Emotion: It Don’t Come Easy

My decision to layer in stronger, deeper emotion into Somebody Like You cost me more than I ever anticipated. Why? Because if I wanted my imaginary characters to express emotions that my readers connected with, I had to tap into very real emotions inside me.

While the story is a contemporary romance, it also examines themes of twins and family, widowhood and grief, loss, estrangement, brokenness … all wrapped around the Story Question: Can a young widow fall in love with her husband’s reflection?

Another question I had to answer? How honest was I going to be as I wove stronger, deeper emotion into my novel?

Many Dream, Few Do

I’ve been around writers for a long time. I’ve met literally thousands of folks who have a desire to become published authors. Interestingly, I’ve met few who actually do. When I was new to the world of authors, I passed it off as extreme competition. After all, there are only so many books that pub houses can send to press in any budget year. Not many manuscripts will be published compared to all the writers out there creating them.

Closer investigation revealed that wasn’t the case with most writers. I discovered many of these writers never actually wrote. They didn’t go through the process of constructing a story, building a plot, sitting with butt in a chair and hammering out word count, rewriting and editing.

In short, many dream, few do.

Rachel Hauck

And So She Climbed A Rock

Here at MBT we talk about the protagonist’s happiest and saddest moments.

These to elements are used to shape the deeper layers of emotion between the characters. Expressly the hero and the heroine.

Often use of symbolism or metaphor can deepen the emotional layer of sharing a raw, tender moment between the stars of your story.

But wow, it’s really easy to miss these moments. To kind of skip over them and wrap it all up in prose summation.

Okay, what do I mean?

Let’s create a scenario.

Your hero is wealthy, grew up in a good family. His whole life he had nice things, a nice car, great vacations. He’s a star athlete and student.

Your heroine grew up poor, without, never had anything nice. The old beater car she purchased for $200 had to be pushed all over town by her friends because the starter didn’t work right. She never went anywhere for vacation but a night at the country fair. She’s pretty, a good student but never ever did anything out of the ordinary.

Rachel Hauck

Extreme Book Makeover: Start with the End to craft the Beginning!

I love writing contests for unpublished authors. I got my own start with a writing contest, and I believe there is nothing better for a new author than entering a contest to see if they have what it takes to write a story. (by the way, here’s a shameless plug for our own contest, the Fraiser!) The feedback can be essential to helping an author strengthen and add shine to their story.

The problem with these contests, however is that an author can have a fantastic opening chapter, honing and crafting it to compelling brilliance….

And still have the book fall apart after that.

Why does this happen? Because it’s easy to get excited about the beginning of a story – but maintaining the momentum to the end is challenging. In our Extreme Book Makeover seires, we’re headed into ACT 2 – how to keep the middle from muddling. But the key to keep Act 2 momentum going starts with a look at the END…and hinting at it in the beginning.

Start with the End in Mind.