Putting one of your characters through a spring cleaning writing exercise is an excellent way to practice showing rather than telling your readers character details through scene-work. For example, let’s say your character is spring cleaning and decides to get rid of an old exercise bike. Have they stopped exercising and don’t plan to begin again anytime soon? If this is the case, is your character depressed or simply not a fan of exercise. Or did they instead get a gym membership and that is preferable to them? One item and the choices they make surrounding that item can say so much about who they are and/or their current state.

Let’s say your character is cleaning out their closet. What types of clothes do they hold onto and why? Do they donate some clothes as they go through their wardrobe? What sorts of clothes do they decide to get rid of and why? Perhaps some of their clothes have holes or stains in them, where did that wear and tear come from?

Is this person’s home already fairly organized or are they finding old pieces of gum in various drawers? If it’s the latter, that could perhaps indicate that the character is going through a hard time as of late. Or maybe it can show the reader that this person is just generally messy, their home and life mimicking one another.

What does your character have that is sentimental in their home? An old note their Mom left in their lunchbox back in their Middle School days? Ticket stubs from a movie they saw with their partner years back? Half of a ‘best friends’ locket? Anything sentimental will have a story behind it and, when the character sees the object in real-time, it provides you with the opportunity to tell those stories. And, whether the character decides to hold on or let go to these items, says a lot about their level of sentimentality and/or the state of their relationship with the person about whom the memory shows.

Writing Prompt: Take a character from your manuscript or create a character for this exercise. Write about a spring cleaning day for your character. If you choose to use a character from your manuscript, choose a spring cleaning day from a significant year in your character’s life. Presume your readers know nothing about this character and give them character details solely by using the action of spring cleaning. Highlight important items and details around their home, tell the stories behind them, and use action to show how they feel about these objects.

The post Writing Prompt: Spring Cleaning appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

Readers are going to judge books by their covers, but they can’t help it! With so many amazing books to choose from in today’s publishing market, that’s how they narrow down the search initially. Since this is the case, it’s crucial for us authors to keep up with the latest in book cover trends- both so we can hop on them or so we can give them a slightly different angle to set our upcoming releases apart from the rest.

1) Bold Typography

The past few years we’ve seen book covers skew toward big bold typography and we don’t expect that trend to die down this year. This is a trend where, rather than have an image be the focal point of the cover, the cover is almost completely covered in giant bold text consisting of the title and author’s name. The goal of new cover trends is always to draw attention to a book when it’s sitting on the shelves and big bold lettering has been doing the trick.

2) Cartoon Style

We’ve seen an uptick, especially within the romance and rom-com book genres, of covers featuring a minimalistic cartoon-ish style. In the past, romance covers have been hyper-realistic, featuring real models in various romantic poses and settings. This shift toward a more cartoon style is allowing new romance books that are hitting the shelves to stand out and catch readers’ attention more when sitting among the model versions of old.

3) Object focal point

This trend began in the fantasy genre, but we’ve begun to see it branch out to various genres and expect it to continue to do so in 2020. This cover design trend revolves around a single object or image being used as the focal point of the cover among a plainer background. The object or image chosen will be one that encapsulates some aspect of the story within. With fantasy books, we’ll often see this style of cover done with a crown, throne, sword, etc. beautifully illustrated at the center of the cover.

4) Rainbow/Technicolor

In the past, cover artists have been very hesitant about choosing too many colors for their covers (usually opting for one or two colors tops). But we anticipate seeing more and more technicolor/rainbow covers this year as some have already started hitting the shelves. Artists have found a way to keep all of these colors from contrasting or overwhelming the senses by creating a psychedelic effect. This creates the bold eye-catching look they’re after without appearing sloppy.

5) Text and Images Overlapping

As we move into 2020, another trend we’re already seeing begin to form is text and images overlapping with one another. As designs get more and more advanced, cover designers are leaning into layering images to create a unique and more three-dimensional cover image. They’ve even gone so far in some cases as to have the text weaving in and out of the cover image, creating a textured effect that’s sure to capture a bookstore goer’s imagination.

6) Hand lettering
We’ll likely see more hand-lettering covers coming onto the market as well, which we started to see some of last year. Although the hand-lettered trend has been around for a few years now, we expect to see them get more and more realistic throughout the year. Rather than using fonts that mimic human handwriting, we’ll likely see fonts that use the real thing- creating an immediate personal connection between the protagonist and the reader.

The post Book Cover Trends 2020 appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

1. Pick an object that is ugly, and create a character who finds it very beautiful. Have the character describe the object in a way that convinces the reader of its beauty. Now write a second version where you choose a very beautiful object from the POV of a character who finds it ugly. Convince the readers that it’s ugly. For example, a character who finds an old running shoe beautiful or another who finds a sunset ugly. The way your character reacts to certain stimuli tells the reader a great deal about who they are and what makes them unique.

3. Describe a character’s bedroom in such a way that it tells us about a person’s greatest fears and hopes. For example, a character who has a college application on their desk and has a box under their bed labeled ‘KEEP OUT’. A person’s belongings can tell us a lot about them. What would your character have in their room?

4. Root through your desk drawer until you find a strange object- an object that would probably not be in other people’s drawers. Have a character who is devastated to find this object, and tell the story of why this object devastates them. For example, let’s say you have an old grocery list in your desk drawer. Maybe your character finds this and is devastated because it was written by his nanna who passed away a few months prior. Maybe the contents make him think of all the times his Nana made him those very foods. Objects can be a great way to bring back different emotions, foreshadow, or show guilt. This is your opportunity to play around with that!

5. Do some research online and choose a piece of art you’ve never seen before. Now imagine a living room inspired by that piece of artwork, and show the room after a husband and wife have had the worst fight of their marriage. Without specifically saying what happened in the room, use the objects to reveal why the room is in the state it’s in (for example, there’s a picture of the couple broken on the floor or the contents of the wife’s purse poured onto the ground).

SaveSave

The post Writing Exercises: Objects appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.