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.

1) Mannerisms

One way to show your readers that two characters are close friends is by using their mannerisms and body language. When two people are close, especially when they’ve known one another for a long time, they naturally have a higher level of comfortability around each other. So, having your characters pat one another on the back, rest their head on their friend’s shoulder, playfully nudge one another, uncross their arms when one spots the other- these types of actions show the reader that these two characters are close.

You can even use less obvious mannerisms as a way of showing the reader they know one another well. For example, perhaps one character always taps his foot when he’s nervous. Have your other character notice him doing this and call him out on it. This shows the reader that these characters not only display more open/warm body language around each other, but they also know one another well enough to recognize and idiosyncratic body language as well.

2) Dialogue

Another excellent way to display friendships in your writing is by using dialogue. This is also one where you need to be cautious because you can easily slip into lazy writing territory. The last thing you want to do is write something along the lines of, “Hey Tim, you know how we’ve been friends since the second grade?” Authors often make the mistake of writing dialogue like this in order to establish a long friendship. The problem with this is that it sounds super unnatural and is too clearly the author sending a message to the reader. This can have the effect of taking the reader out of the book slightly.

Instead of being so obvious about it, attempt to cite a specific memory that goes along with a conversation that they’re having. Say you’re writing two male characters, one of which is asking the other for girl advice. You could have his friend say something like, “As long as you don’t throw up on her shoes I think you’ll be fine,” and the other could say, “Dude, that was in second grade, when are you going to let that go?” This not only establishes some playful banter between the characters, but also gives a rough timeline on the friendship in a more natural manner.

3) Circumstantial Differentiation

You can also show your readers a close friendship by differentiating between how your characters act around one another vs. how they act around other characters. So perhaps one of your characters is joking around and being very fun and outgoing around their close friend, but then some of their other friends come over and that person instantly becomes shyer or more guarded. Or maybe one of your characters if very boisterous around other people, but when they’re alone with their best friend they’re more relaxed and sensitive. You can also have their mannerisms change, having them cross their arms, ruffle their hair, cover their mouth with their hand- all of these can show the reader that the character has become less comfortable.

4) Confidence/Protectiveness

As you’ll know from friendships in your own life, close friendships offer a certain level of confidence. Having your characters confide their feelings or secrets with one another will help establish the level of trust that they have for one another. This doesn’t have to be a seamless process to show their closeness either. Perhaps the character being confided isn’t going to react well to this secret- friendships don’t have to be perfect and loving all the time to be close. Having the confiding character say something like, “I knew you’d be like this…” or something along those lines to indicate that they know each other well enough to predict their reactions does just as well to show your reader that closeness.

In addition to confiding in each other, close friends tend to also show protectiveness around each other. So, you could introduce a character that one of the friends deems as untrustworthy and show how they stand up straighter and act wary or defensive of their best friend while in this person’s presence. Or you could introduce a character that the best friend is threatened by as another potential best friend and show some jealousy there.

5) Other Characters

Finally, you can use other characters and their opinions to reinforce the friendship you’ve established. Having other characters like your protagonist’s parents or additional friends that also reinforce the reverence and closeness of the friendship will also reinforce this to your reader. So perhaps your protagonist’s parent is always asking, “Where’s Jimmy?” anytime your protagonist is seen without him or maybe the best friends get into a fight at some point and everyone is shocked by this. Having people outside of the friendship notice how close they are gives even more legitimacy to the friendship.

The post Show Don’t Tell: Friendships appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

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.

The post Writing for Your Audience: Young Adult appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

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.

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

As we’ve stated previously, using a website like Netgalley is a great way to find reviewers with influence. However, you should always do some additional digging and find bloggers, reviewers, readers, and press outlets to reach out to. The first step to doing this successfully: do your research. You need to make sure you’re reaching out to blogs, readers, and press outlets that relate to your book and/or genre in some way. You likely won’t have much luck if you’ve written a romance and you’re reaching out to bloggers who primarily review suspense novels.

You also want to have either a digital file of your book or some physical copies handy that you can send to these outlets if they’re interested. Offering them a complimentary copy of your book is a great incentive to obtain a review and a great marketing strategy to engage directly with their following. As we’ve said before, though, we’re writers, not PR experts. So for those unsure of how to make contact with these platforms, here are some templates to get you started:

Bloggers or Amazon/Goodreads reviewers

Dear [INSERT REVIEWER NAME],

I discovered your work at [where you found them] and thoroughly enjoyed your review of [name of book]. I recently wrote a book that appeals to a similar audience, [name of my book]. If you think you might be interested in reading it and perhaps reviewing it, I’ll gladly send you complimentary copy. Thank you so much for your time.

Best Regards,
[Author Name]
[Your website]
[Your social media links]

Readers (to put at the end of your book)

Thank you for joining me in telling the story of [x and y characters]. I hope they touched your soul the way they touched mine.

If you loved the book and have a minute to spare, I would really appreciate a short review on the page or site where you bought the book. Your help in spreading the word is greatly appreciated. Reviews from readers like you make a huge difference.

Thank you!
[Author Name]
[Your website]
[Your social media links]

Press Outlets

Dear [INSERT JOURNALIST NAME],

I really enjoyed the piece you did on [date] in [name of publication]. I think that [cause] is very important.

I recently published [name of book], which is very relevant to [name of cause] [link to Amazon or major retailer].

[List your qualifications, i.e. why you are an expert on a given topic.] I would be happy to send you a review copy to possibly include in your next [piece name].

Best,
[Author Name]
[Your website]
[Your social media links]

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The post How to Reach Out for Reviews appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.