1) Level of Stress

When you’re writing a character under stress, you’ll first need to decide on their level of stress. This involves considering two things: a) What would stress them based on their personality and 2) How much would that event stress them. Different events stress varying personalities at different levels. For example, a character could have a very high-stress job working for 12+ hours a day and be content with it, but they get tasked to babysit and all of a sudden they’re losing sleep. On the other hand, you may have a more laid-back or quirky character who gets stressed over being asked to virtually anything, even something as small as picking up a pen delivery. Simply start by asking yourself a few questions: How stressed do I want my character to be? What, based on my knowledge of their personality, would make them that stressed?

2) Body Language

The first way to show rather than tell stress is through body language. Perhaps the character starts to appear jittery, their hands shaking and their foot taping at all times. Maybe other characters start to notice bags under their eyes, their eyes looking bloodshot, and them displaying a series of nervous ticks like biting their nails, scratching their head, rubbing their forehead, cracking their knuckles, etc. You could have them obviously slapping themselves awake a few times, displaying that they are having trouble sleeping. Each of these pieces of body language allow the readers to see that this character is undergoing an event or circumstance that is leaving them stressed.

3) Action

Another manner in which one can show stress to your readers is through action. For example, the stressed character starts to display erratic behavior. They start showing up late to everything, seeming disheveled and dirty. Perhaps they fall asleep at their desk in the middle of class. They start laughing at random and inappropriate moments only to start crying a minute later. If they were more of a homebody, perhaps they suddenly suggest going out and drinking with friends. Maybe they start picking fights with strangers or distancing themselves from friends. Showing how their behavior changes through action can help the reader and the characters within the story note the level of stress the character is under.

4) Dialogue

You can also display character stress or anxiousness through dialogue. Perhaps a very talkative character suddenly has very little to say. Maybe they’ve suddenly become harsh, stress making them lash out at anyone who speaks to them. They could become very sensitive, unable to have conversations without tearing up. Their report with every character will be different, so perhaps someone that they normally love spending time with they suddenly grow distant from knowing that they’ll break down around them. Think about your character’s dynamic with everyone in the story as well as their normal manner of speech. Showing changes in these two aspects of the character will allow the readers to notice further red flags.

5) Arc

As with anything in your story, whether it is background noise or not, there needs to be a purpose. Consider the stress that your character is under a mini-arc. Why are they going through this? What does this stress show about the character? Perhaps it shows that a character that we previously thought infallible isn’t as strong as they portrayed themselves to be. Or maybe it challenges a character in an area that will reveal something new about them. Consider how the stress changes the character and how the audience perceives them.

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1) Choose your audience

As we examined previously, one of the first steps to writing a cookbook is choosing your theme. Cookbook writers make the mistake of trying to make their cookbook as ‘general’ or easily accessible to anyone as possible. The problem with this method is a cookbook that is for ‘everyone’ is just going to get lost in the mix. A famous chef could pull off a more general theme because they already have name recognition, but generally readers in this genre are looking for cookbooks that match with specific needs they have. Maybe they’re a vegan but they’re looking for less complex quick recipes or they’re a Mom looking for some date night dishes that feel fancy but don’t take too much time. Cornering the market on more specific needs may feel like it’s limiting your audience, but it’s actually assuring that you gain a loyal following.

2) Skill Level

The next aspect to consider when writing your cookbook is your reader’s skill level. Do you want to make a cookbook for master chefs who want to challenge themselves? Or perhaps a book for people wanting to teach themselves how to cook from the… oven up? Putting yourself in the minds of your readers is a very important step in creating a cookbook that is a perfect match for your target audience. If you’d like to include recipes for an array of cooking skill levels you can, but keep in mind it may be helpful to break these up into sections in the table of contents. This way when a reader opens your book, they can flip right to the recipes they can handle.

3) Shopping

Another important thing to keep in mind when considering your audience is where they’ll be shopping. Some cookbook recipes are more regional, looking to attempt to bring recipes from the south all across the country or something of the like. If you’re attempting a cookbook like this, you’ll need to keep in mind that people in other states or other parts of the world may be shopping at entirely different stores than you do. This means there may be some specific ingredients that will be more difficult to find for them than it would be for you locally. So, as you’re writing, it’s important to research the ingredients you’re including and, if need be, including possible substitutes for that ingredient if it will be difficult to find in other areas of the world.

4) Budget

Money, money, money, must be…. yummy? Not quite, but budget is important to consider as well. If you’re writing a book of recipes that happen to be super simple with inexpensive ingredients, taking ‘on a budget’ onto your title will definitely draw more readers to your work. If your recipes are more complex and could be expensive, it may be helpful to consider adding little footnotes giving people who are on a budget tips on how to find less expensive versions of certain ingredients. This will end up making your recipes accessible for both readers who want something more high-end and something more budget-conscious.

5) Time

Finally, when putting yourself in the minds of your food fanatics, consider their time. How much time will they need to set aside to cook these recipes? An hour? Two hours? If your recipes tend to take longer, who will have time to cook longer recipes each day? Stay-at-home parents? Retirees? Considering the time needed for recipes could simply allow you to narrow down a possible target audience to tack onto your book title. Quick Recipes for Moms on the Go, A Stay-at-Home Parent’s Guide to Nutrition-Packed Meals– narrowing down the target audience using time will allow your book to pop up in those specific searches.

If you’d like to allow your book to be more accessible to people with varying degrees of cooking time, consider adding longer or shorter recipes to give your readers an array of options. Similarly to the skill level, this could be another manner to arrange your recipes in your table of contents. This way, your readers can easily flip to a recipe they have time for instead of having to spend an hour flipping through your book that they could’ve spent cooking their new favorite meal.

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Intensity

If there’s anything all YA books have in common, it’s that the writing is intense. When you’re in the headspace of a teenager, your hormones and emotions are racing, and that adds an extra weight to the events of the story. Every moment feels like it has this endless sense of possibility where anything could happen. As a YA writer, it’s your job to capture those feelings and write about them in a genuine way.

Romance

Even in a non-romance book, YA readers want some element of romance to be present. If your YA book isn’t strictly in the romance genre, then this element will be in the background of the story as the plot and character development unfolds around it. But just because it’s happening in the background doesn’t mean you can get away with a generic or stereotypical romance. Even if this isn’t the reason readers are picking up your book, YA readers live for those ‘swoon-worthy’ moments where your character’s love interest brushes against her arm or touches her cheek. Make sure you’re creating two specific characters and giving them unique moments to fall in love.

Escapism

Since YA books have both a young adult and adult following, you have to write in a way that satisfies both age groups. And one thing that applies to both groups? They go to YA novels for an escape. Adult readers enjoy escaping into YA books because it’s such a vastly different, and arguably simpler, lifestyle than the one they currently lead. No bills or student loans or job applications; the largest problems in YA novels are emotion-based ones. And young adults themselves like to escape from their own lives and into the life of someone they can relate to and learn from. It’s like they’re going to a new school and reinventing themselves, if only for an hour a night.

Mature Characters

We can’t stress this enough: no one wants to read a book about a whiny teenage stereotype. Both the YA and adult audience of young adult books finds these characters annoying and offensive. Emotions should be heightened in YA books, but young adults themselves have mature feelings about real problems. Adult readers want to be able to empathize with the protagonist’s struggles, even though they may be more self-contained than their own. And teens want to read about a character they can relate to, empathize with, look up to, and learn from.

Diversity

Modern YA books are some of the most diverse reads, so make sure when you’re going into writing your YA books you include diverse characters. Even if your book isn’t about the issues or plights of diverse characters, make sure you’re still making a place for them in your book. Take the series To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before: the protagonist of the series is an Asian-American teen. The series has very little to do with being Asian American, it’s primarily about a teenage girl. Though it’s not about racism, it’s still such a positive source of diversity in YA books because it normalizes the teenage experience for Asian American girls.

Complex Themes

Again, since a wide range of ages reads YA books, you don’t want to dumb down your content or themes. YA readers want complex and relatable themes that they can learn from, regardless of their current age. They want to see themes like self-discovery, family conflict, coming of age, morality–themes that you’d often find in adult lit, just in a more self-contained environment with young adult triggers. So, for example, maybe your character comes home every day and has to overhear her parents fighting. This is the trigger that leads him/her to examine what they want in a relationship and what they think their parents are doing wrong it theirs.

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ThreeDimensional Female Characters

Given that (statistically) the vast majority of romance readers are women, they obviously want to be portrayed in a realistic and respectful manner. Whether you’re writing from a male or female protagonist, the last thing readers want to see is an annoying, whiny, one-dimensional female character. And the stereotypical ‘manic pixie dream girl’ protagonist isn’t going to cut it either. Female readers don’t want to see themselves portrayed as simply plot points furthering a man’s character development and story- they want to be shown as complex, interesting, relatable, strong characters in and of themselves. Whether a female lead is a protagonist, love interest, or close friend- readers want to be able to love and root for them.

Swoon-worthy love interests

Romance readers aren’t picking up your book to get an action hero style gray, dark, cynical character. They want someone who they can gush over, that they fall in love with and constantly grow to love more and more throughout the story. If you’re doing the hate to love trope like in Sally Thorn’s The Hating Game, you have to be careful. You’ll have to craft the love interest so that he doesn’t do anything absolutely cruel or unforgiving in the beginning stages; otherwise, the character will cause more controversy than swoons. And, if this is the trope you’re going with, your readers will crave that moment where (plot twist) you find out he/she was only mean because he/she was attracted to your protagonist and didn’t know what to do with their feelings. Make sure you give your readers that moment.

Real Conflict

Emphasis on real here, fellow writers. A common mistake among romance writers is spending so much time focusing on the love story that the conflict feels disingenuous. Your readers may enjoy the romance in this circumstance, but there needs to be something keeping your characters apart to build up the tension. And there’s nothing more annoying than reading a romance about two people who have no good reason to not be together. Don’t make the mistake of the conflict just being words taken the wrong way or misunderstood- this isn’t real conflict. Use something external- like the protagonist’s parents disapprove of the love interest or one of them is sick.

Tension/Build-up

Romance readers crave a buildup of tension. They don’t want your characters to be hooking up on page two of the book, they want a gradual build-up of the characters’ feelings toward one another. They want to see their relationship grow; they want the characters to have little adorable moments where their hands touch and they feel sparks. They want them to question their feelings for each other, experience confusion when they feel things they didn’t expect and maybe don’t want initially. Make sure you build up the romance for your readers with little moments throughout the story until the characters (finally) get together.

Relatable/Average Characters

Gone are the days where readers crave these characters with rich, lavish lifestyles. When it comes to contemporary romances, they want to see characters with student loans who get gum stuck on their shoes. That may sound very unromantic, but the closer the character feels to themselves and the more relatable he/she is, the more a reader can imagine themselves in the protagonist’s place.

Happy Endings

We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again- romance readers want happy endings. You can spend the entire book tormenting your readers with super sad and tragic scenarios, but they want to be happy when they finish the book. Yes, there are romance novels that have sad endings and sometimes they work, but it’s not what the readers are looking for when they pick up a book in this genre. They want to leave with warm and fuzzy feelings inside–but that doesn’t mean it has to be unrealistically happy. The love interests should end up together, but maybe a character didn’t get their dream job–that’s still OK. It may even feel more realistic and, as long as the characters have each other, the reader still gets their happily ever after.

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1) Pick a subject

The first step to writing a How-To book is honing in on a subject. When it comes to this genre, the more specific you are with your subject the better. There are a lot of How-To books out there so you need to make yours stand out. For example, there are a lot of different books to teach you how to play guitar, but Mastering Jazz Guitar in Three Easy Steps is both specific and simplified version. If you have a broad idea, try to take it one step further by narrowing it down. This may even lead to several book ideas.

2) What makes you an expert?

When you’re choosing a subject, make sure its one that you have some experience with or some expertise within. If you’ve spent your life as a woodworker, for example, then writing g a how-to book about woodworking makes sense. People want to get advice on a subject from someone they feel is an expert. No one wants to read a how-to book on building rockets by someone that’s never built one.

3) Who is your audience?

This step should be relatively easy to figure out. When choosing your subject, think about who you envision as your audience. Because, while you do want to be specific with your subject matter, you don’t want to be so specific that there is virtually no audience for your book. For example, a book about how to play basketball will have a market, but a book about vegans who play basketball likely won’t.

4) Outline

Next–and this is crucial–make sure you outline your book before you start writing. Outlining is merely a suggestion in most cases, but when it comes to How-To books, it’s essential. This book should be a step-by-step process regarding the subject matter where the reader gradually gets better at the task as they go. This means your book needs to be ordered perfectly so that it’s not taking large leaps in the level of difficulty, leaving frustrated readers in its wake.

5) Research

Even if this is a subject that you know a lot about (and it should be at this point) make sure you do additional research. This involves factual accuracies as well as field testing. The last thing you want is for another book to be doing exactly what you’re doing, but better. Make sure you’re telling your readers the best methods. In addition, once you’ve finished your first round of writing, grab a friend or two and see if they can learn the required subject matter from your book. If not, they may be able to point out areas that need reworked.

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