However, this must be done correctly, otherwise, it yanks the reader straight out of the story and leaves them feeling distracted and often causes them to cringe at the poorly executed technique. In the plays of William Shakespeare, a character will sometimes turn toward the audience and speak directly to them. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck says:

“If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.” —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Breaking the fourth wall is a technique of speaking directly to the audience or reader (the other three walls being the setting of the story/play.) Another way of looking at it is this: it’s a way the writer can briefly use second person point of view in a first or third person narrative.

• Unintentionally alternating between first and second person. This only works if it was done intentionally and makes sense within the context of the story. I am interweaving first and second person in my blog post because I, the writer, am sharing my personal experience with you, the reader. This works and is most common in web-based content, social media or non-fiction, and it can be tricky to pull off in fiction writing.

Third person point of view

In third person point of view, the narrator is outside of the story and is relating the experiences of a character. The central character is not the narrator and in face, the narrator is not present in the story at all. The simplest way to understand third person narration is that it uses third-person pronouns, such as he/she, his/her, they/theirs.

There are two subtypes of third person point of view:

Third person omniscient – The narrator has full access to all the thoughts and experiences or all the characters in the story. This subtype of third person narration is not limited by a single viewpoint.

Examples of Third Person Omniscient:

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

• The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Read my Review Here)

• Atonement by Ian McIwan

• Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing. McIwan makes clever use of story order, tense, and third person POV to tell a story from multiple points in time, and due to its nature as a metafiction, the story recognizes itself as a work of fiction that likely could not be achieved in any other point of view.

Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasizes its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds readers to be aware that they are reading or viewing a fictional work.

Third person limited – the narrator has only some, if any, access to the thoughts and experiences of the character in the story, often just to one character. It is not uncommon for dialogue to be the primary mode of storytelling in this point of view because if the narrator has little to no access to the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters, the reader might not get that information from a third person limited narrator.

Some examples of third person limited:

• Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

• Ulysses by James Joyce

• 1984 by George Orwell

Should you use third person omniscient or third person limited?

The distinction between third person limited and omniscient point of view is unclear and somewhat ineffectual.

Complete omniscience in novels is rate—its almost always limited in one way or another—if not because the human mind isn’t comfortable/capable of handling all of the thoughts and emotions of multiple people at once, then it’s because most writers prefer not to delve that deep into each character anyways.

To determine which subtype of third person point of view you should use in your story, consider this:

How omniscient does your narrator need to be? How deep are you going to go into your character’s minds? How important is it to the story’s pacing, plot, and characterization that you reveal everything and anything they feel or thing at anytime? If its not absolutely necessary, consider leaving some parts out in order to build intrigue in your readers.

2 Major mistakes I often see writers make when using Third Person Point of view:

• Blurring the line between omniscient and limited. This happens all the time because writers don’t fully understand the very, very thin line between the two subtypes. While it can become confusing at times, there certainly is a distinction to be made and you should take great care to ensure you use one or the other in your writing, but not both at once.

• Giving readers whiplash by alternating between two characters POV’s too quickly. This happens all too often with omniscient narrators that are perhaps a little too eager to divulge all the character inner workings. When the narrator switches from one character’s thoughts to another’s too quickly, it can jar the reader and break the intimacy with the scene’s main character. Drama requires mystery, intrigue. If the reader knows each character’s emotions, there will be no space for drama.

Woman sitting at a table in the foreground with a man smoking in the background. Photo by cottonbro.

Here’s an example of third person omniscient that is poorly executed:

Meredith wants to go out for the night, but Christopher wants to stay home. He’s had a long day of work and just wants to relax, but she resents him for spending last night out with his friends instead of her.

If the narrator is fully omniscient, do you parse both Meredith’s and Christopher’s emotions during each back and forth?

“I don’t know,” Meredith said with a sigh. “I just thought maybe we could go out tonight.” She resented him for spending the previous evening out with his friends when he had to work yesterday as well. Was it such a crime for her to want to spend time with her partner?

“I’m sorry Mere,” Christopher said, growing tired of the nagging. “I had a long, crappy day at work, and I’m just not in the mood.” Why couldn’t she just let it go? Didn’t she realize how draining his work was? He felt annoyed that she couldn’t step outside of her own view for even a moment.

Going back and forth between multiple characters’ inner thoughts and emotions such as with the example above, can give a reader POV whiplash, especially if this pattern continued over several pages and with more than two characters.

The way many editors and writers get around the tricky-to-master third person omniscient point of view is the show the thoughts and emotions of only one character per scene (or per chapter.)

Some examples of third person omniscient done well:

In his epic series, A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin, employs the use of “point of view characters,” or characters whom he always has full access to understanding. He will write an entire chapter from their perspective before switching to the next point of view character. For the rest of the cast, he stays out of their heads.

• Gillian Shields expertly switches between her characters viewpoints by chapter and by book. In her Immortals series, the first book takes place from the first person POV when told by the main character and switches to third person omniscient when told by the supporting characters. The second book is told the same way. The third book instead is told by one of the supporting characters. The fourth book is told by another.

• Leda C. Muir’s series, the Mooncallers is a fantastic example of excellent execution of third person omniscient point of view as well.

How to choose the right POV for your novel

So, now that we’ve discussed the different types of POV, examples of them executed well, and the top 2 mistakes for each type, let’s discuss how to select the best POV for your story.

Firstly, there’s no “best” or “right” point of view. All of these points of view are effective in various types of stories and there are always exceptions to these “rules.” However, it is true that some POVs are often used in certain genres and some are just better suited for certain types of stories.

• First person – Most often used in YA Fiction in all subgenres, but especially in coming-of-age stories and romance. Often used in Adult romance as well. Romance stories typically alternate between main character and love interest, switching every scene or every chapter.

• Second person – Most often used in nonfiction including but not limited to: cookbooks, self-help, motivational books, entrepreneurial, business, or financial books, and interactive narratives such as Choose Your Own Adventure.

• Third person limited – Most often used in all fiction subgenres for all reading levels. This is the fiction go-to. The third person limited POV is fantastic for building tension because the narrators viewpoint is limited.

• Third person omniscient – Most often used in high fantasy or heavy science fiction.

Of course, like I said, there’s always exceptions to the rules. If you know the rules well, then you know how to break them well.

If you’re just starting out with writing, I would suggest using either first person or third person limited point of view because they’re easier to master. However, you can always experiment with different points of view and story tenses and by practicing them, you improve your ability as a writer. Good, prolific writers learn to master different points of view because it opens their writing up to a greater audience and allows more people to feel included in their writing. Of course, we haven’t even discussed inclusivity, works by authors from a marginalized community, or sensitivity writing, but that’s topic for another day. (I’ll probably cover that in this series so keep an eye out for that.)

Whatever you chose, stay consistent.

The number one issue common to all of these different points of view is that new writers often mix them up or unintentionally alternate between multiple viewpoints within one story. As mentioned under the section covering major mistakes with third person omniscient, the other points of view can suffer from unplanned interweave of multiple viewpoints. The main takeaway here is that you should pick one and be consistent. If you do choose to alternate, consider only alternating between a handful of characters and use only third person limited or first person with each one. Whatever point of view choices you make, be consistent.

There are writers who effectively and expertly mix narrative modes because they might have multiple characters who the plot revolves around, but these kinds of switches generally don’t take place until a break in the text occurs, perhaps at a scene or chapter break.

And that’s it for my blog post on the points of view and how to identify and use them! What is your favorite POV to write in? What is your favorite POV to read in? What is your least favorite POV for both of these? What POV do you struggle with most? Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to check out this week’s writing challenge!

Writing challenge: Your mission this week is to write for fifteen minutes while changing narrative modes as many times as possible. Post your writing practice in the comments and take some time to read the work of other writers here.

Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101: How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

Check out my other Book Writing 101, and Freelancing posts.

—Payton

Book Writing 101 - How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

Freytag’s Pyramid from Serious Daring by Lisa Roney. Photo by Payton Hayes.

Hi readers and writerly friends!

This week in Freelancing, we’re continuing the Book Writing 101 series with the 3rd part of the series, How to Achieve A Good Story Pacing. If you’re looking for the rest of the series, it will be linked at the end of the blog post!

What is story pacing?

In literature, pace, or pacing is the speed at which a story is told —not necessarily the speed at which the story takes place. The pace is determined by the length of the scenes, how fast the action moves, and how quickly the reader is provided with information.

Story pacing is the momentum of the story and it’s what keeps readers turning pages

Pacing is an element of storytelling that seems to trip up many new writers. It can be hard to pin down. What is a good pacing for a story? Well, to get a better idea of good story pacing, we have to look at bad story pacing first.

Pacing is also tension. It’s how you build out the rising and falling action of your scenes. When I reference “action” in this blog post, rising and falling action is what I am talking about. This may be literal action scenes, conflict, events, plot points and pinch points, and other peaks and valleys of plot.

If you read my blog post about where to start your novel, then you might remember this next bit. That post (linked at the end of this blog post) is specifically for starting a book, but it serves as a great reminder for starting/ending you scenes and chapters as well.

Pacing is also how you enter and leave scenes and chapters. It’s how you open a scene and keep the momentum all the way through to the “turning point” of that scene or chapter. It’s how you close that scene/chapter and lead into the next one. Think about the “enter late, leave early” rule when trying to achieve goo pacing within your story, and how events in your story drive the plot forward.

Bad story pacing

This usually occurs when a story is told at a pace or speed that is either just too fast or too slow for the plot and the events that happen within the story. Story pacing that is just too fast almost gives the reader narrative whiplash in that, everything is being presented so quickly that the reader just can’t seem to keep up and is lost in confusion. Story pacing that is just to slow usually ends up boring the reader and making it hard for him or her to stay motivated to finish the book.

Story pacing really has more to do with the amount of information being presented and the intervals at which it is being presented. Books that have too-fast story pacing often just bombard the reader with information faster than they can process it. For example, a thriller writer may leave things out of the story in an attempt to build intrigue but as the plot progresses, the reader will be come increasingly more confused. In fantasy, too-fast pacing usually arises when the writer drops in a ton of names in rapid succession without really giving the readers time to orient themselves.

However, on the flip side, too-slow pacing can arise in fantasy in much the same way as well. Taking entirely way too long to establish backstory or info-dumping is a great way to slow the story down and bore the reader. And truthfully, this isn’t unique to fantasy; this issue can manifest itself this way in all genres.

Pacing that is too fast: Too much information is presented too often.

Pacing that is too slow: Not enough action is presented often enough.

I know, it looks like I said the same thing twice. But the truth is, story pacing is all about balance. There is a very delicate balance between action and information that even seasoned writers struggle to master.

Identifying pacing issues with word count

This might only be useful if for writers who have critique groups, agents, or editors but essentially, you can identify bad pacing by looking at the word count of a novel. If your editor says “the word count is too low for your genre” then they’re essentially saying, your pacing is too fast, and you’ve not spent enough time building out the story and included too much action. If your editor says “the word count is too high for your genre” then they’re saying your pacing is too slow, and you’ve spent too much time building out the story and not including enough action.

Sentence structure can make or break pacing

Long, drawn-out, convoluted sentences, word paragraphs, big, pretentions words, and overly descriptive purple pose will absolutely kill your pacing. Think about these things and keep in mind that if it doesn’t add to the writing style, voice, tone or drive the plot, then you don’t need it. Characterization should be dropped in here and there, and not done in page-long descriptions with wordy backstory. Big words and extensive vocabulary should only be used if it makes sense for the voice and tone of the story, and not just for the sake of making your writing “sound smart” or upping your letter count.

This doesn’t mean that shorter and more direct sentences are key either. Like I said, it’s all about balance. The secret to achieve this balance and good story pacing is varied sentence structure. Look at the sentences below.

Sarah wanted to read a book. She got up out of her chair and grabbed a book off of her shelf and sat back down. She opened the book and began reading.

Sarah yawned, sleepily remembering it was reading time and stretched as she rose out of her chair. She slowly ambled over to her expansive bookshelf, not sure what to read next, now that she’d finished her last novel the day before. She lifted a heavy blue book with an ornate cover and carried it back to her chair where she cuddled up and began reading.

The first series of sentences is very stale and boring, and it presents the action too quickly by simply telling the reader what is happening. However, the second series of sentences is entirely too colorful and takes too long to get the info across to the reader. Look at the series of sentences below.

Sarah yawned and looked out the window, realizing the sun was setting and it was reading time. She rose out of her chair and moved to the large, oak bookshelf, filled to the brim with hardcovers and paperback in every color. Thumbing through the first few pages of several books, she found one that had intricate illustrations for ever chapter and decided that would be her next read. Sarah settled back into her cozy reading chair and opened the hefty fantasy tome, eager to begin her next adventure.

In the third paragraph, you can clearly see how varied sentence structure makes the scene more interesting. This is the key to achieving balance between action and narrative and achieving good story pacing. Mastering this writing technique will help you keep this delicate balance no matter what genre you write in because sentence structure is part of every kind of writing. I even use it in my blog post writing.

In addition to this, consider what the purpose is of your chapter or scene and if it isn’t providing the reader with key information, moving the plot forward, or making space for characterization, then perhaps you don’t need it. Scenes that serve no real purpose for the story should be cut from the manuscript because they only drag out the story and slow the pacing. Typically, all scenes should be meeting these three criteria and it’s certainly all about balancing out the time each one takes to achieve their individual purpose.

Story structure can help you with pacing

Much like sentence structure, story structure can be a great way to determine the pacing of your story and where you might be doing really well in terms of tension and pacing and where your story might be sagging a little. The 3-Act Story Structure is just one (popular) example.

I think a lot of writers have a hard time with pacing because many of us grew up learning about the 5 elements of plot with a very set-in-stone triangular structure, but I like to think of plot as more of a bell curve. In the graphics below, you’ll see the 5 Elements of Plot versus the Plot Bell Curve (based on the 3 Act-Story Structure) and how pacing looks with each of these story structuring methods.

The issue with the Elements of Plot is that this structure allows entirely too much time to pass between major plot points. This is where many writers’ issues with the “sagging middle” originate from. Look at the bell curve, where tension is kept evenly from plot point to plot point. Instead of a terribly slow and steady incline, the rising action builds tension right from the inciting incident and falling action slows tension from the midpoint to the confrontation.

So, to recap:

• Story pacing is the momentum of the story and it’s what keeps readers turning pages.

• It’s how you build out the rising and falling action of your scenes.

• Story pacing is all about balance. There is a very delicate balance between action and information

• Varied sentence structure makes the story more interesting

• Scenes that serve no real purpose for the story should be removed

• Try using the plot bell curve instead of the elements of plot to see how it affects your story’s pacing

And that’s it for my blog post on how to achieve good story pacing. I hope this post helped you and if it did, make sure to comment below and check out the related topics for more Book Writing 101 posts!

Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

See all posts in Freelancing. See all posts in Book Writing 101.

—Payton

Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

Hello readers and writerly friends!

Three friends sitting on a rocky hill at sunset at Joshua Tree. Photo by Cynthia Magana.

What’s in a name? It’s a question Shakespeare asked and many other writers today find themselves pondering because sometimes character names are a very crucial part of creating compelling characters. A name can make or break a character’s believability and so, authors should always chose carefully when selecting names for their characters. However, this isn’t something to get too in-your-head about. While there’s many factors that can influence a character’s name, it’s really up to you to chose something you feel best represents that character. If you’re just starting your novel or still in the first draft phase, consider using [Main Character], [Supporting Character 1], and [Main Antagonist] as placeholder names while you get the first draft completed. Names aren’t something to interrupt the writing process over. You can always come back to your characters later and change their names during the editing phase.

If you’re in the editing phase, this blog post is for you so, let’s get into it!

So, what actually is in a name?

As mentioned, there’s a lot of different parts of picking a name for your characters from etymology, to genre, to time-period, etc., and its easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer research you must do to carefully curate names for characters that you want to be compelling and memorable. Names are incredibly important because they tell the reader a lot about your story—cultural background, genre, influences and worldview, time-period, setting, and identity. However, picking a name that doesn’t suit your characters can do a lot of harm to your story, from distracting the reader, to losing relatability and connection between the reader and characters, which is ultimately the most important part of storytelling—the reader-character-connection.

Parents, experience, upbringing, and worldview

I go into this a little bit in my blog post, “How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters” but when crafting a character, you have to take a lot of external factors into consideration including family trees. If you have a female main protagonist in your story, its important to note that her parents are going to have a direct effect on her name, her upbringing, and her worldview.

If you’re trying to determine a name for this character you might ask yourself the following:

• Does she have both or only one of her parents and what is their situation like?

• What are their names (if you have picked already)?

• What kind of upbringing did they have?

• What kind of names would they name their daughter?

• What is the setting like and what kind of names would be prominent in this setting?

• When was the character born?

This information is all, lower portion of the iceberg and doesn’t necessarily have to make it onto the page, as long as you know the answers and how they inform characterization. These kinds of questions should be at the front of your mind when considering what to name your characters.

Genre

Contemporary, historical, and time-period pieces

First on the list, let’s look at genre as a starting point for coming up with names for characters. If you’re writing a contemporary novel or historical fiction, for example, you could use a baby name website, or modern name generator to try and spark inspiration for names. Essentially, contemporary works would encompass anything that seems realistic and plausible today and the names should follow that. Historical fiction would require some research —such as looking up popular names in certain countries during a specific year to get an idea what names were in use in the setting of your novel.

Science Fiction, High Fantasy, and invented names

I think a lot of the naming struggle comes from writers who’s works fall into the science fiction and fantasy category because they feel as if they have to completely make up new names from scratch for world building and immersion and that can be really overwhelming to both new and experienced writers alike. While you can pull names out of the air, its typically easier to base your characters and cultures off of real-world people and cultures and use real names as a starting point. For example, in short story, The Sieka of Sahn’Jatar, is set in the middle-east in Terrae Forrh and this setting is based off of the Sahara desert and the middle-east on Earth and the cultures are also based off the cultures of those locations, i.e., Iran, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Morocco, and India. Names, appearances, mannerisms, language, and accents are inspired from these cultures as well. However, the Nelnaiian elves in the southern part of the continent are inspired by France and their language is mildly derivative of both French and Spanish.

Essentially, if you had to compare your fantasy/sci-fi characters and cultures to that of the real world, which ones would the be most like? Once you determine this, research the language and names of that real-world culture and see what minor twists you can put on existing names to tailor them to your world while keeping with a general theme for consistency’s sake.

For example, if I wanted to name a young elven girl that would have lived in Sahn’Jatar, I might pull names from Syria. One I found was Amira. To make this more suited for my fantasy world and less like I found it in a baby names list, I might add or remove vowels/consonants until I have something new. Aamira or Amiira could work. Or I could even use Ammira or Amirra.

If I wanted to keep the pronunciation but change the spelling, I could use Emira or Amire. If I wanted to make the name or masculine I could tack an “o” to the end of the name or change out the “a”s for “o”s such as in Amiro, Omiro.

I could swap letters around altogether to end up with Imiro, Omira, Imira, or Amiri.

Pro tip: Always double check that your result isn’t something that exists or is widely popular in your inspo culture or another culture. For example, if my result from the name exercise above was Omar, then I’d simply be back at square one. It would be okay to use this name because of its origin in Muslim culture, but I would have to be cognizant of the fact that this is a real name/word/concept in an existing culture. It might be better to tweak it again if I didn’t want readers to think “Hey, that’s my name!” or that I simply pulled it out of a list. Instead, I might use Omaar and so on. Just know, that you might have to go through this process a few times to come up with the most perfect, original names. Certainly, cross-check your work.

The main takeaway here is that you’d use existing names and cultures as a starting point and tweak them until the become x) as original as possible while y) fitting the characters and setting of your story.

Consider these things when trying to invent your own character names:

• What language and culture are the from? What are they inspired by?

• How are vowels and consonants pronounced?

• Are male and female names/words conjugated differently?

• Are their honorifics such as with Korean or Japanese?

• What do your names suggest about society, class, and privilege?

Use the answers to these questions as a rule-system for naming your characters, so that you can ensure consistency and uniformity among members of specific societies, groups, and kingdoms. Of course, there will always be exceptions to the rules, especially if you have regions that are sort of melting pots of culture.

And on the other hand, you do want to be careful when using real-world cultures as inspiration for your invented world. Try to avoid using stereotypes in your fantasy if they’re offensive, or harmful to the culture you drew inspiration from. For example, in my short story I mentioned earlier, the Saabuli, a warband and reigning power over Sahn’Jatar is inspired by militant Muslim culture, however I try my absolute best to avoid including stereotypes or mention of terrorist themes in the story. Just be mindful of whatever culture you’re drawing inspiration from and make sure to do your research.

Additionally, ensure your names all fit well together. Make sure your first names and last names both look aesthetically good together as well as sonically work well with one another. Take time and care to ensure your all the names in your entire cast of characters make sense together against the backdrop of your setting and genre. You wouldn’t have a high fantasy story where all the characters have intricate names except one, who’s name is Jerry, right? And of course, the same goes for Sci-Fi.

Naming places

As mentioned in my blog post about creating compelling characters, the setting/world is also a character in a sense, and especially in Sci-Fi and fantasy where a lot of worldbuilding takes place, it’ quite common to have to come up with names for universes, galaxies solar systems, worlds, continents, countries, regions/provinces/states, counties, cities, towns and infrastructure/landforms. I would argue that naming places in Sci-Fi and fantasy is pretty similar to coming up with names for people. The only differences are a) there may be several words/spaces/punctuation in the name, and b) infrastructure and landforms may be included in the name.

An example from my own writing— a river in Terrae Forrh is called the Lae’ir’nali river. There are also some tepuis in Terrae Forrh, a singular one called Kuketi Tepui, and a mass of tepuis, upon which a city has been formed, is called Asyanir, The Tabletop City. Another name for tepui is table-top mountain. So, you can see how I used the different landforms in their own names.

History and Culture

All names are rooted in history and culture and as mentioned before it’s a good idea to take inspiration from existing history and culture as a starting point, even if you’re not trying to make up your own names from scratch. Your challenge as the writer, is to come up with a fairly concrete historical and cultural basis for your names.

Of course, if you have various cultures represented in your book, consider how their names might sound different. I wouldn’t expect my French-derivative names to sound anything like my Syrian-derivative names. It all has to do with characterization, worldbuilding, and ultimately identity. If you’re writing a Sci-Fi story that takes place across multiple planets with different races, consider what various naming conventions may be used to give characters their names and how they fit in with those races and cultures.

Name trends

Something to keep in mind when naming characters is that names do rise in and fall out of popularity over the years and names do go through trends, especially first names, since last names are usually passed down through the family line or are adopted/dropped with change in marital status. First names are often affected by gender and tradition. Male names are often passed down in patrilineal fashion whereas girls may be named after a grandmother, aunt, or godmother instead.  If the names in your book have been passed down through your fictional families’ bloodlines, consider how and where they got those names and why they would pass them down. Additionally, you should consider the religious and traditional aspects of inherited names as well.

US map showing states where the names Ashley and Jessica were the most popular in 1992 based on data provided by the Social Security Administration.

Graph showing the popularity of the name Ashley between 1970 and 2012, with prevalence peaking in 1988 at roughly 50,000 children with this name. Data provided by the Social Security Administration.

Names not only reflect culture, but they reflect character

It’s a sort of chicken versus egg cycle when it comes to characters and names—the name becomes the character, and the character becomes the name. Whether we realize it or not, our name is very much a part of our identity. Think about how characters might behave differently if they had a unique/hard to pronounce/read/spell name as opposed to having a common easy name. My name for example, is Payton and I was at least fourteen before I ever encountered anyone else with that exact same spelling and they were a guy! It was a relatively uncommon name when I was growing up and people would always ask me “Oh, is it Peyton with an e?” and I’d have to correct them. So, as an adult, I naturally have a complex about my name and the way its spelled. I take pride in knowing my name is somewhat unique, but I know I may never find my name on a Coke bottle and that’s just how it is. I am just as befitting of my name as my name is a part of my identity.

However, I grew up when the name “Ashley” was very, very popular and likely knew over 20 different Ashley’s throughout K-12, including one of my best friends and my older sister. I decided I was so sick of hearing that name in all my classes and with friends, I would never name my daughter that if I had one. I remember I had a music class one year where there were three different Ashleys in that class. We had to call them Ashley C., Ashley T., and Ashley H just to tell them apart.

Consider how names might influence your characters’ personalities:

•  Are they self-conscious about their name?

• Do they feel like their name suits them?

• Do they get picked on in school because of the spelling?

• Do they have a thick skin because they’re used to people butchering the pronunciation?

• If their name is really common, do they hate their name for it’s lack of uniqueness?

• Do they get confused with other kids in their class (Such as with the Ashley example above)?

• Do they change their name or go by a nickname to establish some sense of identity and individuality?

• How are your character’s perceived and then treated because of their names?

Because of the “which one came first?” nature of the naming/character process you can really work backwards or forwards. That’s why I suggest writers use placeholder names while they get their first draft done. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, or green or experienced with characterization—the naming process can be tricky for any kind of writer. It’s a very experimental process with a lot of playing around with words and culture and language to see what works and what doesn’t.

Additionally, remember to do research within your genre to determine if the “popular” name you’ve chosen for your main protagonist is not the same or at all similar to other books in that genre. After you’ve gone to the trouble to find the perfect name for your character, it would be a shame for readers to just get him/her mixed up with another character from a completely different story by an entirely different author.

Examples of bad names

Anachronistic names

Nothing severs the reader-character connection faster than a name that distracts or annoys the reader or is so forgettable that the reader has to flip back through earlier pages just to remind themselves of the main character’s name. Try to avoid names that are just absolutely outlandish for your setting and genre. If you’re writing about a time in which you did not live through personally, do your due diligence and conduct as much research as you can to ensure your names fit the time period about which you’re writing. Names that stick out as being unrealistic for the time period are a dead giveaway that the author lacks experience in said time period. For example, if I was writing a story set in England in the 1800’s I might give the name Matilda to my main protagonist, but if I named her Maylee it would be a clear sign, I didn’t do my research on the time period. You just can’t give names that were popular in 2007 to characters that were born in 1943.

Distracting names or names that just don’t make sense

Likewise, names that are distracting in other ways—such as Jev, Patch, or Vee Sky in Hush, Hush, has always been distracting to me. I never felt like any of these names suited the characters they were given too and wondered if Fitzpatrick could have spent a little more time naming her characters. In the same vein you don’t want names that are going to be completely unpronounceable (ornate names are often best left for fantasy and sci-fi, but even then they need to be pronounceable and relatively easy to read.)

Forgettable names or names that sound too alike

Additionally, names that are forgettable or easy to mix-up with others are just as bad. When I read the Angel series by L.A. Weatherly, I found myself often getting the side characters names mixed up or forgetting them altogether. The supporting angel killer characters all blended together and the angel’s names—such as Paschar and Bascal—were very hard to tell apart (and imagine listening to those names on audiobook, you’d never remember the difference between them!) Likewise, you want to make sure that you don’t have too many characters with names starting with an “a” if the main character’s name starts with an “a”. Don’t be afraid to have some diverse names.

Resources for coming up with names and how to save names

As I mentioned earlier, for fantasy, I like to derive invented names from existing cultures, but how/where do I find these names? And what if you want to use names that do exist for a contemporary work, where would you go to find them?

Baby name websites and random name generator sites are key here. I wouldn’t use the fantasy name generator because it pulls fictional names from existing works which can be plagiarism if you’re not careful and aware of this. Additionally, you can use naming books such as LLewellyn’s Complete Book of Names.

If you’ve found some names you’d like to keep for later, I would suggest making a digital list somewhere, be it in Microsoft Word, Evernote, Google Docs, Scrivener, Pages, or what have you, keep a running list of Female First Names, Male First Names, Non-binary names and Surnames.

Also, on the topic of Non-binary and unisex names, consider the history of names that originally were male names but became popular for females and vise versa. Also consider how you can put a new spin on a traditionally binary name to breath new life into it and use it in a way it has never been used before. And while writing niche is important because you do want people to have some specifics to make connections to, you should consider if its possible to use unisex or non-binary names in your stories because they are more inclusive and will help a wider audience of readers connect with your characters and their story.

Naming Miscellany

Naming Villains

When naming characters, and villains especially, double check that your “perfect names” don’t actually exist in the world. This serves as a final pass on your part to ensure that no accidental libelous writing can be found in your book because your villain’s name is almost entirely made-up by you. I always Google my villain names just to ensure that no one is going to come knocking because they ended up as the bad guy in my book.

I had a friend who was named Katniss Everdeen (no, I swear I am not making this up.) and when Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy, The Hunger Games came out, it was an absolute nightmare for her. She said she couldn’t travel or get pulled over without having TSA and Police grill her about her supposed fake name. She said she considered changing her name, but she doubted the process would be any less grueling than day-to-day life because wherever she went to change her name, they didn’t take her seriously. Finally, almost a decade after the hype blew over, she has found a little peace, but people still ask her about it to this day.

Four friends watching the sunset. Photo by Helena Lopes.

Using your friend’s names

Feel free to pay homage to you friends, family and people who have inspired you but using their names in your stories but try to limit it to only one of their names as opposed to full names, and again, don’t used these names for villains or characters painted in a bad light.

Taking inspiration from existing works of fiction

Be very careful when taking inspiration from existing works. Some works of fiction are just so, SO popular that the names of the characters in these works are just as famous as celebrities. It is very apparent when the name Edward shows up in a new writer’s work, that they were obsessed with Twilight growing up, or the name Jace for the love interest of the female, main protagonist, after Jace Wayland appeared in the fan-favorite Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare.

And that’s it for my guide to naming fictional characters and places! This was the fourth installment of my Book Writing 101: How To series. Let me know what you think of coming up with names and if this blog post helped you, leave me a comment down below! At the end of this post is a list of related topics including a link to my Story Binder Printables, and the first 3 parts of this series. See you next week for part 5!

Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101 - How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

• LLewellyn’s Complete Book of Names

• Babynames.com

—Payton

Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

Hi readers and writerly friends!

The How-To Series continues! This week, in Freelancing, we’re going to discuss how to come up with story ideas and what to do with them! This is normally where I’d direct you towards a useful, related blog post, but we’re gathering quite the list already, so I’ll just leave that bit at the end of this post for your convenience!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming!

So, where do book ideas come from?

Book ideas can come from anywhere. That’s it. Blog post over. We can all pack up and go home. Right?

Well, yes, book ideas can come from practically anywhere, but it takes more than just a juicy theme or a compelling character to make a book. You certainly need those elements present to make a thrilling novel, to be sure, but its so much more than that. However, we’re not here to discuss the elements of a novel —no, we did that last week. (Check the links below!)

While novel ideas can come from just about and where and anything, you can also brainstorm novel ideas. Think about your favorite novels and see how you can create a mashup of two or more stories that would fit well together and put your own twist on it, such as Alexa Donne’s Jane Eyre in Space —Brightly Burning, or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, (the same writer who did Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter!) for example. While the latter is a literal mash-up, the former is more like a mash-up or genre-bender with Donne’s own twist on the original premise.

So, think about how you can put your own spin on your favorite tales!

How would x-story be different if it were…

• set in space? in the center of the Earth? on another planet?

• told in another genre?

• told from the opposite gender or a non-binary narrator?

• told from someone with 30-years age difference?

• told from the perspective of an animal?

• mashed-up with your favorite movie?

• told from a different POV or story tense?

 Write the book YOU want to read

These are just a few ways to put a refreshing spin on old stories to make them feel new. You can also consider what kind of book YOU want to read. How would your favorite story be better? How could you change it to include certain elements you feel it is lacking, but with a whole new cast of characters, a new theme, and a fresh new setting? How can you rework and existing story to include more representation for a minority?

Explore fun websites to spark inspiration

I have an interesting little blog post that does just this! (It’s listed at the end of the blog post too!) Essentially this post is a long, organized list of fun websites that you can read or interact with to spark inspiration for your next book. If you already know what you might like to write about, try some of these sites out to see how you can put a new spin on it to make it your own story that has never been told before. For instance, I might like to try rewriting Hush, Hush, but instead of the typical plot points that occur throughout that story, I might swap the genders of the characters, and set it in 1943, where an asteroid shower has been happening for the last 30 years. See how that immediately changes the whole story? It might not be the best example, but you get the idea! Consider reading articles on news sites from Buzzfeed to the New York Times to get inspiration from the crazy every-day lives of other people, like Florida Man. Sometimes, the truth can be stranger than fiction and can spark even the most outrageous novel ideas that eventually become great stories!

Read bad books!

Ever heard of BookTube? Well, if not, then bless you! It’s what book YouTubers and others in the community like to call the little corner of the video-streaming service that is dedicated to all things bookish!

Consider looking up scathing reviews of books you may or may not have heard of and see how you can rewrite them to succeed in the areas they failed. Obviously, none of this advice is suggesting you plagiarize, by any means. However, it is okay to take an overly broad and vague story premise, mold it, and make it your own. How can you turn this book that is absolutely loathed by the Bookish Community into a novel that readers everywhere will love simply by reimagining the things they went wrong with? For instance, there are plentiful mixed (and mostly critical) reviews for Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings Zenith. 

Here is the description from Goodreads.com:

Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she's just Andi, their friend and fearless leader.

But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder's all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi's past.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.

Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.

—Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings, Zenith

This book has a 3.11 average rating and is most known for its unconvincing worldbuilding, lack of original vocabulary explanation (the author drops in made-up words without explaining what they mean beforehand and leave the reader to remain confused, since there is a lack of a glossary in the book as well?) sci-fi elements that simply don’t make sense —such as impenetrable glass spaceships (with metal defense covers?) and golden, double-trigger revolvers— characters that are lazily thrown together and also do not make sense, poor-quality writing, overwhelming number of clichés present throughout, and—I’ll save you the rest because I could go on and on. The point is that this novel was incredibly overhyped, and fans of Alsberg’s YouTube videos were sorely disappointed when the book did not deliver.

So, as a writer, how could rework this story to succeed where it failed? How can you take extra time and immense care to ensure your characters are compelling and are actively evolving throughout the story? What kind of research can you do to verify that your story keeps in line with traditional sci-fi elements, while managing come across in a refreshing, interesting, and new way? How can you make sure your readers thoroughly understand the vocabulary and systems present in your book? What do you personally wish had been done differently? These are the types of questions you have to consider when brainstorming, because if you think you have the skill to rework a very poorly received influencer novel such as Zenith, then you just might have a story idea on your hands. I would suggest reading books that have overwhelmingly terrible reviews and seeing if you can distill the poor, unfinished, low-quality work into something fresh and new that you too would want to read.  You can also do this with movies, TV shows, plays, music, and any other art form that leaves you feeling underwhelmed or unsatisfied once you’ve finished consuming it.

One fantastic example of a writer who reworked a story they were unsatisfied with is Claudia Grey’s Defy the Stars which she wrote after seeing the movie Prometheus and being dissatisfied with how the movie’s producers portrayed David 8. She was inspired to rework the story and write her own book about an android the way she wished it had been told.

In an interview for Nerdophiles on Twitter, Grey explained how she got the inspiration for Defy the Stars from Prometheus:

How did you come up with the idea of writing Defy the Stars?

You know, the actual genesis of this story came a few years ago when Prometheus came out. A lot of it had to do with Michael Fassbender’s performance as David 8. He just walked right into the uncanny valley and stayed there and it was great.

One area the movie didn’t really explore much but that was really interesting was the fact that Elizabeth Shaw was trying to really evaluate how much of David is machine. It’s this very tiny thing but I thought that was a really interesting thing they should have played with more. They have this person who has this other mission – her job is not to analyze this guy – but who spends time trying to figure out if she’s working with a machine or if she’s working with somebody. And that’s not going to be a question that has a really solid answer.

That idea then took root and became the idea of Defy the Stars.

—Claudia Grey, Nerdophiles

Read more from this article in the link below!

Another great example of a story premise that was reworked is “Errant” by Diana Peterfreund.

As per Goodreads.com:

In 18th century France, a noble family prepares to celebrate their daughter's arranged marriage by holding a traditional unicorn hunt. But when an unusual nun arrives at the chateau with her beloved pet to help the rich girl train, nothing goes as expected. Starring hunters, fine ladies, fancy frocks, and killer unicorns.

—Diana Peterfreund, Errant (Killer Unicorns #0.5)

This short story is not only a historical reimagining of arranged marriages with never-before-seen traditions, but it’s also a fantasy. With KILLER UNICORNS. It’s exquisite.

Don’t be afraid to look to other media where narratives left you feeling dissatisfied and consider how you can tell them in a new way that succeeds where these stories failed. And on the flip side, look at where your favorites succeeded and consider how you can channel that into your story idea.

Take inspiration from your own hobbies and interests

Are you a gamer? Consider writing yourself into the world of your favorite video game and then change it to make it your own. Are you a chef? Consider how you can reimagine cook-books to find balance between overly chatty blog posts and old-school recipe-only cook books that lacked that certain something something. What kind of morbid curiosities can you dive deeper into to pull a story from? I personally have a morbid curiosity with true crime and sinkholes even though they both creep me out. Maybe I could write a thriller about people adventuring into the world’s deepest sinkhole only for the trip to go awry and lead to murder, mayhem, and mystery as the characters grow increasingly desperate to survive being trapped inside the belly of the earth?

Yeah, no I wouldn’t write that. Not ever. Not even if you paid me. Sinkholes and caves are the worst!

But you could! You could write about LITERALLY ANYTHING.

What weird thing are you obsessed with? Can you turn it into an interesting, new, dark, fantasy? How can you weave that topic into a novel?

Examine events and people form history to spark inspiration

What is your favorite time period to study? I personally love the Revolutionary war and the romantic period in literature. What chunk of history fascinates you? (Leave a comment below!) How can you take your favorite elements of that time period and either modernize them or convert them from history to fantasy?

Subscribe to writing prompt websites and social media pages

There are TONS of writing prompt profiles on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram and not to mention the plethora of other websites on the world wide web. You can find story ideas on reddit or on Wattpad too! I personally am subscribed to @redditvoice, @reddit, @mr.reddit and @writing.prompt.s on Instagram and I am signed up to receive daily writing prompts from Storyaday.org (they also have a great list of where to find story prompts). Likewise, you can purchase writing prompt books or even play around on your favorite meme sites to spark inspiration. You can also take inspiration from fanfiction as well!

Those are just a few ways to come up with ideas, but they can truly come from anywhere. The truth is, the more media you consume and the more life experiences you have, the more avenues you have open for story ideas to just waltz into your life. Watch some movies, read a few books, go out and catch a local play and then sit down for a good ole brainstorming session and see what you can come up with.

How to keep your story ideas once you’ve been inspired

MS Word document with New Story Ideas. Alternatively, you can use Pages or Google Docs. Photo by Payton Hayes.

Just like with writing, there’s a ton of different methods of jotting down your story ideas. You can keep them in a notebook or binder. You can make an ongoing Google Doc or Microsoft Word Document. You can store them in Scrivener or Evernote. It really doesn’t matter what you use. Just make sure you keep them organized and include enough information so when you come back to them, you remember your ideas vividly and know where to pick them back up. I prefer to keep my fleeting ideas in a single Microsoft Word document titled “New Story Ideas” where everything is in a bulleted list.

 Sometimes, the ideas a fully fleshed out while others are simply one-liners because that’s all I could think of when I was writing it down for later. Figure out what works for you and keep it in an easy to reach place so you can access it whenever the creative spirit strikes you! If you can try to write a brief synopsis for your book ideas so you can come back to them and know exactly what you were talking about 1, 2 or 5 years later. Additionally, don’t be afraid to let your story ideas ferment within that list and feel free to add to them over time when you get more inspiration for them.

And that’s it for my blog post on how to come up with story ideas and how to keep them once you’ve gotten them! Brainstorming is such a personal process and can be different for every writer. How do you come up with ideas? Let me know in the comments below and don’t forget to check back next Friday with another installment of this Book Writing 101 Series! Part 4 will be out next week!

 Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

• Nerdophiles Interview with Claudia Grey

• Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love (Errant by Diana Peterfreund)

See all posts in Freelancing. See all posts in Book Writing 101.

Thumbnail photo by Jason Goodman.

—Payton

Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

Hi readers and writerly friends!

I’m so glad you’re here and I can’t wait to get back into this series! (I may have gone on a  mini vacation/camping and I have been playing a lot of WoW lately! Hello, Shadowlands!)

In any case, after a long-awaited return, the How-To Series is back and this week in Freelancing, we’re going to discuss where to start your novel. Make sure to if you haven’t yet read my blog post, “Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)” ! It’s a great first step to writing your novel. If you’re ready to start bringing your story to life, just keep reading to learn how to start your book in the right place!

The importance of starting your book in the right place

You might have heard this phrase —I think you might have started this story in the wrong place— before from a friend or critique group or what have you. It’s actually a very useful and critical piece of advice because the start of your novel is arguably the single most important part. From the very first page/scene, readers get an idea about your voice as a writer, what the story will be about, what the characters are like, and more. The first page just might be the most important part of your book. But don’t fret! It’s doesn’t have to be as dramatic or as daunting as it first may seem. The key to a good opening scene is one that introduces character, conflict, setting, and ideally, stakes. The opening scene should establish your main protagonist (or if you’re writing with flashbacks, it can introduce your antagonist too!), introduce the main conflict/themes of the story, present the setting as both where and when the story takes place (and what rules/systems/cultures and other aspects exist there), and should reveal the stakes of the story. 

Achieve balance between action and introduction through pacing

This of course, is going to require much of you since there is a lot to accomplish in the opening scene, to be sure. However, the secret is in the pacing. Whenever someone says “I think you might have started this story in the wrong place” it has to do with pacing more than the actual location in the plotline. For example, if you start your story too early or too late, that simply means you haven’t given enough time to establish all of these aspects of a good opening scene: a) character, b) conflict, c) setting, or d) stakes. If you start your story too early, then you will end up with a pacing that feels slow or takes entirely way too long to get the proverbial ball rolling. However, if you start your story too late, then your story will feel rushed and the reader will feel confused and as if they have no clue what is going on. The former usually presents itself in a “waking up” or “weather scene” which is typically irrelevant and will bore your reader, while the latter presents itself typically in action scenes, where the reader is dropped into a situation where there is just not enough information to assess said action.

Start just before the inciting incident

A helpful tip I always try to tell new writers is that they should start their story just before the inciting incident. This doesn’t necessarily mean, fifteen minutes before the action, but it can. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the story will start five minutes before the action, but it can. It really depends on your story and the plot you have created, but you should always try to start your story just before the thing happens that sets the story in motion.

For instance, if you’re writing a YA Highschool Paranomal romance— where a girl discovers she’s a vampire while she’s at school and everyone makes fun of her— you wouldn’t start the story with her waking up. Instead, you might start with your main protagonist sitting in class when she starts feeling unwell. Thoughts are racing through her mind as she struggles to pay attention to her instructor. She can hear her heartbeat drumming her ears, but wait—its not her heartbeat she hears, its her classmates’ and she can hear their blood pumping through their veins as well. Suddenly, she gets up and rushes to the bathroom just to get away from it. When she looks in the mirror, she’s horrified that there’s no reflection. Another girl comes out of the seemingly empty stalls behind her and comments on how pail she looks. Her best friend rushes into the bathroom after her to check on her at the request of her teacher. They look at her in awe as they realize she’s just begun to transition from human to vampire. And to top it all off, the popular girl group comes into the bathroom…

Of course, this is a really overplayed and cheesy cliché, but I’m sure you understand my point. I wouldn’t start a story like this with the weather or someone waking up, or going to sleep, and neither should you, although many, MANY stories seems to start in this fashion. In this example, the inciting incident is the main protagonist transitioning into a vampire. However, you could start this story with her sitting in class when this physical transformation comes on.

Get to the party late, leave early

This advice might not be the best for real life situations, but it works wonders for writing stories. The first part of this saying suggests you should open your story with a social gathering of some sort, or the party. All kinds of different people might find themselves at a party (or other social event, it doesn’t have to be a party. Consider how the event might be different if it were set in a fantasy story or murder mystery!) Think about what groups might attend this party and how your cast of characters fit into this backdrop. Consider where the party might take place and how you can use this sub-setting to establish your story’s greater setting. Present the stakes of the story by introducing the relationships among characters and how they interact with one another. If you haven’t read my blog post, “How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters,” you should check it out. I discuss how setting can even be a character of its own and how characters drive the plot. 

The second part of this saying refers to when your characters actually get to the proverbial party, i.e., when does the story start in reference to the inciting incident. As mentioned previously, you don’t have to start the story right before things change and set the story in motion, but it’s always good to start it as early before this as you can. Likewise, the latter part of the saying —leave early, reminds writers to close the scene early. Don’t end things prematurely, but definitely move on before things start to peter out and get boring for the reader. If your characters are at a party, don’t write until they’re standing around trying to say goodbye for half an hour after everyone else has already left. If it’s not interesting or crucial for character development, and doesn’t drive the plot forward, you don’t need it.

The Hush, Hush Saga by Becca Fitzpatrick. Photo by Payton Hayes.

Let’s talk about prologues

Prologues are great for some books and story-killers for others. For sci-fi and fantasy novels, prologues are typically told from an alternative point of view and/or story tense, i.e., third-person, past-tense. They serve as a great way to throw in extra worldbuilding lay the groundwork for systems and other aspects of your story. However, prologues don’t always give an accurate portrayal of what your book will be about, for this reason. Likewise, an unfortunate occurrence in the reader world, is that many readers just skip over the prologue entirely. One way I have found to get around this is to write a flashback/repeat prologue — where you start with a scene that will occur later in the book but will not make complete sense until the reader reaches that point in the story and puts the puzzle pieces together for his or herself. This can be tricky, however and depending on your plot/genre it might not make sense for your novel. If I do end up writing a prologue, I prefer to do it once the story is completed. Naturally, your story should be able to stand on its own without a prologue. I would check out prologues from popular stories in your genre or review prologues from your favorite books to get an idea of how to execute a successful prologue.

• If you are going to write a prologue, here are some general tips.

• Keep it short and sweet, but not too short of course.

• It should align with the tone and themes of your story If it is told from a different tense or point-of-view, make sure its not a stark contrast from the rest of the storytelling so readers can get an accurate idea of the narrator’s voice for the rest of the story. 

Prologues naturally slow down the pacing of a story, so consider whether your story really needs to have one. If the answer is yes, consider what information will be present and how you can weave it into the story later, to avoid readers missing crucial story details if they do decide to skip your prologue.

Examples of good openings:

Example 1: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

I’m going to start with my all-time favorite series —you guessed it, Hush, Hush, by Becca Fitzpatrick. (And you thought I wouldn’t, tsk, tsk tsk.)

Hush, Hush does have a prologue, but after that it starts off very domestic, or day-in-the-life but quickly grabs the readers attention on page one. I personally like to think of the first chapter as the true starting point of the story. While the elements in the prologue come back around later in the story, it could also do without it.

I’ve included this entire chapter for educational purposes only. All credit goes to Becca Fitzpatrick and Simon and Shuster Publishing.

1

COLDWATER, MAINE, PRESENT DAY

At my side, Vee Sky said, “This is exactly why the school outlaws camera phones. Pictures of this in the ezine would be all the evidence I’d need to get the board of education to axe biology. And then we’d have this hour to do something productive— like receive one-on-one tutoring from cute upperclass guys.”

“Why Vee,” I said, “I could’ve sworn you’ve been looking forward to this unite all semester.”

Vee lowered her lashes and smiled wickedly, “This class isn’t going to teach me anything I don’t already know.”

“Vee? As in virgin?”

“Not so loud.” She winked just as the bell rang, sending us both to our seats, which were side by side at our shared table.

Coach McConaughy grabbed the whistle swinging from a chain around his neck and blew it. “Seats, team!” Coach considered teaching tenth-grade biology a side assignment to his job as varsity coach, and we all knew it.

“It may not have occurred to you kids that sex is more than a fifteen-minute trip to the backseat of a car. It’s science. And what is science?”

                “Boring,” some kid in the back of the room called out.

                “The only class I’m failing,” said another.

                Coach’s eyes tracked down the front row, stopping at me. “Nora?”

                “The study of something,” I said.

He walked over and jabbed his index finger on the table in front of me. “What else?”

“Knowledge gained through experimentation and observations.” Lovely. I sounded like I was auditioning for the audiobook of our text.

“In your own words.”

I touched the tip of my tongue to my upper lip and tried for a synonym. “Science is an investigation.” It sounded like a question.

“Science is an investigation,” Coach said, sanding his hands together. “Science requires us to transform into spies.”

Put that way. Science almost sounded fun. But I’d been in Coach’s class long enough not to get my hopes up.

                “Good sleuthing takes practice,” he continued.

                “So does sex.” Came another back-of-the-room comment. We all bit back laughter while Coach pointed a warning finger at the offender.

“That won’t be part of tonight’s homework.” Coach turned his attention back to me. “Nora, you’ve been sitting beside Vee since the beginning of the year.” I nodded but had a bad feeling about where this was going. “Both of you are on the school eZine together.” Again I nodded. “I bet you know quite a bit about each other.”

Vee kicked my leg under our table. I knew what she was thinking. That he had no idea how much we knew about each other. And I don’t just mean the secrets we entomb in our diaries. Vee is my un-twin. She’s green-eyed, minky blond, and a few pounds over curvy. I’m a smoky-eyed brunette with volumes of curly hair that holds its own against even the best flatiron. And I’m all legs, like a bar stool. But there is an invisible thread that ties us together; both of us swear that tie began long before birth. Both of us swear it will continue to hold for the rest of our lives.

Coach looked out at the class. “In fact, I’ll bet each of you knows the person sitting beside you well enough. You picked the seats you did for a reason, right? Familiarity. Too bad the best sleuths avoid familiarity. It dulls the investigative instinct. Which is why, today, we’re creating a new seating chart.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Vee beat me to it. “What the crap? It’s April. As in, it’s almost the end of the year. You can’t pull this kind of stuff now.”

Coach hinted at a smile. “I can pull this stuff clear up to the last day of the semester. And if you fail my class, you’ll be right back here next year, where I’ll be pulling this kind of stuff all over again.”

Vee scowled at him. She is famous for that scowl. It’s a look that does everything but audibly hiss. Apparently immune to it, Coach brought his whistle to his lips, and we got the idea.”

“Every partner sitting on the left-hand side of the table—that’s your left—move up one seat. Those in the front row—yes, including you, Vee—move to the back.”

Vee shoved her notebook inside her backpack and ripped the zipper shut. I bit my lip and waved a small farewell. Then I turned slightly, checking out the room behind me. I knew the names of all my classmates … except one. The transfer. Coach never called on him, and he seemed to prefer it that way. He sat slouched one table back, cool black eyes holding a steady gaze forward. Just like always. I didn’t for one moment believe he just sat there, day after day, staring into space. He was thinking something, but instinct told me I probably didn’t want to know what.

He set his bio text down on the table and slid into Vee’s old chair.

I smiled. “Hi. I’m Nora.”

His black eyes sliced into me, and the corners of his mouth tilted up. My heart fumbled a beat and in that pause, a feeling of gloomy darkness seemed to slide like a shadow over me. It vanished in an instant, but I was still staring at him. His smile wasn’t friendly. It was a smile that spelled trouble. With a promise.

I focused on the chalkboard. Barbie and Ken stared back with strangely cheerful smiles.

Coach said, “Human reproduction can be a sticky subject—”

“Ewww!” groaned a chorus of students.

“It requires mature handling. And like all science, the best approach is to learn by sleuthing. For the rest of class, practice this technique by finding out as much as you can about your new partner. Tomorrow, bring a write-up of your discoveries, and believe me, I’m going to check for authenticity. This is biology, not English, so don’t even think about fictionalizing your answers. I want to see real interaction and teamwork.” There was an implied Or else.

I sat perfectly still. The ball was in his court—I’d smiled, and look how well that turned out. I wrinkled my nose, trying to figure out what he smelled like. Not cigarettes. Something richer, fouler.

Cigars.

I found the clock on the wall and tapped my pencil in time to the second hand. I planted my elbow on the table and propped my chin on my fist. I blew out a sigh.

Great. At this rate I would fail.

I had my eyes pinned forward, but I heard the soft glide of his pen. He was writing, and I wanted to know what. Ten minutes of sitting together didn’t qualify him to make any assumptions about me. Flitting a look sideways, I saw that his paper was several lines deep and growing.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

“And she speaks English,” he said while scrawling it down, each stroke of his hand both smooth and lazy at once.

I leaned as close to him as I dared, trying to read what else he’d written, but he folded the paper in half, concealing the list.

“What did you write?” I demanded.

He reached for my unused paper, sliding it across the table toward him. He crumpled it into a ball. Before I could protest, he tossed it at the trash can beside Coach’s desk. The shot dropped in.

I stared at the trash can a moment, locked between disbelief and anger. Then I flipped open my notebook to a clean page. “What is your name?” I asked, pencil poised to write.

I glanced up in time to catch another dark grin. This one seemed to dare me to pry anything out of him.

“Your name?” I repeated, hoping it was my imagination that my voice faltered.

“Call me Patch. I mean it. Call me.”

He winked when he said it, and I was pretty sure he was making fun of me.

“What do you do in your leisure time?” I asked.

“I don’t have free time.”

“I’m assuming this assignment is graded, so do me a favor?”

He leaned back in his seat, folding his arms behind his head. “What kind of favor?”

I was pretty sure it was an innuendo, and I grappled for a way to change the subject.

“Free time,” he repeated thoughtfully. “I take pictures.”

I printed Photography on my paper.

“I wasn’t finished,” he said. “I’ve got quite a collection going of an eZine columnist who believes there’s truth in eating organic, who writes poetry in secret, and who shudders at the thought of having to choose between Stanford, Yale, and … what’s that big one with the H?”

I stared at him a moment, shaken by how dead on he was. I didn’t get the feeling it was a lucky guess. He knew. And I wanted to know how—right now.

“But you won’t end up going to any of them.”

“I won’t?” I asked without thinking.

He hooked his fingers under the seat of my chair, dragging me closer to him. Not sure if I should scoot away and show fear, or do nothing and feign boredom, I chose the latter.

He said, “Even though you’d thrive at all three schools, you scorn them for being a cliché of achievement. Passing judgment is your third biggest weakness.”

“And my second?” I said with quiet rage. Who was this guy? Was this some kind of disturbing joke?

“You don’t know how to trust. I take that back. You trust—just all the wrong people.”

“And my first?” I demanded.

“You keep life on a short leash.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re scared of what you can’t control.”

The hair at the nape of my neck stood on end, and the temperature in the room seemed to chill. Ordinarily I would have gone straight to Coach’s desk and requested a new seating chart. But I refused to let Patch think he could intimidate or scare me. I felt an irrational need to defend myself and decided right then and there I wouldn’t back down until he did.

“Do you sleep naked?” he asked.

My mouth threatened to drop, but I held it in check. “You’re hardly the person I’d tell.”

“Ever been to a shrink?”

“No,” I lied. The truth was, I was in counseling with the school psychologist, Dr. Hendrickson. It wasn’t by choice, and it wasn’t something I liked to talk about.

“Done anything illegal?”

“No.” Occasionally breaking the speed limit wouldn’t count. Not with him. “Why don’t you ask me something normal? Like … my favorite kind of music?”

“I’m not going to ask what I can guess.”

“You do not know the type of music I listen to.”

“Baroque. With you, it’s all about order, control. I bet you play … the cello?” He said it like he’d pulled the guess out of thin air.

“Wrong.” Another lie, but this one sent a chill rippling along my skin. Who was he really? If he knew I played the cello, what else did he know?

“What’s that?” Patch tapped his pen against the inside of my wrist. Instinctively I pulled away.

“A birthmark.”

“Looks like a scar. Are you suicidal, Nora?” His eyes connected with mine, and I could feel him laughing. “Parents married or divorced?”

“I live with my mom.”

“Where’s dad?”

“My dad passed away last year.”

“How did he die?”

I flinched. “He was—murdered. This is kind of personal territory, if you don’t mind.”

There was a count of silence and the edge in Patch’s eyes seemed to soften a touch. “That must be hard.” He sounded like he meant it.

The bell rang and Patch was on his feet, making his way toward the door.

“Wait,” I called out. He didn’t turn. “Excuse me!” He was through the door. “Patch! I didn’t get anything on you.”

He turned back and walked toward me. Taking my hand, he scribbled something on it before I thought to pull away.

I looked down at the seven numbers in red ink on my palm and made a fist around them. I wanted to tell him no way was his phone ringing tonight. I wanted to tell him it was his fault for taking all the time questioning me. I wanted a lot of things, but I just stood there looking like I didn’t know how to open my mouth.

At last I said, “I’m busy tonight.”

“So am I.” He grinned and was gone.

I stood nailed to the spot, digesting what had just happened. Did he eat up all the time questioning me on purpose? So I’d fail? Did he think one flashy grin would redeem him? Yes, I thought. Yes, he did.

“I won’t call!” I called after him. “Not—ever!”

“Have you finished your column for tomorrow’s deadline?” It was Vee. She came up beside me, jotting notes on the notepad she carried everywhere. “I’m thinking of writing mine on the injustice of seating charts. I got paired with a girl who said she just finished lice treatment this morning.”

“My new partner,” I said, pointing into the hallway at the back of Patch. He had an annoyingly confident walk, the kind you find paired with faded T-shirts and a cowboy hat. Patch wore neither. He was a dark-Levi’s-dark-henley-dark-boots kind of guy.

“The senior transfer? Guess he didn’t study hard enough the first time around. Or the second.” She gave me a knowing look. “Third time’s a charm.”

“He gives me the creeps. He knew my music. Without any hints whatsoever, he said, ‘Baroque.’ “ I did a poor job of mimicking his low voice.

“Lucky guess?”

“He knew … other things.”

“Like what?”

I let go of a sigh. He knew more than I wanted to comfortably contemplate. “Like how to get under my skin,” I said at last. “I’m going to tell Coach he has to switch us back.”

“Go for it. I could use a hook for my next eZine article. ‘Tenth Grader Fights Back.’ Better yet, ‘Seating Chart Takes Slap in the Face.’ Mmm. I like it.”

At the end of the day, I was the one who took a slap in the face. Coach shot down my plea to rethink the seating chart. It appeared I was stuck with Patch.

For now.             

—Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush.

Fitzpatrick, Becca 2009. Hush, Hush, 7-17. New York, Simon and Shuster.

Sorry in retrospect for the long excerpt, but I just had to include Hush, Hush. How could I not?

Anyway, this opening scene absolutely nailed it in all the areas it needed to for it to be an interesting, gripping, and memorable start to one of the most well-known romantic thrillers.

✔️ Established compelling characters

Nora, Vee, and Patch are the prevailing main characters here. They all have interesting and unique personalities that not only set them apart from one another, but even in this short first chapter, the reader can tell these characters are going to be entertaining to watch interact with one another.

✔️ Outlined the story’s core conflict

Nora versus Patch —that is, as far as the reader knows, the story’s main conflict. Nora is creeped out by her new class partner, who seems to know so much about her and refuses to shed any light on himself.

✔️ Introduced the setting for the story

This story takes place in Coldwater, Maine, and is set in the present day. The reader quickly learns that the story is currently being told from the setting of a high school classroom. Based on the supporting characters, tone, and how the students interact with the coach, readers can infer that this story takes place in the 2000’s or later, thanks to the dialogue. It is likely many readers themselves can relate to this type of Sex-ed class setting and I for one, can certainly connect with the idea of having a high school sports coach double as a professor as that happened to me more often than I would have liked.

✔️ Presented the story’s stakes

Nora doesn’t want to fail this assignment and she seems to think Patch doesn’t care either way. The stakes are high because Nora doesn’t want her grade to drop but Patch gets under her skin so easily. Him leaving his phone number on her hand, acts as an open invitation to see what he’s all about. Will Nora bite, just for the sake of her grade? This question is what drives the reader further into the story.

It’s dynamic, interesting and ultimately pushes the reader further along in the plot in a way that feels organic. ✔️

Example 2: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Another example of book that opens at just the right time is Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. While I don’t particularly enjoy dystopian fiction, I can’t deny I was hooked from the first page of the series. I’m not including an excerpt for this one, because it is very likely we all know how this story starts out.

Here’s a recap:

Hunger Games opens with main protagonist Katniss Everdeen on the morning of The Reaping. It all starts out very domestic and day-in-the-life as Katniss gets is getting ready and taking care of her family. It demonstrates the level of poverty they are living in and sets the tone for the YA dystopian fiction. As the story progresses, we learn more about this world, how the systems inside this setting work, the characters and their relationships and ultimately, how they are impacted by said systems. Katniss eventually goes out hunting, and her interactions with Gale —them discussing their concerns about The Reaping and their desire to protect and provide for their families —really introduce these characters and their values. This is a series of scenes that lay out the story for the reader and very neatly drive them towards the Reaping. By the time the reader reaches that point in the story, he or she already knows the characters, their values, the oppressive nature of the world they live in, and when everything happens with the reaping, it evokes an emotional reaction from the reader. When Katniss wanting to do whatever it takes to protect her family conflicts with her sister being selected to fight in the Hunger Games, the reader can’t help but wonder where the story can go from here. The fact that the Hunger Games are so terrible that Katniss is willing to take her sister’s place, but she trembles with complete fear as she volunteers as tribute, absolutely tugs at the readers heart strings and forces them to keep reading to see how it all plays out.

However, it might not evoke such a strong emotional reaction had the story started say, in the months or weeks leading up to the Reaping because the story’s pacing would have been too slow to keep the reader invested. Likewise, it could have turned the reader away out of confusion if it had started right with the Reaping or the Hunger Games instead, because there isn’t enough information on the characters or their situation to make the reader care.

Example a of lackluster opening scene from my writing

In this excerpt from a short story I am working on, I have a pretty solid start to an opening scene. It has compelling characters, introduces immediate conflict while also providing backstory to the characters and their struggles. However, this story opening lacks stakes and it happens too quickly. While this is a work in progress, I can already tell that I am going to have to add more to make it more convincing and interesting to the reader.

1

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, PRESENT DAY

My knuckles are snow-white, clasped around the small paper cup of airport coffee in my hands, as I strive for some sense of warmth and normalcy. I hold it together until the last person passes through the airport terminal and break down only once I’m in the relative privacy of the car park.  I slump onto the cold, steel bench, set my coffee beside me, and drop my head into my hands, sobbing.

I’ve just been through something so crazy that I’m still shaken up over it, three days and a flight later. I lost someone I cared about deeply, all because of my own emotions getting the best of me, and by lost, I mean literally.

My name is Stephanie Powers, and no, the irony of my last name is not lost on me -we’ll come back to that later. I’m twenty-four years old, brunette and blue-eyed, and I’ve just landed my first real job after graduating with my Bachelor’s in Mass Communication a year ago. Sounds normal, right? Well, my new normal is going to make this look boring.

 ***

The alarm clock blares for the fifth time and I’m about ready to throw it out the window when switch it off for good this time. I’ve been up for an hour now- I woke up on time and somehow, I’m still running late, and obnoxious alarm clocks aren’t making me get ready any faster. I shimmy into a pair of matchstick jeans and grab my sweater from the pile of clean clothes growing in the chair. I’m walking out the door when I realize I’m missing shoes, which I run back into my room to find. At this point, my room is looking like a tornado came through and showed mercy on absolutely nothing- clothes everywhere, makeup and hair products strewn about on any and every previously open surface available, and on the floor, there’s a graveyard of empty water bottles that unfortunately didn’t make it into the trash bin. I catalogue the damage and make a mental note to tidy up later, but it’s unimportant now. After finding my shoes, I grab my sweater and bag and race out the door, smacking into him.

“Fox!” I shriek, stumbling backwards through the doorway, almost landing on my rear. Fox catches me, with that familiar, yet sinister smile on his face, and pulls me to my feet.

“What are you doing here?” I say.

“Good to see you too, Steph.” Fox says sarcastically.

I pluck a rogue strand of hair from my lip gloss and stand up straighter.

“Good to see you too,” I say, “Not to be rude, but I’m running a bit late.”

“For?” he asks.

An impatient sigh escapes my mouth before I can stop it.

“It’s my first day at the paper, and I want to make a good impression.”

He looks me up and down briefly then smiles wider. “You’ve made a good impression on me, so far.”

“Yeah? Falling on my ass, does it for you?” I say.

He rubs his chin as if considering this. “Yeah, your ass does it for me.” He said, then winked. Actually winked.

Fox Wilder has been my neighbor and childhood friend for as long as I can remember. He’s a whole head taller than me, with blonde shaggy hair and a tan that reminds me of a stereotypical surfer dude. Throw in a shell necklace and the look is complete. Growing up, he lived three doors down from me and we went to all the same schools together, including Washington State University. 

I move to check my watch and realize I’m not wearing it, so I pull my sleeve up over my wrist and tuck my hair behind my ear.

“I have to go.” I say looking around him to my 98’ Volkswagen Jetta, parked in the driveway. His Avalanche was boxing it in. Taking the hint, he fished his keys out of his pocket and went to move his car. I shouldered my bag and climbed into my own, then turned the keys in the ignition. The engine sputtered several times before dying. I tried again, to no avail.

“Great, just great,” I say, “as if I needed any more bad luck already.”

Fox raps on my window and I roll it down manually.

“Car problems again?” he asks, knowingly.

I sigh. “Yeah. At this rate, I’ll never make it to work. Impression: not good.”

“I can take you.” he offers with a smile.

“Really?” I say, almost too enthusiastically.

His smile widened. “Yeah, hop in.” He gestures to his car and a wave of relief washed over me. I might make it to work on time after all. He backs the Avalanche out of the drive and makes for the highway.

Of course, I was grateful, but I couldn’t help thinking, Fox saves the day, yet again. Adding to my mental to-do list, I vow to take my car into the shop after work. I’d get a ride with Fox for the next few days if I could and then be back behind the wheel in no time.

— Payton Hayes, “Stockholm Heroes, a Work in Progress” 😂

Glad we’re done with that part, whew! But do you see what I mean? The short scene at the beginning launches readers into the action with a very fly-by type of introduction to the main character. This scene is really more of an info dump, something which you should really avoid during the exposition. Readers can smell them from a mile away and they absolutely kill pacing. The second scene is where some magic happens. Readers learn about the characters, their immediate struggles, and the setting. However, once again, its too short. Everything happens so fast, and then is over with the snap of a finger. While this scene is so visually appealing and relatable, it might not make sense to start in either of these parts in the story’s timeline. Instead, I should pick one or the other to start with and spend more time fleshing it out.

Go with your gut

It all comes down to your story and the plot that you’re working with. There’s truly no one-size-fits-all approach to writing an opening to a novel, but if you go with your gut and think about your story and what kind of pacing you’ll need to deliver it best, you can come up with a fantastic opening scene at just the right time. Think about slice-of-life scenes that you can use to introduce your characters and think about the events leading up to the inciting incident so you can select the best time to drop the reader into the story. Develop a scene that shows off character, setting, conflict, and stakes. Consider different ways to achieve this without massive info dumps and inorganic dialogue.

There is of course, always exceptions to the rules, but this is how I go about writing opening scenes in my novels. It’s certainly not a hard-and-fast—rules approach but these are just a few guidelines for creating an organic and enthralling opening scene that will keep your reader turning pages. I hope this blog post helped you and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave a comment with your thoughts below! At the bottom of this post, helpful/related blog posts are linked for your convenience.

Related Topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

• Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick on Amazon

• Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

See all posts in Freelancing. See all posts in Book Writing 101.

—Payton

Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

Hi readers and writerly friends!

This week in Freelancing, we’re going to start a new series: Writing How To’s and today, we’re starting off strong with what is essentially Book Writing 101 —how to write a book. We talk an awful lot about editing, writing, publishing, marketing, and everything in between but we’re going to be bringing it right on back to the basics. How do you actually write a book? It’s a badge of honor for some and a checkbox for others, but one thing is certain: writing a book is not easy. It’s a feat of strength, really. It requires a lot of planning, months and even years of writing, and dedication from start to finish.

There’s really no set way to write a from the first word to the last. The truth is, the writing process varies from writer to writer. In this guide, I will explain the basics of writing a book and a general order to follow, but of course, experiment, try different methods and figure out what works for you!

So, how do you actually write a book? What goes into it?

Research, brainstorm, and come up with an idea

Think about what you might like to read and or write about and even look up what is selling in that genre. For instance, if I want to write a murder mystery for young adults, I might check out some of the popular books that are out at the time and see what the hype is about for myself. Reading is a great way to improve your own writing and familiarizing yourself with your desired genre will only help you.

I will have a more in-depth post for this next week when we cover book brainstorming, but essentially, you want to try and come up with a compelling premise that you can write roughly 50,000-75,000 words around, depending on your genre. Don’t get too bogged down by the word count, right out of the gate; this is just a simple guideline to shoot for. So, do some brainstorming and see if you can come up with an idea that will yield roughly 50,000 words. If you don’t think you can stretch your story idea to book length, consider writing it as a short story or a novella instead. If you believe you do have a solid story idea and you think you can write an entire book from it, consider if your idea is somewhat original. Of course, none of us are out here doing new things under the sun per se, but you can put a new spin on old ideas and resurrect dead story tropes by breathing new life into them with your unique voice, writing style, and twist on clichés.

Establish your prevailing theme and subthemes

I wish someone would have given me this advice when I started out writing. It’s one thing to come up with a premise and a plot, but themes are the driving force in a story and every good story has at least one important theme at its core. Consider your story idea and what the main theme of it is so you can write that into your outline in the next step.

Writer taking notes. Photo by lilartsy.

Outline/Develop your plot

Some people prefer to plan out their novel with an outline while others enjoy writing as they go. I used to be the kind of person who would just write as I went and often my story would become jumbled and confused as the consistency slowly melted away. Now, I sit down with a firm outline and I know exactly where the story is going start to finish, even if I jump around and write out of order. Even if you prefer not to get to crazy with the outlining, I would at least suggest outlining the key plot points according to the 3-Act Story Structure. This is a tried and true plot outline that is present in almost all successful works of writing and if you only used this to outline your novel, it will make all the difference in your consistency. That being said, if you’d like to try the pantser route as opposed to the planner route, you can try writing freely and taking some notes as you go, to try out the alternative process and see how it works for you. A pantser is someone who, “flies by the seat of their pants,” meaning they don't plan out anything, or plan very little. For some writers, the thrill of telling themselves the story as they write it is part of their creative process and what making writing fun for them. If you do decide to go the pantser route, I would suggest that you come up with at least a vague idea for how you want the novel to start and end and then plant yourself somewhere in the middle and write from there. Instead of going from point A to point B to point C, you’re considering point A and point C while you write point B and then connecting them all as you go. At the end of the day, find out what works for you and stick with it.

Develop your characters

As mentioned previously, there’s really no set order to follow when writing a book. For some, the characters are what sparks the inspiration for a novel idea, whilst for others, the premise or the theme inspires characters along the way. Either way, you must have a clear idea of who your characters are and what they are like when writing a book. Characters are the lens through which the story is told and writers must create compelling characters for their readers to connect to while reading. Consider your main character(s), supporting characters, antagonists, and background characters as well. Think about how they will come into play with one another to drive the plot, how their unique personalities both move them forward and backward in their goals, and how it makes sense within the realm of your premise, theme, and genre. Put simply, who is your main character, who is getting in that character’s way, and does it make sense with your story idea?

I have an in-depth blog post for How To Write Compelling Consistent Characters here, so make sure to check that out if you want to know more!

Establish the setting

Book with a view. Photo by Kourosh Qaffari.

Piggybacking on the idea that the story idea can come from anywhere, sometimes, establishing the setting is the first step in the process. Try to imagine all kinds of different terrains and zones and see what stories emerge from these places. I got the idea for my short story, The Sieka of Sahn’Jatar when imagining a vast desert in the greater setting of my ongoing fantasy series. I was just imagining the windswept sand dunes one day and the idea struck me. Suddenly, it wasn’t just a desert I was seeing —no, it was a girl dashing through the dunes, being chased by a warband mounted atop camels against the backdrop of the setting sun. Its crazy how stories can just come to us like that.

So, if you’ve already got your story idea in mind and don’t really need the setting for inspiration, consider where you want to set the story. Consider whether or not worldbuilding is something you’d like to do, or how realistic you want your story’s setting to be. Sometimes, the setting can even be a character all on it’s own, depending on how much of a role it plays within your novel. If you’re writing realistically, do you research, look at maps, and if you can visit the place you’re writing about, so you can write it accurately.

Break out the writing tools

Now, I know what you’re thinking —Payton, what writing tools do I need? I have a laptop.

And you’re totally right. While some people do enjoy writing their first draft longhand with pen and paper, most of us write digitally. However, I’m not just talking about the physical writing implement; I’m talking about you’re writing environment, your word processor (the program you physically write with), your writerly resources, and more.

For starters, where do you write? Do you write at home, locked in your bedroom with a tea and mood music? Or do you prefer to write at your favorite coffee shop with your trust headphones and a croissant nearby? Think about where you can get your best writing done and make it happen.

On that note, I have a helpful blog post on 8 Ways to Level Up Your Workspace And Elevate Your Productivity. It’s really more geared for freelancers and those working from home during the pandemic, but I think it has some great information on how to tailor a space that is both comfortable to work in and also is conducive to productivity.

Next, what kind of word processor will you use to write your novel? Do you use Mac or Windows? If you’re a Mac user, you might want to use Pages, but if you’re a Windows user, you might want to use Microsoft Word. (I think you can use MS Word for both, but that’s besides the point!) If you’d rather keep all of your writing in the cloud, maybe Google Docs is better for you. Perhaps none of these options sound quite right so here are a few more to check out: Scrivener, Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice Writer, or Word Perfect. There are many others out there, so make sure to try them out and see what works best for you and your writing needs.

Following the word processor, the next tool you will need in your writerly toolkit is a note keeping system of some sort. I hear many people use Scrivener, Notion, or Evernote for keeping their novel notes organized and in one central location. If you’d rather keep the notes tactile and not in the digital realm, consider using a Story Binder to keep all of your hand-written story notes safe and organized.

Next, figure out what other real-world items you’re going to need when you sit down to write your novel. Of course, this might be a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along kind of thing. I personally always need some kind of soft music in the background while I write to help keep me in the headspace of my story. I have a blog post on Get Immersed With The Five Senses, but I think it’s also applicable to writing because it can help you stay de-stressed and inspired throughout the process. Likewise, I highly recommend you make a playlist for your novel so you (and your future readers) can get into the right headspace for your story as easily as clicking play. Additionally, consider what snacks, drinks, and other items you might need to write effectively. I’ve also linked my Yoga For Writers post here, just in case you need a little writing break.

Lastly, prepare your accountability tools. This could be a writing partner, a critique group, your editor, a friend, or even a writing schedule. If you know you will need some external accountability source to keep you writing on the days when it gets tough, then get that ready well before you sit down to write. Consider joining a writing group online if you are having trouble finding a writing community in your area. Maybe NaNoWriMo is just the thing you need to keep the forward momentum going in your writing. Whatever you decide to use, have that accountability crutch ready beforehand so you can lean on it when you need to.

Create a writing schedule

This might be the single most important step in your entire writing career because if you don’t establish a habit of writing regularly, it might not bode well for you as a writer. However, it is likely also the hardest step in writing a novel, because many writers struggle to find the time to write. The truth is that if you want to write, you have to make the time to write. This is a special, designated time where you sit down and write, for however much time or however many words you decide and you do this consistently to progress your project and better your writing skill.

Writer planning her schedule. Photo by Marissa Grootes.

If you can, write every day. Some writers will tell you that you absolutely must write every day, while others will advise writing once a week. If you can, try to write a little every day, and if that’s just not possible for you and your schedule, try to write as often as you can. Don’t use being busy as an excuse for not writing. Ultimately your writing, your writing career, and your novel’s success is on you, and if its truly important to you, then make it a priority in your life. Writing is just like anything else in life that requires exercising a skill and practice. You must work your writing muscles to improve your writing in the same way you have to work your upper arms to get better at push-ups.

Like with the writing space, you can use the 5 senses to trigger yourself into what I like to call “writing mode.” This is the headspace you get in when you write, and it becomes easier and easier to trigger this mindset shift with time and practice. It’s a lot like Pavlov’s dog, in that, with time, effort, and practice, you will subconsciously train your brain to expect that when it’s writing time, you will sit down and write and nothing will get in the way of that. For example, as mentioned, I like to have tea and music when I write. For some, that might be a certain candle or aromatherapy or dimming the lights in your writing space. I personally like to set an alarm for my designated writing time and the alarm itself is actually the music that I listen to while writing. This immediately gets me in the mood for writing and like the dog mentioned earlier, drooling for some black tea.

There are many ways to make writing a habit for yourself and while it will take some self-discipline and patience at first, it certainly is doable. You could even use a incentives or a rewards system top keep you motivated to write. Whatever you decide works for you, just make sure that you are writing regularly and making consistent strides to better your craft and make progress on your projects. Th reason a writing schedule is so crucial to the writing process is because writers will have to learn to push through when the writing process becomes difficult. We can’t always write just when we want to or wait, twiddling our thumbs for the creative spirit to strike us. It is great when we have those moments for sure, but the reality is that most days, writing is hard. There’s going to be so many moments when writing is difficult and you won’t feel like writing, but if you’ve created the schedule and the habit, you’ll write anyway. Writing when it’s hard, or when you don’t feel like it, or when the words just won’t flow is what enables you to push through, finish the book, and accomplish your goals.

On a similar note, don’t try to force yourself into a box or create unrealistic expectations for your writing habits. If you work two jobs and are a mother of three, it might not be realistic to expect yourself to sit down and write for four hours out of the day. Many people recommend writing first thing in the morning, but if you’re not a morning person, this simply will not work for you.

I’m raising my hand over here. I’m actually a night-writer and I prefer to write during the ungodly hours of the night, but I can see how that is an unrealistic schedule for many writers who have day jobs. The point is, just go with what feels right with you and what fits feasibly and realistically into your schedule.

Set realistic goals and a deadline

Of course, this ties in with your writing schedule, finding what works for you, and building the writing habit, but having something to work towards can really help you when you’re first starting out with writing. Having loose, but clear goals can help you plan your writing schedule and celebrate milestones as you encounter them. This will also help you in breaking down the daunting process of writing an entire novel to smaller, more manageable parts. For example, if you want to write a 50,000 word novel, and you want to try and write 500-1000 words a day, then if you wrote every day, you can expect to finish your novel in 100-50 days. Write as much as you can as often as you can but if you find that you really just cannot bring yourself to write 1000+ words a day, that’s okay, do what you can. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and you don’t want to burn yourself out trying to reach these impossibly unrealistic goals. Likewise, you can reverse-engineer this method by setting a deadline first. Maybe you want to participate in NaNoWriMo? If you’re writing a 50,000-word novel for the National Novel Writing Month Challenge, then you know you’ll have to write an average of 1,667 words a day to meet that goal. Some people like to write one chapter a week while others will write one a day. Some books take a month to write while others take years to write. No matter what this looks like for you, setting deadlines and loose, yet realistic goals can help you stay on track throughout the novel writing process.

Writer feeling stressed. Photo by Energepic.com.

Be kind to yourself throughout the writing process

This is probably one of the most overlooked parts of writing and I believe many writers could stand to practice some self-care throughout the writing process. Remember, writing a book is insanely hard to do and most people never accomplish this feat of strength. It’s not meant to be easy. As mentioned, writing can get really tough sometimes and its important that you exercise patience and kindness with yourself when writing. You will feel like the words just aren’t working or everything you write is an absolute dumpster fire, or you can’t pull yourself to the desk to write because you know these next scene is going to be really hard to bring to life. It’s okay. Breathe. Forgive yourself for writing garbage writing. Forgive yourself for not meeting your daily word count goal for that day. Forgive yourself for struggling because writing is a process.

I have a blog post for When Writing Becomes Difficult that goes more in-depth into this topic, but for the most part, just be kind to yourself and take the process one day at a time. Eventually, if you keep at it, you’ll have yourself a book! Following through and finishing the book is the hardest part of actually writing a book, but trust me, there is no better feeling that finishing a book.

When writing gets tough, check out these articles I wrote for some grace and self care.

• 5 Reasons Most Writers Quit

• When Writing Becomes Difficult

• Self-Care for Writers and Readers

And that’s it for my guide on How To Write A Book! Remember, this is going to be a 20-part in-depth series, so stay tuned for the next one. These blog posts will be coming out every Friday from now on, so make sure to subscribe to my newsletter if you want updates when the next part of this series is out! Good luck to all of you aspiring writers out there! I believe in you! Thanks for reading and don’t forget to write!

Related topics:

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

See all posts in Freelancing. See all posts in Book Writing 101.

Thumbnail photo by Kelly Sikkema.

—Payton

Book Writing 101: How to Develop and Write Compelling, Consistent Characters

Friends holding each other at sunset. Photo by Helena Lopes.

Hi readers and writerly friends,

Today, I want to talk about how to write and develop compelling, consistent characters. Characters are the beating heart and soul of any story. Books with lackluster writing or major plot holes can get away unscathed (mostly) if they at least have believable, loveable characters—not that writers should cut corners, though. Readers will follow these types of characters anywhere which is why Fanfiction is such a big interest to many readers. Writers can really bring a story to life with vibrant, relatable characters. The first half of this blog post that covers creating compelling characters is geared towards writers who are still in the drafting phase while the second half that covers writing consistent characters is more geared towards writers entering the revising and editing phase, so just keep that in mind as you go.

So, first, let’s discuss how to develop characters.

Character development

This is always the fun part, right, dreaming up your ideal characters, giving them names and backstories and building a fictional life for them? But this is also where a lot of key, fundamental, foundational work goes into your story and the characters within it. This part of story-building is crucial. There are so many more factors that come into play that will make your characters seem realistic and yet enchanting or cause them to be one-dimensional, forgettable, and poorly thought out. There are many things you’ll want to consider when developing characters that make sense.

Character backgrounds and worldview

What racial background do your characters come from? What gender background, religious background or economic background do they come from? What kind of upbringing did they experience? What kinds of views were they raised with? What kind of experiences did they face during their most critical stages of development as children and teenagers? What familial background do they have? What kind of education levels do they have?

Consider yourself for a moment. You are the culmination of all of your experiences, memories, backgrounds, and external and internal influences, up to this very moment. This is called your worldview. Everything you’ve ever experienced has come together to bring you to this moment in space and time. And that even started before you were born. Think about how your parents factor into this or even your grandparents. Everything that happened to your grandparents brought them together so they could bring your parents into this world, and thus, you. So not only does your upbringing influence your story much like the characters’ upbringing influences their stories, but you literally might not be here now if things hadn’t worked out just the way they did. This worldview is a critical element of each of your characters whether or not they ever make it onto the page. Consider your characters parent’s worldviews and goals and how they might influence your characters.

For example, if your character’s mother wanted to be a ballet dancer as a young girl, but her mother never let her, maybe she might push your character into ballet other extracurricular activities to make up for the lack of experience with such things in her life. Another example, if your characters grandparents were insanely rich and the character’s parents realized how all the money could corrupt people, they might chose to cut themselves off from the rest of the family and struggle through life instead of allowing themselves to succumb to wealth and the vapid nature of the parent’s family.

Consider character goals

Piggybacking on that last point, you want to consider your characters goals both internally and externally. Consider what goals they might have and how the interact with plot points. Consider what kind of self-imposed and external expectations might come attached to these goals. Consider what is at stake for failing to complete these goals and how that failure might make your character feel. Consider how one character’s goals conflict with the goals of another character in your story. Basically, determine what are your characters greatest desires and deepest fears and what lengths will they go to, to achieve the former and avoid the latter?

Perfect characters are boring

There is no such thing as perfect—not in real life and not in fiction. One of the biggest selling points of vibrant characters is the level of relatability the reader has with those characters. Characters should have both good and bad qualities as well as character-specific, unique quirks that set them apart from each other. Think about the things that make us human and figure out how you can weave that into your characters. Perfect characters are unrelatable and boring so leave those unrealistic expectations out of your writing. A fun way to figure out character personality traits is to write as many of them down as you can. Then close your eyes and point to a random one. Do this a couple of times to see what kind of character trait combinations you get. Then see how you can write these traits into your characters.

Icarus and The Sun artwork by Gabriel Picolo.

Strengths and weaknesses

Branching off from writing perfect characters, we need to talk about character strengths and weaknesses because it’s quite closely related. Since we know there is no such thing as a perfect character, then surely your characters must have some flaws you can work with. See how their strengths interact as well as how their weaknesses interact. Is one character really insecure but another has enough self-confidence to cover for the both of them? Are two characters toxic people towards one another but madly in love with each other and unstoppable when they’re together?

I like to think of Gabriel Picolo’s (@_picolo on instagram) Icarus and The Sun comics, where the sun is a radiant woman with so much passion and love to give, but her flaw is that she’s selfish and she will treat Icarus poorly until he leaves her and she starts the cycle again. And Icarus is so painfully lonely that he welcomes the toxic relationship back into his life again and again even though it is literally and figuratively killing him every time.

Consider the characters’ strengths and weaknesses and how these traits can either be steppingstones or roadblocks for completing their individual goals. Additionally, many times, a character’s greatest weakness can also double as their greatest strength. Much like in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, where Percy has struggled all his life to read and focus and chalked it up to dyslexia, but that weakness proved invaluable when it turned out he could read fluent Greek without and previous practice and it eventually saved his life. So, as you’re writing your characters, consider how their strengths and weaknesses can interact and either help them with or keep them from reaching their goals.

Character interaction

Now that you’re thinking about character strengths and weaknesses, you can start to figure out how characters interact with one another and how all of these character traits interact as well. If you start with your main character, how can you cast characters that play off the strengths and weaknesses of him/her? What kind of traits do they need to have to make a believable, relatable, and irresistible relationship between one another? Consider writing Foil characters, or characters that exists solely to frustrate and derail the protagonist’s goals. What kind of strengths would a foil character have if he/she existed purely to stop your main protagonist from completing his or her mission? In addition to character strengths and weaknesses interacting with one another, writers should consider what quirks, hobbies, interests, activities, and preferences their characters might have.

For instance, it might make sense that the bully in a YA boarding school fiction is a bit stronger than the main protagonist because she has played lacrosse for as long as she can remember and the main protagonist is more of a reader. But that might also make sense as to why the main protagonist is smarter or more cunning in a tight situation because she’s spent all her time reading and quickly formulate a plan for escape. This example is from Gillian Shield’s Immortal series and its just one of  millions of examples of how to write character trait interaction and it really does boil down to just what worldview, interests, background, and strengths/weaknesses your characters might have.

Of course, you want to limit these traits to only a few per character and make sure they truly do make sense. Characters with too many dislikes, talents, hobbies, quirks, or what have you, are just not dynamic or believable—instead they are just too much. Pick a handful of traits that make sense for your characters and the plot and go with those. Additionally, it would be better to sprinkle these things in throughout the story instead of info-dumping on your readers all at once. Keep in mind that some hobbies are passive and might not make sense for your character or story as a whole—such as with reading. It made sense for Evelyn Johnson in Immortal, but it might not make sense for your story, so really consider how each character’s hobby fits in against the backdrop of your story, specifically.

Character hobbies and setting

Consider what your characters enjoy doing in their spare time and how that hobby reflects the world around them. Some settings/stories are easier to develop hobbies in such as Contemporary because anyone in that genre could just as easily (and believably) be doing the same activities any of us do, such as reading or playing video games or anything else we do in 2020. However, designing character hobbies for a futuristic story set in 3059 might be harder to do because you have to think about what people might actually be doing in that setting.  The same thing goes for historical fictions, where you absolutely wouldn’t be reading about characters playing World of Warcraft or making videos for Tik Tok (rip Vine) because it just wouldn’t make sense for the setting and story. Likewise for Fantasy where many things that exist in our world might not make sense for a fantasy story, especially not high fantasy. The list goes on and on. Just think about how your character’s hobbies reflect the world about them and how they fit in with your setting.

Character relationships

Another element of compelling character design that ties into everything we’ve already discussed is how characters interact with others and what kind of relationships are present in the story. Something has to drive the plot forward and that is usually likes, dislikes, talents, hobbies, or relationships. Relationships are often the driving motivation for a character and can really move the plot along in an inconspicuous way to the reader. Such as, in Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush where on the first day of school, Nora’s coach and Sex Ed professor assigns a seating chart and forces Nora to be partners with the new transfer student, thus putting her in an awkward position and potentially jeopardizing her grades if she can’t get her partner to cooperate on assignments. There’s all kinds of tension here from Nora missing sitting next to her best friend Vee, to her reluctance to engage with the intimidating transfer student, Patch, and to the stubborn teacher who refuses to change the seating chart at Nora’s request. This immediately creates some kind of relationship between Nora and Patch whether they want it or not and that’s exactly what drives the plot along until the real plot points are revealed.

There are many tropes in which something happens to a characters relationship with another character that drives a plot forward. For one, the trope of the character who must save their sibling (or a lover) from a terrible fate so they go on their quest. For two, there’s the trope of a character’s family member dying and the angst, rage, and confusion propelling them into their quest. Character relationships directly impact character motivations. For example, why does the villain always capture the superheroes’ love interest? Answer: because they know the hero will come running to the rescue of said love interest. That’s one of the most blatant uses of character relationships as plot devices.

When you’re crafting characters think about all of the characters in your story as an entire cast and plan them out as a whole. When you’re developing a cast, consider each relationship and how everyone relates to one another, what function they serve, and whether or not its dynamic. However, much like the issue of having too many hobbies or talents, steer clear of having too many characters. You really only need enough characters to drive the plot and then have a few extras here and there to make your world seem bigger/believable as needed. Try to avoid veering into Martin territory where there are just so many characters that all of them are disposable and even the readers know not to get their hopes up since they will all die anyways. Some stories warrant a large cast of characters such as with Tolkien, Martin, or Riordan where there are complex subplots and worldbuilding at play. As you can probably gather from these examples, massive casts of characters are best left to fantasy and mythological fiction. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, but air on the side of caution and avoid creating a character soup, where there’s just so many characters that their details get muddied and confusing. 

Character names

This very well might be the single most fun items on the list, yet but I implore you dear writer, to take time and care with choosing your character’s names. There is so much readers can learn from a character’s name. Names truly do inform a large part of a person’s identity—they serve as markers of racial or cultural backgrounds, family names carry centuries of history, certain names carry with them certain connotations and ultimately names can impact how people are treated, so select your characters names with care. Consider why the character’s parents might have picked that name for them, what it says about them, how other characters might treat them because of it, and so on.

Pro tip: One of the easiest ways to get started with believable names is to look up a culture your character might be based on and try to find names that might have been popular during the time you’re writing your story. Obviously, this might be difficult with fantasy or futuristic stories, but for those, you can get extra creative by adding in vowels or consonants, changing spellings, and weaving elements of different languages into the name. Such as with some of the names/words in my fictional language in the world of Avyiien which pulls inspiration from Xhosa, a Nguni Bantu language that uses tongue clicking, and French which uses a lot of excess letters.

Ultimately characters are like icebergs—this is an analogy we see used a lot for plot and it works well there, but it works well for characters too. The visible tip of the iceberg is the written information about your character that is present in the book and the other 80% below the surface is what you use to inform the way you write your characters, but doesn’t necessarily always make it on the page. This is exactly how you write vibrant, rich, compelling characters that readers just can’t get enough of. These are the kinds of characters that find themselves in fanfiction and beyond.

And now, lets talk about how to maintain a consistency among your character’s their unique voices, worldviews, quirks, hobbies, strengths, weaknesses, goals, and relationships. If you’ve spent all this time designing rich, deep, believable characters, you want to ensure their actions throughout the story align with them as people and make sense to the reader. This is typically a revisions/editing issue so if you’re still working on that first draft, don’t get too bogged down by inconsistencies early on—simply write and go back to iron out the details later.

However, these are all important points you should take into consideration if you’re looking to write consistent characters across chapters and/or multiple books. In order to avoid giving readers emotional whiplash, it’s the writers job to ensure a character’s actions align with their personality. Failing to do this can result in confusion and distraction for the reader, which we of course, want to steer clear of. Its perfectly okay for characters to do things that are our-of-character for them as long as it makes sense for the story and has the proper set up beforehand, thus it no longer becomes out of character for them. Potential Spoiler: Such as with my short story, the Sieka of Sahn’Jatar, where one character has plans to kill another for profit, but after a series of events, changes their mind and decides to work with the person they’d initially planned to kill. This shift in character makes sense because of the shift in events leading up to this conflict. As a writer, you can choose to keep the plot points that conflict with the personality of your character so long as you’re willing to tie them together and make it make sense. Otherwise, it might just be a better move to cut it out and change directions altogether.

Inconsistent main characters are the worst

Of course, all that has previously been mentioned concerning inconsistent characters thus far, has pretty much only had to do with supporting characters or antagonists but if you’re finding inconsistencies with your main protagonist, you have some fundamental discrepancies with your book that will absolutely need to be worked out for you to achieve believable, relatable characters. Inconsistent main characters can potentially create a lot of distance between the characters and the reader. This can end up causing some serious issues for your story because it deprives the reader of that emotional reading experience, and since the characters are the vehicles by which the story is told, having that disconnect can really break a story. That being the greatest of your worries, having inconsistent main characters or POV or what have you, can cause frustration, confusion, and anger in your reader. All of these issues are just distractions for your readers and ultimately something you as the writer, should be trying to avoid.

So, how do you solve an inconsistent character? Well, you have to bring it back to the basics. Consider what that character’s fundamental motives are. Think back to everything we’ve covered in the first half of this blog post. What goals does he or she have and how do their (inconsistent) actions fit in to those goals? If they don’t fit, how can you write them so that they do? What other background information and characterization can you supply that will make these actions not so far fetched for your character? If these actions aren’t necessary for that character, can you write them for another character? Can you cut them out entirely? If they are necessary to the plot, how can you change your characters to fit around these inconsistencies? Consider how your characters would organically respond and react to the actions of the other characters and how they all fit together.

This is where you have to do some serious soul searching and determine whether or not these character actions are integral to your plot and story as a whole. Like I said, if it’s a deal breaker, you might have to recast that character or sprinkle breadcrumbs throughout your story, so their inconsistent actions don’t seem so out of character for them. If it’s not a deal breaker, how can you change those actions to fit your carefully crafted characters and make their actions and reactions believable? As you can probably tell, this is why its critical to make sure you have your first draft completed before digging into inconsistencies and rewriting because you just get stuck in a vicious rewriting cycle and it’s just not pretty. If there’s discrepancies throughout your writing, a finished draft will allow you to make decisions on how you can solve those issues, but if you’re just rewriting, it can quickly get confusing and hard to know where your story will even end up.

Characters are incredibly important and should serve the plot just as much as the plot serves them. Characters must be well-rounded and balanced and everything they do should make sense within the framework of your story. Compelling, consistent, and loveable characters are the backbone of any great story and can often carry a sub-par plot if they are believable and relatable enough and if their actions match their personalities. However, writing enchanting characters is easier said than done and it’s why a lot of writers struggle with character development.

And that’s it for my extensive blog post on writing and developing compelling and consistent characters. What are your favorite and least favorite parts of character development? What do you think about character backstories and names? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Related Topics:

• Book Writing 101: How To Write A Book (Basics)

• Book Writing 101: Coming Up With Book Ideas And What To Do With Them

• Book Writing 101: Starting Your Book In The Right Place

• Book Writing 101 - How To Chose The Right POV For Your Novel

• Book Writing 101: How To Achieve Good Story Pacing

• Book Writing 101: How To Name Your Book Characters

• Book Writing 101: Everything You Need To Know About Dialogue

• Story Binder Printables (Includes Character Sheets, Timelines, World-Building Worksheets and More!)

• Payton’s Picks —40+ of my favorite helpful books on writing and editing.

• 25 Strangely Useful Websites To Use For Research and Novel Ideas

See all posts in Freelancing. See all posts in Book Writing 101.

— Payton