You’re in luck! I’ve compiled several key questions into a survey and asked parents, grandparents, and teachers for their input. Based on their responses, I’ve summarized the top five best tools recommended for writing a children’s story.

I asked those in the survey what their favorite picture book was of all time and why they loved it. In asking my participants to recall their favorite picture books from their childhood, their responses came from a time when they were children and from that warm, cozy place of reading bedtime stories with their own children and grandchildren. That’s the feeling all children’s book authors want to invoke in their readers.

1. Characters and Their Interpersonal Relationships

Magical, resilient, powerful, clever, and sometimes hilarious characters, and the friendships between them are an integral part of creating a beloved children’s story. Every person surveyed mentioned character development. It was that important.

But how do we create these types of characters? My best advice is to get out into the world, look around, and listen. Don’t forget to bring a journal so you can write your observations on how children interact with each other and their world. 

Write down how they speak. I find children have such rich dialogue and a lot of it is worth writing down. Write down how they resolve conflict with each other and the adults in their lives. Write down the wonder of discovering new things. So much in this world is new to children. 

2. Rhyming and Repetitiveness

While I’ve read from many professionals that writers should ditch the rhyme, parents in the survey disagree. They adore stories with rhyme and repetition. Those books from their childhood are imprinted upon their hearts and minds.

Writing in rhyme is complex. You’ll need to make sure it has rhythm and meter, and this is done by understanding syllables and where they are stressed in the words you’re creating to tell your story. When writing rhymes for children, avoid near rhymes because at a young age, children should first learn the predictability of rhyming words through their phonetic relationships.

Don’t be afraid of repetition or redundancy in children’s picture books. Just think about how young children watch their favorite movies over and over and you’ll learn that children enjoy and need repetition in order to make connections and remember patterns. Repetition is simple; and, according to those surveyed, it’s an important element in a children’s story.

3. A believable Plotline

Parents and teachers commented that a believable plotline was also key to determining their favorite children’s story of all time. Let your story draw from real life and identifiable characters from which they can learn something about themselves. 

Many in the survey said their favorite children’s book taught a moral, and they felt that was important. As a children’s writer, study folk tales of various cultures and then consider writing one of your own. There are so many great morals for children to learn. Weave a moral into your story.

4. Great Artwork

It’s important as an indie author to collaborate with an artist who shares your vision and captures in their art your voice, uniqueness of the characters, and the story setting. Your readers rely on a balance between text and illustrations to develop their story comprehension skills. 

That brings me to another point.

When I skimmed the pages of the favorite picture books of all time listed in my survey, the illustrations had one thing in common: they were realistic. This might be just as important as a believable plot. Consider colors and lines when collaborating with an illustrator, and keep it realistic.

5. Give your reader an adventure

The final tip I gleaned from the survey: your reader is looking for an adventure. You’ve developed unique characters and outlined a believable plot illustrated in captivating colors and lines. Now, through concise, repetitive, and perhaps rhyming words, take your reader by the hand and lead them on a wondrous adventure to a place they’ve never been before. 

Tell us in the comments: What’s your all time favorite children’s story? What did you love about it?

S.J. Rosson is releasing her first children’s picture book, The Lamb, in May 2022. She believes this story comes at a time when children need to hear a positive message about unconditional love and its redeeming work. She weaved in math counting concepts for fun. To learn more about pre-orders and exclusive, limited-time rewards, visit her website at: www.sjrosson.com.

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I can answer my own question. Because I love you, and for those of you I haven’t met yet, I pre-love you. I am the Thomas Merton of Creative Writing. 

My forthcoming novel is suspenseful, thoughtful, and sometimes emotionally troubling. Be forewarned. But this Brian showing up today, human Brian, is upbeat and here for you.

This is what I got for you right now. On tomorrow’s show, it’s a cobra-juggling unicyclist, but today is “Writer’s Day.” So here are some takeaways from about 25 years as an active, publishing writer. Some of it may work for you. 

I can report with all sincerity, I wish I’d had this list way back then. I have found my kind genius writer, and by the end of this post, you will have too.

1. People who tell you that you must write every day forget to admit that they don’t write every day. They are not kind genius writers.

They don’t tell you that’s a rule for you but not for them. If you write three days a week for just a couple hours at a time, or 6 days a week an hour at a time, or 7 days a week 15 minutes at a time, it’s all the same. If you can write one day a week because that’s all you can pull out of your busy life schedule, well, gods-bless you!

My writing schedule has changed dramatically over these many years. For example, there was indeed a time I wrote every day. Then I fell in love and moved in with a great guy. I wrote less frequently, but not any less well. The guy, by the way, is in the acknowledgments of all my books. 

Do make a weekly plan, but don’t fret, no matter how many days you commit to. Just commit your writer to the days and times you – you kind genius writer – CAN write.  

2. Your kind genius writer’s sweetie can wait.   

What I mean is, yeah, he was a great guy, but I didn’t let him read any of my work before it was published. Why? Well—and yes, there are rare exceptions—your sweetie is wonderful, I agree. So are many of your relatives and friends. Naturally, you want their thoughts on your work. They know you best, after all. 

And that’s the problem. You need the freedom to not be you in your writing. 

And you need the freedom from your sweetie and these others searching for and making assumptions about where they are in the work. 

Also, because they love you, much of the critique your writing really needs will go left unsaid. 

I know two poets married to each other. They share their writing. I don’t know how they do it, but they manage quite well. So, maybe that’s the addendum. Follow my advice unless you can marry a kind genius writer poet. 

In any case, replace extra love for the unpublished writing you won’t let your sweetie read. They’ll appreciate the tradeoff. And so will you.  

3. I was a super cute little kid kind genius writer.    

That has nothing to do with this list. I just wanted you to know in case you see me now on the street. 

But, speaking of childhood, Mrs. Rodgers read Stuart Little to my first-grade class. It was a wonder. A mouse born just like a little man. My entry point into queer literature, for sure, but back then, I was just thrilled to Stuart on his boat, worried for him wrapped in the blinds, admired his tenacity and boldness to venture out into the world to find his future. 

What book from your childhood (up to 14?) excited you the way Stuart Little did me? Or, what book when you first had access to books thrilled you? When was the last time you read it? 

Stuart and I have a little lunch together every two or three years. Why? Because I like to be reminded of that feeling I had when we first met. I want to remember delight. 

I want to remember delight because it reminds me of my own responsibilities as a writer, and it reminds me that reading shouldn’t feel like a chore nor medicine. Some of the best-intended literature courses and book clubs can wring the life out of the very texts they mean to honor with attention. Remembering delight reminds me, even in my most serious, somber writing, my ambition is to be in service of a reader’s delight.

So, from time to time, revisit that book which delighted you in childhood. Re-read what raised your little genius writer.

And if you’re thinking I’m being too precious, alternatively I might have mentioned that in fifth grade I came across a used copy of Helter Skelter and read it in one day. It’s a terrifying account of the Manson murders. I could have mentioned that book instead of Stuart Little, but I wanted to first delight you with my cuteness.  

4 Be honest: Your inner kind genius writer likely has a couple of places in mind. 

Where are you going to publish? In what print or online journal? With what press? What non-profit literary organization do you hope will play a role in supporting your writing and writing life? 

Now, how do you know these places will be there when you need them? We’re all hoping against hope that enough people are subscribing and donating to keep our favorite journals, presses, and literary organizations afloat so that we have a place to land. Everyone in print this month was made room for by the folks who in the previous year or years supported the publishing venue. Those very good people.

Are you a very good people? Right now, how many print and online journals are you supporting? How many literary organizations? Are you making it possible for other writers to achieve their dreams? It is, after all, a reciprocal ecosystem.  

Put simply, how are you in service to other writers? You can’t expect more than you give. I’ve met so many good-hearted writers who want to be assisted and supported in their ambitions, but who make almost no investment in other writers. If you want space on the bookshelf, help make room for others on that same shelf.

It’s not all dollar signs. There are non-costly ways to be in service of other writers. Being an eager and thoughtful reader of an unpublished manuscript, for example, or volunteering with a literary non-profit.

Think of it this way: the most fabulous and selfish thing you can do in service of your own writing is to support other writers. Every good rainbow needs more than one genius writer.

5) You know you’re Mad, right? 

There is just a blip under 8 billion people on this planet. Most of them aren’t writers. My, my, what an odd duck you are. Is it crossed wires, wild synapses, firing up all these images in your brain that you must bring to life through text? There are so many surgical instruments and pulsing electrics on the table that there’s hardly room for the body. 

This you know. You have the power to create life. You are a god on Earth. You have the power to make a positive difference in other people’s lives through your writing, not to mention your own. 

After reading the previous four items in this list, what the hell are you going to do with all that power? Will you find your kind genius writer?

Brian Leung is the author of the novels Ivy vs. Dogg: With a Cast of Thousands, Lost Men, and Take Me Home. Among other honors, he is a past recipient of the Lambda Literary Outstanding Mid-Career Prize and the Willa Award. Brian’s fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry appear in numerous magazines and journals. He is a Professor of Creative Writing at Purdue University. His forthcoming novel, All I Should Not Tell (C&R Press), will be released in the spring of 2022.

Click here to pre-order a copy of All I Should Not Tell.

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But no, our published pieces are captive to the amber of time, words that were written can’t be unwritten. Your writing is out there naked in the world colliding with the viewpoints, critiques, and skepticism of others. 

Returning written words to your imagination isn’t an option, but embracing those words is, no matter how imperfect you might perceive them. An essay collection just might make for the perfect embrace.

More than just an exercise in self-aggrandizement, or a nonfiction writer’s greatest hits, an essay collection can trigger reflection, contemplation, and self and societal assessment in a reader. Essential ingredients for both individual and social betterment. 

No, not everyone’s essay collection will have the might of Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard, but, of course, not everyone is Toni Morrison. But your resurrected work can provide readers with a unique way of looking at their life, this world, and the people they inhabit it with. 

But choosing exactly what to include out of your massive archive of writing can provide a unique challenge. What stays and what goes? How do you organize it all? And will any of it still resonate with readers after all this time? 

These are questions I was forced to answer while gathering the essays that comprise my collection, Readying to Rise. Hopefully my hard earned knowledge can assist you with building your own essay collection. 

1. Embrace the Past

Reencountering old writing can be scary, in no small part because you’ve hopefully evolved as a person, writer, and thinker since you put the final punctuation mark on a months or years-old essay. 

A friend says old writing can be like bumping into an ex. You’re different and so are they, but no matter how the relationship ended, whether you wish it had concluded differently or not, you have to make peace that you made an impression upon their life, and they yours.  

You were who you were during that time period. And that is completely okay. Chances are, the thoughts, experiences, and interpretation of events then still ring true to someone encountering a similar circumstance that you previously wrote about. One person’s past is another’s present, afterall. 

Maybe you would’ve even drastically changed things had you written the same piece today. But remember writing is like Virgina Madsen’s description of wine in her monologue from the movie Sideways: I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I’d opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity.

Don’t deprive readers of the taste of your past work, the work you were uniquely able to craft on a singular day, just because your own tastes have evolved. 

2. Make Order Out of Chaos

Most of your work was probably intended to live as stand alone pieces without regard to potentially being bound together one day in a single essay collection.

This means you have to go about the business of organizing disjointed columns or essays into something that a) makes it look like you knew what you were doing all along and b) doesn’t completely jar the reader’s sensibilities. Going from a scarthing piece on FEMA’s missteps following Hurricane Katrina to a musing on overcoming severe halitosis probably isn’t the best sequencing. 

Once you’ve identified all the pieces you found fit to reprint, you want to ensure that you’ve categorized them under comprehensible themes. They don’t necessarily have to be grouped by a concrete topic (e.g. politics, culture, art, etc.) but a reader should be able to implicitly understand why an essay was placed where it was.

I originally chose to group my essays under three categories: Tribulations, Trials, and Triumphs that corresponded with essays dealing with my mental health struggles. I eventually decided it would be better to sort them chronologically. 

You shouldn’t try to shoehorn a piece into a category. If you have enough pieces that seem out of place, there’s nothing wrong with simply creating a new category called Random!

3. Pick That Which Endures 

With an essay collection what’s old is new again. A piece you wrote five years ago about the destigmitizatizing mental health in professional sports may now have new relevance given the recent stances of athletes like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. Likewise, a profile you wrote about an Afghanistan War veteran’s return home a decade ago might provide an illuminating insight into the recently concluded conflict. 

In both cases, it’s not only that each story has a renewed news peg, it’s that each story deals with underlying issues that will be ongoing long after your book is planted on someone’s self: The normalization of discussing mental health in the workplace, and America’s role in conflicts abroad. 

You want to do your best to ensure that what you’ve selected can add to those continuing conversations. 

4. Your Vulnerability is Someone Else’s Strength

My favorite writer, James Baldwin, once said that a primary reason he wrote was so that long after he’d departed, hopefully someone who was looking through the wreckage of the past for words of inspiration, comfort, and affirmation might find refuge in his work.

Black, gay, and atheist at a time when just one of those identities would invite scorn, prejudice, and even death, he left a goldmine of words for others to find who dealt with racism, homophobia, bigotry, and alienation. 

Writing about your life’s struggles is never easy, especially when you might still be dealing with those struggles.

However, resharing them in the form of your essay collection can potentially make a difference in someone’s life. It can allow them to know that they are not isolated in their experiences. Your words can make someone feel like their life is seen, heard, felt, and potentially rescue them from a dark place.

Add your words to what people might find when they rummage through the past. 

5. Take Stock

You’ve spent years writing. You’ve persisted through criticism, negatively, doubt, and frustration to arrive at a body of work that you should be proud of. While others waited for the muse to strike, you set your butt down solidly in your chair and produced. 

Was everything you wrote Nobel laureate worthy? Of course not.

But in all your writing, you’ve surely crafted something that has the potential to uplift someone, change their bullheaded beliefs, increase their empathy, or just put a smile on their face after a particularly craptastic day. 

The fact that you amassed enough work that can be bound into a collection is an achievement worthy of celebration. It also means that your work as a writer most likely matters to someone, whether dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people, but who cares.

It all means that you haven’t written in vain. And sometimes we all just need a testament to that.

Marcus Harrison Green is the author of Readying to Rise, the publisher of the South Seattle Emerald, and a columnist with the Seattle Times. Growing up in South Seattle, he experienced first-hand the impact of one-dimensional stories on marginalized communities, which taught him the value of authentic narratives. After an unfulfilling stint in the investment world during his twenties, Marcus returned to his community with a newfound purpose of telling stories with nuance, complexity,  and multidimensionality with the hope of advancing social change. This led him to become a writer and found the South Seattle Emerald. He was awarded the Seattle Human Rights Commissions’ Individual Human Rights Leader Award for 2020. You can follow him on Twitter or connect with him on Facebook.

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Through my own struggles with writing a novel, as well as my work with other writers, I’ve seen this firsthand. Cultivating the right mindset about writing a novel is just as critical to success as understanding the craft of it. 

Here are the five things about writing a novel that I wish I’d realized sooner.

1. Let yourself be a beginner at writing a novel.

When you first start writing a novel, you are a beginner, no matter how much writing you have done before. You will struggle with description, you will write flat characters, and you will agonize over making dialogue sound real. 

It’s even more frustrating if you’re an avid reader, and you know what good storytelling and good writing look like. You may think you’ll be able to easily replicate advanced skills in your story. 

What you’re experiencing is a gap between your taste and skills. Ira Glass explains: “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years, you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.”

Writers give up in the early stages of the first draft because they don’t understand how their writing could be so bad—especially if they’ve been told before that they’re good at writing. But even if you’ve been good at writing other things, you’re a beginner at writing a novel. So try not to compare yourself to your favorite authors or expect that you should be more advanced. Give yourself the grace to be bad and the permission to practice your craft until it improves. 

2. Everyone has to learn how to write a novel.

Our tastes trip us up, but so does a belief in natural talent. There’s a pervasive idea that some writers are just born with it, that a whole and compelling story just flows out of them and onto the page. 

However, despite how easy some novelists make this endeavor look, no one is born knowing how to write a book. Yet, so many first-time novelists sit down with the hope that they are a natural talent, and that writing will be easy and storytelling will come effortlessly. If we don’t get our first draft perfect on the first try, we might believe it’s a sign that we don’t have the gift and we can’t do it. 

In reality, you have to learn. Even if you have plenty of experience writing articles and short stories, you still have to learn to write a novel. 

A novel’s conventions are not like any other piece of writing. A novel is also such a large-scale project that it requires a different approach. Learn about story structure and character development. Try out different planning methods and writing habits. Look at a novel as something you have to learn how to do. 

3. You don’t have to do it on your own.

Along with the genius myth, we also believe that writers do their work alone. And while the act of writing is generally solitary, working on a novel should involve outside input. We get so close to our own work that we can’t evaluate it objectively. Getting outside perspectives on your story will help you see the problems that you can’t identify on your own. And help abounds to get your writing and your story in the best possible shape. DIY MFA, writing groups, critique partners, coaches, editors, workshops, and more are all available to you.

You also don’t have to wait until you already have a draft to get help. Want to skip years of writing in circles, trying to figure out on your own how to raise the stakes of your novel or make your characters more believable? Take a class or work one-on-one with a book coach. 

Asking for help doesn’t mean that you’re not cut out to write; it’s just a more efficient way to learn and hone your craft. 

Getting help will better prepare you for traditional publishing as well given that the industry is more competitive than ever, and agents don’t have as much time as they once did to help promising writers develop their skills. As such, they’re less likely to take on a writer who’s not quite there yet. So before you query, you should take advantage of any opportunity you can to learn new skills, get feedback on your work, and make your draft the best it can be. 

4. Editing will take longer than drafting.

Many beginning writers think that the hard part of the process is completing the first draft; then all the story needs is a polish, and the book is ready to publish. They wind up discouraged when they either finish the draft and find it’s a mess, or they try to query a story that’s just not ready and get continually rejected.

Instead, go into your first draft with the mindset that your novel will be far from done when you type “the end.” In fact, in the case of your first novel, the editing process will likely take the bulk of your time. You can’t see the scope of your novel until you’ve completed a full draft because you discover so much about your story and your characters along the way. And then you can see what’s working and what isn’t. 

Ultimately, your first draft will need a massive story-level edit before line edits. Plan to spend significant time on that step of the process. 

5. Persistence is more important than talent or natural ability. 

Given the debunked myth about natural talent, the thing that separates successful writers from—well, writers who do not publish or do not finish—is persistence. 

It takes time to learn, to practice, to develop your skills, to revisit your story over and over to make it better, to work with others and apply their feedback. But writers who think that talent is all it takes will not realize they need to put in this effort; they will never see their skills improve because they give up when the work gets hard. 

I’ll admit that this happened to me on more than one draft. I felt like my terrible first drafts were a sign that I couldn’t write well, and I’d never get better. I just never got better because I kept quitting. 

So remember, your writing and storytelling skills can be improved, but only if you’re prepared to stick it out through all the tough times. 

With the right mindset, you can learn to look at those challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than warning signs that you’re doing it wrong. 

In fact, if you have the mindset that writing a novel takes continual learning and practice, and you show up to write consistently, you’re doing it right. 

Heather Campbell is a book coach who helps writers develop tools to overcome their perfectionism and mindset blocks so they can create lasting and effective writing habits to complete a novel. When she’s not immersed in fiction, she’s running in the fresh mountain air of Colorado or snuggling with her rescue dog, Chase. Find out more at www.thewriterremedy.com and follow her on Instagram!

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In fact, how does a writer train himself? Hemingway trained himself by listening to his memory and rearranging it by tinting it, thus many of his writings seemed to come from first-hand experience. 

You can create fiction from secondary sources by alertly watching what happens around you. You listen when people talk. You discern the smells around you. You understand, never judging, because you are everything―being the Maker―when you write. 

The following five tips for writing fiction are subjective—every writer must have his own rules of writing. However, we all learn from one another and writing tips, therefore, contribute to such growth.

1. On Building Short Story Collections

Writers who have in their repertoire published and/or unpublished short stories would fret about how they fit together in a collection. Should the stories share a common thread, a theme? Can they be unrelated to one another and yet stand on their own merit?

Either approach works. However, the building of a story collection might benefit by strategically placing stories with reciprocal settings and moods in such a logical way they help the stories flow better. 

Then each structure, as a cohesive unit, must impress either as a whole or by the strength of each individual story. Pleasure reading is that which seeks enjoyment. Whatever structure a story collection is built with must please readers in the end.

2. On Writing Routines

So you want to start writing fiction. Do you have a writing routine? I know no one’s routine is like another’s. I wrote every day. Each day, faithfully, by sticking to some basic rules:

• Find discipline in solitude so you can meet your characters. It’s like a rendezvous with ghosts. Then make that meeting every day or every night with no excuses.
• Write each scene as if it were the only thing in your universe—it must command all your attention.
• Write one scene well and let that scene breed the next scene.
• Leave room for readers to participate. Remember: Less is more.
• Stop where you still have something to say so the next day you won’t face a dry well.
• Read each day to keep your mind off your own writing.
• Don’t believe in anybody’s rules except yours.

Somewhere I remember Toni Morrison once said, “I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.” 

3. On Revising

You finished a short story or a novel’s chapter.

Now go back and fine-tune it—add, delete—what needs to go in, be taken out. Repair the characters. Do it when your mind is still fresh with the scenes and the characters of that story or chapter. 

However, you must be unbiased (which is hard toward what you’ve just written) and detached (which is harder from what you’ve just built), so you can see your own creative flaws.

Or it will be challenging much later to go back to fix the flaws either on your own courage, or at an editor’s request.

4. On Characterization

Unlike an actor who plays just his role, an author plays all his characters’ roles, like a man who plays chess against himself.

You can imagine characters. Yet until you write them out, you haven’t known them. Let them interact with one another. It’s then that you begin to explore your characters’ depths. 

If you ask me what’s the hardest part in writing a novel, I’ll tell you: characterization. That’s what separates a literary novel from a potboiler. 

Characters shape a story line, not the other way around. You can’t think up a plot and shoehorn your characters into it. If you do, you are writing a potboiler. 

In fact, well-developed characters create a more convincing story line, even shaping it or altering it against your original vision.

5. On Hard Scenes

Writing fiction is just like any normal part of our daily life. It ebbs and flows. The worst thing to a writer isn’t writer’s block but illness that can really affect his writing. Other than that, as Hemingway once said, there will be days when you have to drill rock and then blast it out with charges. When that happens, just take a break, do something else and let your battery be recharged.

There are no hard scenes to write. Really. Those so-called difficult scenes are what writers make them out to be with their paranoia. So before they can write such scenes, their anxiety has already killed their creativity to write them.

What is your best advice on writing fiction?

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, the Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, and The C&R Press Fiction Prize. His new novel, Mrs. Rossi’s Dream, was named Best New Book by Booklist and a 2019 Foreword Reviews INDIES Silver Winner and Bronze Winner. You can find him on his website, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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The answers have a lot to do with harnessing and manipulating human curiosity: our need to know what happens next, how a difficult situation will “turn out.” Will the characters we love live to see another day, and, if so, how? Something in our brain cannot rest until we know all is right—or at least resolved—in the story world.

When I wrote my novel They Will Be Coming for Us, my intent was to keep the reader entertained every step of the way. This required several things: a sprinkling of humor, a dash or two of sex, and an overall sense of danger. I was elated when my first pre-publication reviewer wrote that my book “holds readers spellbound” (more on how to do this here).

A true page turner skips like a stone from one conflict to the next. In between, a bit of downtime occurs so both readers and characters can catch their breath. But quiet moments of reflection soon segue into motion. All will not be settled until the end of the book, when the loose ends tie together in an unexpected yet plausible finish.

Here are five ways to produce a page turner:

1. Conflict and Tension. 

Fear. Emotional pain. Physical pain. Annoyance. Irritation. Confrontation. Threats of any of the above—or worse, of death. These are the things that create pressure, anxiety. 

Humans may avoid tension in their everyday lives, but it plays an important role in keeping readers engaged in the story world. Life for characters should rarely be copacetic. Even if two friends have a civil conversation, tension should be present in some form. Their conversation strains under the weight of that thing they don’t want to talk about or are afraid to ask. Or, they are talking about the thing that causes stress, and their words are heated. 

The unease of conflict must be present on the surface or below it in most every scene.

2. Make the reader worry. 

How? Create suspense. Once again, it can be subtle or it can be obvious. An ominous atmosphere, such as a twister (metaphorical or otherwise) appears in the near distance. It might be a dangerous situation that requires careful skill in order to survive. A silent man lurking in the corner, a scary dream or other portentous activity. Something could easily go wrong—make sure your readers fear that it will. 

Provide a hint of what could happen in a worst-case scenario. Then, later, when tensions are high, make the “bad” thing happen in some way, shape, or form.

3. Unpredictable Characters.

No one is all good or all bad, all nice or all mean, all prim and proper or rough around the edges. Some characters begin as the enemy and end up the savior. If you want to create twists and surprises, you need characters that can break out of whatever mold you’ve put them in, in a believable way. 

You need round characters, three-dimensional characters. Characters who may be steadfast about something, but then you reveal a tiny crack in that steadfastness, a hint of what may come. And readers will read on to see whether it does.

For example, in a scene you present a young woman who loathes the expensive coffee shop her best friend often drags her to. She refuses to order there. Before the scene ends, however, you show her sniffing the air in a way that suggests she wouldn’t mind having a delicious coffee (the hint). At the end of the story, the best friend pops in for her daily caffeine fix and finds this anti-coffee drinker alone at a table, sipping happily.

Granted, this is a minor twist, but you can imagine using the technique in a bigger, more significant way. Real people aren’t consistent, and you can use that to your advantage when creating twists and other surprises.

4. Snappy Dialogue. 

Nothing eases readers down the page faster than crisp dialogue. All dialogue should be lean, but the more intense the situation, the shorter, terser, and quicker it will be. Establish who is speaking at the get-go so you can lose the “he said/she said” and let the back-and-forth flow like a river down the page.

“Get your bag,” I say. “We’re leaving.”

“What? No.” Bella scowls.

“Laurent is coming. We can’t handle Laurent.”

“I promised I’d stay.”

“Text him from the car.”

“No.”

“Get. Your. Bag.”

Our eyes lock.

“He’ll kill us,” I say.

She runs to her room.

5. Short Sentences. 

The same effect can be created with short sentences, which quicken the pace of the action.

Jessica hovers in the doorway. If only she could reach the light. The floor creaks behind her. She startles back. “Adam!” she cries.

One might argue that every plot has the potential to be a page turner in its own way, whether action packed or quietly intense. The hint of what’s to come can act as a powerful push forward. We want to know, Will it happen? If so, what will be the result? Will the main character prevent the disaster? If she doesn’t, what kind of tragedy will occur? Even if only a personal tragedy. The need to know is the key.

Kim Catanzarite has been a freelance writer and editor for almost three decades, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her debut sci-fi thriller, They Will Be Coming for Us, published June 1, 2021. You can subscribe to her self-publishing blog, and follow her on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

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1. Borrow from Real Life

In his memoir, Rushdie writes his father cried out, “What am I going to tell my friends?” when he told him he was going to be a writer. A similar scene appears in the novel, The Satanic Verses, with a main character telling his father he’s going to be an actor. Fourteen pages later, he recounts an experience I recognize from the novel Fury, which includes a character, whose physical description is based on his ex-wife, Padma Lakshimi. 

These are just a few real life elements that made it into his fiction. I used to avoid including anything from my life in my writing. I thought people might think I was hiding behind fiction to write about myself or them. 

More importantly I thought it would make me a fraud—fiction is supposed to be made up. 

I realized Rushdie, and most fiction writers, frequently include details from their lives in stories. They give fiction that bit of truth it needs to be believable. And some stories are too good not to use.  

You don’t have to include intimate details or base a whole character on someone you know. Including pieces of a real conversation might bring your dialogue to life. Try expanding a childhood accident or a bad work experience into a traumatic event for a character’s backstory.

2. Characters Need Distinctive Voices

When asked, Rushdie advised writers to give characters their own distinct voices, explaining that while reading passages of character dialogue you should be able to tell the difference. Each character should have different vocabulary, syntax, attitude, and body language. 

Rushdie focuses on voice. This stems from the advice of a history professor at Cambridge: “You must never write history until you can hear the people speak.” He remembered it and thought it was a valuable principle for fiction as well. He writes in his memoir you need a sense of how people speak to tell their story. The way characters speak reveals a lot about them.

Think about how your characters speak. Do they use short or long sentences, are they slow and deliberate or do their words come out quick and garbled? Maybe they use a lot of slang or technical jargon from their work. 

Remember to read dialogue out loud to really hear the character’s voice.  

3. Do Your Research

Rushdie’s novels take place in a variety of locations in the world and in time. It’s hard to believe that he could recreate these settings in his fiction without doing at least some research. 

Before writing Midnight’s Children, he left his job to travel through India for as long as possible. Much of the story is about India itself and it’d been over a decade since he’d lived there. He describes the trip as “plunging into the inexhaustible Indian reality, so that [he] could drink deeply from the horn of plenty and then come home and write.” 

He mentions a variety of media he consumes as he developed The Ground Beneath Her Feet. He had a friend in the music industry review it to point out related mistakes. 

The clearest evidence of his research was the four-and-a-half-page bibliography included in The Enchantress of Florence.

You don’t need intimate knowledge of every setting. If you can’t manage a visit, there are other options. Key details can be found on the internet using local newspapers, blogs, maps, and satellite views. 

When writing an era other than your own, look up cultural norms, technologies and language quarks. 

Lastly, reach out to friends, family and colleagues that might be willing to fill you in on their areas of expertise or knowledge.

4. How You Write Is as Important as What You Write

You can tell Rushdie pays careful attention to language and how he uses it to tell his stories. One moment from the novel Fury has always stuck with me. When the narrator is introduced to the female love interest, he loses touch with reality describing her. It’s four long paragraphs that verge on a philosophical lecture on her beauty: “Extreme physical beauty draws all available light toward itself, becomes a shining beacon in an otherwise darkened world. Why would one peer into the encircling gloom when one could look at this kindly flame. Why talk, eat, sleep, work when such effulgence was on display?” 

The long rambling sentences made me slow down, pulling me into the long, drawn-out moment, which was abruptly interrupted by a piece of dialogue from narrator’s friend. 

I remember the first time I read it. I had to stop for a minute to collect myself and remember where I was. It felt a lot like how the character was snapped out of his own thoughts and brought back to reality.

Think about what your characters are going through and how your writing might reflect what they are feeling. 

Short sentences with abrupt changes in topic mimic the rapid thinking of anxiety and panic, while the same words in longer sentences feel like being lost in thought. An elaborate explanation or description where a few words would have sufficed might cause suspicion.

5. Keep Writing

Right out of college, Rushdie knew he wanted a career as a writer. It’d take almost thirteen years to really get his start. In the meantime, he worked as a copywriter and wrote what he describes as “unbearable amounts of garbage.” 

His first novel, Grimus was dismissed or ignored by critics. 

For him, Midnight’s Children was his last try at achieving his dream. He thought it was more likely to fail than succeed and took five years to complete. Fortunately, the book was a success and he enjoyed continued success until publishing The Satanic Verses. Labeled blasphemous by Muslim leaders, there were violent protests against the book and it was banned in several countries. A fatwa—official death sentence—was issued for him and anyone involved in publishing the novel. He had to live in hiding under police protection for nine years. His personal and professional life suffered as a result of the controversy surrounding the book. 

There were moments when he considered not being a writer. Progress was slow and he would go long periods without writing fiction, instead focusing on efforts to defend his work and speak out for freedom of speech and expression. It would have been easy and safer for him to stop writing, but he didn’t.

It’s easy to get discouraged. Writing is not easy and sometimes the risk is greater than the reward. But there is joy in the process of creation and seeing the result of your hard work. Focus on that joy and keep writing.

Alexis Collazo, sometimes LexC online, is originally from Brooklyn but currently lives in Pennsylvania where she has worked at the Public Library for the past four years. Her favorite part of the job, other than being surrounded by books, is leading writing workshops. She is passionate about helping others improve their writing and sharing their unique stories with the world. She enjoys creative work that bends artistic boundaries and crosses genres, and is currently working on a mixed genre memoir combining essays, poetry and poetic prose. You can find out more about her by visiting her website, or by following her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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I’ll decide to do something that seems so good for me. I’ll purchase books and watch webinars and do the research and decide, That’s it! That’s the thing that will change my life for the better!

Then, as I embark upon the journey to make this astounding life transformation… Did you hear the door slamming behind my eternal teenager as she flees screaming, “You can’t make me!”?

Hello, resistance! Not nice to see ya!

Some of us successfully defeat resistance in hand-to-hand combat. Others have to trick her into letting us go.

For the second group, here are my five steps to trick yourself into a creative habit. They worked for me, and I think they can work for you too.

Step #1: Decide on Your Goal

When deciding on your goal, make sure that it connects to your purpose and meaning in a significant way. You want this goal to be something that can get you out of bed on cold mornings or keep you awake when all you want to do is collapse.

For example, I wanted to FINALLY finish my novel. I decided to wake at 5:30 am for a full hour of writing.

By day three of waking at 5:30 am, I thought I was going to die. Thoroughly exhausted in every way, my day job suffered—and I still needed that sucker!

On day four, I accidentally slept in until 6:45 am and felt great all day. No more super-early mornings, I decided. I guess I can’t do that.

I could have stopped there, but my novel! I want to write! Get published! I don’t want to die without finishing all the writing I want to do! When I thought of giving up, my regret laid on top of me like a bag of concrete. 

“How can I make my writing happen?” I despaired.

At the same time, with that question, I knew I’d picked the perfect goal.

You’ve found your perfect project the moment you look at your goal and, instead of “It’s too much. I can’t do this,” you say “How can I make this happen?”

The trick worked!

Step #2: Pick One Tiny Step You Can Take Toward Your Goal

“How can I make this happen?” is the right question.

And the answer? Pick a tiny, itty, bitty step to take.

Something that you can’t possibly NOT achieve. This trick shuffles you inevitably toward your goal.

Something that you can repeat each day.

I decided to write for fifteen minutes a day.

That was it. That was all I asked of myself. That was all I could ask of myself.

Fifteen minutes each weekday. I didn’t even make myself write on weekends. Fifteen minutes a day, five days a week.

Step #3: Create a Ritual Around that Step

Create a ritual around that step that propels you into your writing space. 

To do this, acknowledge your truths. For example:

• I wake up early, but if I get up too early, I’m sleepy and grouchy all day.
• My wife sleeps late.
• I am at my most creative in the morning.
• I like to get my most important work done first.
• If I move making lunch from the morning to the evening, I have my fifteen minutes.

Mornings, in the still and quiet, promised the best results for me. 

Answer these same questions for yourself. What time of day are you the most creative? Are you good at getting things done at the end of the day or do you need to get them out of the way?  When will you be least likely to be distracted? Do you rise early or stay up late? Do you have any final or beginning chores for your day? If yes, can you move them to the opposite time?

Now, visualize your ritual. Does it feel possible? Great! If not, tweak the ritual until peace rises in your soul at the thought of performing the actions.

My visualization went like this:

Before I go to bed, I make my lunch and store it in the fridge. Off to sleep!

At 6:30, I rise. Fifteen minutes to feed the pets and walk back into my office. Write from 6:45 until 7. At that point, get up, take my shower (½ hour), walk the dogs (½ hour), eat my breakfast (½ hour). At 8:30 am, get in the car and go to the day job.

Yep. All doable. 

Time to set my stage! Make sure everything you need to write is ready to go when you enter your writing space. A working pen sitting on top of your notebook. Laptop in its place. 

Now all you have to do is take this same small step, over and over.

Once you start to write regularly, even if it’s only fifteen minutes a day, the words you put on the page will begin to pile up. As you begin to yearn for more time, go ahead and give in. Use a small chisel and chip tiny bits of extra time into your schedule. Too much time at once can undermine your efforts, so go slow. Patience is the key to this trick.

Step #4: Celebrate Your Victory

Each morning, I wrote for fifteen minutes. Done with my step, I proceeded through the rest of my day—so pleased with myself!

For me, the celebration for fulfilling my step was reveling in the work on the page. When I finished up that first day and looked at my word count, I saw that I’d created 50 words. I danced my joy in writing those 50 words all the way to the shower! 

Your celebration is the daily manifestation of your victory! Dance, sing, have a cup of that tea you keep for special occasions.

Allow your celebration to proceed in any way that you wish. But make sure to rejoice each time you succeed in taking that step. The continual reward helps you return to do the step again and again—and that keeps you moving forward.

Step #5: NO GUILT ALLOWED.

Finally, here’s the biggest trick of all—we all have those days, a day when we oversleep, a day when we feel sick, a day when we have to get the trash out and the cat pukes in the middle of everything and the dog runs outside and barks at a deer and we spend our fifteen minutes of writing time corralling him back into the house.

But our real goal is that when those things happen, instead of dwelling on our failure for that one day, we put that day behind us and show up brand new the next day. That one day’s worth of failure doesn’t get to seep into the next. Tomorrow, we return to our desks with our heads held high and write. 

And trick ourselves into continuing to write every single day that we can for as long as we can.

LA (as in tra-la-la) Bourgeois supports writers, makers, and other creatives to find their meaning and use their creativity to manifest it in the world. And, if they want to turn their creative work into a business, her twenty-five+ years of entrepreneurial experience answers their questions. Writing and knitting are her nonnegotiable mediums, and she can usually be found with a pen or knitting needles in her hands. Find her free guide, “Tricking Yourself into a Creative Habit” online on her website and start writing those words today. She can’t wait to read them!

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1. Audiobooks help you read more

Maybe you listen to audiobooks already, and if this is true, it’s undoubtedly improving your writing. Reading is essential for authors not only to learn good writing, but also to stay up to date with publishing trends. If you want to sell your work, it helps to be aware of what’s selling. It also helps find accurate recent comp titles when pitching your books.

Audiobooks are a great way to get more books into your brain. A UC-Berkeley Gallant Lab study found your brain creates meaning from words in the same way whether those words are read or listened to. Sure, keep reading print or ebooks too, but if you have an audiobook on while you drive or do the dishes, you’ll likely end up consuming more words, and I am a firm believer that authors should read deeply and broadly. Fall asleep reading nonfiction in print? Put it on in the car. Prose too dense to get through on the page? Try listening!

The more books you read, the better your understanding of what makes good writing will be, so pop on your headphones and get reading!

2. They support authors and publishing

Audiobook sales increased in 2020 and are becoming increasingly popular. As the publishing industry continues to shift and evolve, it will likely continue to rely on audiobooks to thrive. Libraries, too, deal increasingly in digital content, and audiobooks are a big part of this. When you buy audiobooks or borrow or request them for your library, you are supporting the industry as a whole, which makes it a more viable space for your own work. A rising tide lifts all boats, and writers’ support for one another is essential.

3. Audiobooks can help you find your voice

In addition to letting you read more, audiobooks are one of the best tools for finding your own authorial voice, as they let you listen to literal voices. When you read text, you likely still hear your own voice saying the words in your head. Hearing audiobook narrators helps distinguish between different authors’ work.

Neil Gaiman, in his Masterclass, recommends the following exercise for finding your authorial voice: Attempt to write a paragraph about the same event in the voice of several different authors. Then, write it in your own voice.

To add an audiobook twist to this exercise, listen to a clip of an audiobook from each author before you attempt to imitate their voice. After you write it, see if you can imagine it in that narrator’s voice. Make any adjustments you need.

When it’s time to write in your own voice, do so and then read it aloud. Does it sound right in your own, literal voice? How does it differ from the narrations you listened to and imitated?

4. They can help you find your characters’ voices

Many audiobook narrators are excellent at using variations in their voice for different characters’ dialogue. Some use full casts or different narrators for different points of view. It can be easy to let your characters blur together, becoming indistinct from one another, but even minor characters should have unique voices and quirks.

As you listen to audiobooks, pay attention to the shifts in narrators or in a narrators’ voice. What shifts in the authors’ writing do these reflect? 

5. Audiobooks can help you learn to write with rhythm

Finally, as an author, you don’t just want the meaning of your writing to be clear. You want it to sound good in readers’ brains or aloud. When you hear prose aloud, you hear the rhythm of the words and sentences and, thus, are more likely to listen for these in your own writing. 

I was first introduced to this concept when I read Gary Lutz’s essay, “The Sentence is a Lonely Place,” but the how didn’t click until I thought about Lutz’s charge to “combin(e) the acoustical elegance of the aphorism with the force and utility of the load-bearing, tractional sentence” while listening to an audiobook.

As you listen, pay attention to the way the sentences sound. Are they clipped and bouncy? Soft and rolling? Lutz describes words that “fizzed and popped and tinkled and bonged.” How do you want your sentences to sound? The actual sound of your work should reflect the feeling of the scenes you’re writing.

Try listening to an audiobook without paying attention to the story. I do this sometimes as I’m falling asleep, letting the words of a book whose story I’m not necessarily interested in absorbing wash over me. Can you hear the words as they flow? Do the sentences sound smooth or choppy? Does a rhythm begin to emerge? Can you hear the rhythm of your own writing? Are there words to add that make it better? Words to take out that break the flow?

Audiobooks, especially modern ones with professional narrators or full casts, are a fun, entertaining way to read. But more than that, they can be used as a tool to keep you up to date on the publishing world, support fellow writers, and take your craft to the next level.

Becca Spence Dobias lives in Southern California where she writes frantically as her children sleep. Her short stories have been featured in two Writing Bloc anthologies, Inlandia: a Literary Journey, and A Short Guide to Finding Your First Home in the United States. Her debut novel, On Home, will be out August 24, 2021 from Inkshares. You can pre-order your copy on Amazon or Bookshop.

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The goal of copyediting is to escort the blunders out the door so your words can shine through. Whether you hire a professional for your work or not (learn more about the editorial process here), I recommend getting the manuscript into the best shape that you can. If it’s a book manuscript, your beta readers will thank you, and if it’s a news article that will appear in a local newspaper or online blog or zine, you may be responsible for the copyediting anyway.   

I’ve been a freelance editor for decades, and I teach three copyediting courses for Writer’s Digest University, so I know well the mistakes writers most often make. Here are five common copyediting issues to look for and eradicate on your own.

1. Commas and Independent Clauses

Use a comma to join two independent clauses (those that can stand on their own as a full sentence) that connect with a conjunction.

Example: The bird flew up to the feeder, and the cat let out a cry.

“The bird flew up to the feeder” is one independent clause. “The cat let out a cry” is another independent clause. The two are connected with the conjunction “and.” The conjunction is paired with a comma.

Seems straightforward enough, but it’s very easy to forget this comma.

Do not, on the other hand, use a comma to separate a compound predicate. This occurs when one subject is shared by two clauses. Do not use a comma to cut the subject from the second verb.

Incorrect: Lainey went to the store, and bought a bag of oranges.

Correct: Lainey went to the store and bought a bag of oranges.

2. The Semicolon

Many writers fear the semicolon, but it has its uses. For one, you might want to connect two sentences that are very closely related, but you don’t want to use a conjunction to do so. One statement flows into the next, enhancing or expounding on it.

Correct:  I am traveling to China; I’ve always wanted to go there.

Correct: Ginger swam to the other side of the lake; it really was the only option.

You will also use semicolons when dividing items in a complex list in which one of the items is a sub-list.

Correct: Her favorite color combinations were black and white; pink and green; and red, white, and blue.

3. Quotation Punctuation and Dialogue Tags

Many are baffled by the quotes, commas, and dialogue tags that are used to indicate spoken words. The dialogue tag may start the sentence, fall in the middle, or end the sentence. A sentence leading into the spoken words can act like a dialogue tag, but it will not be punctuated like one.

Example 1: He said, “You’re going to regret this.”

In this example, you have the dialogue tag at the start, a comma following the tag, and the quotation marks before and at the end of the spoken words.

Example 2: “You’re going to regret this,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Here we start with the quotation mark and spoken words followed by a dialogue tag. Note the comma at the end of the spoken words and the period following the tag, putting an end to the sentence. The speaker continues, however, with another sentence, so you start this second sentence with a new quotation mark and a capitalized word. It ends with a period inside the closing quote because there is no tag to follow. The tag in the middle works for both sentences.

Example 3: “You’re going to regret this,” he said, “and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Here the sentence continues after the dialogue tag, so a comma is used after the tag and a new quotation mark starts the rest of the sentence, but a lowercase letter is used to start the second phrase because it is a continuation of the same sentence.

Example 4: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.

When the dialogue tag follows, you’ll use a comma at the end of the spoken sentence followed by the closing quote and the dialogue tag.

Example 5: James grabbed a handful of the candies by the cash register and unwrapped one. “I’m known for having a sweet tooth.”

Here the sentence that comes before the quotation indicates who is speaking. It is not treated as a dialogue tag. It’s a sentence in its own right.

4. Colon Use

I would venture to say that a majority of writers do not know how to properly use colons. Improper use appears in print constantly, so it’s certainly not their fault. Here is the No. 1 rule to remember when using a colon: a full sentence must come before the colon. (I have used the colon correctly in the sentence before this one.)

Incorrect: The paper listed ways to earn a living including: starting a business, working for someone else, getting a temporary job. (Remove the colon and add a comma after “living.”)

Incorrect: The instructions are: cut the paper, glue the paper, and color the paper. (Remove the colon and the sentence works.)

Acceptable: Pros: attractive and affordable. Cons: far from work, no animals allowed. (A single word used to introduce a list.)

Correct: The question was obvious: How would we get out of here? (Use a colon to introduce a question or quote.)

5. Dashes

Dashes work in pairs, but don’t send a dash to do the work of a comma. Save the dashes for the “special” instances when you want to set off an emphasizing statement or one that further explains. I like to think of it as going off on a quick tangent. Please note: be sure that the words before the first dash and after the second form a complete sentence.

Tangent: She worked long hours at her desk—in spite of sitting being the new smoking—each and every day.

Emphasis: He would not listen—no matter how hard she tried to explain—to any advice she gave.

Non-Essential Clause: He put the Beatles album on, a favorite of his, and sat back in the easy chair. (“A favorite of his” is the nonessential clause, and you will not use a pair of dashes here.)

Search for these scenarios in your own work, and get in the habit of using this punctuation correctly. If you can handle the above punctuation well, your manuscript will be that much closer to reaching the goal of a smooth and enjoyable read.

Kim Catanzarite has been a freelance writer and editor for almost three decades, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her debut sci-fi thriller, They Will Be Coming for Us, published June 1, 2021. You can subscribe to her self-publishing blog at AuthorKimCatanzarite.com/blog, or follow her on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.   

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