1) Mood

The ‘mood’ of the scene is what you want your reader to feel throughout the exchange. Picture a scene where two characters are having dinner out at a nice restaurant. When you think of this scene initially you think it’s romantic, right? Well, what if they’re on the run and one of the characters has a gun held to the other beneath the table? What if they’re dating, but one character is about to break up with the other one? What if one character is the other’s estranged father and they’re meeting for the first time? Each of these scenarios involves completely different moods and should evoke various feelings from the reader.

2) Atmosphere

The ‘atmosphere’ is the specific detail of a setting that allows the correct mood to be felt by the reader. So, for example, let’s say the dinner we mentioned earlier was romantic. You would then mention how the candlelight casts perfect shadows on the partner’s face, perhaps an old couple next to them gazes at each other lovingly, the intoxicating mix between the smell of fresh bread and the rose on the table. All of these sensory descriptors tell the reader that this scene will be romantic. Whereas if the characters were about to break up, you could describe how the partner is fidgeting in his seat, how an overly sweet smell is making the protagonist slightly nauseous, how there’s an old man sitting alone with a severe expression one table over. This alerts the reader of the more somber mood that this scene will take on.

3) Setting

The setting of the scene involves the combination of the mood, atmosphere, and more specific information. What restaurant is this? In which time period is the story taking place? Where geographically is the story taking place? This sort of additional information should be sprinkled into the scene, especially if it hasn’t already been established in your story at large. However, be cautious not to go too deeply into these details and lose the pacing of your scene. Space out these details between bits of dialogue and more immediate scene work.

4) Point of View

Part of what dictates the setting of the story is the point of view from which the story is told. Your novel may be told just from your protagonist’s perspective or you could have multiple characters in which the story focuses on. You could also vary the psychic distance in your story or have a distant or close third person vs. a first-person perspective. Regardless of the POV you choose in your story, the atmosphere of the story should be influenced by your protagonist, or whoever’s POV is the focus of the scene. This could mean it is influenced by either their mood, their observations, or what will be happening to them during the scene. So, for example, if your character has just experienced something tragic in their life all of the things they observe, taste, smell, or feel will have a melancholic feeling to them.

5) Genre

Another aspect that can influence the setting of a scene is the genre in which the scene takes place. A midnight stroll in the woods is going to feel very different in a romance novel vs. a horror novel. In the romance novel, there would be a full moon illuminating the wooded area, an owl hooting, and a cute frog leaping across the path, and fireflies would be dancing all around. In a horror novel, your protagonist can scarcely see a thing, they’d hear a distant howl, they’d smell something that they can’t place but it gave them a metallic taste in their mouth. And in a fantasy book, there would be an array of fantastical creatures and a mystical fog coating the forest floor. Think about the genre you’re working with when you’re deciding on the mood for your setting. Then use adjectives that evoke those emotive responses from your readers.

The post Why is Setting Important? appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Do you feel that fist-clenching tenseness? Cultivating that feeling is a crucial part of what horror readers are looking to experience throughout your book.

1) Layers of Terror

There are a few different types of terror that horror aficionados will expect in their books. We could tell you about them, but famed horror writer Stephen King really says it best, “The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”

The best types of horror novels will have layers and will find ways to incorporate all three of these terror types. When they pick up your book, your readers want to be scared so it’s best to give them as many different ways to be scared as possible.

2) Create Continued Suspense

Another aspect of these novels that horror-junkies can’t get enough of is the continued suspense one feels when reading a horror book. This suspense isn’t created through the monster jumping out of the shadows or wreaking havoc on the town, but rather through the absence of that. Suspense is created through a looming sense of danger- we don’t know what it is or why it is or how it is, but we know it’s coming. One way to create suspense is through foreshadowing or placing lines or moments into the book that hint at what is to come later. This can be in the form of the character finding a mysterious substance at the park where a child died recently or taking a series of photos and seeing the same old lady in all of them. These devices show the reader that something isn’t right, that something is lurking in the background of this story and you never know when it will rear its head.

You can also create suspense through your characters. Perhaps there’s a character who is exhibiting some shady behavior, this puts the reader further on edge wondering if they’re in on whatever danger is lurking. The more you can call back on the danger that’s building, the more tense readers will feel. Think of the feeling you get when you’re watching a movie and a character is walking through a dark house. You know something is going to pop out and scare you, but you don’t know when. Your novel should have a more drawn out version of that feeling.

3) Balance Suspense with Calm

Even though you want to have a looming sense of suspense present in your book, you need to also give the readers moments of calm as well. Suspense is a very intense feeling and, if you don’t create a balance here, you’ll risk having a reader need to put down your book to take a breather. These moments present opportunities to build on your characters and their relationships as well. This will not only create a more enjoyable fleshed-out reading experience, but it will also make the moments where we return to the tension feel much more palpable.

4) Put Your Readers into your Protagonist’s Head

As we said earlier, your reader wants to get scared. The most visceral way you can create a scary experience for them is to make them feel like they’re going through this experience themselves. This is why a first-person or a close third-person POV works best for a horror novel. You should put your reader into your protagonist’s head and allow them to see the world out of their eyes. Suddenly they’ll find themselves in a darkened field, being chased by a masked man with a chainsaw. Which is much scarier than simply watching that happen from a safe psychic distance.

5) More than Gore

Although different facets of suspense and terror are important, the best horror stories are about more than just gore. Stories such as Us, The Platform, It, It Follows, etc. are all dealing with psychological themes as well as simply present danger. Both The Platform and Us deal with themes of classism and the resentment that a corrupt system can cause. The story It involves childhood innocence being corrupted and It Follows is a thinly veiled idea based on STD’s. A horror audience will want to see some depth from your idea, so attempt to think of a societal or psychological human condition by which everyone has been troubled or tortured. Use that idea to create your monster or killer and the parameters through which he, she, or it operates in the world.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Horror appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Character Arc

Even though you’re working with a fraction of the page length and word count that novelists work with, short story readers want to see some character arc- at least from your protagonist. If you’re including, let’s say, a group of friends in your short story, your audience won’t be expecting character arc from every single member of the group. That would be a ridiculous expectation for a 30-page story. Simply hone in on your protagonist’s story and brainstorm ways to make sure they’ve changed by the end of the story. Remember, your short story should be selected to take place during a time of character growth for your protagonist. Focus on how the events of the story will change your protagonist as a person- for better or worse.

As few characters as possible

Because your page length is very limited and there’s a lot that needs to happen, you’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot by trying to include dozens of characters. You won’t be able to fully realize your protagonist’s development and the plot of the story if you’re focusing on establishing all of these different characters and their unique traits. Not only that, but your readers will be frustrated. Even in a novel, it’s difficult to have several characters introduced at once- let alone in a story less than 1/4 the size.

Emotional Impact

It may not happen often, but have you ever watched a commercial or music video and found yourself bursting into tears? Even though you’ve been viewing this tiny story or advertisement for a mere few minutes, what you watched was so simple and touching with its own little story. You leave surprised something so short could impact you so much emotionally. That’s exactly how your short story should feel. All of the best short stories, similarly to these mediums, hone in on the emotional core of an experience and, because they’re short and can get right to the point, have a way of being extremely touching. Stories like Why the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down and Delicate Edible Birds are just a few of hundreds of stories to use as examples of how to do this well.

Clear theme

Whereas novel writers can touch on several themes or topics throughout their stories, short story writers are encouraged to hone in on one and focus on dissecting it. And it can’t be a general idea like simply love/relationships, politics, or war- hone in on a specific aspect of these big ideas. For example, Jhumpa Lahiri’s A Temporary Matter focuses on the relationship between a couple who suffered a miscarriage and how it affects their relationship.

Less exposition, more action/imagery

Though novel writing will inevitably involve some exposition, in a short story you should include as little as possible. Focus on showing the details of your character’s internal state and their feelings through setting, observations that the character makes, objects they see, people they interact with, and body language. For example, let’s say your protagonist’s dilemma is trying to decide whether they want to have kids. Maybe throughout the story, as they maneuver through life, they observe different kid/parent interactions- some sweet, some sad, some annoying. This way we aren’t being told how the protagonist feels, we get to see them noticing things and their body language or reactions can tell us how they’re feeling about what they’re observing.

The post Writing For Your Audience: Short Stories appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Unrealistic Dialogue

One of the most common mistakes writers make is having dialogue that sounds too literary and fluffy. Your narrative should sound drastically different than the way your characters speak because people don’t talk in abstract similes and poetic imagery. People use slang, have a finite vocabulary, and stutter or stumble over their words. Speech is an imperfect thing and if your novel doesn’t reflect that, the characters will feel dry and unrealistic. One of the easiest tricks to making sure your dialogue sounds realistic is to speak any dialogue you’re writing aloud. It may make you feel a little silly, but hearing the words coming out of someone’s mouth is the clearest way to figure out if it’s something that someone would actually say.

Similar Voices

Another common dialogue mistake is failing to differentiate your character’s voices from one another. So many books exist where each of the characters just speaks how the author speaks. Not only does this problem make it difficult to tell the characters apart, but it also affects the believability of the book because a world where every character sounds exactly the same just doesn’t feel real. Consider where each of your characters grew up- is there slang from those areas they would use that other characters wouldn’t? What is each of your character’s level of education? This will affect their level of vocabulary as well. In addition, think of their tone, if they stutter or ‘er’ and ‘um’,  or do they have specific words they simply like to overuse? Use these questions as tools to help make your characters sound more unique.

Writing ‘In-Scene’

One thing writers often overlook is how to write ‘in-scene’ to create drama. Think about a movie- when there’s less action, there are slower shots and when there’s more action, you get quicker cuts. Writing is the same way: when you want to create drama or suspense in a scene you start to write with shorter, sharper sentences. Writers often make the mistake of keeping the long-winded prose for suspenseful scenes and this ends up making them feel less dramatic.

Where are we?

Out of everything on our list, this is likely the most common writing mistake. Leaving the reader asking ‘where are we?’ because you’ve done no work to describe the scene. We know it’s easy to get caught up in the plot and forget to include these details, but in order for readers to feel fully immersed in your novel, all of their senses need to be activated- including sight. Every time you switch the setting of your story, make sure to take a paragraph or two to go into detail about what this new setting looks like, feels like, smells like, etc.

Missing Conflict

In order for your story to feel realistic, you must create conflict that is both interesting and believable. So often in books, writers create scenarios where the entire root of the conflict is simply based on the characters misunderstanding what the other is saying. This is not conflict. Conflict involves both internal and external forces keeping the protagonist from getting what they want. If the conflict just involves characters misunderstanding each other, you’re simply going to leave your readers frustrated.

POV & Tenses

Inconsistency with POV and tenses is another incredibly common writing mistake. Make sure when you begin writing your novel you choose your POV and whether the story will be in past or present tense…and then stick with that throughout the story. Nothing is more jarring than a story that keeps switching between third-person on one specific character to third-person omniscient to third-person in the mind of another character with little to no transition.

The post Common Writing Mistakes appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.