Khanh 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

In this episode Khanh Ha and I discuss:

• How he writes death scenes in a way that is comfortable for him and powerful for the reader.
• The difference between style and voice and how writers can make both unique.
• Why writers need to stay faithful to their character when creating the POV of the narrative.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Khanh Ha

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.

A Mother’s Tale

A tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose setting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their landscape and inhabitants. Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 382

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 382: Character, Setting, and Cinematic Storytelling in Short Stories – Interview with Khanh Ha appeared first on DIY MFA.

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.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways to Turn Your Plot into a Page Turner appeared first on DIY MFA.

Going Nowhere

But this block was different. I was still making my daily word count goals: 500 words one day, 1,000 the next, and on and on. I was writing like mad, but I was still going nowhere. Pages stacked up, and inside them my characters stagnated. It was an absurd existential crisis: I was supposed to be writing a journey narrative, and I couldn’t get my main character to leave town. It was like trying to control a Sim in a glitching video game. Instead of moving or growing or confronting or changing, my characters mainly sat alone in rooms and thought about things very hard in very pretty prose. Sometimes they remembered things, too. But they didn’t go anywhere.

I had at least fifty pages of this nonsense. I started beating myself up about it. I started wondering if I was as afraid of confrontation in my imagination as I was in real life. Was I coddling my characters? Keeping them safe inside rooms rather than shoving them out into the world to face the hardships I had planned for them? And maybe that was part of it, some deep psychological impulse. But the larger problem, I realized, had much less to do with my mind and much more to do with my method: I’d been so focused on measuring the progress of my page count, I’d forgotten the story entirely.

A Different Tactic

Lately, I’ve been trying a different tactic. Instead of setting arbitrary word count goals, I set story goals. It’s simple enough: every day when I sit down to write, I commit to keep writing until I’ve done something that moves the story forward. Maybe my character runs into a friend, and learns some information that proves to be useful later. Maybe they have a fight with their spouse. Maybe they buy a cup of coffee. Maybe they attend a funeral. These can be large story moments or small, realistic or fantastical, just as long as they add another brick onto the house.

It took a little getting used to (it takes some doing, to get those characters to leave their lonely houses), but I felt a change in my output right away. I wasn’t writing as many pages, but the pages I had were worth keeping. Previously, word count goals had left me feeling like Sisyphus, constantly rolling rocks up hills only to have them tumble to the bottom again. Now: progress. The best part was, I started to get a better understanding of the story the further I dove in. I became more attuned to the times when I was spinning my wheels, and when I was really propelling the plot. I noticed that my most successful days were when I’d written scenes where my characters made decisions, acted, and interacted with one another. Fancy that!

Just Right

It’s funny, some of the books I admire most are often very economical in their storytelling. Susannah Clark gives the reader a full fantasy world in Piranesi in 270 pages. Cosmicomics clocks in at 188 pages, and in that time Italo Calvino manages to explain the whole universe. Not to be outdone, my favorite short story writer, Amy Hempel, can give you the whole of the female experience in the span of a one-and-a-half page phone call. Why on earth did I think I needed word count goals to get the job done?

My novel is not economical—it came in at 399 pages. But it does feel whole—the right size book for the story I was trying to tell. Unsurprisingly, when I edited later drafts, the part that needed the most cutting was the middle section where I’d been stuck. So many unnecessary pages. So much time spent kicking in the air before I learned to plant my feet again.

When I talk to fellow writers, they’ve all experienced similar problems, writing and writing and getting nowhere. Perhaps this is happening to you. Perhaps that’s why you’re here, practicing productive procrastination, reading writing tips on a blog rather than buckling down and getting that tenth chapter written. If so: don’t beat yourself up. Take a breath. Take a walk. When you get back, try to stop counting pages. As the bawdy joke goes, it’s not the size of the thing, but how you maneuver it.

Maybe the book will still end up eight hundred pages long, who knows? The world needs long epics, mid-length novels, brief beautiful novellas, and everything in between. But if you pace your progress by story instead of length, you can be assured that every page has a purpose, and every word counts. 

Marissa Levien is a writer and artist who hails from Washington State and now lives in New York with a kindly journalist and their two cats. Her first novel The World Gives Way releases June 15, 2021. You can visit her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Focus on the Story, Not Word Count appeared first on DIY MFA.

While the scope of available writing tools might have expanded and access to resources increased, the fundamental principles that make a good writer remain constant and evergreen. To this end, here are five crucial traits historically found among successful authors.

1. Passion for Literature

Perhaps the most critical attribute needed for anyone to succeed at any endeavour is passion. This quality sets you apart from the horde in ways no other trait does—it makes you genuinely original. True love for literature begins with a passion for reading.

When you genuinely enjoy gaining access into the minds and thoughts of others as you read through their words, you find out that your burning ideas begin to take on a form of overwhelming coherence. A passion for reading bestows you with the uncommon ability to enthral your target audience thoroughly. 

It is imperative to note that the passion coursing through your mind should be extremely vivid in your writing during character development and the description of emotional scenes. Always do your research properly to ensure you use the right words and phrases to transfer your passion and emotions from your mind to your readers.

2. Powerful Deductive Abilities

A spectacular author is not only able to appreciate the beauty of literature, they are also adept at spotting problems in it. Truly remarkable authors view other people’s writings like an art collector may view a painting—with an adoring, yet critical eye. As a great author, you must be able to appreciate the beauty of the piece you are reading while also being able to figure out the pitfalls in the text.

Pinpointing the problems in a piece of literature is not about detecting grammatical errors. It is about being able to view the storyline with a critical eye to figure out the point where the story begins to stray from its original theme. A great author must be able to honestly and constructively assess even the most exquisite pieces and find a way to make those stories a little better, at least from our own perspective. Identifying the perfect words and phrases to use is one of the critical abilities for writing a fantastic story.

3. Unique Imaginative Ability

The mind is like an arsenal to the prolific writer, and the deadliest weapon in that arsenal is your imagination. Some of the best stories the world has ever read have arisen from brilliant authors combining their personal experiences with their spectacular imaginations.

One particular story that comes to mind is Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The simplistic yet deeply satisfying narrative of this book was created out of the author’s childhood experiences and his superb ability to re-interpret that creatively.

We must remember that being genuinely imaginative involves evaluating our experiences and using the power of our mind to complement these experiences with description. A visionary mind can write a moving script that conveys a variety of emotions and feelings from calmness and tranquillity to fear and violence. This helps make a book genuinely exceptional.

4. Superb Expressivity 

It’s one thing to be imaginative, and another to be able to express your ideas to move your readers to feel the exact emotions you want them to. A prolific author is a master manipulator who can conveniently wield the reader’s emotions in any direction they want.

One of the defining characteristics of brilliant authors is, therefore, their ability to evoke needed emotions in people, such as fear, anger, joy, surprise, and even unadulterated terror. Superb expressivity lies in being able to make the reader feel every emotion. While writing your book, using the most suitable expressions for every context is vital to penetrating your reader’s mind completely.

5. Long-Term Discipline & Commitment 

As an author, it doesn’t matter how talented, imaginative, or intelligent you are. If you are not disciplined enough to set personal goals and stick religiously to them, you aren’t likely to succeed. To become a prolific author, you need to master your mindset.

Writers tend to procrastinate a lot because they are not “feeling creative enough.” However, to succeed as an author, we need to be able to get past our emotions and relentlessly pursue our goals. The truth is, there will always be times when we don’t feel so motivated. 

This is where the line between good authors and legendary ones is drawn. To be truly phenomenal, we need to feel a deep desire to carry out essential tasks such as reading necessary reference materials, typing up our manuscript, and proof-reading our work—all within specific time frames. Discipline and commitment would help us stand out as we reach for the best-seller list.

Conclusion

Writing is one of the purest forms of art. Creating an outstanding piece of art requires you to dig painstakingly into the deepest recesses of your soul. Before you write, be sure to be in your element and to write straight from your heart. With passion and consistency, there is a world of infinite opportunity for the budding writer.

Never forget that achieving excellence as a writer is all about putting these traits into practice. If we are diligent enough to keep trying, eventually, we’ll attain the peaks of creative perfection we dream of.

Rachael Cooper is the SEO & Publishing Manager for Jericho Writers, a writers services company based in the UK and US. Rachael has a Masters in eighteenth-century literature, and specialises in female sociability. In her free time she writes articles on her favourite eighteenth-century authors and, if all else fails, you can generally find her reading and drinking tea!

The post #5onFri: Five Common Traits of Successful Authors appeared first on DIY MFA.

But what about our characters’ jobs? How much thought do we put into that?

We authors recognize the importance of strong characterization, agonizing over the smallest details and collating pages and pages of information about our cast members. But unless the story calls for a certain career, their occupation is often an afterthought. We pick something that’s interesting—a career we admire or think is cool and unique. And we end up with a character who has a cool and unique job that does absolutely nothing for the story.

This is shortsighted. The details are what make a story shine. When we hand-select the ones that tie into numerous elements, they anchor everything together, building a sturdy foundation for a story with depth. One detail that can accomplish this is the character’s job.

But just like in the real world, there are gazillions of jobs your character can choose from. I know, because Angela and I have just written The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers and, honestly, it almost became The Occupation Encyclopedia, because there were so many dang jobs to choose from. It was agony figuring out which ones to include and which ones had to be cut. 

I know how hard it can be to settle on the right job for a character. Today I’d like to share some factors to keep in mind to help you find the perfect job for your character and your story.

What’s My Story About?

This one is obvious, so let’s get it out of the way. Sometimes your story requires a certain job, so the decision about your character’s career is super easy. James Bond had to be a spy. Raiders of the Lost Ark needed an archaeologist. The Wedding Planner…you get the picture.

So if your story is about a person in a certain career field (It’s about a homicide detective who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher), or you’re writing a specific genre such as courtroom drama, espionage, or military thrillers, the occupation choice very often has been made for you.

For most stories, though, it won’t be this simple. There are literally dozens of careers that your character could have. Rather than picking one randomly, choose one that will serve your story by tying into an element of characterization. Consider the following details about your character, and make a list of careers that make sense for each. We’ll discuss what to do with those lists in a bit.

Positive Traits

People choose jobs because they fit their personality, so it’s smart to take this into account. Do you know your character’s dominant attributes? If not, figure that out. Then make a list of jobs that would be a good match for someone with those traits. For more information on how this can work, see the Speed Dating reference at our blog.

Talents and Skills

Unless there’s an underlying reason for doing so, characters will often choose a job that they’re good at, one that plays to their strengths. Athletes are skilled at their respective sports, mechanics are good with their hands, and a chef should be able to make tasty food. Consider your character’s aptitudes and abilities, and see which careers might make sense for them. If that talent or skill will specifically be used to help them achieve their story goal, make note of that. Any detail that does double duty in this way should have more weight in the decision-making process.

Interests

Many people will choose a job in a field that piques their interest: science, antiques, shopping, working with children, etc. What passions or hobbies does your character have that they might naturally turn into a career?

Values and Beliefs

Does your character hold strong ideals that may motivate them to pursue a certain career path? If they want to make a difference in the world, serve a segment of the population, pursue justice, or right a wrong, those desires can drive them toward a particular job. Explore the character’s important values and beliefs to see if this will play into their decision.

Missing Human Needs

This one, I think, may be the most influential (though subconscious) factor when we choose a job. When any of our basic human needs are missing, we start trying to fill the void. Our actions and decisions are driven by missing needs—and this includes choices about work and careers.  

A missing human need will often push the character toward (or away) from a certain job. Based on what you know about your character’s past and who they are at the start of your story, which of those needs is missing? Love and connection? Safety and security? Self-fulfillment? What job might the character pursue to fill that void?

Emotional Wounds

On a related note, emotional wounds from the past can also influence a person’s choice of job. Someone who was a victim of violent crime may choose a career that will enable them to bring criminals to justice or protect the innocent from similar victimization. A character who was raised by a harsh and cruel parent may choose a radically different career path as a way of separating him or herself from that caregiver.

Unresolved Wounds

Unresolved wounds—past ones the character may not have dealt with or even recognize—can also play a subconscious part in this decision. Someone who experienced a humiliating failure may avoid their preferred career and choose something that will allow them to underachieve so they won’t have to risk failing again. A character desperate to please a parent may follow in their footsteps out of a desire to gain their approval, even if it means embarking on a career that will make them miserable. Unresolved wounds are often at the root of a missing human need, so if this kind of past experience is influencing your character, take both factors into consideration.

Putting It All Together

By this point, you hopefully have a few lists of job possibilities that relate to various aspects of characterization. Take a look at your options and circle any careers that appear on more than one list. Those are good prospects because they tie into multiple characterization details, making them realistic options that will provide depth. You now have a shortlist of jobs that make sense for your character and your story.

If pulling multiple characterization details together to find the perfect job seems daunting, we’ve created a tool that simplifies the process. You can download a blank copy of this Career Assessment from our website, and if you’ve picked up a copy of The Occupation Thesaurus, you can see a completed sample there.

Real people don’t typically choose jobs randomly, and characters shouldn’t either. Don’t make careers a background detail. Bring them to the forefront and put them to work for your story.

How have you chosen your characters’ jobs in the past? Were they tied into any aspects of characterization to enhance your story?

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and other books for writers—including her latest: The Occupation Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Jobs, Vocations, and Careers. Her books have sold over 500,000 copies and 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. 

The post Choosing the Right Job for Your Character appeared first on DIY MFA.

Before you take a machete to your words, hacking away in what you hope is the right direction, review your draft for these five things that can take your story from good to great.

1) Make sure we know what the main character thinks

As writers we often have the curse of knowledge with our characters. We know what they think about everything, so we assume it’s obvious to the reader as well. But when we don’t give the reader a glimpse inside our main character’s thoughts and feelings, our story feels random and untethered.

Take this example from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. Before Harry knew he was a wizard, he experienced many strange things, including “being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley’s gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry’s surprise as anyone else’s, there he was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Harry’s headmistress telling them Harry had been climbing school buildings. But all he’d tried to do…was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Harry supposed the wind must have caught him.”

This scene is strong because we know how Harry processed these events — he was just as surprised by it as everyone else and concluded the wind must have blown him up to the roof. Without that helpful insight into what Harry thinks about this experience, this is just exposition and the reader likely doesn’t know what to make of the information.

2) Break up dialogue

Another area that sometimes falls flat in writing is dialogue that ping pongs back and forth between characters without anyone doing anything or thinking anything. As readers, we don’t just want to witness a conversation (we can do that any day just by going to a coffee shop and eavesdropping on strangers). We want the inside scoop. We want to know the backstory, the meaning, and what the main character thinks about what the person is saying. We also want to be able to picture what the people involved in the discussion are doing while they talk. People usually aren’t just sitting across from each other talking. There is typically activity going on, even if it’s just gestures or pacing or biting fingernails.

Here’s an example of what NOT to do:

Mary backed the car out of the driveway. “Where to, John?”
John pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Take a left here.”
“Where?”
“Here. Right here—you missed it. I told you to go left!”
“Well I’ll turn around.”
“No, just keep going and take a right.”
“Where? Give me street names.”
“Right here—go right.”

While this dialogue is pretty true to life it’s also a yawn fest. But try the same conversation with added action and the thought process of the main character.

Mary backed the car out of the driveway. “Where to, John?”
She tried to ignore the fact that John was staring at the woman in spandex pants jogging through the crosswalk at the intersection.
John pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Take a left here.”
Mary gritted her teeth. He always did this—acted like she should know where they were going even though she clearly didn’t.
“Where?”
“Here. Right here—you missed it. I told you to go left!”

It’s a simple shift, but simply adding these action and thought breaks elevates a dry chunk of dialogue to one that is teeming with importance.

3) Cut out the unnecessary (or make it necessary).

One important part of revision is letting go of your little word babies. It’s one of the hardest things for a writer to do—cutting those precious sentences and words that we slaved over. But as painful as it is, it’s necessary for making a good story even better. As Lisa Cron points out in her book Wired for Story, “A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question. As readers we instinctively know this, so we expect every word, every line, every character, every image, every action to move us closer to the answer.”

So when we hold on to our precious words and characters because we love them—even though they don’t serve the story in any way—we actually lose our readers. They try to make meaning that isn’t there and then get frustrated and put the book down.

The best way to take a stale story to the next level is to actually go through it with a scalpel and cut out anything—and I mean anything—that doesn’t move the story forward and work toward answering the overall story question.

4) Make sure each scene sets up the next

One of the best tricks I’ve learned in writing is to wrap up each scene with a realization and an “And So?” moment. (This is an integral part of the Story Genius method by Lisa Cron, though I’ve seen similar ideas presented in other story structures.) The idea is that at the end of each scene, the main character has gotten new information in some way or another and has a realization which leads them directly into their next action (and the next scene).

Why does this work so well? Because as readers we want to try to anticipate what will happen next and if the story isn’t building on itself—working directly from one scene into another—then it’s just random disconnected events. And random disconnected events don’t make for a compelling story.

5) Be specific

Richard Price said ““You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” This is what we are doing as writers—taking big ideas, huge themes, and distilling them into specific characters, specific scenes, and specific words. But doing this is much harder than it sounds.

If your story is humming along at the level of perfectly adequate, the culprit might be that you aren’t being specific. The best way to fix it is to go through it with a highlighter and highlight every sentence, image, scene, or word that could be made more specific. Use Lisa Cron’s “eyes wide shut” test: if you can’t picture it in your mind, it’s too vague. Once you’ve uncovered the vague and broad sections of your story, go back through and refine them until they stand out crystal clear in your mind’s eye.

Remember that the best stories are the ones that were first written and then rewritten. No writer gets it right on the first (or second or third) try. So don’t give up on your draft. You’re armed with an arsenal of weapons now that can take your story to the next level. So go to it.

Ashly Hilst is a book coach and editor who believes that stories give us much needed hope–and we need as many stories in the world as we can get. She lives with her husband and daughter in the magical lands of the Pacific Northwest and spends her days supporting writers and working on her fantasy novel. Visit her website, www.InkandGraceEditing.com, for free writing resources.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways to Take Your Story from Good to Great appeared first on DIY MFA.

Thankfully, there are a few tricks to incorporating theme into your first draft that don’t involve ignoring theme and don’t have you rubbing your reader’s face in it either.

1) Make sure your theme is the foundation of your overarching plot

The best way to make theme an integral part of your story is to build it right into the foundation. You can do this by asking yourself some questions that explore the connection between your plot and your theme: Why does this plot captivate me? Why do I want to write this particular story? What message does this story communicate? Is that the message I want it to communicate? If not, how can I adjust my plot to reflect the right message?

Say I’m writing a story about Brenda, a thirty-year-old spinster who believes she is too ugly to ever find true love. Say I really want to write a transformation story–I’m captivated by the idea that Brenda gets a makeover and finds true love. But if I just stop at Brenda getting a makeover and finding true love, the theme is scary close to something like  being beautiful is the only way to really be loved. Ew!

So I return to my plot, and I add a few elements. First, she will have a geeky best guy friend who secretly loves her. She will find true love with a man who loved her before her transformation. That’s better, but the theme is still not where I want it. So I decide that Brenda will transform and finally appear beautiful, but she will still not feel beautiful, which is where she learns that in order to feel beautiful, you have to love yourself exactly as you are. Bingo! That’s my theme. Feeling beautiful is more about your internal perspective of self than anything external.

2) Connect your main character’s transformation to the theme

As you plan out the character arc of your protagonist, ask yourself what s/he will learn, and how she will change. If your plot is already grounded in your theme, your character’s growth will automatically connect to your theme. If not, tweak it until the character transformation relates to your story’s theme.

In Brenda’s case, she will learn that being beautiful isn’t what she thought it would be–in fact even when she is objectively beautiful, she feels ugly. This will send her down the path of learning what it takes to feel beautiful (which, she will discover, comes from loving yourself, flaws and all).

3) Add symbolic objects to your story based on your theme

Another way to incorporate theme is to include symbolic objects in your story. These could be anything from small trinkets to elements of the setting. Play around with various objects that might be important and meaningful to your character and see if they might relate to your theme with a bit of tweaking.

In Brenda’s story, her bedroom mirror would be symbolic. I’d make the mirror somewhat flawed, maybe a little bit of a blurred image or with a scratch on it so what is seen in the mirror isn’t what is real. This could develop a few themes of it’s own, but would also be the proof that Brenda has grown and changed when she finally looks in the mirror and believes that she is beautiful no matter what the mirror shows her.

If you’re stumped for what symbolic objects you might include, brainstorm a list of objects related to the big ideas in your theme. See which ones spark your imagination and fit with your story.

4) Use other characters to compare and contrast with your theme

From minor side characters to major sidekicks, your main character is surrounded by other humans bumbling through the story alongside her. Put them to work bringing out your theme by highlighting their character traits, backstories, and subplots as they compare and contrast with what your main character is struggling through.

For example, in Brenda’s story, she’d have a gorgeous sister who is everything Brenda wants to be — attractive, confident, and sought after by men. But she would be missing something. Maybe she is happily married to a Ken Doll but part way through the book, Brenda finds out they are divorcing, calling into question Brenda’s theory that beautiful people find true love and live a “charmed” life.

I’d also add a spry older woman, maybe a grandma, who is completely confident and happy in her body even though she is ninety and not the cookie-cutter beautiful that Brenda longs for.

These characters would support the theme in their own right, but would also be like sandpaper for Brenda, slowly scratching away at her misbelief about external appearance and love.

5) Use imagery to illustrate your theme

If you know your character and theme well, you will naturally start including imagery that points back to your theme as you write. If you are still fleshing them out, however, you can start by putting yourself in your character’s shoes. Think about what they might notice in their surroundings. Jot down all of your ideas and then go back and highlight the ones that connect to your theme, then be sure to add that imagery to your scenes.

For example, say Brenda is visiting the spry old lady mentioned above and she notices the peeling wallpaper in her house, the outdated furniture, and the dinginess of this old lady’s home. Obsessed with external appearances, Brenda would notice these things and would probably make some sort of judgment or assumption based on it. She’d assume that the old lady was miserable looking at that every day.

Now you don’t have to explain the significance of peeling wallpaper to the reader, but explained or not, the image works to support Brenda’s character (she cares a great deal about external appearances) and connects to theme.

The basic trick to avoiding beating your reader over the head with theme is to work it into the blueprint of your story until it looks like it was always part of the original structure. Afterall, we don’t notice the insulation in the walls of our house, but we sure do feel it keeping us warm and dry.

And that’s all we want from theme in our stories–to feel it as we read like the warm sun on our faces, so soft and subtle that we don’t notice the source but only the pleasant warmth it gives us.

Ashly is a book coach and editor who believes that stories give us much needed hope–and we need as many stories in the world as we can get. She lives with her husband and daughter in the magical lands of the Pacific Northwest and spends her days supporting writers and working on her fantasy novel. Visit her website, www.InkandGraceEditing.com, for free writing resources.

The post #5onFri: Five Ways to Inject Theme into Your Story (Without Being Obvious) appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Shanthi Sekaran, author of the new novel Lucky Boy (affiliate link), a book that has been getting a lot of pre-publication buzz and is an Indie Next Great Read pick for January 2017.

Lucky Boy is a moving story about two unforgettable women in California: an undocumented Mexican woman and an Indian-American wife, who both love the same child but can’t have him. The novel beautifully weaves together the themes of motherhood, immigration, infertility, adoption and minority life in America. More personally, as the first-generation American child of Brazilian immigrants, this story hit home and had me riveted from page one.

In this episode Shanthi and I discuss:

• The importance of fiction in humanizing different groups of people by bringing them and their experiences to life on the page.
• Using both research and imagination to create a vivid experience for your readers, and in particular how she crafted the dramatic immigration scenes in her book.
• Connection to the point of view of the characters and how to capture their experiences and emotions with authenticity.
• Crafting her book around the theme of motherhood, and how “mother” can mean very different things to different people.
• The universality of the “immigrant experience” in America, and how there are many common threads between immigrants from wildly different experiences.
• How there are also stark differences between immigrants with different levels of privilege, and how it’s important for us to understand these varied experiences.
• Why it’s important that writers live their lives and be present in the world.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists’ Colony and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.

Her latest book, Lucky Boy, has been generating a great deal of pre-publication buzz and is an Indie Next Great Read pick for January 2017. More recently, Sekaran wrote an excellent, thought-provoking opinion piece for the NY Times, “The Privileged Immigrant,” about privileged vs. unprivileged immigrants:

Lucky Boy

Is love alone enough to raise a child or does someone need the means to give that child a better life? Lucky Boy is a moving story about two unforgettable women in Northern California: an undocumented Mexican woman and an Indian-American wife. Both are bound together by their love for the same boy.

Solimar Castro Valdez has always been a dreamer, wishing for a better life away from her small town of Popocalco. Drunk on optimism and full of faith, Soli embarks on a perilous journey across the Mexican border. Weeks later she arrives on her cousin’s doorstep in Berkeley, California, dazed by first love found then lost – pregnant, undocumented, and unmoored. When her beloved son Ignacio finally arrives, Soli discovers that motherhood can be her identity in a world where she is otherwise invisible.

Despite enormous pressure from her parents to conform to their idea of the proper Indian-American lifestyle, Kavya Reddy has created a life she adores. Her marriage to her husband, Rishi, is mostly happy and she loves her job as a chef, but at thirty-five her life starts to seem empty, a gaping hole at its center that can only be filled by a child. When she can’t get pregnant, this desperate desire strains her marriage and tests her sanity, setting her on a path leading to Soli’s infant son Ignacio, sent into foster care when Soli is placed in immigrant detention. As Kayva learns to be a mother to this boy she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else’s child.

The novel beautifully weaves together the themes of motherhood, immigration, infertility, adoption and minority life in America.  It’s also a story about California and a larger portrait of what the state looks like now – who does the work and who has the power. A native of California, Shanthi Sekaran was inspired by her own upbringing as a child of immigrants, by the news stories she was hearing about undocumented mothers losing their children when they were put into detention centers, and by living in Berkeley, a place that for all of its progressiveness is also incredibly privileged. She applied these real life inspirations to fiction and the result is revelatory. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, Lucky Boy will leave readers thinking and feeling and debating long after turning the last page.

As with many books recommended on this site, these are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you choose to purchase this book via this link, DIY MFA will get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 132

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 132: Capturing Diverse Experiences on the Page — Interview with Shanthi Sekaran appeared first on DIY MFA.

This episode is part of a new series I’ll be doing called “Behind DIY MFA,” where I’ll bring members of my team on the show as a co-host and we’ll talk about what they do, both at DIY MFA and beyond. My goal with these behind-the-scenes episodes is for you to get to know the different people who help make DIY MFA awesome, plus hear their insights about books and all things literary.

As you probably already know, I see DIY MFA as a collaborative and collective venture. While I may be the instigator, DIY MFA would not be nearly as great if it weren’t for all the amazing people who have partnered with me on this project. My hope is that this series will showcase the incredible talent we have on this team, and help you get to know these awesome people.

Our co-host today is the fabulous Sara Letourneau, author of the DIY MFA column Theme: A Story’s Soul.

About Sara Letourneau

Sara Letourneau is a Massachusetts-based writer who practices joy and versatility in her work. In addition to writing a fantasy novel, she reviews tea at A Bibliophile’s Reverie and is a guest contributor for Grub Street Daily. She’s also a published poet whose works have appeared in The Curry Arts Journal, Soul-Lit, The Eunoia Review, Underground Voices, and two anthologies. Learn more about Sara at her personal blog, Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

In this interview, Sara and I talk about…

• Theme, and why it’s important to your story
• Passion and its place in your writing life
• Versatility vs. Niche
• Her personal writing rituals

Plus, Sara shares her #1 piece of advice for writers.

Link to Episode 41

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 41: Behind DIY MFA – Interview with Sara Letourneau appeared first on DIY MFA.

Conflict, rising tensions, epic rivalries; we writers love to finger paint with all of it.  But what if you could use the same raw materials of story to map out your marketing efforts?  How fun would that be?  Today, I’ll show you some simple strategies to do just that.

At its core, a story is what happens when a need butts heads with an obstacle. The actions a character takes to overcome that obstacle drive everything forward and keep us reading.  In other words:

Story = Need + Obstacle + Action

Luke Skywalker needs adventure, but has to stay home and take care of the farm and family.  So, Luke sneaks out to take care of some weirdo droids and… the rest is history.  Of course, the needs and obstacles will change throughout the story.  But usually, there’s one core need that doesn’t.  Luke still needs adventure even after his Uncle and Aunt are vaporized, but now there’s revenge mixed in, so we get some adventurous revenge.  His obstacle is still his duty, but now it’s his duty to help Leia (still his family, unbeknownst to him at the time).

Now let’s talk about you.  You’re the main character in your marketing story.  How do you take these building blocks of conflict and use them to map out a marketing plan?  Let’s start with need.  What do you need?  It’s a much harder question than at first glance.

The Need

Maybe you have a pretty good idea what you need to focus your marketing efforts on as a writer, maybe not.  Whatever the case, here are a few questions to help clarify things.

• What do I need to communicate right now?  To who?  Why?
• What’s the highest priority in my writing life?
• What goal would make me the proudest to achieve?
• What would really stick it to that (insert your own jerky authority figure) that said I’d never amount to anything?
• If I died tomorrow, what would I regret the most not having done (in terms of writing)?

After you’ve gone through these, you should be able to formulate a statement like this:

Right now, what I need most is to build an audience for my self published sci fi novel.

Now, you may have a couple of needs.  But for the moment, pick one and stick to it.  Whichever resonates the most with you and feels right.  Remember, needs can and should change, but right now, we’re just picking a focus.

The Obstacle

No story, not even the story of your marketing efforts, would be complete without some conflict.  What’s standing in the way of you publishing your novel?  What’s the obstacle?

When I’m formulating a goal (of any kind), I like to list out as many obstacles as I can think of and then look for patterns.  Set a timer for five minutes and write down as many obstacles as you can think of. Your list might include:

• Too much work at day job
• Not enough money to pay for a babysitter
• Too lazy to write query letters on the weekend
• Too tired in general

And so on.  Then you boil it down to one or two BIG obstacles.  From this list above, we can assume that the big obstacle is lack of time to spend on marketing.  Now that we know what we’re up against, we can plan according.

The Action

What differentiates stories from real life?  Characters, when backed into a tight spot, take action.  In real life, we might just buy some popsicles and binge watch Gilligan’s Island on Netflix.   In this case, we need to imitate fiction.  We need to proactively ride out to meet our obstacles, and attack them with overwhelming force. Again, free writing a list helps.  Mind mapping also works well.  Bottom line: use whatever works for you.

If you don’t have enough time to market your novel, you might:

• Cut back your hours at your day job.
• Ask a relative to watch the kids on the weekend.
• Not go to bed until you’ve sent out two query letters.
• Try a new scheduling app so you can squeeze in time where you can.
• Cut back on TV or cut it out altogether for a month

I’m not advocating any of these choices; the point is to get some ideas on paper.  Write down what you could do, not what you have to do.  You don’t have to make any decisions until you’re ready to. But when you are ready, pick three to five actions that you can take, and start putting them into action right away.

Tools

What are some things you can use to make your actions more effective?  Sure, you can throw a rock on your own.  That’s an action.  But a slingshot will help you fling a rock three times as far, with a lot more precision.  That’s a tool.

Tools are anything that can help you supercharge your efforts.  Maybe a website where you blog about your upcoming novel.  Self publishing is also another tool (and also a whole other can of worms, too big for one article).  Contests, social media, writing groups; all of these are incredible resources to tap in your marketing efforts.

Identity

Who are you as a writer?  Why do people care about what you have to say? This is something you need to know to tell your story.  A small three sentence bio can help you enormously when reaching out to agents and publishers, but also when working on your writer’s website or other marketing materials.

It also helps you in your own quest, when things look bleak.  Who am I?  I’m a sci fi writer. It’s what I do.

One great way to put this together is to write a character bio for yourself.  There are lots of great ones out there, but a simple one pager should do the trick (like this one).

Putting it all together

By the time you’re done, you should be able to put it all in one place.  Below is a basic template with the examples we used above.  Feel free to use this in your own marketing plan.

Need: Right now, what I need most as a writer is to: (Publish my Novel)

Obstacles: The biggest obstacles I’m facing are: (Lack of time because of work and family obligations)

Action:  I will take the following Actions to overcome my obstacles: (Stop watching TV for month.  Spend at least 30 minutes daily brainstorming ways to market my novel.)

Tools: I will use the following tools to maximize my efforts: (My writer website, my beta reader Max, mocha cappuccinos, social media)

Identity: As a writer, I am can be summarized as: (I’m a Sci Fi writer who lives in San Diego with my husband and parakeet.  I have written short stories for various Sci Fi Anthologies.)

Something that works really great with this is Gabriela’s writing goals tool worksheet.  Check that out here.  It’s really powerful to know what your writing goals and your marketing goals are, and to be able to look at them once a week, once a month, or whenever you need some inspiration.

Getting specific and getting it on paper makes your goals real, and not as easy to blow off as the daydream of you winning a Hugo.

Last thoughts

As writers, we need to tell stories.  So, why not map out your market strategies as a story?  What are some other ways that you can use the elements of story to get published, get an agent or achieve your other marketing goals?

Post in the comments below.

………………..

Kent Bridgeman is a freelance writer and marketing strategist who also writes short stories, screenplays and poetry.  He helps his clients clarify their marketing messages and craft potent content. He lives in Chicago with his lovely fiancée D, and a grumpy parrot named Poncho. Check out his work at thewritejazz.com

The post Plan Your Marketing With the Power of Story appeared first on DIY MFA.