Of course, no one is going to read your book if they don’t know about your book. But with the hundreds of thousands of books that get published how do you, one author, break through the white noise and be heard?

One of the best ways is through getting yourself some podcast interviews. These are great because they get you right into the ears of your potential readers from anywhere in the world without even leaving your house.  

As the producer of DIY MFA Radio, I hear a lot of author interviews. The raw, unedited kind. Some interviews are better than others, and a good audio editor can clean up a recording to make the author shine, but you still want to put your best foot forward.

With that in mind here are five steps to give the best most awesome podcast interview you can.

Please note this article assumes you have already been accepted as a guest on a podcast, and  is not about pitching to be one (that’s a whole other kettle of fish).

1) Send the host/producer a copy of your book

It is of vital importance to giving an awesome interview that you send the host a copy of your book well in advance of your recording date. You are wanting to be on this interview to promote your book, so the host will need to have time to read said book.

You can be all set to discuss your book, but if the host has no idea what it’s is even about, they are not going to be able to ask you many questions, which would make for a very boring interview. And no one wants to listen to a boring interview.

2) Stop. Breathe. Relax.

Here’s the hard truth: When you are on your interview you will be nervous. There’s no way to fight that clammy, chest-constricting, anxiety that comes with public speaking. So don’t. Accept that you will be nervous, and that that’s okay because everyone gets nervous. Even some of the most seasoned authors, who have been on countless interviews, still get nervous when they have to speak. But they do it, and so can you.

Right before the interview starts, take a few deep breaths and relax your whole body as much as possible. Ask the host questions if you are confused about anything or have certain concerns you would like to address. Remember: the host wants your interview to sound awesome, too. And while it doesn’t stop you from being nervous, knowing that this interview is pre-recorded and there’s an audio editor that’s got your back if you have a major blooper does help to ease some of the tension. Especially after you make said major blooper.

3) Pause and collect your thoughts

At some point in your interview your train of thought will become derailed and you will begin to stumble over the words to that perfect answer you were giving a second ago.

The temptation will be there to simply push through all the uh’s and um’s until you find the right words again. But that only serves to make you more nervous the longer you can’t find them. It’s a vicious cycle, so don’t start it in the first place.

When you begin to fumble for words, stop talking. Pause for a minute to give your missing train of thought a chance to get back on track. Then start your answer over. The host doesn’t want to rush you, and if you repeat words when you start again, that’s okay. Remember, podcast interviews are pre-recorded, so an audio editor will be coming in to clean up any bloopers and make you sound as awesome as you are.

4) Watch your language

Using curse words may not seem like a big concern, but shows can get shut down for using certain not-so-PG language without transparency. For example, iTunes (the biggest syndication network for podcasts) will remove a podcast if certain words are used and not noted according to their guidelines.

Some shows don’t mind explicit language, but others do. When people see a podcast episode with either an “e” for explicit or a “c” for clean (meaning the curse words are bleeped out) it may deter them from downloading and listening to the episode. This is not to say that you can never use a curse word during your interview. If you let one or two slip out you won’t get flagged (plus an audio editor can edit those out), but if you start dropping f-bombs or your language affects the interview’s quality that could be a problem. If the show you are on doesn’t want to mark their episodes as explicit they may decide to not air your episode even after recording it.

You don’t want to go through all the effort of giving an interview, only for no one to hear it. So when it comes to your language be on the safe side and keep it clean unless the word holds a particular artistic significance to your book. To see an example of what I mean by this check out this DIY MFA Radio episode with author NoNieqa Ramos.

5) Be courteous

You want to give a good interview, but you also want to be remembered as a good interviewee. Make sure you show up on time, and if you must reschedule do so as far in advance as you can. Showing up late or, worse, not all, is very unprofessional. Emergencies do happen, but at least shoot the host a quick email saying that you have had an emergency and will not be able to make your scheduled interview time.

Also, be nice when you’re on the interview, and remember to thank the host for having you on their show. You do not want to be remembered as the guest that showed up late and then was rude. Because people talk. The podcaster community is smaller than you think, and everyone knows the interviewees to avoid. Don’t be one of them by forgetting your manners.

Giving a good podcast interview can really set you apart from all the other authors out there. You create connections with people in a similar way to doing in-person events but on a much larger scale. And it’s that feeling of connection that will get people interested in your book.

Just be your honest awesome self and you can’t go wrong!

Marielle Orff is a freelance writer, content strategist, and podcast producer who strives to help authors manage their online presence so they can put their best foot forward. As a content strategist she takes the stress of content marketing off authors and streamlines their process so they can focus their attention on what really matters: their writing. She is the producer of DIY MFA Radio, has worked as the audio editor for the Writer’s Digest Podcast, and is the Content Strategist for DIYMFA.com. She is currently hard at work on a YA science fiction novel (with just a touch of fantasy) about the strong, intimate bonds between siblings, and conquering evil through sheer awesomeness. To connect with Marielle check out her website at marielleorff.com.

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To engage readers, we need them to empathize with the main character. They need to care about him or her and whether or not they succeed. This is often accomplished when we can convey the character’s emotions in a way that engages the reader’s emotions; get them feeling what the protagonist is feeling. And the best way to do this is by compellingly showing (not telling) the character’s emotional state.

Readers are not pulled in by the telling of emotion because they’re simply being fed  information. He was sad. She felt angry. Telling creates distance between the reader and the character, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. To pull readers in, we need to bring them close. Invite them into the story to share in the character’s experience. Showing is the way to make this happen. And there are five vehicles you can use to effectively show character emotion—all of which already play a part in your story.

1) Dialogue

We use dialogue to articulate our ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and needs, all of which are driven by our emotional state. What we feel always propels us, but it’s rare to refer to those feelings directly in conversation. So while dialogue is a proven vehicle for sharing a character’s emotions, it rarely should do so alone. To convey feelings well, a writer should also utilize the nonverbal elements of conversation: vocal cues, body language, thoughts, and visceral reactions.

2) Vocal Cues

These are shifts in the voice that supply readers with valuable hints about the speaker’s emotional state. In conversation, there isn’t always time to think about how to react, so while a person might disguise their true feelings by choosing their words carefully, their tone of voice or the flow of words won’t be as easy to control. Hesitations, a voice that changes tone or pitch, words that suddenly slide out faster—all of these are terrific indicators that a character’s emotions have changed and there’s more to the exchange than meets the eye. Vocal cues can be especially useful for showing the feelings of a non-point-of-view character, since, in most written viewpoints, their direct thoughts cannot be shared with the reader.

3) Body Language

This is how our bodies outwardly respond when we experience emotion. The stronger the feeling, the more we react and the less conscious control we have over movement. Because characters are unique, they will express themselves in a specific way, making the writer’s options for showing emotion through body language and action virtually limitless.

4) Thoughts

Thoughts act as a window into the mental process that corresponds with an emotional experience. A character’s internal monologue is not always rational and can skip from topic to topic with incredible speed, but utilizing that mental response to express emotion is a powerful way to convey how they see their world. Thoughts also add a layer of meaning by illustrating how people, places, and events affect the point-of-view character and can help showcase their voice.

5) Visceral Reactions

These are the most powerful form of nonverbal communication and should be used with the most caution. These internal sensations (heart rate, lightheadedness, adrenaline spikes, etc.) are raw and uncontrolled, triggering the fight-flight-freeze response. Because these are instinctive reactions, all people experience them. As such, readers will recognize and connect with them on a primal level.

To make your character’s emotions crystal clear for readers, try a combination of these vehicles. Showing emotion takes a bit more effort than telling, but when it’s done well, it can pay off in heightened reader engagement and increased empathy for the character. So it’s definitely worth the effort. More information on this subject and others pertaining to character emotion can be found in the second edition of The Emotion Thesaurus.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of books for writers—including her latest publication: a second edition of The Emotion Thesaurus, an updated and expanded version of the original volume. Her books are available in multiple languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

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In today’s edition of Theme: A Story’s Soul, we’ll examine five reasons that explain the importance of the theme of family. If five sounds like a stretch, then you might be pleasantly surprised as this post goes along. Remember, no two books examine one theme in the same way—which means the reasons for why a theme is so significant are just as numerous and complex.

1) It can remind us of the importance of birth families

For many of us, our biological family is our first and primary social unit. Our relationships with our parents and siblings shape who we are and create the foundation for relationships with people outside the family. If those familial bonds are healthy, we’re more apt to demonstrate genuine love, loyalty, and selflessness as a result. This kind of nurturing is something we often find in the stories we read. The Murrys in Madeline l’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time, the unnamed man and his son in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and the Alden siblings in Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Children are just a handful of fictional biological families who demonstrate the power of their love and the great lengths that characters and real people alike will go to maintain or save those relationships.

2) It can address broken families and show how people endure or overcome such circumstances.

Sometimes the happy family is an ideal, and the reality we grow up with is much different. Many authors recognize this; and as a result, some stories that explore the theme of family reveal how complicated, fragile, or painful these relationships can be. Infidelity, disownment, neglect, abuse—such trials and tribulations can shatter families, both literally and figuratively. In fact, the broken or dysfunctional family is a frequent topic in creative nonfiction and memoirs such as Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and James McBride’s The Color of Water (specifically Ruth McBride’s chapters in the latter).

This angle on the theme doesn’t just stress the trauma that a narrator or fictional character can experience in these families. It also shows how these individuals endure and rise above their circumstances, sometimes by leaving their birth family for a more loving “chosen” family (which we’ll discuss shortly). For some of us, these stories resonate more strongly than those in Reason #1. When we recognize our own not-so-happy family on the page, we feel less alone in our struggles and might be compelled to use the book as a guide to repairing or changing our circumstances for the better.

3) It opens our eyes to different types of families

Not all literary families are comprised of a husband, wife, and children. Many books that delve into this theme feature different types of families, including single-parent families, blended families, and families with same-sex parents. It’s also common for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other members of the extended family to play crucial roles. (Remember Grandma Lynn in Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones? Or Aunt March in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women?) By highlighting characters and relationships outside the traditional family, the theme’s portrayal becomes more multi-dimensional and realistic. We can then develop empathy for characters who grow up in a family structure that’s different from ours, or feel included and respected because we’ve found a literary family that resembles our own.

Similarly, the theme often embraces “chosen families.” Characters might lose their birth family due to distance, death, or other reasons, and then form new bonds with other characters they meet. Sometimes these relationships form out of necessity, like with the refugees in Ruta Sepetys’s Salt to the Sea. Other times they form out of a common purpose or location, like with Ruth McBride and her friends, neighbors, and church community in The Color of Water. These families might not be related legally or biologically, but the kinship they create and nurture is undeniable and realistic. In this way, stories about chosen families help us remember and acknowledge the people we consider to be “as close as family.” They also emphasize the importance of looking beyond our birth families for love, companionship, and support.

4) It can teach us how the concept of family differs across time and culture, and which aspects of family are universal

Pick up a historical fiction book, or a novel or play written over a century ago. Chances are you’ll find stories from long ago that demonstrate the theme of family. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, for example, illustrate the impact of social status on a family’s future as well as common familial obligations of 19th century Britain, such as a child’s compliance with their parents’ wishes and the parents’ responsibility for their children’s education and manners.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet present darker angles on the theme, but they still address family expectations of Shakespeare’s era, as well as loyalty, love, and other values that are woven into the familial fabric. These and other such stories do more than offer a glimpse into family life in the past. They also reinforce how family has always been a fundamental part of people’s lives, and help us realize how the concept of family has changed over time in some ways and how, in other ways, it hasn’t changed at all.

The same can be said from a cultural perspective. When we engage with stories about families of a different ethnic, religious, or other sociological background than ours, we discover how the character’s culture and beliefs influence the family’s dynamics—and how, despite any differences, our own family might have a lot in common with the family we’re reading about.

Where these stories take place or whether they’re historical (Michelle Moran’s Rebel Queen, Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan) or contemporary (Ibi Zoboi’s American Street, Erika L. Sanchez’s I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter) doesn’t matter. These family-centric stories teach us empathy by acting as a window into family life in another culture and as a mirror of the values, challenges, and relationships we experience in our own.

5) It can highlight a family’s ability to come together during difficult times

What happens when your family experiences a tragedy or other shared heartache? Do you, your parents, siblings, and anyone else make sacrifices so you can be together to support each other? This is often the case with both real-life and fictional families.

The Pevensie siblings in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Charlie’s family in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the Rossignol sisters in The Nightingale are just some of the literary families who struggle to overcome their differences but eventually find a way to reconcile, reunite, or cooperate to achieve a common goal, even if that goal is a sense of restored peace within that family. And when a story’s examination of the theme wraps up in this way, it can be incredibly inspiring. These endings remind us of how vital the ties that bind really are to our existence and how, when we value family beyond measure, we’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep those bonds strong.

In your opinion, why is family an important literary theme? What other reasons would you add to this list? Which family-themed stories have you read that are compelling examples of any of the above?

Sara Letourneau is a poet and speculative fiction writer in Massachusetts who devours good books, loves all kinds of music, and drinks copious amounts of tea. In addition to writing for DIY MFA, she was previously a Resident Writing Coach at Writers Helping Writers, freelance tea reviewer, and music journalist. Her poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Amethyst Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Canary, Soul-Lit, The Eunoia Review, Underground Voices, and elsewhere. Visit Sara at her blog, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

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Indeed, the best stories get us to experience the events being portrayed. Studies have even shown that when readers encounter well-told stories, there’s cortex activity in their brains; that is, the areas of the brain that light up are literally the same areas that would light up were the readers experiencing first-hand the events they were reading about.

Not all stories do this, mind you. The best do; the well-told stories do.

And a big part of a story’s being well-told has to do with how the writer gets readers to identify with characters’ emotions. In fact, it’s stories that convince us of the authenticity and validity of character emotions that ring truest experientially.

In his book From Where You Dream, Robert Olen Butler claims that “emotions are . . . basically experienced, and therefore expressed in fiction, in five ways.” Let’s take a look at them.

1) Physical Responses Inside the Body

The first of Butler’s five expressions is “a sensual reaction inside our body—temperature, heartbeat, muscle reaction, neural change.” Rarely are such reactions perceivable to anyone but the person experiencing them, and even then, it takes a highly perceptive person to pay attention to sensual reactions inside their bodies during emotional encounters.

That may be appropriate during a particularly physical scene—a sex scene, or one involving other physical exertion, like rock climbing or boxing. But an over-reliance on these physical descriptions of emotional expression may come across as oddly clinical.

When people are engaged in emotional encounters, their attention tends not to be on their own bodies, and so if a POV character is nervous or excited, it may be awkward—not to mention cliché—to narrate their vitals. One can easily picture a physically-expressive scene descending quickly into a medical chart: I could feel my heart race as he pressed his lips to mine. As he ran his fingers down my back, my knees got weak. Elevated levels of oxytocin raced through my veins and my blood pressure, had I been able to take it at that moment, probably would have read 140/86.

2) Physical Responses Outside the Body

Second, “there is a sensual response that sends signals outside of our body—posture, gesture, facial expression, tone of voice, and so forth.”

These physical signals are what allow us to read emotions of other people. We can’t read their minds, but we can interpret the outward signs of what they’re feeling. We’re sometimes not even conscious of what it is we’re interpreting when we assess another’s emotional state—is it the minuscule relaxation of the facial muscles around the eyes? Is it the barely-detectable coloration of the skin that results from an elevated heart rate?—regardless, we do all our interpersonal interpreting through physically-expressed emotional signals.

What’s this mean for the writer? You’ll likely have a narrator who does not have access to every thought or feeling experienced by every character. Even omniscient narrators often remain on the outside of characters. In these cases, you have to rely on physical displays and whatever impression the POV characters have about the other characters in the story.

3) Flashes of the past

When you’re writing the experiences of your perspective characters, Butler’s other expressions of emotion tend to be richer soil. The third experience of emotion comes from flashes to the past. “Moments of reference in our past come back to us in our consciousness,” he states, “not as ideas or analyses about the past, but as little vivid bursts of waking dream; they come back as images, sense impressions.”

Flashbacks are certainly one iteration of this type of emotional expression, but writers can give us what James Scott Bell calls a “back flash,” a short evocation of the past, as in this excerpt from Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove:

“He sits there for what must be an hour, just staring at that photo [of his wife]. Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his. She had a way of folding her index finger into his palm, hiding it inside. And he always felt that nothing in the world was impossible when she did that.”

It’s that vivid image of the index finger folded into the palm that is the emotional heart of that flash to the past.

4) Flashes of the future

Butler’s fourth expression goes the other way in time: “Similar to flashes of the past, but of something that has not yet happened or that may happen, something we desire or fear or otherwise anticipate.” These flashes “also come to us as images, like bursts of waking dreams.”

Take this example from André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, in which Elio fantasizes about Oliver:

“About two weeks after his arrival, all I wanted every night was for him to leave his room, not via its front door, but through the French windows on our balcony. I wanted to hear his window open, hear his espadrilles on the balcony, and then the sound of my own window, which was never locked, being pushed open as he’d step into my room after everyone had gone to bed . . . .”

From there, it gets even steamier, but none of it is happening. It’s all imaginative longing for a future event, which reveals Elio’s longing.

5) Sensual Selectivity

And finally, there is what Butler calls “sensual selectivity.” It is often understood that the details being relayed by the narrator are the details the perspective character is paying attention to.

“At any given moment we, and therefore our characters, are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of sensual cues. But in that moment only a very small number of those sensual cues will impinge on our consciousness. Now, what makes that selection for us? Well, our emotions do.”

Take, for example, this moment in Anthony Doerr’s short story “So Many Chances,” in which the protagonist, Dorotea has just moved with her family to Maine and is feeling a little isolated:

“Then she sees the fisherman. Just to her left. Wading. As if he came from nowhere. From nothing. From the sea itself.

She watches him. Feels lucky to watch. The world peeled back and left with only this vision. This silent flying wizardry. The rod seems an extension of his arm, an extra and perfect appendage, his shoulder pivoting, his bare brown chest, his legs tapering to calves buried in the sea. So this is Maine, this is how it can be, she thinks. This fisherman. This grace.”

Dorotea’s perception of the fisherman is colored by her fascination, hope, and attraction.

It’s tempting, and easiest, to just slap a label on a character’s emotion, as in “She was livid.” The typical “Show, Don’t Tell” advice would have you enact the emotion: She threw the book at him and screamed, “You never listen!” And enacting emotions is important and necessary and effective. But an angry person doesn’t always act out. And in those frequent cases when you want to show a character’s emotions before they act, Butler’s five expressions are very helpful.

So it’s worth experimenting with these expressions in order to create the most evocative scenes you can. Give your readers an experience.

T.D. Storm is an award-winning writer and teacher whose work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, and Literary Hub. His passion for storytelling and its inner workings informs his teaching, editing, and mentoring. He runs an online writing school (stormwritingschool.com), which offers articles, worksheets, and courses geared toward helping writers hone their craft of engaging and moving stories. You can also connect with him on Facebook and Pinterest.

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The following rules belong in the top tray of your romance writers toolkit. Let’s get started!

Rule 1) It’s All About The Lovers

This rule is black and white without one minuscule of gray. The main plot, without exception must be the relationship between the hero and heroine. Period.

We develop subplots to add meat and potatoes to our story, but the blossoming relationship, with clashes of conflict, mingled with peace and harmony―and a bit of steam depending on the sub-genre―is the reason fans pluck romance novels off shelves faster than Wonder Woman in Sketchers.

Plan an initial meet and greet for the hero and heroine by the end of chapter one. Depending on your plot, if this is not a possibility, arrange an introduction by the end of chapter three. Even if the first encounter lasts a mere minute or two, clue the reader in she is witnessing the main characters first “look-see.” The couple may have an immediate attraction, perhaps flirt, or they may do a once-over, and the heroine visualizes whacking him upside the head with a three-day-dead salmon.

Now, in no way does this attraction mean they have to resemble Ken and Barbie. Characters with physical disabilities, differences of opinion, or a mega-zit resembling a third eye also possess extraordinary qualities, value, and the capacity to give and receive love.

Rule 2) Love Connections Require Mind, Body, & Soul

Your hero and heroine must have chemistry. Electrify your main characters by making them exciting and bigger than life. Give them memorable personalities. The more detailed you know the hero, heroine, and any other substantial “cast members,” the richer your story.

The way to understand how your characters will react in any circumstance and remain true to their unique personality is to develop their back-story. What makes them tick, what angers your heroine, and why?

A heroine may say something in a conversation that may not be what she is thinking. How can you give your reader a heads up? No pun intended. Thrust her inside the point of view (POV) character’s thoughts by placing them in italics and first person POV.  I hope he kisses me goodnight. The heroine’s inner dialogue leaves no question as to her true feelings.

Pull your reader into the story by immersing her in your character’s inner emotions. She is unable to lay your book down as she envisions the hero’s eyes seeking his lover’s soul. She visualizes him, perhaps a Norwegian Viking with lengthy, flowing blond hair and rigid, bulging muscles, and oh sorry, I got carried away. Anyway, your reader swears she felt a waft of heated breath upon her neck. She becomes mesmerized. As the heroine falls in love, many times so does the, excuse me while I swoon, reader.

Rule 3) A Romance Must Contain Conflict

What is the all-important page-turning reason two potential lovers do not meet on page one, fall in love on page two, and hustle up to the altar carrying that gargantuan bouquet on page three? Conflict. The circumstances that keep the couple apart.

To make conflict work, give the hero and heroine conflicting internal and external goals. This makes for a rollercoaster of obstacles as the characters butt heads until they realize a little teamwork goes a long way. The very foundation of your plot lies on internal goals of “I need” driving external goals of “I want.” I’m not talking about “no-big-deal” obstacles. No how, no way.

A romance reader wants the worst-case scenario made believable. She wants to witness the couple in such a heated argument she could chew nails and spit out a barbed wire fence. She craves their struggle, desires to shed a tear or twenty, and wants to swear and snarl as she rips the pages apart with her incisors.

The deeper you tug her emotions, the more invested she becomes, until she melds herself into the story, You have the power―with word choices, barriers as solid as granite, and conflict, to make your romance novel the best story she ever escaped inside―until your next novel hits the shelves.

There exist a million reasons for the popularity of romance novels, but I like to think the magic comes from the release of our humdrum “same shit different day” lives. An escape to a place in time where everything turns out all right, and true love prevails, and we celebrate the magic of:

Happily, Ever After

Next Up: Part 2 of “Ten Rules for Writing Killer Romance.”

Tammy Lough is an award-winning author who loves writing romance and creating unique characters who burst with personality and frequent sprinklings of humor. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, Missouri Romance Writers of America, Saturday Writers, and Missouri Writers Guild where she serves as liaison. You can connect with Tammy on her website www.TammyLough.com.

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Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying conflict isn’t important. It’s absolutely essential. But giving broad labels to the types of conflicts a character may face does little to help a writer understand the utility of conflict to a story.

And what is that utility? Well, there’s what conflict means for a character and what it means for a reader. For the character, conflict is the catalyst for character transformation—be it a small change or a large one. But I’d argue that the conflict that really matters is the one the reader experiences subjectively.

Writers need to examine conflicts for their effect on readers even more than for their effects on the characters within the stories. So, I present five situations writers can craft in order to create conflict within the reader.

1) Classic Conflict

I like James Scott Bell’s definition of conflict: “a clash between at least two incompatible sides,” one of which “must be personal, that is, having the ability to exercise conscious will.”

Examples abound, of course. Katniss battles the other tributes, Harry battles Voldemort, Elizabeth Bennett argues with Darcy. Climax scenes usually fall back on this most tried and true method of engaging readers, but you’ll find smaller conflicts throughout every story.

Readers observe the conflict, uncertain about the outcome. Will the character we’re watching “exercise his will” to triumph or lose? Our minds mirror the conflict in the story as we can see the outcome going either way. It’s that uncertainty, that conflict within readers, which keeps them reading.

2) Threat

But you don’t need actual conflict to occur to the character in order to create that uncertainty within readers. You can create threat, which is the potential for conflict or trouble.

For example, have a protagonist navigate a menacing setting on the way to a destination. Fill it with darkness or shadows or creepy-crawlies or some other ultimately harmless atmospherics and you’ll have readers worrying.

It’s not even necessary that the character worries. You know all those scenes in horror stories that have characters innocently going to the basement for some menial errand? Those characters need not worry. Nor is it necessary that they encounter a murderer in the basement.

It’s enough just to have the readers crawling out of their skin.

3) Mystery

Threat brings up a very important concept: that the reader may have a different understanding of story events than the characters. Writers can capitalize on that concept by creating mystery.

Mystery occurs when the reader knows less than the characters. And in an effort to make sense of the mysteries presented them, readers experience a small struggle to synthesize the new information.

Thus, when we read that “The drone arrived at 11:00 with the red box,” we formulate some nascent theories about the world and the plot of the story, theories that are then put to the test, challenged, and revised as we continue reading.

Story beginnings are particularly well-suited to mystery. We often don’t know enough about the context or the characters to be engaged in the outcome of a classic conflict in the first paragraphs of a story. But mystery is like a toddler tugging at our sleeves for attention. Take, for example, the first line of Madeline Miller’s Circe: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.”

4) Surprise

Any time readers meet with the unexpected, they experience surprise. That unexpected revelation may or may not be a conflict for the character. It is in the case of Luke finding out that Darth Vader is his father.

But heist stories, for instance, (like Oceans 11—or 12 or 13 or 8) often have revelations about what clever mechanism or behind-the-scenes plot got the heroes to their current success.

Such revelations are not conflicts for the characters. But they create conflict as the reader has to re-evaluate assumptions. The ending of Carmen Maria Machado’s short story “The Husband Stitch” has exactly that effect on readers. The final revelation is not a surprise for the protagonist, but it forces the reader to grapple with the new understanding.

5) Expectation

We can think in broad terms about how reader anticipation provokes a sort of conflict: a prediction is formulated and then tested, challenged. Threat is a form of negative anticipation, in which readers predict problems. But readers can feel some subjective conflict from an opposite, positive anticipation.

We’ll call it expectation: when we predict success or good fortune for the character.

The protagonist meets a very cute romantic interest, for example. They hit it off. No clash, no conflict. Eventually, sure, there may be complications in the romance plot. But even at the first uncomplicated meeting, the reader experiences that subjective conflict in daring to hope.

Any time change is possible for characters, readers will feel tension in weighing what that change might mean.

So there you go. Five ways for writers to make the most of conflict in stories. Not all of them portray conflict experienced by the characters. But all five create conflict for the reader. And that’s what we’re after.

T.D. Storm is an award-winning writer and teacher whose work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, and Literary Hub. His passion for storytelling and its inner workings informs his teaching, editing, and mentoring. He runs an online writing school (stormwritingschool.com), which offers articles, worksheets, and courses geared toward helping writers hone their craft of engaging and moving stories. You can also connect with him on Facebook and Pinterest.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways to Create Conflict Within Your Reader appeared first on DIY MFA.

But not always. I just completed National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). I wrote a poem and posted it on my blog everyday in April. I chose to do NaPoWriMo because I often overthink when I write, which leads me to overwrite. Or worse, freeze up and not write.

During NaPoWriMo, I didn’t have time to obsess over word choice or subject matter. I chose a subject, a form, and wrote. Everything down to the chassis. Clean lines (mostly) and spare language. Were the poems beautiful? Were they crafted well? Probably not, but they were immediate and communicative. My readers responded to their rawness. They liked the simple but descriptive language. They asked me to continue writing and posting daily poems after NaPoWriMo ended.

I write a column for my local paper. Thanks to the headshot which appears alongside the column, I am recognized at times. Readers ask me questions on specific articles. Most often, they tell me they read the column because it’s interesting and gives information in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand format.

I’m not trying to convince you that I’m a minor celebrity. I see those readers’ statements as evidence I fulfilled my duty as a writer.

Writerly Duty and Responsibility

Some writers say they don’t write for their readers. They write only what they’re interested in. Only what the muse or their imagination leads them to create. I’m ambivalent about that view of writing. Who doesn’t want to create freely without outside opinion? But if you don’t consider your reader and what you want to communicate, your writing will fall flat. Or worse, close the entrance into the world(s) you want to share.

Writing is a conversation between writer and reader. Our responsibility/job as writers is multi-faceted. Our words are:

• Mirrors for our readers to see themselves and society
• The first part of a circuit that our readers complete
• Glimpses into alternate possible realities

So our duty and responsibility is to:

• Remember that, although we write alone, there is another in the room — our reader
• Be clear — whether you’re writing about rocket science or poetry. Readers can’t support you if they don’t understand you. They’ll get tired of working so hard.
• Be imaginative without being obscure

Don’t make your readers scale walls and dig tunnels to get into your work. Build a door for them. But, being accessible doesn’t mean your work is shallow.

Nothing Shallow Here, Folks

You’re thinking “Brenda wants to take all the mystery out of my art.”, right? Wrong. I want us writers to have readers and the chance to do what we all want: get our voices out into the world. None of us wants to write/speak/create in a void.

So, let me dispel your fears with a few current (and not so current) excerpts of “accessible, not shallow”, still beautiful work.

Soil, Irène P. Mathieu, from “Orogeny” (Bob Kaufman Book Prize):

the way you say soil
sounds like soul, as in

after we walked through the woods
my feet were covered in soul

when it rains
the soul turns to mud

the soul is made of decomposed
plant and animal matter;

How it Felt, Sharon Olds, from “Poetry”, April 2018:

[…]         And when my body came out

the other side, and I checked myself,
10 fingers, 10 toes,
and I checked whatever I had where we were
supposed to have a soul, I hardly dared
to know what I knew,
that though I had been taken down,
again, hammer and tongs, valley
and range, down to the ground of my being
and under that ground, it was possible
that in my essence, at the center of my essence, in some
tiny chamber my mother could not
enter — or did not enter — I had not been changed.

Marie, Edward P. Jones, from “Lost in the City”:

“You done crippled me, you old bitch.”

“I sure did,” she said, without malice, without triumph, but simply the way she would have told him the time of day had he asked and had she known. She gripped the knife tighter, and as she did, she turned her body ever so slightly so that her good eye lined up with him. Her heart was making an awful racket, wanting to be away from him, wanting to be safe at home. I will not be moved, some organ in the neighborhood of the heart told the heart. “And I got plenty more where that come from.”

Spring Plowing, Ted Kooser, from The Nebraska Project video, Passing Through:

The field mice are moving their nests
to the higher ground of fence rows,
the old among them crying out to the owls
to take them all. The paths in the grass
are loud with the squeak of their carts.
They keep their lanterns covered.

The works above are straightforward but inventive, and speak to the reader. One recent work, that epitomizes what I feel we writers should strive for, is Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti. It is a novella but easily shoulders the aims — profundity, invention, and simplicity — all writers should embrace.

It all looks easy on the page, I know. So, how do you invite readers into your writing? First, know your readers. If you’re a newbie writer, envision your ideal readers. If you’re a bit more established and have a base of readers, ask them directly what they get from your work. Gabriela Pereira’s book, DIY MFA, has an excellent chapter, Know Your Reader, with step-by-step information and techie tools to discover who your readers are. Then imagine your computer screen as a window with your ideal readers on the other side, listening to your words. Are you saying what you want to say in a language they can understand?

Ultimately, our words should burrow into readers, put down roots, and flower when needed at our readers’ idle moments or times of stress. They are, to paraphrase June Jordan’s “These Poems”, “things that [we] do/in the dark/reaching for [readers]/whoever [they] are”.

Brenda Joyce Patterson is a poet, writer, librarian, and lover of short writing forms. Her poetry and flash fiction have been published in Vayavya, Gravel Magazine, and Melancholy Hyperbole. Along with works by Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Alice Walker, her travel essay “The Kindness of Strangers” appeared in Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Guide to Travel and Adventure.

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